Sunday Times 2
Ticking dpl. clock a cover for Israeli assaults on Gaza
UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) – As the death toll in Gaza keeps climbing – and charges of alleged war crimes against Israel keep mounting – the most powerful political body at the United Nations remains ineffective, impotent and in a state of near paralysis. Perhaps by choice.
The 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC), the only body representing the international community armed with legally-binding powers, has failed to adopt a single resolution on the three-week- old conflict in Gaza which continues to result in the merciless killings of Palestinians and widespread destruction of homes and schools.
Activists in San Jose, Costa Rica demonstrate requesting that the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon intervenes to bring peace to the conflict with Israel in the Gaza Strip. AFP
US military, financial, and veto power at the Security Council controls what can be done, even in such extreme moments of carnage. After an unusual midnight meeting, ostensibly meant to display a false sense of urgency, the UNSC agreed on Monday to release a so-called presidential statement, dismissed by some diplomats here as a morbid joke.
“Nobody, least of all the warring parties, takes these UNSC statements seriously,” said an Asian diplomat.
A mildly worded draft resolution, co-sponsored by Jordan and the Arab states, has been in circulation for weeks now, but failed to garner enough support to reach the negotiating table.
Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya, an e-zine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, told IPS that from the outset of the latest assault on the Gaza Strip, Israeli leaders have been clear that their ability to sustain their attacks is dependent on international support. “It’s what they call ‘the ticking of the diplomatic clock’, meaning the slaughter can continue with impunity only so long as the West remains prepared to extend it political cover,” he said.
The refusal of the UNSC to send a clear message to Israel that the slaughter must stop and there will be consequences if it doesn’t, therefore in practice extends the grace period allotted to Israel to continue its massive bombardments of the Gaza Strip, said Rabbani, who is also a contributing editor to the Washington-based Middle East Report.
This, of course, primarily reflects the support of permanent members the US, the UK and France – but also other members – for Israel’s actions, he said.
All three Western nations in the UNSC have predictably remained supportive of Israel and would not approve any resolutions accusing Israel of war crimes, imposing a no-fly zone over Gaza or calling for an international commission of inquiry into civilian killings.
UN Human Rights Commission Navi Pillay has warned that Israel’s continued military assault on Gaza may amount to war crimes, while criticising Hamas for “indiscriminate attacks”.
“There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” Pillay said last week.
The 47-member Human Rights Council last week voted for an international inquiry into alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict. But Israel has refused to cooperate in implementing the resolution which was opposed by a single country: the United States.
Abba A. Solomon, author of ‘The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech: The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews’, told IPS, “The United States will not act against Israel in the Security Council because of the well-established leverage of the pro-Israel lobby, both in the U.S. Congress and Senate.”
He said the administration of President Barack Obama is working in a situation in which the US House and Senate passed unanimous resolutions of full support for Israeli military action against Gaza earlier in July.
Since the 1940s, he pointed out, American Jewish organisations have cultivated relationships with elected officials, in the process of seeking and giving political and financial support.
“These organisations have accepted that advocacy for Israeli position is part of their duties,” Solomon said.
In times of crisis, these relationships are golden for the Israeli government, he added.
In this case, customary US deferral to Israel obstructs what would be humanitarian action, a UNSC resolution to protect a besieged civilian population, said Solomon.
Historically, he noted, US assent to UN condemnations of offensive Israeli military actions has been argued against because it would “embolden” whatever Arab opponent Israel is contesting with.
In cases where condemnation is unavoidable, “pairing” with condemnation of Arab actions is insisted upon, said Solomon, who has done years of archival research on the ways that American Zionism has gained and maintained so much power since the 1940s.
Rabbani told IPS at a time when Israeli leaders are explicitly stating their objective is to inflict such massive damage upon the Gaza Strip that the population will turn against Hamas — and killing civilian non-combatants by the bucketful in what can only be characterised as a pre-meditated and deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure — these states prioritise Israel’s purported right to self-defence above all else.
“To speak of an Israeli right to self-defence under such circumstances, when over 1,000 Palestinian civilian non-combatants have been killed in what can only be characterised as a pre-meditated and deliberate act of mass murder, and when the vast majority of Israeli casualties have been uniformed combatants, is well beyond obscene,” he said.
“It constitutes active support, and therefore direct complicity, in Israeli war crimes – even without taking into consideration the manifold other direct and indirect ways such states are supporting Israel.”
These include massive military, economic and political support, giving settlement products preferential access to their markets, and permitting their citizens to commit war crimes in Israeli uniform, he added. Rabbani said the role of the UNSC is to preserve and protect international peace and security, and it has once again failed miserably in this task.
And it has done so once again on the question of Palestine, a conflict for whose creation and resolution the UN bears a unique responsibility, he added.
