By Murtaza Hussain – Drop Site News
On February 20, 2015, an official of the United Nations Population Fund sent two Israeli diplomats an email containing a confidential report about a trip two weeks earlier to Washington, D.C. by Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, then the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“For your eyes only. Do not forward,” Yahav Lichner wrote to then-Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor and diplomat Ronny Leshno-Yaar in a message sent from Lichner’s personal email account, describing the report as a “classified internal summary of Zeid’s meetings in Washington.”
The meetings came at a time when Israel was facing an independent commission inquiry by the UN Human Rights Council over its conduct during the 2014 military offensive against the Gaza Strip.
The document recorded private meetings that Al-Hussein held with White House officials, senators, congressional appropriations staff, AIPAC, J Street, and human rights organizations. It also revealed a concern inside Al-Hussein’s office: that congressional anger over the UN inquiry could threaten American funding for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Lichner added that Al-Hussein had met with members of Congress including “our friend,” the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, adding that Al-Hussein was “trying to do damage control and distance himself from the report.”
Leshno-Yaar responded that he intended to act on the intelligence that Lichner had provided. “Thank you Yahav. I have no choice and of course without addressing this information I must act with members of Congress to make them understand,” before listing the arguments he planned to make about Al-Hussein and the Gaza commission’s secretariat.
“Absolutely,” Lichner replied. “You are right.”
The exchange was far from a one-off: Over a two-year period between 2014 and 2015, emails show, Lichner repeatedly supplied Israeli officials with internal UN documents, private meeting accounts, pre-release material, and other political intelligence—including documentation marked as “strictly confidential”—which was later used by Israeli officials to help shape their own efforts to both proactively lobby the U.S. government and undercut UN initiatives they viewed as unfavorable to Israel.
The communications showing Lichner leaking confidential information to officials in the Israeli government come from a hacked database of emails from Prosor, Israel’s permanent representative to the UN from 2011 to 2015. The emails were posted online by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a whistleblower and file-sharing website, after being obtained by Handala, a hacking group believed to be tied to Iranian intelligence.
Prosor is currently Israel’s ambassador to Germany, while Lichner has served since January 2025 as director of the Washington, D.C., office of UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency. Prior to joining the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), Lichner worked at Israel’s mission to the UN from 2011 to early 2014.
The emails showing leaks of classified UN information and other communications with Israeli officials came from a period when Lichner served at the UNFPA and does not indicate whether or not it has continued in his role at UNICEF. Lichner previously served as Prosor’s political advisor at Israel’s embassy in London and later as a senior advisor at Israel’s UN mission.
The emails suggest that Prosor personally promoted Lichner’s UNFPA candidacy, drawing on the assistance of then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to privately lobby for his appointment and later providing a glowing reference letter to the agency.
That placement appeared to pay dividends as Lichner continually fed inside information from the UN to Prosor and other Israeli diplomats, including unissued draft documents authored by then–Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, private accounts of meetings by UN officials, and internal reports marked as confidential. Lichner also provided insight and guidance on internal UN processes and deliberations related to Israel, including informing them of scrutiny of its conduct in Gaza and the West Bank.
UN officials are subject to rules defining staff as international civil servants whose responsibilities are “not national but exclusively international.” The organization’s internal guidelines also strictly prohibit officials from communicating information to any “government, entity, person or any other source any information known to them by reason of their official position.”
A former senior UN official confirmed that the behavior documented in the emails is expressly prohibited by UN guidelines.
“When you join the UN you are bound to serve the UN rather than the country you came from, and as such you are bound to promote the interests of the organization. You sign a piece of paper acknowledging that you have become a UN official and, as a result, are bound to confidentiality and serving the interests of the organization rather than a member state,” Charles Petrie, a former senior UN diplomat and Assistant Secretary-General, told Drop Site News. “But there are no systems in the UN to impose consequences for leaking information. In the U.S. government, when you leak, you are actually committing a crime because you have accepted the conditions under which you are able to access different levels. That does not exist at the UN.”
He added, “It is a sign of an institution that does not have internal accountability. And the higher you go, the less accountability there is.”
Lichner, Prosor, and Power did not respond to detailed requests for comment. UNICEF did not respond to a request for comment.
Strictly Confidential
On November 10, 2014, Lichner received an internal daily report from the UN Operations and Crisis Centre (UNOCC) providing security and political updates from various regions of the world. The report was marked, “UN STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL – NOT FOR FURTHER DISSEMINATION,” citing the UN’s information classification rules and with an additional note in the body further emphasizing that the report is “sensitive and the Chef de Cabinet has directed that it not be disseminated further,” a reference to Ban Ki-moon’s chief of staff.
Lichner forwarded the report the next morning to six Israeli diplomats with the comment, “For your eyes only,” pointing to a segment on civilian casualties from U.S. operations in Iraq and opining that, “there are no statements of condemnation from the Secretary-General and no commissions of inquiry into harm to innocent people”—an evident contrast to the focus at the time on Israel’s actions in Gaza by the organization.
