Genocide. That is a word which should be used sparingly, always. There are many horrors and atrocities

committed throughout history which are hideous enough on their own terms without constituting

genocide. Now in my own view, when there are those who are specialists and experts in the field

of genocide, when they start warning about genocide, then I believe the very least you can do

is to sit up, listen urgently because of the obvious stakes involved. Now this brings me to

Craig Mockerber. Now he is the director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner

of Human Rights, at least he was, because on 28th October he wrote to the UN High Commissioner

in Geneva, Volker Turk, and in that letter he wrote, this will be my last communication to you.

That's because he resigned. Let me just read what he wrote and please do listen carefully.

I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again,

we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the organisation that we serve appears

powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s,

lived in Gaza as a human rights adviser in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights,

missions in the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me. I also worked in these

halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya.

In these gates, when the dust settled, on the horrors that had been perpetrated against

defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed on our duty to meet

the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocities, of protection of the vulnerable, and accountability

for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the

Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN. High Commissioner, we are failing again.

As a human rights lawyer, with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well

that the concept of genocide has been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter

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