Antonio Guterres’s tenure as secretary general of the United Nations is scheduled to end in January 2026, but now seems like a good time to pull a Joe Biden on him. Two more years of the bumbling Portuguese’s leadership at Turtle Bay would tarnish the reputation of an institution already held in low esteem. It might put a nail in the coffin of last century’s dream of a global body that would promote peace, justice, and world happiness.Yesterday the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, declared Mr. Guterres a persona non grata, and announced he’d be unwelcome on the country’s soil. That’s in line with the Geneva Convention of 1961, which marks that a state “may at any time and without having to explain its decision” declare an individual “persona non grata.” In that case the person shall be recalled or refused recognition as a member of a diplomatic mission.No sooner did Mr. Katz issue this appropriate — nay, long overdue — judgment on the UN’s secretary general than, as our Benny Avni reports, diplomats and UN officials proclaimed themselves aghast at the supposedly unprecedented move. “Outrageous,” Beijing’s ambassador, Fu Cong, said. “Rubbish,” his Russ counterpart, Vassily Nebenzia, added. A Briton, Barbara Woodward, expressed “full and unequivocal support” for Mr. Guterres. Our own envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, courageously chose to sidestep the chorus. Yet, the Department of State’s spokesman, Matthew Miller, said the Israeli move was not a “productive step at all,” as the UN does an “incredibly important work” in Gaza and Lebanon. Who’s he kidding? A UN teachers union chief in Gaza was recently killed as a Hamas combatant. The UN force in southern Lebanon has been catering for years to Hezbollah. As the Mideast wars have raged, Mr. Guterres has exacerbated such transgressions with one bone-headed statement after another. At every turn he said or indicated Israel is at fault for the troubles that genocidal Iran proxies have inflicted on its citizens. After October 7 he said the atrocities by Hamas that day “did not occur in a vacuum.” After Tuesday’s unprecedented Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel, he denounced “escalation after escalation.”The next day, Mr. Guterres told the Security Council that his condemnation of the Iranian attack on Israel “should have been obvious.” Should it? Condemnation, Iran, Israel — those words were unsaid in his statement on one of the seminal events of the year-long war. Israelis would have been outraged over the benign statement, had they not lost any faith in Mr. Guterres long ago. For Mr. Katz, however, enough was enough. The UN chief’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters that the term, persona non grata, has no legal meaning, yet he acknowledged that officials of the world body can visit only countries that invite them. Israeli officials have for months declined to take Mr. Guterres’ calls. They are far from alone. Many in the region have given up on the UN long before Mr. Guterres took office. His tenure has only illuminated the point. When, in the wake of October 7, Mr. Guterres made his notorious statement that the massacre of Israelis “did not happen in a vacuum,” we noted that his remarks smacked of attempts by enemies of the Jews to suggest that the Jews deserved the Holocaust. We also doubted that the UN would be able to continue with business as usual. Mr. Katz’s comments are the latest evidence of the collapse of the dream of the United Nations itself.It’s always amazed us that a state midwifed by the UN has now become the object of its darkest sentiments. As is often the case, in any event, Israel has been tearing the mask off of the face of the UN — exposing the world body in all its ugliness. Having no effect over world affairs, Mr. Guterres spends most of his time tilting at diplomatic windmills. His reduction by Israel to persona non grata is a fitting coda for his career, reflecting a reality widely recognized.
