Shaming the UN by Ratifying Genocide
December 29, 2025
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
After October 7
Throughout this period, challenging the adequacy of the UN in the face of genocide, there were reasons to redeem its reputation, including an awareness that its refusal to respect judgments of the leading international tribunals (International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court). It needs to be better understood that when the UN was established 80 years ago the Charter design gave the last word on issues of global security to the five winning states in World War II, and not to international law as believed by its most ardent champions. By clear intention, despite the priority accorded war prevention in the Preamble to the Charter, the capabilities of the UN to act coercively against aggression, apartheid, and genocide were withheld from the Organization. Instead, the winners (that is, the five permanent members of the Security Council of P5) of the recently concluded war against fascism were also given a right of veto that amounted to a limitless entitlement of any one of the five in the only UN political organ with the authority to make binding decisions, and this provision meant not only an opting out of decisions contrary to their will but of preventing Security Council from acting even when the other 14 members were united in voting for the decision. In practice, this meant that prospects for peace and security in major conflict situations were left to the geopolitical calculations and alignments of these most powerful and dangerous members of the new organization.
During the Cold War, which prevailed globally between 1945-1991, the paralysis of the UN in relation to the management of global security was mainly due to the discretion at the disposal of the opposed alliances of the US-led NATO forces on one side of the ideological divide and strategic rivalry and Soviet-led Warsaw forces on the other side. The UN contented itself with being a spectator, or site of opposing propaganda denunciations as regarding the Vietnam War, Moscow’s interventions in Eastern Europe, and other settings of violent conflict involving the strategic interests of the P5. This was partly due to the constitutional framework of the UN, but it also reflected the unwillingness of many leading countries to dilute sovereignty when it came to national security. This refusal was most dramatically illustrated by the rejection of nuclear disarmament and a preferred reliance on deterrence, exhibiting the militarist orientations of foreign policy elites in leading governments. It blends a militarized hard power version of global security with P5 strategic ambitions to reinvent Western domination in a period of collapsing European colonialism.
Against this background, the role of the UN, while disappointing, was not surprising given the strong ties between the white West and Israel in this encounter with a Muslim majority Palestine in the strategically important Middle East. This lent the struggle an inter-civilizational dimension while also posing a challenge to Western hegemony in relation to energy reserves, arms sales, and more generally, trade and investment. This line of interpretation was accentuated by the anti-Western, religiously oriented Hamas, a non-state entity that was characterized in Western media and state propaganda as nothing other than a terrorist organization. Such a posture ignored the 2006 political victory of Hamas in an internationally monitored election and its role as the center of legally grounded Palestinian resistance to an Israeli occupation that consistently violated international humanitarian legal standards as set forth in the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 governing ‘belligerent occupation.’ UN members complicit with Israel supported the genocide in Gaza for two years, stepping back from support mainly because of the rise of public protest activity in their countries, as Israel had exceeded all constraints of law and morality in persisting with its genocidal campaign. It should be appreciated that the ICJ by a near-unanimous vote on July 19, 2024, declared continuing Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (and even East Jerusalem) to be unlawful, decreeing its withdrawal, an outcome that the General Assembly formally supported and Israel and its support group ignored.
This political agenda explains the six ceasefire initiatives that were vetoed in the Security Council, combined with the failure of complicit states, above all, the United States, to use its soft power leverage to induce Israel to stop its assault on Gaza and satisfy the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. Such a willingness is inhibited by adhering political realism of the pre-nuclear age and the special interests of the arms industries and a long militarized governmental bureaucracy.
The Disgraceful UN Response to the Trump Plan
In my view, the 15 members of the Security Council, disgracefully voted unanimously in favor of the US draft resolution, adopted as SC Resolution 2803 on November 17, 2025, endorsing the Trump Plan for the stabilization of Gaza. The plan emerged with the approval of Israel, significantly unveiled during a Netanyahu visit to the White House at a joint press conference. The core feature of the plan was to reward the perpetrators of prolonged genocide, preceded by apartheid and resulting in making a wasteland of Gaza. Not only were there no references in the resolution to Israel’s defiance of rulings of the International Court of Justice, resolutions of the General Assembly, or the assessments of independent scholars and genocide. Neither Israel nor the United States, nor the other complicit states were even obliged to pay reparations for the unlawful damage caused in Gaza, but this was left to be sorted out by the combined forces of vulture capitalism operating freely as if Gaza reconstruction was a real estate venture and the monetary contributions of Arab governments.
In this process, not only was the diplomatic framework imposed on the Palestinians, but the US was accepted as the legitimate ‘peacemaker’ although it was overtly collaborating with Israel in drafting the plan and pointedly excluding Palestinian participation. Indeed, the US Government went so far as to deny visas to any Palestinian Authority delegate who sought to attend the General Assembly meeting of the UN or to otherwise take part in UN proceedings shaping Palestine. What makes the resolution a step backward if the objective had been what it should have been, arrangements for a peaceful and just future crafted with the participation of proper Palestinian representation and dedicated to a just and durable peace?
Instead, SC Resolution 2803 if considered as a whole, indirectly exonerates the culprits for their past behavior, carrying impunity to an extreme. Beyond this, 2803 visibly acknowledges US total control of the present diplomatic efforts to replace unrestrained Israeli violence with a ceasefire that Israel ignores at its pleasure. The bloody result has been hundreds of lethal violations of the ceasefire killing up to now of over 400 Palestinians by estimates of the Gaza Health Ministry, without Israel even being reprimanded by Washington for so abusing a ceasefire deal. Why Hamas tolerates this Israeli practice of accepting the ceasefire while continuing with genocide at a decelerated rate, and exhibiting indifference to the persistence of widespread severe suffering among the entire Gazan population of two million?
As to the future, 2803 endorses a colonialist transitional arrangement given operational reality by a Board of Peace, of course chaired by none other than Donald Trump and given stability in Gaza by the formation of an International Stabilization Force to be formed by the contributions of troops by UN members endorsing the plan. The US has brazenly acknowledged its own transactional goals by pledging $112 billion to rebuild Gaza as a global hub for trade, investment, and tourism. Governance in Gaza is left in part to Israel which seems to be claiming a permanent security presence in northern Gaza above the so-called yellow line.
Given the highly dubious manner of recovering from the Gaza catastrophe at this late stage, how can we explain its widespread international support and the disappearance of opposition in the Security Council? The five SC members from the Global South (Algeria, Somalia, Guyana, Sierra Leone, and Panama) made some critical comments about 2803 during the formal discussion that preceded the vote, centering on its vagueness as to crucial details and even its one-sidedness, yet all ended up voting in favor. Did such a vote reflect genuine agreement, or more likely, was it a vote that recognized geopolitical primacy when it came to the management of global security? And why would Indonesia and Pakistan, Muslim majority countries, even if not members of SC, go out of their way to express approval of the 2803 path to the future? More understandable was the approval expressed by the European Union, which again served as a reminder that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is part of Judeo-Christian civilizational long game of sustaining Middle Eastern hegemony.
As troubling was the endorsement of 2803 given by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who not only welcomed the resolution but expressed the hope that its momentum would be converted into “concrete action.” Thankfully, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, expressed “serious concern with the Security Council’s adoption of resolution 2803, warning that it runs counter to the Palestinian right to self-determination, consolidates Israël’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including ongoing unlawful policies and practices, and therefore risks legitimating ongoing mass violence.” Revealingly, Albanese spoke these words of truth to power after enduring punitive sanctions imposed in July for her courageous willingness to bear official witness to what was becoming all too clear to the eyes and ears of the peoples of the world. It is ironic that the UN’s response to 2803 was somewhat rescued from the taints of complicity by an unpaid appointee not subject to UN discipline. Her words are congruent with those of Craig Mokhiber who resigned from a senior position at the UN because of its failure to deal responsibly with respect to Palestinian grievances, and in the last couple of years emerged as the most informed and incisive critic of the UN approach, reinforcing Albanese’s forthrightness on behalf of law and justice with respect to Palestinian grievances and rights, but the Organization’s own transactional approach in clashed between geopolitical imperatives and compliance with the UN Charter.
