British Secretary of State for Immigration Robert Jenrick argued on Wednesday that UN Secretary-General António Guterres should retract comments he made about Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
“I think [Guterres] is wrong because it implied that there was a justification for what happened in Israel two weeks ago,” the government official told ITV.
Jenrick understands that there is no possible justification for the Hamas attacks in Israel, stressing: “No one, intentionally or otherwise, should insinuate that there was anything to justify what happened”
“So in that sense I think he is [Guterres] was wrong. I hope that’s not what he meant. But if he does, he should take back what he said,” he added.
The Foreign Secretary declined to say whether the British government supports Israel in its call for Guterres’ resignation.
“It is very important that we all come together and condemn Hamas and not give any suggestion that they had good reasons to act this way,” he stressed.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Gilad Erdan, on Tuesday asked the organization’s secretary general, António Guterres, to resign “immediately” after saying that the attacks by the Islamist group Hamas “did not just happen” ”.
“The UN Secretary General, who understands the campaign of mass murder of children, women and the elderly, is not fit to lead the UN. I ask him to resign immediately,” the diplomat wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter). ).
“There is no justification or point in speaking to those who express compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people. There are simply no words,” he added.
Moments earlier, at the opening of a UN Security Council meeting dedicated to the current situation in the Middle East, Guterres unequivocally condemned the October 7 “unprecedented” and “acts of terror” committed by the Islamist group Hamas in Israel, saying stressed that “nothing can justify the deliberate murder, attack and kidnapping of civilians”.
But in the same intervention, he 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”.
Source: DN
