“Maybe I made a mistake yesterday, but yesterday’s me is still me. I am who I am today, with all my faults. Tomorrow I might be a tiny bit wiser, and that’s me, too. These faults and mistakes are what I am, making up the brightest stars in the constellation of my life. I have come to love myself for who I was, who I am, and who I hope to become.”
―Kim Namjoong
By Alex P. Vidal
I NORMALLY walked toward the United Nations (UN) headquarters on 405 East 42nd Street from the First Avenue at 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan even without the General Assembly scheduled every third week of September.
I worked nearby from 2021 until 2023.
No longer this year. In fact, I avoided it on September 24, 2026, the second day of the high-level General Debate of the 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA81), which officially started on September 8, 2026.
Manhattan—Midtown and Lower—has been my regular and most favorite place to rendezvous when I am off duty. It will not change.
At the corner of First Avenue and East 39the Street, the New York Police Department (NYPD) arrested and detained over 30 to 100 demonstrators protesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just after 12 p.m. September 24.
Organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, hundreds of demonstrators wearing matching white T-shirts (“Fund people not bombs”) blocked traffic in a planned act of civil disobedience during Bibi’s U.N. General Assembly address.
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Among those arrested and detained were high-profile personalities including Emmy-winning actor Hannah Einbinder, actor Susan Sarandon, and New York political figures.
The protest outside the UN, one of several this week against the embattled Israeli prime minister, drew hundreds of Jewish, Palestinian, Iranian and Lebanese New Yorkers, among others, as well as several elected officials and candidates in the November election, and a number of celebrities.
Protesters chanted slogans like “Let Gaza live” and “the whole world is watching.”
Official vehicles heading to the U.N. were diverted as protesters sat down in the middle of the street for more than an hour, unfurling banners that called to “end the genocide” and flying a kite reading “Free Palestine” – a reference to Israel’s threat earlier this year that it would target Palestinian children flying kites, organizers said.
According to The Guardian, Netanyahu delivered an inflammatory address to the United Nations, decrying what he said was a global anti-Jewish conspiracy and swatting aside criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza, as he faces down international isolation and a fight for political survival in upcoming elections in Israel.
“As planned protests erupted on the streets of New York City, Netanyahu took aim at critics of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the international media, regional leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leftwing commentator Hasan Piker and the New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in an address that doubled as a stump speech to ignite his rightwing base for the elections,” The Guardian reported.
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Invoking his late brother Yonatan Netanyahu, a commando killed in a 1976 raid to free Israeli hostages from a hijacked airliner in Entebbe, Uganda, Bibi repeated the lines: “We are going to win. We have no other choice.”
Inspired by a Palestinian call, dozens of delegated walked out of the General Assembly Hall of the U.N. headquarters as Netanyahu took the stage, leading a speaker to pound his gavel and announce: “I’m calling for order in the hall.”
Palestinian representatives organizing diplomatic missions to bring staff for a planned walkout of Netanyahu’s speech said they wanted to “send a clear message to Netanyahu and his government that no one is willing to aid, abet, or be complicit in its genocide and war crimes and illegal occupation, which all peace-loving states and peoples demand must come to an end”.
“If there are any other moral cowards in the audience, I urge them to walk out,” Netanyahu said before launching into his prepared remarks.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)
