Israel declared UN chief Antonio Guterres “persona non grata” on Wednesday, accusing him of failing to specifically condemn Iran’s missile attack on Israel.

“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” said Foreign Minister Israel Katz in a statement.

“This is an anti-Israel Secretary-General who lends support to terrorists, rapists, and murderers,” he said.

Katz added that Guterres, who he said supported the “murderers of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Huthis, and now Iran, the mothership of global terror, will be remembered as a stain on the history of the UN for generations to come”.

Following Iran’s missile attack on Israel late Tuesday, Guterres condemned the “broadening conflict in the Middle East”, slamming “escalation after escalation” in the region. “This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” said Guterres.

Guterres has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to halt the fighting in both Gaza and Lebanon.

UN-Israel relations at the lowest ebb

Wednesday’s action was the last salvo in Israel’s long-contentious relationship with the United Nations, which, since October 7, 2023 has spiralled to new depths, amid insults and accusations and even a questioning of the country’s continued UN membership.

Addressing the UN General Assembly last Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the UN General Assembly with scathing words, accusing the UN of being a “swamp of antisemitic bile” that was “willing to demonise the Jewish state for anything”. He also called the organisation an “anti-Israel flat-earth society”.

“Until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce,” he thundered.

The past year has seen repeated accusations from within the UN system that Israel is committing “genocide” in its war in Gaza, while Israeli officials have made charges of bias and have even accused the UN chief of being “an accomplice to terror”.

The heat has been turned way up in a war of words that has raged between Israel and various UN bodies for decades.

And temperatures have risen further in recent days amid Israel’s escalating strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“There has been a great deterioration,” in the relationship, said Cyrus Schayegh, an international history and politics professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. “It has gone from fairly bad to really bad.”

Since Hamas’s deadly attack inside Israel nearly a year ago, UN-linked courts, councils, agencies and staff have unleashed a barrage of condemnation and criticism of Israel’s devastating retaliatory operation in Gaza.

“We feel the UN has betrayed Israel,” the country’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva Daniel Meron told AFP.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity. Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed more than 41,500 Palestinians and wounded more than 96,000 others, according to the latest figures released last Thursday by the Health Ministry. More than half the dead have been women and children, including about 1,300 children under the age of two.

Israel has especially taken aim at UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, but its ire has been felt across the UN system, and up to the UN chief.

Israeli called for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ resignation just weeks after October 7, when he asserted that the attack “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”.

Even before October 7, Israel complained of UN bias, pointing for instance to the towering number of resolutions targeting the country.

Since the creation of the UN Human Rights Council in 2006, more than a third of the over 300 condemnatory resolutions have targeted Israel, Meron pointed out, describing this as “mind-boggling”.

Critics meanwhile highlight that from the time a General Assembly vote paved the way for Israel’s establishment in 1948, the country has ignored numerous UN resolutions and international court rulings, without consequences.

Israel has always snubbed resolution 194, which guarantees the Palestinians expelled in 1948 from the territory Israel conquered the right to return or to compensation.

It has also ignored rulings condemning its forceful acquisition of territory and the annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and the continuing and expanding settlement policy in the West Bank, among others.

By allowing Israel to remain in “non-compliance with international law, the West has been basically making the Israelis believe that they are above international law”, Geneva Graduate Institute political sociology professor Riccardo Bocco told AFP.

Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, also said a lack of accountability in the Middle East crisis appeared to have made “the parties to the conflict more brazen”.

“We rang the alarm bells multiple times and now there is the impression that impunity reigns,” she told AFP, lamenting increasing attacks on UN bodies and staff expressing concern over the situation. “This is unacceptable.”

UNRWA has faced the harshest attacks. It saw a series of funding cuts after Israel accused more than a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 attack.

Agency chief Philippe Lazzarini has accused Israel of conducting “a concerted effort to dismantle UNRWA”, which has suffered dramatic human and material losses in Gaza, with more than 220 staff killed.

Netanyahu demanded earlier this year that UNRWA, which he said “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem (and) whose schools indoctrinate Palestinian children with genocide and terror … be replaced by responsible aid agencies”.

Francesca Albanese, the UN independent rights expert on the Palestinian territories, who has faced harsh criticism and calls for her ousting from Israel amid her repeated accusation it is committing “genocide” in Gaza, recently suggested the country was becoming a “pariah”.

“Should there be a consideration of its membership as part of this organisation, which Israel seems to have zero respect for?” she rhetorically asked journalists last week.

Meron slammed Albanese as “anti-Semitic and really an embarrassment to the UN”.

