The UN report, “Gaza Genocide”
(A/80/492) states that “the prolonged unlawful occupation of the Palestinian
territory” by the state of Israel “has now escalated into a full-fledged
genocide” with “the direct participation, aid and assistance” of other
countries. Hence, the “collective crime” is “internationally enabled.”[1]
Just before I wrote this, two Iranian dissidents sitting next to me in a coffee
shop declared to me that the destruction by Israel in Gaza is not a
genocide. I looked up the UN report, and replied, “It’s not just a matter of
opinion anymore.” The two Iranians, doubtlessly in the US because they opposed
their own regime in Iran, quickly left the coffee shop. Rather than being open
to something more than their opinion, they left. Doubtless they had not
expected the scholar sitting next to them to cite a well-documented source. To
be sure, even political officials of governments critical of Israel’s genocide
in Gaza (and the wanton violence of “settlers” in the West Bank were too inclined
to posture for attention than even to be consistent in symbolic political
actions (while refusing to occupy Gaza militarily, standing up to the holocaustic
Israeli regime).
The UN report states that third
countries (i.e., excluding Israel and Palestine) “may, and in some case (sic)
must, use force against [a country] in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN
Charter.”[2]
That the UN’s General Assembly allowed Israel’s prime minister (Netanyahu) to
speak in September, 2026 in spite of Israel’s significant, even blatant violations
of the Charter is discrediting enough to the international organization; that
the governor of the EU state of France spoke explicitly against the genocide
and yet his UN delegation did not join some 70 others in walking out just
before Netanyahu’s speech. That EU states had used their respective vetoes to proscribe
federal action against Israel meant that the state governments were left to act,
or not act, symbolically and/or in terms of trade and even military action
against Israel in Gaza.
In his speech, the E.U. state
of France’s governor, President Macron, said, “Recognition [of the Palestinian
state] is just a piece of paper, look at the reality” in Gaza. “Are we simply
to stand by and watch this spectacle that should shame us all?”[3]
He should have been pointing his finger at himself, for he allowed his state’s
delegation to literally sit by and watch Netanyahu’s speech. Had he really
believed that Israel had been committing a genocide in Gaza, he should have
opposed Netanyahu’s presence, and speech, at the UN, for committing a genocide clearly
violates the UN Charter. Macron himself asked rhetorically in his speech, “But
what credibility do we have if we continue to remain inactive in the face of
Gaza?”[4]
Duplicity even in symbolic political actions may be worse than doing nothing.
The stakes of just posturing
were high not only because of Israel’s multi-year genocide, committed with impunity
due to the US playing the vital roll of an enabling not-so-silent partner, but
also because Russia was still invading Ukraine, a sovereign country. Accordingly,
“Macron warned against a global ‘return to the law of the jungle,’ saying countries
faced a choice between a world governed by power and coercion and a ‘civilized
international society.’”[5]
In other words, the alleged international law proffered by the UN and the
International Criminal Court (ICC) after two world wars was being openly defied—and
the US military actions in Venezuela to kidnap its president and in Iran to unleash
bombs unilaterally (without Iran having attacked the US) can be added to the
list of defying international law, if indeed law had really existed
internationally after World War II (without any real enforcement mechanism)
even amid the advent of international organizations.
To be credible—to be believed to be real—international law would have been enforced by third-country militaries entering Ukraine as soon as Russian troops crossed the border and entering Gaza to protect the civilians there as soon as Israel started bombing the enclave. Relative to such action, speeches at the UN against Israel’s genocide without the respective delegations even walking out before Netanyahu’s speech can be relegated as mere posturing and even as hypocritical.
Macron was hardly alone in his duplicity. Even though the governor of the E.U. state of Italy had announced about six months earlier, “In light of the current situation, the government has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defence agreement with Israel,” Italy’s UN delegation did not walk out on Netanyahu either.[6] Meloni could easily have instructed her delegation to make such a symbolic move, especially as Netanyahu used his speech to threaten other countries by reminding them of Israel’s past use of phone pagers to blow up people. Such a reminder adds insult to injury, and even rubs the international body itself in the dirt for being so impotent in the face of a genocide in which Israel decimated entire cities in Gaza with utter impunity. Even though Israel arguably had lost its very legitimacy as a country in the world, the UN not only had failed to kick Israel out and urge militaries of countries (not “member states”) to occupy Gaza, but instead played host to symbolic inconsistency. The sheer severity of Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza (and the West Bank, in enabling “settler” violence and theft) dwarfs posturing half-measures even just in symbolic in nature.
It could
be asked at the time whether our feckless, weak species of windpipes deserves
international law. Even just the convenient ideologically-based denial in
2026 that the decimation of Gaza constitutes a genocide even though the UN and
ICC had determined as much supports the contention that homo sapiens as a political animal is inherently
compromised, and thus that the “family” of nations is in desperate need of
international law, which requires automatic rather than only politically
expedient enforcement.
2. Ibid.
3. John Irish, “In UN Farewell, Macron Denounces Trump’s Gaza Diplomacy as Spectacle of Shame,” Reuters, September 22, 2026.
4.Ibid.
5.Ibid.
6. Angelo Amante and Alvise Armelini, “Italy’s Meloni Suspends Defence Cooperation Deal with Israel,” Reuters, April 14, 2026.
