During a television interview yesterday, the United Nations’ top humanitarian-aid official denied that Hamas is a terrorist organization. “I’ve worked with many, many, many different terrorist and insurgent groups. Hamas is not a terrorist group for us,” he said, opting to describe it as a “political movement” instead.

The official, Martin Griffiths, oversees the coordination of the U.N.’s humanitarian aid in his capacity as undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs. He made the comments during an interview on Sky News yesterday after an anchor asked him about the difficulties of negotiating with terrorist groups. Griffiths also said that it’s “very difficult to dislodge these groups without a negotiated solution which includes their aspirations.”

This sparked a controversy, with the Israeli government’s official social-media account calling the U.N. an “abomination.” Although the U.N. officially does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization, the U.S., the EU, and numerous other governments have designated it as such. Griffiths could have certainly referred to Hamas as a terrorist organization despite the perplexing lack of its official designation by the U.N.

He later tried to walk back his statement, referring to Hamas’s “acts of terror on 7 October” and writing that he merely meant to say that it is not on the U.N. Security Council’s list of terrorist organizations.

What is telling, however, is that he had originally gone further and referred to Hamas as a “political movement” with aspirations to which the world must cater.