United Nations (UN) chief, António Guterres, said on Wednesday he needed to “set the record straight” about remarks he made a day earlier that incensed Israel and led to calls for his resignation.
“I am shocked by the misrepresentations by some of my statement yesterday in the Security Council, as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas,” he said at the UN’s headquarters in New York.
“”This is false. It was the opposite,” he said in a brief address.
Guterres said he had condemned the Hamas attack on Israel and noted that he had emphasised that “nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians, or the launching of rockets against civilian targets”.
The UN chief said he spoke of the grievances of the Palestinian people and in doing so “I also clearly stated, and I quote: ‘The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.”
Guterres said he wanted to “set the record straight, especially out of respect for the victims and their families”.
On Tuesday, tensions flared after Guterres criticised Israel’s relentless bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip in the wake of the Hamas massacres.
He called them “clear violations of international humanitarian law” and “collective punishment” of Palestinians.
While condemning the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, he said they had not taken place “in a vacuum” and that Palestinians have lived for decades under “suffocating occupation”.
In a swift reaction, Israel’s ambassador to the UN said Guterres was justifying terrorism and called on him to step down.
