UNITED NATIONS: Israel’s United Nations envoy showed the 193-member General Assembly a brief video on Thursday (Oct 26) that he said showed a Hamas fighter trying to decapitate a man with a garden tool during the Palestinian militants’ Oct 7 attack on Israel.
Ambassador Gilad Erdan told diplomats the victim seen in the few seconds of footage he played for them on a tablet was not Israeli or Jewish, but an agricultural worker from Thailand.
“One can see a terribly injured civilian – bloodied, yet alive – laying on the ground as a Hamas savage screaming Allahu Akbar repeatedly pummels the man’s neck with a garden hoe in order to decapitate him,” Erdan told the assembly.
Erdan’s comments were delivered as the assembly began a two-day meeting on the Middle East on Thursday.
It is due to vote on Friday on a resolution drafted by Arab states that calls for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
At each seat in the hall at United Nations headquarters, Israeli diplomats placed a print out of a QR code with the title “Free Gaza from Hamas, scan to see Hamas’ atrocities”. It linked to photos and videos from the Oct 7 attack.
Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, which rules Gaza, in retaliation for the attack that killed 1,400 people. Israel has struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege on the enclave of 2.3 million people and is preparing a ground invasion. Palestinian authorities say more than 7,000 have been killed.