Expanding the Possible, from Below

by Alexandria Shaner / November 16th, 2024

The Green New Deal has been largely blocked at the national level, but it is thriving in communities, cities, and states. Jeremy Brecher’s new book is both an urgent call to action and proof of concept.

Starting where we’re at

Less than one week after Trump was re-elected to the single most powerful political office in the world, it seems like a horrible time to release a book about the Green New Deal.

Thinking back to 2018, not so long ago in time but perhaps much longer in space, to when the Green New Deal was launched into public attention as a bold proposal for transformative national legislation, is frankly, beyond depressing. Loss, grief and rage compete with numbness and shock, easily overwhelming any effort to fathom where we were then, and where we find ourselves now.

But this is not a depressing story. We have no time for that now.

This is a story, a true story, about expanding the sense of what is possible and thereby expanding the actual limits of the possible. It is about shifting the balance of power and expanding democracy – what could be more right, right now? This story weaves once strange and wary bedfellows into a surprising sort of magical fabric, capable of keeping us safe as we pull the rug from under kings. This is the view from below.

What makes a Green New Dealer?

Jeremy Brecher’s new book, The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy, is a timely and important contribution for organizers and anyone thinking about rebuilding the world from the bottom up.

Drawing on decades of hands-on experience at the intersections of environmental, labor, and justice movements, Brecher offers an overview of Green New Deal from Below initiatives across various sectors and locations, highlighting a diverse array of programs already in progress or under development. The initiatives shared by Green New Dealers are intended to inspire countless more projects, which can serve as the foundation for local, national, and even global mobilization and reconstruction – even, and perhaps especially in times when national legislation cannot be relied upon.

Brecher begins with questions, “Is [the Green New Deal from Below] a brilliant flame that may simply burn out? Will it continue as a force, but not a decisive element in a society and world hurtling toward midnight? Or will it prove to be the start of a turn away from catastrophe and toward security and justice? The answer will largely depend on what people decide to do with the possibilities [it] opens up” (10).

The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Like The New Deal of the 1930s, the Green New Deal is not a single program or piece of legislation – rather, according to Brecher, it exhibits many of the traits of a social movement. “[The New Deal] was a whole era of turmoil in which contesting forces tried to address a devastating crisis and shape the future of American society. In addition to its famous “alphabet soup” of federal agencies, the New Deal was part of a broader process of social change that included experimentation at the state, regional, and local levels; organization among labor, the unemployed, urban residents, the elderly, and other grassroots constituencies; and lively debate on future possibilities that went far beyond the policies actually adopted” (12). While the New Deal certainly had its limitations in terms of racial and gender justice, it was this unifying and expansive vision that set it apart as a cohesive and immensely transformative program.

From its outset, the core principle of the Green New Deal has been and remains, “to unite the necessity for climate protection with the goals of full employment and social justice” (11). In other words, not only does the GND provide a unifying vision that aligns environmental, labor, and justice movements together in the pursuit of mutual aims, it weaves constituencies and communities into transformative power blocs, greater than the sum of their parts.

Though the GND has so far been consistently blocked and largely coopted at the national level by the fossil fuel lobby, and by corporate interests antagonistic to its inherent socialist implications, a lesser-known wave of initiatives has also emerged. Driven by community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, students, and other nonfederal actors, all aimed at advancing the climate protection, economic and social justice objectives of the Green New Deal, this grassroots movement can be recognized as “a Green New Deal from Below.”

“So far, these forces have managed to block the Green New Deal at a national level. The strategy of the Green New Deal from Below is to outflank them” (174). Brecher warns against mistaking the Green New Deal from Below movement for an unrelated collection of isolated or even of loosely related interventions – that would be to miss the forest for the trees, or as Brecher describes it, that would be like describing a collection of lecture halls, library, stadium, cafeteria, and dorms but failing to recognize the university.

The type of vision fueled and integrative coalition building exemplified by diverse Green New Dealers has major potential for mass member organizing, shifting power, expanding democracy, and could provide the way forward from our current predicament, shoved between a neoliberal heat-rock and a cold, hard fascist place.

How to Green New Deal from Below

Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, who has introduced a motion to create a new city office to support workers transitioning out of jobs affected by new technology, including those in the oil and gas industry, summed it up well: the city cannot “correct the sins of environmental racism” by “taking away jobs from working-class communities” (108).

