Though the UN General Assembly passed a resolution called on Israel to observe a ceasefire in its attack on the Gaza Strip in response to the attacks against by Hamas on October 7, Israel has remained obdurate. The resolution was passed by 120 votes to 14, with 45 abstentions. Among those voting against were Israel itself, and the USA. The USA’s backing of Israel was more fervent than that of other firm backers on Israel, such as France, which voted in favour of the resolution, or Germany and theUK, both of which abstained. The UNGA resolution followed an attempt to get the Security Council to intervene, but that failed because of the US veto. Israel’s disobedience to the UN General Assembly is to be ascribed to the backing of the USA, which seems blind in its backing of Israel, because that backing is making nonsense of its claims to being a champion of human rights. Its clamour about supposed violations of human rights in such Third-World countries as Pakistan now ring hollow in view of how easily it is ignoring Israeli atrocities, even to the extent of backing its falsehoods (such as the claim that it did not kill around 500 people in the attack on the Ahli hospital, but the Palestinians did).
Pakistan voted for the resolution, even though it has enough experience of the failure of the UN to enforce its resolutions in the face of a member refusing to, in the Indian refusal to obey resolutions on Kashmir. It was perhaps symptomatic that India was one of the abstainers on this resolution. The problem that the UNO faces is that such disobedience renders it irrelevant. The collapse of its predecessor, the League of Nations, should make it clear that the persistence of bad behaviour by members will lead to a loss of relevance.
What is unfolding people. The death toll in the Gaza Strip is a human tragedy, where a state has been let loose on a civilian population. Israel has subjected the Gaza Strip to its most intense bombardment so far as preparation for moving in its ground forces. Already, with 7000 deaths claimed, the death toll is frightening. The USA must remember that it has a history of mass murder since it killed off its own Native Americans. Vietnam. Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq… its forces have left a bloody trail wherever they have been. In Gaza, the USA risks going down in history as being complicit in the slaughter of the Palestinian people.