The UNOCC report was a roundup of assessments from different conflict hotspots and classified confidential. The archive communications do not indicate whether any of its contents were useful to Israeli diplomats.
But other communications in the archive suggest the information that Lichner provided to the Israeli government was useful in their efforts to resist pressure from the international community over the 2014 war in Gaza and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank, including shaping the communications of senior UN officials to whom Lichner had privileged access.
A few months earlier, on July 4, 2014, writing from his UNFPA account, Lichner had sent five Israeli diplomats what he called “the UN internal/confidential weekly report on Jordan.” The document contained accounts of closed consultations with Jordan’s interior minister, border-security developments, and domestic unrest.
Five days later—one day after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza—Lichner supplied Prosor, Deputy Ambassador David Roet, and three other mission officials with two additional documents: a letter Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had sent Ban Ki-moon and an unpublished draft of the UN chief’s reply.
The letter from Ban was still a work in progress and Lichner indicated to Israeli diplomats that he was helping shape it from the inside to be more favorable to Israel’s concerns. Lichner wrote that he was working with an unnamed female “friend” privy to internal deliberations at the organization—a formulation that comes up frequently in the emails—to improve the draft “as much as possible.”
“For your eyes,” Lichner wrote. “I am working with our friend on improvements to the Secretary-General’s letter, as much as possible.” When Roet said the draft had not arrived, Lichner sent it again. “We are working to insert a reference to the rocket fire,” he wrote, referring to rocket fire by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups into Israel.
Lichner also sent Israeli diplomats internal accounts of Ban’s meetings with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Iraq’s prime minister, and Amnesty International chief Salil Shetty. The Sisi report included a candid discussion of Gaza, Libya, the status of detained journalists, and human rights in Egypt. Lichner, sharing the reports from his personal email, requested “complete sensitivity.”
Lichner also forwarded the agenda for a meeting of Ban’s Senior Management Group—a high-level body made up of leaders of various UN departments and chaired by the secretary-general—which was scheduled to discuss a draft Security Council resolution on Palestine. He noted that Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of UNFPA, would attend the closed door meeting and promised to provide an update afterwards. “Information needs to be collected after the meeting,” Lichner added. “As always, with sensitivity.”
In another 2015 email, Lichner passed an itemized list of information from what he described as “a source in the Secretary-General’s circle,” detailing internal developments at the UN. The email included information on attempts to promote particular individuals to posts within the organization, speculation about Ban Ki-moon’s political future, and discussion of Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov—now director-general of Trump’s Board of Peace overseeing Gaza—as a possible successor as head of the UN. “He is being mentioned in closed discussions in the Secretary-General’s office as a possible candidate to replace Ban,” Lichner wrote. “Keep an eye on him.”
The information that Lichner provided was deemed highly valuable by his former Israeli colleagues. In response to the note about the private discussions on senior appointments, Prosor replied: “Yahav, as usual, amazing and first-hand information.”
In a separate episode, Lichner gave the Israeli mission what he described as an internal OHCHR summary of a UN General Assembly discussion concerning the then-special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Indonesian diplomat Makarim Wibisono.
In a response, Israeli diplomat Nelly Shiloh noticed that the internal account inaccurately paraphrased an Israeli statement on the rapporteur’s work. But she told colleagues they could not seek a correction. “For now we cannot change the situation because this is their internal report, which was not supposed to reach us,” Shiloh wrote.
Information Lichner provided also appeared to be intended to help Israel blunt scrutiny over fatal shootings in the West Bank by providing Israeli diplomats advance warning about internal UN deliberations on human rights abuses, thus helping them prepare public responses.
In May 2014, Lichner used his personal Gmail account to send Prosor and three other Israeli diplomats a Haaretz report titled “UN Calls for Probe Into Shooting of Palestinian Youths.” The article said that video taken at the scene suggested that two teenagers killed by Israeli troops, Mahmoud Odeh Salameh, 16, and Nadim Nuwara, 17, posed no threat to Israeli forces and reported that a senior UN official was demanding an “independent and transparent” investigation.
“For the past two days, I have been in contact with our friend about the issue,” Lichner wrote, again referring to an unidentified female contact. He warned that the UN Department of Political Affairs, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the OHCHR would meet the following day and that the shootings would probably be discussed. The high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, had been urged by her Ramallah staff to write to Israel and issue a statement expressing concern about “excessive use of force,” Lichner reported, adding that similar language might enter an upcoming briefing by the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs.
“At the advice of our friend,” Lichner then supplied Israel with two counterarguments: that the UN was disregarding an existing Israeli military investigation by calling for an independent inquiry, and that it should not express concern about excessive force before that investigation was complete.
“I will update [you] after the meeting tomorrow,” he concluded.
Gaza Accountability
The communications between Lichner and Israeli diplomats at the UN mission came at a time when Tel Aviv was facing unprecedented scrutiny over the mass killing of civilians during the summer 2014 military campaign against Gaza.
In addition to forwarding details about Zeid Al-Hussein’s meetings in DC related to the Gaza commission report, the archive includes several instances in which Lichner gave Israel advance or internal information about UN human rights proceedings involving Gaza. In February 2015, he forwarded an internal OHCHR planning email that disclosed when the UN commission of inquiry intended to release its report.
