On Thursday Netanyahu walked up to the podium in the UN General Assembly, and in the same moment a large part of the hall stood up and walked the other way.
Before he had said his first word, the picture was already on its way out into the world - a man speaking to empty chairs, a country standing alone, a world that has turned its back.
Most of us have seen that picture by now.
Me too.
And before I go on. I am writing this because it surprised me. I had seen the clip and read the headlines, and for a couple of days I carried that story around as if it simply was that way. Then I sat down this morning and began to count, and what came out was not the story I had been left with.
That difference is what interests me.
Hence also this, so it does not drown later: the walkout in number of people was real. Somewhere between 70 and 77 delegations, depending on who is counting, either walked out or never showed up, and among them were countries with weight - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, Spain, Brazil, South Africa.
That protest should probably be taken seriously.
But something else also happened, before anyone stood up.
The Palestinian UN mission had sent a message around to the member states in advance with a fairly precise request - bring as many staff as possible into the hall, and then walk out together the moment he is announced.
Each delegation has several seats in the hall, and when a full row stands up at once, it looks like more than one country. The chairs were, in other words, filled so that they could be emptied.
In front of the camera.
Call it choreography, because that is what it is. Choreography is an old and entirely legitimate political instrument - AS LONG AS you dare to call it by its name.
Because when the smoke has cleared, and you count countries instead of chairs, the room looks different. Around 120 of the UN's 193 member states stayed seated. The USA, Britain, France, China and Germany stayed seated. And from the Arab world, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain stayed seated - two countries that have signed peace with Israel and apparently meant it.
So what was it we actually saw?
We saw a picture of an empty room and were told it was "the world's verdict". But what was actually going on was a protest by just over a third, staged to take up more space than it did, while not quite two thirds sat quietly in their seats, without anyone thinking that was worth a picture.
And that is where it gets interesting, because in the end this is about something bigger than Netanyahu and bigger than Israel - it is about who has the right to describe what is. Whoever controls the picture controls what the world "saw", and whoever controls what the world saw rarely needs to argue for anything at all afterwards - for who can be bothered to read a count when you have already seen the answer?
The picture travels in seconds.
The count comes afterwards, if it comes at all - and it never reaches quite as far.
But Reality is not a party to the dispute. It sat there the whole time, in the chairs nobody filmed.
You may be able to create the illusion of emptying the chairs - but you cannot empty the room.
❤️🔥🪽
Happy Monday and have a good week, friends ☀️
And yes, I did count. It took most of two cups of morning coffee. 😅
