UN NY director of human rights quits over 'text book case of genocide' of Palestinians, says US, UK, EU 'wholly complicit'

Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
Tue, 31 Oct 2023 22:04 UTC

© Bebeto Matthews/AP

FILE PHOTO

The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has left his post, protesting that the UN is "failing" in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, UK and much of Europe as "wholly complicit in the horrific assault".

Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying: "This will be my last communication to you" in his role in New York.

Mokhiber, who was stepping down having reached retirement age, wrote: "Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it."

He said that the UN had failed to prevent previous genocides against the Tutsis in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, the Yazidi in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Rohingya in Myanmar and wrote: "High Commissioner we are failing again.

"The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs ... leaves no room for doubt."

Mokhiber added: "This is text book case of genocide" and said the US, UK and much of Europe were not only "refusing to meet their treaty obligations" under the Geneva Conventions but were also arming Israel's assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.

The outgoing director's departure letter did not mention the 7 October attack by Hamas on southern Israel killing more than 1,400 people and taking 240 hostages.

Comment: Perhaps because the 7 October attack are irrelevent, and Israel has been involved in ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine for decades now. Moreover, maybe the director is aware of the intelligence that shows 7 October was likely in large part, an inside job.

Even more contentiously, his letter calls for the effective end to the state of Israel.

Comment: What he calls for is hardly 'contentious', and the director, who has worked at the UN for four decades, was evidently considered qualified to make assessments such as these:

"We must support the establishment of a single, democratic secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews," he wrote, adding: "and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land."

Mokhiber has worked for the UN since 1992, serving in a number of increasingly prominent roles. He led the high commissioner's work on devising a human rights-based approach to development, and acted as a senior human rights adviser in Palestine, Afghanistan and Sudan.

A lawyer who specialises in international human rights law, he lived in Gaza in the 1990s.

In his role as director of the New York office of the high commissioner for human rights, he has come under occasional fire from pro-Israeli groups for his comments on social media.

Comment: Israel will attack any one who dares even question its war crimes, even the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: Israel to refuse visas to UN officials after Guterres' Gaza speech highlighting Palestine's '56 years suffering occupation'

He was criticised for posting support of the boycott, divest, sanctions (BDS) movement and accusing Israel of apartheid - an accusation which he repeated in his retirement letter.

Journalists and academics began posting the letter's content to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday afternoon.

A spokesperson for the UN in New York sent the Guardian a statement about Mokhiber, saying: "I can confirm that he is retiring today. He informed the UN in March 2023 of his upcoming retirement, which takes effect tomorrow. The views in his letter made public today are his personal views."

Comment: These aren't simply 'personal views'; he worked at the UN for four decades, and in the area of human rights, evidently he was considered qualified to make assessments such as these.

The statement went on: "The position of the office on the grave situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel is reflected in our reports and public statements."

Reaction to Mokhiber's outspoken departure from such a prominent UN position was mixed. Louis Charbonneau, the UN director at Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian that he had made a powerful argument against double standards in the stance of the world body.

"You don't have to agree with everything in the letter to see that he's made a powerful and depressing case that the UN lost its way on human rights when it comes to Israel and Palestine, partly due to pressure from the US, Israel and other governments. It's not too late to turn the UN ship around, but they need to do it quickly."

By contrast, Anne Bayefsky, who directs Touro College's Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust in New York, accused Mokhiber on social media of "overt antisemitism". She said he had used a UN letterhead to call for "wiping Israel off the map".

Comment: It begs the question of why the West would involve itself in such brazen and risky as criminality that is so clearly exposing its true nature and agenda? Apparently, not only is it blinded by wishful thinking, but it feels compelled to act, likely because for them, despite the exposure, the means meet the end:

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• Netanyahu tells Israelis to prepare for 'long and difficult' war
• UN votes overwhelmingly in favour of humanitarian truce in Gaza, US & Israel vote against

In the Twitter/X thread linked above, Investigative journalist John McEvoy provdes more detail of the resignation letter:

UN human rights director in New York: "This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine".

"The governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault... They are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover".

"Western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide"

"In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US, and to fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself".

"It bears repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of Israel's human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is anti-Buddhist...".

"The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. let us stand on the side of justice".

For more on the West's suicidal motivations, check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Israel and US Implementing 'Final Solutions' to End Palestine and Multipolar World