Over the past year, Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media — has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation. Many Americans roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel. Like many Americans who protested South African apartheid or the Vietnam War, their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral.
Archiv: Moral / Werte / Ethik / Integrität / morality / values / ethics / integrity
Vote Against Genocide: American Academic Letter
As American scholars and higher education administrators, we are deeply committed to the pursuit of truth, justice, and the common good—both in our classrooms and research, and in the broader world we engage with daily. Since October 2023, the Biden-Harris administration has failed to uphold fundamental human rights and the principles of knowledge, truth, and humanity. Their material support for genocidal atrocities has devastated entire communities in Palestine, leading to the loss of countless families in Gaza over the past year, and undermined the core values the United States professes to uphold globally. Under Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, every university has been bombed and destroyed in Gaza, more journalists have been killed than in any other conflict in recorded modern history, and the death toll is projected to exceed 186,000 according to The Lancet. Under Biden-Harris, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has prosecuted violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention, and declared Israel‘s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, unlawful, along with its associated settlement apartheid regime.
This election, on November 5th, the Democratic Party—once again with Kamala Harris at its center—has repeatedly sought our votes by positioning itself as the „lesser evil,“ urging us to abandon our moral convictions out of fear of a second Trump term under Republican leadership. Let us be clear: there is no „lesser evil“ when both parties are complicit in the same atrocities. And there is no lesser evil when they are complicit in genocide. Kamala Harris has actively funded and endorsed genocide, and we cannot reward such leadership with a Harris-Walz ticket. While the Republican Party under a Trump-Vance ticket offers no meaningful alternative, it is the Democratic Party, under Kamala Harris, that has actively supported and sanctioned these international crimes against humanity since October 2023. They must not be rewarded.
Abandon Harris Campaign’s Academic Letter Urges Nationwide Vote Against Genocide
The Abandon Harris Campaign announces that an academic letter calling on Americans to vote third party in the upcoming election is quickly gaining traction across higher education institutions nationwide. Titled “A Call by American Academics to Vote Against Genocide on November 5, 2024: Vote to Abandon Harris – Vote Third Party,” the principled letter condemns the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza and urges voters to hold Kamala Harris accountable at the ballot box. The letter and its signatories can be found at voteagainstgenocide.org.
Turkish president condemns Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, calls for global action
Erdogan criticized the international community for enabling Israel‘s actions, saying that as Tel Aviv continues to receive „weapons and ammunition support from its backers,“ it becomes „increasingly reckless, defying all humanity, humanitarian values, and international law.“
He stressed that Israel‘s „politics of madness,“ already seen in Gaza and Ramallah, must not be allowed to spread to Lebanon and other countries in the region.
„No person of conscience can accept, justify, or deem such a massacre legitimate,“ he said.
UN Secretary-General Addresses General Debate, 79th Session
Categories
Meetings & Events / General Assembly / 79th Session / Plenary
Production Date
24 Sep 2024
Video Length
00:25:07
Asset Language
Arabic
Chinese
English
French
Russian
Spanish
Original
Secretary-General‘s remarks at the Opening of the General Debate of the Seventy-ninth Session of the General Assembly ..
Many have said that the differences and divisions today are just too great.
That it is impossible for us to come together for the common good.
You proved that is not true.
The Summit of the Future showed that with a spirit of dialogue and compromise, we can join forces to steer our world to a more sustainable path.
It is not the end.
It is a start of a journey, a compass in the whirlwind.
Let‘s keep going.
Let‘s move our world towards less impunity and more accountability …. less inequality and more justice … less uncertainty and more opportunity.
The people of the world are looking to us – and succeeding generations will look back on us.
Let them find us on the side of the United Nations Charter … on the side of our shared values and principles … and on the right side of history.
Damning Report Reveals How Antony Blinken Lied to Congress on Israel
The U.S. government’s handling of USAID’s memo led to internal conflict, with one official in the State Department, Stacy Gilbert, resigning in May over Blinken’s statement to Congress.
“There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” Gilbert wrote in a statement at the time. “To deny this is absurd and shameful. That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.” (mehr …)
The West Is A Dystopian Wasteland Of Moral Degeneracy
The moral degeneracy of this civilization looks like living lives of relative comfort built on the backs of workers in the global south whose labor and resources are extracted from their nations at profoundly exploitative rates, while raining military explosives on impoverished populations who dare to disobey the dictates of our government, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and acting like this is all fine and normal.
Being born into western civilization is like waking up in the middle of a massive lynch mob.
Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute
(August 23, 2024)
In the past, Israel’s moral debate about its military actions may have been narrow and hypocritical, but at least it existed. Not this time.
