SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Saturday accused Israel of failing to \u201creflect\u201d on allegations of rights abuses by its forces, after Israel decried him for amplifying social media \u201cdisinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Seoul leader irked Israel\u2019s foreign ministry this week with his comments on a social media video with a caption purporting it showed Israeli soldiers torturing and pushing a \u201cPalestinian kid\u201d off a roof.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to look into whether this is true, and if so, what measures have been taken,\u201d Lee said Friday on X.<\/p>\n
AFP was not able to immediately identify provenance of the video, which has been widely shared on social media.<\/p>\n
However it appeared to show the different angle of an incident captured by AFPTV in the West Bank two years ago, when reporters saw an Israeli soldier use his foot to push the body of an apparently dead adult man off a roof.<\/p>\n
In 2024 the White House called the footage \u201cdeeply disturbing\u201d and said it had demanded an explanation from Israel amid its intensifying raids on the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday the incident was already \u201cinvestigated and addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Lee Jae Myung, for some strange reason, chose to dig up a story from 2024 and to cite a fake account that falsely presented it as a current event,\u201d said a ministry social media statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis account is notorious for spreading anti-Israeli disinformation and falsehoods about Israel,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s foreign ministry attempted to defuse the escalating social media confrontation.<\/p>\n
In a statement it said Lee\u2019s post \u2014 which drew parallels between alleged Israeli abuses and historical atrocities against Jews and Koreans \u2014 was a call to \u201cuniversal human rights rather than an opinion on any specific issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
But on Saturday Lee issued another pointed social media missive, commenting on a news article detailing Israel\u2019s backlash against his remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing that you don\u2019t even once reflect on the criticisms from people around the world who are suffering and struggling due to relentless anti-human rights and anti-international law actions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I am in pain, others feel that pain just as deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n
South Korea, an ally of Israel\u2019s biggest international backer the United States, has generally maintained a balanced stance on strife in the Middle East, without backing any one side in the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Saturday accused Israel of failing to \u201creflect\u201d on allegations of rights abuses by its forces, after Israel decried him for amplifying social media \u201cdisinformation.\u201d The Seoul leader irked Israel\u2019s foreign ministry this week with his comments on a social media video with a caption purporting it showed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":96199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96201,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96186\/revisions\/96201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}