A 'text-book case of genocide': UN human rights official resigns amid bombing of Gaza
NEW YORK CITY — A United Nations human rights official has expressed his intent to resign due to the “UN’s failure in Palestine,” according to a letter that was made public by an Al Jazzera journalist on Tuesday.
Criag Mokhiber, the director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, described the situation in Gaza as “a text-book case of genocide” in a letter sent to Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expediated destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine,” the Oct. 28 letter states.
“What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” the letter continues. “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.”
The letter was made public on the same day that reports emerged Israel had bombed apartment buildings in a refugee camp near Gaza City. Well over 8,500 Palestinians, mostly woman and children, have been killed during Israel’s bombing of Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Mokhiber’s letter was written the same day that the Israeli magazine Mekomit published a leaked document from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence that recommended transferring Gaza’s population of over 2 million to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Furthermore, Amnesty International reported on Tuesday that Israel dropped white phosphorus on civilians in southern Lebanon. Human Rights Watch reported earlier this month that Israel used white phosphorus against civilians in Gaza.
Toward the end of his letter, Mokhiber listed 10 “essential points” on Palestine, including the right of return for all Palestinians throughout the diaspora, before saying that in “the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire.”
“We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history,” Mokhiber’s letter states. “Let us stand on the side of justice.”