‘We’re in the midst of a great revolution,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared from the UN podium in September 2017, “a revolution in Israel’s standing among the nations.”
He catalogued the evidence: world leaders flocking to Jerusalem, Israeli technology courted by investors from Silicon Valley to Shanghai, and intelligence cooperation with Western governments saving countless lives.
He boasted about having visited six continents in one year. Then he quipped that the only one left out was Antarctica, where he also hopes to visit, “because I’ve heard that penguins are also enthusiastic supporters of Israel. You laugh, but penguins have no difficulty recognizing that some things are black and white, are right and wrong.”
The punch line drew some laughter, and his message was clear: After decades of isolation, Israel – because of what it had to offer the world – was finally being welcomed into the global fold.
That was then.
Eight years later, Netanyahu is poised to address the same UN General Assembly in New York next month, but the mood could not be more different. Instead of an embrace, Israel faces an onslaught as diplomatic downgrades, fierce criticism over Gaza, and accusations of war crimes and genocide threaten to turn this year’s gathering into a diplomatic battering ram.
Ironically, following the 12-day war with Iran, the changes in Syria, the defanging of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the degradation of Hamas in Gaza, Israel has rarely been in a stronger position regionally. Yet its standing in the world – except in Washington – has seldom been so weak.
ONE OF the most dramatic diplomatic moves this past week came not in Washington or Berlin, but in Canberra. Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador after its security service linked Tehran to two antisemitic arsons: the torching of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue in December and the burning of a Sydney kosher restaurant a few weeks later.
These attacks, significantly, preceded last June’s war with Iran. They were not spontaneous outbursts triggered by Gaza images on television, but, rather, part of a darker pattern: Tehran’s long-standing campaign of targeting Jews abroad.
Iran’s fingerprints on attacks against Jews and Israelis abroad are not new. Argentina’s Jewish community still bears the scars of the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing and the 1994 AMIA community center blast, together killing 114. Both were linked to Iran and Hezbollah. Burgas in 2012, Baku in 2008, plots in London, Washington, Bangkok – the list is long.
That Iran allegedly extended this campaign to Australia – far removed from the Middle East – shows the global scope of its project.
Australia’s move was significant for two reasons. First, it was an act of tangible consequence in a world too often content with platitudes about fighting antisemitism. Second, it implicitly raised another question: If Iran is willing to torch synagogues and restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney, is it really so far-fetched to suspect its hidden hand in the swelling anti-Israel street protests across Western capitals?
The suspicion is not far-fetched.
On August 3, tens of thousands crossed Sydney’s Harbour Bridge in the largest pro-Palestinian demonstration in Australia’s history. Among the figures marching at the front were former foreign minister Bob Carr and Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Behind the front line of celebrities and politicians was a bearded man holding up a large picture of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Carr later said he had not noticed the image. But in photos he himself posted from the rally, he is clearly visible directly in front of it. Intentional or not, the effect was telling: a demonstration framed as a humanitarian march for Gaza featuring, at its symbolic center, the face of the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
For those willing to look, the signal is unmistakable. These marches are not only the product of local outrage or homegrown activist networks – though those are certainly there. They are also vehicles Tehran uses to poison public opinion against Israel, thereby weakening the Jewish state.
As then US director of national intelligence Avril Haines said in July 2024, after anti-Israel protests had roiled US campuses, Iran has sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza.
IF AUSTRALIA’S move pointed a finger at Iran, France this week turned its diplomatic fire directly on Israel.
The spark came from Netanyahu himself, who two weeks ago sent French President Emmanuel Macron a sharply worded letter accusing him of emboldening antisemitism and hardening Hamas’s negotiating positions by signaling recognition of a Palestinian state. US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner leveled similar criticism in his own letter to Macron this week.
Accusations of France lacking in combating antisemitism
Macron’s subsequent reply was to have his foreign ministry summon Kushner for a reprimand, and then fire off a strongly worded letter to Netanyahu.
Macron bristled at the suggestion that his government was lax in combating antisemitism, and then – typically – lectured Netanyahu on what is good for Israel’s security and soul.
“France cannot resign itself to see a friend like Israel descend into a spiral of violence which runs contrary to its history, to its origins, and to its democratic essence, turning its back on the opportunity provided by history today,” he wrote.