It also seems strange that Russia and China, although voicing some criticisms during the discussion, did not use their right of veto to block the passage of 2803, especially given the frequent use of the veto on Israel’s behalf by the US and considering the principles at stake. It is likely that they were impressed by Hamas’ acceptance of the overall approach and did not want to be seen as spoilers held responsible for a breakdown of the Trump Plan that would have undoubtedly meant the end of the already tarnished ceasefire. Additionally, China and Russia both seem to regard global stability as dependent upon a degree of geopolitical reciprocity in relation to their trilateral relations. In this limited sense, Trump seems more in accord with how cooperative relations with these two countries would bring stability and transactional gains than did the Biden approach of fighting Russia by way of Ukraine to preserve US post-Cold War dominance, a path that increased the risk of a third world war fought with nuclear war leading to a lengthening of the Ukraine War with heave casualties on both sides. Trump’s approach, although fragile because of his mercurial style, stressed geopolitical stability if it meant accepting spheres of influence as compromising the sovereignty of smaller states and even, as here, overlooking genocide.
The rejection of 2803 by Hamas was not entirely a surprise. It does not explain why Hamas ever accepted the Trump diplomacy at its outset, except for its ceasefire and IDF withdrawal prospects. Hamas’ acceptance extended to the whole of the Trump plan, but with this stand against 2803 and its announced refusal to disarm it may now be either the basis of a better compromise or at least a stalemate as to further progress. Hamas, and Iran, the other vocal critic of the resolution, also undoubtedly are reacting to the absence on Israel’s part of any willingness to show signs of embracing a politics of reconciliation, even to the extent of conscientiously upholding the early ceasefire, partial withdrawal, and an end to the rigid constraints on humanitarian aid. For Israel to have shown no mercy to a population living without heat, secure shelter, and adequate food and medical supplies is to send the chilling message that Israel has not even considered abandoning its expansionist ambitions that include further ethnic cleansing in Gaza and a surge of settlement growth on the West Bank.
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The US representative insisted that “[a] vote against this resolution is a vote to return to war” was part of the ‘take it or leave it’ Trump approach. Nor is it surprising that Netanyahu hailed the endorsement of 2803 by declaring “that President Trump’s plan will lead to peace and prosperity because it insists upon full demilitarization, disarmament, and the deradicalization of Gaza.”[15] Or that France and the UK sugarcoated their endorsements of the Trump Plan by verbal statements of conditional support for eventual Palestinian statehood as affirmed in its sponsorship of the New York Declaration, envisioning future Palestinian representation under the authority of a reconstituted Palestinian Authority (PA), itself a creature of US/Israel dominated diplomacy that has evaded Palestinian self-determination, but now is being repurposed to implement the Trump Plan. The PA announced support for 2803 is a move calculated to convince Israel and the US that it can be counted upon to go along with their stabilization scenario despite its rejection of Palestinian grievances and denial of Palestine’s right of self-determination. Offering such ‘breadcrumb’ rewards to the PA, while disqualifying Hamas from any role in representing the Palestinian people is emblematic of the next phase of the Zionist end game involving the political surrender of Palestine and the elimination of Hamas and Palestinian resistance.
Concluding Remarks
The maneuvers of states, following their interests rather than the supposedly shared values associated with the UN Charter and the international rule of law, is to be expected given the history of international relations and the political realist orientation of most foreign policy elites. Nevertheless, it is regrettable, given the gross disregard of justice and rights, which pervades the Trump Plan and the diplomatic and hard power muscle at the disposal of the US. It does not augur well for meeting other world order challenges, including climate change, migratory flows, ecological stability, less inequitable distributions of wealth and income to individuals, states, and regions, as well as a more robust commitment to peaceful modes of conflict resolution.
This saga of 2803 is particularly unfortunate because it shows that the geopolitical management of global security extends beyond the veto power of the P5. For the sake of stability, the UN venue implicitly swallows the Israeli genocide to an unseemly extent by unanimously endorsing a neo-colonialist future for Gaza and impunity plus for Israel and its complicit supporters. Symbolic of this unseemly submission by the UN and its membership is the endorsement of 2803 by the UN leader, an individual declared persona non grata by Israel more than a year ago. Israel’s insulting dismissal of the UN as ‘a cesspool of antisemitism’ and the like should have at least led the Organization’s Secretary General to respond with stony silence to 2803 rather than kneel in submission. sending a shameful message to the world that, from the perspective of the UN, even genocide does not disqualify a state from receiving diplomatic and territorial rewards as long as the geopolitical actors or P5 remain on board. In effect, the dynamics of power politics are still making history, despite the disastrous consequences.
by Ramzy Baroud | Dec 30, 2025 |
Suppose we accept the fiction that none of us expected Israel to launch a full-scale genocide in Gaza – a premeditated campaign to erase the Strip and exterminate a significant portion of its inhabitants. Let us pretend that nearly eighty years of relentless massacres were not a prelude to this moment, and that Israel had never before sought the physical destruction of the Palestinian people as outlined by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
If we go so far as to accept the sterile, ahistoric claim that the Nakba of 1948 was “merely” ethnic cleansing rather than genocide – ignoring the mass graves and the forced erasure of a civilization – we are still left with a terrifying reality. Having witnessed the unmasked extermination that began on October 7, 2023, who can dare to argue that its perpetrators lack the intent to repeat it?
