Israel’s UN Ambassador: Resignation of UN official ‘long overdue’

Israel’s UN Ambassador said that the resignation of the executive secretary of a UN agency that accused Israel of being an “apartheid regime,” was “long overdue.”

Israel’s Ambassador Danny Danon expressed appreciation that Rima Khalaf, the executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), a Lebanon-based UN agency, resigned from her post at ESCWA on Friday, a few days after her organization had accused Israel of being an “apartheid regime.”

“Over the years Khalaf has worked to harm Israel and advocate for the BDS movement,” Danon said. “Her removal from the UN is long overdue.”

Khalaf left her post after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres ordered that the report be taken off the organization’s website.

“The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw the report,” she said during a press conference from Beirut. “I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN.”

“We expected of course that Israel and its allies would put huge pressure on the secretary general of the UN so that he would disavow the report, and that they would ask him to withdraw it,” she added.

Gueterres’ spokeswoman, Stephane Dujarric had noted that there was no consultation whatsoever on the part of Khalaf’s organization with the Secretary-General’s office.

“(Guterres) cannot accept that an under-secretary-general or any other senior UN official that reports to him would authorize the publication under the UN name, under the UN logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself,” she said according to Reuters.

By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News

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