#stop vetoing ceasefires

[faloverfae]

HOT TAKE IT SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE TO VETO A CEASEFIRE AND ANY COUNTRY THAT TRIES SHOULD BE BULLIED MERCILESSLY

[captain-casual]

Guyana literally went:

[macoto17]

Time to END USA Veto!

If we want a total ceasefire, we need to expel USA from UN. Please sign these petitions guys!

[bl3ssed-cursxd]

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[agentfascinateur]

At least 33,634 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October. About 70 per cent of those killed are reported to be women and children.

#dontstoptalkingaboutpalestine

[rainingincale]

.

[sayruq]

The US, on 29 February, vetoed a UN Security Council (UNSC) statement that would have condemned Israel for the mass murder of over 100 Palestinian civilians who were awaiting the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza City. “We don’t have all the facts on the ground – that’s the problem,” US deputy ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told reporters on Thursday. He then claimed there are “contradictory reports” about the Israeli army's latest massacre and highlighted that Washington was focused on finding “some language that everyone can agree on.” Thursday's veto is the fifth time Washington has blocked a UNSC statement or ceasefire resolution that would hold Israel accountable for the atrocities it has committed in Gaza.

[totallynotcensorship]

tags update: rafah is 8th on trending

edit: it is now at 7th

FOR CONTEXT:

israel has launched an invasion and heavy bombing of rafah(a.k.a the "safe zone" 1.7 million Palestinians were forced into) after the UN approved a ceasefire resolution for the rest of ramadan... all 2 weeks of it. results were 14 votes for YESes. 0 NOs. and 1 didn't vote(take a guess who it was) the resolution called for an unconditional release of all hostages on both sides. so yes, mr "i am totally just doing this to get my hostages back whom i totally care about and totally didn't kill" Israel is launching harder attacks even after being promised all hostages release. just in case anyone was still questioning if Israel was using hostages as just an excuse for colonialism

russia tried to turn it into a permanent ceasefire but the US vetoed it. i guess vetoing a ceasefire looks less bad when russia is the one proposing it

DON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT PALESTINE

[sscarletvenus]

biden could have called for a ceasefire months ago. let it be known now and forever : america is no hero. we all watched the us veto every single appeal to stop the barbaric slaughter of innocent lives. but it only took three foreign nationals, three white people, and not the 30,000+ Palestinian lives gone...

edit : 6 white adults. not the 15000+ Palestinian children.

[mothmansbakery]

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free 🍉

I’ve seen many people stop boycotting and stop talking about Palestine and it truly breaks my heart especially when the USA recently vetoed the ceasefire, no one should look the other way when this genocide is taking place, don’t stop talking about this don’t stop boycotting.

This blog does not support genocide.

[matan4il]

Update post:

The US has publicly stated that it has not found Israel to be violating International Humanitarian Law (IHL), in terms of how it uses its weapons, and not blocking humanitarian aid.

Yet for some reason, that doesn't seem to matter when it comes to how the US is currently treating Israel. At the UN Security Council, for the first time since the start of the war, the US has not used its veto to block a resolution that's anti-Israel. This resolution calls for an immedaite ceasefire in Gaza for the rest of Ramadan (half of this month has passed already), and while it does call for an immediate release for the Israeli hostages, it does NOT make that a CONDITION for the ceasefire. The operation in Rafah, since it hasn't happened yet, is not likely to happen during Ramadan, so the main thing this resolution is calling to stop, is the on going lower intensity fighting in places like the Shifa hospital, where at least 500 confirmed Hamas and PIJ terrorists have been arrested by Israel. In essence, this is a pro-terrorist reolution. The US did abstain, showing it knows this resolution is wrong. It's also meaningful that just a few days earlier, a similar resolution submitted by the US itself, which did make the release of the hostages a condition for the ceasefire, was vetoed by those great beacons of democracy, Russia and China.

Did I mention Hamas praised the passing of this anti-Israel UN resolution? I can't stress this enough, but if a genocidal, antisemitic, Islamist tererorist organization is glad this resolution passed, that should be upsetting to EVERY person who values life out there.

