DFA disavows Locsin’s statements on Palestinian children

Teodoro Locsin Jr.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has distanced itself from the social media post recently made by the country’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Teodoro Locsin Jr., about Palestinian children caught in the reignited conflict between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas.

“The Department of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Philippines completely disassociates itself from the statement made on Twitter by Ambassador Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr.,” the agency said in a brief statement on Monday.

“Such statement was made in his strictly personal capacity,” it added.

Part of Locsin’s now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter) read: “That’s why Palestinian children should be killed; they might grow up to become as gullible as innocent Palestinians letting Hamas launch rockets at Israel. Not that they could stop them but that’s no excuse.”

“They are Muslims. They could stage mass suicide against Hamas until the latter ran out of bullets,” the post added.

Apology

In a post on X on Sunday, Locsin, who also serves as President Marcos’ special envoy to China, apologized for the statements, saying they were made only as a “sarcastic response” to another post.

“I immediately deleted my sarcastic response to a tweet as I realized it could be misconstrued and retweeted to incite,” said the former Cabinet official, who came under fire from netizens for the post.

“My apologies to those who did misconstrue my sentiments and did in fact get triggered—I obviously was not advocating for the literal death of anyone, but rather simply for the end of any ideology that condones terrorism in any way, shape or form,” he added.

Duterte remarks

Locsin was not the first prominent Filipino personality to make a controversial public comment on the Israel-Hamas war, which has been raging since Oct. 7 and has claimed about 5,000 lives, including that of four Filipinos.

In an interview aired on the Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI) on Oct. 10, former President Rodrigo Duterte said that if he were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would “crush” Hamas and turn Gaza into the “biggest cemetery in the world.”

Duterte, under whose administration Locsin served as foreign secretary from 2018 to 2022, said he would order everyone to leave Gaza in 48 hours.

“If not, well, I’m putting you on notice. I will level it to the ground so that there will be no more Gaza. No more Gaza to fight for. I will make it a dead place,” he said in a mix of Filipino and English.

And if he had an atomic bomb, he would drop it on Iran because he believed its rulers were the masters of Hamas.

The Duterte interview was later deleted from SMNI’s YouTube channel.

—With a report from Inquirer Research INQ