The controversial U.N. agency that found rockets in its Gaza schools

By Terrence McCoy August 1 at 4:05 AM

Several days ago, a sandy-haired United Nations spokesman named Christopher Gunness had a moment when, as he explains it, “words cracked under the burden of meaning.” Clad in a tan blazer, he was just about to wrap up an interview with Al Jazeera from an office adorned with a United Nations flag. He felt emotion rising, but suppressed it. “The rights of Palestinians — even their children — are wholesale denied,” he told the news station. “And it’s appalling.”

Then the interview, he thought, was over. Feeling unencumbered from the burdens of representing the United Nations, he allowed his emotion to swell and began to weep.

“My heart simply burst,” he told The Washington Post. “And I assumed in a moment of private anguish they’d turn the camera off.” But they didn’t. Al Jazeera later broadcast the weeping U.N. official.

snip* Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor, has called for spokesman Gunness’s suspension, according to the Algemeiner, a U.S.-based Jewish newspaper. Among other complaints, he accused Gunness of “an ongoing pattern of anti-Israel bias,” adding: “He has abused his position to promote incitement against Israel and present a one-sided view of reality…. UNRWA staff members have repeatedly failed to abide by the UN’s principles of neutrality and impartiality.”

in full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/01/war-in-gaza-the-controversial-un-agency-that-found-rockets-in-its-schools/?tid=hp_m