U.S. Slams ‘Outrageous’ Failure Of UN Security Council To Condemn Gaza Rocket Attacks

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley ripped into the Security Council during an emergency session called by Washington after Kuwait blocked her efforts to formulate a joint statement condemning this week’s massive barrage of rockets fired at Israel by Gaza Strip-based terrorist groups. Kuwait, a non-permanent council member representing Arab nations, argued that the U.S.-drafted declaration was unnecessary as the Gulf country had already proposed another resolution on the crisis aimed at setting up an international peacekeeping force in Gaza. “It is outrageous for the Security Council to fail to condemn Hamas [and Iranian proxy Islamic Jihad] rocket attacks against Israeli citizens while the Human Rights Council approves sending a team to investigate Israeli actions taken in self-defense,” Haley asserted in reference to a recent decision by the latter UN body to launch a probe into the IDF’s use of force to quell the “March of Return” protests along the Gaza border that culminated on May 14 in mass violence resulting in the deaths of more than 60 Palestinians, the vast majority of them Hamas members. For his part, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon slammed Kuwait’s initiative as a “cynical” and “shameful” ploy, while reiterating that Jerusalem has “no intention for escalation [in Gaza], but if someone will attack Israel, we will attack them back.” The brouhaha at Turtle’s Bay came a day after as many as 180 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel—to which the Israeli army responded by striking over 60 terror targets in Gaza—in what amounted to the most significant military exchange in the south since the fifty-day conflict between the IDF and Hamas in the summer of 2014.