The core idea behind Green New Deal from Below initiatives is to address the urgent need for climate protection while also meeting the needs of working people and marginalized communities, an approach that moves beyond fragmented policies to a comprehensive set of strategies for social change. It integrates climate protection with the creation of good jobs and tackles the disproportionate concentration of carbon pollution, such as from fossil fuel plants, in low-income communities of color. This policy integration is reflected in the collaboration of previously separate or opposing constituencies. “When once-divided groups reach out to each other, explore common needs and interests, and start cooperating for common objectives they thereby create new forms of social action. That is the process that [Brecher has] called the emergence of “common preservation”” (180).

The initiatives described by Brecher are largely driven by such coalitions of diverse groups working toward shared goals, often including neighborhood organizations, unions, racial and ethnic justice groups, political leaders, government officials, youth and senior organizations, religious congregations, and climate justice advocates. Chapters 1-4 provide detailed but highly accessible examples of such initiatives, including candid debriefs that don’t shy away from exploring lessons learned from mistakes, at the community, municipal, and state levels.

One particularly potent lesson, gleaned through numerous campaigns, relates to tensions that can arise between environmental and labor protections. Historically and now, climate protection policies have often been viewed as a threat to workers and communities reliant on the fossil fuel economy. This perception generates opposition to climate action, with certain communities and worker groups highlighted as “poster children” for the negative impacts of such policies, leading to the widely framed “environment vs. jobs” debate, fueling conflict between environmentalists and organized labor, often amplified by fossil fuel interests.

Brecher lays out three key shifts in mindset that are beginning to offer an alternative to this polarization (147). First, many trade unionists have come to recognize that the transition to cleaner energy is inevitable, and that their members will be vulnerable unless policies are put in place to protect them. Second, climate advocates are realizing that their policies will face significant resistance unless they also address the needs of workers and communities that could be negatively impacted by these changes. Third, the core idea of the Green New Deal, that climate protection can be an opportunity to address inequality and injustice, opens up a broader vision for social change that transcends narrow interest group politics.

This “new thinking” often begins with specific interests but is increasingly fostering a broader awareness. Unions are recognizing the necessity of climate protection; environmentalists are acknowledging the importance of community well-being; and justice advocates see the potential for new coalitions to tackle long-standing inequities. “The result has been the development of coalitions among groups that had previously been at odds, lobbing virtual projectiles at each other from separate silos” (148).

Green New Deal from Below initiatives contrast sharply with dominant neoliberal public policies that prioritize private enterprise as the primary vehicle for achieving social goals and restrict government action to facilitating private wealth accumulation – or more simply, they intentionally break from the profit over people and planet model of business as usual. Green New Deal from Below programs emphasize public planning, investment, and strict criteria for achieving public objectives. Their implementation involves not just private corporations but also government-run programs, public banks, cooperatives, and other alternatives to profit-driven enterprises. Resources are often raised through strategies like pollution fees, taxes on large corporations, and uber-wealthy individual incomes.

The climate policies of Green New Deals from Below aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the pace required by climate science with a focus on proven strategies: expanding renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuels, decreasing energy demand by increasing energy efficiency and doing more with less through programs focused on public abundance, while rejecting more costly, risky and green-washed approaches like carbon capture, hydrogen blends with fossil fuels, and nuclear energy.

Brecher gets into detail via diverse examples of campaigns, direct actions, community and public projects, as well as overarching and particular strategies in chapters 5-11: Climate-Safe Energy Production, Negawatts (Efficiency and Managed Contractions), Fossil Fuel Phaseout, Transforming Transportation, Protecting Workers and Communities on the Ground, Just Transition in the States, and New Deal Jobs for the Future. This is a wealth of information in a highly accessible and actionable presentation – from the nitty gritty of organizing meetings and local bicycle lanes to very large-scale campaigns like public jobs guarantees.

Strategy from below

The Green New Deal from Below does not provide a strategy for total social transformation. “That would require transformation of the basic structures of the national and world order, including capitalism and the nation-state system. The Green New Deal from Below can be part of that more extensive process of change, but it cannot subsume it” (174).

The Green New Deal from Below is a hybrid movement that operates both inside and outside the dominant political system, including elected officials, party leaders, government bureaucrats, and electoral activists, as well as communities, ethnic groups, labor organizations, and other civil society groups. It pursues its goals through a mix of conventional political tactics, such as supporting candidates, lobbying for legislation, and public education, alongside direct-action methods, including occupying political offices, blocking fossil fuel pipelines, and supporting strikes aimed at a just transition to a climate-safe economy.

These initiatives strategically function both within, alongside, and in opposition to existing political institutions. Actions focus on tangible changes that directly improve people’s lives. Whether it’s shutting down a polluting coal plant in an asthma-ridden community or providing free transit or bicycles to young people, these initiatives aim to make a real difference. They also educate and inspire: free transit and bicycles not only reduce vehicle pollution but also allow young people to explore alternatives to car-dependent lifestyles.

Additionally, participation and justice are centered in practice. Actions are also almost always led by coalitions of diverse groups. For example, the Green New Deal for Education brings together teachers, school staff, students, parents, unions, and racial justice advocates to fight for investment in healthy schools free from fossil fuel pollution. Sate coalitions have united unions, climate-impacted communities, racial and ethnic justice groups, and climate advocates to push for legislation that phases out fossil fuels in ways that create good jobs, support community development, reduce environmental injustices, and build climate-friendly housing and transit.

Historical sociologist Michael Mann argues that new solutions to societal problems often arise from the overlooked spaces within existing power structures – what he calls the “interstices.” These gaps, often hidden from the mainstream, provide fertile ground for marginalized or seemingly powerless groups to propose alternatives to the status quo. This process is sometimes called the “Lilliput strategy,” where small, isolated efforts are linked to create larger systemic change. However, Brecher points out that this strategy is not without tension (169). It requires balancing the need for identity and independence within each group with the necessity of broader cooperation. The resulting tension can either lead to fragmentation or domination, but it can also spark a process of collaboration where the distinct needs and concerns of each group are incorporated into a larger, unified vision.

This dynamic is key to the development of the Green New Deal from Below. While recognizing the unique needs of different constituencies, advocates of the Green New Deal have worked to forge connections between diverse groups that have historically been at odds. A notable example mentioned previously is the collaboration between organized labor and environmentalists – two groups that have often been in conflict. Rather than forcing these groups to give up their individual identities, the Green New Deal offers a shared identity centered on common goals. The success of these coalitions depends on ensuring that all participants benefit from cooperation through policies that combine labor protections, environmental justice, and greenhouse gas reductions. However, Brecher warns that these coalitions are fragile and can falter if the priorities of key constituencies are not given adequate attention.

Ultimately, Green New Deal from Below actions seek to shift the balance of power away from fossil fuel polluters, exploitative corporations, and the wealthy elite, toward exploited workers, marginalized communities, and non-elite groups. At their heart, they aim to expand democracy, challenge the rise of autocracy and plutocracy, and ensure power is more equally distributed and accessible to all.

By helping to build organized constituencies and coalitions that serve as political foundations for broader Green New Deal campaigns, these projects also create institutional building blocks, from energy systems to transportation networks, that can become integral parts of the economic and social infrastructure of a larger Green New Deal. By engaging people in projects that reflect common interests and a shared vision, these initiatives help overcome divisions and contradictions that weaken popular movements. They also reduce the influence of anti–Green New Deal forces by dividing them, disorienting them, undermining their support base, and, at times, even winning them over.

Brecher’s presentation reveals that the fight for the Green New Deal is closely tied to the fight for democracy. These initiatives offer models for, and demonstrate the benefits of, popular democracy. Green New Deal from Below projects show that people can achieve tangible gains that improve their lives, building a base for the protection and expansion of democratic governance at every level, embodying local participatory democracy while also reinforcing representative democracy against the threat of fascism at the national level.

Local and state-level Green New Deal initiatives are therefore crucial for achieving both climate and justice goals. They help build momentum and power for a national Green New Deal and serve as testing grounds, offering a “proof of concept.” These building blocks, when linked, form a more effective Green New Deal with deep local roots. Programs “from below” can then connect with each other and align with national planning and investment. Some national proposals even outline policies to facilitate this coordination. While federal and global action are needed to fully realize Green New Deal goals, the movement is already taking shape at the local level.

Going further

Brecher cautions, that while the Green New Deal program is crucial and beneficial, it is not sufficient on its own to address the deeper structural issues of an unjust and self-destructive global order. There are also critiques outside the scope of this book which assert that even if the Green New Deal was adopted at the national level today, on its own, it doesn’t go far enough, fast enough on climate protection to avert devasting outcomes.

One of its strategic objectives must therefore be to pave the way for more radical and far-reaching forms of change. Indeed, an internationalist Global Green New Deal has begun to materialize – both “from below” and championed to various degrees by a few government and multinational formations. The key will be to continue to build and connect participatory, justice centered activity around the world in ever widening and deepening solidarity.

