"What is the message we are sending Palestinians if we cannot unite behind a call to halt the relentless bombardment of Gaza?" Deputy UAE U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab asked the council. "Indeed, what is the message we are sending civilians across the world who may find themselves in similar situations?"
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Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the council that the draft resolution was a rushed, imbalanced text "that was divorced from reality, that would not move the needle forward on the ground in any concrete way."
"We do not support this resolution's call for an unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war," said Wood.
The U.S. had offered substantial amendments to the draft, including a condemnation of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that Israel says killed 1,200 people and in which 240 people were taken hostage.
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said her country abstained because there was no condemnation of Hamas.
"Israel needs to be able to address the threat posed by Hamas and it needs to do so in a manner that abides by international humanitarian law so that such an attack can never be carried out again," she told the council.
Palestine
Sen. Bernie Sanders was the lone member of the Senate Democratic caucus to oppose advancing a $110.5 billion supplemental foreign aid measure on Wednesday, expressing opposition to the bill's unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government.
"I voted NO on the foreign aid supplemental bill today for one reason," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "I do not believe that we should give the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government an additional $10.1 billion with no strings attached to continue their inhumane war against the Palestinian people."
"Israel has the absolute right to defend itself against the Hamas terrorists who attacked them on October 7," Sanders added. "They do not have the legal or moral right to kill thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children."
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books focussing on the Middle East including 'The Hundred Years' War On Palestine'. He explains some of the basic facts of the struggle for Palestinian independence and the creation of the Zionist project of Israel.
The reported cancellation of Hasan’s show has similarly caused outrage, with left-wing commentators saying that Hasan was both a unique on screen talent and a critical voice on the left and on the topic of Gaza in the sphere of corporate media.
“[MSNBC], make this make sense,” wrote human rights lawyer Noura Erakat. “[Mehdir Hasan]’s program has felt like an oasis on air and more needed than ever. His program with Mark Regev was a whole class on journalistic method. He should be amplified, not shut down.”
“It is bad optics for MSNBC to cancel [Mehdi Hasan]’s show right at a time when he is vocal for human rights in Gaza with the war ongoing,” wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California). “MSNBC owes the public an explanation for this decision. Why would they choose to do this now?”
The privileging of Israeli sources and perspectives is hardly new. An internal report by the BBC into its news coverage of Israel and Palestine that was commissioned by the corporation’s governors in 2006 remarked on “how little history or context is routinely offered”.
It also noted “the failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and other lives under occupation”.
For evidence of this today, just consider the difference between the BBC’s “explainer” of what it calls the “Israel-Gaza war” whose chronology starts on 7 October 2023 and Al-Jazeera’s own version which argues that the current conflict “has its roots in a colonial act carried out more than a century ago”.
Municipal authorities in Gaza have accused the Israeli army of deliberately destroying thousands of books and historical documents. They have also called for the intervention of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to “intervene and protect cultural centers and condemn the occupation’s targeting of these humanitarian facilities protected under international humanitarian law.”
As was the case in Sarajevo in 1992—when Bosnian Serb forces, stationed in the hills above the city, razed the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the ground—the targeted destruction of Gaza’s primary public library is a stark reminder that genocide is about more than just the premeditated mass extinguishing of human life; it’s also about the calculated, and often vindictive, destruction of a people’s culture, language, history, and shared sites of community.
Entirely run by students — Iyer and Shahriari-Parsa, like Eghbariah, attend Harvard Law School — Harvard Law Review is a well-known launch pad for estimable legal and political careers. Barack Obama was the journal president during his time at the law school, and graduates regularly go on to clerkships with Supreme Court justices and jobs at top-tier law firms. With careers potentially on the line, the Harvard Law Review’s decision on Eghbariah’s essay came amid a crackdown in academia, in Ivy League schools and elsewhere, against pro-Palestinian speech following the October 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent onslaught against the Gaza Strip.
“I can only speculate about the reasons of individual editors,” said Ryan Doerfler, a law professor at Harvard who attended a meeting with Law Review staff about the Palestine article. “What I can observe, though, is that the vote took place amidst a climate of suppression of pro-Palestinian advocacy.”
Every day for the last six weeks, journalists in Gaza have shown inhuman strength and bravery reporting from the frontlines. Journalists are losing their lives at four times the rate of the enclave’s general population. Since the start of the war, nearly fifty journalists have been killed by Israeli forces. That’s almost one every single day. Two are unaccounted for and at least a further six are missing. More journalists have died since the beginning of this violence than in the last twenty years.
At the same time, many journalists have been displaced from their homes, and are now living in tents around Khan Yunis. Collectively, they have lost around 1,000 family members.
This is the price they pay for doing their jobs, for documenting Israel’s ongoing devastation of Gaza, and for showing evidence of its war crimes to the outside world. Israel does not want the world to witness their atrocities.
Israel has freely admitted to destroying communications systems in Gaza ahead of their intense bombing campaigns. Israeli airstrikes have targeted and completely or partially destroyed the headquarters of several media outlets, including al-Ayyam newspaper, Gaza FM radio, and Shehab news and Palestinian news agency Ma’an, among others. The targeting of journalists is itself a violation of international law.