Former UN speechwriter Mark Seddon urges member states at the United Nations General Assembly to invoke the Uniting for Peace resolution and establish a protective international force to defend Gaza.
Exactly, I've been talking about this for a while because not just Chapter 7, but Articles in Chapters 6 and 10 can be invoked! The United Nothing aka UN know only too well what can be done, they're not idiots, so the only reasons why they haven't is alignment with Israel, or blackmail, donations or all 3!
This dereliction of duty towards basic humanity by Trump, Starmer and Lammy is absolutely disgraceful. I can only imagine that they will retire from their positions with wads of cash given by AIPAC. Their bank balances will be healthy but their consciences will have to take the blow. But Hey! I was forgetting-they don’t have one.
Magnificently well said 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Amongst the worst of nations preferring hollow , vacuous platitudes rather than calling out the Zionist Israeli government for what it is , is the Australian government . So far under the boot of the US and Israel that it is disappearing. Except to be seen as despicably spineless . Two years after the Zionist genocide in Palestine has begun they are finally getting around to recognising Palestine as a state , yet still refuse to condemn the genocide for what it is .
I see Albo gave Israel a helping hand by using fictitious “Iranian” support for terrorists to capture the headlines on the day that Israel bombed Al Nasser Hospital in order to murder a handful of journalists - and followed it up with a double tap to murder the rescue workers who had arrived to deal with the dead and wounded. Albo is a craven, immoral pretence of a leader.
In this long interview, not a single word is waste. The following details of the history from 2005 to October 7th are crucial for the analysis and resolution of the conflict. Surprisingly, no academic has yet brought them to the forefront of the debate. It demonstrates that the strength of the argument resides in the detail. It must be widely and urgently disseminated and continued:
Siege to Genocide: Gaza’s history from 2005–2025 | Muhammad Shahada | UNAPOLOGETIC
— No state has an inherent right to exist; states exist de facto. Their existence depends on international de-facto recognition of clearly defined, unchanging borders, which Israel possesses no more than Palestine.
Rather than a nation-state Isreal is a de-facto occupier of two existing nations and one aspiring nation.
— States acquire the right of self-defence only when they achieve existence.
Great post. Thank you for reminding people that there’s no such thing as”right” to exist in international law. (Al Jazeera’s program “Center Stage” interviewed Ralph Wilde, International law attorney, on the issue of a state’s right to exist, and other legal issues is excellent) Israel has never accepted their internationally recognized borders, as it has no intention of remaining within them. I agree that Israel is a de facto occupier, rather than a nation state and has not earned the right to self defense. Even were they to be found entitled to a right of self defense, the Geneva Conventions are clear that an occupier does NOT have a Right to Self Defense against those they occupy ON OCCUPIED TERRITORY! If Israel wanted to exercise self defense they should have done so on 10/7/2023 when Hamas and other actors were within Israel (wherever that actually is with no recognized borders). Instead they chose to ignore all warnings prior to that date, including those of their own security guards, and then delayed any significant response for upwards to 6 hours.
Thank you, Kathleen. I am not a lawyer, but have an interest in it, enough to work this out from cues emerging in the context of current horrors, e.g., F. Albanese is another lawyer to clarify that states don't have a right to exist. It aligns with philosophy. In phenomenology, what exists is what is perceived (thus recognised as such). Therefore, I am glad to reconfirm and expand on this with your expert view and clear explanation.
To your subsequent point on the exercise of self-defence. I wonder what the legal view is on an act of self-defence that is self-destructive: an interesting paradigm for jurisprudence. Let's revise the facts as they happened on 10/7/2023: it was the Israeli so-called Hannibal directive that killed most Israelis on October 7th, and it continues to slowly kill the hostages —and their families in Israel— under the guise of self-defence.
These facts cannot be stressed enough. It would be very useful if every debate on the urgency of the current conflict and how to end it (such as at the UN) started from this fact.
double lie of a God’s promised land to a chosen people who do not believe in God; of a West’s allocated land to a chosen people to create a fake proxi state. Each version hides the other depending on context. They can never appear simultaneously—unless someone makes the effort to unravel the seeming paradox to deactivate them.
