NEW YORK: The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR) resigned with a strongly-worded letter to the OHCHR saying that the UN “surrendered to the power of the US” and has given in to the “Israeli lobby.”

“This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase,” said Craig Mokhiber in his resignation letter, published on Tuesday. “Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,” read the letter.

The UN has repeatedly failed to stop genocides, Mokhiber noted, listing events in Rwanda and Bosnia, the genocide of the Yazidis by the Islamic State, and the Rohingya in Myanmar as examples. He went on to say that the UN has lost its global credibility.

He finished with the highly-controversial sentiment that a two-state solution for the problem is “illusory” and called for a complete dismantling of Israel, which he called a “deeply racist, settler-colonial project.”

Mokhiber has worked for the UN since 1992 and previously acted as a senior human rights adviser in Palestine, Afghanistan and Sudan. As a lawyer in human rights law, he lived in Gaza in the 1990’s. According to the UN, he submitted his plans to retire in March 2023, before the situation was gained global attention following the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Since the attacks, global protests have erupted calling for a ceasefire as Israeli military retribution has killed over 8,000 Palestinians in the Gaza strip, an area where half of the population is made up of children. The Hamas attacks and Israel’s response have also reignited a wave of anti-Semitism from those who refuse to separate the acts of the Israeli government from Jewish people across the world.