United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres aired a “blood libel” against Israel, according to senior Israeli officials infuriated by his suggestion that Hamas murdered civilians in retaliation for the Jewish state's "suffocating occupation" of Palestinian territory.
“The SG is blaming the victim. You are blaming Israel,” Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan said at the United Nations headquarters. “This is a pure blood libel, and I think that the secretary-general must resign ... unless he apologizes immediately today.”
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That rebuke was just part of an outpouring of Israeli anger at Guterres, who suggested during a U.N. Security Council meeting that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen canceled a meeting with Guterres while his subordinates implied that the former Spanish foreign minister had sided with Hamas after one of the most atrocious terrorist attacks in modern history.
“There is no middle line: If you don’t stand with Israel today, you are a supporter of Hamas,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat said at the press conference.
Guterres “condemned unequivocally” the Hamas attack but argued that they arose out of opposition to Israeli policy toward Palestinians.
“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” Guterres said. “But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Israeli officials deny that they have imposed any “collective punishment,” condemning instead Hamas for the use of human shields, and Guterres’s statement drew an immediate rebuttal from Cohen, who also spoke in the Security Council meeting.
“Mr. secretary-general, in what world do you live? Definitely, this is not our world,” Cohen said during the meeting. “Just as the civilized world united to defeat the Nazis, just as the civilized world united to defeat ISIS, the civilized world is to stand united behind Israel to defeat Hamas. Let us [not be] mistaken Hamas intention. I'm sure, secretary-general, you can read it. [Hamas has] clearly called for the destruction and elimination of the state of Israel.”
Cohen and Erdan were flanked, after the council meeting, by the relatives of some of the hostages seized when Hamas forces broke through the Gaza border fence to embark on a mass terrorist rampage across southern Israel that left at least 1400 people dead and thousands more wounded.
“I live in a different universe than all of you,” said Rachel Goldberg, a Chicago native with dual Israeli citizenship whose son was kidnapped after losing his left arm in the Hamas attack on the music festival. “This is a global humanitarian catastrophe, and the hatred being showered on Israel … Israel gives warnings to civilians in Gaza to relocate before they strike, but there were no warnings given to the women, the children, the elderly, the music lovers, and the babies on Oct. 7 before the intentional massacres on innocent lives.”
Goldberg said her son, Hersh, 23, was pulled by Hamas from a bomb shelter where 29 people were attempting to hide. The terrorists tossed 11 grenades into the shelter — her son’s friend “managed to pick up eight of them and throw them back out,” she said, citing eyewitnesses — before firing a rocket-propelled grenade into the shelter and opening fire with machine guns.
“Some were alive and wounded and trapped under the dead bodies, so they pretended to be dead,” she said. “Hersh and two other young men were ordered to stand, and when Hersh stood up, they all saw that his left arm had been blown off from the elbow. He had somehow managed to put on some sort of tourniquet or bandage and walked out with the other two young men. They were loaded onto a Hamas pickup truck and headed toward Gaza.”
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Erdan claimed that years of experience at the U.N. had taught him to believe that Guterres “doesn't really care for the suffering of the Israeli civilians” but that the “impartiality” of his office had obscured it.
“Saying that Hamas attacks ‘did not happen in a vacuum’ ... it should be unfathomable for each and every one of us,” the Israeli ambassador said. “You are tolerating terrorism, and by tolerating terrorism, you are justifying terrorism.”