World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke on the horror taking place in the hospitals in Gaza. The health system is on its knees, with no medicine, no fuel. In the period since the siege there have been 600 trucks with aid—during the same time there would have been 10,000 trucks in the past. I lived through a situation like the Gaza children are experiencing now—bombs, bullets, smoke and fire. The UN Security Council needs to be reformed, it no longer serves the purpose for which it was created—the post World War II world is not the world of the 21st century.
Marwan Jilani, head of the Palestinian Red Crescent, gave a blood-curdling description of the condition of the patients and the health workers. More are being killed as we speak. The hospitals have no food, water, electricity or fuel. We must stop another massacre. Without fuel, even the trucks delivering the aid will be unable to run. If the scant aid coming in is denied to the north, and only delivered to the south, thousands more will die of dehydration and starvation. We must have new health workers to relieve those who have been working wonders in unbelievable conditions. Listen to the cries of the children soaked in blood, asking, “What have I done?”
Riyad H. Mansour, Permanent Rep to the UN from the State of Palestine: The events in Gaza should pain the conscience of all people. The hospitals are now the primary targets of the Israeli bombing. I am an old man, I lived through the Nakba in 1948, and spent my whole life trying to repair the damage. We all said to ourselves at the time, that if the world knew what was happening, they would stop it. Now we know—we were wrong. It is happening again, in plain sight of the world, and nothing is being done to stop it, no one is telling Israel that enough is enough. The children of today who survive will recall the trucks loaded with dead bodies and body parts, suffering beyond what any human should bear.
We scream but we cannot be heard. How can we scream louder than the bombs? The killer (Bibi) says we will impose a siege, we will bomb your hospitals and schools, your homes, we will deny you your self-determination, will commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Where shall we go? Into the sea? Into Egypt? They bomb and bomb and bomb. Bibi holds up a map at the UN with all of Palestine as part of Israel. Some people made it to the Rafah gate, but they are still bombed. They want us out of our land, to submit or die. This UNSC has met several times during this mass murder, and still the bombs, and thousands of children under the rubble. The “pause” is only so that we leave our land.
Gilad Erdan, Permanent Israeli Representative to the UN: His presentation was both insane and horrifying. It was as much an attack on the UN as on Hamas. The UN agencies refuse to listen to our intelligence experts, but just take whatever Hamas says and report it as truth. It is all lies. Tedros complains about hospitals and schools, but doesn’t say that Hamas purposely uses them as shields for their terrorist operations. We arrange for people to flee the war zone to “safe havens,” but Hamas shoots them to stop them from leaving. He described Hamas rockets hitting an Israeli hospital, calling it a serious war crime, but no one at the UN complains about that. He ranted that “We have gone above and beyond what is needed to save civilian lives,” and even said that “only we cherish human life.” He denounced the UN for allowing Iran, “the octopus of all the terrorist groups,” to be treated with respect. He said that Reuters and the New York Times had journalists with Hamas, even when they entered Israel on Oct. 7.
U.A.E. Permanent Reprepresentative to the UN Lana Nusseibeh gave a passionate presentation, reporting on several individual cases of people, whose lives were ruined and whose entire families were killed. She demanded accountability, that the killing has gone on for 33 days without a response from the UNSC, which has allowed a dehumanization process.
The U.S. presentation was basically a repeat of Tony Blinken’s blather and cover up of the U.S. total support for the genocide, while claiming concern for the war crimes of the Israelis.
Many other countries also gave presentations, mostly saying what might be expected.