Appreciate that you referenced Gideon Levy’s statements. I have much respect for his intelligence and his honesty, neither of which are appreciated in Israel. I’m somewhat surprised that he’s been able to continue to live and work in Israel. Most of the “new Israeli historians” who wrote in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, after Israel opened its archives, have had to leave Israel as they were unable to continue working in the universities there. The crime they committed was showing (by the use of Israel’s own documents from pre 1948) that the Zionist militias had ethnically cleansed Palestine in order to create Israel. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes through acts of terror (blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and eventually driving out the British who were in the way, blowing up trains to rob money and weapons, massacring entire villages- some estimates as high as 200 villages, murdering large groups of Palestinians, enforced marches). This was a plan that had been conceived in the initial creation of Zionism. Herzl, the father of Zionism, clearly stated that the Palestinians (they were fully aware that Palestine was NOT a land without people for a people without land) would not willingly leave their homes and would have to be forcefully removed by whatever violent means necessary. David Ben Gurion (formerly David Green from Poland), the first Prime Minister of Israel, also stated the need to forcefully expel the Palestinians. He countered complaints that he shouldn’t have accepted the division of Palestine (they wanted all of it) by saying they would take this “for now” and take the rest later, cautioning that they would have to do it incrementally as the world would never allow such mass expulsions again. Little did he know that 75 years later the world would sit on its hands and watch a genocide. All of this is proven by Israel’s own original documents.
Even if the racist governments in the west have no care for the possibly 300,000 casualties (83% of whom are civilians according to IDF files) they should deeply care about the destruction of international law and the institutions that support it. They are taking us back to the law of the jungle where the powerful prey on the weak. Failing to use the safeguards put in place after WWII, Europe, Australia, and others are allowing Israel and the US to slaughter vulnerable populations for the purposes of stealing land and resources. Do they honestly believe that either Trump or Netanyahu would hesitate to turn on any of them? Trump has been talking about taking Greenland by any means necessary, as well as Panama and Canada since BEFORE his inauguration. If these sycophants don’t grow a collective spine and stand up to Trump and BiBi they may be next and there won’t be a viable UN or ICJ or ICC to protect their rights. I don’t see them necessarily invading the UK or Australia but there are so many other ways to constructively occupy a country or steal resources. I am a dedicated supporter of the rule of law, with all parties treated equally under the law. I believe it is the foundation for a just and equitable international society.
Israel already constructively occupies the US with only 20 of the 535 members of Congress not bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. The lobby effectively ends careers for those who fail to give “ironclad” support for ANYTHING Israel wants. Additionally, if the government fails to control us peasants, Israel has been training US police since 1999 and the militarization and brutality evidence that. NYPD has an office in tel Aviv and a professor at Columbia University is charged with coordinating the university, NYPD, and Israel. Why is an American university coordinating with a foreign government?!? US taxpayers have to provide Israel with $3.8 billion dollars a year just to sustain their economy and then additional tens of billions for their constant aggression towards Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Iranians. Our tax dollars provide Israelis with universal healthcare and free college while we’re told we can’t afford those things here. Our own govt fails to protect us and is fully complicit. I recently learned that Israel is also training the FBI in “counterterrorism” or how to control an occupied population. Many of us have warned for years that we are the occupied population that Israel is teaching our law enforcement agencies to subdue. I never imagined that I’d ever live to see this rampant global insanity with the US leading the charge.
I really appreciate your comments and hope we can continue to discuss these issues.
“The rule of law, with all parties treated equally under the law, is the foundation for a just and equitable international society.” Yet I cannot help but wonder whether Israel is a worst paradigmatic expression of the fictional nature of the nation-state form that underpins international law.
Protection is a legal responsibility. Therefore, it is an abstract idea, not a de facto capacity. What is written into law becomes visible. Its visibility presents an obligation while hiding the fact that it is not in the state’s inherent power to fulfil it: that the law of the jungle is the law of a relentless desire to exist, that the state form frames existence as a function of power over others. Israel is a self-declared state, a state that openly admits its falsity and crimes. But the state form itself is nothing but a declaration of existence dependent on recognition.
