Instead of Guterres, the Consul General of Israel in New York, Aviv Ezra, will address the event.
Ezra will use his speech to remember the October 7 massacre as well as the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The service will hear testimony from a former hostage, as well as a brother and sister of a hostage still held by Hamas.
A spokesperson for the Shul told the JC: “Park East Synagogue International Holocaust Remembrance Day Shabbat Service this year will focus on the Shoah and the barbaric attack on Israel on October 7th, the kidnapped, the rise of worldwide anti-Semitism, and internal pain.”
Guterres will speak at the UN’s own Holocaust Memorial Ceremony on Friday alongside Holocaust survivors.
Since October 7, both the secretary general and the UN more widely have come under fire for their response to Hamas’s atrocities. Guterres was slammed by Israeli officials when he said that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”
UN Women, the UN’s women’s rights agency, has also been criticized for taking 55 days to issue a statement on the massacre which saw rape used by Hamas as a weapon of war.
