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.

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.

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Kurdish militia fighters in northern Syria say they will receive military training from Russian troops that have established a presence in the Kurdish enclave of Efrin on the border with Turkey.

Redur Xelil, a spokesman for Kurdish units known as People's Protection Units (YPG), said on March 20 that Russia would provide training in "modern warfare" to the Kurdish militia.

Russia's Defense Ministry rejected the Kurdish claim, saying Russian soldiers were embedded with the YPG in northern Syria to monitor the YPG's cease-fire with rival Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces.

The Bush administration may have counted on a similar reaction when it embraced a violent uprising against Aristide beginning in late 2003, or even after it reportedly forced him to sign a resignation letter. According to the "ex-president," he was kidnapped at gunpoint at 2 a.m. on Sunday, February 29 and flown without his knowledge to the Central African Republic. His inability to maintain order in an atmosphere of US-backed destabilization had provided an excellent pretext for another exercise in "regime change."

In early February, a "rebel" paramilitary army crossed the border from the Dominican Republic. This trained and well-equipped unit included former members of The Front for the Advancement of Progress in Haiti (FRAPH), a disarming name for plain clothes death squads involved in mass killing and political assassinations during the 1991 military coup that overthrew Aristide's first administration. The self-proclaimed National Liberation and Reconstruction Front (FLRN) was also active, led by Guy Philippe, a former police chief and member of the Haitian Armed Forces. Philippe had been trained during the coup years by US Special Forces in Ecuador, together with a dozen other Haitian Army officers. Two other rebel commanders were Emmanuel "Toto" Constant and Jodel Chamblain, former members of the Duvalier era enforcer squad, the Tonton Macoute, and leaders of FRAPH.