COP26 inaccessible for Israeli minister in wheelchair, Church of England apologises for Nazi comment

Israel’s energy minister was unable to participate in the United Nation’s COP26 summit  in Glasgow on Monday because the transportation offered to her was not accessible by wheelchair, she said in a TV interview.

Karine Elharrar told Israel’s Channel 12 she could not reach the conference grounds because the only options to get there from the gathering area were to walk or board a shuttle that was not suited for a wheelchair.

“I came to COP26 to meet my counterparts in the world and advance our joint struggle against the climate crisis,” Elharrar wrote on Twitter. “It’s sad that the United Nations, which promotes accessibility for people with disabilities, in 2021 doesn’t worry about accessibility at its own events.”

Elharrar waited outside the venue for almost two hours but was eventually forced to return to her hotel in Edinburgh. She said she hoped a solution would be found by Tuesday.

Israel’s foreign minister called out the conference organizers, saying: “It is impossible to worry about the future, the climate and about people if we do not first take care of human beings, accessibility and disabilities.”

The British ambassador to Israel, Neil Wigan, apologized for the mishap.

“I am disturbed to hear that Karine Elharrar was unable to attend meetings at COP26. I apologise deeply and sincerely to the minister. We want a COP Summit that is welcoming and inclusive to everyone,” Wigan said on Twitter.

Meanwhile Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby apologised  after saying world leaders who fail to act on climate change could be making a bigger mistake than their predecessors who ignored warnings about the rise of the Nazis.

Welby, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion of about 85 million Christians, speaking at the start of the climate change summit in Scotland said he was sorry for the offence caused to Jews by his comments.

“I unequivocally apologise for the words I used when trying to emphasise the gravity of the situation facing us at COP26,” Welby said on Twitter. “It’s never right to make comparisons with the atrocities brought by the Nazis.”

The U.N. summit critical to averting the most disastrous effects of climate change opened on Monday, with world leaders, environmental experts and activists pleading for decisive action to halt global warming.

Welby earlier told the BBC world leaders will be “cursed” if they fail to reach an agreement on climate change.

“People will speak of them in far stronger terms than we speak … of the politicians who ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany because this will kill people all around the world for generations,” he said.

“It will allow a genocide on an infinitely greater scale. I’m not sure there’s grades of genocide, but there’s width of genocide, and this will be genocide indirectly, by negligence, recklessness.”