ESCWA chief resigns under pressure over 'Israeli apartheid regime' report

RT
Sat, 18 Mar 2017 14:24 UTC

© Mohamed Azakir / Reuters

U.N. Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf.

Caving in to pressure from the UN Secretary General amid controversy over a report which accused Israel of imposing an "apartheid regime" on Palestinians, the head of the world body's West Asia commission has resigned.

On Wednesday, The UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) published a report accusing Israel "beyond a reasonable doubt" of being guilty of "policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid" against the Palestinian people.

The damning document, which was eventually taken down on Friday, sparked an immediate condemnation from Israel which called the conclusions of the Lebanese-based UN body a "despicable and a blatant lie."

The Israeli UN ambassador Danny Danon accused the authors of the report of bias, while specifically singling out the ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf for pursuing her own anti-Israeli agenda. The American ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, was also quick to call on the United Nations to withdraw the report.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres immediately distanced himself from ESCWA document, and over the past two days exerted pressure on Khalaf and ESCWA to take down the report. Once Guterres explicitly insisted that the document be removed from the agency's website, Khalaf announced her resignation.

"I submitted to him my resignation from the United Nations," Khalaf said at a press conference in Beirut, as cited by Reuters.

Khalaf, however, still stands by the report, calling it the "first of its kind" from a UN agency that sheds light on "the crimes that Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people, which amount to war crimes against humanity," the Times of Israel quoted.

The office of the secretary general office explained after Khalaf's resignation that the head of ESCWA failed to check with UN headquarters before making the report public.

"This is not about content, this is about process," said Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"The secretary-general cannot accept that an under-secretary-general or any other senior UN official that reports to him would authorize the publication under the UN name, under the UN logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself," he told reporters, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Israel praised Guterres' persistency and the resignation of Khalaf, with ambassador Danon, saying "the time has come to put an end to those using their status within the UN to promote anti-Israel activity."

"The Secretary General's decision is an important step in ending the bias against Israel at the UN," Ambassador Danon said following Khalaf's resignation. "Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the UN."

"Khalaf has for years worked to harm Israel and to promote the BDS and she should have left her role a long time ago," he added according to Harretz.

Comment: More on this report from Mondoweiss:

While the webpage for the report, titled "Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid," was removed, the link to the executive summary of the report is still active on theUN website here.

Here is the full report:

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid by Mondoweiss on Scribd

Officials in Israel made far-reaching allegations against the report and its authors, charging anti-Semitism and making comparisons to Nazi propagandists.

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told Mondoweiss (and posted on social media): "#UN #ESCWA has issued today a " Der Stürmer"like report, NOT endorsed by @UNSG . Friendly advice- dont read it without anti nausea pills....," equating the UN report to the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer.

Yair Lapid, leader of Israel's center-right Yesh Atid party, said the UN report "is dripping with hate and anti-Semitism," according to the Israeli daily Israel Hayom. Lapid went on:

"Instead of defending freedom, democracy and liberal values, the U.N. and its agencies are assisting terrorist organizations. Does it make any sense to anyone that the U.N., which includes member states Syria and Sudan, should preach to Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, which upholds minority rights and provides humanitarian assistance to its enemies? The U.S. and Europe need to make it very clear that they will withhold support for the U.N. and its agencies as long as they continue to incite against Israel."

Meanwhile, Palestinians applauded Khalaf for resigning rather than walking back her group's report. The General Coordinator of the Palestinian BDS National Committee Mahmoud Nawajaa said in a statement today:

"Palestinians are deeply grateful to ESCWA's director, Dr. Rima Khalaf, who preferred to resign in dignity than to surrender her principles to US-Israeli bullying. At our darkest moment of Israel's escalating repression, including of nonviolent human rights defenders, ongoing theft of Palestinian land, and worsening apartheid policies, Palestinians are hopeful that this groundbreaking report heralds the approaching dawn of a new era where Israel's regime of injustice will be held accountable through sanctions and other measures, as was done against apartheid South Africa."

