DUBAI (Dispatches) -- Emirati social media influencers with ties to the Abu Dhabi regime have publicly celebrated the United Arab Emirates’ decision to remain seated in the United Nations General Assembly hall during terrorist Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address on Thursday, even as 77 delegations walked out in protest against Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza.
The walkout marked the second consecutive year that nations staged a mass protest during Netanyahu’s speech, with representatives from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen among those who abandoned the chamber. 
The UAE, alongside Bahrain and Morocco, chose to remain seated—a decision that drew widespread condemnation but was lionized by Emirati influencers described as defenders of Abu Dhabi.
Ahmed Khalifa, a prominent Emirati social media figure, posted a photograph of Netanyahu speaking before the largely emptied chamber, writing: “THE UAE IS IN THE HALL. We show up. We do not run.” He followed with a sneering dismissal of those who walked out: “It is not our problem if you run!”
Another Emirati influencer, Rauda Altenaiji, defended the decision with the boast: “We stay and we listen … We Dubai It, even in politics.”
These statements amount to a public celebration of complicity in genocide. While Gaza burns and children are pulled from rubble, the regime-aligned propagandists congratulate themselves for “showing up” to listen to the man who oversees their slaughter. 
The remark itself was turned against the UAE on X, with one user posting: “The UAE stayed. They are the most disgusting cowards.”
The UAE’s presence in the chamber was not a diplomatic gesture of bridge-building—it was a deliberate signal of solidarity with a regime involved actively and brazenly in genocide, delivered while Netanyahu defended Israel’s conduct and even displayed a pager linked to the deadly attack in Lebanon that killed 12 and wounded some 3,000.
This is the natural culmination of the UAE’s normalization project. Since signing the Abraham Accords in 2020, Abu Dhabi has deepened military and intelligence cooperation with Israel to unprecedented levels. 
Israel has deployed its Iron Dome system and operating personnel to the UAE, and Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs have made multiple trips to Abu Dhabi during wartime. The UAE now functions as a de facto Israeli military outpost in the Persian Gulf.
The complicity extends beyond Palestine. Users on X highlighted that Abu Dhabi is “doing the exact same thing in Sudan that Israel is doing in Gaza”—backing the Rapid Support Forces in a campaign of atrocities that mirrors Israel’s genocidal violence.
The UAE’s paid influencers have revealed the regime’s true face—one that seeks to whitewash its disgraceful alignment with a terrorist illegal entity and lionize backstabbing of the Palestinian people and the Muslim ummah. 
History will not forgive this treachery, nor will it forget those who celebrated it.