Israel & Hamas: Recognition of Palestine: 1)Israel and Gaza: Facing global isolation at UN, a defiant Netanyahu says Israel ‘must finish the job’ against Hamas; 2)As the world convulses in war and contentiousness, its leaders convene at the UN to figure it out; 3)Canadian recognition of Palestinian state greeted with cheers, dismay
1) Israel and Gaza: Facing global isolation at UN, a defiant Netanyahu says Israel ‘must finish the job’ against Hamas
Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press
By Jennifer Peltz, Adam Geller And Farnoush Amiri, September 26, 2025
Surrounded by critics and protesters at the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow world leaders on Friday that his nation “must finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza, giving a defiant speech despite growing international isolation over his refusal to end the devastating war. “Western leaders may have buckled under the pressure,” he said. “And I guarantee you one thing: Israel won’t.”
Netanyahu’s speech, aimed as much at his increasingly divided domestic audience as the global one, began after dozens of delegates from multiple nations walked out of the U.N. General Assembly hall en masse Friday as he began.
Responding to countries’ recent decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu said: “Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere.”
As the Israeli leader spoke, unintelligible shouts echoed around the hall, while applause came from supporters in the gallery. The U.S. delegation, which has backed Netanyahu in his campaign against Hamas, stayed put. The few world powers in attendance, the United States and the United Kingdom, did not send their most senior officials or even their U.N. ambassador to their section. Instead, it was filled out with more junior, low-level diplomats.
“Antisemitism dies hard. In fact, it doesn’t die at all,” Netanyahu said. He routinely accuses his critics of antisemitism.
Netanyahu faces international isolation, accusations of war crimes and growing pressure to end a conflict he has continued to escalate. Friday’s speech was his chance to push back on the international community’s biggest platform. He used it to cast Gaza as the lone remaining front in a wider war, listing recent military missions by Israel to target its enemies and contain threats to its security in Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
Those efforts have “opened up possibilities for peace,” he said, noting that Israel has begun negotiations with Syria to reach security arrangements with the new government in Damascus. The final challenge, Netanyahu said, is to root out what he called the “final remnants of Hamas.”
As he has often in the past at the United Nations, Netanyahu held up visual aids — including a map of the region titled “THE CURSE,” which chronicles Israel’s challenges in its neighborhood. He marked it up with a large marker. He wore — and pointed out — a pin with a QR code to a site about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that led to the war and about the Israeli hostages taken by the militants. Members of the Israeli delegation wore similar pins.
Netanyahu also frequently praised President Donald Trump, his chief ally in his political and military approach in the region. Netanyahu said the changes across the Mideast have created new opportunities’ he said Israel has begun negotiations with Syria on security arrangements with the country’s new government.
The Israeli government took steps to get Netanyahu heard in Gaza, setting up loudspeakers to blast the speech into the territory though the military has pushed Palestinians away from its borders. The prime minister’s office also claimed that the Israeli army had taken over mobile phones in Gaza to broadcast his message, though AP journalists inside Gaza saw no immediate evidence of Netanyahu’s speech being broadcast on phones there.
Netanyahu said the special measures were taken in an attempt to reach the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza. He spoke in Hebrew at one point, and he read the names of the 20 who are believed to still be alive.
Hamas responded to the speech with a statement accusing Netanyahu of making false justifications to continue the war.
“If he were truly concerned about his captives, he would have stopped his brutal bombardment, genocidal massacres, and the destruction of Gaza City,” Hamas said in a statement posted on its website. “Instead, he lies and continues to endanger their lives.”
A closely watched speech
Netanyahu’s annual speech to the U.N. General Assembly is always closely watched, often protested, reliably emphatic and sometimes a venue for dramatic allegations. But this time, the stakes were higher than ever for the Israeli leader.
In recent days, Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and others announced their recognition of an independent Palestinian state. The European Union is considering tariffs and sanctions on Israel. The assembly this month passed a nonbinding resolution urging Israel to commit to an independent Palestinian nation, which Netanyahu has said is a nonstarter.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant accusing Netanyahu of crimes against humanity, which he denies. And the U.N’s highest court is weighing South Africa’s allegation that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which it vehemently refutes.
As Netanyahu spoke Friday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered a few blocks from the heavily secured United Nations.
“Israel has chosen a war against every conscientious human being in this world,” said Nidaa Lafi, an organizer with Palestinian Youth Movement, prompting chants of “shame” from the growing crowd.
Netanyahu’s message was simultaneously applauded by UN Watch, a non-governmental group long supportive of Israel. “His address had a dual tone: defiance in the face of terror, but also a vision for peace with Arab neighbors, and even with a free Iran one day,” the group’s executive director, Hillel Neuer, said in a statement.
