Israeli Envoy Condemns ‘Glaring Silence’ from UN Agencies

Ben-Naftaly told the council that Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, neglected to mention Tzeela Gez, an Israeli who was murdered in a terror attack in May en route to the hospital to give birth, when he discussed Palestinian casualties in Judea and Samaria. (Gez’s baby son, Ravid Chaim, died of his wounds two weeks later.)

The Israeli diplomat also said that Catherine Russell, executive director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), failed to mention Israeli children, whose fathers remain hostages in Gaza.

“Roni and Alma Miran are 4- and 2-and-a-half years old. Like many kids their age, they regularly make pretend phone calls on their telephones,” Ben-Naftaly told the council. “But unlike most children their age, when their mother asks them who they’re speaking to, their answer carries a deep pain.”

“The answer is always the same. Abba. Dad,” she told the council. “They ask, ‘Where are you, Daddy? Are they letting you return to us?’”

The two kids hug and kiss a photo of their father, Omri Miran, held by terrorists in Gaza since October 7, 2023. “For those two young girls, that’s nearly their entire lives without their Abba,” Ben-Naftaly said.

The Israeli diplomat also shared stories of other children awaiting the return of their fathers.

“These children were victims of an evil that this council seems unwilling to address or condemn: Hamas,” Ben-Naftaly said. “We are presented with a narrative that forces Israel into a defendant’s chair, while Hamas, the very cause of this conflict and the very instigator of suffering of Israelis but also of Palestinians, goes unmentioned, unchallenged and immune to condemnation.”

‘They fuel antisemitism around the world’

Dorothy Shea, interim US ambassador to the United Nations, said that Fletcher “pointed the finger of blame solely on Israel with one reference to Hamas.”

The global agency’s refusal to work with the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an alternative aid delivery mechanism, is “tantamount to dereliction of duty in the humanitarian space,” she said.

She said that most criticism of the foundation, which the United States is funding, is “incorrect information that benefits Hamas and undermines the secure delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza.”

The foundation has come under heavy criticism from its outset by UN supporters, who have claimed on multiple occasions that aid seekers have been massacred at or near foundation distribution sites. Both the foundation and Israel have denied those claims repeatedly.

The United Nations has stated that only its agencies can adequately supply aid to Gazans. Israel has posted photographs repeatedly of aid trucks that it said were allowed to enter Gaza but sit idly in the Strip waiting for UN agencies to retrieve and distribute the aid.

Shea said that accusations that multiple council members have made that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza are “categorically false.”

“They fuel antisemitism around the world,” the US diplomat said of those attacks.

‘We can already see some improvements’

Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the European Union’s delegation to the global body, told the Security Council that an agreement between Israel and the EU last week to allow more aid into Gaza is already making a difference.

“We can already see some improvements, including delivery of fuel, re-opening of the Jordanian and Egyptian routes, opening of a crossing point in North Gaza and ongoing reparations of essential humanitarian infrastructure,” he said. “A lot more is needed.”

The EU diplomat told the council that it will take measures to ensure that aid won’t fall into Hamas’s hands. The terror organization has long seized aid, and it has reportedly resold some of it at higher prices to Gazans.

Evangelos Sekeris, the Greek ambassador to the United Nations, said that there must be more done to “ensure that the increased humanitarian aid benefits directly the Gazan population and is not diverted by Hamas.”

“We expect that the agreed steps are implemented urgently,” he said.