(Jerusalem) Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced that he had declared the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, “persona non grata in Israel”, accusing him of not having condemned Iran by name for its massive attack against Israel on Tuesday evening.
Published yesterday at 2:41 p.m.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil. We are dealing with an anti-Israeli secretary general who supports terrorists, rapists and murderers,” Katz said in a statement on Wednesday.
After Iran’s attack which fired nearly 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening, Mr. Guterres condemned “the widening of the conflict in the Middle East”, deploring “escalation after escalation”.
“This has to stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” he added, without further details.
Speaking before the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Mr. Guterres however said he “strongly condemns the massive missile attack by Iran on Israel”.
Asked about the Israeli decision, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, for his part, judged that this measure was “really not useful in any way whatsoever”.
The notoriously difficult relationship between Israel and the United Nations has sunk to its lowest ebb since October 7, the date of Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
Israel is very critical of the UN, and their relations further deteriorated after the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Israeli calls for Antonio Guterres’ resignation began soon after the start of the war, when he stressed that the Hamas attack had “not happened in a vacuum” and that “the Palestinian people [avait] been subjected to 56 years of stifling occupation.
Mr. Guterres has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to end the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel has been in the midst of a military escalation against Hezbollah for several weeks.
The Lebanese Islamist movement opened a front in support of Hamas on October 8 by starting firing rockets into northern Israel. Since then, almost daily clashes between the Shiite militia and the Israeli army have led to the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border.
On Monday, Israel began a ground offensive in Lebanese territory against Hezbollah.