Opposition to Netanyahu’s approach is growing
At a special session of the U.N. Security Council this week, nation after nation expressed horror at the 2023 attack by Hamas militants that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, saw 251 taken hostage and triggered the war. Many of the representatives went on to criticize the response by Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and influx of aid.
Israel’s sweeping offensive has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced 90 percent of its population, with an increasing number now starving.
While more than 150 countries now recognize a Palestinian state, the United States has not, providing Israel with vociferous support. But Trump signaled Thursday there are limits, telling reporters in Washington that he wouldn’t let Israel annex the occupied West Bank.
Israel hasn’t announced such a move, but several leading members in Netanyahu’s government have advocated doing so. Officials recently approved a controversial settlement project that would effectively cut the West Bank in two, a move critics say could doom chances for a Palestinian state. Trump and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet during his visit.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas addressed the General Assembly via video on Thursday after the U.S. denied him a visa. He welcomed the recent announcements of recognition but said the world needs to do more. “The time has come for the international community to do right by the Palestinian people,” he said.
Abbas leads the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers portions of the West Bank. Hamas won legislative elections in Gaza in 2006 before seizing control from Abbas’ forces the following year.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, then withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their envisioned state, part of a “two-state solution that Netanyahu opposes robustly. He maintains that creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas.
In his speech, Netanyahu insisted that Israel is battling radical Islam on behalf of all nations.
“You know deep down,” he said, “that Israel is fighting your fight.”
___Geller reported from New York. Liseberth Guillaume in New York contributed.
2) As the world convulses in war and contentiousness, its leaders convene at the UN to figure it out
Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press
By Edith M. Lederer, September 22, 2025
World leaders begin convening Monday at one of the most volatile moments in the United Nations’ 80-year history, and the challenges they face are as dire as ever if not more so: unyielding wars in Gaza and Ukraine, escalating changes in the U.S. approach to the world, hungry people everywhere and technologies that are advancing faster than the understanding of how to manage them.
The United Nations itself, which emerged from World War II’s rubble on the premise that nations would work together to tackle political, social and financial issues, is in crisis itself. As Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week: “International cooperation is straining under pressures unseen in our lifetimes.”
Yet the annual high-level gathering at the U.N. General Assembly will bring presidents, prime ministers and monarchs from about 150 of the 193 U.N. member nations to U.N. headquarters. The secretary-general says it is an opportunity that can’t be missed — even in the most challenging of moments.
“We are gathering in turbulent — even uncharted — waters,” Guterres said. He pointed to, among other spectres, “our planet overheating, new technologies racing ahead without guardrails, inequalities widening by the hour.”
They gather for a better world, but can they build it?
Guterres said he will use the more than 150 one-on-one meetings he has with leaders and ministers to urge that they speak to each other, bridge divides, reduce risks and find solutions — to conflicts, to keep the planet from increased warming, to put guardrails on fast-expanding artificial intelligence, and to find funding for lagging U.N. goals for 2030 including ending poverty in all countries and ensuring quality education for every child.
He said leaders must make progress, not merely engage in “posturing and promises.”
But U.N. watchers say that in a deeply polarized world, with no prospects of ceasefires in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, whether the high-level meeting makes any progress remains a big question mark.
Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, said he is confident three topics will dominate high-level week – U.S. President Donald Trump’s first appearance in his second term, the horrific situation in Gaza, and what’s next for the United Nations as it grapples with major funding and staff cuts, mainly due to the cutoff in U.S. payments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets.
Gowan said he expects the nearly two-year war in Gaza to be the central issue, as Israel launches a major offensive in Gaza City forcing thousands to flee and following a report by independent experts commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council that accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel rejected the allegation, calling the report “distorted and false.”
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, has stressed that “Palestine is going to be the huge elephant in this session of the General Assembly.”
It will be front and centre on Monday at a high-level meeting co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia on implementing a two-state solution to the nearly eight-decade Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the spotlight will be even brighter because the Trump administration refused to give a U.S. visa to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to speak at that meeting and the General Assembly.
On Friday, the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution enabling Abbas to speak by video — as it did in 2022 for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following Russia’s invasion. This year Zelenskyy will be attending in person, and the Security Council is expected to meet on Ukraine on Tuesday.
The assembly voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to support a two-state solution and urge Israel to commit to a Palestinian state. Hours before that vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “there will be no Palestinian state.”
More than 145 countries already recognize Palestine as a state, and Mansour told The Associated Press on Sunday that “it’s going to be 10 more” announcing their recognition at Monday afternoon’s meeting. High-level week is also expected to see a Security Council meeting on Gaza, possibly Tuesday afternoon.
Lots of thorny issues are on the docket
The high-level meeting starts Tuesday morning in the vast General Assembly chamber. Trump will speak that day shortly after Guterres’ opening “state of the world” speech.
