Riceviamo e volentieri pubblichiamo una riflessione del prof. Carlo degli Abbati, nostro collaboratore della rubrica #crisidimenticate
Cari lettori di PassaParola,
per doverosa informazione verso i nostri lettori portiamo a conoscenza il testo ufficiale della lettera di dimissioni(*) che il direttore dell’Alto Commissariato ai Diritti Umani delle Nazioni Unite, Volker Turk, ha inviato al Suo Commissario il 29 ottobre scorso a New York.
Delusi e amareggiati dalla complicità dei media occidentali di fronte ad un’ operazione di sterminio criminale, scientifico di massa della popolazione palestinese non solo a Gaza, ma anche nei “territori occupati”, voluta dal leader israeliano Benjamin Netanyahu ignobilmente contrabbandata per lotta al terrorismo, dopo l’azione che pure era terroristica di Hamas.
Ma nessuno in Italia ha mai pensato di radere al suolo al suolo Genova, Roma, o Milano per la presenza di gruppi brigatisti che pure ci sono stati. Quella che è in atto è invece una operazione di sterminio, uno slaughter, che ricorda più che tristemente quanto avvenne nella storia, quando i coloni europei anglosassoni e francesi si sono resero responsabili nel XVIII -XIX secolo dello sterminio delle popolazioni autoctone del Nord-America, i Sioux, i Navajos, i Pawnees, i Seminole, i Tomahawk, gli Huron.
Questa avviene con la complicità e l’indifferenza dei media di casa nostra, americani ed europei. Ma la storia racconterà che se il soft power militare dell’Occidente è morto a Kabul nel 2021, la pretesa superiorità morale dei valori occidentali è morta per sempre a Gaza nel novembre 2023 insieme ai 12.000 civili palestinesi, con le loro chiese, le loro moschee, le loro scuole, i loro ospedali, le loro puerpere, i loro neonati, i loro vecchi, le loro donne.
Carlo degli Abbati
(*)To UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK, NY 10017
Dear High Commissioner,
This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of my colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization 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 UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to 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 each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocities, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. As 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 often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status of Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.
This a text book of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.
Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights
