Video: secret recording shows Israeli ambassador saying Gaza children should face ‘death sentence’

Palestinians have a legal right of resistance to occupation. Israel’s ambassador to Austria David Roet says there are no innocent bystanders and children who resist should be killed

A secret recording by the Antizionist Jewish collective of Vienna shows Israel’s ambassador to Austria, David Roet, suggesting that Palestinian minors involved in armed conflict should be executed – and denying that Israel has deliberately killed babies, despite abundant evidence of very young children being repeatedly shot in the head by snipers and Israel’s destruction of neonatal intensive care facilities in Gaza. At least a thousand babies under one year old have been killed so far during Israel’s genocide and tens of thousands of children, with many more maimed and orphaned.

During a meeting behind closed doors with local Jewish representatives in Innsbruck last week, Roet said that “there are no uninvolved people in Gaza” and “there should be a death sentence” for teenagers for “holding a gun” or a “grenade”. Palestinians have a clear legal right of resistance, including armed resistance, to illegal occupation under international law:

Roet, who provided no evidence of children carrying weapons in Gaza, also boasted that he will “play golf in Gaza, whether you like it or not”.

By the time Roet was filmed on Thursday, Israel’s renewed and escalated assault on Palestinian civilians had killed at least five hundred people, of whom almost half were children. He also suggested that Europe should not contribute to rebuilding Gaza because Israel will simply destroy it again:

Will Europe be crazy enough to invest money again in Gaza? So we will have to destroy it the next time.

Civilians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank also have an absolute right under international law to respect for their lives, property, honour, family rights and customs, as the International Committee of the Red Cross explains:

It is in many ways difficult to separate the legal rights of the civilian population from the duties of the occupying power, i.e. a duty for the latter is often a right for the former…. Civilians are at all times entitled to respect for their persons, honour, family rights, religious convictions, and manners and customs. Their private property is protected.

Instead, Israel has murdered hundreds of thousands and maimed many thousands more in a clear campaign of genocide, has forcibly displaced the whole population of Gaza and tens of thousands in the West Bank and is trying to drive the Palestinian people out completely; it has destroyed almost all housing, has targeted hospitals, schools, refugee camps and tents for destruction, destroyed water, sanitation, energy generation and roads and is engaged in a complete blockade of food, water, shelter, medicines and more alongside its renewed and massive bombing. It is engaged in the rape, torture and brutalisation of thousands of helpless Palestinian hostages, both men and women.

Roet represents his rogue and terror state with all the arrogance expected of the criminal, racist and murderous regime.

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