(JNS) As the Jewish state facilitates aid entry via the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation into the Strip, the United Nations is running a “mafia-like” shakedown and is spreading “panic” and making “declarations detached from reality,” Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday.
“This is the gravest violation of the U.N.’s own principles,” he said. “It is the extortion of any well-meaning NGO that refuses to kiss the ring. A shakedown with U.N.-branding.”
Hamas knows that if it loses control over aid in Gaza, it will also lose its hold over Gazans, according to the Israeli envoy.
Danon told the Security Council that the global body removed non-governmental organizations, which are part of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, from its central system for tracking aid delivery in the Strip.
“The United Nations is using threats, intimidation and retaliation against NGOs that choose to participate in the new humanitarian mechanism,” Danon said. “A number of major international NGOs made the decision to take part in the new aid initiative. They ignored the U.N.’s calls for a boycott. They chose to act because they truly care.”
The United Nations removed those organizations “in retaliation and without any discussion or due process,” according to the Israeli mission to the United Nations. “They were frozen out,” it said.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, told JNS that “there are no differences between the current list and the one from before the launch of the GHF.” (JNS sought comment from the Israeli mission to the United Nations.)
‘Chain of incitement’
Danon also slammed the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday and charged that its activities led up to the gunman killing two Israeli embassy staffers at point-blank range outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington the week beforehand.
“The animal who pulled the trigger was just the final link in a chain of incitement that stretches across social media, across university campuses, across rallies in Times Square and, yes, across the floor of this very council,” Danon said at the monthly council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian file.
The shooter isn’t the only one with the blood of the victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, on his hands, according to Danon.
“It is on every official, every influencer, every academic, every antisemite, every so-called expert who has spent the last 19 months portraying Israel as a genocidal regime and terrorists as freedom fighters,” he told the council.
Much of the council session on Wednesday focused on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“Every day, Hamas demonstrates its lack of regard for the Palestinians it claims to represent,” John Kelley, a U.S. mission political coordinator to the United Nations, told the council. “All while it violently suppresses protests against its barbaric rule and diverts aid meant for civilians.”
He blamed Hamas for continuing to reject ceasefire and hostage release proposals, as Washington works to end the war “that Hamas brutally started.”
James Kariuki, London’s deputy ambassador to the global body, told the council that the U.K. “always supported” Israel’s right to defend itself but deemed Jerusalem’s military operation in Gaza “wholly disproportionate.” (London has adopted an increasingly harsh posture toward the Jewish state, of late.)
The British envoy told the council that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is independent of the United Nations, “lost control of its distribution center, with multiple casualties reported and great distress for those desperately seeking aid.”
Five Gazans were fired upon and killed while seeing aid being distributed, per media reports on Tuesday. But the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation stated that no shots were fired, nor was anyone killed, at its distribution sites.
The United Nations has criticized the foundation’s efforts, though the foundation says it has distributed more than 1.8 million meals to Gazans to date and that it aims to avoid Hamas looting supplies intended for civilian relief. (JNS sought comment from several U.N. officials about the foundation.)
Gazans reportedly stormed a U.N. warehouse, which Hamas allegedly controlled, this week. Some analysts said this shows that the terror group’s reign is not ironclad.
