Tornado Alley (PROG)

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For years, only one state solution viable -- Top UN official in New York steps down citing ‘genocide’ of Palestinian civilians

"Once upon a time the area was predominately controlled by...
[...] "Analysis How Iran Really Sees the Israel-Hamas War
"Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza becoming a ‘graveyard for children’, UN chief says; 10,000 Palestinians killed, says Gaza health ministry
"How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel"""

Related: NINE years ago: Israel Claims Nearly 1,000 Acres of West Bank Land Near Bethlehem
By ISABEL KERSHNER AUG. 31, 2014
[...] The land, which is near the small Jewish settlement of Gvaot in the Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem, has now officially been declared “state land,” as opposed to land privately owned by Palestinians, clearing the way for the potential approval of Israeli building plans there.
P - But the mayor of the nearby Palestinian town of Surif, Ahmad Lafi, said the land belonged to Palestinian families. He told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli Army forces and personnel posted orders early Sunday announcing the seizure of land that was planted with olive and forest trees in Surif and the nearby villages of Al-Jaba’a and Wadi Fukin.
[...] 12 years ago: The only satisfactory solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict
is a one-state solution, which is antithetical to Zionism.
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With others here - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105827830

It's not Israel, but the Zionist vision for Israel which is long overdue for elimination. Religious zealotry is what the world could well do without.
One state for Jews, Muslims, Christians and others. All with equal rights. Other countries are melting pots. Why should Israel be so different.

Gaza hospitals ‘becoming unbearable’, says Red Cross; evacuations to Egypt suspended

Craig Mokhiber, director of human rights body, accuses the US, UK and much of Europe as ‘wholly complicit in the horrific assault’

Israel and Hamas at war – live updates

Ed Pilkington in New York
@edpilkington
Wed 1 Nov 2023 08.04 AEDT
First published on Wed 1 Nov 2023 05.30 AEDT

insert-text-here
The United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has left his post, protesting that the UN is “failing” in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”.

Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying: “This will be my last communication to you” in his role in New York.

Mokhiber, who was stepping down having reached retirement age, wrote: “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it.”

He said that the UN had failed to prevent previous genocides against the Tutsis in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, the Yazidi in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Rohingya in Myanmar and wrote: “High Commissioner we are failing again.

“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 added: “This is text book case of genocide” and said the US, 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.

The outgoing director’s departure letter did not mention the 7 October attack by Hamas .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/hamas .. on southern Israel killing more than 1,400 people and taking 240 hostages. Even more contentiously, his letter calls for the effective end to the state of Israel.

“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.

In his role as director of the New York office of the high commissioner for human rights, he has come under occasional fire from pro-Israeli groups for his comments on social media. He was criticised for posting .. https://www.thejc.com/news/world/top-un-human-rights-official-accused-of-extreme-anti-israel-bias-4zFvzt473lGsvSNGyOEkUJ .. support of the boycott, divest, sanctions (BDS) movement and accusing Israel of apartheid – an accusation which he repeated in his retirement letter.

Journalists and academics began posting the letter ..

NEW: @UNHumanRights NY Office Director @CraigMokhiber resigns in protest over timidity of key parts of #UN system on issues pertaining to Palestinian Human Rights. In letter to @volker_turk he says: "This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler… pic.twitter.com/lss1EvdLb3

— Rami Ayari (@Raminho) October 31, 2023

’s content to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday afternoon.

A spokesperson for the UN in New York sent the Guardian a statement about Mokhiber, saying: “I can confirm that he is retiring today. He informed the UN in March 2023 of his upcoming retirement, which takes effect tomorrow. The views in his letter made public today are his personal views.”

The statement went on: “The position of the office on the grave situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel is reflected in our reports and public statements.”

Reaction to Mokhiber’s outspoken departure from such a prominent UN position was mixed. Louis Charbonneau, the UN director at Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian that he had made a powerful argument against double standards in the stance of the world body.

“You don’t have to agree with everything in the letter to see that he’s made a powerful and depressing case that the UN lost its way on human rights when it comes to Israel and Palestine, partly due to pressure from the US, Israel and other governments. It’s not too late to turn the UN ship around, but they need to do it quickly.”

By contrast, Anne Bayefsky, who directs Touro College’s Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust in New York, accused Mokhiber on social media ..

Senior UN "human rights" official who used UN letterhead & UN email address to call for the destruction of the Jewish state - Craig Mokhiber - should be fired now! @UNHumanRights @USUN (p.s. he's blocking anyone who objects to his overt #antisemitism.) https://t.co/tzlwQ2UJIo pic.twitter.com/0zMfeH2P35

— Anne Bayefsky (@AnneBayefsky) October 31, 2023

.. of “overt antisemitism”. She said he had used a UN letterhead to call for “wiping Israel off the map”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/un-official-resigns-israel-hamas-war-palestine-new-york