People during a pro-Palestine march in central London, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, February 3, 2024
THOUSANDS of Palestine supporters will gather across Britain this weekend against world leaders’ continued failure to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Russia, China and Algeria vetoed a US-sponsored resolution at the UN today which said that “an immediate and sustained ceasefire” in Gaza is “imperative” to protect civilians and enable humanitarian aid to stave off widespread famine.
They did so because the resolution did not actually call for a ceasefire.
Guyana abstained in the vote, with just 11 of the 15 security council members accepting it.
Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that while Moscow supports an immediate ceasefire, he questioned the resolution’s language. He accused US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of “misleading the international community” for “politicised” reasons.
“This was some kind of an empty rhetorical exercise,” Mr Nebenzia said.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pleads for a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel during a March 22, 2024 speech on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/YouTube screen grab)
“The time is now to force compliance with U.S. law and the standards of humanity.”
Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor Friday to demand a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel as it wages a genocidal war on Gaza and deliberately starves Palestinians to death in the besieged enclave.
“As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door. A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said during her speech. “This is a mass starvation of people, engineered and orchestrated following the killing of another 30,000, 70% of whom were women and children.”
“If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes,” she continued. “It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves, while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away. It looks like good and decent people who do nothing. Or too little. Too late.”
“As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door.”
Noting that much of the death and devastation in Gaza was “accomplished with U.S. resources and weapons,” the congresswoman pointed out that “it is against United States law to provide weapons to forces who block United States humanitarian assistance.”
“That is exactly what is happening right now,” she said. “So much so that the president himself stated, during the State of the Union, that the United States must and will be building its own port to let aid through. It will be too late.”
“The time is now to force compliance with U.S. law and the standards of humanity,” the lawmaker asserted. “And fulfill our obligations to the American people to suspend the transfer of U.S. weapons to the Israeli government in order to stop and prevent further atrocity.”
There is no world in which the forced famine of 1.1 million people cannot be considered genocide. And that is exactly what we are watching unfold in Gaza now.
We must enforce U.S. laws and halt weapons transfers to the Israeli government to stop an atrocity in the making. pic.twitter.com/N40Jk3yKc7
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) March 22, 2024
Ocasio-Cortez related that “a decent man” once said: “‘Preventing genocide is an achievable goal, a goal that requires a level of government organization and engagement that matches in its intensity the brutality and efficiency required to carry out mass killing. Too often, these efforts have come too late, after the best and least costly opportunities to prevent them have been missed.'”
“The man who said that was then-Vice President and now President Joseph Biden,” she revealed. “And he was right.”
Ocasio-Cortez was referring to a 2011 speech during which Biden told an audience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that “when a state engages in atrocity, it forfeits its sovereignty.”
This, as U.S. troops were committing atrocities while violating the sovereignty of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia as the Obama administration continued and expanded the so-called War on Terror launched after 9/11 by then-President George W. Bush.
“This is not just about Israel or Gaza. This is about us,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “The world will never be the same. And we will never be the same. And we must write our story in this moment, of what it means and who we are as Americans. And our story must be not that we were good men who did nothing. But that we were a committed democracy that did something.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s plea came as her House colleagues voted 286-134 on Friday to extend U.S. sanctions on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) until March 2025, while authorizing another $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel. Ocasio-Cortez was one of just 22 House Democrats to vote against the measure, which also authorizes more than $1 trillion in spending on U.S. militarization.
Responding to unfounded Israeli claims—reportedly resulting from torture—that 12 of UNRWA’s more than 13,000 workers in Gaza took part in the October 7 attacks on Israel, the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries suspended funding for the lifesaving agency, even as famine loomed amid Israel’s relentless bombardment and siege. Numerous nations have since reinstated financing for UNRWA, most recently Finland on Friday.
The Biden administration—which is seeking an additional $14.3 billion in military aid for Israel—continues to support the country’s war on Gaza even as evidence mounts that the key ally is violating an International Court of Justice order to avoid genocidal acts. However, the administration has ramped up its criticism of Israeli war crimes, with Biden imploring the Israel Defense Forces to stop its “indiscriminate bombing” of civilians and Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week asserting that “children should not be dying of malnutrition in Gaza.”
“It’s time for the president to bring real leverage to bear, in accordance with existing U.S. law, and suspend military assistance to Israel.”
But they are dying, and critics say U.S. humanitarian airdrops and construction of an aid port are essentially meaningless as long as Washington also continues to back Israel’s genocidal onslaught. And now the world is watching as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his far-right government vow to invade Rafah, where around 1.5 million Palestinians—the vast majority of them refugees forcibly expelled from other parts of Gaza—are sheltering.
“The Biden administration has rightly been sounding the alarm about the threatened Israeli incursion into Rafah, and the looming famine resulting from Israel’s indiscriminate war on Gaza,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. “But the devastating last five months have shown the limits of the power of words.”
“It’s time for the president to bring real leverage to bear, in accordance with existing U.S. law, and suspend military assistance to Israel,” Duss added. “We applaud Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s courageous call today for President Biden to do that.”
The latest poll will do little to calm Tory nerves ahead of the general election, with a number of factions within the party looking at replacing Sunak.
