In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan welcomed the Ambassador of Palestine, and urged other nations to recognize the State of Palestine as quickly as possible; that this could be the last stage to pave the way for Palestine’s membership in the United Nations, reported the site of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye.
After asserting that “international peace and security are too important to be left to the arbitrariness of the ‘privileged five,’” referring to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, he listed the atrocities, casualties and horrors perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and said Israel’s attacks turned Gaza into the “largest cemetery for children and women in the world.” He pointed out: “Despite the level of development which our world has reached, despite the technology at our disposal; despite our organizations with huge budgets employing thousands of personnel under their roofs, unfortunately, as humanity of 8 billion, we have not been able to save a 6-year-old girl, an injured sparrow fluttering in front of our eyes.” The girl, Hind Rajab, was killed by an attack from an Israeli tank, with her family, waiting in an ambulance for help.
He called out the human rights organizations, international press organizations, and the UN Security Council itself. Echoing Shylock’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice ("If you prick us, do we not bleed?"), Erdogan posed: “Are the ones in Gaza, the ones in the West Bank not human beings?” He asked the UN members, what are you waiting for to stop this genocide, for how long will you be accomplices in this atrocity?
