Rep. Richard McCormick, R-Ga., told Newsmax Wednesday that United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ statement on Tuesday regarding Israel and the Palestinians “does not help” the current state of the conflict.
“I'm not a big fan of the U.N.,” McCormick said during an appearance on Newsmax’s “Newsline.” “I haven't been since ’94 when I was in the Rwandan crisis. I think it's proven itself to be antisemitic, anti-American. This inflammatory rhetoric does not help.”
“The fact that Israel broke down the settlements, moved out of Gaza, gave them all the room they needed and then they were attacked and literally the egregious evils that we saw,” he continued. “I mean, I've never seen anything like that. I'm an ER doc, and I'm a guy who was a veteran from Afghanistan. I was the head of emergency medicine and I saw some horrible things. This exceeds all of that, and there is no excuse for this. There's no way you can justify anything that they did.”
On Tuesday, Guterres told the 15-member U.N. Security Council that war has rules, beginning with the basic principle of protecting civilians. He voiced concern about "clear violations of international humanitarian law" in the Gaza Strip.
"It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
"But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas,” he continued. “And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
McCormick said the massive Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas “was planned in a vacuum, absolutely.”
“Where there was relative peace and they disrupted that with something as heinous and evil is anybody's ever seen in the world,” he added.
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called Guterres’ speech “shocking” and demanded he resign immediately. Guterres said Wednesday that he was “shocked by the misrepresentations by some” of his statement.
The Georgia congressman also said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., should be censured for her comments blaming Israel for the deadly blast at a Gaza hospital last week, which U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday was the result of a failed rocket launch by a Palestinian militant group. The progressive Democrat has called for an independent investigation into the incident.
“Bring on the independent investigation and then she can apologize and look like the fool that she's acting like,” McCormick said.
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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