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Something set Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance at the United Nations General Assembly last night apart from every other one of his annual productions. On the surface, all the recognizable elements were there: props, plenty of pauses for applause, and a generous number of quotable lines. The difference was the audience. Even though he was ostensibly addressing the international community, Bibi has always had one eye locked on his domestic audience. Only this year, he was staring directly at them. Bibi has never agreed with Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion’s derisive dismissal of what the latter called “Um-Shmum.” After all, it was in this highly broadcast arena that the young Netanyahu, as Israel’s ambassador to the organization, built his reputation by eloquently sparring with Israel’s enemies. Yesterday, in one of his broadest-spanning speeches, the prime minister addressed Gaza, Iran, the West Bank, international isolation, Emmanuel Macron, and Zohran Mamdani, careful to provide as many viral clips as possible for Likud’s next month of campaigning. The primary question is: did it work? Probably not. No matter how flashy his performance, his words were not sufficient, nor intended to beckon opposition voters into the coalition fold. This was Bibi trying to show what Bibi does best: defending Israel, attacking enemies, and bragging about his achievements, all in perfect English, a capability Gadi Eisenkot, notably lacks. He is hoping that showing himself in top form will instill just that extra ounce of energy necessary for demoralized Likud voters to turn out to the polls and give him that vital extra inch. The biggest problem with that plan is timing. Besides UNGA taking place while voters are busy preparing for the holiday of Sukkot, the circumstances surrounding the speech do not easily build to a grand oration. Last year’s speech was delivered while hostages were still in Gaza; the year before, as Israel prepared for an advance in Lebanon and was still in the aftermath of a direct exchange of fire with Iran. Had he delivered this same speech in March during the war, the brief MoU stage, or the active exchange of fire, he likely would have had a larger impact. Instead, he attempted to heat up some fronts that have been frozen for months, and, judging by Donald Trump’s statements, are unlikely to defrost until after the elections, both Israeli and American. Nor was the speech of such enthralling quality that it could obscure the successive parade of anti-Israel diatribes that marched in lockstep from the heart of Europe to Pakistan. To no one’s surprise, even UN Secretary-General António Guterres took time on the opening day to put it at the center of the conference. Donald Trump’s solidarity and the shockingly direct, and always welcome, statements from Argentine President Javier Milei could hardly be heard over the din of accusations. Given Israel’s size and exposure in a hostile region, international relations have always been a key part of security, and security is voters’ highest priority. Bibi would like to flex his vast experience in the field, while omitting recent circumstances in the international arena. Fortunately and unfortunately for the prime minister, UNGA will likely be forgotten by election time. His latest U.N. performance can comfortably be filed along with most of the organization’s speeches, in the drawer labeled pointless.

Something set Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance at the United Nations General Assembly last night apart from every other one of his annual productions. On the surface, all the recognizable elements were there: props, plenty of pauses for applause, and a generous number of quotable lines. The difference was the audience. Also, what if Netanyahu knew about October 7 before hand? And more. All in today's edition of It's Noon in Israel. open.substack.com/pub/amitse…

A drone crashed inside the outpost. Nadav and Ofek approached to inspect it, and then it exploded.

Cleared for publication: Two IDF reservists were killed in combat in Gaza during an explosion involving an IDF drone. 🕯️ Sgt. Maj. (res.) Nadav Kali, 24, Har Halutz 🕯️ Sgt. Maj. (res.) Ofek Moalem, 23, Jerusalem

Weekly poll summary: opposition-coalition Channel 12: 54–50 Channel 13: 52–51 Channel 14: 46–63 Channel 15: 48–60 Channel 16: 52–52 The Times of Israel: 53–53

Netanyahu: The day is not far off when the evil regime in Iran will fall, and we will celebrate that day.

Netanyahu: They’re talking about settler violence? There are maybe two victims a year, compared with thousands of attacks from the other side.

The UAE representative remained in the hall.

Netanyahu arrived at the UN.

Until two weeks ago, the Opposition Bloc controlled the agenda unopposed, and Benjamin Netanyahu only reacted. That’s no longer the case. Has anyone heard about the Haredim lately? The million people who were Netanyahu’s biggest electoral problem have practically vanished off the face of the earth. It’s tempting for Gadi Eisenkot, Avigdor Liberman and company to talk about the massacre and Netanyahu’s responsibility for it, and about that phone call that may or may not have happened with the UAE ruler. But sound campaign discipline would require them to talk about Hasidim in the morning, Litvaks at noon and Shas voters in the evening. Instead, Netanyahu is serving them a different menu: Abu Shehadeh for breakfast, Abbas for lunch and Tibi for dinner. The Haredim disappeared, the Arabs showed up. The cost of the partnership with the Haredim is already sunk into the bloc, and by most polls it’s still running up a heavy bill. But the rise of the Arab parties—and the rise of talk about the Arab parties—is hurting the bloc badly. At the meeting, Eisenkot pushed back against pressure from Liberman, and from many in his own list, to finally disavow the idea of swearing in a minority government propped up by Arab abstention. He believes it’s the bloc’s last hope. “What’s your alternative?” he asked Liberman. After all, the Yisrael Beiteinu chairman has nothing but the mantra of 63 seats for the bloc—seats that simply aren’t coming. Liberman sketches a frightening scenario of total collapse in American public opinion, leading to UN Security Council sanctions, alongside an extra 125 billion a year in the budget, defense spending, and the unraveling of agreements with the European Union. But he’s dug in: either a genuine change government, or election after election after election. Joining Netanyahu isn’t even up for discussion. This week also marked the collapse of almost the last remaining path to forming a government: support from the Arab Ra’am. In every poll, without exception, even a yes vote from Abbas and his colleagues doesn’t give the opposition a majority of 61. Things aren’t any brighter in the other bloc. In some Likud polls it clears 63 seats, in others it comes very close to a majority, but Netanyahu himself is deeply skeptical the numbers are accurate. If he believed them, he wouldn’t be working so hard to finish off Ofer Winter’s party. Winter’s party is collapsing in most polls, barely able to grow: Smotrich still hasn’t cleared the danger zone, Ben Gvir is approaching it too (though those numbers are questionable), and Shas is scraped to the bone. Like Gulliver waking up in Lilliput bound by a thousand thin threads, he too can’t get up. Going by the polls, he isn’t quite the giant, and they aren’t quite such dwarfs.

