Always a showman, Netanyahu again turns to props, visual aids as he fends off critics at UN

In his speeches to the United Nations when world leaders gather, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has quite the history of turning to props and visual aids to hammer his points home. But even by the Israeli leader’s elevated standards of showmanship, this year’s address took things to a new level.

Moments into the speech on Friday morning, Netanyahu unfurled a map – titled ‘THE CURSE’ (the all-caps were his) – in which he methodically used a fat marker to check off the countries where Israel has killed its enemies during a nearly two-year region-wide war.

He then addressed the audience with a pair of multiple-choice questions, depicted on a large card. “Who shouts ‘Death to America’?” he asked as he read off the names of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi militia. The answer, familiar to anyone who has taken a standardised test: “All of the above.”

It was vintage Netanyahu, who over the years has shared maps, photos and, in one instance, a crude cartoon of an atomic bomb as he railed against Iran’s nuclear programme.

Then there was the QR code. He showed up wearing a huge button bearing one of the codes often used by advertisers and popularised by restaurants who used them during the Covid pandemic to avoid asking contagion-fearing customers to touch menus.

The code linked to a website about the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, the hostages they took and Israel’s point of view about it all.

Even before he took to the podium, Netanyahu’s office said it had set up massive loudspeakers on trucks along the Gaza border to blare the speech to the people inside. He said his intended audience included the Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. “We have not forgotten you,” he said.

His office later claimed the Israeli army had hacked the phones of people of Gaza, including Hamas operatives, to make sure they heard his words. Inside Gaza, Palestinians said they could not hear the speech, and there were no immediate reports of phones being hacked.

And at the UN General Assembly, it is doubtful that many minds were changed. Dozens of diplomats walked out of the hall before his speech to protest the Gaza war, leaving the hall largely empty, save for a small but loud group of aides and supporters to cheer him on.

But Netanyahu had other audiences on his mind — namely his base of supporters in a deeply divided Israel and President Donald Trump, whom he is to meet on Monday at the White House.

With a colourful and defiant speech rejecting international criticism of Israeli policies, Netanyahu portrayed himself to his supporters as a master showman, communicator and statesman at a time that the country is increasingly seen as a pariah. And a long list of compliments for Trump could help clear the way for a smooth meeting on Monday.

By those measures, for Netanyahu, the speech was a success.