The White House affirmed that Hamas was a terror group after a top UN official claimed that it was a political organization.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization,” White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters in Washington on Thursday.
“And you don't have to look any further than what they did on the 7th of October to see it in stark terms,” Kirby said as he referenced the Hamas-led attack against southern Israel in which over 1,200 people were killed and another 253 seized as hostages.
“My goodness, take a look at their manifesto, even the one that’s so-called watered down in 2017,” Kirby said.
“There's no doubt they just want to wipe Israel off the face of the map. This is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. Period,” he stressed.
He spoke after Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said that “Hamas is not a terrorist group, for us, of course as you know. It’s a political movement” during an interview with Sky News in which he appeared to legitimize the group on behalf of the UN.
His words were widely circulated on social media and denounced by Israel and a number of its allies.
Officials respond to Griffith's claim
Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X that, “The @UNReliefChief denies that the Nazi organization Hamas is a terrorist organization and calls it a "political movement". Shame on him.”
The German Foreign Office said, “To make it crystal clear: The EU has listed Hamas as a terrorist organization and so have many others.”
Germany’s Ambassador to Israel Stephen Seibert commented on the post, stating on X, “I didn’t expect that this still needed to be said.”
Griffiths later clarified in a post on X that “Hamas is not on the list of groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council.
“This doesn't make their acts of terror on 7 October any less horrific and reprehensible, as I've been saying all along.”
But he did not address the part of his comment in which he referred to them as a political group.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesperson Stephan Dujarric told reporters in New York that UN officials, including Martin Griffiths, have unequivocally condemned the abhorrent terrorist attack that Hamas conducted on October 7th and that there could be no justification for them.
“That position is unchanged,” he stressed.
A UN official told The Jerusalem Post that, “There are different parts to Hamas. There's a political element to Hamas as there is also an armed element.
“The UN has always condemned acts of terror committed by Hamas. We also have to deal with them as the de-facto authorities in Gaza."