UN SecGen Fact-Checked by X After Comparing Deaths in Gaza with Casualties in Nearby Countries

The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, issued a community note on United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after social media users countered his claim about the deaths in Gaza in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

The official UN news account on X posted several quotes from Guterres's press conference on Monday (November 20) when he insisted that the world has been "witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict" since assuming the UN's top job.

Casualty Count Conundrum

After the post went live, it received a community note, which allowed users to provide additional context for "posts that might be misleading." In particular, X users pointed to at least two conflicts with significant death tolls either equal to or above the death toll in the Gaza Strip - the Syrian Civil War and the Yemen War, both of which have seen hundreds of thousands killed.

An unnamed Israeli official told Fox News Digital that Guterres has "lost any moral standing."

"He willfully ignores the thousands of civilians killed in conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, as he pursues vilification of Israel," he added. "Shame on him."

On the other hand, a representative for Guterres responded by saying that the secretary-general stood by his comments, initially noting that he was responding to the "large number of civilian casualties reported so far in Gaza" and argued that the numbers cited in the community note were "still below the 11,000+ deaths counted so far in Gaza," and that the Yemeni casualties "preceded [Guterres's] term."

The spokesperson also argued that Guterres was "clearly talking about the casualties among children," noting that the comment followed a list of the numbers of child casualties in various conflicts in recent years.

"Although he did use the word civilians in the last sentence, the focus of what he was saying, and the statistics he provided, were about child deaths," the spokesperson claimed.

Israel's UN Envoy Tells Guterres to Resign

It was also reported that Guterres stressed in his comments that he was not going to enter into "discussing the accuracy of the numbers that were published by the de facto authorities in Gaza."

Guterres took office in 2017. During that year, the Syrian Civil War saw over 10,000 civilians dead.

Meanwhile, the Yemen War, which began before he took office, has claimed over 377,000 deaths, with the UN itself reporting that a child died every seven minutes in the Yemen War in 2022 alone, though this included deaths due to starvation or disease.

The Hamas-controlled Gazan health ministry reported over 11,000 people dying in Gaza since Israel began its bombing runs in response to the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 Israeli civilians and foreign nationals.

However, the ministry number does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties, nor does it specify how they died, similar to the UN's figures for Yemen. Despite this, the UN maintained that the ministry's numbers have held up to scrutiny in past conflicts and have largely been proven accurate.

Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gilad Erdan replied to Guterres's comment on X, criticizing him for the distorted numbers.

"Short memory? I think not," he said. "More likely that it's the regular bias and anti-Israeli approach of the Secretary-General."

Erdan has since called for Guterres to resign after accusing the secretary-general of losing "all morality and impartiality" by "[distorting] and [twisting] reality."

In response, Guterres pushed back on the claim, insisting that he has "condemned, unequivocally" the October 7 attack and does not in any way endorse terrorist acts.

The secretary-general's spokesperson did not respond to queries about the claims of an anti-Israel bias at the UN.

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United Nations, UN, Twitter, X, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, Hamas, Ukraine