The world has been silent in the face of Palestinian “terror attacks with rocks” against Israelis, Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
“Rocks can and do kill,” Erdan said as he held up a large rock that looked like a brick. “A terrorist is not only one with a gun. A terrorist is not only one with a bomb. Rocks like this [are] thrown at Israelis in their cars and on buses. They are thrown at Israeli men and women, at Israeli babies and children. Every. Single. Day. But the world says nothing.”
Erdan spoke at the monthly UNSC meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the 15-member body often condemns Israeli actions against Palestinians but pays scant attention to Palestinian violence against Israelis.
“Would you consider it a terror attack if a rock like this was thrown at your car while driving with your children?” he asked the UNSC members. “Would you at the very least condemn these brutal terror attacks carried out against Israeli civilians by Palestinians?”
Erdan charged that there were 200 violent Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the past month alone, including 143 incidents of rock-throwing, and 20 grenade and firebomb attacks.
There were also “dozens more stabbings, car rammings, shootings, and other violent physical attacks risking – and claiming – Israeli lives,” Erdan said, adding that during 2021 there were thousands of violent attacks including indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza.
But there is another kind of terror attack, Erdan said: Terror attacks with rocks. In 2021 alone, Israelis suffered 1,775 rock attacks by Palestinian terrorists.”
The Palestinian Authority, he said, has not condemned these attacks, nor has it spoken out against the killing of two Israelis, Eli Kay and Yehuda Dimentman, by Palestinians in terror attacks last year.
Does the PA “condemn or do they condone?” Erdan asked.
He charged that the PA had supported terror activity with its policy of providing monthly grants to terrorists in Israeli jails and to the families of slain terrorists.
“This hypocrisy, this moral bankruptcy, is a poison that is spread online, in the media, in the mosques and even in the schools, under the Palestinian Authority,” said Erdan.
He took issue in particular with what he called the “audacity” of PA Foreign Minister Riyad Malki, who accused Israelis of violence against Palestinians even though such action is the “exception to the rule. He knows very well that whenever there are such incidents, Israel and its leadership abhor them. We probe, we investigate, and we condemn, but when Palestinians attack Israelis – the Palestinian Authority celebrates, congratulates, and rewards.”
The UNSC is also hypocritical for failing to clearly condemn Palestinian terror, Erdan said. “Palestinian acts of terror and incitement are whitewashed.”
The UNSC’s failure to condemn such terror, Erdan explained, has given the message that “Jewish blood is cheap” and “terror against Jews is acceptable.”
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Malki later told reporters, that Erdan's rock was "a joke."
Most people are not strong enough to throw a rock that large and if they could, it would not travel far, he said.
"It was a gimmick," Malki said, adding that Erdan was "a champion of such gimmicks."