- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Obvi America (in its present form) wouldn’t stop supporting genocide. However, i do think they are worried about optics and know they can’t keep saying ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ like they did before.
That’s very obvious to anyone who listened to the UN rep’s speech immediately after the vote.
The fact that a country which abstained felt the need to speak at all in the face of otherwise unanimous consent from the world is already telling. American narcissism embodied in one person. And I’m not placing blame on her individually as a person since she’s just a hand puppet of the US state department at the UN, as they all are for their governments. It’s clear she was ordered to abstain and told basically what to say. Just recite the same Zionist garbage about Hamas blah blah.
But the fact of her speaking at all being inappropriate aside (if you don’t want to choose a side then ok, but don’t speak afterwards just to whine!), she falsely called the resolution non-binding. As if the US UN rep can just unilaterally declare a UNSC decision “optional” essentially just because the US decides so without vote or discussion. That’s obviously how the US believes things work, and perhaps still do and did for a while now, but it’s not how the world sees nor is it factual per the UN charters.
And of course neither she nor the state department bothered to explain why or how it’s non-binding when by definition every UNSC decision is binding… that’s just how it works. They vote on something like “Israel must ceasefire immediately and ALL hostages (both sides) be returned” that isn’t like a strong letter. It’s a legally actionable command from the world’s agreed upon powers.
Which is exactly why the US immediately proclaimed it be non-binding so they could pretend it’s legal to continue supplying Israel and continue not physically stopping Israel from doing genocide or providing cover for Israel from the entire world who wishes to stop the genocide. You can bet your happy ass if the US announced clearly like “We acknowledge this binding resolution and will abide by it. Israel must immediately ceasefire.” Then if Israel didn’t and the US basically gave a greenlight in some fashion like “Israel is committing war crimes and directly violating orders from the UN. We do not condone these actions and will not be complicit by providing any sort of security for Israel any longer.” Basically an hour after that statement Israel would not longer be a state. Every surrounding Arab nation that has had to endure embarrassment, humiliation and murder by the Israelis for 75 years would absolutely be ripping the Knesset apart, Bibi would be shot with cell phone footage, etc. And at this point I can’t say a single fucking moral person on earth could feel bad for the average Israeli if that happened. It would be like feeling bad for slavers in the US south during a slave revolt. It’s not a fun thing to imagine yourself being wrapped up in, but at the end of the day… well, maybe they shouldn’t be doing a fucking genocide.
In any case, we’re witnessing some shit happening right now as far as international law goes which will set a new tone in the world going forward. Either the US speaks strong words (as they have) but force Israel to stop through all means necessary. Or the US speaks strongly (supporting Israel, the criminals) and then does nothing to stop the completion of this planned genocide. Obviously no one can say what happens if the latter scenario… the UN will have been effectively dissolved at that point, imo anyway. At least the security portion of it will have been exposed as purely a tool of western propaganda (which it obviously is, but this is so mask off and obvious that NO ONE could deny it any longer). So, I dunno, guess we’ll see how stupid US leadership is. Based on their response for the last 6 months… can’t imagine any good scenario happening here. Even though the “good” scenario is simply ending the siege. Fucking insanely low bar. “Stop doing genocide, guys.” What an evil country.
they need to remove the veto power of the permanent members but that would require amending the charter which any permanent member can veto soooooo
Yeah clearly that veto power is dumb as hell but also clearly the US and all the other permanent members wanted it for obvious reasons. If the US couldn’t veto any UNSC resolution on a whim there’s little reason to remain in the UN.
If I’m being a liberal though, a compromise might be requiring two permanent member votes to veto a resolution or, better, US/FR/UK any of them are one veto vote and RU/CH are another veto. One veto must come each camp to kill a resolution otherwise it’s treated as abstain.