For a few hours, Israel’s deeply polarized political arena, just a month before the elections, found rare unity. It came following the news that Neria Leiter, son of Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, was critically injured in a car-ramming terror attack in the West Bank. Neria chose to continue his reserve duty, including serving in Lebanon, even after his brother Moshe fell in battle in northern Gaza in November 2023. 

Ambassador Leiter was on his way to a CNN interview ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the U.N. General Assembly, set to take place this afternoon, when he received the news about his son, and quickly departed for Israel. That speech will likely now take a turn following the attack. 

But even beforehand, Netanyahu’s trip to New York was set to be entirely different from anything seen before. The prime minister’s brief video message about his speech on Tuesday referenced only one individual: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Not Iran, not Hamas, nor Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Of all the adversaries facing Israel, Netanyahu singled out just one. 

Sources close to the prime minister claim Mamdani is the reason for Netanyahu’s unprecedented brief visit: a quick stop of just a few hours in New York, and nothing more. The concern, his aides claim, stems from potential protests or political posturing by Mamdani, despite him admitting he has no authority to arrest Netanyahu, a key campaign pledge of the mayor’s. However, a former official involved in coordinating prime ministerial trips offered a different explanation: As long as Netanyahu remains in New York for only a few hours, the absence of a meeting with President Donald Trump becomes far less conspicuous.

This is not how the prime minister envisioned his annual U.N. trip, especially a month before an election. He hoped to schedule a meeting with Trump, which would have been their ninth since January 2025 — but it did not materialize. He wanted to visit Texas, meet Elon Musk, and talk about AI, but that too fell through. And Netanyahu, who recently predicted that the Iranian regime would soon be toppled, certainly did not expect that a day before his arrival, U.S.-Iran negotiations would resume, with White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi. 

“In his address to the General Assembly, Prime Minister Netanyahu intends to speak about both the challenges and the opportunities facing the region. The prime minister will call for continued pressure on Iran, the primary exporter of terrorism in the Middle East,” Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, told Jewish Insider.

When asked whether the prime minister’s speech is aimed at a domestic Israeli audience or an international one, Danon offered a diplomatic response: “The U.N. General Assembly provides an opportunity for the State of Israel to make its voice heard before hundreds of leaders from around the world, particularly at such a sensitive time.”

Netanyahu promised some surprises in his upcoming speech, which, Danon said, may be connected to Israel’s relationship with the Arab world.

“Netanyahu will also address the diplomatic opportunities emerging in the Middle East, as we mark six years since the Abraham Accords and following the signing of the agreement with Morocco last week,” Danon noted, referring to the deal whereby the two countries upgraded their diplomatic ties.. 

According to the Prime Minister’s Office, while there will be no meeting with U.S. administration officials during his short stay, the prime minister will meet with the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama and Ethiopia, as well as the vice president of Colombia and the prime ministers of Greece, Slovenia and Papua New Guinea. “Many world leaders requested to meet with the prime minister during the visit, but due to a tight schedule and the need to return before the onset of Sukkot, the prime minister was only able to accommodate some of them,” the Israeli PMO said.

Danon described the overall atmosphere during the UNGA as almost festive, with delegations gathering from around the globe, yet overshadowed by deep friction between the Israeli delegation and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has historically been exceedingly critical of the Jewish state. Unfortunately, that atmosphere has become even more complicated following the latest terror attack in the West Bank that looms over the entire Israeli delegation to the U.N.