@mona_fawaz Respect! The Director of the NY Office of UN High Commissioner of Human Rights just resigned: “Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it.” Letter below-

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[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

The first 2-1/2 pages are a history of his decades with UNHCHR, especially on Palestine human rights, and then he closes out the last page and a half with the following:

What, then, would a UN-norm-based position look like? For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable, and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law? The answer, I believe, is simple - if we have the clarity to see beyond the propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice to which we are sworn, the courage to abandon fear and deference to powerful states, and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace. To be sure, this is a long-term project and a steep climb. But we must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points:

1 - Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presume political expediency. Our positions must be unapologietically based on international human rights and international law.

2 - Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity.

3 - One State based on human rights: 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.

4 - Fighting Apartheid: We must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid, just as we did for South Africa in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.

5 - Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.

6 - Truth and Justice: We must call for a transnational justice process, making full use of decades of accumulated UN investigations, enquiries, and reports, to document the truth, and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators, redress for all victims, and remedies for documented injustices.

7 - Protection: We must press for the deployment of well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.

8 - Disarmament: We must advocate fir tge removal and destruction of Israel's massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.

9 - Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.

10 - Solidarity: We must open our doors (and the doors of the SG [Secretary-General]) wide to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christin human rights defenders who are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their human rights and stop the unconstrained flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders, where they advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid, and impunity, and smear our human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.

This will take years to achieve, and western powers will fight us every step of the way, so we must be steadfast. In the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the longstanding siege on Gaza, stand up against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank (and elsewhere), document the genocidal assault on Gaza, help to bring massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction to the Palestinians, take care of our traumatized colleagues and their families, and fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN's political offices.

The UN's failure in Palestine thus far is not a reason for us to withdraw. Rather it should give us the courage to abandon the failed paradigm of the past, and fully embrace a more principled course. Let us, as OHCHR, boldly and proudly join the anti-apartheid movement that is growing all around the world, adding our logo to the banner of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people. The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.

I thank you, High Commissioner, Volker, for hearing this final appeal from my desk. I will leave the Office in a few days for the last time, after more than three decades of service. But please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance in the future.

(signed)

Craig Mokhiber

[–]therazorx👹🧹🥇 The road to truth is often messy. 👹📜🕵️🎖️[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

The Crazy thing about Number 3? Qaddafi, the man everyone called a "Whack job", called for this exact solution in the early 2000s

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

That's an interesting bit of history I never knew.

[–]therazorx👹🧹🥇 The road to truth is often messy. 👹📜🕵️🎖️[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Like I said before, the more I actually learn about Qaddafi, the more I grow to like the man, unfortunately too late.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Whatever his crimes domestically, he was doing some pretty amazing things regionally.

[–]therazorx👹🧹🥇 The road to truth is often messy. 👹📜🕵️🎖️[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'm no longer even convinced his "domestic crimes" were real.

they have CIA all over them.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You may be right. One thing I remember reading soon after he was set up to be brutally executed is that he had been collaborating with the US in its "war on terror". His crime, according to these sources, was talking about a Pan African project including a gold-backed financial system.

[–]therazorx👹🧹🥇 The road to truth is often messy. 👹📜🕵️🎖️[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yup.

And NATO stole all the gold he had stockpiled to do it.

Don't forget all the cash they stole as well.

Edit:

Oh and speaking of "Domestic" crimes, this Askhistorians thread is pretty telling.

For example;

Perhaps that's western bias. But the reality is that he earned his reputation as an autocrat, quashing dissidents swiftly. Some would point out his leniency (relative), in that he'd often exile dissenters for a set period of time with no threat of imprisonment or punishment when the de-facto sentence was up and they returned. While that is certainly preferable to being hanged for going against say, the Ayatollah, there can be no question that it was an authoritarian regime uninterested in giving power to its people. The power dynamic that feigned republican checks and balances did little other than put window dressing on centralized oversight.

and

In 1984, whatever leniency he'd promised was shown to be reneged upon at best, and a lie at worst. He had his forces execute Al-Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy on state television in a stadium for joining anti-government campaigns. What's noteworthy to the west is that Al-Sadek was an engineering student studying in the U.S. on a visa. The implications were grim.

Moving into 1986, the U.S. accused Gaddafi, or at least his Libyan loyalists, of being behind the Berlin discotheque bombing. An oil embargo was enforced, and then Reagan pushed for military intervention. In a brief bombing campaign, Libyan civilians were killed. This painted the US in a bad light on the world stage, and boosted Gaddafi's profile. It's not unrealistic to think that outside of the US, this might help garner sympathy for him.

However, Gaddafi refused to release two Libyan suspected of bombing a Scottish flight over Scotland in '88. The UN, British Parliament, and US all took very strong stances against the nation and its leader for this. Over 270 people were killed in the attack, and his complacence in sheltering the suspects is nearly impossible to paint in a favorable light. EDIT: he did finally release the two in 1999, and the flight was US-bound.

So basically his crimes were not that dissimilar to what the west does.