The controversy over the report comes amid the Trump administration's decision this week to reduce U.S. commitments to fund UN agencies. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to non-governmental organizations working with the UN's Human Rights Council regarding the possibility of the U.S. leaving the body. Mark Toner, acting spokesperson for the State Department, was asked about the letter on Wednesday and said he was "not predicting we're going to walk away from the council. What I will say is that we're going to hold the council and its members more accountable and urge greater accountability and transparency."

The Republican Jewish Coalition, a pro-Israel organization on the right, is circulating a petition to support the president over social media in his "standing up to" the United Nations.

Update: Here is Khalaf's resignation letter (H/T Mondoweiss via Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's Facebook page):

Honorable Secretary General,

I have given a great deal of consideration to the letter I received from your office, and I assure you that I in no way question your right to issue instructions to remove the report from the ESCWA web site, as I do not question that as employees of the United Nations, we must all execute the orders of our Secretary General.

I know very well your commitment to the principles of human rights in general and your position on the rights of the Palestinian people specifically. And I also understand the anxiety you must have in these difficult times that leave you with few good choices.

It is clear to me the kinds of pressures and threats to which the United Nations and you personally are subjected by states with authority and influence, because of the publication of the ESCWA report (Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid)[still available here]. I am unsurprised that these states, which are run today by governments with little concern for international principles and human rights, should resort to tactics of fearmongering and threats when they fail to defend their policies and practices which violate the law. It makes sense that a criminal would attack those who defend the cause of his victims, but I find myself incapable of bowing to such pressures, and not because of my role as an employee of the United Nations, but simply as a sane human being. For I believe—as you do—in the values and noble principles that have always represented the forces of good throughout history, and upon which our organization, the United Nations, was founded. And, like you, I also believe that discrimination against any human being on the basis of religion or skin color or gender or ethnicity is absolutely unacceptable, and cannot be made acceptable by political maneuvering or brute force. And I believe that to speak truth to power is not only a human right, it is our obligation.

Over the course of two months, I have been instructed to withdraw two reports published by ESCWA, not for any error or shortcomings within the reports themselves and not necessarily because you yourself disagree with their content, but because of political pressures from countries implicated by their blatant violations of the rights of people in the region and human rights in general.

You have seen with your own eyes how the people of this region are enduring episodes of pain and suffering unprecedented in their modern history, and that the deluge of catastrophes that has overtaken them today is a direct result of unchecked oppression which has been ignored, or covered up, or openly engaged in by governments with dominance and force within the region and outside of it. These same governments are the ones pressuring you today to silence the voice of truth and the calls for justice represented by this report.

In view of all that I have stated here, I can only insist on the findings of the ESCWA report, which state that Israel has built an apartheid regime which aims to give one ethnic group control over another. The evidence provided in the report is incontrovertible, and here it is sufficient to point out that anyone who has attacked the report has been incapable of calling into question a single word of its actual content. I see it as my obligation to shine a light on the truth and not to hide it or obscure the testimony and evidence it provides.

The painful truth is that an apartheid regime still exists in the 21st century, and this is unacceptable under any law and is morally unjustifiable.

As I make this statement, I claim no moral superiority and no greater clarity than you possess, the matter is simply that my statements are a result of an entire life spent here, in this region, witnessing the horrific consequences of stifling people and preventing them from expressing the truth of their suffering through peaceful means.

As such, and after great consideration, I realize that I too have no choice. I cannot withdraw, once again, a United Nations report, an exceptionally researched and well-documented report about grave violations of human rights. I also realize that the clear directives of the Secretary General of the United Nations must be executed. And so the only way to resolve this tangle is for me to step aside and leave it to someone else to do what my conscience prevents me from doing. I realize I have only two weeks of service remaining in my post, so my resignation is not meant to exert any political pressure on you. I am simply resigning because I believe my duty to the peoples of the region that we serve, and to the United Nations, and to myself, is not to silence the testimony about a crime that causes such suffering to so many human beings. For this reason, I submit to you my resignation from the United Nations.