In New York City, Craig Mokhiber, the director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights and longtime human rights lawyer, stepped down in protest over the U.N.’s failure to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which he called a “text-book case of genocide.”
“The 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 … leaves no room for doubt.”
Mokhiber said: “This is text book case of genocide” and said the United States, UK and much of Europe were not only “refusing to meet their treaty obligations” under the Geneva Conventions but were also arming Israel’s assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.
“We must support the establishment of a single, democratic secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews,” he wrote, adding: “and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.”
Mokhiber has worked for the UN since 1992, serving in a number of increasingly prominent roles. He led the high commissioner’s work on devising a human rights-based approach to development, and acted as a senior human rights adviser in Palestine, Afghanistan and Sudan.
A lawyer who specialises in international human rights law, he lived in Gaza in the 1990s.
