by WYATT REED
Behind closed doors, the noted ‘humanitarian interventionist’ successfully lobbied for Israel’s inclusion on important UN committees even after the Human Rights Council accused it of targeting civilians in Gaza.
The leaked emails also reveal that Israel furnished Power with a dodgy dossier on Syrian chemical weapons as she pushed regime change in Damascus.
Former US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power secretly coordinated with a top Israeli diplomat to secure Israel’s access to multiple prestigious UN committees, leaked files show.
Several unsolicited emails sent by Power to the then ambassador of Israel to the UN, Ron Prosor, show the diplomat celebrating her role in polishing Israel’s image on the global stage.
The emails between the two diplomats reveal how the US-Israeli special relationship operates at a granular level, and help map out the personal interactions which ensure Israel enjoys constant diplomatic cover at an international level. They are among the latest batch of hacked files belonging to Israeli government officials which were leaked by the Handala hacking collective.
A November 2013 email exchange between Power and Prosor reveals how the US ambassador helped secure Israel entry to the UN’s Western European and Others Group (WEOG). Three days before the vote succeeded, Prosor predicted “a Hanukkah miracle,” telling Power, “I know what [a] crucial role you played in making this happen. This success will last way beyond our time and will always carry your figure [sic] print on it.”
Power replied by thanking him for sending “such a nice note,” and agreed that Israel’s ascension to WEOG was “so overdue and so ridiculous that it has taken this long.”
When Tel Aviv was accepted into WEOG days later, the pro-Israel Jewish Virtual Library hailed the vote as “an important move that allows Israel to join WEOG meetings in Geneva and exert some influence on the Human Rights Council.”
On October 29, 2015, two weeks after Prosor stepped down from his role as Israeli ambassador to the UN, Power boasted to her former colleague that she had gotten Israel onto another UN body — “our last plot,” as she described it.
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