New UN Secretary-General Thinks Palestinians in Syria Better Off with ISIS & Assad Than Israel

On October 13, 2016, the United Nations General Assembly appointed by acclamation António Guterres of Portugal as the next UN Secretary-General. Guterres was the top choice of the Security Council, which forwarded Guterres's nomination to the General Assembly on October 6, 2016. Guteres will replace the current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on January 1, 2017, and will serve for a 5-year term. Guterres was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015.

Given the UN's preoccupation with the demonization and destruction of the Jewish state, Guterres' views on Israel would likely have factored into the enthusiasm of UN members for his appointment.

For instance, in a 2014 address to the Arab League meeting in Cairo, Guteress analogized the Arab refugee flow of 1948 - created by a failed effort to destroy the nascent Jewish state - with Palestinians fleeing ISIS and Assad's killing machine in Syria. He condemned Israel's counter-terrorism operations and claimed Palestinians were better off in Syria than Gaza. In his words:

"The refugee situations under UNHCR's mandate pale in comparison to the desperate situation of the Palestinians, the largest protracted refugee situation in the world... It was devastating to me to see Palestinian refugees in Syria being forced to flee for the second time. But even worse, in addition to the terrible loss of life and the tens of thousands of people displaced, it was shocking that Gaza's inhabitants could not even flee to seek safety from the recent conflict. No one wants to be a refugee. But for the people of Gaza, not even that was an option."

In the middle of the 2009 Gaza war in which Israel sought to end an eight-year rain of rocket attacks on its civilian population, Guterres called for open borders between terrorist-run Gaza and Hamas' Israeli victims. In the words of his January 5, 2009 press release:

"'Those who are compelled to flee the Gaza Strip should be able to do so and to find safety and security in other countries according to international law,' he said. 'I thus urge that all borders and access routes concerned should be kept open and safe, and Palestinians endeavouring to leave Gaza should not be prevented from doing so.'"