Israeli Regime Absent from UN List of Shame
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The United Nations has placed Russia’s military and allied armed groups on its “list of shame” over the war in Ukraine, but Israeli forces have been left off the list despite killing more than 40 Palestinian children last year.
Human rights organizations had made repeated requests that Israel be added to the UN blacklist over the killing and maiming of Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reported.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour on Thursday called UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s decision to leave Israel off the shame list a “big mistake”.
In the UN’s annual report on the treatment of children in conflict zones, which was distributed to members of the UN Security Council on Thursday, Guterres said that he was “appalled by the high number of grave violations against children in Ukraine” in 2022.
According to news organizations that had seen a copy of the report, 477 children were listed as killed in Ukraine last year.
Ukrainian armed forces were responsible for killing 80 children, according to the report. Of the remaining child victims, neither of the two warring sides could be blamed with certainty. The children were mostly killed by air attacks, the UN report said.
The UN chief said in the report that he was “deeply concerned” by the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in 2022.
According to the report, 42 Palestinian children were killed and 933 injured in 2022 by Israeli forces. In 2021, Israeli forces killed 78 Palestinian children.
The Zionist regime has never been on the UN list of countries shamed for killing children.
Human Rights Watch criticized the UN chief’s decision to leave Israel off the shame list, saying that he “had failed Palestinian children again”.
“His (Guterres’s) unwillingness, year after year, to hold Israeli forces accountable for their grave violations against children has backfired, only emboldening Israeli forces to use unlawful lethal force against Palestinian children,” said Jo Becker, the group’s advocacy director for children’s rights.
“From 2015-2020, the UN attributed over 6,700 child casualties to Israeli forces. He has just verified 975 more in 2022. Yet he still omits Israel from his ‘list of shame’,” Becker wrote in a tweet.
Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, said leaving Israel off the UN list was “very disappointing to the Palestinian people and to the Palestinian children”.
“The Secretary General made a big mistake in not listing this current Israeli government. This is the most extreme government, loaded with fascist elements. If you do not list this government now, when will you list the Israeli government?” Mansour said. “It’s very unfortunate that he selected not to list them.”