The question itself is an act of charity, as it assumes the genocide has actually stopped. In reality, the carnage has merely shifted tactics. Since the implementation of the fragile ceasefire on October 10, Israel has killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more. Others have perished in the frozen mud of their tents. They include infants like eight-month-old Fahar Abu Jazar, who, like others, froze to death. These are not mere tragedies; they are the inevitable results of a calculated Israeli policy of destruction targeting the most vulnerable.
During this two-year campaign of extermination, more than 20,000 Palestinian children were murdered, accounting for a staggering 30% of the total victims. This blood-soaked tally ignores the thousands of souls entrapped beneath the concrete wasteland of Gaza, and those currently being consumed by the silent killers of famine and engineered epidemics.
The horrifying statistics aside, we bear witness to the final agonies of a people. We have watched their extermination in real-time, broadcast to every handheld screen on earth. No one can claim ignorance; no one can claim innocence. Even now, we watch as 1.3 million Palestinians endure a precarious existence in tents ravaged by winter floods. We share the screams of mothers, the hollowed-out faces of broken fathers, and the haunted stares of children, and yet, the world’s political and moral institutions remain paralyzed.
If Israel resumes the full, unrestrained intensity of this genocide, will we stop it? I fear the answer is no, because the world refuses to dismantle the circumstances that permitted this slaughter in the first place. Israeli officials never bothered to hide their intent. The systematic dehumanization of Palestinians was a primary export of Israeli media, even as Western corporate outlets worked tirelessly to sanitize this criminal discourse.
The record of intent is undeniable. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly championed the “encouragement of migration” and demanded that “not an ounce of humanitarian aid” reach Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the starvation of two million people could be “just and moral” in the pursuit of military aims. From the halls of the Knesset to the pop charts, the refrain was the same: “erase Gaza,” “leave no one there.” When military leaders refer to an entire population as “human animals,” they are not using metaphors; they are issuing a license for extermination.
This was preceded by the hermetic siege – a decades-long experiment in human misery that began in 2006. Despite every Palestinian plea for the world to break this death grip, the blockade was allowed to persist. This was followed by successive wars targeting a besieged, impoverished population under the banner of ‘security,’ always shielded by the Western mantra of Israel’s ‘right to defend itself.’
In the dominant Western narrative, the Palestinian is the eternal aggressor. They are the occupied, the besieged, the dispossessed, and the stateless; yet they are expected to die quietly in the world’s ‘largest open-air prison‘. Whether they utilized armed resistance, threw rocks at tanks, or marched unarmed toward snipers, they were branded ‘terrorists’ and ‘militants’ whose very existence was framed as a threat to their occupier.
Years before the first bomb of this genocide fell, the United Nations declared Gaza “uninhabitable.” Its water was a toxin, its land a graveyard, and its people were dying of curable diseases. Yet, aside from the typical ritual of humanitarian reports, the international community did nothing to offer a political horizon, a just peace.
This criminal neglect provided the vacuum for the events of October 7, allowing Israel to weaponize its victimhood to execute a genocide of sadistic proportions. Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant explicitly stripped Palestinians of their humanity, launching a collective slaughter directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The stage is being set for the next phase of extermination. The siege is now absolute, the violence more concentrated, and the dehumanization of Palestinians more widespread than ever. As the international media drifts toward other distractions, Israel’s image is being rehabilitated as if the genocide never happened.
Tragically, the conditions that fueled the first wave of genocide are being meticulously reconstructed. Indeed, another Israeli genocide is not a distant threat; it is an encroaching reality that will be finalized unless it is stopped.
The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was a legal vow to “liberate mankind from such an odious scourge.” If those words possess a shred of integrity, the world must act now to abort the next phase of extermination. This requires absolute accountability and a political process that finally severs the grip of Israeli colonialism and violence. The clock is ticking, and our collective voice – or our silence – will make the difference.
