Beatriz W. de Rittigstein.
At the end of last November, Wall Street Journal published an editorial questioning the UN for its treatment of Kenyan expert and special adviser on the prevention of genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu, by refusing to renew her contract after declaring that the war against Hamas does not meet the requirements to be considered genocide, based on the extensive documentation available.
According to Nderitu, the meaning of the term genocide includes the Holocaust, the slaughter of Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda, the Serbian attacks on Bosnian Muslims and the systematic murders in Sudan. The editorial in the American newspaper noted: “From a legal standpoint, establishing a pattern of violence as genocide requires proving intent. Israel’s self-defense campaign does not qualify. Ms. Nderitu’s removal is a political move” influenced by groups hostile to Israel, for whom she was a nuisance and who wanted her excluded.
The final decision on her dismissal rests with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has the authority to renew or terminate the contracts of UN employees. However, the UN has denied the dismissal of the adviser, saying her contract has expired and rejecting any connection to her findings on the issue of genocide.
A couple of years ago, Nderitu published a guidance document on the proper use of the term genocide, in which he stressed the obligation of UN officials to adhere to its correct application due to political sensitivities and its frequent misuse to describe crimes against specific populations. Indeed, in the past, Nderitu He issued warnings against those who use the word genocide so lightly.
Nderitu, who has served at the UN since 2020, was fired after stating that Israel’s war against Hamas does not constitute genocide. She explained that while the conflict has caused significant loss of life, Israel’s actions are aimed at dismantling a terrorist regime, not exterminating an ethnic group. She also noted that Israel has taken pains to minimize civilian casualties, even as Hamas uses civilians as human shields to exploit their deaths for propaganda purposes.
Nderitu has had the moral clarity and courage to expose the reality: Israel is not guilty of this crime. His position clashes with the narrative that the UN has been expanding, starting with Guterres himself.
Beyond the deterioration of the true meaning of the term genocide, it is worth noting that the UN has not been objective or impartial. Worse still, on the one hand, the highest international body and its agencies have been slandering Israel and, on the other hand, they have not recognized with the necessary forcefulness that Israel suffered a massacre of inhuman and unimaginable cruelty, and therefore has the right to defend itself and prevent its citizens from being attacked again by terrorist, jihadist and genocidal groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
The UN does not acknowledge any of this; it seems that it does not care about failing to fulfill its functions, that is, truth and justice. The negligence of the UN indicates that its profit is in accusing Israel, the Jewish State, as if it wanted to conclude that the State of the victims of the Shoah, that is, of an irrefutable genocide, is now accused of a genocide, of course fictitious. Perhaps, so that, in the future, the Jewish people cannot continue to teach about their experiences as part of humanity's learning. However, reality shows two substantial issues: the first, one of the most execrable forms of anti-Semitism is to pretend a false equation in which the former victims became the victimizers; And second, there is no genocide of the Palestinian people (an accusation that has been going on for several years). Of course, there are painful deaths of people not involved, as in every war, but demographics prove that the Palestinian people, integrating that of Gaza, has been growing exponentially, and its increase can even be seen this year. It should be noted that, today, more than 85 years after the beginning of the Holocaust, the Jewish people have still not managed to recover their statistical numbers.
Great writing. It makes clear the truth of what the UN is: an instrument of the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Iranian terrorist tyrants Ayatollahs. If what Israel is doing is genocide, how come it has not wiped out the Arabs falsely called Palestinians? How can Israel have peaceful and useful citizens who are “Palestinians”? The UN is, by all accounts, a disgrace that has fallen into the hands of terrorist sympathizers.