As usual, he added a warning emphasizing the secrecy of the information. “The information about the publication date of the report—after the elections—is sensitive and was not intended for distribution,” Lichner wrote. “The information was not supposed to pass to the Office’s staff and entered the summary below by mistake, and there is drama now.”
The following month, Lichner supplied Prosor and Leshno-Yaar with internal correspondence between UN official James Rawley, then-Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, and Guardian reporter Harriet Sherwood. Sherwood was investigating allegations that she said had been leaked to her from within the UN showing that Israeli pressure had disrupted an internal process that recommended listing the Israel Defense Forces as an entity involved in human rights violations against children.
Rawley’s response said the listing process was strictly confidential, remained ongoing, and was not subject to further comment.
Two days after The Guardian published its report about Israeli pressure, Lichner forwarded Leshno-Yaar the correspondence between UN officials and the reporter, stating that it was for his eyes only and not to be used or quoted, while also attempting to identify Sherwood’s source within the UN.
“The fact that The Guardian reporter approached these two (Rawley and June) indicates that the leak did not come from them. My bet is UNRWA/OCHA,” Lichner wrote on March 19, before adding, “Internal correspondence—please do not use or quote.”
“Intelligence officer in training”
More than a year earlier, Prosor had mounted a private campaign to help place Lichner at UNFPA. In January 2014, following a telephone conversation with U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, Prosor emailed her about Lichner’s application for an external-relations position. He told Power that Lichner had ranked first in the interview process, adding: “Please don’t mention that explicitly as we know it from internal sources.”
Prosor claimed that Lichner’s Israeli nationality was the only obstacle to his appointment and asked Power to speak personally with UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin to convey U.S. support for hiring what Prosor called the “best and most professional candidate.” Osotimehin already knew Lichner and his work, Prosor wrote, but “needs support to reach the right decision.”
When UNFPA requested a confidential reference the following month, Prosor described Lichner as a former political adviser and senior Israeli diplomat who had his “absolute trust.” He gave Lichner the highest possible scores for reliability and teamwork and told the agency that he conducted himself with “the utmost integrity.” By May 2014, Lichner was corresponding from a UNFPA address under the title External Relations Specialist.
Within weeks, he was again advising his former mission—but this time as an active inside source within the United Nations bureaucracy leaking confidential information in violation of UN regulations.
In June of that year, Lichner distributed a UN public-information department organizational chart and identified a unit responsible for Palestine, decolonization, and human rights. He suggested examining its personnel and cutting posts when the department’s budget reached the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee.
The emails suggest that Prosor remained an influential patron in Lichner’s UN career as he progressed higher within the organization.
In May 2015, Lichner prepared third-person talking points for Prosor to use in promoting him for a prospective position as secretary of the UN Development Program (UNDP) Executive Board. The document instructed Prosor, who had an upcoming meeting with the director of external relations at the agency, that it was important to press a senior UNDP official on the importance of Lichner’s appointment even if ultimately his hiring would be decided elsewhere.
The email itemized a list of talking points for Prosor to use to promote Lichner during the meeting. One of them states, “Yahav has very good political and analytical skills – he knows exactly what member states’ political positions are,” adding that he is an “intelligence officer in training and was as a political officer in the Israel embassy in the UK, working with the MPs in the House of Commons and Lords.”
The available emails make no other reference to Lichner working or being trained as an intelligence officer during this period.
Joining UNICEF
Lichner remained in the UN system after the correspondence documented in the archive and began working on issues more directly tied to Israeli interests at the organization. In 2016, he served as UNFPA’s interim representative in Britain, and by 2019 public materials identified him as a senior UNICEF adviser. In October 2023, he joined UNICEF’s executive director in a meeting with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna concerning civilian protection and humanitarian access in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Public career listings identify him as having subsequently served as principal adviser to the UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza. In June 2024, he wrote that he had visited Washington to discuss humanitarian operations in Gaza and the implementation of Security Council Resolution 2720, which called for increased aid to Gaza, with U.S. officials. In March 2026, George Washington University described him as having been “at the forefront” of negotiations with the U.S. government, engagement on Capitol Hill, and implementation of the resolution.
Lichner is now director of UNICEF’s Washington D.C. office. There is no evidence to establish whether his conduct documented in Prosor’s archive continued after 2015, nor is there evidence that UNICEF knew about the correspondence when it appointed him.
But the emails documenting his past private collaboration with the Israeli government and leaks of confidential information concern many of the same institutions and issues now within his public portfolio, including dealings with Congress and humanitarian diplomacy related to the Gaza Strip.
The archive does not connect Prosor or any other Israeli officials to his later appointment to a senior role at UNICEF.
In April 2015, however, after Lichner thanked Prosor for the “tailwind” surrounding a boost to his standing at UNFPA, Prosor offered a satisfied reply on his efforts to help Lichner ascend within the UN bureaucracy: “Glad we had an influence.”