Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, lashed out at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday during a session the 15-member body held that focused on the suffering of children in the Gaza Strip.
“Why didn’t you hold a discussion on the situation of children in Israel?” he asked in the council’s chamber. “Children who suffer from ongoing terrorism. You are blind to their pain and their tears.”
The Israeli envoy was particularly incensed over the lack of mention of the Bibas brothers: Ariel, 5, and Kfir, 2. Hamas kidnapped the two boys and their parents—Yarden and Shiri Bibas—from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, dragging them into Gaza. They have not been seen or heard from since.
Ariel was 4 years old at the time. Kfir was only 9 months old.
“Perhaps you have forgotten about little Kfir Bibas, but I promise you we haven’t,” Danon said, holding up a picture of the baby boy.
Kfir Bibas was “ripped from his bed” and “has remained in the darkness of Hamas’s terror dungeons,” Danon said. He slammed the council for caring only for “political agendas.” Otherwise, “this session would discuss Kfir Bibas and all those Israel children still suffering as well,” the Israeli envoy said.
Danon also criticized the International Committee of the Red Cross, from which Israel has “received no word, nothing” about the condition of the Bibas children.
“No visits from the Red Cross, no offers of assistance and no outrage from the United Nations,” he stated.
The Red Cross has coordinated the transfer of released Israeli hostages out of Gaza, and the transfer of Palestinian security prisoners, including murderers, whom Israel released as part of the ceasefire and hostage deal.
Critics have accused the Red Cross of abandoning the Israeli hostages and refusing to put pressure on Hamas to allow for medical checkups and to assess proof of life.
“When will you do something effective against Hamas to change the future of the children of the world?” Danon asked the council.

‘Less important than children in Ukraine’
Russia’s envoy, who criticizes the Jewish state frequently, directed his ire elsewhere.
Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador to the global body, denounced the head of the U.N.’s children’s agency, UNICEF, for not appearing before the council to brief it on the situation in Gaza. Moscow had requested the meeting.
Catherine Russell, a former assistant to then-President Joe Biden and former director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, serves as executive director of UNICEF.
Nebenzia charged that Russell appeared before the council “at the drop of a hat” for a meeting about children in Ukraine in December when the United States held the presidency. (Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the war is ongoing.)
“So it would appear that for UNICEF, children in Gaza are less important than children in Ukraine,” he said. He called Russell’s absence on Thursday “a flagrant step which deserves our most serious censure.”
A UNICEF spokesperson said Russell, who is at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was unable to adjust her schedule to brief the Security Council. Russell did brief the global body in the past on the situation of youth in Gaza and had offered to have another agency executive appear on Thursday, the spokesperson said.
Nebenzia told reporters that Russell’s claim to have offered a deputy to brief the body was “not true.”
He also accused Washington of shielding Israel and ignoring prior calls from Moscow for a meeting on Gazan children.
‘Get more, not less, aid in’
Dorothy Shea, acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said “the idea that the United States is responsible for the terrible suffering there is just unacceptable to us, and we reject it in its totality.”
Shea also dismissed the notion that Hamas and Iran should have a say in the future of the region, instead calling for Gaza to be demilitarized and for a more “integrated, prosperous Middle East.”
Several council members pressed for Israel not to implement a pair of laws set to go into effect on Wednesday that would bar communication between Israeli officials and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and would ban agency operations in Israel.
The United Nations says UNRWA, which Israel has claimed has extensive, documented ties to Palestinian terror groups, is the only agency that can coordinate aid and services in the Gaza Strip.
James Kariuki, London’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told the council that “the ceasefire deal should be an opportunity to get more, not less, aid in.”
He added that David Lammy, the U.K. foreign secretary, “has urged Israel to ensure UNRWA can continue its life-saving operations and give the fragile ceasefire the best chance of success.”