Following the horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s collective punishment of innocent civilians in Gaza in response, Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights until yesterday, has said four things some of which, up to now, have been almost unmentionable. But, daring to say them,  he is certainly a hero.

He has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. You’re not allowed to even suggest that Israel could ever be guilty of genocide or ethnic cleansing, after the mass slaughter of the Jews in the Nazi Holocaust. But Mokhiber says what is happening in Gaza is “a textbook case of genocide”, and he also accuses the UN of failing to prevent it.

He accuses “the US, the UK and much of Europe” not only of that failure but also of “arming Israel’s assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.”

He says:

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.

He suggests a solution:

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.

These are the things he’s said.

He’s a hero.

Top UN official in New York steps down citing ‘genocide’ of Palestinian civilians: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/un-official-resigns-israel-hamas-war-palestine-new-york?embed=true