#158 THE G|O BRIEFING, NOVEMBER 9, 2023
Exclusive: The Inside Story of a Senior UN Human Rights Official's Resignation | The Philosophy Behind Israeli Government's Dehumanizing Language
Friends,
Geneva, the humanitarian and human rights capital of the world, is consumed by the Israel-Hamas war. The recent, widely-reported resignation of Craig Mokhiber, Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), has shaken the Palais Wilson. His resignation letter reads as a scathing indictment of the Office and the UN itself, with the American-born human rights lawyer and UN human rights veteran of 32 years describing Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack as a “text-book case of genocide” which, he claims, the UN is failing to prevent.
The notion of genocide is one of the most thorny in international law, with the highest threshold of proof among international crimes. His resignation and the controversy around it have also shone the spotlight on major powers, led by the United States, who have defended Israel at all costs through successive wars, thus intimidating some U.N. institutions from speaking out. Many observers here told me that although they disagreed with some of the positions expressed by Craig Mokhiber, a conversation needed to take place around his letter’s central argument. “I also believe it is important to separate the messenger from the message,” one seasoned human rights observer told me.
From the moment the letter was leaked—in unclear circumstances—and went viral in late October, the UN has publicly distanced itself from its former high-level staff member. Mokhiber, the UN said, was expressing his personal opinions after having announced his intention to retire. Was Mokhiber fired, as some reports have it? Was he being investigated by the UN internal audit division, as was recently reported by The Guardian? Today in The Geneva Observer, we speak directly with Craig Mokhiber, look at the sequence of events, and address his motivations for leaving the organization.
The Inside Story of a Senior UN Human Rights Official’s Resignation.
THE GENEVA OBSERVER TALKS TO CRAIG MOKHIBER
Geneva, the humanitarian and human rights capital of the world, is consumed by the Israel-Hamas war. The recent, widely-reported resignation of Craig Mokhiber, Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), has shaken the Palais Wilson. His resignation letter reads as a scathing indictment of the Office and the UN itself, with the American-born human rights lawyer and UN human rights veteran of 32 years describing Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack as a “text-book case of genocide” which, he claims, the UN is failing to prevent.
The notion of genocide is one of the most thorny in international law—with the highest threshold of proof among international crimes. Many observers told me that although they disagreed with some of the positions expressed by Craig Mokhiber, a conversation needed to take place around his letter’s central argument. “I also believe it is important to separate the messenger from the message,” one seasoned human rights defender told me.
From the moment the letter was leaked—in unclear circumstances—and went viral in late October, the UN has publicly tried to distance itself from its former high-level staff member. Mokhiber, the UN said, was “expressing his personal opinions” after having announced his intention to retire. Was Mokhiber fired, as some reports have it? Was he being investigated by the UN internal audit division, as was recently reported by The Guardian? Today in The Geneva Observer, we speak directly with Craig Mokhiber, look at the sequence of events, and address his motivations for leaving the organization.
Timeline of Events
On February 28, 2023, Gnasher Jew, a UK-based organization that describes itself as a “group of experienced online investigators who expose Holocaust deniers and antisemites around the globe” using open-source intelligence, published an exposé on its website under the headline “High-ranking UN official’s antisemitism and extreme anti-Israel bias revealed.” Following a review of his social media posts, Gnasher Jew concluded that Craig Mokhiber's tweets violated “UN rules regarding impartiality, objectivity, and independence,” and called for his social media conduct to be investigated by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).
On March 16, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), an organization that “uses the law to prevent attempts to undermine, attack, and delegitimize Israel, Israeli organizations, Israeli citizens, and supports of Israel,” used the UN Office of Internal Oversight Service (OIOS) hotline to formally lodge a complaint. UKLFI’s Director told The G|O that it had acted after being contacted by Gnasher Jew. OIOS tells UKLFI that its “investigations division” will “carefully review” the report and decide which office is best suited to follow the matter.
On October 13, OIOS informed UKLFI that following a review of its complaint, OIOS management “has determined that this matter would be best addressed by the High Commissioner’s Office.”
