Netanyahu's Office Says It Paid for 500 Pro-Israel Billboards Across Manhattan Ahead of UN Speech

Ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, his government paid to place 500 billboards and send dozens of branded trucks through Manhattan carrying pro-Israel and anti-Iran messaging, according to his office. Middle East Eye reported the figure as supplied by Netanyahu's staff; it has not been independently verified, and no contract value or vendor was disclosed.

The paid domestic messaging campaign in a major American city preceded a roughly 40-minute speech that was broadcast live in prime time on all four of Israel's main television channels, a scale and format Middle East Eye described as campaign-style.

In the speech itself, Netanyahu addressed rising settler violence in the occupied West Bank, an issue documented for years by rights monitors, UN agencies, and Israeli media, by calling it the work of a small number of offenders.

"A handful of young juvenile delinquents," Netanyahu said, downplaying the number of Palestinian casualties from the attacks.

He did not cite casualty figures or address specific incidents, and no supporting data accompanied the remark in the speech as reported.

Netanyahu used the same address to go after a list of foreign leaders and officials. He told Syrian Prime Minister Ahmad al-Shaara that "the Jews have been on the Golan Heights since the days of Moses," a historical framing for Israel's continued hold on the Israeli-occupied territory. He accused Britain and France of hypocrisy over their criticism of Israel as colonial, called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a "tyrant" who helps Hamas, and said Israel is fighting a "seven-front war" against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, and armed groups in Iraq, Syria and Palestinian territory. None of these characterizations were accompanied by supporting evidence in the speech as delivered.

He also singled out New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, accusing him of "spreading these lies about my country or my brave soldiers" without naming a specific statement.

The billboard and truck campaign sits alongside a broader, long-documented pattern of Israeli government spending on public messaging inside the United States timed to diplomatic moments, part of what Occupation Watch tracks as the money and influence infrastructure surrounding U.S. policy on Israel. The claim rests on Netanyahu's office as the sole source; independent confirmation of the spend, its cost, or its vendor has not been published.