While I agree that the rule of law is the best tool we have and should be protected at all costs, awareness of its abstract/nominal nature may still be useful in the analysis of the dynamics we witness and suffer from.
Isreale’s existence exposed (and continues to do so) the intrinsic vulnerability of the nominal nature of the power of statutory law (and by extension of international law). This exposure has continually generated a level of suffering that is unacceptable/unconscionable.
Continued exposure of the nominal power of the law will deactivate it. Once this is exposed, there may not be a way back.
I would propose to use the experience of this exposure face-to-face with the fabricated nature of the power of law to grow up, leave our comfort zones and look further for the real power behind it.
The power of law comes not from law itself but from people’s desire for a fair society and their belief that on their belief that such a society is possible—such as yours.
The redeeming power of Gaza’s sacrifice may reside in this realisation.
Gaza became a lawless zone, with little effective oversight of the military and almost no personal accountability for soldiers. We came to wage a war without a timeline, without attainable goals, without an exit strategy — a status quo that undermines the idea of a modern state.
I fully agree that laws are simply words on paper unless they are broadly upheld and implemented. The UN was rigged from the outset, giving the five permanent members of the Security Council the veto, ensuring they could always avoid accountability. It’s true of all legal systems whether local, national, or international. If the actors who are meant to uphold and implement the laws fail to do so they aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I think local, state, and to a lesser degree, national laws are more generally implemented because we as a society have some say in what laws we choose to be governed by. We have no power to either write or enforce international laws. It’s been made painfully clear that the world’s population doesn’t accept Israel’s impunity but our governments couldn’t care less. I think at least here in the US, and from what I see in the UK, the majority of the people are refusing to be ignored and are promising to change the government actors responsible. I think Starmer is a dead man walking with Jeremy Corbin’s new party gaining momentum quickly.
I live in a rural state with only a million people. One of our Senators, Susan Collins, has been unpopular for years but managed to stay in power from a lack of alternatives. For the first time in my lifetime we have a candidate running for the democratic nomination that I’m truly excited about. He’s young, a scallop farmer, who’s extremely progressive, and committed to working people and a just system. We have a lot of conservatives but we’re also fiercely independent. It can be a hardscrabble existence here and Trump’s cuts to healthcare for the poor and rising costs attributable to his tariffs are hitting the state hard. I think this guy has a chance to be elected and I think he’d fight the good fight. He’s only one person but I think similar things are happening in other states. The Democrats style themselves as the good guys while taking massive amounts of campaign donations from all the usual suspects and doing nothing except keep themselves in office. The Democratic National Convention last week failed to pass a resolution to stop sending arms and money to Israel because they are all owned by Israel. They had the gall to openly oppose the resolution, knowing that 77% of democrats want the US to stop funding Israel. I realize I live in an echo chamber, but I’ve never seen this level of involvement in activism pertaining not just to domestic issues but to foreign policy. I believe there are a significant number of us who will not vote for democrats simply because they’re not republicans. We’ve been thrown under the bus too many times. Especially in terms of Israel, the Democrats have been identical to the Republicans. It’s too early to tell and far too late for thousands of Palestinians, but I have hope for the first time.
Yes, rather than a choice owing to the party system type of democracy, change now seems to move towards a dynamics of "redemption" (witnessing Gaza) in the context of generational and demographic shifts in public consciousness. It is a very good thing that Hamas keeps strong every time the Israeli military threatens with a new fatal and final move (several times now). There were two interesting long interviews in the last 2 or 3 days, which signal momentum towards a shift in the range of potential outcomes, one with Sayad M. Marandi and another with Jeffrey Sachs. Yet the UN veto situation remains a stubborn obstacle, and there was no outcome out of the EU meeting on Gaza on Saturday. France may not recognise Palestine as Hamas will not disarm.
"the destruction of international law and the institutions that support it." Precisely, these are clearly the stakes of Gaza.
