A Shameful Example of UN’s Moral Equivalence Between Savage Terrorists and Israel

The United Nations has just published its Annual Report of the UN Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict, covering the period from January to December 2023. This includes the nearly three months beginning with Hamas’ genocidal massacres, rapes, torture, and kidnappings of Israeli and other civilians on October 7, 2023 until the end of 2023.

The report indulged in the UN’s customary moral equivalence

The report indulged in the UN’s customary moral equivalence. Terrorists seeking to destroy the Jewish state of Israel and kill as many Jews as possible and a democratic nation’s legitimate military operations to prevent more October 7th-style genocidal attacks against its people are treated the same. The report accused the terrorists and Israeli forces alike of killing and maiming children, adding that Israeli forces had also harmed children in Gaza by attacking schools and hospitals.

"Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory presents an unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children, with hostilities leading to an increase in grave violations of 155 per cent,” the report stated. The report equated the Palestinian terrorists who showed no mercy in slaughtering babies and young children on October 7^th with the Israeli forces endeavoring to destroy the terrorists’ Gaza-based operations while doing all they can to minimize civilian casualties. The report did so by listing the terrorist groups and Israel’s armed and security forces among the parties responsible for committing “grave violations affecting children in situations of armed conflict.” The list is colloquially referred to in UN circles as the 'list of shame.'

Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza use Palestinian children and their families as human shields

The report lacks any context to help the reader understand the circumstances in which Palestinian children have been killed and maimed in Gaza during the war between Hamas and Israel. Hamas has placed the children in harm’s way by locating its command centers, weapons, and fighters in buildings where civilians live, work, seek medical care, and go to school as well as in tunnels underneath civilian neighborhoods.

In short, Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza use Palestinian children and their families as human shields. They refuse to provide Gazan civilians caught in the crossfire of war with any chance of safety in the terrorists’ tunnels. Hamas’ military leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, made no bones about how he regards the lives of the civilians in Gaza. He described civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices.”

Yet the UN Report on Children and Armed Conflict makes only one glancing reference to “the use of human shields by Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.” The report makes no attempt to connect the dots between the deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza and the terrorists’ use of the children and their families as human shields.

Virginia Gamba, the current Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, tried to explain why the report gave such short shrift to the human shield issue during her press conference regarding the report. 

In short, even Palestinian teens firing at Israelis are treated “primarily as victims” 

She said that standard space limitations for such reports precluded any expanded discussion of the connection between the terrorists’ use of children as human shields and the number of children who died in Gaza.

This is about as lame an excuse as the dog ate the homework.

Ms. Gamba also made a startling admission during her press conference. For the purposes of the Children and Armed Conflict Reports, she said, “any killing, maiming or detention of children, regardless of the circumstances, will be recorded as such,” including when the children are part of armed terrorist groups and “are perpetrators of violence.” In short, even Palestinian teens firing at Israelis are treated “primarily as victims” if they are killed or maimed by return fire from Israel’s defense forces.

Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan was right when he sharply criticized the report’s inclusion of Israel’s armed and security forces on the list of shame. “This is simply outrageous and wrong because Hamas has been using children for terrorism and uses schools and hospitals as military compounds,” Ambassador Erdan said.

The United Nations’ equation of Israel with the terrorists who have vowed to destroy the Jewish state and kill as many Jews as possible is another shameful episode in the UN’s repeated demonstration of intense anti-Israel bias.