Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Friday that condemned Hamas for its October 7 attack against Israel authored by the United States.
“Russia and China still could not bring themselves to condemn Hamas as terrorist attacks on October 7,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield told the 15-member body which has yet to take a stand against the terror group.
“Can we just pause on that for a moment?,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
“Russia and China refuse to condemn Hamas from burning people alive for gunning down innocent civilians at a concert for raping women and girls for taking hundreds of people hostage,” the ambassador said.
“This was the deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust,” she explained as she referenced Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel.
During that attack over 1,200 people were killed and another 253 were taken hostage. Many of the victims were burned, dismembered, raped and tortured.
Failing the resolution
Thomas-Greenfield said that the failure to adopt the resolution was “really outrageous, and it’s below the dignity of this body.”
She further charged that Hamas aside, Russia and China took this step purely because it was authored by the United States.
This is not just cynical, it’s also petty. Russia and China simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States because it would rather see us fail than to see this council succeed,” she charged.
The US resolution had the support of 11 UNSC members, enough to pass the text. Three countries opposed it and one abstained.
Russia and China, however, are among five permanent council members who have veto power at the council and their negative votes on the text were enough to cause it to fail.
The resolution had also called for an immediate six-week pause to the war and the release of the remaining 134 hostages.
The US had hoped the resolution would shore up negotiations for a hostage deal taking place Friday in Qatar.
“We’ll continue to work toward a deal alongside Qatar, and Egypt, and we will work with any council member that is seriously interested in adopting a resolution that will help make that deal possible,” she said.
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