(JNS) With his posting soon to expire, Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, left the U.N. Security Council chamber mid-session on Tuesday, August 13, after Amar Bendjama, the Algerian ambassador, chided him over the Gaza death toll, which Hamas compiles without differentiating between civilians and terrorists killed.
The Security Council held an emergency session to discuss an Israeli airstrike on Saturday on a terror compound, which the IDF says was embedded in a school-turned-shelter and mosque complex in Gaza. Israel identified 31 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists that it killed in what it called a precise strike, based on aerial surveillance and intelligence.
Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group, claims that more than 100 people were killed in the strike. Israel says that is impossible based on its intelligence.
As he has in many prior sessions, Erdan lashed out at the U.N. body for what he said is its unfair treatment of the Jewish state. U.N. officials are “quick to echo this campaign of lies” about the death toll that Hamas alleges, Erdan said.
He noted the similarity between Hamas’s recent claim and an Oct. 17 incident, when Hamas claimed massive casualties in what it said was an IDF strike on Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. The strike turned out to be a faulty Hamas rocket, which fell on the hospital grounds. Video footage and pictures showed minimal damage to a hospital courtyard, and the death toll was revised downward heavily.
“I simply cannot comprehend that the United Nations Security Council would hold an emergency session based on jihadist propaganda,” Erdan said on Tuesday, accusing Hamas of concocting “a new blood libel” and the council of “amplifying them and neglecting its obligations to tell the truth.”
Erdan held up a poster with the pictures of the terrorists Israel says it eliminated in Saturday’s strike. He then held up a second poster displaying images of 11 of the 12 Druze children killed by a Hezbollah rocket that fell on the Golan Heights village of Majdal Shams on July 27.
No Security Council member called for an urgent session following the latter attack. “Ask yourselves: Why was the murder of 12 Israeli children in Majdal Shams insufficient cause for a meeting, but the elimination of over 30 Palestinian terrorists operating out of a school is sufficient?” Erdan said.
The Israeli envoy also said that the U.N. body has ignored the threat that Iran poses, particularly as it has said it plans to attack the Jewish state.
“Right now, millions of Israelis are preparing for a direct Iranian attack,” Erdan said. “Yet, here you are wasting your time on falsehoods spread by the words of terrorists.”
