Getting Serious About Halting Israeli Genocide
US representative to the UN Robert Wood raises his hand to veto a security council resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire. Photo credit: Charly Triballeau/AFP
On Friday, December 8, the UN Security Council met under Article 99 for only the fourth time in the UN’s history. Article 99 is an emergency provision that allows the Secretary General to summon the Council to respond to a crisis that “threatens the maintenance of international peace and security.” The previous occasions were the Belgian invasion of the Congo in 1960, the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 and Lebanon’s Civil War in 1989.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that he invoked Article 99 to demand an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza because “we are at a breaking point,” with a “high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza.” The United Arab Emirates drafted a ceasefire resolution that quickly garnered 97 cosponsors.
The World Food Program has reported that Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation, with 9 out of 10 people spending entire days with no food. In the two days before Guterres invoked Article 99, Rafah was the only one of Gaza’s five districts to which the UN could deliver any aid at all.
The Secretary General stressed that “The brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people… International humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity.”
Mr. Guterres concluded, “The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss… The eyes of the world – and the eyes of history – are watching. It’s time to act.”
UN members delivered eloquent, persuasive pleas for the immediate humanitarian ceasefire that the resolution called for, and the Council voted thirteen to one, with the U.K. abstaining, to approve the resolution. But the one vote against by the United States, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, killed the resolution, leaving the Council impotent to act as the Secretary General warned that it must.
This was the sixteenth U.S. Security Council veto since 2000 – and fourteen of those vetoes have been to shield Israel and/or U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine from international action or accountability. While Russia and China have vetoed resolutions on a variety of issues around the world, from Myanmar to Venezuela, there is no parallel for the U.S.’s extraordinary use of its veto primarily to provide exceptional impunity under international law for one other country.
The consequences of this veto could hardly be more serious. As Brazil’s UN Ambassador Sérgio França Danese told the Council, if the U.S. hadn’t vetoed a previous resolution that Brazil drafted on October 18, “thousands of lives would have been saved.” And as the Indonesian representative asked, “How many more must die before this relentless assault is halted? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000?”
Following the previous U.S. veto of a ceasefire at the Security Council, the UN General Assembly took up the global call for a ceasefire, and the resolution, sponsored by Jordan, passed by 120 votes to 14, with 45 abstentions. The 12 small countries who voted with the United States and Israel represented less than 1% of the world’s population.
The isolated diplomatic position in which the United States found itself should have been a wake-up call, especially coming a week after a Data For Progress poll found that 66% of Americans supported a ceasefire, while a Mariiv poll found that only 29% of Israelis supported an imminent ground invasion of Gaza.
After the United States again slammed the Security Council door in Palestine’s face on December 8, the desperate need to end the massacre in Gaza returned to the UN General Assembly on December 12. An identical resolution to the one the U.S. vetoed in the Security Council was approved by a vote of 153 to 10, with 33 more yes votes than the one in October. While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, they do carry political weight, and this one sends a clear message that the international community is disgusted by the carnage in Gaza.
Another powerful instrument the world can use to try to compel an end to this massacre is the Genocide Convention, which both Israel and the United States have ratified. It only takes one country to bring a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the Convention, and, while cases can drag on for years, the ICJ can take preliminary measures to protect the victims in the meantime.
On January 23, 2020, the Court did exactly that in a case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, alleging genocide against its Rohingya minority. In a brutal military campaign in late 2017, Myanmar massacred tens of thousands of Rohingya and burnt down dozens of villages. 740,000 Rohingyas fled into Bangladesh, and a UN-backed fact-finding mission found that the 600,000 who remained in Myanmar “may face a greater threat of genocide than ever.”
China vetoed a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Security Council, so The Gambia, itself recovering from 20 years of repression under a brutal dictatorship, submitted a case to the ICJ under the Genocide Convention.
That opened the door for a unanimous ruling by 17 judges at the ICJ that Myanmar must prevent genocide against the Rohingya, as the Genocide Convention required. The ICJ issued that ruling as a preventive measure, the equivalent of a preliminary injunction in a domestic court, even though its final ruling on the merits of the case might be many years away. It also ordered Myanmar to file a report with the Court every six months to detail how it is protecting the Rohingya, signaling serious ongoing scrutiny of Myanmar’s conduct.
So which country will step up to bring an ICJ case against Israel under the Genocide Convention? Activists are already discussing that with a number of countries. Roots Action and World Beyond War have created an action alert that you can use to send messages to 10 of the most likely candidates (South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Ireland, Belize, Turkïye, Bolivia, Honduras and Brazil).
There has also been increasing pressure on the International Criminal Court to take up the case against Israel. The ICC has been quick to investigate Hamas for war crimes, but has been dragging its feet on investigating Israel. After a recent visit to the region, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was not allowed by Israel to enter Gaza, and he was criticized by Palestinians for visiting areas attacked by Hamas on October 7, but not visiting the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
However, as long as the world is faced with the United States’ tragic and debilitating abuse of institutions the rest of the world depends on to enforce international law, the economic and diplomatic actions of individual countries may have more impact than their speeches in New York.
