Shortly after leaving the General Assembly Hall to oppose a speech given by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, was held by United Nations security agents. In spite of the fact that it was first unclear what the cause for his imprisonment was, he was eventually let go. Before leaving, Erdan had shown a photograph of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian lady who had been brutally killed the previous year for not wearing her hijab correctly, to the audience. The reason for her death was that she did not properly cover her hair.
Erdan condemned the United Nations for providing a platform to a “vile mass murderer” and voiced his support for the aspirations of the Iranian people to achieve independence. He said that the United Nations had sunk to “a new moral low” and reiterated that Israel stood behind the Iranian people. He made a plea to the nations of the world, saying that they should stop “murderers and anti-Semites” from speaking at the United Nations.
Erdan brought attention to the hypocrisy and moral corruption of the United Nations, which, in his view, was established in order to prevent atrocities but permitted a mass murderer to speak at one of its conferences. He pointed out that while Raisi was speaking at the United Nations, many people in Iran were suffering as a result of the activities of his administration.
In his statement to the United Nations, Raisi leveled criticism at the United States and placed the blame for instability throughout the globe on that country. In addition to this, he was critical of efforts to establish a new East-West split, and he emphasized the importance of international collaboration and convergence.
The goal of Erdan’s demonstration was to raise attention to the misery of the Iranian people, question the moral attitude taken by the United Nations, and demonstrate unity between the people of Israel and the people of Iran, despite the misinformation put forth by the Iranian dictatorship.