TEL AVIV — Even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleads his country’s case to the world at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, his target audience will likely be closer to home: Israeli voters ahead of next month’s crucial elections.Netanyahu arrived in New York Thursday for what appears to be a whirlwind trip that will highlight the growing isolation of the U.S.ally over its assault on the Gaza Strip.With only a handful of diplomatic meetings on the sidelines of the assembly and President Donald Trump’s focus firmly on his summit with China’s Xi Jinping, the prime minister looks set to return to Israel shortly after his address to be back in time for the major Jewish Sukkot holiday on Friday evening.“I am leaving tonight for New York in order to defend, from the U.N.
podium, Israel and IDF soldiers,” the prime minister said in a video Wednesday night before he left.“You hear the terrible lies that are being spread there.”Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly last year.Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty ImagesNetanyahu is likely to address an almost empty chamber as delegates observe an annual tradition of walking out in protest over the conduct of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.
But that spectacle will likely play well among the premier’s domestic supporters, for whom he has styled himself as a defiant truth-teller standing up for Israel on the global stage.While much of the world has condemned Israel for the huge loss of civilian life and continuing humanitarian tragedy in Gaza, Netanyahu’s primary domestic challenge comes from an Israeli right-wing who accuses him of not being tough enough in the country’s multi-front war on Iran and its proxy groups.“The main reason that brings him to the UN General Assembly this time is the opportunity to talk, using the UN microphone, to his voters in Israel, in his polished English, in a speech that of course will be accompanied by exaggerated descriptions of his gre...