UN dropping jurist who refuses to accuse Israel of genocide

The Wall Street Journal claims that Special Adviser’s refusal to accuse Israel of genocide was unacceptable to Alice Wairimu Nderitu’s bosses.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The United Nations has decided not to renew the contract of its Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide who has refused to accuse Israel of intentionally committing mass murder.

In her statements ever since the Jewish state went to war with the Hamas terror organization after its men led a surprise invasion on October 7, 2023 in which they massacred 1,200 people and took 251 hostage, Alice Wairimu Nderitu has been careful to express the need to end the fighting without pointing a culpable finger only at Israel.

She harshly condemned Hamas a week after the war began, labeling its attack as “vicious,” saying its “continued indiscriminate rocket fire” into Israel was “unacceptable” and appealing to the terrorists to “immediately liberate all hostages,” while calling for both sides to cease attacking and negotiate peacefully.

In a February statement reacting to the International Court of Justice ordering Israel “to take all measures within its power” to prevent the commission of “acts of genocide” in the Gaza Strip, which it had yet to determine were occurring, the senior Kenyan staffer said equally that “violations of international humanitarian law can never justify the collective punishment of the people in Gaza” and that “civilians must be protected at all times on both sides.”

The Special Adviser would not “take a position in relation to ongoing judicial proceedings before the Court,” she added.

Last month, Nderitu called evenhandedly for urgent diplomatic efforts to end the “ongoing hostilities,” “strengthen the protection of innocent civilian populations,” and get humanitarian aid to those “in dire need of receiving it.”

She also “reiterates her demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, for the full compliance by the parties at war with obligations under international law, as well as for accountability.”

In addition, the statement said that the Special Adviser “reiterates that her prevention mandate does not allow her to express a position on whether the crime of genocide or any other specific international crime has been committed, which can only be determined by a competent, independent and impartial court of law.”

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) argued Monday that the refusal to outright condemn Israel did not sit well with the higher-ups in the international body, such as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who have sharply criticized Israel’s actions in fighting Hamas over the past year.

It is the reason for Alice Wairimu Nderitu being told to go home after almost five years on the job, the WSJ editorial said.

The Palestinians and their supporters in the UN have been accusing Israel of committing genocide against them for years, if not decades.

The WSJ pointed out that Nderito’s office had put out a guidance paper in 2022 on when it is proper to call a situation “genocide” because of “its frequent misuse.” Rather than citing the Palestinians, she gave the examples of the Holocaust, the Hutus’ massacre of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Serbian slaughter of Bosnian Muslims, and said it was possible that the ethnic killings then taking place in Sudan could be included as well.

“As a legal matter,” the paper opined in part, “establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify. The war against Hamas has had many deaths, but Israel’s strategy is intended to dismantle a terrorist regime, not eliminate an ethnic group.”

But “That’s not what the anti-Israel cabal at the U.N. want to hear,” it said, while accusing the body of having “long ago lost credibility as a moral arbiter” and “hitting a new low” in its “assault on Israel.”

genocide accusationsIsrael-Hamas warUnited Nations