Today, we are living with a profound sense of urgency – the urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the urgency of those suffering and dying due to injustice. The original Green New Deal proposal responded to this by calling for a ten-year mobilization aimed at transforming American society and economy as dramatically as the New Deal and the wartime mobilization during World War II. “The Green New Deal arose in a sea of hopelessness and despair. It pointed the way toward viable alternatives to the realities that evoked that hopelessness and despair. The Green New Deal from Below provides people with a way to start building those alternatives day by day, where they live and work” (180).

Seven years later, a recent headline from New Scientist reads: “The 1.5°C target is dead, but climate action needn’t be”. For the first time, climate scientists have explicitly said it will be impossible to limit peak warming to 1.5°C. Our focus must be on taking real action, like the initiatives Brecher has laid out and like many others around the world, not on meaningless platitudes and slogans like “Keep 1.5°C alive” or vague promises of “net-zero”.

At the outset of the book, Brecher cites the world historian Arnold Toynbee on how great civilizational changes occur. The existing leadership of existing institutions face new challenges and fail to change to meet them. But a “creative minority” may arise that proposes and begins to implement new solutions. “Those building the Green New Deal are creating such new solutions, from below” (180).

Therefore, perhaps the greatest success, as well as the greatest potential, of the Green New Deal from Below is its ability to expand the boundaries of what is possible, bringing together and empowering people to fight for the things they need but have long considered out of reach.

Workin’ on a world

We may never know if these solutions will be sufficient or come in time. But Brecher offers us the chance to resonate with the feelings expressed by songwriter Iris Dement in her song “Workin’ on a World.” She recalls waking each day “filled with sadness, fear, and dread,” as the world she once knew seemed to be “crashing to the ground.”

Looking around where we find ourselves this November of 2024, in the shadow of so much loss but with so much yet to lose, it wouldn’t be crazy to admit to feeling the same. Yet, as Iris “reflected on the struggles of those who came before her, the sacrifices they made, she realized those sacrifices had opened doors for her that they never lived to see” (180).

“Now I’m working on a world I may never see,
I’m joining forces with the warriors of love
Who came before and will follow you and me.
I get up in the morning knowing I’m privileged just to be
Working on a world I may never see.”

Brecher concludes, “whether we will see the world of the Green New Deal fully realized, in the Green New Deal from Below, we can see that right now we are making a part of that world” (180).

I’d only add that in so doing, we are also each reaffirming our own and one another’s right to be here, to reclaim our world here and now with a place for us all in it, to choose to live and to help live, to occupy our lives. We’re not just doing it for the future, we’re doing it for the now. In the words of a different movement ancestor, Salaria Kea, an American nurse, desegregation activist, and the only black nurse who worked in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, fighting against fascism on the frontlines:

“I’m not just goin’ to sit down and let this happen. I’m going out and help, even if it is my life. But I’m helping. This is my world too.”

Through action, especially through our collective action, we are our vision come to life. We are the embodiment of that world we’re busy working on. Through us, it already does exist.

The Labor Network for Sustainability is taking the opportunity to launch the book, as well as the organizing models it provides, in a live webinar event scheduled for Wednesday, November 20th at 7:30 pm ET.

Alexandria Shaner (she/her) is a sailor, writer, & organizer. She is a staff member of ZNetwork.org and active with Extinction Rebellion, Caracol DSA, & the Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network. Read other articles by Alexandria.

Deliberate Israeli Targeting of Palestinian Children Becomes “Local News” on the BBC

Buried out of Sight

by Media Lens / November 16th, 2024

Imagine an experienced Ukrainian surgeon breaking down in front of a committee of British MPs as he related how Russian forces had been deliberately targeting Ukrainian children.

Imagine the surgeon had had to operate in desperate conditions on young children who had been lying injured after a Russian bombing attack and who were then ‘picked off’ by Russian drones. The atrocity claims would be headline news all across Western media.

Here, in the real world, the horrific testimony of a British surgeon who had operated on children in Gaza targeted by Israeli drones after Israeli bombing attacks– something that happened ‘day after day after day’ – has been largely blanked.

Professor Nizam Mamode, a retired NHS surgeon who recently returned after working at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said he had ‘never seen anything on this scale, ever’. He has worked in a number of conflicts around the world, including the genocide in Rwanda.

