Hours before one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, offered a prayer for the hostages in Gaza during a U.N. General Assembly session.
The envoy offered the prayer during a meeting on Wednesday to discuss Washington’s recent veto of a Security Council resolution demanding an Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
“Speech does not free hostages, and words do not stop terror,” Danon told the diplomats, accusing the global body of spending “time on empty gestures.”
“While you perform,” Danon said, “I will pray.”
The envoy donned a kippa and recited in Hebrew and then English: “Master of the universe, the One who saves and delivers, may He redeem, in His great mercy, our captives, from the hands of cruel and harsh enemies.”
“May He swiftly return them to their land, to embrace sons and daughters, women and children, to serve You with awe and reverence, with joy and with a full heart and may Your great name be sanctified through them, in the eyes of all who live,” Danon added.
Danon told diplomats that Israel will bring the hostages home “the easy way or the hard way, but they will return home.”
He contrasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan of action to resolve the war with the General Assembly’s “great shows of theater, long speeches, grand declarations” and “staged walkouts.” The latter referred to an organized walkout at the beginning of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly last week.
Danon criticized a Sept. 18 Security Council resolution, which the council’s elected 10 members drafted and Washington vetoed, for failing to condemn Hamas and recognize Israel’s right to defend itself. Washington acted with “moral clarity,” he said.
“The fact that we meet here today to recycle failed resolutions that do nothing for peace proves one truth,” Danon said. “This body is detached from reality.”
Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, echoed Danon’s points.
“The reality is that Hamas is responsible for starting and continuing this war,” Waltz told assembled diplomats. “Israel has repeatedly accepted proposed terms that would end the war.”
“My question to you all: Where is the outcry? Where are the demands for Hamas to accept this offer of peace? Where are the demands for Hamas to end the suffering?” Waltz said. “They could end it today by accepting this offer, and by doing that, we all, together, can ensure that this never ever happens again.”
