A top-ranking UN official, Craig Mokhiber, has resigned from his position in protest against the organisation’s failure to stop Israel’s “genocide” of Gazan Palestinian civilians.
Mokhiber was the Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In his resignation letter, he said the world is “seeing a genocide” unfold and the UN is not taking enough action to stop it.
Mokhiber said he has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights adviser in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country.
He mentioned various genocides against population groups in history and said that the organisation has failed in its protection of the Palestinian people.
“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate,” he said.
Mokhiber brought up the attacks on homes, schools, churches, mosques, and hospitals, adding that in the West Bank, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race in the occupation, making it a “textbook case of genocide.”
“This is a textbook case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, towards the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine,” said Mokhiber, elaborating on why he says it's a genocide.
He stated that the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe are “wholly complicit” in this situation.
“Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations ‘to ensure respect’ for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.”
In addition to that, he said Western corporate media are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] by broadcasting “propaganda for war“ and advocating hatred that may constitute incitement to discrimination and violence.
He revealed that in recent times, parts of the UN have fallen under the power of the US and Israel. This made them abandon the principles that the organisation stood for “and to retreat from international law itself”.
Despite what Israel has recently said during its UN hearings, Mokhiber reiterated that criticism of Israel’s human rights violations is not anti-Semitic.
He also heavily slammed the two-state solution, which many hailed as a good solution to ending the war. But Mokhiber said the two-state solution is not only impossible but also fails to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people.
While Mokhiber did not give one ultimate solution, he said it was imperative that the UN abandon the “failed and disingenuous” Oslo paradigm and the two-state solution.
On that note, he called for one state based on human rights and said the UN must insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in surrounding Middle East countries, and in the diaspora across the globe.
“We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.”
In addition to that, he said the UN must call for a justice process, investigations, inquiries, and reports to ensure accountability.
He also said the organisation should set its sights on advocating for the removal and destruction of Israel’s massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
IOL