U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood raises his hands to veto a draft resolution during a United Nations Security Council meeting at the U.N. headquarters in New York City on November 20, 2024. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The U.S. government, said one human rights lawyer, “proves once again to the world that it is fully committed to the continuation of the genocide in Palestine.”
The Biden administration faced fierce criticism on Wednesday after using its veto power at the United Nations Security Council to block a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional, and permanent cease-fire in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.
The vetoed measure also called for all parties to implement a U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution passed in June—which would lead to the release of all hostages—and to enable Gaza civilians’ immediate access to basic services and humanitarian assistance.
Jess Peake, who directs the International and Comparative Law Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, condemned the U.S. decision as “absolutely unforgivable” while Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, declared that “this is absurd.”
Mai El-Sadany, executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, D.C., called it “yet another shameful abuse of the UNSC veto by the U.S. to perpetuate a war that violates U.S. law and U.S. international legal commitments.”
“Today’s message is clear to the Israeli occupying power—you may continue your genocide… with complete impunity.”
Human rights attorney Craig Mokhiber, who last year resigned as the New York director for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights over the United Nations’ response to Gaza, said Wednesday that “the U.S. has just vetoed another cease-fire resolution in the U.N. Security Council, and, in doing so, proves once again to the world that it is fully committed to the continuation of the genocide in Palestine.”
Mokhiber also called for action at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where there is no U.S. veto power.
“Even as we seek accountability for Israeli perpetrators, we must also seek accountability for complicit U.S. actors,” he said. “Israeli/U.S. impunity threatens the entire world. And the U.N. must now move to take concrete action in the UNGA.”
The 14-1 vote at the UNSC marked the fourth time the United States has blocked a Gaza resolution since Israel began its retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. All five permanent members of the Security Council—the U.S., the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China—have veto power. The other seats are filled on a rotating basis and lack that authority.
The 10 nonpermanent members—Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Korea, and Switzerland—were behind the push to pass this draft resolution. Those who supported it represent “the collective will” of the international community, Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama said after the vote, according to U.N. News.
“It is sad day for the Security Council, for the United Nations, and the international community as a whole,” Bendjama said, stressing that it has been “five months since the adoption of Resolution 2735, five months during which the Security Council remained idle—remained hand-tied.”
“Today’s message is clear to the Israeli occupying power—you may continue your genocide… with complete impunity. In this chamber—you enjoy immunity,” he added. “To the Palestinian people, another clear message—while the overwhelming majority of the world stands in solidarity with your plight, others remain indifferent to your suffering.”
Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its assault on Gaza, which as of Wednesday has killed at least 43,985 Palestinians, according to local officials. Another 104,092 people have been wounded, and most of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been repeatedly displaced as Israeli forces have devastated civilian infrastructure.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood said Wednesday that “we made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional cease-fire that failed to release the hostages.”
“This resolution abandoned that necessity,” he argued. “For that reason, the United States could not support it.”
The U.S. government has been widely accused of complicity in genocide for arming Israeli forces over the past 13 months—including by progressives in Congress. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday planned to force a vote on resolutions that would block American weapons sales to Israel on the grounds that they violate federal law.
Palestine Action activists occupying the site of Elbit Ferranti in Oldham, Greater Manchester in 2021
COUNTER-TERRORISM police have arrested 10 more Palestine Action activists in connection to a protest at a “research hub” belonging to Israel’s largest weapons firm Elbit Systems.
Another 10 had already been detained when the action took place on August 6.
…
Despite being arrested under the Terrorism Act, which allows police to detain suspects up to 14 days without charge, the activists were all charged with non-terror offences, such as criminal damage and aggravated burglary.
Police confirmed that 10 more were arrested under the Terrorism Act on Tuesday in connection with the incident.
…
A spokesperson for the group accused the British state of “acting to protect the interests of a foreign genocidal regime, over the rights and freedoms of its own citizens.”
They added that the real terrorists were “those assisting and arming Israel’s genocide.”
It comes a month after counterterrorism police raided the home of Asa Winstanley, a journalist covering the occupation of Palestine.
…
Cage International head of campaigns Naila Ahmed said: “The British government continues to build an infrastructure of authoritarian laws.
“This is beyond a question of complicity; the UK police are now acting as an extension of a genocidal entity, abusing and exploiting any and every power at their disposal to intimidate and crush resistance to the mass killing of humans in Gaza.”
