This week marks two years since the launch of Al Aqsa Flood and the beginning of the Israeli Occupying Forces’ escalated genocide of Palestinians and forced displacement throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Clearing the FOG speaks with former senior United Nations official, human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, about the United Nations leadership’s recent efforts to suppress criticism of Israel, which led to his resignation, and the failure to take effective action to stop Israel’s crimes. Mokhiber discusses the history of the United Nations, what the General Assembly can do to hold Israel accountable and, given the failures of the UN to uphold international law, what people are doing to support Palestinian liberation.
Begins at 12:40
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Craig Gerard Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and activist and a former senior United Nations human rights official. A human rights activist in the 1980s, he would go on to serve for more than three decades at the United Nations, with postings in Switzerland, Palestine, Afghanistan, and UN Headquarters in New York, undertaking dozens of human rights missions to countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. In October of 2023, he left the United Nations, penning a widely read letter criticizing the UN’s human rights failures in the Middle East, warning of unfolding genocide in Gaza, and calling for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on international law, human rights, and equality.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Margaret Flowers: Craig, you left the United Nations on October 28th of 2023, the same month that Palestinians broke out of Gaza, which has been referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison. Can you talk about how that impacted you and your decision to leave the United Nations?
Craig Mokhiber: 2023 was a particularly disturbing year for the world and also for me. When this new government took control in Palestine and Israel in the beginning of 2023, it immediately announced that the gloves were off and that the country’s policy of incremental genocide that had gone on for decades would be replaced with an expedited form of attacking Palestinians. In the spring, there was a violent upsurge in racially-based attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, including full-scale pogroms in villages like Huwara by Israeli settlers backed up by Israeli soldiers. Ethnic cleansing was unleashed in the West Bank and there was a tightening of the persecution of the people in Gaza.
I was being vocal about this, as I had been on human rights abuses in dozens of countries all around the world for my entire 32-year career as a UN Human Rights official. Something very unusual happened that year. I was told to shut up, and that had not happened with regard to my human rights critiques. That effort by senior officials in the organization to silence me was directed by a kind of fear that had been growing within the organization over a very long period of time – a fear of demarches by the US and UK governments, a fear of being smeared by Israeli proxy groups around the world, a fear of distraction of the human rights agenda because of the need to deal with crises always generated by these proxy groups and by Israel itself inside of the of the UN.
I was quite stunned by that. I indicated to my colleagues at the UN that we should not lower our voices. When these intimidation campaigns begin, we should speak out more loudly. Otherwise, you’re reinforcing this very bad behavior. Nevertheless, the UN did try to silence me at that time and unwilling to be silent, I told them early in the year that I would complete the work I was doing and that I would leave because those are not the terms under which I could do human rights work. I thought that was a breach of everything that the UN stood for.
I had seen a long-term trend in the organization, not just an increasing trepidation but of increasingly dealing with the situation in Palestine in a way that was not law-based and was not human rights-based but was deferential to power, deferential to an amorphous political process led by the United States, Israel’s closest ally. That had resulted in this kind of dismissal of the human rights of the Palestinian people in favor of a kind of politics that said, “Let’s not be too tough on the Israelis.” That was not a framework in which I could work.
As the year went on, the human rights situation on the ground got worse and worse. That’s why I penned my final letter to the organization in October warning that genocide was unfolding in Gaza, challenging the direction of the UN’s work on Palestine and asking that we shift our focus in the organization to an approach based on human rights, international law, and equality. Since then, I have been working independently on the situation, essentially full-time on Palestine and on the genocide that’s been taking place without the shackles of the UN.
MF: Yes, sometimes we can be more effective that way. There have been calls coming for a while now to reform the United Nations because it hasn’t been effective in upholding its mission. I think it was 2019 when a group of countries organized The Friends in Defense of the United Nations Charter. Have you sensed discontent with the functioning of the United Nations?
CM: I’ve been saying that it’s not just Israel. Israel is on trial for genocide in the International Court of Justice. Its leaders have been indicted for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court. Israel has been found guilty of genocide and apartheid by every major international human rights organization. But it’s not just Israel that’s on trial at this moment, but also the United Nations, international institutions, and international law itself are on trial because, as cliche as it sounds, this is indeed the first livestreamed genocide in history where ordinary people all around the world see what’s happening. They know the atrocities that are being perpetrated and they see an international organization established ostensibly to fight against those things has been unable or unwilling to respond in the way that it needs to respond.
The UN General Assembly, in session now, has powers in its toolkit that it has not deployed, largely out of fear of the United States as a co-perpetrator in the genocide. You realize, if the UN doesn’t act, is unable or unwilling to act in these circumstances with a whole world that knows what’s going on, then it is a legitimate question to ask whether that organization should survive.
