Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appeared to shift blame onto Israel for the horrific October 7 Hamas attack in which the terrorists slaughtered more than 1,400 people, including infants, women, and the elderly.

In a U.N. Security Council meeting on Israel and Hamas on Tuesday, Guterres commented, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”

“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he said, according to a Times of Israel report. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres has said that attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum”, sparking criticism from Israel’s ambassador to the UN.

Israeli bombs have killed 704 Palestinians in the past 24 hours alone, and 5,791 in total since the war began. pic.twitter.com/uMSvNgZDB9

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 24, 2023

Guterres conceded that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas,” but added that the terror attack “cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Israeli envoy to the U.N. Gilad Erdan called Guterres’s remarks “shocking,” “horrible,” and “totally detached from the reality of our region,” according to the report.

“His comments… constitute a justification for terrorism and murder,” Erdan said. “It’s sad that a person with such views is the head of an organization that arose after the Holocaust.”

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