Prof Mamode worked for a month between August and September as a volunteer for the charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians. In a hearing on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, he told members of the UK parliamentary International Development Committee :

‘Drones would come down and pick off civilians, children. This is not an occasional thing. This was day after day after day operating on children who would say, “I was lying on the ground after a bomb dropped and this quadcopter [a small, remotely-piloted helicopter drone] came down and hovered over me and shot me”.’

Prof Mamode told MPs he saw children with sniper injuries to the head. He also noted that the pellets fired by most drones were more destructive than bullets which would go straight through a victim’s body. Instead, the pellets would bounce around inside bodies, creating much more extensive damage.

A seven-year-old boy, who had been caught up in an Israeli bombing and then deliberately hit by an Israeli drone, came into the hospital with his stomach hanging out of his chest. He had further injuries to his liver, spleen, bowel and arteries.

‘He survived that and went out a week later. Whether he is still alive, I don’t know.’

The surgeon broke down three times during his testimony. He described one case of an 8-year-old girl who was bleeding to death during surgery: ‘I asked for a swab and they said, “No more swabs”’.

As he spoke to the MPs, he was momentarily overcome with emotion.

Simple medical items, such as sterile gloves and painkillers, are in short supply because of Israel’s blocking of aid into Gaza, said Prof Mamode. This also applies to basic items like soap and shampoo, leading to unhygienic conditions.

He added:

‘I saw I don’t know how many wounds with maggots in [them]. One of my colleagues took maggots out of a child’s throat in intensive care. There were flies in operating theatre landing in wounds.’

He told MPs that he had spent the entire month in the hospital, partly because it was not safe to travel around. But also because, in January 2024, Israel had bombed the guest house used by Medical Aid for Palestinians.

The surgeon believes that this was done deliberately by Israeli forces:

‘All of those guest houses are in the Israeli army’s computers and are designated safe houses, so my assumption is that it was a deliberate attack and the aim behind it is to discourage aid workers from coming.’

He said the same applied to five Israeli attacks on UN convoys, including one while he was in Gaza.

Labour MP and committee chair Sarah Champion asked Prof Mamode if he meant that rogue snipers were shooting at the armoured vehicles.

‘No, no. This is the Israeli army coming up as a unit and deliberately shooting.’

Prof Mamode’s Palestinian colleagues told him that when Israeli forces attacked the hospital in February, they killed members of staff and deposited them in a mass grave with dead patients. Many other colleagues were taken away. The surgeon related one such case:

‘They [Israeli soldiers] just took him away and killed him. That’s what’s going on. As far as I can see, it doesn’t matter who you are in Gaza. If you are a Palestinian in Gaza, you are a target.’

Champion said in her parliamentary summary:

‘The Committee will do all we can to act on Professor Mamode’s extraordinary testimony and ensure his experiences are heard loud and clear. If leaders are not yet listening, they should be by now.’

This should have generated massive coverage across national news media, with the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Minister David Lammy being bombarded by questions from journalists on what action the UK government would now take. Instead, there has been virtual silence. As far as we can tell, there was no broadcast coverage on BBC News, Sky News or ITV, although Channel 4 News did include an item on Prof Mamode’s testimony, at least on its X feed (we could not find a broadcast item, however, on the Channel 4 News programme catch-up page). We do not have the resources to monitor all television and radio programmes, so we cannot rule out that there was a passing mention on the BBC World Service or elsewhere.

Nor were there any editorials or significant coverage in major news reports in UK national newspapers. Prof Mamode’s appearance before the parliamentary committee was reported in a live Guardian blog about Gaza on 12 November, but his most compelling and harrowing evidence was omitted or glossed over. To his credit, Owen Jones mentioned the surgeon’s account in a Guardian opinion piece.

The appalling lack of serious coverage is actually highlighted by the fact that there was one article on the BBC News website about Prof Mamode’s testimony to the committee (we were alerted to it by a post on X by one of our followers). The article was titled, ‘Gaza surgeon describes drones targeting children’. As is often the case, the word ‘Israel’ or ‘Israeli’ – as in ‘Israeli drones’ – was missing from the headline. In other words, the perpetrator of violence was missing. Moreover, rather than refer to Prof Mamode as a British surgeon, he was labelled as a ‘Gaza surgeon’, perhaps implying that he was employed by the ‘Hamas-run health ministry’, the phrase that is routinely deployed in BBC News reports.

