World leaders rebel against US & Israel: to save Gaza, they demand international intervention

Leaders from many countries condemned the USA and Israel at the UN General Assembly, demanding intervention to save Gaza. Diplomats walked out to protest Netanyahu. Latin America led the resistance.

World leaders from roughly 190 countries gathered in September for the general debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

This year, many governments condemned the United States and Israel for carrying out crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Representatives of numerous countries expressed support for the Palestinian people, while denouncing Western imperialism.

A UN commission and multiple UN legal experts have stated conclusively that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

At the 2025 UNGA general debate, it was left-wing leaders from Latin America who led the resistance against the US empire.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro compared the US government to Nazi Germany and referred to Donald Trump as the “new Hitler”.

“Washington and NATO are killing democracy, and they are spreading totalitarianism at the global level”, Petro warned.

The Colombian leader called for an international coalition to militarily intervene to physically stop the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Brazil’s President Lula da Silva made similar remarks, emphasizing that the US-led West is destroying international humanitarian law (all emphasis added):

Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

There, under tons of rubble, are buried tens of thousands of innocent women and children.

International humanitarian law and the myth of the ethical exceptionalism of the West are also buried there.

UN diplomats stage mass walkout to protest Israeli leader Netanyahu

In fact, when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the General Assembly, there was a mass protest inside the hall, in the UN headquarters in New York City.

The diplomatic representatives of dozens of countries walked out in protest, while chanting and shouting “Boo!”

This is extremely rare at the UN. It illustrates how isolated Israel is on the international stage.

In fact, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an outstanding arrest warrant for Netanyahu, formally charging him with committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Nevertheless, the US government has repeatedly invited Netanyahu to come to the US, and the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC, attacking the court for daring to take action against a US ally.

These actions demonstrate that the US and Israel are rogue states that are waging a full frontal assault on international law, and seeking to destroy multilateral institutions.

They are also completely isolated on the international stage. The diplomats who walked out in protest of Netanyahu represent the voices of the Global Majority.

Latin America condemns US-Israeli genocide, fascism, and imperialism

The representative of Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government, Foreign Minister Denis Moncada, condemned the genocide in Gaza and noted that Israel is following exactly the same “practices of the other colonial, imperial, neocolonial, and fascist powers”:

We reiterate our historical and permanent condemnation of the genocide, the barbaric policy of denial of the Palestinian people.

We condemn all the savage, brutal massacres that are perpetrated and spreading in clear view, with the complacency of the entire world.

We condemn the state of Israel, just as we have condemned and do condemn the policies and practices of the other colonial, imperial, neocolonial, and fascist powers.

Venezuela also expressed its solidarity with Palestine, and denounced the US war of aggression against Iran.

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil declared, “We stand in solidarity with the heroic people of Palestine, and we call for the end of the genocide waged by Israel’s Zionist regime”.

“We condemn attacks against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, he added.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla opened his speech by expressing solidarity with Palestine, while blasting the US for aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This is what he said:

As we meet here, 2.2 million human beings in Gaza are condemned to hunger by the genocidal extermination and ethnic cleansing actions of the Zionist regime, which enjoys the military and financial supplies and the impunity guaranteed by the government of the United States.

On behalf of the government and people of Cuba, I reiterate our firmest solidarity with the Palestinian people and with their just cause for freedom, independence, and an end to the Zionist occupation.

If the Security Council proves itself impotent because of the veto that the United States wields or threatens to wield, and is incapable of adopting effective measures to halt the barbarity, then this General Assembly has the duty and the capacity to put forward concrete measures without delay.

World leaders insist UN must be reformed, as US abuses veto to continue genocide in Gaza

In their speeches at the 2025 general debate, representatives of many countries warned that the continuation of the genocide in Gaza demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, on the 80th anniversary of the body’s founding.

Although the UN is important, given that it is one of very few international institutions that provides all countries with a voice, in practice, those voices are often silenced, because the institution is dominated by the United States and its Western allies.

Power in the UN is concentrated in the Security Council, where the US has abused its veto, to prevent the world from taking any actions it doesn’t like.

Between October 2023 and September 2025, the US government used its veto six times to unilaterally block resolutions that called for peace and a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Joe Biden administration used the veto four times, and the Trump administration has used it twice in eight months.

In 2024, the US also vetoed a resolution in the Security Council that called for Palestine to be admitted as a full UN member.

That was when Biden, a Democrat, was president. Opposition to equal rights for Palestinians is bipartisan in Washington.

A few weeks after the US vetoed the resolution in the Security Council, another vote was held in the General Assembly to call to admit Palestine as a full member.

Of the 193 UN member states, 143, or 74.1%, voted to admit Palestine.

Only nine countries, representing just 4.7%, voted against admitting Palestine: the United States and its proxies.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro calls for international intervention to stop genocide in Gaza

Given that the United States has paralyzed the UN and halted all efforts at ending the genocide in Gaza, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro urged countries to create an international armed force to physically intervene to save the Palestinian people.

