Former Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has accused the Israeli government of killing more than 74,000 people in Gaza and blocking humanitarian aid, in a video appeal for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
“They are not dead, they are murdered people. These are not numbers,” the Spaniard said at the start of the video, released on Sunday, October 18, by UNRWA. “They are not collateral damage, they are girls and boys.”
In the roughly three-minute message, Guardiola, 55, spoke about children in Gaza searching for their parents in the rubble and suffering from hunger. “We watch them lose everything before they’ve even had a chance to grow up,” he said.
“We are living through a very dark time in our history,” he says.
Guardiola said he admires the resilience of Palestinians but added that they should not have to be resilient. “No childhood should grow up learning to survive before learning to live,” he said.
He described UNRWA, which has worked with Palestinian refugees for over 75 years, as an institution that preserves their history, identity and rights. He asked viewers to donate to the agency. UNRWA serves about 5.9 million registered Palestine refugees.
In October 2024, Israel’s parliament passed laws barring the agency from operating in Israel, after Israel alleged that some of its Gaza staff took part in the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
“The silence today is a way of taking sides. But we cannot look the other way,” he said. “Palestine matters and Palestine needs justice and peace.”
A supporter of Palestinians
Guardiola has spoken out on Gaza several times this year. In January, he wore a keffiyeh at a charity event in Spain and criticised global silence over the suffering of Palestinian children. In February, he told reporters in Manchester that he would keep speaking on the issue.
He left Manchester City in May after a decade in charge, during which the club won six Premier League titles and the 2023 Champions League.
The appeal comes days after the first anniversary of the Gaza ceasefire, which took effect on October 10 last year.
Gaza’s Health Ministry put the death toll since October 2023 at 74,469 on Saturday, October 17, with 175,492 people wounded. At least 1,511 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began, it said.
According to an Al Jazeera analysis, Israel attacked Gaza on 325 of the 361 days after the truce. The Health Ministry said 44 per cent of essential medicines are out of stock.
More than 100 humanitarian and rights organisations said in a joint statement this month that the ceasefire exists only in name, Middle East Eye reported. “A ceasefire is meaningless if children are still being killed,” Save the Children chief executive Inger Ashing said in the statement.
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