High-casualty count in Gaza from Hamas using human shields, US envoy says
“This terrorist organization continues to use civilians, including children, as human shields and refuses to accept a ceasefire that would bring calm to Gaza,” Dorothy Shea told the United Nations.
Dorothy Shea, the US interim ambassador to the United Nations, came to Israel’s defense as members of the UN Security Council decried the Jewish state, which was included in the global body’s annual “list of shame” report on violations against children in armed conflict.
Wednesday’s open debate was held to review the recently published 2024 report from António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, which details grave violations against children in conflict zones.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres
Israel was listed for the second year in a row, further straining the Jewish state’s relationship with Guterres and the United Nations. Jerusalem says that many of the most serious violations with which it is charged are due to Hamas’s use of human shields in Gaza and further incentivize the terror group to commit war crimes, knowing that Israel will be blamed.
“It is important to remember that Israel has the right to defend itself and has taken numerous measures to limit harm to civilians and address humanitarian needs,” Shea told the Security Council.
“While the loss of civilian life in Gaza is tragic, the responsibility for this conflict rests with Hamas, which could stop the fighting today by freeing the hostages and agreeing to the ceasefire terms already accepted by Israel,” the US envoy said.
Israeli armed and security forces were placed on the list alongside terror groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Still, the report uses what it calls a verified number of Gazan children casualties that is some 92% lower than the figure that other UN agencies disseminate, including one that a UN agency published the day after the secretary-general’s report.
The US envoy cited the deaths of Israeli children Ariel and Kfir Bibas, whom Hamas kidnapped during the terror group’s attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Terrorists took the family to Gaza. Israel freed Yarden Bibas in February, but Shiri, his wife, and the children—who were kidnapped at 4 years old and 9 months old—were murdered. Israel recovered their bodies.
Shiri Bibas and her children were taken hostage and murdered by Hamas
“Hamas murdered the Bibas children and then paraded their coffins through the streets,” Shea said. “This terrorist organization continues to use civilians, including children, as human shields and refuses to accept a ceasefire that would bring calm to Gaza.”
Shea said that Hamas murdered eight Palestinian humanitarian workers recently.
“We strongly condemn Hamas’s actions and regret that the report does not highlight the full scale of their abuses,” she said.
Other council members used their pulpits to attack Israel and Virginia Gamba, Guterres’s special representative for children and armed conflict, who compiled the data for the report.
“The report’s most glaring gap previously had been the omission of certain situations,” in the Palestinian territories “most notably,” said Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, Pakistan’s UN ambassador. “It took the killing of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza for the situation to be included in the report last year.”
Critics of Israel have long pushed for the Jewish state to be included in the annual blacklist, finally getting their wish last year.
Gamba, who will retire from her post in the coming weeks, has been singled out for criticism for, some say, too few public comments about the war’s effects.
“Despite the dire situation in Gaza, the catastrophic situation in Gaza,” the response from Gamba’s office “has been strikingly insufficient as it issued remarkably few statements,” said Amar Bendjama, the Algerian envoy.
“This limited, very limited, public engagement starkly contracts with the rapidly deteriorating reality on the ground where Palestinian children’s right to life is denied every single moment in Gaza,” Bendjama said.
Gamba called on Israel “to facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief to civilians in need in the Gaza Strip” on Wednesday.
“I also called on all parties to the conflict in Gaza to expedite the distribution of aid, because international humanitarian law applies to every party, in every conflict, and it must be respected,” she said. “For this reason, I also call on Hamas to immediately release all Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.”
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