Dear friends--
I hope this email finds you well, and strong enough to meet the vast challenges our world will face over the weeks ahead.
The U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza continues unabated. I call it the
"U.S.-Israeli genocide" because the U.S. president could halt it at a
moment's notice, if he chose to. But he has not done so. U.S. arms and
other support still flow to Israel, at full tilt. Pres. Trump has
abandoned all the moves he once made to broker a ceasefire between
Israel and Hamas that would have freed the captives that both sides
hold, and ended Israel's forcible destruction of Palestinian life and
Palestinian society in Gaza.
That, though the Hamas negotiators in Qatar have stated clearly
since August 18 that they accept the latest ceasefire plan endorsed by
mediating states Qatar and Egypt, and though Israel itself has seen
large and mounting protests calling for the ceasefire-for-hostages deal.
Meantime, the Israeli military has started its advance toward/into Gaza
City (despite army leaders having expressed very grave doubts about the
value of doing so.) And the deliberate cruelty that the Israeli
government and military have inflicted on the Palestinian of Gaza has
multiplied.
On Wednesday, the head of Save the Children International told the UN Security Council that,
“The Gaza Famine is here. An engineered famine. A
predicted famine. A manmade famine. As we speak children in Gaza are
systematically being starved to death. This is a deliberate policy. This
is starvation as a method of war in its starkest terms.
"Save
the Children’s clinics in Gaza are overwhelmed by need; every bench
packed with malnourished children and their mothers. Yet our clinics are
almost silent now. Children do not have the strength to speak or even
cry out in agony...
"A
few kilometres away stand ready a sea of supplies. Thousands upon
thousands of truckloads of lifesaving items. All blocked. The Government
of Israel could end this famine tonight if it chose to end its
deliberate obstruction and let humanitarians do our job. Instead, there
are reports of escalations in Israeli military activity in Gaza City,
more attacks on hospitals, more killing.
"At
our Child Friendly Spaces, children draw what we call ‘wishing clouds’
so that they can imagine a better future. In Gaza, children used to wish
for school, or peace, or to see their friend again. Once the total
siege began in March, children would increasingly tell us they wish for
food, for bread. These past few weeks, more and more children have
shared that they wish to be dead.
"One child wrote “I wish I was in in heaven where my mother is, in heaven there is love, there is food and water”.
Afterwards, 14 of the SC's 15 members issued a powerful statement that called
for an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire. But the
Council as a whole could take no action, because the one member not
joining that statement was the United States, which as we know wields
veto power in the SC.
* * *
As I noted in last week's newsletter,
there have been numerous initiatives undertaken by citizen groups and
by some governments that have sought to find ways to sidestep the veto
power that Washington wields in the Security Council and to secure the
despatch of some form of empowered, UN-backed "protection force" to
Gaza.
I also linked there to the essay I published on Globalities.org on August 20 , "Gaza, and the UN at 80," where I assessed some of those "protection" initiatives and made the following observations: - Any such protection force needs to operate
within a clearly stated political horizon, otherwise it could end up
being as dysfunctional as the originally-UN forces in Haiti.
- This political horizon should include a complete rollback of Israel's presence in, and control over, Gaza,
which has already been judged illegal by the International Court of
Justice. Just establishing little UN-backed "pockets" inside Gaza is
neither workable, nor sufficient.
- The political horizon should also include a clear plan for reconciliation between the Palestinian factions.
If you have not yet read that essay, I urge you to do so. And I'd love to hear any comments you have on it.
Another great resource on this issue is the excellent essay that veteran human-rights leader Craig Mokhiber published
on Mondoweiss, August 27. He does an excellent job both of explaining
the complex UN mechanisms involved and of assessing/debunking the "Day
After" plans that various (mainly Western) international actors have
proposed for Gaza. The few issues I wish he had addressed in more detail
included: - The need to tie any "UN protection force" deployment tightly to the concept of ending Israel's (quite illegal) 58-year occupation rule over Gaza;
- The challenge of winning the full support
that any robust "Uniting for Peace" plan needs, under UN rules, from the
"State of Palestine"... given that this "State" is completely directed
by the PLO/PA coterie in Ramallah which continues to act in close
coordination with Israel to suppress resistance forces throughout the West Bank.
On this latter point, it is possible that the Trump administration's newly announced ban on PLO/PA leaders' attendance at the UNGA session in New York might
persuade the Ramallah coterie to change their allegiance and seek a
coalition with the Palestinian resistance forces instead... But I have
studied the history of PLO decision-making very closely for 50 years
now. And I am not hopeful.
* * *
I note that Craig Mokhiber, along with Ali Abunimah, Susan Abulhawa, Miko Peled, Jeffrey Sachs, Medea Benjamin, Dr. Jill Stein,
and a number of other excellent civil-society activists are going to be
presenting at two webinars under the title "We Can End the Genocide" on
September 5 and 7. Details (and sign-ups) are here.
Let's keep a close eye, meanwhile, on what the states that have
actual voting power in the UNGA are doing. I note that Türkiye and
several other NATO members recently announced bans on the trans-shipment
of military goods from their countries to Israel. That was a good
step-- and one that was pioneered back in July
by the group of states known as the Hague Group. But it is still far
from sufficient to end this escalating genocide in Gaza, and to restore
to the United Nations the principled role it should be playing in
international affairs. * * *
It's also important to note that the
zombie-like machine of death and destruction that is Israel's military
has been carving its cruel path not just against the Palestinians of
Gaza but also against:
- the Palestinians of the West Bank,
- numerous communities in Southern Syria and Lebanon-- and also
- vital infrastructure projects in distant Yemen.
In Syria and Lebanon, the destructive (and
expansionist) actions the Israeli military has undertaken over the past
15 months, and until today, have bust right through the disengagement forces the United Nations has maintained in those countries for many decades.
In these countries, and in occupied Palestine, this Israeli government
has made a mockery of the whole concept of the "rule of international
law" on which the UN has been based since 1945. (As it did, too, with
the completely unprovoked aggression it launched against Iran back in
June.)
These actions, and the direct complicity in them of veto-wielder Washington, bring the international system to one of the greatest crisis-points it has seen since 1945.
At this year's landmark UN General Assembly, how will the other nations of the world respond?
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