Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General honored the UN and human decency by invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter, calling for the UN Security Council to stop the killing in Gaza as a basic responsibility under the UN Charter.
Each day, UN officials on the ground in Gaza heroically struggle to feed, shelter, and protect the population from Israeli bombs. More than 100 UN staff have been killed in the Israeli assault.
The vote in the UN Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza is a moment of honor for the United Nations and shame for the United States. The vast majority put itself on the side of international law, by voting to stop Israel’s war on Gaza. The US stood alone against international law, with its sidekick and tutor in imperial brutality, the United Kingdom, dutifully abstaining.
Human Rights Watch has called Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison. The situation in Gaza is as clear as it is brutal. The State of Palestine, recognized by 139 nations, has long suffered from the brutalities of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel began to cleanse Gaza ethnically, after the Hamas-led attack on October 7. Legal specialists at the Centre for Constitutional Rights regard Israel’s actions as a genocide.
Last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children. More than 18,600 Gazans have been killed with women and children constituting 70 percent of the victims. An unfathomable 1.8 million Gazans have been displaced. Tens of thousands are at risk of imminent death.
After pushing the population from northern Gaza to the south, Israel then invaded the south. Israeli authorities told Gazans to flee for their life to zones within the south, and then bombed the places to which the Gazans had been directed.
The US authorities pay lip service to Gazan civilians and are more than a protector of Israel. It is an accomplice. The US supplies, in real-time, the munitions Israel uses for mass murders. The president of Israel Isaac Herzog justifies the slaughter by declaring that there are no innocent civilian Gazans. It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.
The tale that Israel has no options other than the mass killing of Gazans to defeat Hamas is the Israeli government’s biggest lie. The fact that Israel was lulled by its arrogance into letting its guard down on October 7 does not make Hamas an existential threat. Hamas has only a tiny fraction of Israel’s military might.
The very same politicians who were responsible for the October 7 security failure and who now manipulate the deepest anxieties of the Israeli population are leading the killing frenzy.
Fifty-six years after its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and after decades of illegal settlements in the occupied territories, Israel needs finally to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands. The US needs to stop arming the Israeli operation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and stop protecting Israel’s rampant violations of basic human rights in the West Bank.
Such measures could secure peace between Israel and the neighboring countries. On that basis, UN peacekeepers, including both Arab and Western troops, would secure the Israel-Palestine border for a needed transition period.
As part of a peace agreement, which establishes Palestine along the 1967 borders and its capital in East Jerusalem, the Arab and Islamic countries including Iran have reiterated their long-standing desire for peace with Israel.
All human history makes clear generally that no group, whether Jewish or otherwise, has an unconditional right to any land. Israeli fanatics believe that God promised them all of the lands from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean.
