United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected on Tuesday to announce the inclusion of the IDF on the UN’s list of child rights abusers, alongside terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Boko Haram.
UN Adds Israel with Hamas to BlackList of Those Who Harm Children in Conflict
The Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor said in a statement Tuesday that the decision follows years of NGO lobbying, primarily by organizations with links to Palestinian Authority terrorist organizations, and by groups that have celebrated and justified violence against Israeli civilians – including the October 7th massacre.
“The outrageous listing of the IDF in the UN Secretary General’s Children and Armed Conflict Annex is the product of lobbying by anti-Israel and terror-affiliated NGOs who have sought to weaponize the report for BDS, noted Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor of NGO Monitor.
“For years, the annual report has been routinely marred with substantial methodological bias against Israel as a result of the manipulated and unverified data provided by NGOs and compromised UN agencies.”
Hertzberg said the current report is “especially egregious” in the wake of the October 7th war launched against Israel by Hamas from Gaza.
The report “undercounts and minimizes the savagery of Palestinian terror groups against Israeli children while accusing the IDF of engaging in the same conduct,” she said.
“It also accuses Israel of closing the Erez crossing on October 7 in order to deliberately harm children, while not mentioning that the crossing was destroyed by Hamas when it invaded Israel. And there are many, many more fallacies.”
Equating the IDF with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad is “just the latest example of UN political warfare targeting Israel and represents another case where the UN has decided to erase and deflect from its complicity for the disaster in Israel and Gaza,” Herzberg added.
NGO Monitor’s June 2023 publication, “Terror-linked and anti-Israel NGOs Exploit Children in Campaign to Blacklist the IDF” provides greater details on the issue.
