SECRETARY BLINKEN: Mr. President, thank you for convening this ministerial and for convening this council. And thank you very much, Special Coordinator Wennesland, Deputy Special Coordinator Hastings, for your important briefings.
Mr. Secretary-General, we’re grateful for your leadership in this incredibly challenging time, particularly in helping get humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.
And to the entire UN team – their incredible bravery, their dedication – all of those who continue to serve in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, we express our gratitude and our admiration.
I’m here today because the United States believes the United Nations – and this council in particular – has a crucial role to play in addressing this crisis. Indeed, we’ve put forward a resolution that sets out practical steps that we can take together toward that end.
The resolution builds on many elements of the text that Brazil put forward last week. It incorporates substantive feedback we received from fellow council members over recent days. It also draws heavily on the views that I heard firsthand from partners across the region after Hamas’s appalling attack on October 7 – views that the United States shares.
First, we all recognize the right, and indeed the imperative, of states to defend themselves against terrorism.
That’s why we must unequivocally condemn Hamas’s barbaric terrorist attack against Israel – babies riddled with bullets; young people hunted down and gunned down with glee; people, young people beheaded; families burned alive in a final embrace; parents executed in front of their children; children executed in front of their parents; and so many taken hostage in Gaza.
We have to ask – indeed it must be asked – where is the outrage? Where is the revulsion? Where is the rejection? Where is the explicit condemnation of these horrors?
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