But here was the most glaring feature of the piece: rather than being placed on the front page or even somewhere in the section marked, ‘Israel-Gaza war’, a glaring misnomer for an ongoing genocide, it appeared deep inside the BBC’s ‘Local News’ category on the page for ‘Hampshire & Isle of Wight’. (As far as we know, it never appeared in a more prominent place on the BBC News website. But the fact that the bottom of the article contains the line, ‘Get in touch: Do you have a story BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight should cover?’, suggests that it was immediately placed in that section). The same treatment was afforded to an earlier BBC News article in October, shortly after the surgeon had returned from Gaza, but with the most disturbing details about the deliberate targeting of children omitted.

Why place such an important story in the ‘Hampshire & Isle Of Wight’ local news section of the BBC website? The ostensible reason is that Prof Mamode comes from Brockenhurst, a New Forest village in Hampshire. But surely the real reason was to minimise public attention and thus evade pressure from the powerful Israel lobby. After all, as we have mentioned before, senior BBC News staff have admitted to ‘waiting in fear for the phone call from the Israelis’. The Israel lobby’s weaponising of antisemitism, which was deployed to prevent Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, is being used to suppress or silence criticism of Israel. This has had a crippling effect on journalism and free speech.

Regular readers will recall the dearth of media coverage given to the harrowing testimony provided by Professor Nick Maynard, a UK surgeon who works as a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospital, when he returned from Gaza earlier this year. He had described the clear, deliberate targeting of hospital and healthcare facilities; but also the actual execution of Palestinian surgeons and other medical staff.

In April, Prof Maynard said that Israeli forces are: ‘systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system.’

He described what had happened to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza where he had previously worked, and where around 400 Palestinians had reportedly been killed in a brutal two-week attack by Israeli forces:

‘Every single part of the hospital has been destroyed. The whole infrastructure of the hospital has been destroyed. When I spoke to Marwan [a Palestinian colleague] yesterday, he told me there were 107 patients, 60 medical staff. God only knows what has happened to them. I think we’ve seen some of the pictures. Surgeons I know have been executed in the last 48 hours there. Bodies have been discovered in the last 12-24 hours who had been handcuffed, with their hands behind their back. [Our added emphasis].’

He added: ‘And so, there is no doubt at all, that multiple healthcare workers have been executed there in the last few days.’

All of the above, taken together with the media’s recent gaslighting about a supposed ‘pogrom’ against rampaging Israeli football fans chanting genocidal, anti-Arab slogans in Amsterdam last week – disinformation expertly dissected by Richard Sanders for Double Down News – reveals like never before the monstrous, genocide-enabling reality of ‘mainstream’ news media.

Meanwhile, Israel appears able to continue unimpeded in its brutal drive towards a ‘Greater Israel’, openly espoused by Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, which would require the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians ‘from the Jordan to the sea’.

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

 

UN Membership for Palestine Now

John Whitbeck

November 15, 2024
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

On May 10, 2024, the UN General Assembly passed overwhelmingly, with only nine negative votes (Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the United States) a resolution (https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/ltd/n24/129/97/pdf/n2412997.pdf) which “Determinesthat the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations” and “Accordingly recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably.”

Early foreign policy appointments, both formally announced and authoritatively rumored, by President-elect Donald Trump make clear that there is absolutely no chance that his incoming administration would permit the Security Council to approve an upgrade in the status of the State of Palestine from observer state to full member state.

In addition, prominent members of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, are expressing the expectation (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/11/far-right-israeli-minister-orders-preparations-for-west-bank-annexation) that, in 2025, the second Trump administration will bless and recognize Israel’s formal annexation of the West Bank, as the first Trump administration recognized Israel’s formal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, thereby definitively destroying any possibility of Palestinian self-determination and freedom, and Trump has named a public supporter of Israeli annexation of the West Bank as his ambassador to Israel (https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/12/trump-picks-mike-huckabee-supporter-of-israeli-annexation-as-ambassador-to-israel).

There is, however, one tiny glimmer of hope in this darkness.

On December 23, 2016, after Trump’s first election but before he took office, President Barack Obama instructed his UN ambassador to abstain, and thereby to permit the adoption by a 14-0 vote, in the vote on UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm), which reaffirmed that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation of international law, and which reiterated the Security Council’s demand that Israel immediately cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

Obama’s abstention decision constituted an act of insubordination and disobedience which shocked the Israeli government, and it would have been inconceivable at any previous time during his presidency or if Hillary Clinton had been elected to succeed him. One may assume that Obama did not wish virtually has last act as president to be a final demonstration of his contempt for international law and the views and values of the vast majority of mankind.