“Indeed, this demonstrates once more the incapacity of the UNSC to serve as a meaningful guardian of international peace and security in its current form,” Rabbani said.
Solomon told IPS the US administration has the imperative to avoid accusations in the Senate and House that it has “betrayed” the “most important strategic ally in the Mideast” – Israel.
He said direct Israeli connections with US political figures across the party divide require care in any State Department response to Israeli bombardments of Gaza civilians.
And Republican and Democratic aspiring politicians are taken on Israeli “fact-finding” tours.
He pointed out Palestinian advocacy organisations have not established anything like this degree of ongoing cooperation in the US political scene.
US military, financial, and veto power at the Security Council controls what can be done, even in such extreme moments of carnage.
US cooperation with a binding UN attempt to rein in Israeli military action would mean a challenge to a long-established system of beneficial relationships in the American political scene, Solomon declared.
| US complicity in Zionists’ crimes
By Paul Findley While viewing the massacre of Gazans, you may wonder why 1.7 million Arabs are crowded on that tiny strip of seashore and are being bombed day and night into death and ruins by Israel’s powerful military machine. A glimpse of history is timely. Facts set forth below are little known in America: Sixty years ago 800,000 Arabs fled their ancestral homes in rural Palestine fearing death as a Jewish onslaught obliterated without a trace over 500 Arab towns, villages and hamlets. Massacres were reported. Those who fled are forbidden to return home.  A Palestinian boy walks over debris as civilians who were displaced from their houses due to Israel's army’s shelling and missile attacks return to check their homes in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighbourhood on Friday. AFP Gaza soon became a part of Israel Occupied Palestine. Refugees and their descendants struggle there for survival. Israeli controls are brutal. Potable water is nearly gone. Most of the population depends for survival on food and water distributed by United Nations officials. If supplies are not increased starvation – not just malnutrition – is certain. Arabs huddle behind high fences equipped with Israeli remote-controlled machine guns. A gate that once served as an occasional opening to freedom is now kept locked by the government of Egypt at Israel’s request. Gaza has long been described as the largest open-air prison in the world. Israeli punishment of Gazans became more severe seven years ago when they exercised the right of self-determination by electing the Hamas Party to manage local affairs. Once Hamas took control in Gaza, Israel and the U.S. government conspired in a sustained but unsuccessful attempt to destroy the organisation. Hamas was reelected to a second term and recently achieved a cooperative arrangement with the Fatah organisation that maintains a measure of authority in the West Bank. Infuriated because all gates stay closed, Hamas sends rockets over the fence. They do little damage but incite Israelis to launch heavy lethal bombing. Revenge is not commendable, but I understand why people penned up like cattle may welcome pain and discomfort for their oppressors. The current assault on Gaza is Israel’s third in seven years. This is the first time Hamas has used sustained rocket fire, but it is no match for Israel’s artillery, missiles and bombs. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, Israel has high-tech missiles that shoot down Hamas rockets while still in the air. Hamas has no such defence, in fact, no defence at all. The late radical Rabbi Meir Kahane, wrote a book titled They Must Go. In it he contended that all Arabs must be removed from Palestine so an all-Jewish Eretz Israel, the dream of Zionism, can come into being. Eretz Israel consists of entirety of Palestine, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, plus the Golan Heights, long a part of Syria, exactly the Arab territory Israel now controls. All Arabs are not gone, but approaching two million are imprisoned in Gaza. Elsewhere in Occupied Palestine, 4.2 million Arabs are abused and denied basic liberties. Their property and livelihood are steadily being seized by Israel to provide illegal housing for Jews-only settlements. These Arabs are squeezed into an ever-shrinking part of their birthright. More than one-half of the Palestinian West Bank is now populated by more than 500,000 Israeli settlers. Zionist dreamers can boast they are more than halfway toward their dream. Who is responsible for this tragic treatment of Palestinians? If you ponder that question, bear in mind that Israel could not possibly commit this criminal behavior without automatic, unqualified, U.S. government support year after year. Pro-Israel lobby pressure controls all major news media. The U.S. Congress behaves like a committee of the Israeli parliament. No president since Dwight Eisenhower has had the courage to stand up to Israeli wrongdoing. Those who know the truth are afraid to speak out for fear of paying a heavy price – maybe loss of employment. All citizens of the United States must face the truth: Our government is complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity. This is an election year. We should elect a Congress that will suspend all aid until Israel behaves. The bloody standoff in Gaza will stop if Israel opens the gate to Egypt and keeps it open. When that happens, Arabs living there can “breathe free,” a precious right our Statue of Liberty proclaims for all humankind. (Paul Findley served as a member of United States House of Representatives for 22 years. His books include Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship) Courtesy Consortiumnews.com |