May 2nd marked two months since Israel imposed a complete blockade of humanitarian and medical aid entering the Gaza Strip. Shortages of food has caused some community kitchens to close, with aid agencies warning of a possible total collapse of all humanitarian aid efforts to assist Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents.
Doctors and aid organizations say that malnutrition is spreading, particularly among children. UNICEF recently reported that more than 9,000 children are being treated for acute malnutrition in the few health facilities still operating after Israel’s 17-monthlong bombing campaign. Gaza medical authorities have documented 57 deaths from malnutrition since the war began in October 2023. According to the UN, 75 percent of all households in Gaza have very limited access to clean water.
As Israel’s far right Cabinet approved plans to expand its war in Gaza and reoccupy the territory indefinitely, the International Court of Justice concluded public hearings on May 2 reviewing Israel’s obligations under international law to allow UN agencies and other relief groups to assist Palestinians living under occupation. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Craig Mokhiber, an international human rights lawyer and former director of the New York Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights who resigned in protest in 2023 due to the unfolding Gaza genocide and the UN’s failures. Here he discusses Israel’s weaponization of humanitarian aid targeting civilians, and U.S. complicity in what many legal observers declare is an ongoing war crime.
CRAIG MOKHIBER: Well, the prognosis for those who are suffering from malnutrition and other diseases because of the lack of food, the lack of medicine, catastrophic injuries and illnesses that have circulated in the territories during the genocide — the prognosis is not good because they are unlikely to receive the kind of care that might otherwise save some of their lives.
Because of a systematic effort on the part of Israel to destroy all health care facilities one by one, to destroy the entire food capacity and water capacity of Gaza piece by piece, systematically working from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the genocide in Palestine has already been perpetrated. It continues unabated and with impunity. And many of those who have not been killed by Israeli bomb, bullets and drones will die from the injuries that they have already sustained from the hunger to which they are being intentionally subjected and to the diseases to which they’ve been subjected.
We are now 17 months into this wave of genocide in Gaza. We have never seen a situation where the international community has been so unable or unwilling to respond to such a situation. This is, as many people have said, the first live-streamed genocide to take place in the history of the United Nations. So everybody knows what’s going on there.
And yet, because of the complicity of powerful Western states like the U.S., none of the international institutions have been able to respond in the ways that they should. And, you know, the situation of Israel is a very particular one. There is no country that has more consistently violated the principles of the UN charter than Israel. It’s done so since 1948, violating a series of UN resolutions. It’s literally achieved the world record for the violation of U.N. conventions, UN resolutions of Security Council, the General Assembly, Human Rights Council, as well as repeatedly defying all of the applicable rulings of the International Court of Justice, which is the highest judicial body of the United Nations.
Humanitarian aid and the agencies that provide it — they’re all that stand between Israel and the extermination of the Palestinian people. And UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) in particular, has been a target for this purpose now going back for decades.
SCOTT HARRIS: So, Craig, as many of our listeners are aware, Israel has charged that there were employees of UNRWA who were also members of Hamas, who participated in the group’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1200 and kidnapped some 240 hostages brought back to Gaza. UNRWA disputes the fact that they had in any systematic way worked with Hamas at all. I wondered if you would update us on the urgent situation in Gaza and the very slow court process that could impede UNRWA being reinstated, if that’s even a possibility.
CRAIG MOKHIBER: Yeah, well, Israel’s been making these charges against UNRWA as I say, going back for decades.
They are always investigated. They are always found to be either entirely fabricated or exaggerated. The allegations on Oct. 7 were investigated by two separate UN commissions, one an independent body, the other the Office of Internal Oversight Services. The UN also offered its commission of inquiry from the Human Rights Council to investigate. Israel declined. It has declined to cooperate fully with these bodies and it has been unable to provide any evidence of the allegations that it has made against UNRWA’s staff.
In spite of this going above and beyond — because the UN was blackmailed by the donors to UNRWA — the secretary general at the end of these things said, “Well, there there are a handful, maybe eight or nine people who maybe, you know, crossed over the fence on Oct. 7. And so we are, without any due process or without any, you know, proof of any allegations made against them, he fired them. He terminated their contracts.
Now, let’s say that, you know, a handful of people like that did perpetrate some some crimes, for which I repeat, there is no evidence. But let’s say even if they did, UNRWA has about 30,000 employees. To try to scapegoat the organization itself — a highly regarded, international aid organization — because of the behavior of a couple of its employees would be an absurdity.
You think of how many people have committed crimes that are U.S. government officials or any large organization — not to mention Israel — which perpetrated war crimes literally on a daily basis. So that is not a compelling argument for disabling the most important humanitarian agency in the territories on any day, let alone in the midst of a genocide, when they are the lifeline for that organization.
For more information, visit Craig Mokhiber’s website at craigmokhiber.org.
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