While Israel could and, unsurprisingly, has ignored UN Security Council Resolution 2334, a UN Security Council resolution approving full UN member state status for the State of Palestine would create a fact that no country could ignore. The occupation of the entire territory of a UN member state by another UN member state, which, in the case of Palestine, the International Court of Justice has recently confirmed (https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176) is unlawful and must rapidly end, could not be permitted to stand indefinitely or without prompt and significant consequences.

Might Biden, who has been repeatedly humiliated and treated with contempt by Netanyahu notwithstanding his having given Israel everything it has sought, militarily, financially and diplomatically, as it has pursued its genocidal assault against the Palestinian people, follow the Obama precedent and finally assert his personal freedom and independence by instructing his UN ambassador to abstain from a Security Council vote on a new application by the State of Palestine for full UN member state status?

The period between today and January 20 offers the best opportunity for full UN membership which the State of Palestine has ever had, and it may be the last opportunity.

The State of Palestine and its friends throughout the world should try.

John V. Whitbeck is a Paris-based international lawyer.

When Will the General Assembly Suspend Israel?

by Kathy Kelly / November 15th, 2024

The Biblical Book of Job chronicles a string of catastrophes relentlessly plaguing the main character, Job, who loses his prosperity, his home, his health, and his children. Eventually, an agonized Job curses his own existence as well as the god that created him.

Numerous interpretations of the story exist, and more than one version has circulated through the ancient Near East. One version concludes with Job avowing repentance. “I know that my redeemer liveth, and so I repent in dust and in ashes.”

The Latin root for the word ‘repent’ is pensare – to think. ‘Repent” suggests an effort to rethink.

Job’s surprising repentance has been on my mind as calls increase, in 2024, for the United Nations to rethink its relation to Israel as a member state. Increasingly, civil society groups are pressuring Permanent Missions to the UN to eject Israel as a voting member of the General Assembly.

To paraphrase Pankraj Mishra, writing for the New York Review of Books, a stunned world has watched with disbelief as the United States provisions Israel with weapons enabling a mass murder spree across the Middle East.

Palestinians in the West Bank have recently urged all organizations demanding UN compliance with the International Criminal Court ruling of July 2024 to sign a letter available at World BEYOND War which urges Member States of the United Nations General Assembly to fulfill their duties.

Following up on the potential of this letter, a new coalition, “Global Solidarity for Peace in Palestine” has issued a letter to His Excellency Mr. Philemon Yang, the President of the United Nations General Assembly asking him to convene an urgent meeting of the General Assembly to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, establish and secure humanitarian aid corridors and ensure the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The letter additionally requests:

• The revival of the UN Committee Against Apartheid to address systemic violations of international law and human rights in the OPT.
• Consideration of targeted boycotts, sanctions, and divestments, particularly against illegal operations in the OPT.
• The establishment of an arms embargo on Israel.
• Exploration of suspending Israel from the General Assembly until it complies with international law.

To further support these efforts, the letter calls for the establishment of an unarmed UN peacekeeping mission in the OPT under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to ensure the safety and dignity of all civilians.

In a way, Israel has already removed itself from norms maintained by the UN Charter as it has consistently flouted UN treaties, Resolutions and Advisory opinions. We must not forget that Israel refuses to acknowledge to the UN its possession of nuclear weapons.

I felt startled, during an initial planning call held with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, when one of them spoke of the evacuation he and his family faced, that very day, and said, “We are facing the final solution. Israel is imposing the final solution on us.” Other participants spoke of having shuddered during bombings, day and night.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan,  writes movingly in the Guardian of how absurd it is that the United Nations’ General Assembly agrees to seat Israel as a U.N. member nation.

Israel’s abusive repudiation of the very idea of the United Nations, its escalating and lethal violation of countless international norms, its repeated, lethal attacks on U.N. sanctuaries and peacekeepers justifies its expulsion. Hasan reminds us that Israel’s outgoing Ambassador to the United Nations shredded the UN charter while standing at the General Assembly podium. This is the Charter that declares the UN mission to eradicate the scourge of warfare for future generations.

It is time for the clouds to part above the burning lands of West Asia – for the suffering there to be comforted and their pitiless accusers rebuked by the gathered voice of humanity, by the agent that created Israel and can, when it wishes, “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The work here is ours, and so let our United Nations demand, and not beg, humanity from Israel and from its imperial sponsor the United States.

