After more than three decades of service, Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, has resigned from his position in protest over the “text-book case of genocide,” in Gaza.
“This will be my last communication to you,” Mokhiber wrote in his four-page resignation letter to the agency’s leader, Volker Turk, on October 28.
“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber wrote.
“As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a U.N. human rights adviser in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.”
Mokhiber criticized the office for failing to prevent mass atrocities, protect vulnerable groups, and hold perpetrators accountable, citing past genocides of Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, Yazidi, and Rohingya people.
He adds, “We are failing again.”
“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 added.
“In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred,” he continues.
“This is a textbook case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine,” the letter read.
Mokhiber alleged that the United States, the United Kingdom, and a significant portion of Europe were “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”.
He said, “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.”
He concluded by saying, “The failure of the United Nations in Palestine should not prompt withdrawal, but rather inspire courage to abandon the past model and adopt a more principled approach. As the Commission for Human Rights, we must join the global anti-apartheid movement, advocating for equality and human rights for the Palestinian people, and standing by justice at this critical moment in history.”
The escalation between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Israeli forces continues after Hamas launched, at dawn on October 7, the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, in which thousands of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, storming Israeli settlements, and capturing soldiers and civilians.
Israel responded by launching Operation Iron Swords, threatening Hamas with severe consequences for its attack.
In Gaza alone, 8,525 Palestinians have been killed, including 3,500 children and 21,543 citizens wounded due to Israeli attacks.
On the Israeli side, at least 1,405 people have been killed, including 306 soldiers, 5,431 injured and more than 220 hostages captured.
