Former UN Official WARNS ‘Israel’s Massive Terrorism’ Could Cause Wider War

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Craig Mokhiber, a Human Rights lawyer and former director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights discusses Israel’s “massive terrorist attack on the Lebanese people and the country of Lebanon.” He predicts “the degree to which the Western media tries to sanitize this,” and warns Israel’s attack “opens up a very dangerous new front in global terrorism, putting us all at risk. Once again, Israel has found a way to threaten the safety of all of us. It's also a major escalation that possibly could provoke a wider war.” He also explains “this was a grave breach of international humanitarian law and a gross violation of, of human rights law and human rights law. Obviously extrajudicial executions are prohibited. Targeting civilians is prohibited in IHL (International Humanitarian Law) humanitarian law. Not all Hezbollah personnel are combatants.They are a political party. They're in the government, they run services and so targeting those individuals is a violation of international humanitarian law. Also note that the ambassador of Iran was wounded in one of these attacks. The ambassador of Iran is very clearly a civilian, whatever his relationship to Hezbollah.IHL also prohibits indiscriminate attacks you have to prevent the risk to others who are nearby. And here you've got people driving in cars when the explosion goes off, standing in crowds, shopping and so on. So these are indiscriminate, uh, attacks by their, by their very nature.” And Craig discusses the legality (or lack thereof) of these particular devices: “Booby traps are generally prohibited in international humanitarian law because of the risk that they pose to civilians. So in international humanitarian law, when they talk about booby traps, the ones that are prohibited are, and I'm quoting, ‘things that are designed to look like harmless, portable objects.’ Something you can carry around with you, right? Could be pagers and phones and those sorts of things. Or something that is disguised as something that would be attractive to civilians. So no matter how you look at that, these kinds of booby traps are prohibited by international humanitarian law.”

Craig Mokhiber is an American former United Nations (UN) human rights official and a specialist in international human rights law, policy, and methodology. On October 28, 2023, Mokhiber stepped down as the director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). In his final letter to High Commissioner Volker Türk, he harshly criticized the organization's response to the war in Gaza, calling Israel's military intervention a "textbook genocide" and accusing the UN of failing to act.

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