A member of the Israeli Knesset has slammed comments made by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, after he claimed the Hamas attacks "did not happen in a vacuum".
This follows the ongoing war in Israel after Hamas began an unprovoked attack on October 7, sparking mass conflict in the Middle East.
Following the comments, Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen has cancelled plans to meet Guterres.
He asked the Secretary-General "in what world do you live?”.
Member of the Israeli Knesset, Dan Illouz, criticised comments from the UN Chief
GB News
Speaking of the Palestinian people, Guterres 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."
Guterres continued: "Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing, but the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas, and those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people."
Appearing on The Live Desk with Pip Tomson and Mark Longhurst, member of the Israeli Knesset, Dan Illouz, reacted to the comments made by the UN Chief.
Illouz said: "What the UN Secretary General did was a complete disgrace. We have to remember that the UN was founded in order to stop exactly the type of massacres as the one that we have seen Hamas commit on October 7th in Israel.“
"And by comparing what happened on October 7th and any other thing that Israel might be right doing or not be right doing, legitimate criticism of Israel is always legitimate, but by comparing these things, it was as if he was comparing a firefighter with an arsonist and trying to make a balance between these two things."
Illouz continued: "When the Nazis were fighting the Western free world, it was very clear who the good guys and who the bad guys were. When ISIS was fighting against the Western world, Europe, all of these other places, it was very clear who the good guys were and who the bad guys were.
"It's also very clear here. Hamas burns people alive, burns babies alive babies. They rape women and flaunt them around. They abduct elderly without their medication. There's no comparison to be made. There's the good guys, and that's Israel, a modern democracy, a liberal democracy that tries to abide international law as much as possible. And then there's Hamas, an evil regime that needs to be destroyed."
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the Hamas attacks "did not happen in a vacuum".
Reuters
Mark Longhurst then asked Illouz for his thoughts on Turkish President Erdogan's comments on the conflict, where he claimed "Israel's attacks on Gaza and supporting them amount to assassination or mental illness".
Erdogan added: "Hamas is a liberation group waging a battle to protect its land, not a terrorist organisation."
Illouz hit back at the comments, saying: "These comments are also outrageous. Just to be clear and precise, there is absolutely no occupation in Gaza. Israel left Gaza in 2005. And this engagement plan, a plan that I personally opposed because I thought that it was dangerous to Israel. Unfortunately, we saw that it actually was dangerous for Israel.
"Israel left Gaza in 2005. There's absolutely no occupation in Gaza. That's all fake news that's spread by Hamas supporters who are absolutely evil people who just want to massacre Jews."
