JNS
Danny Danon said the “stain will never wash out” after the global body remained silent about the murdered Israeli, whose body a U.N. staffer helped steal to Gaza.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, denounced the U.N. Security Council during its monthly meeting about Israel and the Palestinians on Monday, a week after Israeli security forces recovered the body of an Israeli, who was killed during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and whose body a U.N. worker helped steal to Gaza.
“Yonatan Samerano’s parents had prayed every day for a miracle. Instead, last week, we received the cold confirmation of tragedy,” Danon told the global body. “The United Nations paid the wages of the man who stole Yonatan’s body and dragged him into Gaza. Where are the condolences from the secretary-general?”
Danon also noted the lack of apology from Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, given that the employee who kidnapped the Israeli’s body worked for UNRWA.
“Their silence rings louder than any empty statement they have ever offered,” Danon said.
The Israeli envoy added that Ayelet Samerano, Yonatan’s mother, had addressed the Security Council and Lazzarini.
“Now, Ayelet has buried her son, while the United Nations buries its head in the sand,” he said. “This stain will never wash out.”
Danon also denounced the global body for its criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an aid group backed by Jerusalem and Washington that aims to avoid looting by Gazan terror groups.
The U.N. response to the group has been “indifference, defamation and obstruction,” Danon told the Security Council.
He also accused the global body of having “spread disinformation that Hamas weaponized to justify more attacks on aid workers,” including promoting “false allegations against the GHF about violent incidents, shamelessly promoting claims made by Hamas-controlled sources.”
The Israeli military has been accused often of firing intentionally on Gazans seeking aid at foundation delivery sites, but no evidence has been presented documenting such attacks. The Israel Defense Forces says that it has fired warning shots when some members of crowds approached IDF positions too closely. Israel also says that terrorists have posed as aid seekers.
The United Nations was also silent about Hamas’s recent massacre of eight Palestinian foundation workers in an ambush, according to Danon.
“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not interested in press releases or technical victories. It is interested in improving the humanitarian situation,” the Israeli envoy said. “If you care about the people of Gaza, stop with the defamation and the lies and help them help the people of Gaza.”
Khaled Khiari, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for the Middle East, told the Security Council that “we call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable.”
He said that the United Nations “will not participate in any aid delivery modality that does not comply with the fundamental humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality.” The global body has used such language in the past to state that it won’t collaborate with the foundation.
Fergus Eckersley, the U.K. minister counsellor, told the global body that “Israel’s aid delivery measures are inhumane.”
“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s operations, which are supposed to be saving lives, are themselves leading to mass casualties,” the U.K. official claimed.
Eckersley repeated something that Israeli officials have called a lie and a blood libel—that “starving people, who are desperate to feed their families, are told food awaits them. But over 500 have reportedly been killed trying to access it.”
The British official said that there are “reports” which “deeply concern” London that “Hamas has targeted Gaza Humanitarian Foundation staff” and of “widespread looting by criminal gangs, which are undermining security around aid distribution.”
Jérôme Bonnafont, the French ambassador to the global body, also denounced Israel’s on-and-off blockade of aid, saying that the “humanitarian aid provided through the Gaza foundation is not up to the task.”
John Kelley, the acting U.S. alternate representative, told the Security Council that implementing Security Council Resolution 2334, which was to serve as the focus of the meeting, “does not contribute to resolving the underlying issues but instead distracts from very real, pressing threats to international peace and security.”
That resolution passed in the final days of the Obama administration via an American abstention and states that Jewish communities in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria have no legal validity and must be evacuated.
“Resolution 2334 denies the factual and historical reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” Kelley told the Security Council. “It likewise seeks to advance a two-state solution through argumentation, ignoring a political reality that has been evident to all since Oct. 7, 2023.”
“It is the wrong conversation at the wrong time,” he said.
Washington, which recently announced a $30 million contribution to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, “will continue to work on improving the humanitarian situation on the ground, supporting the GHF as it delivers lifesaving aid to those in need without empowering terrorists,” Kelley said.
“As of June 20, Hamas had looted over 1,000 aid trucks from international organizations in Gaza,” the U.S. diplomat said. “The video footage is available to all. By contrast, every single GHF truck, more than 700 in total so far, has reached its intended distribution site.”
