Palestinian official: Nikki Haley not ‘the schoolmarm of the world’

A senior Palestinian official on Wednesday rebuffed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley for her repeated threats to take down the names of countries that rejected Washington’s demands, saying that she is not “the schoolmarm of the world.”

“She threatened and she pressured and she used coercion and so on at the U.N., particularly by taking down names. I don’t think people appointed her the schoolmarm of the world,” Hanan Ashrawi, a top official in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said at the U.N., according to Reuters.

Haley has repeatedly warned other U.N. members that the U.S. would take note of countries that opposed Washington at the U.N. 

In December, for example, as the U.N. General Assembly weighed a resolution urging the Trump administration to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Haley said the U.S. would “be taking names.”

“On Thurs there’ll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names,” she tweeted Dec. 19. 

Ashrawi’s comments came a day after Haley defended Israeli forces who opened fire on Palestinian protesters on the Israel-Gaza border on Monday during a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. 

Haley said that Israel had acted with “restraint,” and argued that other countries would have also used lethal force in similar situations. Ashrawi criticized Haley’s argument, saying that it did not reflect reality.

“It’s extremely difficult to find any relationship between reality and the words we hear coming out from the American representative here,” Ashrawi said, according to Reuters.

The protesters were killed as the U.S. opened its new embassy in Jerusalem. That ceremony coincided with the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel — a day that, for Palestinians, marks the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — when millions were forced from their homes in 1948.

Israel and the United States have said that Israeli forces responded appropriately because protesters were trying to cross the fence into Israel at the direction of Hamas. The killings have been widely denounced by other countries.