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When Will the UN General Assembly Suspend Israel?
Israel’s abusive repudiation of the very idea of the United Nations; its escalating and lethal violation of countless international norms; its repeated, deadly attacks on U.N. sanctuaries and peacekeepers all justify its expulsion.
Nov 17, 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. Issues of evil, justice, and divine wisdom are explored, and while the Book of Job surrenders divine wisdom to God, it recognizes that the work to be done here on Earth is our own.
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 U.N. to eject Israel as a voting member of the General Assembly.
In a way, Israel has already removed itself from norms maintained by the U.N. Charter as it has consistently flouted U.N. treaties, resolutions, and advisery opinions.
To paraphrase Pankaj 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 U.N. compliance with the International Court of Justice 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 cease-fire, establish and secure humanitarian aid corridors, and ensure the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
The letter additionally requests:
- The revival of the U.N. 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; and
- 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 U.N. peacekeeping mission in the OPT under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter to ensure the safety and dignity of all civilians.
In a way, Israel has already removed itself from norms maintained by the U.N. Charter as it has consistently flouted U.N. treaties, resolutions, and advisery opinions. We must not forget that Israel refuses to acknowledge to the U.N. 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, deadly attacks on U.N. sanctuaries and peacekeepers all justify its expulsion. Hasan reminds us that Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the United Nations shredded the U.N. Charter while standing at the General Assembly podium. This is the charter that declares the U.N. 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.
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Trump's America Could Be Worse. It Could Be Gaza
People of conscience must demand an immediate end to the slaughter, a total arms embargo against Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza on the scale of the Marshall Plan, and a short and concrete path to Palestinian statehood. It's not too late. We must act.
Nov 15, 2024
We’re in for a hell of a ride when Donald Trump becomes president and Republicans hold both houses of Congress. I know that things will get rough in this country—or, rather, rougher. But it bears repeating: Nothing the American people endure in the next four years can touch the horrors we’ll help inflict on Gaza in the next hour.
I also know how many Democratic voters are still mourning. The Democratic Party’s institutional positions may differ significantly from mine, but I share many values with most Democratic voters: on sensible gun regulation, a stronger social contract, fighting racism, ending poverty, the environment, women’s rights, and more.
These values are savaged every day, with the full backing of a Democratic administration—in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Yemen, and other fronts in Israel’s many-pronged war on its neighbors.
It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. Because fighting for justice is a muscle that grows stronger with each use.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s this: Democrats don’t have to wait. They can fight for these values today—by fighting for Palestine.
Climate and the Environment
The United Nations reports how, in Gaza, “there has been complete degradation of the soil, water, land, and agriculture. Sewage, wastewater, and solid waste management systems and facilities have collapsed. The destruction of buildings, roads, and other infrastructure has generated millions of tons of debris, some of which is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, asbestos, and other hazardous substances.”
“Greenhouse gas emissions are stacking up,” the CBC reports, “from explosions, military vehicles and overseas weapons shipments,” adding that much of the destruction is “irreversible.”
Women’s Rights
Many Democratic women are feeling this loss especially deeply. I share their concerns about the future of women’s rights. I can only imagine what they must feel.
But Democratic women can do so much today for their sisters in Gaza. Women’s healthcare—an urgent issue in the US—was a disaster even before the current onslaught. 70 percent of Gazan women were “unable to access vital medical care due to restrictions on their freedom of movement,” according to UNICEF. Infant mortality in Gaza was already seven times higher than Israel’s, just across the fence.
As of now, more than 20,000 women and girls—probably much more—have already been killed in the region by American weapons. Those of us who support a woman’s right to bodily autonomy can only recoil when we consider how brutally that principle is violated with each woman’s murder.
The right to choose was already difficult for the women of Gaza. Abortion is illegal there, and the occupiers permitted few women to leave for any reason. Today, Gazan women don’t even have the “right to choose” whether their children live or die. They can only watch as their children perish from American weapons, lack of medical care, starvation, and the other fruits of the US/Israeli partnership.
Childcare
Our country urgently needs adequate childcare. It doesn’t get any less adequate than this: Official reports say that over 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza, of whom one-third were children. That comes to roughly 15,000 kids.
The real number is undoubtedly much larger. Last July, medical journal The Lancet found it reasonable to presume that 186,000 people or more had already died in Gaza. At current adult-to-child ratios, that comes to 70,000 dead children—or more.
Gun Regulation
We’re not controlling guns in the Middle East. We’re sending them—literally, tons of them.
The Trace, a publication dedicated to reducing gun violence, reports the US sent “more than 27,500 handguns to Israel” in one two-month period alone. At the same time, per the Forum on the Arms Trade, “U.S. companies dramatically increased the number of military rifles ... ammunition and guided missile parts exported to Israel.”
It's not just guns or spare parts, of course. Here’s a partial list of US weapons deliveries to Israel, per the Arms Trade Forum:
50 F-15 fighter jets and related equipment; 32,739 120mm tank cartridges; 30 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles; 50,000 M933A1 120mm High Explosive mortar cartridges and related equipment; 6,500 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs); at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs; 6,500 500-pound bombs; 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles; 1,000 bunker-buster bombs; 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs and other munitions ... ... 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs; 500 MK82 500-pound bombs; "the transfer of 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth roughly $2.5 billion” fuses for 155 mm artillery ammunition”; 4,792 rounds of M107 155mm artillery ammunition; 52,229 rounds of M795 155mm artillery ammunition; 30,000 M4 propelling charges; 36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition, 1,800 of 3,000 requested M141 bunker-buster munitions, at least 3,500 of 5,000 night-vision devices, some Hellfire missiles and other weapons had been delivered from the United States and European Union.F-16s Small Diameter Bombs, ammunition and JDAM Tail Kits; “precision-guided munitions, such as joint direct attack munitions, small-diameter bombs, 155-millimeter artillery ammunition and other categories of critical equipment”; 1,000 250-pound small diameter bombs ... [ and it goes on]
You get what you pay for—which, in this case, is between 15,000 and 70,000 dead kids.
Between 2000 and 2022, 206 children were killed in the US by school shooters. I wept for the children of Newtown. Imagine how they feel in Gaza, where up to 339 times as many children were killed by weapons violence in one year as died in over two decades of US school shootings.
Racism
As far as I know, Israel is the only nation the United States has ever explicitly wanted to create so that one ethnic/religious power could rule over others (other than the United States itself).
In Israel and the occupied territories, human rights are contingent on ethnic and religious identity. An occupying army sets the rules for Palestinians, whose identity determines where they can live, work, and even which roads they can use. To be an Arab is to be considered inferior, invisible, and insignificant.
That’s apartheid, and it’s a profound violation of our shared antiracism principles.
LGBT Rights
Between 25,000 and 117,000 adults have died in Gaza. This global survey suggests that slightly less than one in ten adults identifies as LGBT. If that reflects the overall distribution of human sexual orientation, we’ve very likely killed 10,000 LGBT people already, with no end in sight.
One thing seems clear: the US has enabled the worst massacre of LGBT people in at least fifty years.
Fighting Poverty
More than one in six children is impoverished in the US, a number that will almost certainly rise under Trump. There’s no denying that level of suffering—or disgrace. With all those pointless billionaires inhaling our national wealth, we’re still being told we can’t afford to feed the poor. For shame.
In Gaza, everybody lives in extreme poverty. Case in point: the UN expects 60,000 cases of acute malnutrition to develop soon among children six months to five years of age.
Inflation Reduction
Inflation? High food prices don’t matter when there’s no food. This UN report concluded that Gaza’s “famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future.”
That’s right, famine—while we aid and abet (and have become) the perpetrators.
Housing
UNICEF estimates that 1.9 million Gazans—which is most of them—have been rendered homeless. Palestinians are being driven from their homes in the West Bank, too, their villages ransacked and their orchards burned.
We’ve also helped Israel kill thousands of people in Lebanon, leaving well over a million people without housing there.
Affordable Healthcare
Democrats largely support “affordable care”—a phrase I’ve never cared for, since I support healthcare for all. But the better question for Gaza is, What medical care? Health itself is a distant dream when there’s not enough water, food, or medical care.
That’s deliberate. Israel, with US help, has systematically destroyed countless medical facilities and targeted medical workers for assassination, arrest, and torture. As a result, polio has reappeared in Gaza.
A note on incrementalism
Democratic Party rhetoric leans heavily on “incrementalism”—the perceived virtue of doing things slowly and in small increments.
In Gaza, especially, incrementalism is surrender. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reports that Israel blocked nearly 95 percent of all coordinated aid movement for much of October and describes “horrific massacres and an unbearable humanitarian situation for people there who remain trapped ...”
