Photo by Diana khwaelid

When Benjamin Netanyahu rose to address the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, the rows of empty seats spoke before he did. Diplomats walked out, while others stayed away from the outset. News reports citing an Israeli tally put the number of delegations absent or departing at 77. This was not a recorded UN vote, nor did all 77 stage a coordinated walkout. Yet the image of an Israeli prime minister speaking to a depleted chamber captured a real political fact: the destruction of Gaza and the consolidation of occupation have made Israel increasingly isolated across much of the world.

The diplomats who stayed away or who walked out were overwhelmingly drawn from Africa, Asia, the Arab world and Latin America, although European states including Spain and Ireland boycotted the address. Brazil and South Africa did not show up, while Indonesia, Pakistan, Senegal, Sudan, and Türkiye stayed away. The empty seats did not mean that each of these countries stayed away for the same reason. However, it is essential to point out that for many of them Palestine is not a distant diplomatic file but a liberation project akin to their own struggles against colonial rule and for sovereignty. They refused to listen to Netanyahu as the occupation, apartheid, genocide, and expropriation were happening in plain sight.

The rebuke came at the correct time. In his address, Netanyahu rejected all genocide allegations. However, in June 2026, a UN independent commission said that Israeli authorities and forces continued to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes, specifically in their treatment of Palestinian children. This commission had previously concluded in 2025 that Israel was committing a genocide. These are findings of a UN investigative body, not a final judgment in the genocide case before the International Court of Justice. The difference between a commission’s findings and a court’s eventual ruling matters legally, but it does not make the evidence of Israeli violence and Palestinian........

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