Israel is already cannibalising its own people. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that it was the Israeli Hannibal directive that killed most Israelis on October 7th as it continues to slowly kill its own soldiers just today in Gaza City, as well as he hostages—and in a psychological sense also their families in Israel. https://thecradle.co/articles/several-israeli-soldiers-missing-following-resistance-ambush-in-gaza-city
This cannot be stressed enough. It would be very useful if every debate on the urgency of the current conflict and how to end it started from this fact and the history you have outlined. Next is the West to do canibalise its own people by, as you say, stealing each other through creation of economic and military dependencies and vulnerabilities, such as by the use of tariffs, economic sanctions, the use of military power differentials and so on
Your concise and effective summary of the history needs to be widely disseminated. I pick up cues that those making decisions in EU (where I am located), are not interested in the historical detail; they do not know it nor want to know it by fear of having to act. This needs to lead decision making in EU, UN, WTO, etc....: "Most of the “new Israeli historians” who wrote in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, after Israel opened its archives, have had to leave Israel as they were unable to continue working in the universities there. The crime they committed was showing (by the use of Israel’s own documents from pre 1948) that the Zionist militias had ethnically cleansed Palestine in order to create Israel. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes through acts of terror (blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and eventually driving out the British who were in the way, blowing up trains to rob money and weapons, massacring entire villages- some estimates as high as 200 villages, murdering large groups of Palestinians, enforced marches). This was a plan that had been conceived in the initial creation of Zionism. Herzl, the father of Zionism, clearly stated that the Palestinians (they were fully aware that Palestine was NOT a land without people for a people without land) would not willingly leave their homes and would have to be forcefully removed by whatever violent means necessary. David Ben Gurion (formerly David Green from Poland), the first Prime Minister of Israel, also stated the need to forcefully expel the Palestinians. He countered complaints that he shouldn’t have accepted the division of Palestine (they wanted all of it) by saying they would take this “for now” and take the rest later, cautioning that they would have to do it incrementally as the world would never allow such mass expulsions again. Little did he know that 75 years later the world would sit on its hands and watch a genocide. All of this is proven by Israel’s own original documents."
You forget Israel was created by British Zionists, United Nothing was created by the Rothschild family, World Bank, ECB, NATO, E(non)U etc., are all Zionist created and funded organisations therefore invoking Articles within Chapter 6, 7 or even 10 will never happen. I suggest you delve deeper into the so called 'international laws' and the Zionists creation of what was an ideal situation from the murder of millions of people (not just Jews) during WWII, in who and what funded UN etc., because it was done for 1 purpose only, and the Zionist took this opportunity to start domination. Look into the UN and their agreements with Palantir, Cellebrite (in other words unit 8200) etc. The laws that have been created within the UN Chapters and other agencies are worthless, and it's a joke to believe that people can create these new laws, legislations because the first thing that needs to be done is the downfall of Zionism, Capitalists, and a full refund education on the bs the majority have been taught in school about history, geography, politics etc.
The world is a long, long way to being an inclusive community based environment for all, as are the laws that have been written to benefit Zionists / colonialism and monarchies. The increase in far right support also doesn't help.
I wish this was more widely known. What is the point of a United Nations if, in times of desperate need, carnage and senseless, deliberate suffering, they stand by and offer empty words and no action? They did not help the people in Bosnia during the ethnic cleansing in the 1990s and still they do nothing to help the people in Gaza and Palestine as they are being starved and massacred. Shameful in my view
100%, just created a post on here about this article. United Nothing are a gross, corrupt entity in all aspects. If bringing in Palantir and Cellebrite (8200) technology to UN agencies didn't (doesn't) alarm people, then what will!
it's wrong wrong wrong no matter what words are used. never should have been allowed to get this far. fuck Israel. death to the idf. free Palestine. delete Israel.
Think you need to read up on United Nothing aka UN, they're a gross entity, and do not help Muslim nations, and they've had numerous options within Chapter6, 7 and 10 to invoke various Artickes and have not!
Citizens of UN countries need to step up to the plate and start pushing their governments to support a Uniting for Peace Resolution at the UN. I don’t hold up much hope for anyone in the current US
Why has this taken so long. Let's do it already!
Exactly, I've been talking about this for a while because not just Chapter 7, but Articles in Chapters 6 and 10 can be invoked! The United Nothing aka UN know only too well what can be done, they're not idiots, so the only reasons why they haven't is alignment with Israel, or blackmail, donations or all 3!
