Did Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, claim that Palestinian rock throwing was a reason to bomb and kill Palestinian women and children? No, that's not true: The video of Erdan addressing the UN about the danger of rock-throwing at Israeli civilians is from 2022, he does not suggest rock-throwing is a cause for military strikes against Palestinians and the comments are not related to the situation in Gaza in late 2023.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by belvestnik.bel12 on October 26, 2023, with a caption (translated into English from Belarusian by Lead Stories staff) that read:
Do you want to know why we bomb and kill women and children? It's because of the rock. Every day they throw these rocks at us. What would you do?
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Oct 30 08:14:13 2023 UTC)
Erdan addressed a UN Security Council meeting in January 2022 when he showed a brick as an example of stones thrown by Palestinians. He claimed 1,775 cases of rock attacks in Israel in 2021 and said rocks may kill and maim Israeli men, women, children and babies.
The Israeli ambassador condemned what he called the rock terror attacks against Israeli civilians and did not address Israeli measures to respond to the attacks. One result of stone-throwing incidents was an Israeli law passed in 2015 to toughen the penalties for stone-throwers.
