UN Employee Refuses to Accuse Israel of Genocide

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The Wall Street Journal has just published an editorial about the UN’s refusal to renew the contract of Alice Wairimu Nderitu as Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. The reason? She had concluded that Israel’s conduct in Gaza did not constitute “genocide.” More on the latest display by the UN of anti-Israel animus can be found here: “UN firing Nderitu over refusal to classify Israeli conduct in Gaza as ‘genocide,’ WSJ argues,” Jerusalem Post, November 26, 2024:

“Can anyone with integrity survive at the UN?” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial asked on Tuesday, arguing that the UN was refusing to renew the contract of Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu due to her determination that Israel’s actions in Gaza could not be defined as “genocide.”

The publication cited her 2022 paper on “when to refer to a situation as ‘genocide,’” which affirms the importance that “United Nations officials adhere to the correct usage of the term.”

Her paper stated this was necessary due to the term’s “frequent misuse in referring to large-scale, grave crimes committed against particular populations; the emotive nature of the term and political sensitivity surrounding its use; and the potential legal implications associated with a determination of genocide.”

According to Nderitu, the term “genocide” encapsulates the Holocaust, the genocide perpetrated by the Hutus on the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Serbian attacks on Bosnian Muslims, and the killings being carried out in Sudan.

With regard to Israel, the WSJ editorial noted, “As a legal matter, establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify.”

Far from having an intent to commit genocide, the IDF makes massive efforts to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. It does this by making tremendous efforts to warn civilians away from places soon to be targeted, from cities to individual buildings. To this end, already by March — that is, six months into the war — the IDF had dropped nine million leaflets, sent fifteen million text messages, and made sixteen million robocalls. Israeli pilots, too, are required to abort missions if they think too many civilians are in the targeted area.

The publication added that the UN’s November 14 report published by the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices claimed the contrary – that there was “the possibility of genocide in Gaza and an apartheid system in the West Bank.”

‘A political choice’

According to the WSJarticle, the committee was strongly influenced by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, who the publication stated “has spent the past year assailing Israel.”…

It is Volker Türk who has warned darkly of “horrific violations” of international law by the IDF in Gaza, for which there must be “due reckoning.” Türk is one of the two most virulently anti-Israel officials at the UN — the other is Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The UN, trying to defend itself from the charge that it fired Nderitu, says that it only decided not to renew her contract. But such contracts are routinely renewed. What was it about Nderitu that led the UN to decide to let her go? The only possible reason is her unwillingness to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza as “genocide.”

Now Alice Wairimu Nderitu will be out of her UN job, to be replaced by someone who will have the approval of Volker Türk and Francesca Albanese, someone who will be prepared dutifully to accuse Israel of “genocide” despite the obvious absence of any intent by the IDF to commit that worst of all atrocities.

There are many in the administration of President-elect Trump who are hostile to the UN for its kangaroo court proceedings against Israel. Some have talked of reducing, or ending altogether, American contributions to the organization. This would cripple many of the UN’s programs. In 2022, the most recent year for which full data are available, the US contributed more than $18 billion to the United Nations, which was one-third of its total support. Perhaps Marco Rubio, soon to be Secretary-of-State, or President-elect Trump himself, should let the UN know that it must renew the contract of Alice Wairimu Nderitu or face “a serious loss of financial support” from the US. That should get the attention of Secretary-General Guterres in his glass palace at Turtle Bay on the East River.