By Juan Larrosa, September 29, 2025
Last week, the United Nations held its meeting in New York, and I believe it was a significant gathering for several reasons. The first is that a global consensus is gradually being built around openly condemning the Israeli government’s military offensive against the Palestinian people. The situation in that region is atrocious and has already been described by many voices as a genocidal intervention. The suffering of the Palestinian people has been immeasurable: years of war, psychological terror, inhumane conditions, lack of food, and the risk of famine.
This, of course, does not eliminate the possibility of criticizing the terrorist practices of Hamas, which have also caused enormous harm to the people of Israel. However, what the Israeli government is currently carrying out in Palestine is inhumane and must be condemned without ambiguity. This is what happened at the UN over the weekend, where several countries also openly recognized the Palestinian state. A symbolic gesture was the walkout of delegates from various countries when Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his speech: a visible repudiation of his government and its actions.
The event, however, also revealed the UN’s weakness. An institution that after World War II sought to order international and military policy with varying degrees of success is today losing power dramatically. We saw this with Donald Trump: defiant, talking about closing borders and transforming international policy on migration and trade, extending his speech beyond the time allotted to him. This reflects how U.S. foreign policy imposes itself over the multilateral dynamics of the United Nations.
This brings us to today’s crossroads: we see global repudiation of the Israeli government’s military intervention and, at the same time, the UN’s growing loss of power. The problem is that the offensive continues, without the Israeli government facing any serious political cost, while the international body proves unable to stop the violence.
And this is not good news. Because a world of dialogue, multilateralism, and democratic practices will always be preferable to a scenario where a few powerful nations make decisions that affect the majority.
This text was originally read on the NTR Radio newscast broadcast on September 15, 2025 and hosted by journalist Sergio René de Dios Corona.