UN rejects Canadian push to call out “deliberate cruelty” of Hamas attacks

A Canadian effort to formally call out Hamas for the “deliberate cruelty” of its deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel has gone down to defeat at the United Nations.

Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, urged delegates Friday to back an amendment that would have named Hamas in a draft resolution calling for a temporary pause in the conflict.

Opponents of the amendment, however, derided it as one-sided, unequal and unfair, noting that the original resolution was expressly designed to avoid calling out either party. 

The amendment went down to defeat, failing to garner the necessary two-thirds majority of votes in the General Assembly, while the resolution itself passed by a margin of 120-14. 

Canada was among the 45 nations that abstained from the final vote after the amendment failed to pass. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said Canada supports the idea of “humanitarian pauses” to allow aid into the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of civilians and foreign nationals. 

A major humanitarian crisis is now blooming in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory of Gaza, home to 2.3 million people who face food, water and fuel shortages. 

Earlier in the day, U.S. envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield called it “outrageous” that the resolution doesn’t call out Hamas by name, nor mention the fact that the group is holding more than 200 hostages. 

“These are omissions of evil, and they give cover to and they empower Hamas’s brutality. No member state should allow that to happen,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

“That is why we have co-sponsored an amendment put forward by Canada that corrects these glaring omissions.”