Iran Calls for Blacklisting Israel as “Terror Entity”

Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kana’ani urged the international community to designate the Zionist regime as a “terror entity”, and further said that the Israeli leaders should be prosecuted for committing war crimes against the Palestinian people across the occupied territories, assassination, occupation and ethnic cleansing.

News ID: 84392

Date: 22 October 2023 - 13:51

As Israel’s war against the Gaza Strip has entered its third week and hospitals are "on the brink of collapse", Kana’ani strongly censured the ongoing Israeli onslaught and threats of bombardment of hospitals in the besieged strip.

In a post on his X account on Saturday, the spokesperson said following the catastrophic attacks on the Al-Ahli Hospital, mosques, schools and the Greek Orthodox church in Gaza, the Zionist regime has threatened to pound other hospitals in the besieged territory as humanitarian concerns mount over Israel’s deprivation of food, water, fuel and electricity to the enclave’s population.

On Tuesday night, at least 500 civilians, mainly women and children, were killed in an Israeli air raid on Al-Ahli Hospital which was sheltering thousands of displaced people who were forcibly evacuated from their homes during Israeli assault.

Hospitals in Gaza are struggling to tend to the wounded across the territory, operating with shortages of electricity and fuel, according to reports. Health services within Gaza are on the brink and food and water supplies are running low.

“Such horrendous crimes mean that the Zionist regime has crossed the limits of insanity,” Kana’ani stated, adding that they amount to a morally shameful scandal for the governments that have long provided unconditional support to the Israeli regime while preaching others over human rights.

“Occupation, aggression, war, misdeeds, assassination, genocide, infanticide, attacks on mosques, churches, hospitals, ambulances and rescue vehicles, schools, houses and residential complexes, refugee camps and journalists, etc… are all crimes collectively manifested in the contemporary world by a bogus and terrorist regime entity called ‘Israel’ with a 75-year-long record of relentless atrocities,” he stressed.

“Nowadays, all these crimes are being committed simultaneously and on a daily basis in Gaza just in front of the international community,” the official continued.

“All people advocating freedom, justice and fairness across the world demand that the Israeli regime be designated internationally as a terrorist entity, and that Zionist leaders be prosecuted and punished as war criminals,” the top diplomat asserted.

Gaza has been hit by a relentless barrage of Israeli fire following an attack by the Hamas fighters on October 7, which Israel confirms killed at least 1,400 people. The group has announced it was in response to the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli settlers’ growing violence against Palestinians.

Israel’s military campaign since has killed at least 4,300 Palestinians, including hundreds of children and women, and wounded more than 13,500 others in the Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported at least 30% of the housing sector in the Gaza Strip has been either destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, while hospitals are overwhelmed with patients.

Israel’s military has also ordered 1.1 million people living in Northern Gaza to evacuate their homes, amid signs it is set to ramp up its offensive.

The UN warned it is “impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences". The World Health Organization (WHO) has also cautioned that a mass evacuation of the Northern Gaza Strip would be "disastrous" for hospital patients, with hospitals in the South already at full capacity.

The OCHA also announced that the number of internally displaced persons in the Gaza Strip increased to 1.4mln people, and more than 544,000 individuals are now in emergency shelters "in increasingly dire conditions”.

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, where some 2 million people live in an area of 140 square miles. It has been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world for nearly 17 years. More than half of its population lives in poverty and is food insecure, with nearly 80% of its population relying on humanitarian assistance.

Human rights groups have stressed that depriving an occupied population of basic necessities is a war crime. Palestinian health officials have warned Gaza is rapidly running out of water and electricity, and the population faces severe shortages of food and medicine. They say hospitals in the besieged territory are under constant bombardment and facing imminent shutdown due to a lack of fuel.

Tehran says the history of the apartheid regime is full of assassinations, massacre, torture and killing of Palestinian kids, and described Tel Aviv regime's atrocities and massacre of Palestinian women and children as indicative of the destitute of Zionists. Iranian officials say the Tel Aviv regime has been struggling for more than 70 years to exit its identity crisis which has been mixed with genocide, plunder, forced displacement and scores of other inhumane moves.