Where Is America’s ‘Rules-Based Order’ Now?
(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.
Gaza is the greatest test liberalism has faced since 1945. And it is failing
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.”
How Americans felt about campus protests against the Vietnam War
There is no guarantee that history will eventually vindicate the positions of protesters. But it does seem safe to assume that the positions, not the protests, are what will be remembered.
‘Part of My Core’: How Schumer Decided to Speak Out Against Netanyahu
(19.03.2024)
It was here, he recalled, inside this hulking red brick school deep in south Brooklyn, where at 16 he was glued to his transistor radio to hear breaking news of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. It was where he idolized Sandy Koufax, the Jewish pitcher for the Dodgers who refused to play on Yom Kippur, and learned it was cool to be proud of his heritage.
And on Sunday, Mr. Schumer, the New York Democrat, majority leader and highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States, returned to explain how his upbringing in Jewish Brooklyn in the shadow of the Holocaust prompted him to deliver a politically risky speech that brought about a watershed moment in the politics of U.S.-Israeli relations.
Remarks by President Biden and His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan After a Meeting
We must make sure the horrors of the past few months since October 7th are never repeated nor accepted by any human being.
We must together, along with Arab partners and the international community, step up efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and immediately start working to create a political horizon that leads to a just and comprehensive peace on the basis of the two-state solution — an independent, sovereign, and viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital but living side by side with Israel in peace and security. This is the only solution that will guarantee peace and security for the Palestinians and the Israelis, as well as the entire region.
Jordan’s King Abdullah: October 7 attacks cannot be accepted by any Muslim
“As I have previously stressed, we must make sure the horrors of the past few months since October 7, are never repeated, nor accepted by any human being.”
“We must together, along with Arab partners and the international community, step up efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and immediately start working to create a political horizon that leads to a just and comprehensive peace” on the pre-1967 lines, he says.
European MPs Call for EU to Oppose Removal of Hadash MK Ofer Cassif
On Monday morning, the Knesset House Committee is slated to hear arguments in an unusual debate that will determine the political future of Communist lawmaker Ofer Cassif, from the Hadash-Ta’al parliamentary faction.
If the hearing goes badly for Cassif, he could soon face an unprecedented vote in the Knesset plenum to expel him from the legislative body, the result of his far-right MKs anger over his public support for a South African petition to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
Four years ago, lawmakers attempted to gather the required signatures to bring similar charges against Hadash leader MK Ayman Odeh, but the effort never made it to the committee stage.
‘Why I support ICJ Gaza genocide case against my country, Israel’
(11.01.2024)
Israeli politician Ofer Cassif announced his support for the Gaza genocide lawsuit against Israel at the ICJ, and is now facing an attempt to get him kicked out of parliament. He explains why he did it.
„Das Verfahren drückt eine Art der internationalen Solidarität aus, die seit dem Kalten Krieg völlig in Vergessenheit geraten ist“
Was sind die konkreten Vorwürfe Südafrikas an Israel, können Sie das einmal näher ausführen?
Zunächst muss ich auf die ungeheure Symbolkraft und emotionale Wucht dieses Verfahrens eingehen, das Menschen auf der ganzen Welt elektrisiert. Diese Wucht hat vor allem mit vier Dingen zu tun: Erstens drückt das Verfahren eine internationale Solidarität aus, die seit dem Kalten Krieg völlig in Vergessenheit geraten ist. In der dunkelsten Stunde der Not, um es einmal pathetisch auszudrücken, erscheint einer völlig am Boden liegenden und ‚von allen guten Geistern verlassenen‘ palästinensischen Nation ein ‚Retter‘, ein Licht am Ende des Tunnels – jemand, der ohne offensichtlichen Eigennutz plötzlich für palästinensische Rechte eintritt…
Thanks to Gaza, European philosophy has been exposed as ethically bankrupt
magine if Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Turkey – fully backed, armed and diplomatically protected by Russia and China – had the will and the wherewithal to bomb Tel Aviv for three months, day and night, murder tens of thousands of Israelis, maim countless more and make millions homeless, and turn the city into a heap of uninhabitable rubble, like Gaza today.
Just imagine it for a few seconds: Iran and its allies deliberately targeting populated parts of Tel Aviv, hospitals, synagogues, schools, universities, libraries – or indeed any populated place – to ensure maximum civilian casualties. They would tell the world they were just looking for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
Ask yourself what the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia and Germany in particular would do within 24 hours of the onslaught of this fictional scenario.
War on Gaza: Internal anger with Biden and Congress reaches boiling point
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.
