United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres fabricated facts regarding the IDF operation on the West Bank city of Jenin, and has failed to call out Hamas, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan charged, noting that his remarks on terrorism were a "disgrace" that only "emboldened Palestinian violence against Jews."
In a speech to the UN Security Council on Thursday, he took issue, particularly with Guterres's generalized statements against “Palestinian terror” that do not call out specific groups, such as Hamas.
“When I hear the words, 'I condemn all acts of terror,' as the Secretary-General recently stated, I cringe,” Erdan told the 15-member body.
He recalled how a Palestinian terrorist, claimed by Hamas to be a member of its group, had attacked a Tel Aviv bus stop injuring at least seven people including a pregnant woman Saba Gavriyot, who lost her baby.
“These acts of terror and those who perpetrate them must be condemned… at the very least by the UN and its bodies” by calling out the perpetrators by name.
“Do the terror organizations perpetrating these attacks not have names? Those responsible must be held accountable!” he demanded.
“Saba Gavriyot lost her baby because she was run over and stabbed by a Palestinian Hamas terrorist. Is that so hard to say?,” Erdan stated.
“Show the Palestinians and the world that you think Hamas is committing heinous crimes and also harming the Palestinian people!,” Erdan said.
Criticism of Jenin operation in UN
He also took issue with claims Guterres made about the IDF operation in Jenin to route out terrorists and their infrastructure.
“Throughout this tactical operation, 12 Palestinian terrorists were killed,” two command centers were uncovered, two shafts to attack tunnels were closed, five explosive-making labs were found and hundreds of IEDs and weapons were discovered, including in mosques and alongside roads.
It was a remarkable achievement that no civilians were killed, he said. So “imagine my shock when, rather than commending Israel for uprooting terrorists with surgical precision, the Secretary-General condemned only Israel, making claims completely detached from reality.”
“Rather than lambasting the terror organizations … he panned Israel for defending itself. The Secretary-General and UN bodies repeated brazen Palestinian lies about Israel preventing access of humanitarian and essential care” even though Israel maintained a “humanitarian corridor” throughout the operation.
“The fact that the Secretary-General chose to condemn Israel, a law-abiding democracy, as opposed to the bloodthirsty Palestinian terrorists seeking to murder innocent Israelis, is a disgrace and such remarks only embolden the terrorists,” Erdan added.
He noted that the IDF entered Jenin, in a two-day campaign it called Operation Home and Garden, only after it had urged the Palestinian Authority to take action to quell terror activity from that West Bank Palestinian city.
As a sign of the operation’s success, he said, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was able to safely visit the city for the first time in 11 years.
Erdan, in his speech also attacked the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is the main body providing humanitarian assistance to 5.9 million Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
He charged that the UN policy of granting refugee status, not only to those Palestinians displaced by the 1948 War of Independence but also to their descendants, created an unrealistic expectation that they could return to sovereign Israel.
Such a move would, Erdan said, would make it impossible for Israel to maintain its identity as an ethnic nationalist state.
Exploiting the refugee issue
The UN and the Palestinian Authority has exploited the refugee issue, in part by maintaining refugee camps, rather than allowing for the Palestinians to be integrated into West Bank Palestinian cities, he charged.
“Let me be clear: there is no “right of return” for Palestinian refugees to sovereign Israel, Erdan stated. “You all know this. The demand of returning millions of descendants of refugees is a demand to obliterate the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, and this will never happen.”
“If the PA’s main goal is truly to establish an independent state, then these second and third-generation refugees would be living in regular Palestinian cities and not camps. But this is not the Palestinians’ goal. Their goal is the annihilation of the Jewish State.,” he added.
“Palestinian leadership does not aim to live beside the Jewish State, but rather to destroy and replace the Jewish State. And they plan to do so by one day flooding Israel with over five million – and counting – so-called Palestinian refugees,” Erdan said.