“The United States no longer teaches democracy, but rather kills democracy”, Petro said.

While comparing the US government to Nazi Germany and calling Trump the “new Hitler”, Petro warned, “Washington and NATO are killing democracy, and they are spreading totalitarianism at the global level”.

Petro’s remarks were especially symbolic, because Colombia has historically been the closest US ally in Latin America.

Colombia was dominated for decades by right-wing oligarchic leaders who were extremely pro-US (and deeply involved in drug trafficking).

In fact, Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chávez had famously dubbed Colombia “the Israel of Latin America”.

Gustavo Petro is Colombia’s first ever left-wing president, and has pursued an independent foreign policy for the first time in the modern history of the South American country.

This is what Petro said at the 2025 general debate of the UN General Assembly:

First and foremost, we need to stop the genocide in Gaza. Humanity cannot allow a single day more of this genocide, and for the genocidal Netanyahu and his allies in Europe and the United States to continue.

The United Nations must uphold the decisions of the International Court of Justice. International law is the basis of civilization, and of its wisdom, as distilled in history. And it must make sure that the decisions of international justice are implemented, are applied.

Diplomacy has been tried in Gaza; it could not resolve the situation.

Every single day, every single minute, a missile is fired and destroys the the bodies of babies, and children, in the Arab state of Palestine.

Every day, there are resolutions that are vetoed in the Security Council.

Every day, more and more children die. More and more bombs, more and more dead.

Can we stop the genocide with a vote in the General Assembly? Yes, that is what we should do, rather than a vote in the Security Council, because that is vetoed.

United for peace for Palestine, we should establish a peacekeeping force.

…

What we need is a powerful army of countries that do not accept genocide.

That is why invite nations of the world and their peoples, most importantly, as an integral part of humanity, to bring together weapons and armies, and to defend Palestine.

I invite the armies of Asia, and the brave Slavic people who defeated Hitler, and the Latin American people of Bolivia, Garibaldi, and others.

I think there’s enough. We’ve had enough words. Today, the time has come to use the slogan of Bolívar: freedom or death.

Because Washington and NATO are killing democracy, and they are spreading totalitarianism at the global level.

…

The United States no longer teaches democracy, but rather kills democracy — especially among its immigrants, filled with greed

The UN should begin its change by stopping the genocide in Gaza, with an army of liberation and salvation.

And there should be a decision here taken in the General Assembly, without any veto.

Honduras and Cuba call for a new international order

The need for a new international order was highlighted by the representatives of several Latin American countries.

The foreign minister of the left-wing government of Honduras, Javier Bú Soto, emphasized that the UN has been unable to stop the wars fueled by the US, so the organization needs to undergo a fundamental transformation:

The world is not peaceful. The genocide in Gaza; the devastation in Ukraine; persistent violent crises, particularly in the Middle East, Africa, and Haiti; the dangerous weapons business of global capitalism; all show the failure of the multilateral system to fulfill its essential mandate to achieve peace; to prevent barbarism; to stop the progression of the nuclear race, which major powers are engaged in, and which could be the apocalypse of humanity.

We categorically reject the fact that the most important decisions on peace and security throughout the world are hoarded in the hands of five permanent members of the Security Council. Their veto power, which has become an anachronistic privilege, has paralyzed collective action, and the calls for peace in different parts of the world; and has allowed those committing war crimes to enjoy impunity.

The UN cannot remain a hostage to special interests, nor can it be idly complicit in the face of the destruction of entire peoples.

It is morally unacceptable that, while billions of dollars are spent on weapons, budgets for peacekeeping operations, humanitarian aid, and sustainable development are being slashed.

How can it be justified that the voice of 193 states who are present in this General Assembly, and who are in favor of peace and to put an end to the different power blocs, can be canceled out by one vote?

We cannot continue to sustain a global order founded on privilege and inequality that leads to suffering for millions of poor people throughout the world.

Cuba’s foreign minister pointed out that, when the UN was founded in 1945, there were only 51 member states.

At that time, there were still many countries in the global South that were formally colonized by the European powers.

Throughout the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, in a series of national-liberation struggles, countries of the Global South finally won their independence from Western colonialism.

Today, there are 193 UN member states. But the structure of the UN remains essentially colonial and undemocratic, and it needs to be changed, stressed Cuba’s foreign minister:

11 million people, 3 million of them children, die every year from hunger and associated diseases.

The climate crisis is destroying nations and lives, devastating communities and economies.

A handful of countries and individuals have amassed more wealth than the vast majority of all other countries combined.

Colossal inequalities stifle and prevent sustainable development.

There has been no effective global response to today’s serious challenges. There could not be, because the current world order reflects a bygone era when most developing countries did not even exist as independent states.

80 years ago, the United Nations was founded with only 51 member states. Today, we are 193.

The most urgent priority is to create a new international order that guarantees peace, the right to development, sovereign equality, participation and representation of developing countries in global policy decisions; that provides for the common good and prosperity in harmony with nature; and ensures the exercise of all human rights for all people.