One thing I want to say, as I always do, is the part of the UN that I’m critiquing is the political side of the house, which is to say the Secretary-General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the senior advisors of the Security Council and the General Assembly. I have no critique whatsoever for the courageous workers of UNRWA, who are also a part of the United Nations, 373 of whom have been murdered by the Israelis just during this current wave of genocide, many along with their families. I have no critique for the very brave independent human rights monitors of the UN, like Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur, who has faced smears, slander, harassment, death threats and US sanctions simply for telling the truth. And yet, she refuses to silence herself. These are worthy humanitarians who have been trying to relieve Palestinian suffering. There are parts of the UN that we don’t want to throw out with the bathwater, right?
If there isn’t meaningful reform and a complete overhaul of the UN, or if the member states of the UN don’t pick up their responsibilities to use the powers they have, for example, in the General Assembly where there is no veto and when there are precedents for that body in the past doing meaningful things, the organization will be lost. There was a period of time in the 1960s and 70s when the United Nations was a beacon of hope for people all around the world, especially colonized peoples. That was the moment in which countries were gaining their independence from the brutal chains of colonialism and were joining together in the United Nations in a global majority that could take a more principled approach, that could fight against colonialism, apartheid and oppression of all kinds. If that political formulation of the UN could be returned with a bit of confidence, we could see an international institution make a difference for what it promised – peace and security, human rights, economic and social development. If they don’t, this will be another League of Nations footnote in the history of the world.
MF: That’s a history that’s not often talked about in the general discourse. I think that it was just over 40 countries, initially, that formed the United Nations, and then there was a great period of decolonization that followed. Let’s talk about this current session. There were, going into this, efforts to try to support Palestinian liberation and end the genocide. A simple one was just trying to have Palestine be recognized. Can you talk about what that means and the status of its recognition?
CM: Recognition is a good thing as a part of the program of self-determination of the Palestinian people. They deserve recognition of their state. But in fact, most of the world recognised the state of Palestine decades ago. What we’re seeing now are a few Western countries, the last holdouts, effectively beginning to recognize Palestine, which on its face is a good thing but does nothing to change the material conditions on the ground.
It is in many respects a diversion because they are trying, and I believe intentionally trying, to distract attention away from another track that had been evolving in the international system, a track for the first time ever of accountability for the Israeli regime to shift focus away from that emerging track toward a kind of buttressed impunity for the Israeli regime, normalization for the Israeli regime and replacement of an accountability international law based approach with one that is kind of an amorphous political process where the Palestinians are told they have to negotiate for their rights with their oppressor for the promise, somewhere down the road, of some kind of Palestinian Bantustan. Sadly, that approach is now dominating the discussions in and around the United Nations. If that happens, we can look forward to decades and decades more of bloodshed and injustice in Palestine and an increasing downward spiral of the legitimacy of the United Nations or international institutions generally.
Every permanent member of the Security Council has recognised the state of Palestine, except the United States, and that increasing marginalization of the US is a good thing because of the active impact of the US on foreign relations globally. There are just a few very isolated and marginalized states left in the world that don’t recognize the state of Palestine. And by the way, Israel does not have universal recognition. Israel has a few more than Palestine in terms of recognition, but none of this changes the reality on the ground, the centerpiece of which is the extermination of the Palestinian people in broad daylight.
MF: September 18th was an important date. In July of 2024, the International Court of Justice gave its opinion on Israel, calling it an illegal occupation, ordering it to dismantle itself and to allow Palestinians to return to their lands and their homes, and pay them reparations for the many years of genocide against them. What happened around that? Why is Israel still a member of the United Nations? Why was Benjamin Netanyahu allowed to travel when he has an arrest warrant and speak at the United Nations?
CM: Those things are outrageous. The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice last year was historic on many levels. Importantly, it was a wholesale return to a law-based, human rights-based approach to Palestine and an abandonment of the Oslo paradigm, in which Palestinians were expected to negotiate with their oppressor for whatever rights they could get. The mediator of the Oslo process was their co-oppressor, the United States government. It was outrageous and predictably resulted in a worsening of the situation of the Palestinian people.
The International Court of Justice last year said, “No, they don’t have to negotiate for their rights. These rights belong to them.” And by the way, they are jus cogens in erga omnes, the highest rights that exist in international law. All states are obliged to help them to realize them, to end the occupation immediately and entirely, and to provide reparations and compensation to the Palestinian people to ensure their right to return to their Homeland. And by the way, also, that Israel was practicing apartheid and racial segregation in violation of Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
All of that was really quite historic. It had put to rest this idea of negotiating for your rights in exchange for a kind of a promise maybe someday of a Bantustan. All of that was picked up a few months later by the General Assembly in September of 2024, who effectively codified the demands of the International Court of Justice and said that if Israel does not comply within a one-year deadline, further measures would be adopted. That deadline expired this year on September 18th.