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), joined by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), speaks at a news conference on November 19, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“The United States government is currently in violation of the law, and every member of the U.S. Senate who believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
A group of U.S. senators led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont held a press conference Tuesday urging their colleagues to support resolutions that would block the sale of tank rounds, bomb kits, and other weaponry to the Israeli government, which has repeatedly used such arms to commit horrific war crimes in the Gaza Strip over the past 13 months.
“The truth of the matter is, from a legal perspective, these resolutions are not complicated; they’re cut and dry,” said Sanders (I-Vt.), who introduced the joint resolutions of disapproval in September alongside several other members of the Senate Democratic caucus.
“The United States government is currently in violation of the law, and every member of the U.S. Senate who believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions,” Sanders continued, pointing to U.S. statutes prohibiting the sale of weaponry to countries violating internationally recognized human rights or obstructing American humanitarian aid.
Sanders was joined at Tuesday’s press conference by Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), each of whom made their case to fellow senators ahead of a scheduled floor vote on Wednesday.
“What’s unfolding before our very eyes right now is mass starvation and the spread of disease,” said Welch. “Is the United States and its foreign policy… forced to be blind to the suffering before our very eyes?”
Surrounding the senators as they spoke were photographs of destruction and emaciated children in Gaza, where most of the population is displaced and crowded into small segments of the enclave as Israeli bombs rain down and famine takes hold.
Watch the full press conference:
The resolutions will hit the floor for a vote Wednesday with the backing of a broad coalition that includes Jewish Voice for Peace Action, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, J Street, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Oxfam, and other organizations and activists.
“For over a year, the Biden administration has funded the Israeli government’s brutal genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, despite overwhelming opposition from across the country,” said Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which said it has driven more than 56,200 letters and more than 20,790 phone calls to senators imploring them to support the measures.
“These joint resolutions of disapproval are one of the last chances that Senate Democrats have before Republicans take control in January to uphold human rights, honor the will of the American people, and stand on the right side of history by blocking weapons to the Israeli military,” Miller added.
“It is time to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law, and in violation of our moral values.”
Since the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the U.S. has supplied its ally with more than 50,000 tons of weaponry and approved billions of dollars in additional arms and military equipment to be delivered in years to come. U.S. military support has helped Israel carry out a large-scale military assault on Gaza, killing more than 43,000 people so far—a majority of them women and children.
To sustain the flow of American weapons, the Biden administration has contradicted the findings of its own experts and outside analysts by declaring publicly that it has not found Israel to be illegally blocking U.S. humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, aid groups on the ground say humanitarian assistance has plummeted to an all-time low in recent weeks, with an average of just 37 aid trucks entering Gaza per day in October.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Sanders said the “most important point to be made” ahead of Wednesday’s vote is that “the United States of America is complicit in these atrocities.”
“That complicity must end, and that is what these resolutions are about,” said Sanders. “It is time to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law, and in violation of our moral values.”
This post has been updated to correct when Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the resolutions.
Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn makes a speech attending a protest against the Israeli army’s attack on displaced civilians in Al-Mawasi, on September 12, 2024 in London, United Kingdom. [Raşid Necati Aslım – Anadolu Agency]
Former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Independent Alliance of MPs have issued two letters challenging Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, and Attorney-General, Lord Hermer, KC, over their position on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The letters follow Starmer’s recent denial in Prime Minister’s Questions that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a stance echoed by Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who claimed such descriptions “undermine the seriousness of that term”.
In their letter to Starmer, the MPs directly challenge his “flippant denial of genocide”, stating it “egregiously downplays the suffering of Palestinians and shows blatant disregard for international law.” They remind the Prime Minister that genocide’s legal definition focuses on intent rather than numbers killed, citing Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.
“It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that your denial of the genocide in Gaza is rooted in the knowledge that, if you accepted the true scale of what is happening, you would be admitting your government’s ongoing complicity in crimes against humanity,” the letter states.
In their letter to Starmer, the MPs specifically ask whether the Prime Minister “sought or received any legal advice from the Attorney-General over the definition of genocide and its applicability to the situation in Gaza.” The letter demands to know if he has “received any other legal advice on this matter” and when such advice will be made public.
The group’s letter to Attorney-General, Lord Hermer, KC, specifically questions whether he has provided legal advice to the Prime Minister regarding the definition of genocide and its applicability to Gaza. They ask whether “the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have publicly contradicted the findings of UN reports and pre-empted decisions of international courts on this issue.” Isreal is currently under investigation by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide.
The intervention comes as multiple international bodies have called Israel’s aggression in Gaza genocide. A UN Special Committee recently concluded that “the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” including “the targeting of Palestinians as a group” and using “starvation as a weapon of war.” The MPs note that the ICJ ruled in January that Palestinians face a “real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice” to their right to be protected from genocide.
Both letters demand transparency about any legal advice received regarding the definition of genocide and its application to Gaza. The Independent Alliance, which includes MPs Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan, Iqbal Mohamed, Jeremy Corbyn, and Shockat Adam, also calls for an end to UK arms sales to Israel.
The parliamentary challenge coincides with Pope Francis’s call for an investigation into whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, adding to growing international pressure for accountability over Israel’s military onslaught which has claimed the lives of 44 thousand Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of whom are women and children.
Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Original article by Misbah Khan republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Israeli blockades and bombings have left doctors without basic medicines to treat infections
Content warning: This story contains graphic images and descriptions of injuries
There is a growing and dire public health crisis taking place in Gaza. Israeli blockades and hospital bombings are fuelling a superbug emergency, with civilians who survive starvation and injury later facing untreatable, life-threatening infections.
Doctors on the ground told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) they were treating wounds infested with maggots and using vinegar to fight infections.
“Wounds are left open much longer [and the] injured are delayed in receiving proper care or not able to get care at all, which increases the risk of infections and emergence of antimicrobial resistance [AMR],” says Krystel Moussally, an epidemiologist monitoring the situation for Doctors without Borders (MSF).
The infections are so severe that they don’t respond to many of the antibiotics that are designed to treat them. Badly infected wounds can lead to limb amputations and, in some cases, death.
Vinegar is being used to disinfect and treat wounds because other medicines are unavailable. Dr Khaled al Shawwa
Medical organisations, including MSF and Medical Aid Palestine, say that targeted bombings of hospitals and humanitarian aid blockades are restricting access to healthcare in Gaza, exacerbating infections that don’t respond to essential medicines.
In some cases, doctors have run tests to discover that infections can be fought with certain antibiotics – but have not been able to get their hands on the life-saving drugs.
‘I’ve never seen these types of cases before’
As explosions sound in the background, Dr Alaa Alshurafa tries to relay her day-to-day experience treating superbug infections in Gaza city. Over a WhatsApp call that keeps cutting out, she conveys the damage these drug-resistant infections are inflicting in the war zone.
Dr Alaa, 30, was forced to flee her home in northern Gaza with her family after the war began. Despite this, she is serving as a doctor at one of the medical points set up by The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Gaza city.
Every morning, before she leaves for work, she checks that no one on her route has reported a warning from the Israeli Defense Force of a potential airstrike. The clinic is a 15-minute walk from where she lives. She has to do the journey on foot, leaving her exposed to a potential attack by drone, air or sniper.
Dr Alaa al Shurafr’s walk to her clinic takes her past rubble. Dr Alaa al Shurafr
Once she does arrive at the clinic, the medical point is flooded with more than a hundred patients a day.
When she spoke to TBIJ, she was facing an outbreak of impetigo, a highly contagious bacterial skin infection most common in children. It causes blisters and itchy sores and is usually treated with an antibiotic cream.
“I’ve never seen these types of cases before,” Dr Alaa said. “It’s a very severe form of impetigo, an extensive form which includes faces and the whole body. We don’t have sufficient antibiotics.”
What little medicine is available is extremely expensive and while it does work sometimes, it is not always effective. “I’ve seen many cases that come again and again because of failure of treatment,” she said. “The rate of reinfection [could be] because of overcrowding and maybe misuse of antibiotics or nonadherence to the antibiotic regime plays a role.”
The most common type of bacteria that leads to impetigo is Staphylococcus aureus. A drug-resistant variant of this bacteria is behind the MRSA superbug.
70% of Staphylococcus aureus infections in wounded patients in Gaza are the MRSA superbug strain
MRSA infections are resistant to many common antibiotics, making them severe and even potentially fatal.
Moussally, the MSF epidemiologist, said: “It might be that this type of infection is difficult to treat not only because of [lack of] access to oral antibiotics, but more so because of a high resistance of the Staphylococcus bacteria causing it.”
Without adequate laboratory testing it is hard to say if the bacteria has developed stronger resistance.
Moussally’s work tracking drug-resistant bacteria in Gaza dates back to before 7 October and the start of the war. Then, MSF could monitor infections through labs at Nasser and Al-Awda Hospitals in Gaza. But over the course of the war, both hospitals have been besieged and attacked, making lab tests extremely challenging.
