Israel's foreign minister on Monday said the United Nations would have responded more strongly to Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attacks had the victims not been Jewish.
"If the victims would not have been of Jewish or Israeli descent, your office would have responded in a much ‘more’ vigorous way," Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote in a letter to U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Katz criticized Guterres for not taking a "decisive international stand" against Hamas's atrocities but rather criticizing Israel. He added that the body must declare the group a terrorist organization and levy sanctions on it, as the U.N. has done with al Qaeda and ISIS.
"Your tenure at the UN is set to be remembered for diminishing the organization’s stature to an all-time low, allowing it to become an epicenter of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel incitement," Katz argued, according to the Times of Israel.
The foreign minister's letter came ahead of a Monday meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss last week's U.N. report that found "reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place," including rape and gang rape, amid Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Katz accused Guterres of attempting to delay the discussion.
Israel has long been critical of the body's response to reports of rape during the attacks. In November, U.N. Women faced severe criticism after it posted and then deleted a condemnation of Hamas and subsequently condemned rape that occurred on Oct. 7 without mentioning the terror group. Days later, a representative with the group did not give a clear answer as to why it could not specifically condemn Hamas for the reports of rape. Days after that, U.N. Women offered a more explicit condemnation of the attacks and the reported rapes by the terrorists.