The Mask of Civilization on the Face of Apartheid: A Look at Netanyahu’s Criminal Rhetoric at the United Nations
From the heart of a Middle East that has bled for decades under the boots of colonialism, indiscriminate bombardments, systematic assassinations, and the medieval sieges imposed by the Zionist regime, Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly was nothing less than the naked embodiment of “the most brazen form of inversion of truth, fascist propaganda, and systematic justification of genocide.”
Before being a political event, this speech was a nauseating spectacle: an “accused man wanted by the International Criminal Court” making his escape, as it were, from the defendant’s seat in a criminal court to the podium of the United Nations General Assembly.
What follows is my examination of the criminal rhetoric of this man accused of genocide.
1. The Greatest Inversion in History: The Accused Perpetrator Posing as Prosecutor
The height of audacity in Netanyahu’s speech lies in his deliberate and deranged reversal of the roles of “perpetrator and victim.” A man for whom the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) found reasonable grounds to issue an arrest warrant on allegations including the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity—the killing and systematic infliction of suffering upon millions of people in Gaza—stands calmly behind the podium and calls the victims of his own war machine “terrorists,” while presenting himself as a “defender of civilization.”
This is linguistic colonialism at its most extreme: 78 years of occupation, the bombing of hospitals and refugee camps, and the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent women and children are called “legitimate self-defense,” while the resistance of a people fighting to reclaim their land and human dignity is branded “barbarism.”
An accused man who should have the handcuffs of justice around his wrists stares the world in the face and mocks every standard of human rights.
2. Invoking Ancient Myths to Legitimize Ethnic Cleansing
Netanyahu’s reliance on the Torah and on narratives dating back thousands of years to justify modern colonialism, illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the occupation of the Golan Heights is a blatant affront to the United Nations Charter and international law.
If geographical borders and the sovereign rights of nations are to be rewritten on the basis of ancient religious scrolls, then no place on Earth will ever be secure.
This approach lays bare the fascist, racist, and apartheid nature of the Tel Aviv regime—a regime founded upon the “dispossession of the indigenous population” and “ethnic cleansing,” and one that brazenly links its crimes to supernatural commandments in an attempt to portray the spilling of human blood as permissible.
3. Emboldened by Imperialism and Brazen Defiance of the International Community
Netanyahu’s arrogant and insulting tone toward representatives of countries who walked out of the United Nations chamber in protest against the presence of a war criminal—and his branding of them as “moral cowards”—is the product of years of ironclad immunity granted to him by the United States and by Western colonialism and global imperialism.
He proudly speaks of violations of the airspace of countries across the region, targeted assassinations, the bombing of facilities, and wars on multiple fronts.
Such a complete abandonment of even the pretense of diplomatic restraint demonstrates the extent to which the international legal order has surrendered before naked force and imperial vetoes.
The silence or implicit support of Western governments for such positions makes them complicit in every drop of blood spilled in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and throughout the Middle East.
4. Projecting Deadly Domestic Crises into Regional Terror and Conflict
Netanyahu bellows about “strategic victories” and the “defeat of insecurity” while the settler society under his rule struggles with profound psychological crises, economic deterioration, structural protests, and political deadlock.
In order to postpone his domestic trials on corruption charges and prevent the collapse of his fragile coalition, he must keep the machinery of war permanently running and drag the region toward the precipice of a global war.
Bringing technological devices—such as Starlink—to the podium of the United Nations General Assembly and issuing threats against the great nation of Iran is a vulgar spectacle staged by a politician who knows that once the war ends, the final chapter of his political life and his inevitable downfall will begin.
Wait Until the Dawn of Your Rule Breaks
History has demonstrated with unmistakable clarity that no occupying empire has ever achieved immortality through cluster bombs, indiscriminate killing, rhetoric at the United Nations, and the support of its Western patrons.
What came from the throat of this wanted criminal in New York was not the voice of strength or authority. It was the terrified roar of a declining project and a decaying structure confronted by the iron will of the peoples of the region.
Gaza, Lebanon, and a steadfast Iran stand as living witnesses that the Zionist killing machine will ultimately drown in the quagmire of its own structural crimes.
Reza Fani Yazdi
September 26, 2026
