Top UN Official Steps Down In Protest Of Palestinian 'Genocide'

UN High Commissioner Office Director, Craig Mokhiber stepped down from his position and stated that the UN is “failing” to do its duty to prevent the “genocide” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

A top-ranking official of the United Nations (UN), has resigned as he called for the dismantling of the “deeply racist, settler-colonial project" while citing “genocide" of the Palestinian civilians as Israel continues to batter Gaza. Craig Mokhiber, the Director of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York, stepped down from his position, by stating that the UN is “failing” to do its duty to prevent the “genocide” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment. In his “last communication” to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk on October 28, he said, “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it.”

Craig Mokhiber also alleged that the United States, United Kingdom and much of Europe were “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”, according to The Guardian.

“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.

According to The Guardian Mokhiber further said that it was “textbook case of genocide” adding that the US, UK and parts of Europe were not only refusing to meet their treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions but are also arming Israel’s assault and providing them with political and diplomatic cover.

However he did not mention the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel which killed more than 1,400 people and took 240 hostages. The former UN official called for a “one-state solution", which would mean the re-establishment of historic Palestine and end of the Jewish state.

As per The Guardian, Craig Mokhiber 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”.

Mokhiber has worked for the UN since 1992, serving in several increasingly prominent roles. A lawyer who specialises in international human rights law, he lived in Gaza in the 1990s.