A new poll shows just how much Tory support among the public has collapsed, as the party continues to trail the Labour Party and Tory MPs plot to remove Rishi Sunak.
The poll, carried out by YouGov for the Times, shows that the Tories are set to win just 36 seats at the General Election, handing Labour a comfortable 398 majority in the House of Commons.
It puts the Tories on just 19%, which is the same share the party received at their lowest ebb in the aftermath of Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. Meanwhile, the Labour Party is on 44% of the vote, while Reform UK received their highest ever poll rating at 15%.
Al Jazeera obtained footage of what it reported was an Israeli drone killing four Palestinians in Khan Younis, Gaza in February. (Photo: Al Jazeera/screenshot)
“There is no way they could have been considered combatants,” said one writer and analyst. “This is unreal.”
Adding to the mountain of evidence that Israel is engaged in a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera on Thursday aired footage of what the news outlet reported was an Israeli drone targeting four Palestinians in Khan Younis last month.
Those killed by the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rubble of the southern Gaza city appear to be unarmed teenagers or young men. According to a translation of the coverage, they were not identified in the reporting.
While Al Jazeera deemed footage “too graphic” to be included on its daily live blog covering the war, a clip of it quickly spread on social media, where critics of the Israel Defense Forces operation expressed outrage.
“OUTRAGEOUS even after months of outrages,” declared Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer. “This video shows an Israeli military drone literally stalking four unarmed civilians posing no threat and eliminating them one after the other!!!”
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, Al-Shabaka’s U.S. policy fellow, said: “This is among the worst footage I’ve seen. Not only were these boys clearly unarmed and present no threat whatsoever, but they were struck multiple times even after stumbling/crawling away. There is no way they could have been considered combatants. This is unreal.”
Note: The following video contains graphic images.
I don't know why, but the execution of the final young man, after killed the three he's with, hits even harder. Absolute depravity. https://t.co/OxRSRL4wH1
Assal Rad, an author with a Ph.D. in Middle East history, said: “Have we ever seen so many war crimes take place right before our eyes? Any country still providing weapons and aid to Israel is complicit in these crimes.”
Exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden asserted that “everyone in the world needs to see this. Note that this footage permits no room for ‘it was a mistake,’ showing repeated, specifically targeted strikes on the unarmed and even wounded.”
“The sort of behavior the ICJ explicitly forbid in the genocide ruling against Israel,” added Snowden, referencing the International Court of Justice’s preliminary order in January for an ongoing case led by South Africa.
Since the ruling, rights groups around the world have accused Israel of ignoring the ICJ order by continuing to bomb and starve people across Gaza. The mounting casualties—at least 31,988 killed and 74,188 wounded—have elevated demands for the U.S. government to end arms transfers to Israel.
The United States gives its Middle East ally $3.8 billion in annual military aid and since the Israeli assault was launched in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, the Biden administration has sought $14.3 billion more while bypassing Congress to send more weapons. U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin face a genocide complicity case in federal court.
While the Biden administration has repeatedly vetoed and opposed cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly, Nate Evans, a spokesperson for Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., confirmed Thursday that the United States plans to unveil a new one on Friday.
The resolution will “unequivocally support ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at securing an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal, which would get hostages released and help enable a surge in humanitarian aid,” Evans told Al Jazeera. “This resolution is an opportunity for the council to speak with one voice to support the diplomacy happening on the ground and pressure Hamas to accept the deal on the table.”
Blinken said Thursday that “there’s a clear consensus around a number of shared priorities. First, the need for an immediate, sustained cease-fire, with the release of hostages. That would create space to surge more humanitarian assistance, to relieve the suffering of many people, and to build something more enduring.”
From obscuring the West’s role in starving Gaza to sensationalised accounts of mass rape by Hamas, journalists are playing the role of propagandists, not reporters.
Israel has reduced Gaza to ruins. (Photo: UNRWA)
The past five months have been clarifying. What was supposed to be hidden has been thrust into the light. What was supposed to be obscured has come sharply into focus.
Liberal democracy is not what it seems.
It has always defined itself in contrast to what it says it is not. Where other regimes are savage, it is humanitarian. Where others are authoritarian, it is open and tolerant. Where others are criminal, it is law-abiding. When others are belligerent, it seeks peace. Or so the manuals of liberal democracy argue.
But how to keep the faith when the world’s leading liberal democracies – invariably referred to as “the West” – are complicit in the crime of crimes: genocide?
Not just law-breaking or a misdemeanour, but the extermination of a people. And not just quickly, before the mind has time to absorb and weigh the gravity and extent of the crime, but in slow motion, day after day, week after week, month after month.
What kind of system of values can allow for five months the crushing of children under rubble, the detonation of fragile bodies, the wasting away of babies, while still claiming to be humanitarian, tolerant, peace-seeking?
And not just allow all this, but actively assist in it. Supply the bombs that blow those children to pieces or bring houses down on them, and sever ties to the only aid agency that can hope to keep them alive.
The answer, it seems, is the West’s system of values.
The mask has not just slipped, it has been ripped off. What lies beneath is ugly indeed.
