United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that he has not spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the Oct. 7 massacre as the Israeli leader refuses to answer his calls.
“I have not talked to him because he didn’t pick up my phone calls, but I have no reason not to speak with him,” Guterres told Reuters in an interview published on Thursday. “So if he comes to New York and he asks to see me, I will be very glad to see him.”
Guterres made the same complaint in January to Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news outlet whose journalists had their press cards revoked by Israel on Thursday for incitement.
Guterres told the broadcaster that he has “asked to speak to Prime Minister Netanyahu and until now, that phone call has not been received.”
The two men last met in person in September 2023 at the annual U.N. General Assembly session.
The secretary-general has taken a consistently anti-Israel approach since Oct. 7.
Speaking to Reuters, Guterres accused Israel of “very dramatic violations of the international humanitarian law and the total absence of an effective protection of civilians.
“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” he said.
On Aug. 29, Guterres called on Israel to cease its anti-terror operations in Judea and Samaria, consistent with his ongoing demand that Israel immediately cease operations in Gaza.
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon defended Israel’s actions, noting that Iran has been working to introduce sophisticated explosives into Judea and Samaria to “detonate in the centers of Israeli cities.”
“The State of Israel cannot sit idly by and wait for the spectacle of buses and cafés exploding in city centers,” he said. “The activity of the IDF forces in Judea and Samaria is intended for the clear purpose of thwarting terrorist attacks and acts before they are carried out under Iranian direction.”
In March, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz slammed Guterres, tweeting, “Under his leadership, the @UN has become an antisemitic and anti-Israeli body that shelters and emboldens terror.”
On Oct. 24, shortly after the Hamas attack, Guterres drew the ire of Israeli officials when he told the U.N. Security Council, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” adding that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
Guterres has come under fire from many Israeli civil society groups and U.S. Jewish organizations that believe that the U.N. has shown little to no empathy for the victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault.