MSF says that “humanitarian support is impossible to provide under current conditions.”
The destruction hasn’t been incremental. Our responses can’t be, either.
As I’ve said, my heart goes out to anyone in pain. But the best antidote for pain is action, and Dems don’t have to wait until Trump takes office to fight for their values. They can act now—by telling their leaders that this horror must stop, once and for all.
First, they can call their senators and tell them to vote for the Bernie Sanders resolution which blocks $20 billion in arms sales to the government of Israel until certain conditions are met. (Callers can use the excellent scripts both here and here.)
That’s just the start. Americans of conscience must demand an immediate end to the slaughter, a total arms embargo against Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza on the scale of the Marshall Plan, and a short and concrete path to Palestinian statehood.
People will say it’s too late because Trump is coming. His new ambassador to Israel doesn’t believe in Palestinians, much less in talking with them. Why pass a resolution that’s purely symbolic?
Because it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. Because fighting for justice is a muscle that grows stronger with each use. And because there’s no better time than now to make this simple moral declaration: that the principles we support at home apply equally to human beings everywhere.
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On Armistice Day, Veterans Call for an Armistice in Gaza and Beyond
One hundred and six years after the end of World War I, another such deadly concoction is brewing. War is permanent. Genocide is on TV. A desperate empire is pushing human civilization toward a tragic end.
Nov 11, 2024
November 11, declared Armistice Day at the end of World War I, is celebrated in the U.S. as Veterans Day. Understanding why requires us to recall World War I and its aftermath.
World War I was an international conflict, from 1914-18, that embroiled most of the nations of Europe, along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war pitted the “Central Powers”—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the “Allies”—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, and (from 1917) the United States. The war was unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused. Over 15 million people were killed—both soldiers and civilians, and over 25 million were wounded.
The First World War ended in November 1918 when an armistice was declared at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month,” marking a moment of hope and the promise of peace. It was also a moment of great sadness and a sense of great tragedy. Many people prayed this would be “the war to end all wars,” and that Armistice Day would serve as an eternal warning never to repeat the past. But then came World War II.
“When U.S. bombs stop dropping on Palestinian children, the genocide will end.”
After the end of World War II and the Korean War cease-fire, in 1954 veterans’ organizations pushed the U.S. Congress to switch the holiday’s name to Veterans Day, a day to honor those who fight in war. Could it be that—having emerged from World War II unscathed and more powerful than ever, the United States was not ready to abandon militarism? Whatever the intention, the holiday’s meaning was turned on its head—a day for war instead of a day for peace.
The national organization Veterans For Peace has been working to Reclaim Armistice Day as a day that is dedicated to ending war once and for all. Veterans lead Armistice Day activities around the country, many incorporating the ringing of bells at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.” Now the veterans group is also calling for peace in the Middle East.
The looming threats of climate catastrophe and nuclear annihilation have been overshadowed this year by Israel’s horrific ongoing genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—up to 50,000 killed, nearly 70% of whom are women and children. For 13 months straight, unspeakable atrocities have filled our screens and haunted our consciences. We can see clearly that the U.S. government is complicit in Israel’s merciless ethnic cleansing. The bombs that Israel drops on Palestinian children are made in the USA and delivered by the U.S. government. U.S.-backed Israeli wars have now expanded to Palestine’s West Bank, to Lebanon, and to Iran, risking a wider war, possibly even a global war that could “go nuclear.”
According to Wikipedia: Scholars trying to understand the cause of World War I “look at political, territorial, and economic competition; militarism, a complex web of alliances and alignments; imperialism, the growth of nationalism; and the power vacuum created by the decline of the Ottoman Empire.” One hundred and six years after the end of World War I, another such deadly concoction is brewing. War is permanent. Genocide is on TV. A desperate empire is pushing human civilization toward a tragic end.
No More U.S. Bombs To Israel
This year, Veterans For Peace is calling for an Armistice—a permanent cease-fire in Palestine, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East, and for an end to U.S. arms shipments to Israel.
“When U.S. bombs stop dropping on Palestinian children, the genocide will end,” said VFP Vice President Joshua Shurley.
The 39-year-old veterans’ organization, with chapters in over 100 US cities, recently issued a statement in support of Israeli and U.S. soldiers who refuse to take part genocide, illegal wars, and war crimes.
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