White House: Second Biden official resigns over Israel-Hamas war concerns
(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.
War on Gaza: The fate of global justice hangs on South Africa‘s ICJ case
These are words that any western leader allowing Israel to carry on with mass murder can ill afford to ignore.
The ICJ has agreed to hold a hearing next week to discuss South Africa’s request for an urgent ruling. No hearing at the World Court at the Hague is more pressing. The fate of that endangered species called international justice depends on it.
Public Figures Sign onto Letter Opposing Dehumanization of Gazans, Palestinians, Muslims, Israelis and Jews
The signatories include authors David Grossman and Iris Leal; MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash), philosophers Slavoj Žižek, Eva Illouz, Axel Honneth and Kohei Saito; former Members of Knesset Dov Khenin (Hadash) and Mossi Raz (Meretz); human rights activists Ruchama Marton, Att. Michael Sfard, Ziv Stahl, Avi Dabush, B’tselem Director Yuli Novak and Breaking the Silence Director Avner Gvaryahu; singer Achinoam Nini, actor and director Itay Tiran, and actors Esti Zakheim, Ala Dakka, Yossi Zabari and Menashe Noy; filmmakers Ari Folman, Avi Mograbi, Nadav Lapid, Avigail Sperber and the Heiman brothers; lawyer Daniel Hacklai; choreographer Ohad Naharin, director and choreographer Avshalom Pollak; scholar and journalist Tomer Persico, and many others.
South Africa Emerges as Moral Giant on Gaza
The collective West will forever stand disgraced and exposed due to its blind support of Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since Oct. 7.
What passes for governance in Washington, Berlin, Paris, London et al. has forced us all to bear witness to infanticide, high crimes and war crimes without end these past few months. Said crimes have been committed not in the name of self-defence but rather in the name of ethno-nationalism, settler-colonialism and white supremacy.
#UNGA Special Session: “Any life lost is a tragedy, there is no hierarchy of death” – Bob Rae, Canada Representative to the United Nations
(Oct 27, 2023)
Papst erteilt feierlichen Weihnachts-Segen – Ruf nach Frieden
Eindringlich rief der Papst in seiner Urbi-et-Orbi-Botschaft dazu auf, sich für Frieden einzusetzen. „Er komme bald in Israel und Palästina, wo der Krieg das Leben dieser Völker erschüttert. Ich umarme sie alle, insbesondere die christlichen Gemeinschaften in Gaza und im gesamten Heiligen Land. Ich trauere im Herzen um die Opfer des verabscheuungswürdigen Angriffs vom 7. Oktober und erneuere meinen dringenden Appell für die Freilassung derjenigen, die noch immer als Geiseln festgehalten werden. Ich flehe darum, dass die Militäroperationen mit ihren entsetzlichen Folgen unschuldiger ziviler Opfer eingestellt werden und dass man etwas gegen die verzweifelte humanitäre Situation unternimmt, indem man das Eintreffen der Hilfslieferungen ermöglicht.“
Franziskus richtete den Scheinwerfer aber über das aktuelle Gaza-Drama hinaus auf die Zukunft der Menschen und Völker im Nahen Osten. „Man schüre nicht weiter Gewalt und Hass, sondern führe die palästinensische Frage zu einer Lösung, und zwar durch einen aufrichtigen und beharrlichen Dialog zwischen den Parteien, der von einem starken politischen Willen getragen wird und von der Unterstützung der internationalen Gemeinschaft.“ Der Vatikan wirbt für eine Zwei-Staaten-Lösung Israel/Palästina und für einen international garantierten, freien Zugang zu den Heiligen Stätten.
Pope: May Christmas bring peace to our world and turn sorrow into joy
Following the birth of the Saviour came the slaughter of the innocents, the Pope recalled, and he remembered the innocents, the „little Jesuses“ of today, who are victims „in their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war.“
We must say „yes“ to peace and „no“ to war the Pope decried, as every war marks „a defeat without victors, an inexcusable folly.“ He also called for a „no“ to weaponry given that with human weakness we can often end up using it for war sooner or later.
Peace is even more difficult, he observed, „when arms production, sales, and trade are on the rise“ and public funds spent on arms can come at the expense of bread for the hungry. He decried „the interests and the profits that move the puppet strings of war.“ And these must be brought to light, „talked about and written about,“ he emphasised, since many have no idea how much of their public funds are being spent on weapons, whereas they should be informed.
Starvation, mass displacement, rampant disease. That is Gaza right now. During the Vietnam War, R‘ Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: „Our own integrity as human beings is decaying in the agony & merciless killing done in our name.“ If we turn away, we risk losing our own humanity.