Brothers in Arms, the reservist protest group that led the refusal campaign against the government’s 2023 judicial overhaul, long ago stopped limiting its Twitter account to refusal declarations and the fight against the judicial reforms. This past week alone, it wished the whole people of Israel a happy new year and plugged a new propaganda film about itself. It also attacked Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s new AI video and even mourned actor Ilan Dar, a beloved fixture of Israeli stage and screen, who died at a ripe old age. There is just one event the organization has yet to respond to: “NAZA,” the film claiming that their brothers in arms, the IDF’s soldiers as a whole, are war criminals, child killers and systematic executioners of the innocent. That’s a bit odd, since the organization is to this day demanding redress for the insult to the refusenik pilots whom Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi told to go to hell. These are the very same pilots now accused of killing Gazans for the sake of killing. Suddenly they don’t deserve a defense? What’s worse, being called “leeches” or being accused of being “murderers”? Or is it that as long as the enemy isn’t Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the architect of the judicial overhaul, the great patriots feel no urgency to take to the streets with a blue-and-white flag and “defend our beloved country?” The silence may be rooted in an interview the organization’s representatives gave to the American program “60 Minutes,” on the very eve of the October 7 massacre. Shira Etting, a reserve helicopter pilot and one of the group’s leaders, explained at the time why they had organized a mass halt to reserve duty. The explanation differed from the one given to the Israeli public: “If you want pilots who can fly and fire missiles and bombs at houses, knowing that they might kill children, they need to have the strongest trust there is in the people making those decisions.” “In their moral values,” added refusenik Ron Scherf, one of the movement’s founders. Omri Ronen sat beside them in silence. Today he is a realistic candidate on the Democrats’ Knesset slate. The message was clear: We stopped showing up because Israel’s leadership in fall 2023 can’t be trusted not to kill children for political purposes. Three weeks later, children and adults did indeed begin dying in the Gaza Strip from Israeli bombs and missiles. We know the truth: this was regrettable but minimal collateral damage in a war of survival as just as any ever fought. But what is the world supposed to understand? Suppose that in September you explained to it, in fluent English, that there was a real chance Israel would kill Arab babies for lack of morals. Then, from October onward, Israel did kill Arab babies. The inescapable conclusion is that you are, at the very least, in the high-risk group for being a war criminal. The embarrassment across broad swaths of the Zionist left and the Democrats since the blood libel premiered in Venice is not just fear of an unhinged base. It reflects something deeper: a loss of direction, and confusion. Above all, it reflects dishonesty, and the concealment of true views, by the people who tore down “End the Occupation” signs at the Kaplan Street pro-democracy protests (oh, the irony) so as not to scare off right-wing crowds. In that same “60 Minutes” interview, they explained that what all the protest activists had in common was the desire to end the occupation. There is consistency in someone who opposed Brothers in Arms’ disgraceful pre-October 7 refusal campaign and also believes Israel has not committed war crimes since that day. There is also consistency in someone who supported the refusal because of the government’s actions before the massacre and argues that Israel has committed war crimes since. It is, after all, the same leadership. But there is no explaining the people who, in September, warned in English on a prestigious international stage that this government might kill children for no reason. In October, under that same government, they themselves flew bombing sorties in which children were killed. No wonder Brothers in Arms is silent, Eyal Naveh, a leader of the movement, is silent, Shira Etting is silent, Ron Scherf is silent, Shikma Bressler, the physicist who became the face of the anti-overhaul protests, is silent. They didn’t lie on “60 Minutes,” it turns out. They really did have doubts about Israel’s purity of arms. But they know full well what the public thinks of what they really think on the subject. That’s the real reason Brothers in Arms isn’t breaking the silence.

Less than a day after Macron explained to Israelis that Hamas is not active in Judea and Samaria, and three days since a Hamas gunman murdered Netanel Shukrun, a terrorist rammed a checkpoint, seriously wounding a reserve soldier, Neria Leiter, son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter. Also, the opposition loses the public agenda, and why Brothers in Arms isn’t breaking the silence. All in today's edition of It's Noon in Israel. open.substack.com/pub/amitse…

Netanyahu’s election slogan on the traditional sign at the Citadel: “We Will Not Surrender”

The Central Elections Committee rejected, by a majority vote, the request to bar Otzma Yehudit from running in the elections.

There is some good news too: Leiter’s daughter gave birth to a baby girl yesterday and is hospitalized only about 40 meters away from her brother, who is in intensive care.

Ambassador Leiter on his son’s condition: “I was afraid I would land in Israel this morning with no hope. Thank God, the doctors managed to stabilize his condition, but his life is still in danger.”

Shaare Zedek: Neria underwent complex brain surgery that lasted several hours. His condition remains very serious, and his life is in danger.

Before takeoff: Netanyahu visited Shaare Zedek, where Neria Leiter is hospitalized.

Ambassador Leiter is on his way to Israel. Neria needs a miracle.

No worries, they’ll keep asking the ambassador only about “Settler Violence”