On Tuesday, a letter by Mokhiber to Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights, was made public, which explained that the UN high-ranking diplomat resigned over the organization's stance on the war between Israel and Hamas. Mokhiber stopped working at the organization on November 1.
Mokhiber pointed out that following the escalation in October, the world has been witnessing "the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza", while the United Nations has totally failed to respond effectively to the situation and noted that a humanitarian ceasefire was blocked by the United States in the Security Council.
"I think [there has been a] very inadequate public response of the political side of the UN to what I have said as a human rights lawyer, looks like a case of genocide. And I don't use that word lightly. Because, you know, genocide is defined by the UN Convention Against Genocide " Mokhiber said. "It sets out a definition and the specific elements of genocide, which I believe have been manifest in the Israeli response in Gaza.”
Commenting on his decision to resign, Mokhiber stressed that his criticism wasn't of the overall UN - he was always very proud of heroic work by the humanitarian workers in Palestine, the human rights monitors in Palestine, the independent UN Human Rights mechanisms have been absolutely heroic - but he criticized that these workers "have been abandoned by the political side of the UN."
For the past 30 years, the UN "has grown increasingly weak in its approach to the Middle East," he explained. "It has dropped its emphasis of international human rights law and international humanitarian law and the UN Charter, and instead has moved into this very amorphous political approach that defers to Israel as the occupying power, defers to Western states that are allied with Israel."
Therefore, he went on to say, there has been the continuous worsening of the situation in Israel and Palestine, especially over the course of the last 30 years.
"In March. when there were a series of atrocities happening on the West Bank, and I felt that our response was too quiet. I made a series of public statements about the situation," he shared. "That brought a blow-back and not just from Israel lobby organizations that were trying to silence me, but even from inside the UN itself. So, I wrote to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, I expressed my concern for these trepidatious approaches by the UN and the need to speak more boldly based upon human rights and humanitarian law. And I indicated that I would be leaving the organization after 32 years in the coming months."
On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise large-scale rocket attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip and breached the border, killing and abducting people in neighboring Israeli communities. Israel launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to more than 2 million people, cutting off supplies of water, food, and fuel. On October 27, Israel announced it is expanding ground operations in Gaza to eliminate Hamas fighters and rescue the hostages.