Israel stops UN staff visas after Antonio Guterres is branded ‘terror apologist’ for his Hamas remarks
Antonio Guterres, the head of the UN, addresses Israel’s accusations about Hamas.
Israel’s envoy to the UN recently demanded that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres resign following his remarks regarding the conflict between Israel and Hamas and his actions in Gaza. Tuesday’s UN Security Council meeting saw Guterres restate his demand for a humanitarian justification for ending Israel’s aggressive attacks in the Gaza Strip, which have cut off Israel’s supplies of food, fuel, water, and electricity.
After Hamas launched a multi-day attack on Israel two weeks ago, Israel has been waging a military campaign against the militant Palestinian group. Speaking to the long-standing suffering of the Palestinian people, Guterres underlined, “It is also crucial to recognize that the Hamas attacks did not occur in a vacuum,” denouncing the “horrific and unprecedented acts of terrorism” that Hamas committed in Israeli territory on October 7.
“The Palestinian people’s complaints do not justify Hamas’s heinous attacks,” he declared. It is not acceptable to intentionally target civilians, injure them, kidnap them, or use rockets to attack civilian targets.”
Prior to this, Guterres traveled to Egypt to supervise UN preparations for last week’s delivery of humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
Following Guterres’ speech, Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen asked, “Sir, in which world are you living? ” while enumerating the names of children slain by Hamas attacks.It is undoubtedly not our world.
Later, he declared that he would not meet Guterres and that “a balanced perspective has no place” in a social media update that was translated into English by Google. The world must be free of Hamas!”
Following the UN Security Council meeting, Gilaad Erdan, the Israeli delegate, called for Guterres’s resignation. “You have lost all morality and impartiality, Mr. Secretary-General, and the United Nations is failing,” he declared. Saying that these terrible attacks weren’t isolated incidents shows that you support terrorism, and I believe the Secretary-General ought to step down right away. There is no justification for the existence of this building if he continues to stay there every day going forward without making amends. Today, we apologized to him by phone.
CNN reached out to the UN for comment, but they did not respond right away.
Later, Erdan described Guterres’s speech as “shocking” and said, “It’s sad that the head of an emerging organization is thinking this way,” in a social media post that was translated by Google.