While historically there have been about two dozen countries that have not recognized Israel, in the past two months, Belize and Bolivia have severed ties with Israel, while others–Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan and Turkey–have withdrawn their ambassadors.
Other countries are trying to have it both ways–condemning Israel publicly but maintaining their economic interests. At the UN Security Council, Egypt explicitly accused Israel of genocide and the U.S. of obstructing a ceasefire.
And yet Egypt’s long-standing partnership with Israel in the blockade of Gaza and its continuing role, even today, in restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza through its own border crossings, make it complicit in the genocide it condemns. If it means what it says, it must open its border crossings to all the humanitarian aid that is needed, end its cooperation with the Israeli blockade and reevaluate its obsequious and compromised relationships with Israel and the United States.
Qatar, which has worked hard to negotiate an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, was eloquent in its denunciation of Israeli genocide in the Security Council. But Qatar was speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Under the so-called Abraham accords, the sheikhs of Bahrain and the UAE have turned their backs on Palestine to sign on to a toxic brew of self-serving commercial relations and hundred million dollar arms deals with Israel.
In New York, the UAE sponsored the latest failed Security Council resolution, and its representative declared, “The international system is teetering on the brink. For this war signals that might makes right, that compliance with international humanitarian law depends on the identity of the victim and the perpetrator.”
And yet neither the UAE nor Bahrain has renounced their Abraham deals with Israel, nor their roles in U.S. “might makes right” policies that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East for decades. Over a thousand US Air Force personnel and dozens of U.S. warplanes are still based at the Al-Dhafra Airbase in Abu Dhabi, while Manama in Bahrain, which the U.S. Navy has used as a base since 1941, remains the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
Many experts compare apartheid Israel to apartheid South Africa. Speeches at the UN may have helped to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime, but change didn’t come until countries around the world embraced a global campaign to economically and politically isolate it.
The reason Israel’s die-hard supporters in the United States have tried to ban, or even criminalize, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is not that it is illegitimate or anti-semitic. It is precisely because boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel may be an effective strategy to help bring down its genocidal, expansionist and unaccountable regime.
U.S. Alternate Representative to the U.N. Robert Wood told the Security Council that there is a “fundamental disconnect between the discussions that we have been having in this chamber and the realities on the ground” in Gaza, implying that only Israeli and U.S. views of the conflict deserve to be taken seriously.
But the real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of U.S. and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians.
While Israel, with U.S. bombs and howitzer shells, is killing and maiming thousands of innocent people, the rest of the world is appalled by these crimes against humanity. The grassroots clamor to end the massacre keeps building, but global leaders must move beyond non-binding votes and investigations to boycotting Israeli products, putting an embargo on weapons sales, breaking diplomatic relations and other measures that will make Israel a pariah state on the world stage.
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for PEACE, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Read other articles by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.Unmasking Media Complicity
The Urgent Call for Truth in Gaza
Bisan Owda, a 25-year-old journalist from Gaza, recently expressed a bleak outlook: ‘I no longer have any hope of survival…I am certain that I will die in the next few weeks or maybe days.’ Bisan’s harrowing sentiment reflects the dangerous reality journalists face, risking their lives to expose the brutal truths obscured by the fog of war.
Bisan and other Palestinian reporters, such as Motaz, another courageous photojournalist from the Deir al-Balah refugee camp, stand as unsung heroes amid a devastating genocide. Bisan, tearfully acknowledging the imminent danger she faces, and Motaz transitioning from documenting to surviving underscore the extraordinary courage of Palestinian journalists determined to unveil the truth.
In contrast, mainstream Western media, epitomized by the New York Times, presents a stark disparity. Instead of amplifying the voices of individuals like Bisan and Motaz, major publications propagate a narrative that perpetuates misinformation and greenlights the ongoing tragedy.
The toll in Gaza is staggering—over 20,000 lives lost, including nearly 10,000 innocent children. Amidst the ruins of homes and the echoes of airstrikes, it becomes clear that the valiant efforts of these journalists serve as our only window into the extent of this horror.
Regrettably, the New York Times is failing to report the situation accurately. Its persistence in publishing misleading information not only aids in spreading propaganda but also follows a historical pattern. The current reporting echoes the publication’s prior engagement in a misinformation campaign preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. The New York Times is failing an open-notes test it has taken many times.
Notably, instead of reporting on the confirmed cases of genocide, the New York Times seems fixated on fake controversies sparked by controversial lawmakers such as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R–N.Y.) that feed into the false idea that supporting Palestinians and demanding an end to the genocide is antisemitic. This type of reporting creates a false sense of danger and weaponizes people into rejecting the Palestinian struggle as the human rights issue it is.
