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ISRAEL APARTHEID
COVER UP:
In Mid-March, Rima Khalaf resigned as executive
secretary of the United Nations Economic and So-
cial Commission for Western Asia after the agency
was forced to retract a report stating that Israel is
an apartheid regime. Translator & poet Lena
Khalaf Tuffaha prefaced her translation of Rima
Khalaf s letter of resignation with these words:
Dr. Rima Khalaf, career diplomat extraordinaire,
personal hero, and Executive Secretary of ESCWA,
resigned today after the UN Secretary General tried
to withdraw a report that correctly identified Israel
as an apartheid regime. Anyone who cares about
freedom and equality should read her letter of res-
ignation, which I have translated here. Her letter is
a document that is now part of the history of the
struggle for freedom. And anyone in the west whos
super worried about women in the Arab world
should sit down, because we have Rima and many
women like her who just need everyone to get out
the way so we can get our work done.Khalaf
women dont play. Palestinian women dont play.
Honorable Secretary General,
I have given a great deal of consideration to the
letter I received from your office, and I assure you
that I in no way question your right to issue instruc-
tions to remove the report from the Economic and
Social Commission for Western Asia web site, as I
do not question that as employees of the United
Nations, we must all execute the orders of our
Secretary General.
I know very well your commitment to the principles
of human rights in general and your position on the
rights of the Palestinian people specifically. And I
also understand the anxiety you must have in
these difficult times that leave you with few good
choices.
It is clear to me the kinds of pressures and threats
to which the United Nations and you personally are
subjected by states with authority and influence,
because of the publication of the UN report (Israeli
Practices towards the Palestinian People and the
Question of Apartheid) . I am unsurprised that
these states, which are run today by governments
with little concern for international principles and
human rights, should resort to tactics of fear-
mongering and threats when they fail to defend
their policies and practices which violate the law. It
makes sense that a criminal would attack those
who defend the cause of his victims, but I find my-
self incapable of bowing to such pressures, and
not because of my role as an employee of the
United Nations, but simply as a sane human being.
For I believeas you doin the values and noble
principles that have always represented the forces
of good throughout history, and upon which our
organization, the United Nations, was founded.
And, like you, I also believe that discrimination
against any human being on the basis of religion
or skin color or gender or ethnicity is absolutely
unacceptable, and cannot be made acceptable by
political maneuvering or brute force. And I believe
that to speak truth to power is not only a human
right, it is our obligation.
Over the course of two months, I have been in-
structed to withdraw two reports published by the
Commission of which I am executive secretary, not
for any error or shortcomings within the reports
themselves and not necessarily because you y-
ourself disagree with their content, but because of
political pressures from countries implicated by
their blatant violations of the rights of people in the
region and human rights in general.
You have seen with your own eyes how the people
of this region are enduring episodes of pain and
suffering unprecedented in their modern history,
and that the deluge of catastrophes that has over-
taken them today is a direct result of unchecked
oppression which has been ignored, or covered
up, or openly engaged in by governments with
dominance and force within the region and outside
of it. These same governments are the ones pres-
suring you today to silence the voice of truth and
the calls for justice represented by this report.
In view of all that I have stated here, I can only in-
sist on the findings of the ESCWA report, which
state that Israel has built an apartheid regime
which aims to give one ethnic group control over
another. The evidence provided in the report is in-
controvertible, and here it is sufficient to point out
that anyone who has attacked the report has been
incapable of calling into question a single word of
its actual content. I see it as my obligation to shine
a light on the truth and not to hide it or obscure the
testimony and evidence it provides.
The painful truth is that an apartheid regime still
exists in the 21st century, and this is unacceptable
under any law and is morally unjustifiable.
As I make this statement, I claim no moral superi-
ority and no greater clarity than you possess, the
matter is simply that my statements are a result of
an entire life spent here, in this region, witnessing
the horrific consequences of stifling people and
preventing them from expressing the truth of their
suffering through peaceful means.
As such, and after great consideration, I realize
that I too have no choice. I cannot withdraw, once
again, a United Nations report, an exceptionally
researched and well-documented report about
grave violations of human rights. I also realize that
the clear directives of the Secretary General of the
United Nations must be executed. And so the only
way to resolve this tangle is for me to step aside
and leave it to someone else to do what my con-
science prevents me from doing. I realize I have
only two weeks of service remaining in my post, so
my resignation is not meant to exert any political
pressure on you. I am simply resigning because I
believe my duty to the peoples of the region that
we serve, and to the United Nations, and to myself,
is not to silence the testimony about a crime that
causes such suffering to so many human beings.
For this reason, I submit to you my resignation
from the United Nations.
From the report:
Although the term apartheid was origi-
nally associated with the specific instance
of South Africa, it now represents a species
of crime against humanity under custom-
ary international law and the Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court, accord-
ing to which: The crime of apartheid
means inhumane acts committed in the
context of an institutionalized regime of
systematic oppression and domination by
one racial group over any other racial
group or groups and committed with the
intention of maintaining that regime.
"Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid."
-UN agency, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
withdrawn from the UNs, website The full 75 page report can be found at:
electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/2017-03/un_apartheid_report_15_march_english_final_.pdf
Thanks to Nada Elia, Verbena & mondoweiss.net
www.greenfuse.work
Running Orders
They call us now.
Before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
This is David.
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass
shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think Do I know any Davids in Gaza?
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this
message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war time courtesy.
It doesnt matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We arent trying to kill you.
It doesnt matter that
you cant call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want arent in your
house
that theres no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes
out.
It doesnt matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesnt matter
that 58 seconds isnt long enough
to find your wedding album
or your sons favorite blanket
or your daughters almost completed college
application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesnt matter what you had planned.
It doesnt matter who you are
Prove youre human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.
-Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
MEANWHILE:
In mid-March, Israel conducted a number of airstrikes
within Syrian territory. Israel believes it has the right to
defend itself from homemade rockets launched from
a blockaded, densely populated area that is pro-
tected by no air force and no air defenses. At the
same time, Israel also believes its neighbor, Syria,
does not have an equal right to defend itself from
Israels vast military capabilities.
theantimedia.org