Israel's ambassador to the United Nations played a video of a Hamas terrorist attempting to decapitate one of its victims as he addressed the General Assembly during a debate on a Gaza war ceasefire.
“The man on the ground is an agricultural worker from Thailand. He is not Israeli. He is not Jewish. He was merely alive, trying to make a living for his family,” Erdan said as he held up a tablet with the video.
“But he was decapitated with a blunt gardening tool,” Erdan said, adding that it was “horrifying.”
He spoke during the start of a two-day debate on a cease-fire for the Gaza War that began on October 7 when Hamas infiltrated southern Israel killing over 1,400 people and taking more than 224 hostages.
Erdan urged the UNGA not to call for a ceasefire which he said would only support the Iranian proxy group Hamas and allow it to rearm itself so it could launch further attacks against Israeli civilians.
“Any call for a ceasefire is not an attempt at peace. It is an attempt to tie Israel’s hands, preventing us from eliminating a huge threat to our citizens,” Erdan said.
Israel in Gaza “is not at war with the Palestinians. Israel is at war with the genocidal Jihadist Hamas terror organization,” Erdan said, as he stressed that the Jewish state was standing at the forefront of a global battle.
“Hamas’s genocidal ideology, just like ISIS, al-Qaeda... is not just about destroying Israel. It is ultimately about world domination. It is about bringing the Jihad war to the soil of each and every one of your countries,” Erdan warned.
Hamas leaders can end the war at any moment by stopping its rocket fire into the country, returning the hostages, and turning themselves in, Erdan said.
“If the drafters of this Resolution truly want peace, if they truly want an immediate solution, then why do they not demand this of Hamas?” Erdan said.
He devoted a portion of his speech to the victims of the attack.
“Twenty days have gone by and Israel is still counting her dead. It took weeks to collect all of the bodies,” Erdan said. “Some bodies are burnt like pieces of coal – it is almost impossible to identify them.”
Ash was found in the throats of countless burnt bodies, evidence that they were alive when they were lit on fire, he said... Medical personnel who first found the burnt human remains didn’t understand at first what they were looking at, Erdan explained.
In one case two spines were found “bound together with wire – one belonging to an adult, and the other, the small spine of a child,” he said.
“Try to imagine that parent’s feeling as they and their child were burning alive. The painful screaming of the love of their life was the last thing they heard,” Erdan told the UNGA.
Palestinian Authority envoy Riyad Mansour
Palestinian Authority envoy Riyad Mansour devoted a portion of his speech to the painful experience of civilians in Gaza who are living through the daily bombings. Hamas has asserted that some 7,000 Palestinians have been killed. Israel has not provided casualty figures, but it has some that the fatalities were from IDF aerial bombings or failed Palestinian rocket launches.
“Jenan, a little girl under the rubble shouts at the people coming to rescue her, 'What took you so long.' There are 900 Palestinian children under the rubble alive or dead, wondering what is taking so long. Wondering if any help is on the way,” Mansour said.
All total, there are some 1,600 Palestinians under the rubble, and “no one can reach them to bury or save them,” he said.
A Gaza cease-fire is about saving lives, he said.
“Why doesn’t the world feel a sense of urgency to stop the killing of Palestinians” in Gaza, Mansour asked.
“Vengeance is a dead end, the only path forward is justice for the Palestinians,” Mansour continued.
Mansour asserted that in the Gaza bombings, 3,000 children and 1,700 women have been killed since the war began on October 7. In total, according to Gaza's health ministry, run by the Hamas terrorist organization, 7,000 people were killed and some 40% of all homes have been destroyed.
Israel thinks, ’If you say Hamas enough times the world will not be able to object to wiping off entire families from the face of the earth,” Mansour said.
Israel has called for the release of the hostages, but takes two million people in Gaza hostage, Mansour continued.
“Why feel so much pain for Israelis and so little pain for us the Palestinians? What is the problem? Do we have the wrong faith, the wrong skin color, the wrong nationality,” he asked.
"Nothing can justify the killing of a single Palestinian child,” Mansour stressed as he called on the UNGA to simply “stop the killing.”