Other experts warned that Israel’s disregard for the UN was threatening the broader respect for the organisation.

Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN expert on the right to drinking water, warned of the consequences when UN bodies “make decisions and nothing is respected”.

“We are blowing up the United Nations if we don’t react.”

Iran warns Israel of its ‘fully loaded missile launchers’

In what analysts saw as “a provocative display of military readiness”, Iran has issued a stern warning to Israel, stating that its missile launchers are “fully loaded” and prepared to retaliate against any perceived aggression. This declaration follows a series of missile strikes aimed at Israeli military targets, underscoring the heightened tensions in the region.

Mohammad Esmaeil Kowsari, a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reiterated Iran’s commitment to defending its interests and warned that its advanced air defence systems are at the ready.

The situation escalated further as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to make Iran “pay” for its attacks, intensifying the ongoing conflict. As sirens blared across Israel and airspace restrictions were imposed, both nations braced for possible military confrontations, raising concerns of a broader regional conflict.

Israeli airbases hit in Iran’s missile attack

The Israeli military on Wednesday acknowledged that some of its airbases were hit in Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack on the country a night earlier, but stressed that no harm was caused to the functioning of the Israeli Air Force.

The missile impacts damaged office buildings and other maintenance areas in the bases, according to the military.

All of the missile impacts in the airbases were deemed by the military as “ineffective,” meaning that no harm was caused to the continuous operations of the IAF.

Tehran erupts in celebration as Israeli flags are set aflame

Tehran erupted in celebration Tuesday night after Iran launched a massive missile strike targeting Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) bases.

Crowds filled the streets, cheering as news of the attack spread, with some burning Israeli flags in a symbolic act of defiance. The operation, codenamed “True Promise II”, was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in retaliation for recent Israeli airstrikes.

Footage of the missile strikes, as well as the jubilant celebrations in Iran’s capital, was broadcast across Iranian state media, marking a significant escalation in regional tensions.

Iran and Israel exchange threats following Tehran’s missile barrage

The Middle East moved closer to a long-feared regional war Wednesday, a day after Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel and Israel said it began limited ground incursions into Lebanon targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.

The Washington Post quotes Israel saying it intercepted many of the missiles, and officials in Washington said US destroyers assisted in Israel’s defence. Iran said most of its missiles hit their targets. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed late Tuesday to retaliate against Iran, which he said “made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it”. An Iranian commander threatened wider strikes on infrastructure if Israel retaliates against Iran’s territory.

The United Nations Security Council called an emergency meeting for today to address the spiraling conflict.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.

US urgently tries to shape Israel’s response to Iran

The United States knows Israel will retaliate after Iran’s major missile attack, and even says it supports such a move, but is trying to influence the nature of the response, warning against targeting Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

US President Joe Biden, who consulted with his G7 counterparts on Wednesday after the Islamic republic fired off about 200 ballistic missiles, set a clear red line for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“All seven of us agree that they have a right to respond, but they should respond in proportion,” Biden said, without going into detail about what such a response might look like.

Pope Francis calls for global day of prayer, fasting for peace

Pope Francis has called for a global day of prayer and fasting next Monday, October 7, to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel amid escalating violence in the region.

The pope’s announcement, made at the end of his homily at Mass in St Peter’s Square on Wednesday, comes the morning after Iran’s missile barrage.

Pope Francis said the Church was always at the service of humanity “especially in his dramatic hour of our history, as the winds of war and the fires of violence continue to ravage entire peoples and nations”.

“I ask everyone to take part in a day of prayer and fasting for peace in the world,” he said.

Starmer goes to Brussels to rebuild UK-EU trust

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has made his first visit to Brussels since becoming prime minister. His main message: to rebuild ties and trust with the EU after the bitter bickering of Brexit negotiations.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen gushed that his welcome was a warm one.

Starmer called for closer co-operation on defence and security, including energy security, as well as on climate change, irregular migration, labelled ‘illegal migration’ under the previous Conservative government and on delivering economic growth to help make Brexit work in the UK’s interest, he said.

He insisted the British public wanted a return to what he called sensible leadership when it came to the EU.

Irwin the emu is missing!

The owners of an animal sanctuary in the UK have urged people to check their gardens after their beloved emu disappeared.

Malmesbury Animal Sanctuary, in Wiltshire, announced Irwin the emu was missing in a Facebook post on Monday morning.

Gary Nageb, who works at the sanctuary, fears Irwin fell in the nearby River Avon while running around at night. He urged walkers and people with gardens along the river to “keep an eye out”.

He said: “Whilst optimism is dwindling, we are forever hopeful.”

Photo: Antonio Guterres, Israel Katz