Algeria Slams UNSC Veto on Gaza as ‘Scar on Humanity’s Conscience’
Algeria’s UN envoy delivered a searing rebuke to the Security Council late Thursday after the United States vetoed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, branding the failure “another scar on the conscience of humanity” and apologizing directly to Palestinians.
Addressing the Council after the vote, Algerian permanent representative to the UN ambassador Amar Bendjama opened his statement with an unusual gesture: an apology. “We Algerians, we hear you. Palestinian sisters, Palestinian brothers, forgive us,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion.
He listed the toll of the Zionist’s nearly two-year aggression in the enclave – more than 18,000 children, 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 medical staff, 250 journalists and 500 aid workers killed – before pausing: “Forgive us, because this Council could not save them.”
Bendjama accused the Security Council of paralysis in the face of what UN investigators have already described as genocide. “Israel kills every day and nothing happens. Israel starves a people and nothing happens. With every unpunished act, humanity itself is diminished,” he said.
The Algerian envoy saluted the 14 Council members who supported the resolution, saying they had “acted with conscience, echoing the calls of international public opinion.” But he warned that history would not judge speeches, only deeds: “When Gaza burned, when children starved, when hospitals fell under bombs, did we act?”
He invoked the findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry, which concluded earlier this year that the Zionist entity bore responsibility “for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide, and the failure to punish genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Calling the veto “shame in the face of genocide unfolding before open eyes,” Bendjama insisted Algeria would not relent. “Palestine has never surrendered to empires or invaders. Algeria, as President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has pledged, will never abandon them until the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Al-Quds as its capital.”
It was the third time since 2024 that Washington blocked Security Council efforts to halt the genocidal war in Gaza, which has left the enclave in ruins, strangled by blockade and famine.
