United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told the Israeli delegation on Friday that their country will join Hamas and the Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations on a list of international states and militias that violate the rights of children during wartime.
As a result of the classification, the Jewish state will join the likes of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Boko Harem, Iraq, the Islamic State, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen for censure.
The Annual Report of the U.N. Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, known to U.N. bureaucrats as ‘the list of shame,’ is released yearly by Guterres’s office.
The summary will reportedly be presented to the Security Council on Friday and provided to the public on June 18.
Responding to the announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement lambasting the determination by saying that the world body “put itself on the blacklist of history today when it joined the supporters of the Hamas murderers. The IDF is the most moral army in the world, and no delusional decision by the U.N. will change that.”
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said that he was "utterly shocked and disgusted" by the "shameful decision of the secretary-general [that] will only give Hamas hope."
Knesset Opposition Leader Yair Lapid joined the criticism, calling Guterres’s initiative "a serious and baseless political step by the U.N. secretary-general, who has long since lost all moral direction."
According to regulations, the only way to be removed from the roster is to submit to monitoring under one of the U.N.’s ‘Action Plans,’ which are administered under the guidance of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.
Israel is the first Western democracy to face such a measure since the report was established.
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