Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall




Two images clearly showed the growing international isolation and criticism facing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Inside the UN headquarters, the conservative Israeli prime minister was met Thursday with jeers and the departure of many delegations before he began his address. The half-empty General Assembly was a powerful metaphor. “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t left this hall, please do so now,” he said defiantly, while members of his delegation shouted: “Am Israel Jai” (“The people of Israel live,” in Hebrew). Outside the building, police detained about 100 demonstrators, among them actress Susan Sarandon and Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Ávila Chevalier, who were protesting the presence of a head of state accused of committing genocide in Gaza.

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There are cities that grow outward, spreading across the landscape like an oil stain. That kind of growth is, broadly speaking, more convenient but harder in other respects, because to serve any development on the outskirts — any planned residential area, any subdivision — you have to deploy a whole system of services, communications, and infrastructure there, which sometimes — often — arrives after the housing in those new neighborhoods has already filled up with people.

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“All that’s standing between me and my vacation is you guys,” Zohran Kwame Mamdani jokes as he welcomes EL PAÍS on a Friday afternoon. He is about to take a week off, his first break since becoming mayor of New York at the beginning of the year.