There is a history of the top United Nations diplomat, the secretary-general, visiting Israel. Such visits are de rigueur for the past decade, including trips by Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan.
On Oct. 2, however, Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, using X (formerly Twitter), declared Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata and an “anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists.”
Guterres called for a ceasefire on Oct. 1, without mentioning Iran, although he did so in a statement later to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Oct. 2. A call for a ceasefire was made by most members of the Security Council, including the United States ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, while she defended Israel’s right to protect itself.
A statement on Oct. 3 from the 10 elected members of the Security Council on the Mideast, read, in part: “We further underscore our full support to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the UN system.”
Israeli criticism of Guterres is not new. Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres’s spokesperson, has repeatedly said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to take a phone call from the secretary-general after the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas.
On Wednesday, Guterres also emphasized that the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, Unifil, which total about 10,000, “remain in position, and the UN flag continues to fly despite Israel’s request to relocate.” (Guterres would make the ultimate decision to vacate the peacekeepers.)
Katz’s statement was made as Iran fired some 180 ballistic missiles on Tuesday with little warning that threatened to engulf the Mideast. At the same time, Israel was battling Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and fending off their rocket attacks. It also continues to carry out airstrikes in Gaza against the Hamas militia.
Dujarric said he could not recall in his 24 years at the UN “this type of announcement being made” by a member state toward the secretary-general. He said there had been tense situations between the UN leader and various member states, “but I don’t recall this kind of language being used.”
The record of UN officials visiting Israel is plentiful. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general immediately preceding Guterres, made 11 trips to Israel, from 2007 to 2016, including to occupied Palestinian territory. (Israel must grant approval for visits to the territory.) Netanyahu was prime minister during most of these visits.
Kofi Annan, the secretary-general from 1997 to 2006, visited five times from 1998 to 2005. Netanyahu was in power for two of the trips. But the tensions between the two were obvious when Netanyahu addressed US Congress to lobby against the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, saying the proposal had too many loopholes.
Former US President Donald Trump ended the deal, called the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Before the US stopped the deal, Iran had agreed not to produce either the highly enriched uranium or the plutonium that is needed to build a nuclear weapon. Now Iran is enriching uranium up to 60 percent fissile purity, close to the 90 percent weapons grade.
In 1961, what was called the Soviet Union announced it would not recognize Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold as an “official of the United Nations.” The Russian government was reacting to the “murder of Patrice Lumumba,” it said in an official letter to the UN. Lumumba was assassinated that year as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as the Republic of the Congo).
Israel has harshly criticized UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, during the country’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7. The agency provides humanitarian and human development services to Palestinian refugees and their descendants: Israel maintains that the agency’s operation has outlived its usefulness. Its chief, Philippe Lazzarini, has been denied a visa to visit all Palestinian territory.
This article was updated to correct the dates that Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan visited Israel.
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Evelyn Leopold is a veteran United Nations reporter since 1990. She was a Reuters correspondent for 40 years and now freelances for a variety of publications. She has served in Britain, Germany and Kenya and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Overseas Press Club and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. She is chair of the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists, was awarded a gold medal in reporting by the UN Correspondents Association and co-authored a book on women in the former East Germany.
We all know that Israel has never implemented one single resolution of the UN Security Council since it was created and we all have seen the Charter of the UN being shredded by the Ambassador of Israel to the UN and we have heard so many times, for so many years and from so many Ambassadors of Israel to the UN that the UN was a circus and we all heard officially that the Prime Minister of Israel refuses to take phone calls from the UN Secretary General and adding insult to injury, Israel has already killed 222 UN staff in Gaza a record number of killings in the history of the UN and finally the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel has declared the UN Secretary General persona non grata and not welcome to Israel and of course the occupied Palestine. Honestly, after all these actions against the UN, it is high time to revoke the seat of Israel from the United Nations and declare Israel a pariah state committing genocide, apartheid, war crimes and crimes against humanity.