This dereliction of duty towards basic humanity by Trump, Starmer and Lammy is absolutely disgraceful. I can only imagine that they will retire from their positions with wads of cash given by AIPAC. Their bank balances will be healthy but their consciences will have to take the blow. But Hey! I was forgetting-they don’t have one.
They forget that this life on earth is not forever and they will be judged at the end of their earthly life.
That they might possess a conscience ??? Impossible, given their track record . Despicable , all of them
Completely agree. Every country vs. US, UK and Israel.
Magnificently well said 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Amongst the worst of nations preferring hollow , vacuous platitudes rather than calling out the Zionist Israeli government for what it is , is the Australian government . So far under the boot of the US and Israel that it is disappearing. Except to be seen as despicably spineless . Two years after the Zionist genocide in Palestine has begun they are finally getting around to recognising Palestine as a state , yet still refuse to condemn the genocide for what it is .
Unforgivable .
I see Albo gave Israel a helping hand by using fictitious “Iranian” support for terrorists to capture the headlines on the day that Israel bombed Al Nasser Hospital in order to murder a handful of journalists - and followed it up with a double tap to murder the rescue workers who had arrived to deal with the dead and wounded. Albo is a craven, immoral pretence of a leader.
In this long interview, not a single word is waste. The following details of the history from 2005 to October 7th are crucial for the analysis and resolution of the conflict. Surprisingly, no academic has yet brought them to the forefront of the debate. It demonstrates that the strength of the argument resides in the detail. It must be widely and urgently disseminated and continued:
Siege to Genocide: Gaza’s history from 2005–2025 | Muhammad Shahada | UNAPOLOGETIC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtHCT2AHWeE
— No state has an inherent right to exist; states exist de facto. Their existence depends on international de-facto recognition of clearly defined, unchanging borders, which Israel possesses no more than Palestine.
Rather than a nation-state Isreal is a de-facto occupier of two existing nations and one aspiring nation.
— States acquire the right of self-defence only when they achieve existence.
Great post. Thank you for reminding people that there’s no such thing as”right” to exist in international law. (Al Jazeera’s program “Center Stage” interviewed Ralph Wilde, International law attorney, on the issue of a state’s right to exist, and other legal issues is excellent) Israel has never accepted their internationally recognized borders, as it has no intention of remaining within them. I agree that Israel is a de facto occupier, rather than a nation state and has not earned the right to self defense. Even were they to be found entitled to a right of self defense, the Geneva Conventions are clear that an occupier does NOT have a Right to Self Defense against those they occupy ON OCCUPIED TERRITORY! If Israel wanted to exercise self defense they should have done so on 10/7/2023 when Hamas and other actors were within Israel (wherever that actually is with no recognized borders). Instead they chose to ignore all warnings prior to that date, including those of their own security guards, and then delayed any significant response for upwards to 6 hours.
Thank you, Kathleen. I am not a lawyer, but have an interest in it, enough to work this out from cues emerging in the context of current horrors, e.g., F. Albanese is another lawyer to clarify that states don't have a right to exist. It aligns with philosophy. In phenomenology, what exists is what is perceived (thus recognised as such). Therefore, I am glad to reconfirm and expand on this with your expert view and clear explanation.
To your subsequent point on the exercise of self-defence. I wonder what the legal view is on an act of self-defence that is self-destructive: an interesting paradigm for jurisprudence. Let's revise the facts as they happened on 10/7/2023: it was the Israeli so-called Hannibal directive that killed most Israelis on October 7th, and it continues to slowly kill the hostages —and their families in Israel— under the guise of self-defence.
These facts cannot be stressed enough. It would be very useful if every debate on the urgency of the current conflict and how to end it (such as at the UN) started from this fact.
