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‘F—k Him’: UN Special Rapporteur Blasts Netanyahu With Profane Social Media Post, Sparking Calls for Punishment
Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health in October 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the United Nations’ “special rapporteur on the right to health,” has come under fire for recently lambasting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a profane post on X/Twitter, expressing her discontent over the Jewish state’s military operations in Gaza.
“F—k him,” Mofokeng wrote last Sunday in response to a report that Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Force (IDF) not to begin the ceasefire in Gaza until the Hamas terrorist organization named the hostages it had agreed to release. Notably, the UN special rapporteur was responding to a news article from Al Jazeera, which receives funding from the government and has long been criticized for pushing an anti-Israel bias.
Israel insisted that Hamas violated the terms of the recently brokered ceasefire deal by refusing to submit the names of the three hostages to be released — Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher — 24 hours prior to their planned release.
“We will not move forward with the outline until we receive the list of hostages to be released, as agreed. Israel will not tolerate violations of the agreement,” Netanyahu said at the time. “The sole responsibility lies with Hamas.”
The dispute was later resolved and the hostages were released in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Warning: The social media post embedded below contains explicit language.
BREAKING: Top U.N. official deletes “F**k him” tweet about Israel’s leader. This comes despite Mofokeng’s expletive-filled tirade calling me an “evil scum” “white man” for having demanded that she be disciplined for her reckless and inappropriate conduct. https://t.co/ARhEj5l5mg https://t.co/EiIzsr728L pic.twitter.com/oIIvx5cTA1
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) January 23, 2025
Mofokeng’s post caught the attention of Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that monitors the UN. After Neuer called for Mofokeng to be punished for her posts, the special rapporteur went on a tirade, rebuking Neuer as an “evil man, a “bastard,” and “scum” in a string of posts.
The UN special rapporteur has a history of issuing condemnations of Israel on social media. In February 2024, for example, Mofokeng wrote “that Hamas are not terrorists is fact.” She argued that previous UN resolutions defended the “legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity [the] liberation from colonial domination, apartheid [and] foreign occupation by ALL means, INCLUDING armed struggle.”
Then earlier this month, Mofokeng seemingly compared the Palestinian experience to her plight as a black South African under apartheid, writing, “I will continue to fight like hell for Gaza, Sudan, Congo because someone once fought like hell for me.”
She has also explicitly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza multiple times.
In October 2024, Mofokeng wrote that she felt “rage and fury” regarding the supposed “horrific genocidal acts” occurring “in real time in Gaza without any result from the international community.”
Last month, she penned a letter to Pope Francis, asking him to speak on “the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
“I reiterate the call to end the genocide, and for you Pope Francis to take all measures to end this evil,” Mofokeng wrote.
Israeli officials have long accused the UN of maintaining a bias against the Jewish state. In 2023, the UN General Assembly condemned Israel twice as often as it did all other countries. Meanwhile, of all the country-specific resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Council, nearly half have condemned Israel, a seemingly disproportionate focus on the lone democracy in the Middle East.
Weeks following Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the UN adopted a resolution calling for a “ceasefire” between Israel and the terrorist group. The UN failed to pass a measure condemning the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
In June, the UN put Israel on its so-called “list of shame” of countries that kill children in armed conflict. Israel is considered to be the only democracy on the list.
During US Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who is President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as the next US ambassador to the UN, lambasted the “antisemitic rot” in the international body, vowing to restore “moral clarity” at the intergovernmental organization.
“If you look at the antisemitic rot within the United Nations, there are more resolutions targeting Israel than any other country, any other crisis combined,” Stefanik said.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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