Right after praising the resolution, Hamas also rejected the hostage deal compromise suggested by the US, that Israel had agreed to, which would have seen 40 Israeli hostages freed, in exchange for about 800 convicted Palestinian terrorists let go. Hamas might have said no anyway, but we'll never know for sure what their answer would have been, had this resolution not been passed.

Maybe the most troubling part is that the US insists this UNSC resolution is non-binding, meaning it will have no real effect on Israel's ability to continue fighting during Ramadan. That means, the US abstaining from using its veto wasn't done for the sake of a real chance to help Palestinians. It was a symbolic anti-Israel step, a bone thrown to Israel haters. That's how Israelis understand it, that's how every political player in the international arena (including the overjoyed Hamas) understands it, that's how political analysts understand it, and it should be troubling to everyone, that the US can treat a democratic, self defending, IHL abiding ally this way.

In fact, at least one country is already using this resolution to put pressure on Israel. The President of Colombia has said that unless Israel complies with the resolution and accepts an immediate ceasefire, his country will cut off its diplomatic ties with it.

Just one more thing. This is resolution did not include a condemnation of Hamas and the massacre it perpetrated on Oct 7, and yet the US allowed it to pass. The other day, the UNSC immediately condemned the ISIS terrorist attack in Moscow, which left 137 Russians murdered. Nobody suggested that "context" should be brought into it, like that Russia has itself attacked Ukraine (which Putin has implied is behind the attack), or like that ISIS' animosity originates in Russia's protection of the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, including many ISIS terrorists. In sharp contrast to this, almost 6 months into this war, the UNSC has not yet adopted a single resolution condemning the Hamas massacre in which over 1,200 people in Israel were butchered, many raped, and over 250 were kidnapped and are still held captive in Gaza. This discrimination was called out by Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan. He pointed to another example of such discrimination, by reading the resolution that was passed in 2014, when Boko Haram (another Islamist terrorist group) kidnapped Nigerian girls.

This is 65 years old Rami Shani.

He's a journalist, working for an Israeli radio station. On Oct 7, he happened to be covering a bicycle event taking place in Israel's south, which is why he was already awake and there at 5:30 in the morning. At 6:30, the Hamas attack started. As Rami started getting information about the massacre at the Nova music festival, he abandoned his original task, and started driving in there and getting people out in his car. He said everyone he managed to get out of there was wounded, having been shot in their arms or legs, one woman was shot in the stomach. One of the people he saved was an Israeli Bedouin Muslim Arab, who worked at the party, and was crying as he had been shot in both his arms and legs. In one case, he managed to evacuate 8 young people from the scene while seeing a terrorist squad progressing in his direction. He kept going, until security forces wouldn't allow him to go back in. He saved a total of about 40 people, and has been visiting them in hospitals around the country since then. Whenever you hear anyone arguing that journalists at the scene of a disaster can just keep covering the news, without doing anything to aid the victims, please remember Rami.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[vague-humanoid]

There was a line in a Hebrew news article yesterday that I can't stop thinking about. US officials told

@barakravid that in every conversation in recent weeks they've been warning Israel that it is responsible for the humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza.

"The senior US official said he was dumbfounded by the response he got from the Israelis: 'They asked me, why is that our problem?' he said. 'I told them they don't understand the situation they're in."

The thing is, Israel has always challenged the US and the world to put their money where their mouth is, and Israel has almost always won that game of chicken.

The stakes are different now but my sense is that most Israelis don't get that either. At this point nothing but cutting off the cash and bombs and UN vetoes could even begin to impart upon them the levels of shock and disbelief and horror with which the world has been watching for months. Shock and disbelief and horror not only at what Israel is doing but at their own governments for allowing it to happen. For not stopping it.

The thing is, nothing will happen and no consequences will be wrought until one man, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., decides that enough is enough. That moment should have come months ago but its unacceptable tardiness only makes it more urgent that it happen today.