Macron argued that the only viable path forward is the creation of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, something he indicated would eradicate Hamas in the process. For the French president, the recognition of a Palestinian state is not a concession to terrorism but a prerequisite for broad Arab participation in Gaza’s reconstruction and eventual stabilization.
Netanyahu, for his part, sees this as fantasy – wishful European thinking that ignores both Israel’s October 7 trauma and decades of bitter experience. To him, Macron’s recognition talk pours “fuel on the antisemitic fire” already raging on French streets.
The exchange revealed more than just personal animosity; it reflected a widening gulf. Where France sees recognition as leverage against Hamas, Israel sees it as a reward for terrorism. Where Paris believes a Palestinian state would stabilize, Jerusalem believes it would replicate Gaza in Judea and Samaria.
IF THE French spat highlighted the differences with Europe, Brazil offered a blow from Latin America. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government this week refused to accept the credentials of Israel’s ambassador-designate. In response, Israel said relations between the two countries will be conducted at a lower diplomatic level, effectively downgrading the ties. Brazil recalled its ambassador last year.
Israel’s ties with Brazil flourished under Jair Bolsonaro but plummeted after the narrow 2022 reelection of Lula, a leader with whom Israel had a tense relationship during his previous term in office.
The irony, of course, is that while Brazil downgrades, France criticizes, and Australia seethes, the Arab states with which Israel has peace treaties or normalized relations – Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco – have not severed ties, despite sharp criticism and hostile public opinion at home.
None of those countries has terminated their agreements or cut ties with Israel. Why? Because October 7 brought home to them what Israel has argued, and they have understood, for years: Hamas is not just Israel’s problem; it is their problem, too. A movement rooted in Muslim Brotherhood ideology, fueled by Iranian money, and bent on destabilizing regimes from Cairo to Amman to Riyadh threatens the region as a whole.
For Gulf rulers, Hamas is a danger that needs to be eradicated, not accommodated. They may criticize Israeli tactics, but they understand the stakes in a way some in Europe and Latin America appear unwilling – or unable – to grasp.
WHAT UNITES these various threads – Australia’s expulsion of Iran’s envoy on the one hand, and Macron’s rebuke and Brazil’s downgrade on the other – is the sense that Israel is confronting headwinds on multiple fronts.
Yet there is a paradox: the countries that once embraced Israel most warmly – the liberal democracies among those states Netanyahu spoke of in 2017 – are now turning against it, while Arab states, once solidly arrayed against Jerusalem, are turning out to be more pragmatic partners.
And hovering above all of this is Iran. It is Tehran that allegedly torched a synagogue in Melbourne and a restaurant in Sydney. It is Tehran that bankrolled and armed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. It is Tehran that thrives when Western capitals are filled with chants of “Death to Israel.”
Iran understands that antisemitism makes Jews feel vulnerable and can lead – as it has – to calls for Israel to alter its policies because they “fuel antisemitism.” In this way, an anti-Israel climate abroad weakens Israel at home, indirectly turning Jewish communities into pressure points on Jerusalem.
As Israel braces for the upcoming UN General Assembly, Iran will be there, too, eager to paint Israel as a pariah, keen to exploit every protest sign in Sydney, London, or Paris as validation of its narrative.
Netanyahu used his UN speech in 2017 to celebrate Israel’s enhanced standing in the world. He will take the same stage in 2025 under vastly different conditions. Instead of boasting about visits to six continents, he will face resolutions condemning Israel’s conduct in Gaza, calls for arms embargoes, and demands for a Palestinian state.
For the prime minister, the contrast could not be starker: from penguins cheerfully siding with Israel to parliaments and presidents turning against it.
But there is another contrast as well. In 2017, Israel was economically and diplomatically strong, but complacent about its vulnerabilities. Netanyahu mentioned Iran 36 times in that speech; he didn’t utter the word “Hamas” once. October 7 shattered that complacency.
In 2025, battered and bruised, Israel will go to the UN General Assembly knowing the world may jeer, but also knowing that security matters more than the world’s applause, because while applause fades, threats – if not dealt with in real time, as Hamas and Hezbollah were not – endure, metastasize, and grow.