Israel’s Mole Inside the UN Exposed After a Decade

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

Emails from former Israeli UN ambassador Ron Prosor’s hacked account, obtained by the group Handala and published by Distributed Denial of Secrets, have exposed Yahav Lichner, now director of UNICEF’s Washington office, as a UN official who appears to have functioned as an Israeli asset inside the organisation. The emails were examined by Drop Site News, while other public records suggest Lichner’s story is much bigger, and older, than anyone has reported

The emails examined by Drop Site News begin in 2014, but Lichner’s involvement in the political management of Israel’s wars in Gaza reaches back much further.

According to PassBlue, Lichner served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)  from 2000 to 2006. It was a six-year stretch at a time when ordinary compulsory service for Israeli men lasted three years. No public record identifies his rank or unit, but that length of service suggests the military was a formative professional chapter in his life, rather than an obligation completed before moving into civilian work.

By 2009, Lichner was already inside Israel’s London embassy as a parliamentary researcher. That August, he wrote to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and transmitted a newly published Israeli government report titled The Operation in Gaza, 27 December 2008–18 January 2009, Factual and Legal Aspects.

The report presented Operation Cast Lead as a necessary and proportionate response to Hamas, defended the IDF’s conduct around civilian casualties, UN facilities and white phosphorus, and blamed much of the destruction on Hamas’s operations within populated areas. Its authors described their purpose with unusual candour. The document had been released, they wrote, “to answer propaganda and prejudice with facts and law.” Lichner was telling Parliament that allegations of civilian killings and unlawful attacks were propaganda, while presenting Israel’s own account as fact and law. Weeks later, a UN fact-finding mission concluded that Israeli forces had committed serious violations of international law, including grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and acts amounting to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

IMAGE: In 2009, Yahav Lichner, then a parliamentary researcher at Israel’s London embassy, sent the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee the Israeli government report defending its conduct in Gaza. (Source: Editorial illustration)

The parliamentary record identifies Lichner by name and embassy position. He was carrying the Israeli government’s legal and political defence of a military operation directly into the British committee examining it.

Years later, UNICEF would entrust him with advancing the rights and protection of children caught in war. By then, he had already spent years helping Israel manage how foreign institutions understood one of its most destructive campaigns in Gaza.

Lichner followed Ambassador Ron Prosor from London to Israel’s UN mission in New York. Drop Site News found that when he applied to join the UN Population Fund in 2014, Prosor pressed Samantha Power, then Washington’s ambassador to the UN, to support him. He also supplied UNFPA with a glowing reference, praising the “utmost integrity” of a man who would soon send confidential UN material back to Prosor’s mission.

By May 2014, Lichner was working inside UNFPA. Within weeks, the information began flowing back.

The emails published by Drop Site show Lichner passing Israeli diplomats unpublished correspondence from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, private accounts of high-level meetings, advance information about investigations into Israel and reports explicitly marked “strictly confidential.” He marked material as sensitive, demanded discretion and sometimes moved it through his personal email. Across two years of correspondence, the same warnings keep appearing. “For your eyes only.” “Do not forward.” “Complete sensitivity.”

In one exchange, Lichner supplied a confidential account of meetings held in Washington by UN human-rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein while Israel faced investigation over its 2014 assault on Gaza. The report revealed concern inside Al-Hussein’s office that congressional anger over the inquiry could threaten US funding for the UN human-rights office.

The Israeli diplomat’s reply showed where Lichner’s information was headed. He would take it to members of Congress. Israel now had advance warning of the human-rights office’s vulnerability and an opportunity to apply pressure through the politicians who controlled its funding.

The intelligence had already left the UN, reached the government under investigation and entered Washington’s political machinery before the inquiry had completed its work.

Another exchange went further. Lichner passed Israel an unpublished draft letter from Ban to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He told the mission that he and an unnamed “friend” inside the UN were working to insert a reference to Palestinian rocket fire. His access was no longer confined to discovering what the United Nations intended to say. It had reached the process through which the UN’s language was being written.

Prosor understood the value. “As usual, amazing and first-hand information,” he wrote after one briefing. When Lichner later thanked him for the career “tailwind,” Prosor answered, “Glad we had an influence.”

The relationship rewarded both men. Prosor helped Lichner enter and advance through the UN system whilst Lichner gave Israel an inside view of the institution, scrutinising it and providing advance warning of threats and opportunities to shape the response.

Gaza never disappeared from Lichner’s career. By early 2024, he had already spent years as a senior UNICEF adviser based in London. He then joined Sigrid Kaag’s UN team, whose mandate included coordinating, monitoring and verifying humanitarian relief consignments entering Gaza.

Honoured to have joined the UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza @SigridKaag to her meeting with the EU Foreign Affairs Council #FAC to discuss the implementation of SCR 2720 https://t.co/V0uXzSnP7x

— Yahav Lichner (@YahavLich) February 20, 2024

Lichner travelled with Kaag to the United Arab Emirates, where she secured a $5 million pledge for her office. When PassBlue asked who staffed Kaag’s team, the UN spokesperson offered no names, referring only to “a team of experts from the UN system.” Lichner’s presence became public because he announced it himself.

Kaag’s office sat inside sensitive negotiations over aid routes, inspection, monitoring and reconstruction for Gaza. Entrusting Lichner with a role in that office created an obvious risk to its independence and confidentiality, given his documented history of passing confidential UN material to Israel. The UN’s refusal to identify the team kept an appointment that plainly demanded scrutiny out of public view.

A British Companies House filing records Lichner as Hungarian. Read alongside the hiring correspondence identifying his Israeli nationality, the filing indicates that he holds dual Hungarian-Israeli nationality. Filed in February 2022, it identifies him as a lawyer residing in England.

The available emails end in 2015, so they cannot tell us whether the leaking continued. They record Lichner using UN access to assist Israeli officials, helping them prepare for investigations of civilian deaths in Gaza and working with an unidentified contact to influence language coming from the secretary-general’s office.

The correspondence remained hidden for a decade. By the time it surfaced, Lichner was running UNICEF’s Washington office.

The Drop Site News investigation deserves to be read in full. It allows readers to follow the relationship through Lichner’s and Prosor’s own words, from confidential reports and unpublished drafts to lobbying plans and attempts to influence UN language from within. The emails leave little room for misunderstanding about what Lichner was doing, who benefited and how comfortably the arrangement operated.

Read the complete investigation and examine the documents for yourself. They show how a member state gained access to the UN’s private deliberations, turned that access into political leverage and helped the man supplying it continue his rise through the institution.

READ MORE UN NEWS AT: 21st CENTURY WIRE UN FILES

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21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media.

Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/08/06/israels-mole-inside-the-un-exposed-after-a-decade/