The United Nations General Assembly voted 124-14 on Wednesday to strip Israel of the right to self-defense in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
The test of the resolution was based on the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in July that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory was illegal.
The resolution also calls on member states not to sell arms or military equipment to Israel that would be used in Gaza, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem.
Among the 43 countries that abstained were Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Some 12 of the 27 European Union countries abstained, including Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden.
Looks like israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself.
Yup. Israel is treating them like land that’s free to colonize, when in reality a nation (albeit one with unstable government, and only recently UN-recognized) lives there.
Similarly, Japan can’t claim it’s “defending itself” if it hypothetically performs violent acts in Lebanon.
There’s a difference between defending oneself and engaging in collective punishment and genocide. I am Jewish and the descendent of holocaust survivors. Not in my name.
I mean yes, but this ruling is fhat they can’t do either. Since these regions are illegally occupied, their inhabitants have the right to resist said occupation and, therefore Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself in the same way it would against an independent country.
Israel has been murdering Palestinians for decades now. It’s a country founded on mass murder and genocide.
It’s a country founded on 19th century White Colonialist ideology (this bunch of people who see themselves as Whites being Jewish rather than Christian makes no different to their victims) which, unlike the places from were such thinking hailed, has never evolved away from it, quite the contrary: just like Apartheid South Africa, with time they just become more violent and oppressive against those they see as lesser races, only Apartheid South Africa was forced to stop whilst Israel just kept doubling down on it and getting more violent.
It’s not by chance that most Israelis and their leadership say that they “have Western Values”: they do have Western Values it’s just that they’re 19th century Western Values.
“Rights” can only be taken away by force, if there is no method to ensure compliance, this is yet another meaningless resolution.
The UN is a diplomatic organization. It is a forum to discuss things and literally has no actual means to enforce anything. Its goal is not enforcement, it’s to discuss.
So about as useful as us here as far as getting anything to actually happen :(
Exactly. Every time the UN does something, people say “they can’t enforce it”.
Well, that’s the whole point of the UN. To resolve things without using force.
It’s a good design, designed by people who learned from the horrors of WW2.
It’s sad to see how many people nowadays forget those lessons and are itching for global war.
Why does it really matter that issues can be “discussed” if the issue being discussed is as atrocious as what Israel is doing to Palestine.
Israel and the US know that what they’re doing is wrong. Them and their crony countries aren’t going to change course because of this.
It doesn’t exactly prevent WW2 if they tell Hitler to stop and he doesn’t listen…unless of course they choose to let him continue his goals unimpeded rather than go to war, citing their documented disagreement as sufficient counter action…
You got it ass-backwards. The point of the UN as opposed to LoN was that it can enforce shit. And do that very heavily. The only problem was that the chosen group of wise and powerful to decide this now includes Russia as the heir of the USSR (why the hell) and China (which is not the China that got the place initially) and UK (which is collecting cannibals to suck off all over the globe) and USA (which just arbitrarily invaded Iraq and didn’t even apologize) and France (seems kinda normal, but CFA etc were not nice) and the situation really sucks.
What is the point of voting, especially veto, if it’s all just voicing complaints?
It stopped being about self-defense, if anyone ever bothered trailing what Israel had been doing.
But, go watch the prime minister declare everyone anti-semantic anyways over this.
Honestly it would be an open and shut case here in the US.
My neighbor throws grenades into my window, me running into their house with my friends and shooting everyone there who looks like they might have had a grenade is not self-defense…
Why list a select 15 abstainers in the summary rather than the 14 voting against? Besides the obvious ones (Israel, US, Czechia), there’s Hungary, Argentina, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Palau, Nauru, Malawi, Tuvalu, Tonga and Micronesia.
Besides the obvious Genocide Joe administration countries like Palau, Tuvalu, and Micronesia do not evoke much significance.
Rather I found listing the more mainstream countries still silently supporting israel and refusing to condemn their obvious violation of international law more interesting.
On closer consideration Hungary might be of relevance, since they are allegedly responsible for the recent israeli supply chain terror attack on Lebanon.
So we’re back to genociding Israel again? I feel like no one has a plan that isn’t at least a little genocide.
My slopes aren’t as slippery, where did you buy yours? I get why you said that, given the tumultuous nature surrounding Israel since it’s founding in the 1940’s, but the Arab nations said they would cease aggression when Israel did. Perhaps Israel having it’s sticks taken away is a step towards a peaceful Middle-East?
Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
During the current war, Hamas officials have said that the group does not want to return to ruling Gaza and that it advocates for forming a government of technocrats to be agreed upon by the various Palestinian factions. That government would then prepare for elections in Gaza and the West Bank, with the intention of forming a unified government.
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
Sources
Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ
The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.
- Avi Shlaim
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
Hamas officials should be held accountable for all war crimes committed, same as all Israeli officials. That said, there are many parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Gaza.
In the Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen, the situation in Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghettos. The comparison was also made by a Palestinian poet who was later killed by an Israeli airstrike. Adi Callai, an Israeli, has also written on the parallels in his article The Gaza Ghetto Uprising and expanded upon in his corresponding video
It is possible none of us will live to see Czechia vote against the interest of Israel as all parties support it and there is pretty much no organized pro-Palestine movement. Israel says we’re their top partners in the eastern hemisphere, which means a lot because most countries are in the eastern hemisphere, including itself. At least, aid toward them is not nearly as popular among politicians and citizens as for Ukraine (we have a sizable, well-behaved Ukrainian minority already and took the most refugees per capita at the height of the crisis).
As for why pretty much every politician is either oblivious or bootlicking Israel: see my comment under a post about the shredder escapade 4 months ago
Thank you for the explanation! Such a shame that anti-Zionism is so often conflated with antisemitism
Good