• First published at World BEYOND War.Email

Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is the board president of World BEYOND W (worldbeyondwar.org) and a co-coordinator of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. (merchantsofdeath.org). Read other articles by Kathy.

Blinken Atrocious in a Dangerous World

by Binoy Kampmark / November 15th, 2024

It is hard to credit one of the least impressive Secretary of States the United States has ever produced with any merit other than being a plasterwork that, from time to time, moved with caution on the world stage for fear of cracking.  On the stage, Antony Blinken’s brittle performances have been nothing short of unimpressive, notably in pursuing such projects comically titled “Peace in the Middle East.”  Each time he has ventured to various regions of the world, the combatants seem keener than ever to continue taking up arms or indulging in slaughter.

A sense of Blinken’s detachment from the world can be gathered from his Foreign Affairs piece published on October 1, intended as something of a report on the diplomatic achievements of the Biden administration.  It starts off with the sermonising treacle that is all a bit much – the naughty states on the world stage, albeit small in number (Russia, Iran, North Korea and China), “determined to alter the foundational principles of the international system.”

The Biden administration had, in response, “pursued a strategy of renewal, pairing historic investments in competitiveness at home with an intensive diplomatic campaign to revitalize partnerships abroad.”  This served to counter those challengers wishing to “undermine the free, open, secure, and prosperous world that the United States and most countries seek.”  Then comes the remark that should prompt readers to pinch themselves. “The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago.”

An odd assessment for various reasons.  There is the continued war in Ukraine and Washington’s refusal to encourage any meaningful talks between Kiev and Moscow, preferring, instead, the continued supply of weapons to an attritive conflict of slaughter and such acts of industrial terrorism as the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline.

There has been the relentless watering down of the “One China” understanding over the status of Taiwan, along with continued provocations against Beijing through the offensive pact of AUKUS with Australia and the UK.  That particularly odious pact has served to turn Australia into a US military garrison without the consent of its citizens, an outcome sold to the dunces in Canberra as utterly necessary to arrest the rise of China.  Along the way, an arms buildup in the Indo- and Asia-Pacific has been encouraged.

With such a view of the world, it’s little wonder how blind Blinken, and other members of the Biden administration, have been to Israel’s own rogue efforts at breaking and altering the international system, committing, along the way, a goodly number of atrocities that have seen it taken to the International Court of Justice by South Africa for committing alleged acts of genocide.

Through his various sojourns, the point was always clear.  Israel was to be mildly rebuked, if at all, while Hamas was to be given the full chastising treatment as killers without a cause.  When the barbarians revolt against their imperial governors, they are to be both feared and reviled.  In June this year, for instance, Blinken stated on one of his countless missions for a non-existent peace that Hamas was “the only obstacle” to a ceasefire, a markedly jaundiced explanation given the broader programs and objects being pursued by the Israeli Defence Forces.  Hamas has been accused of being absolutist in its goals, but one can hardly exempt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the charge.  Not for Blinken: “I think it is clear to everyone around the world, that it’s on them [Hamas] and that they will have made a choice to continue a war that they started.”

On the issue of aid to Gaza’s strangled, dying population, Blinken has been, along with his equally ineffectual colleague in the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, cringingly ineffective.  Their October 13 letter sent to their Israeli counterparts made mention of several demands, including the entry of some 350 aid trucks into Gaza on a daily basis, and refraining from adopting laws, now in place, banning the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).  Each demand has been swatted back with a school child’s snotty petulance, and aid continues being blocked to various parts of Gaza.

On October 24, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action) “urgently” called on the Secretary of State “to stop wasting his time with failed diplomatic visits and to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.”  Those at AJP Action must surely have realised by now that Blinken would be utterly rudderless without those failed visits.  Indeed, Osama Abu Irshaid, Executive Director of the organisation, went so far as to say that “Blinken’s diplomatic theatre is enabling Netanyahu’s war crimes.”  To arm and fund Israel “while requesting a ceasefire” was a policy both “hypocritical and ineffective.”  Such is the nature of that sort of theatre.

In the meantime, the tectonic plates of international relations are moving in other directions, a point that has been aided, not hindered, by the policy of this administration.  Through BRICS and other satellite fora, the United States is finding itself gradually outpaced and isolated, even as it continues to hide behind the slogan of an international rules-based order it did so much to create.  This is not to say that the US imperium has quite reached its terminus.  If anything, the Biden administration, through the good offices of Blinken, continues to insist on its vitality.  But US hegemony long left unchallenged is, most certainly, at an end.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.