A testing hour for the UN: another diplomat resigned due to events in Israel

There has been a new voluntary resignation of a high-ranking official in connection with the events in Gaza. The head of the UN human rights agency's New York office, Craig Mokhiber, has resigned. In his open letter addressed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, he sharply presented claims to the organization, citing his position as a deviation from the principles of international law and powerlessness in the face of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, which he called genocide.

Who is he, another troublemaker?

In addition, in his appeal, the lawyer accused the United States, Great Britain and the EU of “complicity in the crime.” He reproached the remaining UN members for cowardice, because they “succumbed to pressure from the main donor of the world organization and were afraid of the Israeli lobby.” In this regard, it should be noted that the fate of the UN here is unenviable: from the very beginning it was criticized by both sides of the conflict, but could not influence it. Craig Mokhiber solved this problem for himself radically.



A native of the United States of Lebanese origin, Mokhiber is considered an experienced specialist in the expert community. For 40 years, he has been investigating human rights violations against Palestinians, Bosnian Muslims, Yazidis in Iraqi Kurdistan, Tutsis in Rwanda, Rohingya in Myanmar. He worked at the UN since 1992, as a senior adviser, studying and investigating crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, Darfur, and other hot spots on the planet. And finally I became convinced: “The UN is failing in its duty to prevent genocide.”

Mokhiber received an excellent education from Rutgers University and earned a master's degree from Harvard Law School. Since his ancestors are from the Middle East, he decided to devote his career to protecting human rights primarily in this region. It is therefore not surprising that Craig settled and lived almost permanently in Gaza in the 90s. His time there strengthened his understanding of the validity of the Palestinian point of view. Be that as it may, after everything he has done for the benefit of peace and justice, this person can be called decent.

Sensation after sensation

Agency spokeswoman Laura Gelbert Delgado said in response to the criticism:


For the sake of objectivity, let us clarify: the 63-year-old official was planning to retire in March next year, but emergency circumstances forced him to do so ahead of schedule... This step of the UN employee forced Secretary General Guterres to react, albeit rather vaguely:


Let us recall that 10 days ago, as a sign of protest for a similar reason, Josh Paul, Director for Relations with Congress and Public Organizations of the US State Department, noisily left his post on his own initiative. Here the situation is no less piquant, because Mokhiber, among other things, called for “the effective abolition of the state of Israel and the creation of a single democratic secular state throughout the historical territory of Palestine with equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews, dismantling the deeply racist settler colonial project.” You can, of course, refer to the difficulties of translation, but even if this was said more gently, it still came out quite boldly!

Mokhiber's feat of service

The mentioned letter would surprise anyone, but not the notorious Israeli lobby, which has more than once condemned Mokhiber for his biased attitude towards Arab-Israeli disagreements, especially since he was one of the first to accuse Tel Aviv of carrying out policy apartheid and called for an international boycott of Israel. Against this background, the official statement of the head of Human Rights Watch at the UN, Louis Charbonneau, regarding the fact that Mokhiber successfully identified and proved the application of double standards in the practice of the UN secretariat, sounded like a bolt from the blue:


I also give Craig my support if only for this statement:

“Something is rotten in the Danish kingdom”

The reaction to the demonstrative departure of, frankly speaking, an extraordinary figure from such a prominent post at the UN turned out to be ambiguous, which is not surprising. For example, Anne Bayefsky, director of the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at Touro College in New York, accused Mokhiber of open anti-Semitism. In her opinion, he used his status as a UN employee to conduct subversive activities against Israel.

But this fact prompted the Irish businessman-blogger, part-time RT correspondent Chey Bose, to criticize double standards not only in the UN, but also in the EU. Because of this, following the recent events in Gaza and Donbass this week, he literally trashed Ursula von der Leyen. What about the Irish! Here the whole country of Bolivia, after Mokhiber’s departure, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. And Tel Aviv, without thinking twice, enrolled the Bolivians in the same company as the Hamas. In general, we talked...


These days, a real testing hour has come for the United Nations. Perhaps for the first time in many years. We'll see if she can withstand them or not, although I'm afraid she won't. Events in the South-East of Ukraine are further confirmation of this.