Harris maintained the same stance she has previously shared regarding the war in Gaza: She condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack while expressing support for a cease-fire and a two-state solution.
“Israel has a right to defend itself,” Harris said. “It is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed—children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end.”
When asked about the war in Gaza, both candidates reached for their usual talking points.
Harris said she backs a ceasefire deal in Gaza that would see the release of Israeli captives, but she renewed her pledge to continue to arm Israel. She also voiced support for the two-state solution. (…)
For his part, Trump reiterated his position that the war in the Middle East would not have broken out if he were in office. He also accused Harris of having a bias against Israel.
(10.04.2024)
U.N. resolutions that are written without enforcement measures obviously cannot force Israel to stop what its leadership insists is a justified war necessary to remove Hamas and prevent another Oct. 7 massacre. But it’s just as obvious what entity can make Israel stop and isn’t doing so: the United States.
Whatever the Biden administration might have thought it was doing by permitting the resolution to pass and then undermining it, the maneuver exposed the continuing damage Israel’s war in Gaza is doing to the United States’ longstanding justification for being a superpower: guaranteeing what U.S. administrations like to call the international rules-based order.
Pro-Israeli lobbies have hijacked most western liberal democracies.
The whole world is now privy to the shameless pimping of western politicians previously documented in Congressman Paul Findley‘s 1985 book They Dare to Speak Out and reinforced by the 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
As an anonymous commentator wrote: “People think Gaza is occupied, but in reality, Gaza is free but the whole world is occupied.”
We are already halfway through Ramadan, a month-long holy period marked by pronounced grief and suffering in the Palestinian territories. The Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, including many women and children, forced the overwhelming majority of people in Gaza to flee their homes and plunged more than half of Gaza’s population into a de facto famine. Small children are dying of malnutrition in what U.N. officials describe to be the broadest and most severe food crisis in the world.
Amid growing global pressure for a truce in the fighting that has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, the US abstained from the vote to allow the Security Council to demand an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramazan, which ends in two weeks.
It also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
(25.03.2024)
After more than five months of war in Gaza, the UN Security Council for the first time on Monday, March 25, demanded an immediate ceasefire after the United States, Israel‘s ally which vetoed previous draft resolutions, abstained. Drawing unusual applause in the often staid Security Council, all 14 other members voted in favor of the resolution which „demands an immediate ceasefire“ for the ongoing Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
A copy of the new draft resolution, obtained by Al Jazeera, reads: “The Security Council determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, allow for the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, and alleviate humanitarian suffering and towards that end unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.” (…)
No vote has yet been scheduled on this text.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday the U.S. has submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council that calls „for an immediate ceasefire“ in Gaza that‘s „tied to the release“ of hostages held by Hamas.
“He has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas, but he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Netanyahu in an interview with MSNBC.
“In my view, he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel,” Mr. Biden said, appearing to refer to Mr. Netanyahu’s military strategy. “It’s contrary to what Israel stands for, and I think it’s a big mistake. So I want to see a cease-fire.”
At least 104 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded when Israeli forces fired on people at an aid convoy in Gaza City’s al-Rasheed Street on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, calling the incident a „massacre“.
Residents of Gaza City had gathered seeking food, with the area completely cut off from aid by Israeli forces. NGOs and UN experts have voiced fears of famine in northern Gaza and there have been reports of people, including babies, dying of hunger.
„Meeting after meeting, resolution after resolution, this body has failed to effectively address this conflict,” Lockyear said. “We have watched members of this Council deliberate and delay while civilians die. This death, destruction, and forced displacement are the result of military and political choices that blatantly disregard civilian lives. These choices could have been—and still can be—made very differently.
The consequences of casting international humanitarian law to the wind will reverberate well beyond Gaza. It will be an enduring burden on our collective conscience. This is not just political inaction—it has become political complicity.“
(22.02.2024)
The head of the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) slammed the US for vetoing a Gaza ceasefire resolution in testimony at the UN Security Council on Thursday and detailed the horrors Palestinian children are facing in the Gaza Strip due to the Israeli siege.
“We are appalled by the willingness of the United States to use its powers as a permanent Council member to obstruct efforts to adopt the most evident of resolutions: one demanding an immediate and sustained ceasefire,” said MSF Secretary-General Christopher Lockyear.
