Israel bans UN chief Guterres after Iran missile strike
Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced that he has declared UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres persona non grata and banned him from entering the country for failing to "unequivocally condemn" Iran for Tuesday's airstrike on Israel. "He will be remembered as a stain for a lifetime in the history of the United Nations," Katz asserted.
"Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran's heinous attack on Israel, as almost every country in the world has done, does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil," Katz wrote on social media.
He added that Guterres "has yet to denounce the massacre and atrocities committed by Hamas murderers on 7 October, nor has he led any efforts to declare them a terrorist organization."
"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 UN," Katz concluded.
Iran's retaliation
Iran launched more than 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, most of which were shot down by air defenses. Tehran stated that the airstrike was in revenge for Israel’s killing of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and announced further attacks in case of an armed response from Israel, which has already announced it will respond to Tuesday's strike.
Guterres wrote on Tuesday on X that he " condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict with escalation after escalation."
The UN Secretary-General had already been criticized by Israeli diplomacy earlier, for example, for his appearance before the UN Security Council on October 24, 2023. Guterres then said that he unequivocally condemned the horrific and unprecedented acts of terror committed by Hamas on October 7. "Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians — or the launching of rockets against civilian targets." He then added that Hamas’s attack "did not happen in a vacuum" and that it must be remembered that Palestinians have been subjected to "suffocating occupation" for 56 years, and "appalling attacks by Hamas, and those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people."
The war in the Gaza Strip erupted after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed and 251 were kidnapped. In response, Israel started a war against this ruling Gaza terrorist organization. According to local medical authorities, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in it so far. The Gaza Strip is devastated, there is a humanitarian crisis, and most of the residents have become internally displaced.