Because of this ratcheting up of accountability for Israel, because of this chipping away at the long-standing impunity of Israel where Israel was above international law because it was protected by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others, Israel’s allies started to mobilize in international institutions to get away from that accountability track and back to the status quo ante that existed before October of 2023, in which the Palestinian people were forced to live in intolerable conditions in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem with the promise of some kind of a political process down the road. So moving away from law and back into a very unjust political formulation led by the United States and the Israelis imposing their will on the Palestinian people without the help of courts and human rights mechanisms, that impunity-based approach is now dominating. That’s what’s at the heart of the French-Saudi proposal. That’s what’s at the heart of the ‘American 20 points of colonialism’ that Donald Trump just announced. It is to move away from the rights of the Palestinian people and back into raw political domination by the Americans and the Israelis over the Palestinian people, and to tear off significantly at numbers of other actors in the international community so that cruel status quo can be sustained.
There are alternatives. President Petro of Columbia, just a few days ago in the General Assembly, announced that he would introduce a proposal that would be based on protecting the rights of the Palestinian people and holding the Israeli regime accountable. This, by the way, is the approach that the international community insists upon in every other case. It’s never about negotiating with the perpetrator. It’s about holding them accountable and standing in solidarity and helping to provide relief to the victims in those circumstances. President Petro’s proposal is being discussed by diplomats in New York as a counterproposal to these dominant proposals by the Americans, the French, the Saudis and others, that would be a much more human rights-based, that would include an international protection force mandated not by the Security Council, where we know it would be vetoed and not with the Chapter 7 power of the Security Council, which could impose itself on the Palestinian people against their will, but adopted by the General Assembly under a mechanism known as Uniting For Peace. This allows them to get around the Security Council veto and send a protection force based upon the consent of the Palestinian people that could protect civilian infrastructure, ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid into a starving population, preserve evidence of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and that could begin the process of reconstruction, open up the ports, break the siege and so on. It could also contain accountability measures for the Israeli regime, including the denial of their credentials in the United Nations, the establishment of a tribunal to hold perpetrators to account, and a call for sanctions and a mechanism to monitor them. It could include a call for a military embargo and a mechanism to monitor that. All of these measures could be adopted with a two-thirds vote in the UN General Assembly.
There are precedents from South Africa and precedents even for the mandating of a UN Force. In 1956, it was the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace mechanism that deployed the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) to the Sinai at the height of the Suez Crisis. That helped to change the political calculus on the ground and ultimately to free Egypt from this assault by the French and the British. And that was adopted over the objections of the French and the British as permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, over the objections of the Israelis, and was in fact deployed. So these powers exist. There are precedents for them. All it takes is the political will of most member states to make it happen. And that’s where we are now.
MF: For so many of us watching the genocide happen from the outside, we’ve felt that this is so long overdue, having people there to protect Palestinians. Despite that, there is division within the peace movement, anti-war movement in the United States over sending a protection force. People think of Haiti and the MINUSTAH there and how that has been a tool of oppression against the Haitians. What do you say to people who are concerned about using militarization to fight a genocide?
CM: I agree that the problem the world is militarization. The solution is not more militarization. I mean, that is the problem.
Sadly, at the moment, we’re living in a world where without that kind of force, we’re watching what is now the final stages of a genocide in which the Palestinian people are being exterminated in Gaza. We’re in the final stages of that. And now, that genocide is spreading across the West Bank as well. We have two options. One is to sit and watch even while we do long-term things like boycott and divestment and sanctions, which are all absolutely essential, but will not stop the genocide that has been perpetrated. For two years, it has been allowed to rage without international intervention. It seems to me there is a moral imperative of intervention. Secondly, it is the Palestinian people themselves who have requested this intervention. So not just the State of Palestine, which has requested it, but also the Palestinian people and the largest network of social movements and labor and non-governmental organizations, PNGO, have been repeatedly saying, “Please send this force. If you don’t, we are going to be wiped out.” And the people in Gaza have repeatedly, every time they had a microphone, said, “Where is the world? Come and help us.”
So, the moral question to us is: will we say yes or no to an appeal from the Palestinian people themselves for us to intervene in the midst of their extermination? Will we say, “No”? I can’t and I don’t know how anyone could just as a matter of a theoretical opposition.
The next thing is that everyone is right to fear the kind of proxy occupation that we have seen in Haiti and in other cases. But this is not the same thing because those are Chapter 7 uses of force that have the power to impose themselves against the will of the indigenous people. This proposal has no Security Council mandate and has no use of Chapter 7. It is consent-based and adopted in the General Assembly at the request of the Palestinians. And that means that the Palestinians can tell it how long it stays, what it does while it’s there, and when it has to leave. That is very different from the reality that we see in Haiti and in other places because it’s not a Chapter 7 mandate. You could never get a Chapter 7 because the Americans would veto it. And we wouldn’t want a Chapter 7 because we don’t want another proxy occupation. That’s precisely the French-Saudi plan, a modified form of proxy occupation. The American plan is a very direct form of proxy occupation. Palestinian people don’t need an occupation, they need more freedom, and you’re not going to do that through something that is controlled by the United States or by other external actors in the Gulf. They need freedom, not another layer of occupation, after living their lives, their parents’ lives, and their grandparents’ lives, under occupation.
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