Israel has declared United Nations (U.N.) Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata, saying he “does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil.”
Jerusalem officials have been critical of Guterres’ U.N. stewardship since the October 7th terror attacks, accusing him of turning the organisation into an “anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli body” which works as “a tool for Hamas propaganda.” They were particularly frustrated by his early failure to include Hamas on the U.N. sexual violence blacklist.
The last straw came on Tuesday, when Guterres responded to Iran’s missile strikes on Israel by condemning “the broadening of the Middle East conflict with escalation after escalation” and calling again for a ceasefire. The Israeli foreign ministry fumed at the U.N. chief’s “inability to string together a tweet which holds Iran responsible for firing 181 ballistic missiles at 10 million Israeli civilians.”
Foreign minister Israel Katz added in a stinging rebuke of Guterres’ leadership:
A secretary-general who gives backing to terrorists, rapists, and murderers from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and now Iran—the mothership of global terror—will be remembered as a stain on the history of the U.N.
Israel will continue to defend its citizens and uphold its national dignity, with or without António Guterres.
Hours later, Guterres jibed that it “should have been obvious” that he did, in fact, “strongly condemn” Iran’s actions, saying that they “paradoxically do nothing to support the cause of the Palestinian people or reduce their suffering.”
Author and lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky dismissed the clarification as “too little too late.”
Guterres did, however, have the backing of Josep Borrell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who was criticised earlier this week for suggesting that Israeli attacks on Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon have represented “a violation of the sovereignty of an independent country.” Borrell praised the U.N. chief for “his tireless efforts to achieve peace in all the conflicts and particularly in the Middle East,” expectedly prompting yet more condemnation online.
The U.N. is also mired in allegations that some of its staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) participated in Hamas and its October 7th pogrom.
