Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angered Palestinians and their defenders Friday after presenting a map of “The New Middle East” without Palestine during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Speaking to a largely empty chamber, Netanyahu—whose far-right government is widely considered the most extreme in Israeli history—showed a series of maps, including one that did not show the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza. These Palestinian territories have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, with the exception of Gaza—from which Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining an economic stranglehold over the densely populated coastal strip.

Middle East Eyereported Netanyahu also held up a map of “Israel in 1948”—the year the modern Jewish state was established, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs—that erroneously included the Palestinian territories as part of Israel.

Palestinian Ambassador to Germany Laith Arafeh said on social media that there is “no greater insult to every foundational principle of the United Nations than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a ‘map of Israel’ that straddles the entire land from the river to the sea, negating Palestine and its people, then attempting to spin the audience with rhetoric about ‘peace’ in the region, all the while entrenching the longest ongoing belligerent occupation in today’s world.”

As Middle East Eye noted:

The inclusion of Palestinian lands (and sometimes land belonging to Syria and Lebanon) in Israeli maps is common among believers of the concept of Eretz Yisrael—Greater Israel—a key part of ultra-nationalist Zionism that claims all of these lands belong to a Zionist state.

Earlier this year, Netanyahu's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, spoke from a podium adorned with a map that also included Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria as part of Greater Israel. In the same event, he said there was "no such thing as Palestinians."

The use of such maps by Israeli officials comes at a time when Netanyahu's ultra-nationalist government has taken steps that experts say amount to the "de jure annexation" of the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu used the maps in an attempt to illustrate the increasing number of Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered by the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

“There’s no question the Abraham Accords heralded the dawn of a new age of peace,” the Israeli prime minister said. “But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough, an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East.”

ritics have countered that peace between apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has come at the cost of advancing Palestinian rights. In the case of Morocco, the United States recognized the North African nation’s illegal annexation and brutal occupation of Western Sahara in exchange for normalization with Israel.

Netanyahu’s props on Friday reminded numerous observers of the time during his 2012 General Assembly speech when he used a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate Iran’s progress on advancing a nuclear weapons program that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies said did not exist.

  • @spacecowboy
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    149 months ago

    Either you’re okay with being a piece of shit or your ignorant to the facts. Either way, you look like an idiot. That’s the egg on your face.

    • @CookieJarObserver
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      -349 months ago

      Im German and LGBT. I just don’t give a single fuck about people that want to genocide Jews and or LGBT people, wich means i absolutely do not give a fuck about “Palestine”

      • @spacecowboy
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        209 months ago

        Yep every person in Palestine hates you because you’re gay.

        You can have compassion for people and still not like them. You’d think someone in your position would understand that. Nobody deserves oppression.

        • @CookieJarObserver
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          -269 months ago

          Oh i don’t support oppression, wich is why im very pro Israel, as its a democracy.

          • @spacecowboy
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            109 months ago

            Ah so you’re a garbage person. Got it.

            • @CookieJarObserver
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              -189 months ago

              As said, the amount of care i got for your opinion nears the absolute 0. Cope.

              • @spacecowboy
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                89 months ago

                If you’re taking their side of this then you aren’t on my side.

                Take care.

                • @[email protected]
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                  29 months ago

                  It wasn‘t about that of course. I don‘t understand why you’d want to call that person that. Because you think what he said is garbage?

            • @CookieJarObserver
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              -119 months ago

              Just because they’ve elected a right wing government, doesn’t make it a dictatorship…

                • @CookieJarObserver
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                  -5
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                  9 months ago

                  What?!? Hexbear is exactly the opposite.

                  Also im here for longer than you.

                  • @PM_ME_FEET_PICS
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                    -19 months ago

                    This is one of my 7 accounts. Little 3 month adopter.