Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations has denounced the international coalition for failing to universally support the embattled nation in the wake of the attacks from Hamas.
Ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar told reporters that a number of the UN’s leaders have not condemned the Oct. 7 attacks, which resulted in the death of approximately 1,400 people.
“I have to say, generally, the United Nations has let down the people of Israel,” said Eilon Shahar while in Geneva on Oct. 30. “What happens when you have an organization here working in Geneva, WHO, that the next day on the 8th of October starts talking about Gaza?”
According to Reuters, the ambassador “appeared to refer to comments by World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on social media platform X voicing concern about civilian deaths in Gaza the day after the attacks, the most deadly in Israel since the country was founded in 1948.”
Elion Sharar, who serves as her country’s permanent ambassador, stressed that she expects UN leaders to condemn any reports of antisemitism in Gaza.
She previously informed the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry that Israel would not cooperate with a 2022 investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by Israel.
“There is simply no reason to believe that Israel will receive reasonable, equitable and non-discriminatory treatment from the Council or from this [COI] that you were appointed to lead,” she wrote to the head of the commission, per The Jerusalem Post.
She said the inquiry was “designed to serve as a political tool, rather than an impartial investigative body,” and was “sure to be yet another sorry chapter in the efforts to demonize the State of Israel, distorting the factual and legal record, and hijacking the values, language and mechanisms of human rights in order to advance a partisan campaign.”
Other UN ambassadors from Israel have criticized the organization’s leadership since the war broke out.
Ambassador Gilad Erdan demanded UN Secretary-General António Guterres resign for remarks he made during an address on Oct. 24.
Guterres said the “situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour” and that the “war in Gaza is raging and risks spiraling throughout the region.”
“I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel,” he continued, per Fox News. “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.”
Guterres said that “it is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum” and that the “Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation” although their “grievances” do not “justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.”
“The [UN] Secretary-General, who shows understanding for the campaign of mass murder of children, women, and the elderly, is not fit to lead the UN,” wrote Erdan in a post on X. “There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people. There are simply no words.”
