Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan responded to remarks made by UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday during the UN Security Council session, saying: “The slaughter of Jews by Hamas on October 7 was genocidal in its intents and immeasurably brutal in its form.”
Guterres made only perfunctory condemnations of the Hamas attack while taking the opportunity to repeat what can only be called Hamas propaganda. “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he said.
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing,” he added.
Dayan admonished the secretary-general: “Part of why it differs from the Holocaust is because Jews have today a state and an army. We are not defenseless and at the mercy of others. However,” he continued, “it puts to test the sincerity of world leaders, intellectuals and influencers that come to Yad Vashem and pledge ‘Never Again.’”
“Those who seek to ‘understand,’ look for a justifying context, do not categorically condemn the perpetrators, and do not call for the unconditional and immediate release of the abducted – fail the test,” Dayan concluded, “UN Secretary-General António Guterres failed the test.”
