“What a shame to give legitimacy to crimes against humanity when it concerns Jews! The statements of the UN Secretary General are outrageous!” the group of about 220 kidnapped families said in a statement.
Guterres told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that Hamas’ attacks “did not come out of nowhere” and recalled that Palestinians had been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
“Children were burned alive, women were raped and civilians were tortured and murdered in cold blood. All with the aim of destroying all Israelis and Jews in the territory conquered by Hamas,” the families noted.
They also believed that the UN Secretary General “shamefully ignores that a genocide was committed against the Jewish people on October 7 and has even found an indirect way to justify the horrors suffered by the Jews.”
The families claim that legal experts have stated that Hamas’s “heinous acts”, including massacres, torture and taking hostages of civilians – including the elderly, women, children and babies – “constitute not only war crimes, but also crimes against humanity” .
This brutal attack marked the beginning of the war between Israel and the militias in Gaza, which has already left more than 1,400 victims on Israeli soil – most of them civilians killed that same day in the largest massacre in Israel’s history – in addition the 222 kidnapped in Israeli history. enclave and about 100 missing.
The intense and indiscriminate Israeli retaliatory bombings in the Gaza Strip caused approximately 5,800 deaths – at least 70% of them women, children and the elderly – and more than 16,300 injuries, the largest human catastrophe also experienced in the punished enclave.
During today’s controversial Security Council meeting, Guterres unequivocally condemned the October 7 “unprecedented” and “acts of terror” committed by the Islamist group Hamas in Israel, emphasizing that “nothing can prevent the killing, attacks and kidnapping of deliberate actions of civilians justify’.
However, the UN Secretary-General admitted that it was “important to recognise” that the Islamist group’s attacks “did not come out of nowhere”, stressing that the Palestinian people were “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”.
“They have seen their lands continually devoured by settlements and ravaged by violence; their economy is stifled; their people displaced and their homes destroyed. Their hope for a political solution to their situation has faded,” he continued Guterres.
However, the UN leader stressed that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify Hamas’ terrible attacks,” further emphasizing that “these terrible attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Following these words, the Israeli government called for the UN leader’s resignation and canceled a meeting that Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen was scheduled to have with Guterres today.
Source: DN
