The unmitigated chutzpah of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

The term “double standards” is used a lot these days as a way to describe the hypocritical treatment which is prescribed to one side while another more favorable metric is used for the other.

Among the myriad of double standards we see in today’s world, there is, perhaps, none more obviously preposterous and blatantly revolting than the suggestion made by UN Secretary-General António Guterres this past Monday, that everyone “honor the spirit of Ramadan by ‘silencing the guns’ in Gaza.” He went on to say, “I am appalled and outraged that conflict is continuing in Gaza during this holy month. The eyes of history are watching. We cannot look away. We must act to avoid more preventable deaths.”

If ever there was a statement that qualified as displaying the mother of all chutzpah, this one tops them all. Guterres has the unmitigated gall to demand respect for Ramadan, knowing full well that on October 7, two Jewish holidays, Shmeini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, not to mention Shabbat, the holiest day of the week for Jews, were neither respected nor honored. Instead, they were met with the most brutal and savage massacre ever having taken place in the Jewish homeland.

It's honestly hard to believe that anyone could be that tone-deaf and insensitive enough to make a request which has not been earned nor is deserving in any way of a consideration not given to the people from whom they are asking it.

Israeli Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, at his address before the UN Security Council, this past week, minced no words in calling out Guterres when he unapologetically said: “Your response to the atrocities committed by Hamas is unacceptable. Your dismissal of the heinous acts as documented in the recent UN report – acts which are still being perpetrated – is not only inadequate but also offensive. The indifference displayed towards the report on Hamas’s sexual violence – crafted with bravery – is deplorable. Your reluctance to lead a decisive international stance against these atrocities signals a distressing bias. If the victims would not have been of Jewish or Israeli descent, your office would have responded in a much more vigorous way…Your tenure at the UN is set to be remembered for diminishing the organization’s stature to an all-time low, allowing it to become the epicenter of antisemitism and anti-Israel incitement.”

As someone tasked with the position of being a fair, moral arbiter of ushering peace, through the efforts of this amalgamated body of world nations, Guterres, since he was nominated by the Security Council in 2017 has consistently treated Israel with bias. In early 2023, while addressing a pro-Palestinian event, he warned against any expansion of settlements as a provocation. It was then that he called for more funding for UNRWA, the UN agency that has been found to have aided the terrorists in the October 7 massacre.

He had no problem in openly saying, “Our ultimate goals remain unchanged: end the occupation, release a two-state solution.” It goes without saying that his words were music to the ears of the Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, who identified the UN as a “fabulous system.”

The aiding and abetting of Hamas terrorists by UNRWA is less than “fabulous” in the mind of every sane person. But what can be expected from a General Assembly that has “condemned Israel more than all other countries combined, in just the year 2023, placing Israel under more investigatory scrutiny than any other country.”

It wasn’t that long ago that UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, as an investigator of Palestinian rights, had been accused of making an antisemitic comment when she referred to the “Jewish lobby” as those who were “in control of the U.S.”

The UN is rife with prejudice and blatant condemnation towards Israel, and as the expression goes, “The fish stinks from the head,” meaning, in this case, that the leadership sets the tone for what is put out by others within the organization, and that is obvious by its highly antagonistic position towards Israel, which is viciously unrelenting as it continuously looks for ways to demonize the Jewish state.

It’s truly sad to think that this body, which played a pivotal role in the creation of a Jewish homeland, back in 1947, has ended up condemning Israel more times than countries such as Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela combined, because members of those countries act as a judging body within the UN to conspire in delegitimizing Israel. How ironic that they are part of the UN Human Rights Council.

Guterres, as secretary-general, has done more to undermine Israel than most anyone else when he, in December, during the height of the Gaza fighting, as Israel was just beginning to make headway, “decided to invoke Article 99 of the UN’s charter, something which hadn’t been done in 52 years, by calling for a ceasefire.”

It was Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan who demanded that Guterres resign from his position after the vile comments he made, stating that, “Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel didn’t happen in a vacuum,” further going on to say that “Palestinians have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Either Guterres is woefully ignorant of the fact that it is their own corrupt leaders who have been manipulating and suffocating Palestinians or he knows, all too well, but is clearly on the side of savage terrorists which immediately disqualifies him as someone who claims to champion peace.

Either way, Guterres is a miserable failure in his role as someone who is meant to identify “situations which threaten the peace and security, including atrocity crimes, are occurring to the United Nations organs”. since he is clearly incapable of differentiating between evil barbarians who perpetrate massacres and Israel’s right to a harsh military response following such horrific acts of terror.

If he had one ounce of decency, his absurd request to honor the spirit of Ramadan should have first been made of Muslims who, weeks ago, already threatened to use the 30-day-long observance in order to ignite a month of terror throughout the region. 

Apparently, his words are only directed at Israel who would be roundly condemned if they were to respond to any such acts over the holiday period. But Guterres was right when he said, “The eyes of the world are watching.” What he fails to understand is that some of those eyes are directed at him!