Also briefing the Council was Christopher Lockyear, Secretary General, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders.
Fearful of further deadly Israeli attacks, he said he was “appalled” by the United States’ repeated use of its veto power to obstruct efforts to adopt the most evident of resolutions: one demanding an immediate ceasefire.
“We live in fear of a ground invasion” in Rafah, he said.
Calling Washington’s new proposed draft resolution “misleading at best”, he said the Council should reject any resolution “that further hampers humanitarian efforts on the ground and leads this Council to tacitly endorse the continued violence and mass atrocities in Gaza”.
The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining, reflecting the strong support from countries around the globe for ending the devastating conflict that has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians.
Here’s how countries and world leaders responded.
Thirteen council members voted in favor of the Algerian-drafted text, while Britain abstained. It was the third such US veto since the start of the current fighting on Oct. 7.
The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Tuesday on an Arab-backed resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, which the United States announced it will veto.
This month, a small tent cost Abu Salah 700 shekels, or about $185, he said. That‘s cheap, he added: People occupying nearby shelters paid double, or more.
„Opportunists are making use of this war. They hope this war continues so they can keep making money,“ Abu Salah said.
Some people have posted on social media offering tents for rent or sale. Some may be trying to make money, Palestinians told NPR, while others say they were forced to sell shelter materials in order to pay for food and water.
„At every juncture, Netanyahu has given Biden the finger,“ Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has been in close contact with U.S. officials about the war, told Axios. „They are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again.“
Behind the scenes: Biden hasn‘t spoken to Netanyahu in the 20 days since a tense Dec. 23 call, which a frustrated Biden ended with the words: „This conversation is over.“
I first went to check on the mother, who was still buried under the rubble. I called her name and crawled beneath the concrete walls, but there was only silence.
We dug further only to find that she had passed away with her arms wrapped around the tiny bodies of her children.
Some days after returning to our neighbourhood, we noticed that a pack of stray dogs had come and taken shelter in one of the bombed-out houses next to us. Throughout the night, we heard them barking and howling loudly, as though they were fighting over something….
So far, two people from the administration have tendered their resignations – Josh Paul, who oversaw arms transfers at State, and Tariq Habash, who worked on education policy at the White House.
The morale of staff in the White House is so low that the chief of staff planned a party in the hopes of cheering up the employees, according to a report from Axios.
However, it‘s not clear if the senior staff members of the administration understand why morale is so low. After the report of the party for White House staff, another report stated that hundreds of federal employees across 22 government agencies are planning a walk-out to protest against Biden‘s handling of the war.
(04.01.2024)
A senior Biden education adviser on Wednesday became the second administration official to resign from his post over the White House’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, the latest instance of internal turmoil over the war.
(Dec 11, 2023)
Legal experts and scholars have been warning since October that U.S. officials could be rendering themselves complicit in war crimes—and genocide—by continuing to arm the Israeli military as it wages indiscriminate war on the Gaza Strip.
Tlaib echoed that warning Monday, noting that the Biden administration has opted to „give weapons to a military that is very publicly and actively committing serious war crimes and crimes against humanity.“
(09.12.2023)
In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.
Eli on @GBHNews
Jewish constituents met with Clark who is „2nd in command“ in the House for the Democrats. She has not used her power to stop the genocide in Gaza
Members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Region 9A; American Postal Workers Union (APWU); United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) Eastern Region; New York City’s arm of Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA); Adalah Justice Project, American Muslims for Palestine N.Y./N.J.; Jewish Voice for Peace-N.Y.; New York Communities for Change; the New York Working Families Party; and more took to the streets to call for “peace and justice for Palestine.”
They carried signs stressing U.S. worker demands for a cease-fire in the conflict that has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 8,000 children.
Banners at the front show how much $ @ChuckSchumer, @HakeemJeffries, & @SenGillibrand have taken from AIPAC.
@StatusCoup
(22.10.2023)
“It’s not an official government representation,” he conceded.
Instead, he is part of a ragtag group of donors, activists and allies who have moved swiftly these past two weeks to help Israel. They have leveraged their political clout, their relationships with lawmakers and their fundraising networks to do so.
Their overarching goal is to shape how elected officials in the U.S. react to the crisis. But their work also underscores how much of the political fight around the nascent war is being done on the fly; and how much is being waged in unconventional theaters: college campuses, corporate boardrooms, K Street offices and stuffy Capitol Hill restaurants.
