The families of the hostages of the Islamist group Hamas described as “scandalous” this Tuesday the words of the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, regarding the October 7 attacks 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!” said the group of families of some 220 kidnapped people in a statement.
Guterres stated this Tuesday before the UN Security Council that the Hamas attacks “do not emerge from nowhere” and recalled that the Palestinians were “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 annihilating all Israelis and Jews in the area captured by Hamas,” the families said.
They also considered that the UN Secretary General “shamefully ignores the fact that on October 7 a genocide was perpetrated against the Jewish people and even found an indirect way to justify the horrors that the Jews suffered.”
The families argue that legal specialists will declare that the “horrific crimes” of Hamas, which include massacres, torture and the taking of civil rights – including children, women, children and babies – “constitute not only war crimes, but also crimes against humanity”.
This brutal attack began the war between Israel and the Gaza militias, which has already claimed 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 to 222 kidnapped in the enclave and around 100 missing.
The intense and indiscriminate Israeli retaliatory bombings in the Gaza Strip caused around 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.
At Tuesday’s controversial Security Council meeting, Guterres unequivocally condemned the “unprecedented” October 7 “acts of terror” perpetrated by the Islamist group Hamas in Israel, stressing that “nothing can justify the murder, attack and deliberate kidnapping of civilians. “.
However, the UN secretary general admitted that it was “important to recognize” 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 land continually devoured by settlements and devastated by violence; their economy has been suffocated; their people have been displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their situation have been fading,” Guterres continued.
The UN leader stressed, however, that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the terrible attacks by Hamas,” further stressing that “these terrible attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
After these words, the Israeli Government called for the resignation of the UN leader and canceled a meeting that the Israeli Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, would have today with Guterres.
Given the cancellation of this meeting, Guterres’ office reported that the Secretary General will meet this Tuesday afternoon with representatives of the families of the hostages detained in Gaza.
“They will be accompanied by a representative of the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations,” said a statement from Guterres’ spokesperson.
Source: TSF