In response to a November 6 email by UKLFI enquiring about the status of the investigation, OIOS confirmed that it had closed its own file on the matter as it had been referred directly to the High Commissioner’s Office.
Asked by The G|O to comment on the process, OHCR told us by email yesterday (November 8) that “for reasons of privacy and confidentiality, we are not at liberty to discuss matters concerning staff employment history and compliance with rules.” Asked if OHCHR was aware of Craig Mokhiber’s social media posts, the Office added that it “consistently takes action when we become aware that staff have used social media in a manner that is not in compliance with UN guidelines.”
Interview with Craig Mokhiber
(I spoke with Craig Mokhiber at length by Zoom yesterday. His interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.)
PHM: Why and when did you decide to resign?
CM: This all started in late February, early March, in the wake of a series of Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank, pogroms in Huwara, and a number of assaults on civilians around the same time. I had been quite frustrated that the UN, including my own office, had been reticent to adopt some strong public lines that I thought were necessary in the context of those abuses. It wasn’t new, but I found a very careful trepidatious approach that was being embraced with regard to Israeli violations, which was not being applied to other situations, and that there had been a trend up until that point in which that had been manifest. It reached this kind of knee-jerk reaction, drawing back and being careful qualifying things in ways that we didn't in other situations [Mokhiber referenced Sri Lanka and Myanmar], so I was quite visible and vocal about it.
And then, although I was unaware of it and learned about it only recently from The Guardian, there was a campaign by a network of Israel lobby groups that are focused on the UN and make a living from attacking UN staff and UN Human Rights officials. They reviewed every public statement I had made since the 1980s but were unable to find even the most minimal utterance of anything antisemitic in any way. So, instead, what they did was to consolidate all my critiques of Israeli human rights violations and said, essentially, “Look at all these criticisms of Israel: he's an antisemite.”
It is an old tactic to conflate the state of Israel and the Jewish people. I have criticized human rights violations in dozens of countries all around the world. I've never been attacked for it. Of course, those governments are never happy. But there has never been an organized campaign. It is only when it comes to Israel that there is this attempt to silence, because there’s a well-oiled machine designed to make sure that it happens. It is supported by the US, the UK, and some European governments. Because of that, the UN broadly, and parts of our Office as well, have gotten into the habit of these trepidatious approaches because they don’t want to be subjected to pressure from powerful Member States.
Criticism of Israeli human rights violations is not antisemitic any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Burmese violations is anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu. If all of those were true, then there would be no international human rights framework, and we could all go home.
What was the reaction of the UN when in March, you started being more vocal in expressing your frustration?
There was a kind of crackdown on me, I was basically told to be silent, not to say anything in public that the High Commissioner hadn’t said. After 32 years as a senior human rights official, it’s not something that I could accept. And it became very clear to me that, on the one hand, the organization was headed in a dangerous direction that I thought was inconsistent with our mandates and, on the other, I could be more influential outside the organization than inside if I was going to be subjected to these reactions when I spoke publicly on this issue. Again, I have spoken out on human rights violations in dozens of countries around the world in all continents, but it’s only when I dare to speak out about the violations of Palestinian rights that I’m subjected to pressure internally or externally.
So, in March, I informed the High Commissioner [Volker Türk], that I was very concerned about the fear of powerful Western member states and lobbies cowing us into silence, and encouraged an approach where we would basically speak truth to power and not be cowed, because they could only succeed if we silence ourselves. I have a good relationship with the High Commissioner, so it wasn’t an angry conversation. It was a very polite exchange. I told him I intended to leave in the coming months because of this situation. And then the situation got much worse, the event in Gaza in October looked prima facie to me like a textbook case of genocide unfolding. And in my view, the reaction from the UN was wholly inadequate for the historical moment that we were facing. So, I sat down, and I put in excruciating detail what I thought was wrong with the approach that the UN was taking.
It’s not true that I was forced out of the organization—I mean, I wasn’t fired or squeezed out. But I was forced out in the sense that I was put in conditions that I didn't want to work in.