Let's be clear, we're long past the point of a ceasefire being enough. There needs to be an international protection force in Gaza — to protect Palestinians from Israel, to ensure they don't die of starvation, to allow the world to deliver critical aid, to make sure that Palestinians who have fled can return to their homes, and to make sure the Israeli army doesn't stay in Gaza, or ever come back.

That should be the new starting point for discussions of "the day after." And the day after must be tomorrow.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Many on the right have sought to depict the protesters as extremists, but the sheer scale and regularity of the protests and actions are in fact a sign of how mainstream pro-Palestinian feeling is within British society. The question, assuming the movement succeeds in ending the Israeli assault, is where does it go next? What becomes of movements when they stop moving? Traditionally, social movements went through phases of emergence, coalescence, institutionalisation and decline, followed by dissipation and co-optation by mainstream parties. This usually took decades, the classic case being the US civil rights movement. Yet the era since “Occupy Wall Street” in 2011 has been one of so-called “flash movements”. From Black Lives Matter to the gilets jaunes, movements have coalesced around hashtagged slogans with astonishing celerity, producing deep political crises – and then subsiding. The Gaza campaign resembles a flash movement. It didn’t come out of nowhere. Palestine has been a cause of the international left since the six-day war in 1967, and the UK has seen repeated protests over Israel’s flattening of the West Bank, invasion of Lebanon and serial bombardments of Gaza. There is a network of organisations doing the groundwork, such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War. But the turnout for these protests shows the virtues of the flash movement: it can rapidly mobilise masses of people, tolerate a diversity of tactics and keep focus on a simple, morally obvious demand. In many respects, it is succeeding. In the UK, despite efforts to demonise the protests as “hate marches”, and the then home secretary Suella Braverman’s inept provocation of the far right against the protests, the demonstrations brought up to 800,000 people to the streets on 11 November. This was the largest such demonstration since the invasion of Iraq. Nor was the UK alone. There have been mass protests everywhere from Tokyo and Kerala to Cairo, Washington DC and Rio de Janeiro. In France and Berlin, protesters have defied official bans. In the US, the Jewish left has led the movement and often engaged in the most militant tactics,including blockading Manhattan Bridge. The embattled Israeli left has also staged protests, despite a climate of police repression and mob violence. The movement has done what successful movements do: win over public opinion, catalyse cracks in elite consensus and expose divisions in the state. These splits were visible in the form of staffer dissent in the US state department, frontbench resignations in Labour over Keir Starmer’s refusal to support a ceasefire, protests by Dutch civil servants and EU employees, Macron’s ceasefire demand, and recently the call from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, three of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing coalition countries, for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”. Only the US now vetoes UN ceasefire resolutions.

[iam-the-wild]

Liberals keep saying that we should vote for Democrats because they'll be easier to move, but have y'all been paying attention???????? A year of genocide and a year of protests and wheres the change in position???????????? When are they going to move?? If Democrats win they'll learn they can do anything and still get reelected as long as they have someone they can tell you to be more afraid of. Do you think this is going to be the last election with a candidate like trump???? It's never going to end. After trump they'll replace him with someone who's the same or worse, will you keep supporting genocide as long as you're afraid????

You say that the Democrats are more likely to listen and change position but it's been a year and they're still funding genocide and vetoing ceasefire resolutions at the UN and defending Israel every chance they get. You've bought into lies if you think they're more likely to change position, more likely to listen than Republicans. There is no democracy to be saved if you can't even decide what your tax money gets spent on, if you can't even get your government to stop a genocide despite a year of protests. There is no democracy to be saved today, there never has been

[girlactionfigure]

WHY IS ISRAEL CONSIDERING A CEASEFIRE WITH LEBANON WHILE HEZBOLLAH IS BOMBING ISRAEL?

Because America.

ARMS EMBARGO

Because the administration has imposed an ARMS EMBARGO on us that not only bars us from receiving the AMMUNITION they are also withholding 130 D9 Caterpillars(!!) needed for removing the terror infrastructure.

