Protestors demand Israeli hostages’ release outside UN Sec Gen’s house

Emotional protestors gathered at the Manhattan home of the United Nations Secretary General Friday morning to demand action on behalf of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas and to accuse the UN of “legitimizing terrorism” through their inaction.

“What [has the UN] done, they’ve done nothing. In the most basic way, it’s legitimizing this situation. It’s legitimizing terrorism, legitimizing taking hostages,” organizer Omer Lubaton Granot told The Post after the peaceful demonstration.

A group of about 50 people – mostly middle-aged Manhattan residents – met in a park on Sutton Place around nine Friday morning and walked together to the home of Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The protestors lined up in front of the house holding a large sign that said “Free our hostages,” as well as printout pictures of the over 240 missing people who were taken by Hamas during the terror group’s incursion into southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The peaceful demonstration was a marked contrast to other recent acts of protest – including a New York City woman who was arrested after pepper-sprayed a Jewish volunteer and threatened to “kill all you Jews” while she tore down posters of the hostages.

After the names of each hostage was read aloud by different members of the crowd, the demonstrators said a prayer and sang songs in their honor.

At one point, the group tied origami butterflies to a tree outside Guterres’ residence to “remind the Secretary General of the hostages,” one attendee explained.

One woman yelled out “Secretary Guterres, what if they were your kids?” 

The group said they plan to meet every Friday morning – rain or shine – to read the names of those taken.

“On Oct. 7, my cousin [Chen Almog Goldstein] became a hostage and a bereaved mother on the same day,” Granot, who attended the protest with his wife and toddler in tow, told The Post.

“She was taken hostage with her three children, Agam, Gal, and Tal – and her husband, Nagav, and her eldest daughter Yam, were murdered [by Hamas].

Granot urged the public to think of each hostage as more than just a number.

“Think, behind the number there is [a person]. Every person is a whole world. There are the faces and the stories, and we have so many stories,” he explained.

“One girl, her name is Abigail, she is three years old, she is held hostage without her parents. Both of her parents were murdered and they took the child. We have elderly women, some of them are more than 80 years old, they need their medicine, they need their treatments. 

Granot added that he is disappointed by Guterres’ response to Hamas invasion of Israel and the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip.

Late last month, Guterres was forced to defend himself from accusations that his statements on the issue justified Hamas’ terrorist attack when he told the Security Council that the incident “did not happen in a vacuum.”

“First of all, I hope that he will treat this [as] the biggest hostage crisis in history,” Granot said.

“The numbers, the time, the variety of ages, the civilians that are involved…there is nothing like it. We want the UN, the Secretary General to address it.

Susan Lax, 65, an entrepreneur who lives between Manhattan and Tel Aviv, told The Post that the UN’s perceived lack of action reinforced the Jewish community’s generational trauma.

“[I am here so] that he will make sure, as second generation Holocaust survivors, we know what it was like when the world stood silent, and his job is to make sure that the world does not stay silent,” she said in Guterres.

“If it was his child, his sibling, his wife, or his parent, I want to know what he would do.

Lax’s friend, peace activist Vivan Silver, has been held hostage since she was kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7.

“[The protest is]  to remind the world and to remind the Secretary General that we’re talking about souls. Each one of them is a soul and they cannot be forgotten,” she explained.

“We have to keep their faces out there, we have to keep the message out there. There are children, women, and elderly, and my friend Vivian Silver.”

Silver, in particular, was known for her charitable contributions to the Palestinian community before she was taken, Lax added.

“Vivian is one of the most precious souls that I know because she believes in peace. She has been a peace activist for all of her life, she has never given up, she helped sick people from Gaza come in to Israel to get medical help, she drove them, she befriended them.

“She was in touch with her son until 11 am [on Oct. 7]. I tried to get hold of her over and over. She told her son, ‘they’re coming for me, I hear them, they’re in the house.’ She was hiding behind the closet, and then he told her he loved her, and that was the last,” she said of her friend’s horrifying last known moments.

Another protestor, Ally, declined to give her last name but told The Post that “any human being” should have condemned the Hamas attack more explicitly than Gutteres.

“Any human being…will support…our obvious and straightforward effort to bring home those little kids, those elderly, those sick people, those young people, it’s a basic human thing to support,” the 50-year-old pharmacist insisted.

It is unclear if Gutteres is set to address the Israeli hostage crisis at any point on Friday.

There is reportedly a Security Council meeting that will address the situation for Palestinians at 3 p.m., The Post learned.

With Post wires