Do you agree that a review of your tweets can lead to the conclusion that you have what your critics call a clear anti-Israel bias?
I could accept that if that was the whole story, but it is not. When you pull out only the quotes that relate to a particular country and go over a long period of time you could get the impression I am obsessed with Israel. But if you look at the broader set of human rights issues and themes and countries that I address you would reach the conclusion that I am morally and legally consistent. And as a human rights lawyer, being legally consistent is important to me.
But experts I talked to disagree with you on the genocide question. In its response, OHCHR responded that “the definition of genocide under international law is narrow and very specific. It requires proof of intent to destroy, as such, a protected group, in whole or in part—in short, to destroy people purely because of who they are. That type of investigation needs to be undertaken by a competent court, and even then, it can take years. It is a determination that is especially difficult in the midst of hostilities.”
In my legal analysis, I write that this is a textbook case of genocide because you have a situation in which a catalog of the elements of the definition of genocide contained in the UN Genocide Convention are occurring in plain sight—including large-scale killings, serious harm, bodily harm being inflicted on that population, and including the provision that talks about imposing conditions of life designed to bring out the destruction of a population. In Gaza, we know the siege and the closure, which are specifically designed to deny them health, education, housing, water, sanitation and medicine, and free movement—everything to make things as unlivable in Gaza as possible.
And then you have explicit declarations of genocidal intent. We have a situation where senior Israeli officials—including the President, the Prime Minister’s senior cabinet, ministers, and senior military officials—have publicly exposed and declared genocidal intent. Normally, when you're doing research on a case of genocide, you have to get your hands on the archives and the secret documents on the behind-the-scenes conversations to get evidence of intent. That's not the case here.
It is true, as the office says in our official talking points, that only a court of law can make that determination. But my problem is that we only say that with a crime of genocide, we are not so reticent when we're talking about war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, summary executions—you name the crime—it's only for the crime of genocide. And you wonder how that's justified. The convention is on the prohibition and prevention of genocide. But if you are only willing to make that assertion after the killing has stopped, then we are not meeting the obligations of prevention that are set out in convention and international law.
Why didn’t you mention Hamas in your letter?
I didn't mention Hamas in my letter, because the UN has no problem with criticizing armed groups like Hamas. And it has no problem with criticizing small and weak states. My letter was a complaint about where the UN was falling down, which is criticizing powerful states, and criticizing Israel.
Do you agree that Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 qualifies as a terrorist act or not?
I think what Hamas did on October 7 included war crimes for which they should be held accountable. No doubt about it. I think they should be held accountable under the rule of law. But I don't think that there's any relationship between Hamas’ war crimes on October 7 and a credible justification for the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
So I will repeat again, for clarity’s sake, yes, any Hamas fighters or their commanders who are implicated in war crimes on October 7 should be held accountable under the rule of law. That’s unacceptable. And any Israeli officials, military personnel, political officials, or settlers who participated in war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, gross violations of human rights before and after October 7 should equally be held accountable under the rule of law.
I find a bit surprising that you accuse the UN and OHCHR of bowing to pressure when the Secretary-General himself had very strong words about the situation—to the point that Israel’s ambassador to the UN in New York called for his resignation…
I think the Secretary-General was compelled to try to open up the conversation. 90 members of his own staff have been killed under those bombs. The whole world is watching this wholesale slaughter, 10,000 civilians killed in a span of just a few weeks. I think the Secretary-General understood very well that this is not a moment in which you can be too gentle or too silent. Now, he could have gone further, he could have spoken about the Israeli perpetrators of war crimes in the same condemnatory language that he used with regard to Hamas.
Why did you write this letter? Who was your audience? What were you trying to achieve with it?
I wrote it to the High Commissioner and shared it with other senior officials and colleagues close to me. I was writing it to the UN. I had no intention of leaking it myself, but it was leaked. Actually, I was not disappointed when it was, once I saw the impact that it had on getting people to open up and expand the conversation inside the UN—and outside the UN as well.