Because of this, our soldiers have to go into booby-trapped buildings in order to destroy the terrorists and remove the terror tunnels and weapons caches. Because of this many, way too many of our best have been killed.

Our soldiers are dying because of American policy.

INTERNATIONAL THREATS

Because the administration is not using the weight of America to veto dangerous international resolutions designed to force Israel to surrender in this existential war – something we cannot do if we want to survive.

The first case of this was the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the crime of genocide. Facts be damned, it doesn’t matter that Gazans are drowning in food, that Hamas is getting rich off the aid being sent into the strip, that our hostages are in Gaza, starving, or that no nation under attack can be obligated to feed the people trying to murder them. Jews are bad, the Jewish State is bad and the American administration said “Oopsie, sorry we didn’t prevent that. We think it’s not nice what they did…”

Next, Israel is anticipating a UN resolution demanding Israel stop the war in Gaza and withdraw. That means leaving Hamas in power and making it possible for them to invade again, as they have promised to do. As the UN is completely against Israel, should the US administration choose not to veto that resolution, it will pass.

THE WAR IS NOWHERE NEAR OVER AND YET WE ARE FORCED TO CONSIDER A CEASEFIRE BECAUSE OF AMERICA.

Americans don’t need to care about defending Israel for the sake of Israel. Americans need to care because the same people attacking us are coming for you next.

Forest Rain Marcia

[phoenixyfriend]

Calls for Action, Call Your Reps: 2/21/24

This is USA-specific, as that is the place I live and know.

Find your elected officials.

There are no bills scheduled to be on the floor on the House or Senate this week, though that may change. The chambers are using this time to debate and negotiate changes to the bills that were passed in the other chamber last week.

Suggested verbiage and strategies for calling your elected officials.

Both House and Senate:

Reinstate funding for UNRWA. While the claims made by Israel that employees of the relief agency were involved in Oct. 7th are troubling, THEY are not well supported, and western officials did not do their duty in investigating the claims before cutting funding. This arm of the UN is currently providing food, water, shelter, and medical care to the 2.3 million displaced peoples of Gaza. It is especially disturbing and concerning that the many children of Gaza, who are already suffering due to this conflict, are now having this support revoked. Many sources are also claiming that the evidence is flimsy at best.

UNICEF is reporting that children are dying of hunger in Gaza, as of today (2/21/24).

Urge both Senate and House to refrain from funding Israel, or to at least put some strings on it. The IDF cannot be given funding without some regulations on what they can do with it. They have proven that they are unwilling to take steps to protect civilians.

Sanctions must also be placed on Israel for its continued impediment of aid intended for Gazans, including aid from the US.

Urge for the US to stop vetoing ceasefire demands in the UN. No, the suggested replacement written by the US is not an excuse.

FOR THE SENATE: Urge your senator to put their support behind Bernie Sanders and his motion to restrict funding to Israel until a humanitarian review of the IDF’s actions in Gaza has been completed. Cite it as Senate Resolution 504 if your Senator is right-wing enough to react negatively to the mention of Sanders by name. NOTE: This resolution was TABLED by the Senate on 1/16, but it is being brought back in as conditions continue to escalate.

Passed in the House last week, so bother your senators about it, is H.R. 3016: IGO Anti-Boycott Act. Vote Nay. This appears to be intended to force US companies to do business with US allies instead of participating in boycotts. This appears, to me, to be an attack on movements like BDS. To Dem Reps, argue that this refuses the right of peaceful protest to US citizens. To Republican Reps, argue that this is a dangerous government overreach and that it is not the right of the government to force US citizens to purchase products and materials from specific foreign partners.

Not related to Gaza: It looks like they're gearing up for another push at KOSA. The canned email responses I'm getting are really proud of being FOR KOSA, which is... bad. VOTE NAY.

FOR THE HOUSE: Urge your representative to put their support behind Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s petition for the US government to recognize the IDF’s actions in Gaza as ethnic cleansing and forced displacement, and put a stop to it. ALTERNATELY: recommend that they support House Resolution 786, introduced by Rep. Cori Bush, Calling for an immediate deescalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.

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