Gowan said there is “hope” that Trump will come in a positive mood, touting the international accomplishments that the president says merit the Nobel Peace Prize. Also on the docket: Trump’s financial approach to the larger world. “Obviously, most leaders are going to be focusing on what he has to say about tariffs,” Gowan said, but also about Russia and China.
Other speakers to watch are interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, making his debut on the international stage following the ouster of former strongman Bashar Assad in December, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The Iranian leader will be in New York days after the Security Council decided not to permanently lift U.N. sanctions on his country over its escalating nuclear program, but it gave Tehran and key European powers France, Germany and the United Kingdom until midnight Sept. 27 to agree to a delay. That’s when the sanctions will automatically “snapback” unless a deal is reached.
High-level week will also see numerous meetings on tackling climate change; on the more than two-year war in Sudan started by rival military and paramilitary generals that has sparked the world’s worst displacement crisis; on Somalia, which is home to the extremist group Al-Shabab; and on Haiti, where gangs control over 90% of the capital and have expanded into the countryside .
An event on Monday will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Beijing women’s conference, which adopted a platform to achieve gender equality. The United Nations says that goal is growing more distant and Guterres has said it is 300 years away on the current track.
One of Guterres’ major aims this year: to generate support for his plans to reform the United Nations and make it more responsive to the world as it is in 2025. Because of funding cuts by the U.S. and others, the U.N. announced last week that its regular operating budget for 2026 needs to be cut by 15% to $3,2 billion along with a 19% cut in that budget’s staff positions. — 2,681 posts.
Gowan said he doesn’t see the United States or other countries running away from the United Nations. But he stressed that it is going through “an extraordinarily difficult period” and will have to shrink and change.
“The U.N.’s resonance on peace and security issues is unquestionably not what it was,” he said, “but I think that the organization will continue to muddle through.”
3)Canadian recognition of Palestinian state greeted with cheers, dismay
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Jim Bronskill, September 22, 2025
Canada’s formal recognition of a Palestinian state drew applause from longtime advocates of the move and sharp denunciation from voices who said it would not foster a lasting peace.
Prime Minister Mark Carney made the announcement on Palestinian statehood Sunday ahead of a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The United Kingdom and Australia joined Canada in recognizing an independent Palestinian state.
Canada has long been committed to a two-state solution in the region — a sovereign Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel in peace and security.
In July, Carney said the hope was this outcome would be achieved as part of a peace process built around a negotiated settlement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
But he added this approach was no longer tenable for several reasons.
He cited the pervasive threat of Hamas terrorism to Israelis, culminating in the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023, a vote by Israel’s Knesset calling for annexation of the West Bank and the “ongoing failure” of the Israeli government to prevent a rapidly unfolding humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
On Sunday, Carney stressed the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to governance reforms, a 2026 election in which Hamas can play no part and demilitarization of the Palestinian state.
Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada said in a statement that Ottawa had bowed to international pressure by prematurely recognizing a Palestinian state built “entirely on empty promises” from the Palestinian Authority.
“The PA has shown, time and again, that it cannot be trusted,” said Richard Robertson, the organization’s director of research and advocacy. “It is unable to govern the Palestinian Territories and has repeatedly demonstrated it is unwilling to deliver on the very commitments upon which Canada’s recognition is supposed to be predicated.”
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East called Canada’s recognition a “real policy victory” and the result of sustained pressure from civil society.
“Canada is right to recognize Palestine, but cannot hold it to unfair conditions that would violate this right,” the group said in a statement. “Instead, Canada should work to realize the right of self-determination by doing whatever it can to bring an end to Israel’s illegal presence in occupied Palestine.”
The National Council of Canadian Muslims declared Sunday a historic day, but added that much more has to be done.
New Democrat MP Heather McPherson echoed that sentiment, saying in a social media post that recognition alone is not enough.
Canada must act to end starvation in Gaza and stop annexation of the West Bank, she said. “Without action, there will be little left of Palestine to recognize.”
The federal Conservatives accused Carney of trying to create a Hamas-controlled state that will reward terrorists for violent acts and oppression of Palestinians.
“Conservatives will always stand for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, living next to a future demilitarized, terror-free, democratic and peaceful Palestinian State.”
People who exploit the tragic events in the Middle East as a pretext to target Jewish Canadians will only be further emboldened by Carney’s announcement, said Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center president Michael Levitt.
“Whether it’s the violent protests on our streets, the antisemitic incitement or escalating physical assaults against Jews, all Canadians should be concerned by the extremists who increasingly threaten public safety,” he said in a statement.
“For the sake of peace in the region and here at home, this is the wrong policy at the wrong time.”