Forgive us, O Palestinians: UNSC Member as US shields Israel
Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama Thursday delivered a touching speech at the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed yet again a UNSC resolution calling ceasefire in Gaza
[Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama looks at as Morgan Ortagus, US Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East at UNSC, vetoed Gaza Ceasefire Resolution Thursday September 18, 2025.]
United Nations: Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama Thursday delivered a touching speech at the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed yet again a UNSC resolution calling ceasefire in Gaza.
“Forgive us”, Amar Bendjama as Morgan Ortagus, US Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East, sitting next to him shamelessly watched.
“Forgive us, O the people of Palestine, because this Council could not save your children — more than 18,000 of them have been killed by Israel”.
“Forgive us,” he repeated, noting that more than 12,000 women, more than 4,000 elderly, more than 1,400 doctors and nurses, more than 250 journalists and more than 500 aid workers “have been killed by Israel”.
The Algerian representative at the UNSC also accused that Israel is shielded because of the bias of the international law.
“Famine now spreads in Gaza, and the UN Security Council could not even act to denounce it as Israel is shielded — not by international law, but by the bias of the international system”, he said.
Stressing that “history will not weigh our speeches, it will weigh our deeds”, the Algerian Envoy to the United Nations stated that “we will not give up”.
“Shame on helplessness… Shame in the face of genocide unfolding before open eyes”, he said in the speech which has now shaken the whole world but could not move the U.S. Envoy who was sitting next to him.
“A Profound Moral Failure”
[Amar Bendjama, Algeria's UN Ambassador, shows a picture of a Gaza child suffering severe malnutrition due to hunger to lsrael's foreign minister. (File Image)]
Somalia's Permanent Representative to the UN, Abukar Osman, who speaks on behalf of the country at the UN Security Council, slammed the Council’s failure despite appeals made, in his words, ten thousand times.
“Ten thousand times, the world has looked into this Chamber for leadership, conscience and hope. However, we have failed to adopt a resolution safeguarding the basic rights of the people in Gaza”, he said.
He underscored that “this is not just a procedural lapse but a profound moral failure”, reflecting an unspoken and dangerous logic that “the suffering of some is more tolerable than the suffering of others and that the lives of certain people matter less.”
“The moment we measure the worth of human life by nationality, ethnicity or circumstances, we lose the very foundation upon which this institution was built”, Osman said.
“UNSC’s Dark Moment”
Calling the UNSC’s failure to adopt the Gaza Ceasefire Resolution due to the US Veto, a “dark moment in this Chamber”, Pakistan’s Representative at the UN Security Council, Asim Iftikhar Ahmed, pointed out that the Council was prevented from acting by the exercise of the veto — and “that is where the apology must lie”.
“In moments of such grave human suffering, preventing the Council from fulfilling its mandate “risks being seen as enabling the continuation of that suffering”, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said.
Asim Iftikhar stressed that, against this grim setting, today’s failure sends the dangerous message that two million people “are expendable”.
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He also noted that “the safety of hostages is being compromised” alongside hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Dr. Michael Imran Kanu, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone to the UN, speaking at the UNSC after the US veto affirmed that the duty to prevent genocide is binding on all, and that failure to act would make the Council complicit in one of the gravest crimes known to humanity.
He recalled that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro — found that failure to act breached this obligation.
“A State cannot lawfully provide aid or assistance to perpetrators if it knows that genocide is being, or about to be, committed”, he said.
“Let us be clear — unlike Pontius Pilate, we cannot wash our hands of this responsibility,” he stressed.
Representatives of Greece, Slovenia and Denmark echoed warnings of a calamitous situation on the brink. The representative of the Republic of Korea, UN Security Council President for September, spoke in his national capacity to underscore that “civilians in Gaza, as well as hostages and their families, have suffered too much and far too long.”
US Envoy Faces Protest
Meanwhile, Morgan Ortagus, US Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East, faced a strong protest and backlash as she came out of the UN Headquarters in New York after the UNSC vote on Gaza Ceasefire.
As Ortagus stepped out of the UN headquarters, the protesters shouted “Shame on you” at her, who with her vote helped the Israeli occupation continue its brutal genocide in Gaza.
Ortagus had justified the US stand, accusing Hamas being the responsible of the sufferings of the Palestinians in Gaza.
“Gaza’s humanitarian suffering is the result of Hamas’s actions, not Israel’s”, she said even as the United Nations has termed the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands illegal and a UN body probe called the Israeli military action in Gaza a Genocide.
Other UNSC members however did not subscribe to the US views. Noting that today marks the 7th time the United States has exercised veto on this issue, the Russian Federation’s delegate stressed that “there will be no breakthrough” so long as Washington, D.C., “does not change the lens through which it regards the crisis in Gaza”.
He urged the United States to acknowledge that its “declared quiet diplomacy on the ground” is being “undermined not by the sensible voices of the international community”, but by the concrete actions of its Israeli ally.
Other delegations — including those of Guyana and China, also rejected today’s veto, with the latter stating that the United States was “abusing” that power.
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