I was very surprised at the uptake of the letter—I mean, I literally sat down, wrote that letter, and sent it. I didn’t edit it, I didn’t write drafts, I just poured out what was in my heart. And that came from my conversations inside the UN going back for years. I’m not a Palestine specialist. I've worked on dozens of countries, on dozens of themes. I’m not criticizing the whole UN. I love the UN, I dedicated my life to it. The engine of the UN are people who are there because they believe in human rights, development, and peace. They hate war. They hate inequality. They hate poverty, they hate human rights violations, and the arrogance of power. I have nothing but praise for them. My problem is with the political side of the house, which is to say the political leadership, the political appointees, and the intergovernmental mechanisms like the Security Council, that have so terribly failed humanity.
Interview: Philippe Mottaz
Understanding Israel’s Dehumanizing of Palestinians—Rereading Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas
Israel’s bombing and incursion into Gaza raise the question of proportionality. In addition to numerous war crimes and/or crimes against humanity, this fundamental issue is being egregiously violated. It must, of course, be acknowledged that 1,400 Israelis were killed on October 7 and over 200 taken hostage. But in terms of proportionality, does that justify the collective punishment being meted out—killing over 10,000 Palestinians; withholding basic food, electricity, medical supplies and fuel for 2.3 million people; forcing displacement; and destroying a significant portion of Gaza and its infrastructure? I will attempt to answer this question with a brief look at the work of two eminent Jewish philosophers which may provide some insight into Israel’s underlying attitude towards Palestinians and disproportional actions.
The notion of proportionality dates to the Hammurabi Code’s famous dictum of ‘An eye for an eye’ in 1750 BC. It is also found in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus 21:23-27. Note that an eye for an eye doesn’t mean an eye, a leg, an arm, or a head for an eye, or killing an entire family and its neighbors for an eye. An eye for an eye, despite being a primitive and unforgiving call for vengeance, respects proportionality.
The concept of proportionality is also fundamental in current international law. Specifically, Article 8 (2) (b) (iv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court “prohibits intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the non-human environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.”
(The disproportionate use of force by Israel has been confirmed by The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently, in typical diplomatic language. “We have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes,” it posted on social media.)
Beyond the legal question of proportionality, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, lies the underlying attitude of the Israeli government towards Palestinians, which is reflected in the October 9 statement by Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
Two prominent Jewish philosophers are worth citing in respect to the Minister’s statement and the government’s actions. Without going into an exegesis of texts (which I have done previously),[i] a brief look at Martin Buber’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ work clarifies the attitude and actions of the current Israeli government.
Both Buber and Levinas were concerned with social relationships. In their writings, they emphasized that interpersonal relationships are the basis of all ethics and intersubjectivity. While much of it is highly abstract, their work does have relevance for the underlying Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians and the current excessive violence.
Martin Buber (1878-1965) was a Jewish Austrian/Israeli philosopher known for his dialogical writings about the distinction between I-Thou and I-It. I-Thou refers to the “co-consitution” of all beings; it is an attitude in which we recognise another entity as distinct from ourselves but not entirely separate, and we “relate” to it—whether it is another person, or a non-human object like a tree. I-It, on the other hand, is built on the complete separation of subject and object; it describes an attitude to discrete entities separate from ourselves, which we sense, experience or use—however, it can also apply to our relationship with other humans.
Buber’s own political position of binationalism was different from Israel’s founders’ desire for a uniquely Jewish state. However, the possibility of separation between a relational attitude (I-Thou) and a more objective attitude (I-It) is central to the current political situation: It is clear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have an I-It relationship with Palestinians. To call Palestinians “human animals,” as the defense minister did, is only possible in an I-It relationship. There is no universal—or even minimally neighborly semitic—I-Thou relationship possible.
The possibility of the separation of I-Thou from I-It was the exact criticism leveled at Buber by Emmanuel Levinas, a French/Jewish philosopher of the 20th century. Levinas believed in an all-encompassing relationship to the Other, a universal I-Thou that excluded the possibility of I-It. For Levinas, we are all intimately intertwined with others in a generalized, universal Other. However, this concept becomes strained when it comes to Levinas’ understanding of the Other with respect to Palestinians.
