Israel’s foreign minister declared UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres ‘persona non grata’ and was henceforth banning him from entering Israel, according to a post on X/Twitter on Wednesday.
The ban on entry, said FM Israel Katz, was due to Guterres’s failure to “unequivocally condemn” Iran’s massive missile attack on Israel.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as almost every country in the world has done, does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” Katz wrote.
“A Secretary-General who gives backing to terrorists, rapists, and murderers from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and now Iran—the mothership of global terror—will be remembered as a stain on the history of the UN.”
“Israel will continue to defend its citizens and uphold its national dignity, with or without António Guterres,” he concluded. Following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon on Monday, Guterres posted on X/Twitter that he was concerned with the escalation and said an “all-out war must be avoided in Lebanon at all costs, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon must be respected.”
