Top Israeli officials lashed out at UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday, particularly after he stressed in a speech to the Security Council that the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel was not carried out “in a vacuum”, demanding that he step down .

Mr Guterres’ statement to the UN, in which he said the deadly attack by Hamas should be placed in the context of decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians, was a “pure blood libel”, blasted Gilad Erdan, Israel’s UN ambassador. .

Support that the head of the international organization is indifferent to what Israeli civilians have suffered and justifies terrorism. “I think the General Secretary should resign,” added Mr. Erdan.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who attended the Security Council meeting, canceled a planned meeting with Mr. Guterres.

“I will not meet with the UN Secretary General. After October 7, there is no room for balanced approaches. Hamas must be wiped off the face of the Earth,” Mr Cohen said via social networking sites.

Antonio Guterres strongly criticized the relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, calling it “clear violations of international humanitarian law” and “collective punishment” of the Palestinians.

Condemning Hamas’ “terrorist attack” on Israeli territory on October 7, in which more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 200 others kidnapped, he stressed that it was not committed “in a vacuum.” “The Palestinian people have endured 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he recalled.

“He has seen his land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence, his economy strangled, his people displaced, his homes demolished. His hopes for a political solution to his martyrdom are extinguished.”

But his plight “cannot justify the horrific attacks by Hamas”, nor “these horrific attacks can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”, the UN Secretary-General insisted.

Addressing the Security Council, Israel’s Foreign Minister flatly rejected calls to declare a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where, according to the Hamas Health Ministry, the death toll of the Israeli army’s shelling reached at least 5,791 dead yesterday Tuesday. He posed the rhetorical question to the SA what its member states think should be the “proportionate response” to the killing of babies, the rape of women and the beheading of victims, and insisted on photographs of hostages.

“How can you agree to a ceasefire with someone who has sworn to kill you, to destroy your existence?” he shouted, calling Hamas the “new Nazis”.

According to diplomatic sources, some Arab delegations walked out of the room during Mr. Cohen’s speech, including those from Algeria and Libya. However, the representatives of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates remained in their positions.

The head of Palestinian diplomacy, Riyad al-Maliki, denounced the inaction of the Security Council amid the Israel/Hamas war. “Is it or is not the duty of the Security Council to ensure international peace and security and respect for the principles and purposes of the (statutory) UN Charter?”, he asked, denouncing the “double standards” of the international community.

For his part, US President Anthony Blinken reiterated that Washington supports Israel in the war against Hamas, although he noted that “all possible precautions” must be taken to protect civilians. Recalling that the Hamas attack on Israel killed citizens of more than 30 UN member states, he insisted that “we all have a responsibility” in the fight to “defeat terrorism.” He underlined that Israel has a “right and an obligation” to defend itself, however “the way it does it matters”. “Palestinian civilians must be protected. This means that Hamas must stop using them as human shields (…) and Israel must take all possible precautions to avoid harming them.”