UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s Anti-Israel Bias. His moral equivalency is contemptible.
By: Joseph Puder
Thursday, November 2, 2023
ITAI's WEEKLY MIDDLE EAST REPORT
Whether he was pandering to the large Islamic bloc at the United Nations (UN) or simply wedded to the anti-Israel policies of that body, in his speech last week at the UN Security Council Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the UN stunned Israelis and the civilized world with his expressions of moral equivalency. Guterres’ obligatory reaction to the October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,400 innocent Israelis, dragging 240 Israeli hostages from their homes to Gaza tunnels (constituting a war crime), including babies and young women that were violated by Hamas murderers, and injuring over 5,000 Israelis, was to say “appalling.”
Guterres then justified this Nazi and ISIS-like butchery by stating, “It is important to also recognize that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” As if that was not sickening enough, Guterres piled on a list of Israel’s misdeeds saying, “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. Excellencies, even war has rules.” Guterres added, “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, responded by accusing the UN of continued bias and hatred of Israel. He added: “It is a disgrace to the UN that the secretary general does not retract his words and is not even able to apologize for what he said. He must resign. The secretary-general once again distorts and twists reality. He clearly said yesterday that the massacre by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. Every person understands well that the meaning of the words is Israel has guilt for the actions of Hamas or at the very least it shows his understanding of the ‘background’ leading up to the massacre that Hamas perpetrated.”
Apparently, Guterres’ memory is clouded by bias, since he conveniently forgot that Israel offered to end the conflict and accept a Palestinian state throughout the 56 years. Most of the West Bank was offered to Jordan early on. The Oslo Accords, if adhered to, would have resulted in a Palestinian state, but Arafat chose a bloody intifada rather than accommodation. At the July 2000 Camp David summit, with President Clinton as its mediator, and once again in 2008, with Olmert's generous offer to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians rejected every opportunity to reach a deal.
Had Guterres bothered to read the Hamas charter he would find in it a clear intention to destroy the Jewish state and murder its people. Bruce Hoffman, summarizing the revised 2018 Hamas Charter wrote in The Atlantic, (October 10, 2023) under the title Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology the following, “1. The complete destruction of Israel is an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law (Sharia). 2. The need for both unrestrained and unceasing holy war (jihad) to attain the above objective. 3. The deliberate disdain for, and dismissal of any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land. 4. The reinforcement of historical anti-Semitic tropes and calumnies married to sinister conspiracy theories.”
Guterres used the now common UN refrain of “collective punishment.” He had deliberately ignored the fact that Israel, unlike any other army in the world warned the civilian population of Gaza to move out of the northern Gaza firing zone and find shelter in the southern part of the Strip. Israel does fully adhere to the rules of war, but Hamas violates it time and time again. Moreover, Guterres failed to denounce Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), deliberately endangering the lives of Palestinian civilians by using them as human shields. Collective punishment is another phrase fondly used by those filled with a tinge of antisemitism, who would only restrain the Jewish state from rightfully punishing Hamas for its atrocities. That other phrase is “proportionality.”
Interviewed on BBC, British author and journalist Douglas Murray, responded to the absurdity of the notion of proportionality by stating, “This would mean that, in retaliation for what Hamas did in Israel on Saturday (October 7, 2023), Israel should try to locate a music festival in Gaza, for instance - and good luck with that -and rape precisely the number of women that Hamas raped on Saturday. Precisely kill the number of young people that Hamas killed on Saturday…”
Murray added, “Israelis should find a town of exactly the same size as Sderot, and make sure they go door to door and kill precisely the correct number of babies that Hamas killed in Sderot on Saturday and shoot in the head precisely the same number of old age pensioners as were shot in Sderot on Saturday, just to choose one town.”
Guterres reflects the UN's long-standing bias against Israel in virtually all agencies of this largely undemocratic institution. The UN had rarely punished the dictatorial regimes who perpetrated war and violence around the world, especially the likes of Iran and its proxies, Syria, Russia, China, etc. It is easy and risk-free for Guterres and the UN agencies to apply their malign venom against the small democratic state of Israel that does provide human and civil rights, and religious freedom to all its citizens. Unfortunately, the Jewish state is not part of a religious bloc like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation with its 57 countries bloc, and none of them resemble a democracy.
One of the misconceptions that both allies and adversaries of Israel share, including Antonio Guterres is that Hamas and the Palestinian people are two separate entities — they are wrong. The people of Gaza elected Hamas and the vast majority supports that inhuman terrorist organization. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) charter while somewhat less hateful than the Hamas charter, nonetheless, seeks to replace Israel and Jews in what would be a “judenrein” Arab-Muslim state. After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and at President Clinton’s request the PLO was to amend its charter and delete the parts calling for the destruction of Israel. In 1996, the Palestinian National Council was supposed to delete the offending clauses, but it never happened. In fact, the destruction and replacement of the Jewish state are supported by the vast majority of Palestinians.
One thing must be clear, Israel didn’t start the conflict with Gaza, it was Hamas’s unprovoked barbaric attack on Israeli civilians on Saturday, October 7, 2023, that prompted Israel’s justified reaction in defense of its people. No nation can exist with a terrorist neighbor that is committed to its destruction. The endless rocket attacks on Israeli communities, aiming to kill as many Israelis as possible must end, whether Guterres likes it or not.