U.N. chief slammed for not condemning Hamas terrorists in statement on murdered U.S. and Israeli hostages

"The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, is facing a barrage of criticism for failing to explicitly condemn the Hamas terrorist movement for its murders of one American and five Israeli citizens on Saturday.

Israel Defense Forces were looking to rescue the six hostages held by Hamas, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, in the tunnel system below Gaza's Rafah city, but instead found all six murdered at the hands of the terror group. The Times of Israel, quoting Israel's ministry of health, reported that the hostages had been murdered between Thursday and Friday morning.

Guterres wrote on X, ‘I will never forget my meeting last October with the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and other hostage families. Today's tragic news is a devastating reminder of the need for the unconditional release of all hostages and an end to the nightmare of war in Gaza.’

Guterres’ post on X sparked criticism from Israel's former U.N. ambassador Gilad Erdan for playing down the severity of the murders by labeling the news as merely ‘tragic’ and not condemning Hamas outright.

Guterres’ spokesman did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital press query. Erdan, who only left his role as ambassador last month, told Fox News Digital , ‘The Secretary General not only has Israeli blood on his hands, but he has American blood on his hands too. Since his ‘fig leaf’ meeting with the hostage families, he has done ZERO to help them. He could have demanded visits from the Red Cross, he could have condemned Hamas and held them to account, but instead he spent his time criticizing the law-abiding democracy of Israel instead of the ISIS-like terrorists.’...

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the president of Human Rights Voices, told Fox News Digital that ‘U.N. Secretary-General Guterres despicably now turns the cold-blooded murder of Israeli hostages by Palestinian terrorists into a win for the terrorists. He refuses to name the perpetrators. And equates their horrible deliberate execution with Israel's effort to release them.’

She added ‘The United Nations top apparatus - its Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council - has never specifically condemned Hamas. U.N. denial of the right of Israeli self-defense and its promotion of violence against the people of Israel has never been more clear. No amount of U.N. photo-ops with hostages or their families will erase the reality of the U.N.'s insidious role in the nightmare of war in Israel for seven decades.’..."