Gaza as the Last Moral Frontier against Israel’s Policy of Annihilation
Image by Ömer Faruk Yıldız.
Three dominant narratives contend for the future of Gaza and occupied Palestine, yet only one is being translated into consequential action: the Israeli narrative of domination and genocide. This singular, violent vision is the only one backed by the brute force of policy and fact.
The first narrative belongs to the Trump administration, largely embraced by the US Western allies. It rests on the self-serving claim that US President Donald Trump personally solved the Middle East crisis, ushering in a peace that has supposedly eluded the region for thousands of years. Figures like Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and US-Israel Ambassador Mike Huckabee are presented as architects of a new regional order.
This narrative is exclusive, domineering, and US-centric. It was exemplified by Trump himself when he declared the Gaza conflict “over” and presented a “peace plan” that strategically avoided any clear commitment to Palestinian statehood. The entire vision is built on transactional diplomacy and a dismissal of international legal consensus, positioning US approval as the sole measure of legitimacy.
The second narrative is that of the Palestinians, supported by Arab nations and much of the Global South. Here, the goal is Palestinian freedom and rights grounded in international law and humanitarian principles.
This discourse is frequently shaped by statements from top Arab officials. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, for example, asserted last April that the two-state solution is “the only way to achieve security and stability in this region”, adding a warning: “If we disregard international law, (…) this will open the way for the law of the jungle to prevail.” This narrative continues to insist on international law as central to true regional peace.
The third narrative is Israel’s—and it is the only one backed by concrete, aggressive policy. This vision is written through sustained, systematic violence against civilians, aggressive land seizures, deliberate home demolitions, and explicit government declarations that a Palestinian state will never be permitted. Its actors operate with chilling impunity, rapidly creating irreversible facts on the ground. Crucially, the failure to enforce accountability for this pervasive violence is the primary reason Israel has been able to sustain its devastating genocide in Gaza for two full years.
This narrative is not theoretical; it is articulated through the chilling acts and legislative pushes of the highest-ranking government officials.
On December 8, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared in a Knesset session wearing a noose-shaped pin while pushing for a death penalty bill targeting Palestinian prisoners. The minister stated openly that the noose was “just one of the options” through which they would implement the death penalty, listing “the option of hanging, the electric chair, and (…) lethal injection”.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, meanwhile, announced an allocation of $843 million to expand illegal settlements over the next five years, a massive step toward formal annexation. This unprecedented funding is specifically earmarked to relocate military bases, establish absorption clusters of mobile homes, and create a dedicated land registry to formalize Israeli governmental control over the occupied Palestinian territory.
This policy of territorial expansion is cemented by the ideological head of government, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself made it clear that “There will not be a Palestinian state. It’s very simple: it will not be established,” calling its potential creation “an existential threat to Israel.” This unequivocal rejection confirms that the official Israeli government strategy is outright territorial expansion and the permanent denial of Palestinian self-determination.
None of these Israeli officials shows the slightest interest in Trump’s “peace plan” or in the Palestinian vision of statehood. Netanyahu’s core objective is ensuring that international law is never implemented, that no semblance of Palestinian sovereignty is established, and that Israel can contravene the law at a time and manner of its choosing.
The fact is, these narratives cannot continue to coexist. Only real accountability — through political, legal, and economic pressure — can halt Israel’s advance toward continuing its genocidal campaign, destruction, and punitive legislation. This must include the swift imposition of sanctions on Israel and its top officials, comprehensive arms embargoes against Tel Aviv to end ongoing wars, and full accountability at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ).
As long as the pro-Palestine narrative lacks the tools to enforce its principles, Israel and its Western backers will see no reason to alter course. States must replace symbolic gestures and prioritize aggressive, proactive accountability measures. This means moving beyond simple verbal condemnation and applying concrete legal and economic pressure.
Israel is now more isolated than ever, with public opinion rapidly collapsing globally. This isolation must be leveraged by pro-Palestine forces through coordinated, decisive diplomatic action, pushing for a unified global front that demands the enforcement of international law and holding Israel and its many war criminals accountable for their ongoing crimes.
A lasting peace can only be built on the foundation of justice, not on the military reality established by an aggressor that does not hesitate to employ genocide in the service of its political designs. This is the undeniable moral frontier: confronting and dismantling the impunity that allows a state to pursue extermination as a political tool.
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