Qatari emir tells UN that Israel’s war in Gaza is a ‘genocide’

Qatar’s Emir Hamad Al Thani brands Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza a “genocide,” in his speech to the UN General Assembly.

The war is “a crime of genocide by means of the most sophisticated weapons against people besieged in a detention camp where there is no escape from the barrage of aerial bombing,” says the Qatari premier.

“We oppose violence and the targeting of innocent civilians by any party, but after a year of this war… it is no longer tenable to talk about Israel’s right to defend itself in this context without being complicit in justifying the crime,” he says, in an apparent attack at the US and other Western countries.

Adopting phrases utilized by anti-Israel activists on college campuses, Al Thani says Palestinians are an “indigenous people on their own land… who are subjected to a settler colonial occupation, [which] has taken the form of an apartheid system in the 21st century.”

The Qatari emir also bashes the current Israeli government’s efforts “to expand settlements, annex the West Bank and Judaize Jerusalem.”

Turning to the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Al Thani blasts Israel for “committing a major crime by rigging wireless communication devices and exploding them simultaneously across thousands of people with total disregard for their identity or location.”

Israel has not taken responsibility for the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies.

“This is what we have repeatedly warned against if the brutal war on Gaza does not end,” he continues.

Blasting Israel’s escalating operations against Hezbollah without mentioning the Iran-backed group’s nearly year-long cross-border terror attacks, Al Thani claims, “They know that it will neither bring security nor peace to Northern Israel, nor to Lebanon.”