By Anusha Rathi
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with former U.S. President Donald Trump, and Japan’s new leader.
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Netanyahu in Turtle Bay
People and rescuers gather near the smoldering rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27.Ibrahim Amro/AFP via Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday, just one hour before the Israeli air force targeted Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on the group’s headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon. The strike killed at least two people and injured 76 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. It is unclear if Nasrallah was harmed in the attack.
The two near-simultaneous events presented a dramatic split screen as Western diplomats scramble to avert a potentially catastrophic all-out war between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group.
The Pentagon said on Friday that Israel did not give the United States advance notice of the attack and that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin learned of the strike as it was underway, during a phone call with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant.
In the wake of the strike, the Israeli prime minister cut his visit to New York short and is now scheduled to return to Israel on Friday evening, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon confirmed.
Netanyahu used his address to UNGA to rail against Iran and its proxies as well as to denounce the world body as an “anti-Israel flat earth society.” The comments came a day after he appeared to reject a U.S.-backed proposal calling for a cease-fire in Lebanon.
In his speech, which came almost a year after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Netanyahu underscored Israel’s right to defend itself against “savage enemies” who seek Israel’s “annihilation,” including Tehran-backed militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza. Complete with the use of stylized maps as props, Netanyahu warned that Iran’s aggression and radicalism poses a “dark future of despair” for Israel as well as others in the region.
“I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: If you strike us, we will strike you,” Netanyahu said. “There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that is true of the entire Middle East.”
Swaths of seats in the cavernous General Assembly Hall sat empty during Netanyahu’s address, as thousands of anti-war and pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the U.N. headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Supporters in the balcony, including families of Israeli hostages flown in with the prime minister, cheered at several points during the speech.
Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, which began last October, has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians and displaced more than 2.1 million people. With the onset of that war and in solidarity with Hamas, Hezbollah began launching rocket, missile, and drone attacks against Israel; the two sides have traded fire across the Israel-Lebanon border almost daily ever since. That conflict has escalated dramatically in recent days, with Israel’s most recent bombing campaign in Lebanon killing more than 700 people since Monday alone.
World leaders, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, took to the UNGA stage this week and condemned Israel, calling for an end to its fighting in Gaza and Lebanon.
“This madness cannot continue,” Abbas said in his speech on Thursday. “The entire world is responsible for what is happening to our people,” he added, explicitly slamming the United States for blocking three draft U.N. Security Council resolutions over the past year calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
In his speech, also on Thursday, the Lebanese foreign minister said that “the future of Lebanon’s people is imperiled.” “What we are currently experiencing in Lebanon is due to the absence of a sustainable solution to the root of the crisis, which is occupation,” he added.
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What We’re Following
Zelensky meets Trump. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in New York on Friday, in a bid to rally support for Kyiv ahead of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Trump has criticized U.S. aid to Ukraine and claimed that, if elected, he will resolve the Russia-Ukraine war “very quickly.”
The Friday meeting between the two leaders was tense, as Trump boasted his close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Zelensky reaffirmed that he shared a “common view” with Trump that “Ukraine has to prevail.”
Zelensky also separately met with U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, where he presented his “victory plan” for Ukraine and unsuccessfully asked the White House for permission to fire U.S.-made missiles deeper into Russia. Instead, Biden announced a surge in security assistance to Ukraine and promised additional air defense and long-range strike capabilities.
Japan elects a new leader. Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister, is set to become Japan’s new prime minister next week after the country’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elected him as its new leader on Friday. Ishiba will succeed incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who in August announced his intent to resign amid political scandals and record-low approval ratings.
In a close runoff election, Ishiba, who was running for the country’s top office for the fifth time, beat Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, who hoped to become Japan’s first female prime minister. The 67-year-old Ishiba will assume command of the world’s fourth-largest economy at a time when geopolitical tensions remain high, as Russia, North Korea, and China continue to pose security threats to the Indo-Pacific region.
Ishiba is a supporter of Taiwan’s democracy and has proposed to form an Asian version of the NATO military alliance. He has also underscored the need for a more equal U.S.-Japan security alliance.
Austria heads to polls. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party could bag a historic win in the country’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. With voters concerned about immigration, the cost of living, and the Russia-Ukraine war, the weekend election could add to the list of recent far-right gains across Europe.
Founded by a former Nazi officer and now running on a nationalist, anti-immigration agenda, the Freedom Party has proposed to prioritize deportations and decrease asylum applications. It has also called for an end to sanctions on Russia and has criticized the West’s military aid to Ukraine.
However, the far-right party’s victory is not guaranteed. Though it has led recent polls, it is followed closely by the conservative Austrian People’s Party, and the center-left Social Democratic Party.
What in the World?
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer released a photo over the weekend of the latest recruit to No. 10 Downing St.: a kitten. What is its name?
A. Queen
B. Toto
C. Prince
D. Cromwell
Odds and Ends
A zoo in central Finland announced on Thursday that it would prematurely return two borrowed giant pandas to China eight years ahead of schedule, saying that they have become too expensive to keep. China gifted the bears to Finland in 2017 to mark the Nordic country’s 100 years of independence. The private zoo said it invested more than $9 million in the facility that houses the pandas, but that a decline in visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war had added to the zoo’s—ahem, unbearable—mounting debts.
And the Answer Is…
C. Prince
Despite a landslide election victory for the Labour Party in July, Starmer has faced low approval ratings during his time so far in office, John Kampfner writes. The residence’s incumbent chief mouser, named Larry, is also unlikely to approve.
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