Muslim UN agency head quits after being asked to withdraw document calling Israel “apartheid regime”

Long overdue. Is the UN finally regaining some integrity? If so, it is the Trump effect.

“U.N. agency head quits over report calling Israel an ‘apartheid regime,’” by Ruth Eglash, Washington Post, March 17, 2017:

JERUSALEM — The head of a U.N. agency responsible for publishing a report earlier this week calling Israel an “apartheid regime” resigned Friday after U.N. Secretary General António Guterres pressured her to withdraw the document.

Rima Khalaf, a U.N. undersecretary general and executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) headquartered in Beirut, said her decision to resign followed a request from Guterres to remove the report from the agency’s website.

The report, published Wednesday, was immediately slammed by Israel and its closest ally, the United States, who denounced it as anti-Israel propaganda. The U.N. secretary general also distanced himself from the report, saying it was released without prior consultation with the U.N. Secretariat.

On Friday, a spokesman for Guterres told Reuters news agency that the secretary general had accepted Khalaf’s resignation.

“This is not about content, this is about process,” said the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. He said the report was published under the U.N. name and using the U.N. logo but without “consulting the competent departments.”

The report, entitled “Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” no longer appears on ESCWA’s website.

Israeli officials welcomed Khalaf’s departure as long overdue….