UN human rights official resigns over ‘textbook case of genocide’ in Gaza

NEW YORK — A New York-based United Nations human rights official has resigned over the organization’s response to the situation in Gaza, which he described as a “textbook case of genocide.”

Craig Mokhiber, the director in the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, announced his resignation in a letter shared publicly on Tuesday — more than three weeks into the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“This is a textbook case of genocide,” he wrote in an Oct. 28 letter to Volker Türk, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. “The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.”

He added that at Western governments “are wholly implicit in the horrific assault.”

“Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Convention, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.”

The statement echoed a recent social media post by Mokhiber.

“The genocide we are witnessing in Palestine is the product of decades of Israeli impunity provided by the US & other western governments & decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by western corporate media,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Both must end now. Speak up for human rights.”

Mokhiber’s resignation comes as reports of antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents increase in the U.S. and around the world.

Since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel earlier this month which killed 1,400 people, the Gaza Health Ministry reports the death toll in the region has exceeded 8,000.

_____