{"id":275216,"date":"2023-11-02T07:10:11","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T07:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=275216"},"modified":"2023-11-03T08:07:13","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T08:07:13","slug":"top-un-official-in-new-york-steps-down-citing-genocide-of-palestinian-civilians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=275216","title":{"rendered":"Top UN official in New York steps down citing \u2018genocide\u2019 of Palestinian civilians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Pilkington \u2013 The Guardian Oct 31, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has left his post, protesting that the UN is \u201cfailing\u201d 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 \u201cwholly complicit in the horrific assault\u201d.<\/p>\n

Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying: \u201cThis will be my last communication to you\u201d in his role in New York.<\/p>\n

Mokhiber, who was stepping down having reached retirement age, wrote: \u201cOnce again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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: \u201cHigh Commissioner we are failing again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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 \u2026 leaves no room for doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mokhiber added: \u201cThis is text book case of genocide\u201d and said the US, UK and much of Europe were not only \u201crefusing to meet their treaty obligations\u201d under the Geneva Conventions but were also arming Israel\u2019s assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.<\/p>\n

The outgoing director\u2019s departure letter did not mention the 7 October attack by Hamas<\/a> on southern Israel killing more than 1,400 people and taking 240 hostages. Even more contentiously, his letter calls for the effective end to the state of Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must support the establishment of a single, democratic secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews,\u201d he wrote, adding: \u201cand, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mokhiber has worked for the UN since 1992, serving in a number of increasingly prominent roles. He led the high commissioner\u2019s work on devising a human rights-based approach to development, and acted as a senior human rights adviser in Palestine, Afghanistan and Sudan.<\/p>\n

A lawyer who specialises in international human rights law, he lived in Gaza in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

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. He was criticised for posting<\/a> support of the boycott, divest, sanctions (BDS) movement and accusing Israel of apartheid \u2013 an accusation which he repeated in his retirement letter.<\/p>\n

Journalists and academics began posting the letter<\/a>\u2019s content to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the UN in New York sent the Guardian a statement about Mokhiber, saying: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement went on: \u201cThe position of the office on the grave situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel is reflected in our reports and public statements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaction to Mokhiber\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to agree with everything in the letter to see that he\u2019s 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\u2019s not too late to turn the UN ship around, but they need to do it quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

By contrast, Anne Bayefsky, who directs Touro College\u2019s Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust in New York, accused Mokhiber on social media<\/a> of \u201covert antisemitism\u201d. She said he had used a UN letterhead to call for \u201cwiping Israel off the map\u201d.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has resigned, citing what he described as a \u201ctext book case of genocide\u201d in Palestine. In response Anne Bayefsky, who directs Touro College\u2019s Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust in New York, accused Mokhiber of \u201covert antisemitism\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275217,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275216\/revisions\/275217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=275216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=275216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}