United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made a speech to mark one year to the October 7 massacre in Israel. Though he made the most compelling call for condemnation of Hamas, he failed to call upon his organization to recognize it as a terror group, to condemn Iran’s multifront campaign on the Jewish State, as well as touch upon the unprecedented anti-Israeli campaign he and the UN have been engaged in over the past year.
Here is an alternative speech that could still be delivered, if Guterres so chooses. The decision is his to make.
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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
(Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
"Distinguished delegates,
It has been one year since Iranian protégé Hamas’ horrible and inhumane massacre of innocent Israelis on October 7, and Iran’s ensuing multifront campaign against Israel. It pains me to report, however, that the United Nations so far failed to take the most basic step and condemn this atrocity. One does not need to take sides to outright reject the human suffering caused by these enemies of civilization.
Over the past year, I made 37 work-related trips around the world in my capacity as the United Nations Secretary General. My unwavering commitment to the international community that entrusted me with this sacred mission is to be an honest broker while insisting on fundamental values we should all share. I therefore traveled to all seven continents but Australia and Antarctica, and above all, the Middle East, in an attempt to bring the world together. Yet I regret to inform you that I preferred to skip over Israel, even though this long-standing member of the United Nations has just suffered the deadliest terrorist attack in its history.
However, I have taken the trouble to repeatedly talk to Israelis, rather than with them. I skipped no superlative in laying out my accusations of Israel, rushing to be “horrified” by Israeli airstrikes on Hamas compounds and averting against “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. My deputy and a commission I appointed accused Israel of committing “war crimes”, my envoy to the Middle East claimed Israel had “no right of self-defense”, and my organization, the United Nations, still refuses to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization. I myself invoked Chapter 99 for the first time since coming into office and only for the fourth time in history, citing concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Yet I failed to explain how Gaza outperforms Yemen, with 400,000 dead from starvation, Syria, Ukraine, drug wars in Mexico, Afghanistan, or elsewhere, theaters that summon frail international reaction.
I repeatedly condemned Israel by name, accusing it of everything from deliberate starvation to genocide, with no evidence but Hamas’ bogus data (the “Gaza Ministry of Health”), ignoring over 1 million aid trucks that entered Gaza this year. Yet when Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles at Israeli cities, I never mentioned the Ayatollah regime by name, simply making a general reference to “escalation in the Middle East”, as if talking about the weather.
I have to admit that under my reign, I continued a UN tradition of anti-Israel bias. Already on October 19, before any Israeli troops ever entered Gaza, I traveled to Egypt and accused Israel of “starving” Palestinians in Gaza. “For nearly two weeks, the people of Gaza have gone without any shipments of fuel, food, water, medicine, and other essentials,” I stated at the El Arish airport, as a 747 cargo was landing behind me, carrying 65 metric tons of humanitarian supplies on its way to Gaza.
I was oblivious, perhaps willfully, to the fact that since October 7, Israel remained the only country in the world to supply its enemy with food and fuel during wartime, with a great risk to its soldiers: over 60,000 trucks and airborne deliveries have shipped over 1 million tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza, supplying as many as 3,400 calories per day to every Gazan citizen. This policy remains highly unpopular among the Israeli public, as hostages are still being held in sub-human conditions in Gaza. Israel allowed and facilitated this despite clear indications that Hamas uses much of it to its own advantage.
I came back to Egypt in March, while flagrantly skipping over Israel once again. I did not skip over superlatives, though, claiming it was “monstrous” that “Palestinians in Gaza are marking Ramadan with Israeli bombs still falling, bullets still flying, artillery still pounding and humanitarian assistance still facing obstacle upon obstacle.” However, I did not request Egypt, my host country, to stop blocking Palestinian refugees from fleeing into its territory or hurdling humanitarian aid, given it shares a border with Gaza. Egyptian President Al-Sisi even fenced out an enclave to block refugees in case the border is breached through the Rafah area. I would have never accepted such a situation had Moldova, Poland, or Romania ever blocked Ukrainian refugees from escaping a war zone.
I also failed to recognize how my own UN agencies actively colluded with Hamas. UNRWA facilitated the murder of Israelis with its teachers participating in the October 7 massacre, holding hostages, and over 400 of its members being part of Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigades. That did not stop me from claiming “188 UN workers” were killed in Gaza, outcrying how the “horror must stop,” while ignoring the oldest trick in the Hamas manual – registering terrorists as UN workers.
