UN's Ban Ki-Moon
UN's Ban Ki-Moon 'Shocked'
by Hamas Terror Tunnels
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
JERUSALEM, Israel -- In a week when the international community pledged billions of dollars to rebuild the Gaza Strip after this summer's conflict between Israel and Hamas, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was given a look at Hamas attack tunnels that ran under the border from the Gaza Strip to Israeli communities.
"I was shocked and alarmed by this underground tunnel, which had been used for penetration for terrorist purpose[s]. I have been repeatedly condemning these rocket attacks from Hamas by the air," Ban told reporters.
The secretary-general made his comments on a trip to Kibbutz Nirim, where he met with the family of Daniel Turgeman, the four year old killed by a Hamas mortar launched from a U.N. school.
"We told the secretary-general that Daniel was killed in his home by a mortar bomb that was fired from a school," his aunt, Maya Turgeman, told CBN News. "In that school [there] were staying at the time refugees that Hamas was willingly putting in danger while firing from there to civilian targets."
Turgeman said the U.N. must do what it's meant to do: "That is protecting human rights, and protecting human rights means standing and saying that Hamas is a terrorist organization, not looking for peace that they target civilians."
Earlier Tuesday, Ban visited the Gaza Strip where he condemned Israel for striking U.N. properties during the summer conflict. He mentioned the U.N. investigation of Israel, but he never said anything about investigating Hamas.
Meanwhile in Jerusalem, Christian parliamentarians with the International Israel Allies Caucus issued a resolution, in part calling for a U.N. investigation of Hamas.
"The conflict, the rockets, the barrage, the total disregard for human rights on either side of the border that Hamas represents, rightly labeled a terrorist organization in our view. You cannot negotiate with people who embrace terrorism as an end to their means," Member of Parliament Dr. James Lunney with Canada's House of Commons told CBN News.
The resolution came a day after British parliamentarians symbolically voted to recognize a Palestinian state. The passed by a vote of 274 to12, 364 lawmakers (56 percent) were absent during the vote, and Prime Minister David Cameron abstained. The move by liberal parliamentarians doesn't change British foreign policy, but it does give impetus to the Palestinian push for statehood.
The Christian MPs told CBN News calling for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state would have repercussions.
"I'm very angry about it. It's absolutely not helpful what's now going on in different parliaments of Europe," said C.G. van der Staaij, Member of Parliament with the Dutch House of Representatives. "It's saying to the Palestinians violence is a good way. It's helping the Jihadists."
"I saw it among Latin America already," Guatemalan parliamentarian Pedro Galvez said. "There have been a lot of countries that recognize the Palestinian Authority and now one year later, two years later they have been having a lot of trouble in their countries. They have been having a lot of trouble with some of these people and they want now to reverse their decisions and they have understand [sic] that being a supporter of Israel it's being a supporter of democracy."
