Rights and Accountability 17 September 2025
“And yet the world is sitting on its hands and not responding to this collective of horrors that is being perpetrated on it.”
Mokhiber was reacting to a question about Israel’s attempted assassination of Hamas negotiators through an airstrike on Qatar’s capital Doha on 9 September.He is a human rights lawyer who had resigned as the director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in October 2023 to protest the world body’s failure to adequately respond to the genocide in Gaza.
“What the Israeli regime is doing with its American partner, principally, is not just attacking Palestine and Palestinians. It’s attacking the entire world. It’s attacking the international legal framework. It’s attacking the international diplomatic framework,” Mokhiber said.
“Rule number one of diplomacy is you don’t murder your diplomatic counterparts,” he added.
“There’s nothing more threatening to the Israeli regime than negotiations and a possible ceasefire,” concluded Mokhiber. He says negotiations are an “obstacle” to Israel’s plan: “the total destruction of Gaza, the total destruction of Palestine and completing its genocide.”
But Mokhiber believes there is a way for the UN to step in – despite the American veto in the Security Council – and force Israel to halt the genocide. This would be through a multinational protection force to be deployed to Palestine by passing a Uniting for Peace Resolution in the General Assembly.
Mokhiber spoke emphatically about the UN’s ability to send a protection force composed of troops from multiple countries.
“It could adopt a mandate for a multinational protection force to be deployed to Palestine with a specific mandate to protect civilians, to facilitate humanitarian aid, to preserve evidence of Israeli crimes and to begin the process of recovery and reconstruction.”
Mokhiber said this is “not a panacea” and doesn’t replace a long-term strategy for Palestinian liberation. However, it is the most effective way for the UN to intervene and pressure countries to take a public stance against the genocide.
“Imagine Spanish, Irish, Slovenian, South African, Namibian, Colombian, Brazilian, Indonesian, Malaysian … all of these contingents sent from countries entering by land, sea, air, under an international mandate,” Mokhiber describes. “Not as an invasion and combat force, but as an armed protection force for the Palestinian people.”
Barrows-Friedman and executive director Ali Abunimah interviewed an activist who has been organizing weekly protests outside the home of António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, for his inaction to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.Sawsan Samara said in a pre-recorded interview from outside Guterres’s home that the protest will continue until there is tangible action.
“We need to hold every single complicit person accountable,” she said.
You can watch the whole program in the video above.
Israel prepares to invade Gaza City
Associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman reported on Israel’s destruction of high-rise apartment buildings in Gaza City, forcibly displacing around 7,600 people, according to Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense, in the lead-up to Israel’s plans to invade.
That number includes an estimated 3,500 who were displaced from tents located near the towers.
For the full news round up, Barrows-Friedman’s news report can be viewed here or read in article form.Contributing editor Jon Elmer brought the latest developments on resistance operations from Gaza and the occupied West Bank, as well as Yemeni drone and missile support operations.
Elmer reviewed the Israeli military’s evacuation notice for Gaza City.
“This is blanket ethnic cleansing,” said Elmer. “It’s illegal in every possible way and, as I said, they’re bragging about it.”
Elmer shared clips published by military wings of political factions in Gaza. The Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, announced a new series of operations called the Staff of Moses in Jabaliya. One video published by Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, showcased military capabilities of Palestinian fighters in the occupied West Bank as well. Elmer observed through the video that West Bank fighters may have even captured Israeli military gear.Will Jeremy Corbyn’s new party be anti-Zionist?
Meanwhile, Britain’s Labour government is intensifying its crackdown on opposition to Israel’s genocide – as Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently received Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Downing Street.
Some are placing renewed hope in Jeremy Corbyn, who is launching a new left-wing party.
But as associate editor Asa Winstanley discussed, there are worrying indications that Corbyn and his team have learned none of the lessons from the Israel lobby’s bogus “anti-Semitism” campaign that destroyed Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.
Winstanley compares how Zarah Sultana, a working class, former-Labour MP – now independent, is responding to such accusations of anti-Semitism, in comparison to Corbyn.
Winstanley’s book Weaponising Anti-Semitism details the Israel lobby’s attacks on Corbyn, particularly his acquiescence to bad-faith accusations of anti-Semitism that may have cost him the 2017 elections.
On the show and in his recent article for The Electronic Intifada, Winstanley argues that the defiant approach by Sultana may be more effective: she has declared herself an anti-Zionist and said “the smears won’t work this time.”
Corbyn should let Sultana “take the lead,” said Abunimah. “ Let someone who is willing to stand for the things that people want to see.”Abunimah also invited Corbyn to appear on The Electronic Intifada livestream or podcast to discuss these issues openly.
“A step in the right direction” in Europe
Towards the end of the show, Abunimah shared some news stories of recent steps by Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and the town of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada to stand up against Israel’s genocide.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced new measures to stop the genocide including a ban on the import of products from illegal settlements in the West Bank. The Netherlands and Belgium made similar announcements about banning products from illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Abunimah said it’s important to look at the fine print on such announcements, but from a preliminary perspective, they seem to be “ a step in the right direction.”
All three of these countries have supported Israel’s genocide. Abunimah believes they are moving in this direction now due to public pressure.
“And that has to continue,” he added.
You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.
Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and this writer contributed post-production assistance.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
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