My agency UNOCHA, on its part, continues to whitewash Hamas’ disinformation. Figures neatly presented in charts and infographics illustrated how 42,000 Palestinians were allegedly killed in Gaza, based on bogus data provided by Hamas’ “Gaza Ministry of Health” and “various media reports”. I reiterated those figures while professing to alert against “grave global harm” caused by other types of disinformation. Scores of violent protesters blocked Jewish students from entering campuses and attacked Jewish people on the streets around the world based on these false claims, that my own UN has slashed by half ever since.
Disinformation has even become normalized under my reign – though only when Israel is concerned. 35 Palestinians were never killed in a UNRWA school by an Israeli airstrike on June 6, yet my UN News agency rushed to report just that, and my spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric claimed that the incident was “another horrific example of the price that civilians are paying” in Gaza. Later I found out that 17 Hamas militants used the compound as a military site, a legitimate target according to any international law – with no civilian casualties. 500 Palestinians were never killed in the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, yet I rushed to announce I was “horrified” and “shocked” by the incident. Had I awaited the facts, I would have known that this was yet another Hamas fake news. In reality, a misfired PIJ rocket landed in the hospital’s parking lot, all but burning a few cars.
Israel was even excluded from the UN’s report on sexual violence despite multiple evidence of such crimes by Hamas on October 7, while we falsely accused Israel of committing such sexual crimes on Palestinians without a shred of evidence, simply for the sake of false balance.
Unlike my focus on Israel, I never made any significant appeal to Iran to cease funding terrorism, illegally developing nuclear weapons, and publicly calling for the annihilation of Israel, while violating practically all of its international obligations. The Iranian regime instigated the October 7 massacre and continues to wreak havoc around the region and the world. I only mentioned Iran when paying tribute to its notorious president Raisi, in a special visit to Tehran, mourning the death of a mass murderer who made a mockery of international law and minority rights I care deeply about.
In general, I cannot report to you that I’m proud of my record from the past year. Rather than harshly criticizing Israel based on cooked numbers and partial reports, or only expressing empathy with Israeli victims within a “yes, but” context (as my famous speech shortly after the massacre, saying it “did not happen in a vacuum”), I should have rallied the international community against the clear and present threats aimed at the only Jewish state.
While Israel is fighting an existential war and is subject to attacks on multiple fronts, I failed to meet my obligations to it. I presided over a UN that according to my predecessor Koffi Annan, is “misused to constantly vilify the Jewish state and, in so doing, damage the world body itself and its universal values.” Its General Assembly dedicates 85% of its annual resolutions to Israel, while its Human Rights Council’s infamous Article 7 singles Israel out for no apparent reason. No other country suffers this level of existential threat while being in the crosshairs of the international community.
Or YissacharPhoto: Michael PaviaGoing back to where I started – I did pay a visit to Israel during my tenure, albeit not in the past year, but in 2017. I stressed my commitment to combat anti-Semitism in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial while failing to meet that promise. I then visited the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, which borders Gaza, and “heard from them of their fears of rocket attacks from Hamas, as well as tunnel infiltration”. I commended the residents’ will “to see Palestinians and Israelis living both in peace and both well.” I then toured a Hamas attack tunnel crossing the border. I failed to appreciate how this will evolve into an all-out massacre of 1,200 innocent Israelis, of which 16 were murdered and 8 taken hostage in the same Nahal Oz.
I realize my tenure will go down in history as a particularly shameful period as it relates not only to treating Israel but any freedom-seeking nation. But now we have an opportunity to correct that record. Iran’s campaign of terror, rape, and hostage-taking must stop. Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire but to be encouraged to do justice to humanity’s most abominable enemies. We should all also appreciate the heroism of Israeli combatants who put their lives on the line not only for the defense of Israel but for all of us in the free world. Israel managed to channel unspeakable suffering into encapsulating human destiny with the spirit of its people and the ferocious Jewish belief in ultimate good. For failing to meet my commitment, I ask Israel and my Jewish friends around the world for your forgiveness. May we leverage this war to vanquish evil, rather than appease it, and empower Israel, rather than disavow it?
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