Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, walked out of a speech by Palestinian Authority foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki at the UN General Assembly on Thursday as the Palestinian diplomat falsely accused Israel of targeting civilians.
Al-Maliki was speaking during a General Assembly debate on the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which was started by Palestinian Hamas terrorists. Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority (PA) from Gaza in a coup in 2007, but the PA has encouraged violence against Israel over the past week, and spread false stories about Israel attacking the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
At the opening of his address, Al-Maliki claimed that “Israel, with its state-of-the-art arms, is targeting families as they sleep to sow the seeds of terror among our people.”
Israel has noted that most of the Palestinian casualties in the conflict have been Hamas terrorists, and that Palestinian civilians have often been killed by errant rockets that were aimed at Israel civilians but misfired.
Al-Maliki also claimed, falsely, that Israel had attacked the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on the holiest night of Ramadan. (Israeli police entered the mosque to clear rioters who had attacked civilians and police with rocks, fireworks, and other objects.)
As Al-Maliki made his claims, Erdan stood up, bowed, and left the chamber. He later tweeted a video of his response:
Later, in his own address, Erdan told the UN that at that moment, “Israeli civilians are running to find shelter from Hamas’s indiscriminate attacks.” He quoted from the Hamas Charter, which is explicitly antisemitic and calls for the genocide of Jews.
He also cited the UN Charter, which he noted that many of the member nations of the General Assembly had failed to defend in their “indifference to Hamas’s charter — which, like the Nazis, is committed to the genocide of the Jewish people.”
He said that the debate was about “who is on the side of extremism and hate, and who is on the side of moderation and dialogue.” He said that countries that sided with Hamas against Israel’s right of self-defense were guilty of “moral depravity.”
He added that it was a “disgrace” that the UN General Assembly had failed to call a debate on the coronavirus pandemic for months after it began, but managed to hold a session on the conflict merely days after Hamas had launched its rockets.
“Hamas targets civilians. Israel targets terrorists. Israel makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas makes every effort to increase civilian casualties,” he said, noting that Hamas wanted to increase Palestinian casualties as well as Israeli casualties.
“This is not a war between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a war only between Israel and Hamas. We will never apologize for defending our citizens, even if some of the countries here might be happy to see a greater number of dead Jews,” he declared.
He noted that the war had nothing to do with a property dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, nor with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, noting that rioters had desecrated the holy site by using the mosque to stockpile weapons and launch attacks.
Instead, he said, Hamas was reacting to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to cancel Palestinian elections.
“The hypocrisy in this institution knows no boundaries,” Erdan said, accusing it of “acquiescence” in Hamas terrorism.
He noted that Israel was proud of its peace agreements with Muslim countries, including four recent agreements in the past year.
He also called on governments around the world to protect Jewish citizens from a growing wave of antisemitic attacks.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it). His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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