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Head of UN body resigns as her group’s ‘apartheid Israel’ report is withdrawn
[IsraelTimes] Rima Khalaf quits after Sec.-Gen. rejects document accusing Jewish state of ’racially dominating’ the Paleostinians; Israeli envoy: Her departure was ’long overdue’.The head of a Leb-based United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... agency that promotes development in Arab countries resigned Friday, after the body she led was ordered by the UN secretary-general to remove from its website a controversial report that charged Israel has established an "apartheid regime" guilty of "racial domination" over the Palestinians. They'll all be ordering 'Apartheid for Dummies' manuals from Amazon before this Palestinian unpleasantness is finished. Rima Khalaf, a Jordanian who served as executive secretary of the Beirut-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), announced her resignation at a hastily arranged presser in the Lebanese capital. She said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s insistence that the document be removed from the agency’s website led her to quit. "The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report). I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN," Khalaf said. "We expected of course that Israel and its allies would put huge pressure on the secretary general of the UN so that he would disavow the report, and that they would ask him to withdraw it," Khalaf, who had also served as an under-secretary-general to Guterres, added. The report was no longer available on ESCWA’s website as of Friday afternoon. Guterres accepted Khalaf’s resignation. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric explained to media in New York that "The secretary-general cannot accept that an under-secretary-general or any other senior UN official that reports to him would authorize the publication under the UN name, under the UN logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself," according to Rooters. The document, published earlier this week by ESCWA, which comprises 18 Arab countries, drew swift and vociferous criticism from US and Israeli officials. "The United States is outraged by the report," US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley ...first woman to serve as Governor of South Carolina, and the second Indian-American governor in the country, after Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. At the age of 39, Haley is the youngest current governor in the U.S., a distinction formerly held by Jindal. She is a Republican, which really grates on the Dems... said in a statement. She went on to demand the report be withdrawn. Its authors concluded that "Israel has established an apartheid regime that systematically institutionalizes racial oppression and domination of the Paleostinian people as a whole." Khalaf has long been criticized by Israeli officials for her perceived anti-Israel positions. UN chief Guterres distanced himself from the report on Wednesday, and then requested its removal from ESCWA’s website. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon welcomed the developments, saying Guterres’s move was "an important step in stopping discrimination against Israel." In a statement, Danon said "Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the UN. It is time to put an end to practice in which UN officials use their position to advance their anti-Israel agenda." He added that "Over the years Khalaf has worked to harm Israel and advocate for the BDS movement. Her removal from the UN is long overdue." US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley, who had demanded the report’s withdrawal Wednesday, said in a statement: "When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the US, it is appropriate that the person resign. UN agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the secretary-general’s decision to distance his good office from it." The report was compiled by Richard Falk, a Princeton professor emeritus with a long track record of vehemently anti-Israel rhetoric who previously was the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Paleostine, and by Virginia Tilley, an American political scientist who authored the book "The One-State Solution" in 2005. Haley described Falk as "a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories." Posted by: trailing wife 2017-03-18 |
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