As the Israeli military intensifies its attack on Gaza, the urgency for accurate reporting becomes paramount. Netanyahu’s unwavering pursuit of genocidal goals, evidenced by the bombing of schools, hospitals, and UN buildings, demands unfiltered attention. Strikingly, Israeli leaders have laid bare their intentions for ethnic cleansing through genocide, yet U.S. media remains conspicuously silent.
The betrayal of journalists like Bisan, Motaz, and countless others who put their lives on the line becomes even more egregious when juxtaposed with the New York Times‘ failure to uphold journalistic standards. It is no longer a matter of misguided reporting; it is the perpetuation of a historical pattern that prioritizes profit and imperialism over truth and justice.
Western media has the potential to be a catalyst for change. We have seen the impact of unfiltered reporting during the Vietnam War when journalists chose to reveal the truth, irrespective of government constraints. There are the equivalents of the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre currently being in Gaza by Israel. Any reporting by Western media that doesn’t center its context around that is a disservice to humanity.
News reporting, at its core, should be about saving lives. Instead, influential publications opt to provide manufactured consent for violence and oppression, holding the line for war criminals while the atrocities unfold in real-time. In doing so, this makes publications like the New York Times complicit in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, mixing the blood of innocent Palestinians with that of those murdered in Iraq twenty years ago—shame on the New York Times and all.
Nour Jaghama is CODEPINK's Palestine and Iran Campaigner. Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. Read other articles by Nour Jaghama and Melissa Garriga.
A Moral Principle: Denounce the Bigotry of In-Group Members before Criticizing the Bigotry of Out-Group Members
Contempt for the Arab population is deeply rooted in Zionist thought.
— Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, 1983, 2015.
This is the holiday season for various groups of people. Some people will celebrate Xmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc during the winter season. Others will celebrate just because celebrating is fun.
Noting that it is Hanukkah, Sportsnet published an article titled “Oilers’ Zach Hyman: We must ‘eradicate antisemitism’.”
The article is extremely one-sided and insensitive because the Jewish State is in the midst of trying to eradicate Palestinians.
Obviously, anti-semitism must be eradicated from any moral universe. But what does Hyman’s statement imply? It is not “We must ‘eradicate every form of bigotry’.” It is explicit to one group: Jews. Do Jews face bigotry targeted at them? Undoubtedly they do. But is the biotry faced by Jews the worst form of bigotry, so heinous that subordinating other forms of bigotry is acceptable? And is it the case that Jews do not engage in bigotry against Gentiles?
Hyman is a prideful, skillful forward for the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League.
Mark Spector of Sportsnet writes of Hyman:
“I’m very proud of who I am. I’m proud of being Jewish. I’m proud of growing up in the Jewish community … and I’m proud of where we come from,” began Hyman, a 31-year-old product of Toronto’s Jewish community. The Oilers forward is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, schooled in Judaism from kindergarten all the way through Grade 12.
Why has he chosen to speak out during the eight days of Hanukkah?
To shed light on what he is seeing at home. To shine a candle on a growing sense of antisemitism right here….
“It’s very clear that antisemitism as a result of what’s going on has been on the rise. Jewish people … don’t feel safe. There are attacks on synagogues. My high school [in Toronto] has had two bomb threats. This is just for being Jewish. It’s just because you’re Jewish. There’s no other reason.
“There’s no other reason”? Apparently, Spector and Hyman are seemingly unaware that people in their self-declared Jewish State are engaged in a genocide against Palestinians and that the genocide has been in progress since 1948.
Jewish anti-Arabism has been on prominent display over the decades unabated to the present day. Recently, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant denigrated the Palestinians as “human animals.” Jerusalem deputy mayor Arieh King protested that Palestinians are not “human animals”; they are not “human beings”; they are “subhuman.”
It is a commonly held tenet that one should clean up one’s own backyard before complaining about the backyard of others.
At its most basic level, backyard tenets would include mutual respect between neighbors and non-violence (definitely no spilling of blood; especially of civilians, whether they be elderly, children, women, or men). What does mutual respect require? Observing the golden rule: treat others as you wish to be treated.
To prioritize concern about anti-semitism at a time when Israeli Jews, supported by Jews in the diaspora, are committing genocide against Palestinians speaks absurdly to a person’s moral basis. In essence, what Spector, Hyman, and Sporstnet are promoting is Jewish people first even when Jews are knocking down hospitals, blowing up schools, and destroying another people.
As Chomsky wrote in his book The Fateful Triangle: “Anti-Arab racism is, however, so widespread as to be unnoticeable; it is perhaps the only remaining form of racism to be regarded as legitimate.”
Bigotry must be opposed in all its forms. To stand on morally sound ground, one must especially denounce the odious acts committed in the name of one’s group and criticize the bigotry held by members of one’s own group.
Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.
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