Red Cross chief accuses international community of ‘moral failure’
Mirjana Spoljaric, the Red Cross president, has accused the international community of moral failure over the humanitarian crisis and ongoing bombardment of Gaza.
“I have been speaking of moral failure because every day this continues is a day more where the international community hasn‘t proven capable of ending such high levels of suffering, and this will have an impact on generations, not only in Gaza,” she said.
United Nations Honor, United States Shame in Gaza
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.
Another Hadash MK Sanctioned Over Statements Against Gaza War
(15.11.2023)
Touma-Sliman, who the committee said did not apologize and did not recant her statements, is barred from Knesset committee and plenum sessions for two months, and also receives a two-week pay deduction.
On October 19, the Ethics Committee of the Knesset suspended another Communist lawmaker, MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash), for what it deemed as “anti-Israel statements after the war in Gaza broke out.” Cassif has been suspended for 45 days.
My speech read: “Let’s stand against anti-Jewish bigotry here. Let’s stand against anti-Muslim bigotry here. Let’s stand against hate here.” But the chanting crowd threw me off — and I misspoke. We need to stand WITH Muslims, and Jews, and everyone who is under threat.
Van Jones Booed at March for Israel—Speech in Full
„I also pray that Hamas ends its reign of terror,“ he said. „I have to say, I‘m a peace guy, I‘m a peace guy, I pray for peace. No more rockets from Gaza, and no more bombs falling down on the people of Gaza. God protect the children. God protect the children. Let‘s end all the horror and all the heartbreak in the hold land. Let‘s end all of it.
„But, I‘ll be honest in closing. When I think about what‘s happening over there, I don‘t feel powerful to do something about what‘s happening over there,“ Jones continued, as the audience began to chant: „No ceasefire.“
„What I do feel powerful is to maybe do something about what‘s happening here. Let‘s take a stand here against anti-Jewish bigotry. Let‘s take a stand against Muslims,“ he said, appearing to lose his train of thought mid-sentence as the crowd chants.
DECLARATION OF GENEVA
MY COLLEAGUES will be my brothers;
I WILL NOT PERMIT considerations of religion, nationality, race, party
politics or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient;
I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.
I MAKE THESE PROMISSES solemnly, freely and upon my honor.
The Letter that Outraged Us: The Physicians‘ Letter Calling for the Destruction of Shifa Hospital in Gaza
(06.11.2023)
Dozens of Israeli physicians signed a letter urging the military to destroy the “hornet nests and the hospitals shielding them” in the Gaza Strip. The letter indicates that its authors consider the civilians in these hospitals to be legitimate targets – as if they can choose to leave; as if there’s a safe way out and another hospital able to take them in.
Following their appeal, we drafted the response letter below, undersigned by physicians and health professionals working in hospitals and in the community: (…)
No person with a conscience can remain indifferent to the massacre of civilians, including men, women, and children, carried out on October 7, 2023, by Hamas militants – the scale of which has yet to be fully revealed. However, our deep outrage must not be transformed into a carte blanche for killing civilians in the Gaza Strip, where residents are also counting the wounded and dead – certainly not when physicians are the ones demanding this. Fortunately, the letter’s signatories represent only a small minority of the health community, while the vast majority remains busy saving lives – no matter whose lives it may be.
Hadar Morgan a granddaughter of a holocaust survival : “How could we have become what we opposed? That‘s the big question.“ Hadar Morag, Israeli filmmaker
#UNGA Special Session: “Any life lost is a tragedy, there is no hierarchy of death” – Bob Rae, Canada Representative to the United Nations
(Oct 27, 2023)
What is Gaza’s Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war’s death toll?
The United Nations and other international institutions and experts, as well as Palestinian authorities in the West Bank — rivals of Hamas — say the Gaza ministry has long made a good-faith effort to account for the dead under the most difficult conditions.
“The numbers may not be perfectly accurate on a minute-to-minute basis,” said Michael Ryan, of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program. “But they largely reflect the level of death and injury.”
Biden Cast Doubt On Gaza’s Death Statistics — But Officials Cite Them Internally
(Oct 26, 2023)
The credibility of the ministry’s data is significant because there are few other sources of information about the situation in the blockaded region, and because some defenders of Israel’s actions in Gaza claim the ministry overstates the humanitarian toll of Israeli attacks for political reasons.
Most organizations and analysts tracking Gaza do treat the ministry as a reliable source, however, including the United Nations. The State Department has also publicly cited the ministry’s figures, for example in a report published earlier this year on the human rights situation in Israel-Palestine.