NEW YORK, Sept. 25 -- Mahmoud Abbas was not there. The Palestinian president spent Wednesday in Ramallah, watching a pre-recorded video of his own speech play to a chamber he has not entered in two years, while the man directing the Gaza genocide drew walkouts forty blocks away.

The United States denied Abbas a visa for the second consecutive year. When the General Assembly voted 152 to 3 to allow him at least a video address, the three votes against were Washington, Paraguay, and Israel. Four nations abstained. That margin, virtually every country on earth against a three-state bloc, registered as an abstraction in the American news cycle, which moved on quickly to the Israeli prime minister's address.

From Ramallah, Abbas told the wor...