Both before and after October 7, the empathy Biden is known for has rarely extended to Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, said such statements are missing “to the degree that I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all.” In contrast, Khalidi added, Biden sees Israelis “as they are very carefully presented by their government and their massive information apparatus.”
A former Biden administration official shared a similar perspective with me. “The President does not seem to acknowledge the humanity of all parties affected by this conflict,” this person said. “He has described Is
Ongoing negotiations focus on language regarding hostilities cessation. Resolution aims to reduce Israel‘s control over Gaza aid delivery. #UNSC #Gaza
A morning meeting ended without a vote as negotiations continued over a new draft, seen by The Washington Post, that eliminated the word “ceasefire,” contained in an earlier version offered Monday. Instead, it demands an “urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
The resolution, drafted by the United Arab Emirates, demands access to the Hamas-ruled enclave via land, sea and air routes.
The draft text, Reuters reports, currently “calls for an urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access.”
The US is looking to amend the language on the cessation of hostilities, diplomats tells Reuters.
(12.12.2023)
Dear President Biden,
The war in the Gaza Strip has been underway for more than nine weeks, ever since Hamas carried out its horrific and criminal attack on Israeli civilians, which included killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping some 250 to Gaza – among them Israeli civilians, foreign nationals and children. Immediately after the attack, and in a speech you later gave in Israel, you made it clear that Israel has the right to defend itself, while emphasizing it must do so only in accordance with the provisions of international law, and particularly the rules of war.
We, Israeli human rights organizations and civil society groups, must at this stage state with a heavy heart that our government has chosen to ignore your advice and similar statements by US officials. This letter does not address the grave suspicions of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law during the war, but centers on the extreme humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza and the urgent need to change Israel’s policy on this issue.
(13.12.2023)
Among the signatories: Academia for Equality, Akevot – Institute for Israeli Palestinian Conflict Research, B’Tselem, Bimkom, Breaking the Silence, Combatants for Peace, Gisha, HaMoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual, Jordan Valley Activists, Looking the Occupation in the Eye, Machsom Watch, Parents Against Child Detentions, Psychoative, Rabbis for Human Rights, Social Workers for Peace and Welfare, Yesh Din and Zazim -Community Action.
The United States, one of only five permanent members of the Security Council, used its veto on Friday to halt a draft text calling for a ceasefire, the latest sign of impasse.
The Council took more than a month after the start of Israel‘s war on Gaza to speak with one weak voice, calling in mid-November after four rejected texts for humanitarian „pauses“ in the conflict.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of a looming „complete breakdown of public order“ in the besieged Gaza Strip.
There is a larger and far more important point. Hamas can be demobilized through diplomacy, and only through diplomacy. Israel and the United States need finally to abide by international law, accept a sovereign state of Palestine alongside Israel, and welcome Palestine as the 194th member state of the UN. The US needs to stop arming the Israeli operation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and stop protecting Israel’s rampant violations of basic human rights in the West Bank. Fifty-six years after its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and after decades of illegal settlements in the occupied territories, Israel needs finally to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands.
The Palestinians are hoping that a vote Tuesday in the U.N. General Assembly on a nonbinding resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire will demonstrate widespread global support for ending the Israel-Hamas war, now in its third month.
After the United States vetoed a resolution in the Security Council on Friday demanding a humanitarian cease-fire, Arab and Islamic nations called for an emergency session of the 193-member General Assembly on Tuesday afternoon to vote on a resolution making the same demand.
The resolution is not widely used, but it has been known to be employed several times over decades to help resolve a variety of conflicts, including the Congo Crisis in 1960, the conflict between India and Pakistan in 1971 and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1980.
A crucial element of the resolution is that it affirms the General Assembly may, if deemed appropriate, recommend the use of force.
In that sense, the resolution has been implemented only once – in the Korean crisis.
Resolution 377A was used to convene an emergency session of the General Assembly in 1951 due to lack of consensus among the UNSC members. It led to the passing of UN Resolution 498 (V), which said that China had militarily engaged in the Korean War.
The U.N. General Assembly is set to meet on Tuesday to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, officials and diplomats have said, after the United States last week vetoed a Security Council resolution for a cease-fire.