Algeria’s UN Envoy Amar Bendjama: “What We Are Witnessing in Gaza Is Genocide”
NEW YORK – Algeria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Amar Bendjama condemned the Zionist entity’s actions in the Gaza Strip during a Security Council meeting Tuesday, pointing to famine, mass civilian suffering and violations of international law.
“What we are witnessing is not erratic. It is methodical. Call it what it is: genocide,” Algeria’s UN envoy Amar Bendjama told the Council when describing the situation in Gaza. “No silence can justify it. Future generations will ask, Where were you? Where were you when Gaza was starving? In the Security Council?” he said.
He criticized the Zionist entity for denying the famine and blocking essential supplies and noted that it is “the same occupying power that cut off food, water, electricity and medicine in Gaza.”
“What has been allowed very recently into Gaza as humanitarian relief is a drop in the ocean of need. Airdrops are not the solution,” Bendjama said, adding that “malnutrition is rampant among all people in Gaza, including, unfortunately, those in captivity. The reality long denied by the Israeli occupying power has never been a secret to anyone.”
Stressing that access to humanitarian aid is a legal obligation under the Geneva Conventions, he said: “It’s not a favor. It is not negotiable. It cannot be used as a bargaining chip in exchange for those held in captivity.” “Injustice must never, never be normalized. It cannot become the new ordinary,” he said.
Bendjama also called, at the end of his address, for an immediate, unconditional, and lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
