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New York City: Israel has launched a scathing attack on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after he suggested that the Hamas terror group’s dastardly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 was the Jewish state’s continued control of Palestinian territories.

Gilad Erdan

Israel’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan called the comments by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as “shocking”. He has demanded that the secretary general resign.

“The UN Secretary-General, who shows understanding for the campaign of mass murder of children, women, and the elderly, is not fit to lead the UN. I call on him to resign immediately,” Erdan posted on X. “There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people. There are simply no words.”

Erdan said the remarks were “horrible,” and “completely disconnected from the reality in our region.”

https://twitter.com/giladerdan1/status/1716837646813614354?t=fnm0n5wuB3vsj0wpdy63aQ&s=19
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said Tuesday 24 October at a UN Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas war that got ignited when the terror group raided Israeli border communities, slaughtered more than a thousand people, tortured and took away hundreds as hostage, including very old persons, women and children.

Guterres told the Security Council: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing”.

Guterres went on to add: “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”.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen has canceled a meeting with Guterres, and another Israeli Minister, Benny Gantz has described the UN chief as a “terror apologist.”