You probably think you’ve heard every story there is to hear about people getting fired over their tweets. Well, here’s the story of Sarah Muscroft. She’s got them all beat.
Until last Friday, Muscroft was the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA). For 72 hours beginning on 5 August, Islamic Jihad fired 1,000 rockets into Israel and Israel responded with 170 counterstrikes, with the terrorist group citing as its pretext Israel’s targeted killing of two of its senior commanders and the arrest of dozens of its members. Eventually, a ceasefire was brokered with the assistance of Egypt.
Muscroft, based in East Jerusalem, tweeted a fairly tepid message:
‘Relieved to see a ceasefire agreed ending hostilities impacting both Palestinians and Israeli civilians. Such indiscriminate rocket fire of Islamic Jihad provoking Israeli retaliation is condemned. The safety of all civilians is paramount – the ceasefire must be upheld.’
That’s when all hell broke loose, though this is East Jerusalem, where hell breaking loose is a relative concept. The Palestinians – and, most vocally, their self-appointed spokespersons – fumed that Muscroft was blaming them for the fighting.
I don’t know what the world’s coming to. You fire a thousand rockets at civilians and suddenly you’re the bad guy.
No doubt Muscroft thought she was posting an inoffensive ‘both sides’ bromide. But in saying Islamic Jihad rockets provoked retaliation from the IDF – a statement of plain fact – Muscroft appeared to be front-loading criticism of the Palestinian side. This the UN does not do.
The UN and its agencies, especially but not limited to those that serve the Palestinians, are institutionally soldered to the view that Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians eternal victims. In tweeting as she did, Muscroft espoused a neutrality at odds with the UN’s opposition to Israel
Once she had realised her error, Muscroft deleted her tweet, then tweeted an apology, then deleted her Twitter account. A spokesperson for OCHA told Israel Hayom that Muscroft had been ‘assigned to an unspecified new role’. Gilad Erdan, Israel’s UN ambassador, has written to Secretary General Antonio Guterres protesting Muscroft’s treatment, noting that, while Muscroft has been reproachful of his country, ‘Israeli criticism or disagreement has been expressed in a normative way’. Erdan deemed Muscroft’s dismissal ‘a clear surrender of the UN to threats and intimidation’ and called for her reinstatement.
Muscroft’s case recalls that of Matthias Schmale, Gaza director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). During a TV interview in May last year, he admitted that recent Israeli airstrikes against terrorists in Gaza had been ‘precise’ and ‘sophisticated’. Hamas condemned him, Palestinian NGOs condemned him and UNRWA withdrew him from his post. He now works in the UN office in Nigeria. The treatment of Muscroft and Schmale stands in contrast to that of Miloon Kothari, who last month claimed ‘the Jewish lobby’ was throwing ‘a lot of money… into trying to discredit us’ and said of Israel:
‘I would go as far to raise the question of why are they even a member of the United Nations because they don’t respect, the Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a UN member state. They in fact consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine UN mechanisms.’
After criticism of his invocation of the ‘Jewish lobby’ trope, Kothari eventually issued a tortuous apology over ‘concerns that my words were perceived and experienced to be antisemitic’ and how the whole business had left him ‘deeply distressed’. Kothari has kept his role as one of the three commissioners on a UN inquiry into Israel’s human rights record, which is reassuring (the UN secretary-general said he had no power over the position).
We can all learn a valuable lesson from this. If you must tweet in condemnation of terrorist bombings, please do so responsibly. Try to think how your words might affect the terrorists reading them. Be kind.
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