However, data collected by MSF at the hospitals from 2019 to 2023 showed that more than 70% of Staphylococcus aureus in wounded patients was the MRSA superbug strain.
Even before the war, superbugs were already a problem in Gaza; TBIJ reported on the issue as far back as 2018.
Open wounds left to fester
Content warning: graphic imagery below
In Gaza’s remaining hospitals, surgeons are overwhelmed by critical cases. Patients with open, but not initially deadly, wounds that need reconstructive surgery are lower priority, and often forced to wait or seek help at Red Cross and Red Crescent medical points.
Any length of time a person spends with their flesh or, in many cases, bone exposed raises the risk of superbugs and – as multiple doctors report – maggots.
“It is not uncommon to see explosive injury patients with limb injuries and open fractures to develop infections either from the wound itself or from… operations,” says Dr Abdulwhhab Abu Alamrain, who currently works in the orthopaedic department of a government hospital.
A leg injury, which developed a drug-resistant infection, sustained by a 35-year-old man in an explosion in September
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is another highly drug-resistant bacteria. It can infect wound dressings, causing bandages to turn green and smell like mown grass. Doctors in Dr Abdulwhhab’s orthopaedic department have seen cases; tests, available at a few private labs still operating in Gaza and seen by TBIJ, show some Pseudomonas infections don’t respond to any antibiotics at all.
Dr Abdulwhhab said: “This results in two options, either amputation or refusal [of an amputation] and face death. Unfortunately, we have seen many cases that have died either because of refusal or because they accept [the amputation] at the last moment [and die] waiting for surgery or on the operation table.”
Lessons from history
This is not the first time war has worsened a superbug crisis. During the war in Iraq, a lethal strain of the drug-resistant bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii infected American soldiers. Media at the time called it ‘Iraqibacter’.
The superbug infections weren’t confined to the borders of Iraq. Injured soldiers lost limbs, suffered sepsis, and some died back home in US hospitals after their wounds became infected with the bacteria.
The emergence of this strain of Acinetobacter baumannii was detected after its spread in the US hospitals. But due to the lack of testing capacity in Iraq, the extent to which it affected Iraqi civilians at the time is unknown.
“Iraq is a lesson about what war has done and why we have an ongoing crisis of AMR in a place like Iraq. We need to learn these lessons,” said Dr Omar Dewachi, an Iraqi medical anthropologist who narrates the touring exhibit The Pathogen of War.
Acinetobacter baumannii infections have also been reported in Gaza.
Using vinegar as medicine
With so many patients and so few drugs, some doctors report resorting to using vinegar to disinfect and treat wounds.
Moussally said: “Partially functioning hospitals are overcrowded with a huge caseload of injuries, lack of basic supplies needed to treat infections and do proper wound care management and are functioning with sub-standard infection prevention and control measures being the best they can do under the conditions they face. All of this drives AMR.”
Dr Khaled al Shawwa came home to Gaza city from Jerusalem to visit his family for the weekend on 5 October 2023 – two days before the Hamas attacks. He has been in Gaza ever since. He was previously a GP and had just completed his surgical qualification in Jerusalem.
He now works in the outpatient department at a clinic set up by MSF. There he deals with 80-130 patients a day. He told TBIJ: “We see Pseudomonas very frequently and sometimes we use vinegar, we apply it on the wounds. Nurses have a bottle of vinegar on the wound-dressing shelf.”
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The World Health Organization has repeatedly raised concerns about drug-resistant strains of Pseudomonas.
The best practice to prevent bacteria gaining resistance to even more antibiotics is to treat infections carefully with specific drugs, preferably after lab testing to make sure the medicine will work. In Gaza, however, doctors have to work with what they have.
“Drugs are not always available. We are guided by the availability of the drugs and availability of the tests. Where I work, the drugs come in shipments and donations. In some shipments you have one or two types of antibiotics. You don’t have many options … It’s not your decision,” Dr Khaled said.
Despite the limited resources, he and his colleagues at the local pharmacies have concocted a mixture of available antibiotics and steroids to try to treat difficult infections. “You have to do anything. You can’t just leave the patients alone.”
Israel Defense Forces did not respond to TBIJ’s request for comment.
Header image: The wreckage of an ambulance at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Credit: AFP via Getty Images.
Reporter: Misbah Khan Video editor: Katia Pirnak Global Health editor: Fiona Walker Deputy editors: Chrissie Giles and Katie Mark Editor: Franz Wild Production editor: Frankie Goodway Fact checker: Somesh Jha Additional contributor: Hitham Toman
TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.
Original article by Misbah Khan republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