The absolute reliance upon the US and the constant pilfering of US taxpayers should be proof that it is not a state. Perhaps a protectorate.
double lie of a God’s promised land to a chosen people who do not believe in God; of a West’s allocated land to a chosen people to create a fake proxi state. Each version hides the other depending on context. They can never appear simultaneously—unless someone makes the effort to unravel the seeming paradox to deactivate them.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9AhOcr-Sa9k
Appreciate that you referenced Gideon Levy’s statements. I have much respect for his intelligence and his honesty, neither of which are appreciated in Israel. I’m somewhat surprised that he’s been able to continue to live and work in Israel. Most of the “new Israeli historians” who wrote in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, after Israel opened its archives, have had to leave Israel as they were unable to continue working in the universities there. The crime they committed was showing (by the use of Israel’s own documents from pre 1948) that the Zionist militias had ethnically cleansed Palestine in order to create Israel. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes through acts of terror (blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and eventually driving out the British who were in the way, blowing up trains to rob money and weapons, massacring entire villages- some estimates as high as 200 villages, murdering large groups of Palestinians, enforced marches). This was a plan that had been conceived in the initial creation of Zionism. Herzl, the father of Zionism, clearly stated that the Palestinians (they were fully aware that Palestine was NOT a land without people for a people without land) would not willingly leave their homes and would have to be forcefully removed by whatever violent means necessary. David Ben Gurion (formerly David Green from Poland), the first Prime Minister of Israel, also stated the need to forcefully expel the Palestinians. He countered complaints that he shouldn’t have accepted the division of Palestine (they wanted all of it) by saying they would take this “for now” and take the rest later, cautioning that they would have to do it incrementally as the world would never allow such mass expulsions again. Little did he know that 75 years later the world would sit on its hands and watch a genocide. All of this is proven by Israel’s own original documents.
Even if the racist governments in the west have no care for the possibly 300,000 casualties (83% of whom are civilians according to IDF files) they should deeply care about the destruction of international law and the institutions that support it. They are taking us back to the law of the jungle where the powerful prey on the weak. Failing to use the safeguards put in place after WWII, Europe, Australia, and others are allowing Israel and the US to slaughter vulnerable populations for the purposes of stealing land and resources. Do they honestly believe that either Trump or Netanyahu would hesitate to turn on any of them? Trump has been talking about taking Greenland by any means necessary, as well as Panama and Canada since BEFORE his inauguration. If these sycophants don’t grow a collective spine and stand up to Trump and BiBi they may be next and there won’t be a viable UN or ICJ or ICC to protect their rights. I don’t see them necessarily invading the UK or Australia but there are so many other ways to constructively occupy a country or steal resources. I am a dedicated supporter of the rule of law, with all parties treated equally under the law. I believe it is the foundation for a just and equitable international society.
Israel already constructively occupies the US with only 20 of the 535 members of Congress not bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. The lobby effectively ends careers for those who fail to give “ironclad” support for ANYTHING Israel wants. Additionally, if the government fails to control us peasants, Israel has been training US police since 1999 and the militarization and brutality evidence that. NYPD has an office in tel Aviv and a professor at Columbia University is charged with coordinating the university, NYPD, and Israel. Why is an American university coordinating with a foreign government?!? US taxpayers have to provide Israel with $3.8 billion dollars a year just to sustain their economy and then additional tens of billions for their constant aggression towards Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Iranians. Our tax dollars provide Israelis with universal healthcare and free college while we’re told we can’t afford those things here. Our own govt fails to protect us and is fully complicit. I recently learned that Israel is also training the FBI in “counterterrorism” or how to control an occupied population. Many of us have warned for years that we are the occupied population that Israel is teaching our law enforcement agencies to subdue. I never imagined that I’d ever live to see this rampant global insanity with the US leading the charge.
I really appreciate your comments and hope we can continue to discuss these issues.
“The rule of law, with all parties treated equally under the law, is the foundation for a just and equitable international society.” Yet I cannot help but wonder whether Israel is a worst paradigmatic expression of the fictional nature of the nation-state form that underpins international law.
Protection is a legal responsibility. Therefore, it is an abstract idea, not a de facto capacity. What is written into law becomes visible. Its visibility presents an obligation while hiding the fact that it is not in the state’s inherent power to fulfil it: that the law of the jungle is the law of a relentless desire to exist, that the state form frames existence as a function of power over others. Israel is a self-declared state, a state that openly admits its falsity and crimes. But the state form itself is nothing but a declaration of existence dependent on recognition.
