Alone on the UNGA dais

Editorial

The sight of an Israeli prime minister addressing the United Nations General Assembly usually evokes impressions of isolation. Seats in the auditorium are left empty and those with human figures seem eerily mannequin-like, their inhabitants sitting noncommittally and emotionless.

When Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to the body on Tuesday, he seemed even more isolated and alone than a man in his position customarily does. Much of his speech seemed aimed not at enemies – of which there are many – but at friends – of which there are but a couple.

The one reliable ally with the power to have his country’s back in a time of crisis has famously been making nice with the smiling new face of Iranian theocracy. That Western powers, led by the American president, may lay off the punishing sanctions against Iran was depicted by Netanyahu as a fool’s compromise. Hasan Rouhani, the gregarious new ambassador of the 1979 revolution, should not deflect American or world attention from the Iranian determination to build nuclear weapons aimed at wiping Israel off the map, Netanyahu warned.

“This is a ruse,” he said. “This is a ploy.”

He fears, as many do, that Iran’s new leader is playing good cop simply to buy time to realize his country’s nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu quoted, as others have in recent days, Rouhani’s own words when he served a decade ago as his country’s nuclear negotiator, in which he bragged of duping Western powers with empty dialogue while the regime’s bad cops continued their march to nuclear capability.

In a backhanded slap at his American ally, Netanyahu chose a simple but loaded line. Referring to his appearance a year earlier, when he held up a graphic of a Wile E. Coyote-style bomb, the Israeli prime minister declared: “I drew a red line.”

The message was subtle, yet pointed.

The American president, just weeks ago, had to back down from these same tough words. Having warned a year ago that use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would represent a “red line” that the world would not allow Bashar al-Assad to cross, Barack Obama was forced to finesse his language with Bill Clinton-like slipperiness by offering a post-facto clarification that it wasn’t his red line, but rather some sort of objective red line. However, when it was eventually crossed, there were effectively no repercussions for Syria at all. In choosing to employ this same phrase, Netanyahu was implicitly warning the world that he could be counted on to enforce his words with action.

A year ago, Netanyahu was ridiculed for the cartoonish bomb he held up during his speech. This year, there were no cheesy props, though he seemingly couldn’t resist goofy wordplay, declaring that, “Rouhani thinks he can have his yellow cake and eat it too.”

Yet the speech was dead serious – and Netanyahu placed current events in the context of personal history. He spoke of his grandfather who, beaten senseless and left for dead by an antisemitic mob in Europe, determined to help build a Jewish homeland. Netanyahu then transformed his grandfather’s experience into a parable for the Jewish people, warning that the Jewish people, left by the world for dead, had gone on to create one of the world’s most vibrant societies – and would defend it, alone if necessary.

“Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons,” he declared. “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”

The image of Israel standing alone was personified by Netanyahu, whose words drew applause mostly from his own delegation and like-minded non-delegates, while representatives of UN member-states sat indifferently.

The Israeli prime minister’s tough stance may have offered some reassurance to Jews and Zionists in his country and in the Diaspora that the Iranian regime’s determination to destroy Israel will not come to pass. Yet, on the faces of some audience members, and in the commentary that followed, much of the world seemed to figuratively reply, “We’ll see about that.”

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