Families of Israeli hostages in Gaza cry out against Guterres: "What a shame to legitimize crimes against humanity!"
The families of the hostages that the Islamist group Hamas is holding in the Gaza Strip described as “scandalous” the words of the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, regarding the attacks on October 7 in Israel that gave rise to the current war.. “What a shame to give legitimacy to crimes against humanity when it comes to Jews! The statements of the UN Secretary General are scandalous!” stated the group of families of the around 220 kidnapped in a statement.
Guterres affirmed this Tuesday before the UN Security Council that the Hamas attacks “do not come from nowhere” and recalled the Palestinians have been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”. ç
“Children were burned alive, women were raped, and civilians were tortured and murdered in cold blood.”. All with the aim of annihilating all Israelis and Jews in the area captured by Hamas,” the families noted.
In their statement, they consider that the UN Secretary General “shamefully ignores the fact that on Saturday, October 7, a genocide was perpetrated against the Jewish people and even found an indirect way to justify the horrors that the Jews suffered.”
They argue that legal experts have declared that Hamas' “horrible acts,” which included massacres, torture and the taking of civilian hostages – including the elderly, women, children and babies – “constitute not only war crimes but also crimes against humanity.” “.
Foreign Affairs cancels its meeting
In this sense, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, also unilaterally canceled his meeting with Guterres that Tuesday and asked for his resignation due to the words he used today in the Security Council.
The request for resignation was first made by his ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, in a message on. “Aren't you ashamed?” Cohen told reporters.
He then minimized Guterres' role as secretary general: “He does not represent the most important members of the UN, certainly not the US, Germany, France or Great Britain, which have supported Israel,” he argued.
Ambassador Erdan, who appeared alongside the minister and several relatives of the hostages captured by Hamas, added: “Obviously, we are going to have to reconsider our entire relationship with the United Nations.”. “For a long time we have been complaining about how the UN and its representatives act in Israel, distorting reality. “They do not report what is really happening, they take things out of context, they refuse to verify our reports of terrorist attacks (…) and they take Hamas' words as if they were the word of God,” Erdan explained.
Guterres had planned a meeting with Cohen and the hostages' relatives, which he is holding for the moment, even without Cohen's presence, said his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric.
The brutal attack on October 7 began the war between Israel and the Islamist militias in Gaza, which has claimed more than 1,400 victims in Israel – most of them civilians killed that same day in the largest massacre in Israel's history. , in addition to 222 kidnapped in the enclave and around a hundred missing.
The intense and indiscriminate Israeli retaliatory bombings on the Strip have caused some 5,800 deaths – at least 70% are women, children and the elderly – and more than 16,300 injured, the largest human catastrophe also experienced in the punished enclave.