Here the story becomes more personal. I was invited to lecture at Hebrew University several years ago, and began by citing Levinas and his well-known philosophy of the importance of Otherness as “a social communion considered as the primary act of being.” It is because of this original communal relationship, according to Levinas, that we are responsible for others. “Responsibility for the other, this way of answering without a prior commitment, is human fraternity itself, and it is prior to freedom,” he wrote. “Responsibility for the other” and “humanity fraternity” are Levinas’ major philosophical contributions.
After citing Levinas and his all-encompassing “human fraternity” and “responsibility for the other,” I asked the audience of professors and students how this philosophy played out in terms of Israel’s relationship to Palestinians. I made specific reference to an extremely controversial radio interview[ii] Levinas gave in 1982, two weeks after the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon, carried out by Christian militiamen acting under the protection of the Israeli Defense Force. In the interview, Levinas was asked: “Emmanuel Levinas, you are the philosopher of the ‘Other.’[…] For the Israeli, isn’t the ‘Other’ above all the Palestinian?”
Levinas replied: “The other is the neighbor, who is not necessarily kin, but who can be […] But if your neighbor attacks another neighbor or treats him unjustly, what can you do? Then alterity [otherness] takes on another character, in alterity we can find an enemy, or at least then we are faced with the problem of knowing who is right and who is wrong, who is just and who is unjust. There are people who are wrong.” (Italics added.)
Robert Bernasconi, professor of philosophy at Penn State University, directly criticized Levinas’ beliefs, which he summarized as being: “the Palestinian is not as such the Other of the Jew.” Recalling this, I asked the audience why, according to Levinas, Palestinians were outside the Other.
There was a great silence in the room. No one directly answered my question. Eventually I was told I didn’t understand the implications of Levinas’ non-recognition of Palestinians as members of his all-encompassing Other. I was admonished for not understanding the context. To the Hebrew University audience, I was obviously pro-Palestinian, hence anti-Israel and, by extension, antisemitic. The professors and students all accepted Levinas’ rejection of Palestinians as part of any all-encompassing Other. I didn’t agree.
The Israeli Defense Minister’s description of the Hamas terrorists as “human animals” and the disproportionate Israeli reaction to October 7 are part of decades of an asymmetrical relationship between Israel and Palestinians. There can be no talk of a one-state solution, a federation, or even a two-state solution until there is an Israeli recognition of Palestinians as equals and worthy of being treated proportionally in a symmetrical, humane relationship based on mutual dignity. Until Palestinians become part of the I-Thou in Buber’s terms, and are included in the Other in Levinas’, there will be no peace.
-DW
[i] [i] For a more detailed analysis see Daniel Warner; “Levinas, Buber and the Concept of Otherness in International Relations: A Reply to David Campbell.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies. 1996. Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 111-128.
[ii] A detailed description of the interview and conflicting interpretations can be found at: Oona Eisenstadt and Claire Elise Kintz: “The Faceless Palestinian: A History of an Error.” Telos 174(Spring 2016): pp. 9-32.
This is a slightly edited version of a piece that first appeared in Counterpunch.
ELSEWHERE IN THE ECOSYSTEM
ILO’s Governing Body will vote tomorrow on a resolution supported by the Workers, the EU, and other governments to obtain a ruling by the International Court of Justice on the right to strike, as we recently reported.
Philippe Mottaz
Employers are opposing the resolution, proposing that the issue be addressed through an ILO Protocol, as they challenge the longstanding views of ILO experts that the right to strike is included within the ILO Convention on Freedom of Association. The resolution is expected to be accepted, sources tell The G|O, but a final decision won’t be made before the Employers are heard on Saturday. An ICJ ruling could have an impact on hundreds of millions of workers around the world.
Today's Briefing: Philippe Mottaz - Daniel Warner
Editorial assistance: David Jenny
Edited by: Dan Wheeler, with Stephanie Nebehay
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