While I agree that the rule of law is the best tool we have and should be protected at all costs, awareness of its abstract/nominal nature may still be useful in the analysis of the dynamics we witness and suffer from.
Isreale’s existence exposed (and continues to do so) the intrinsic vulnerability of the nominal nature of the power of statutory law (and by extension of international law). This exposure has continually generated a level of suffering that is unacceptable/unconscionable.
Continued exposure of the nominal power of the law will deactivate it. Once this is exposed, there may not be a way back.
I would propose to use the experience of this exposure face-to-face with the fabricated nature of the power of law to grow up, leave our comfort zones and look further for the real power behind it.
The power of law comes not from law itself but from people’s desire for a fair society and their belief that on their belief that such a society is possible—such as yours.
The redeeming power of Gaza’s sacrifice may reside in this realisation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/opinion/israel-defense-forces-reservists-gaza-refusal.html
Gaza became a lawless zone, with little effective oversight of the military and almost no personal accountability for soldiers. We came to wage a war without a timeline, without attainable goals, without an exit strategy — a status quo that undermines the idea of a modern state.
I fully agree that laws are simply words on paper unless they are broadly upheld and implemented. The UN was rigged from the outset, giving the five permanent members of the Security Council the veto, ensuring they could always avoid accountability. It’s true of all legal systems whether local, national, or international. If the actors who are meant to uphold and implement the laws fail to do so they aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I think local, state, and to a lesser degree, national laws are more generally implemented because we as a society have some say in what laws we choose to be governed by. We have no power to either write or enforce international laws. It’s been made painfully clear that the world’s population doesn’t accept Israel’s impunity but our governments couldn’t care less. I think at least here in the US, and from what I see in the UK, the majority of the people are refusing to be ignored and are promising to change the government actors responsible. I think Starmer is a dead man walking with Jeremy Corbin’s new party gaining momentum quickly.
I live in a rural state with only a million people. One of our Senators, Susan Collins, has been unpopular for years but managed to stay in power from a lack of alternatives. For the first time in my lifetime we have a candidate running for the democratic nomination that I’m truly excited about. He’s young, a scallop farmer, who’s extremely progressive, and committed to working people and a just system. We have a lot of conservatives but we’re also fiercely independent. It can be a hardscrabble existence here and Trump’s cuts to healthcare for the poor and rising costs attributable to his tariffs are hitting the state hard. I think this guy has a chance to be elected and I think he’d fight the good fight. He’s only one person but I think similar things are happening in other states. The Democrats style themselves as the good guys while taking massive amounts of campaign donations from all the usual suspects and doing nothing except keep themselves in office. The Democratic National Convention last week failed to pass a resolution to stop sending arms and money to Israel because they are all owned by Israel. They had the gall to openly oppose the resolution, knowing that 77% of democrats want the US to stop funding Israel. I realize I live in an echo chamber, but I’ve never seen this level of involvement in activism pertaining not just to domestic issues but to foreign policy. I believe there are a significant number of us who will not vote for democrats simply because they’re not republicans. We’ve been thrown under the bus too many times. Especially in terms of Israel, the Democrats have been identical to the Republicans. It’s too early to tell and far too late for thousands of Palestinians, but I have hope for the first time.
Yes, rather than a choice owing to the party system type of democracy, change now seems to move towards a dynamics of "redemption" (witnessing Gaza) in the context of generational and demographic shifts in public consciousness. It is a very good thing that Hamas keeps strong every time the Israeli military threatens with a new fatal and final move (several times now). There were two interesting long interviews in the last 2 or 3 days, which signal momentum towards a shift in the range of potential outcomes, one with Sayad M. Marandi and another with Jeffrey Sachs. Yet the UN veto situation remains a stubborn obstacle, and there was no outcome out of the EU meeting on Gaza on Saturday. France may not recognise Palestine as Hamas will not disarm.
"the destruction of international law and the institutions that support it." Precisely, these are clearly the stakes of Gaza.
Israel is already cannibalising its own people. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that it was the Israeli Hannibal directive that killed most Israelis on October 7th as it continues to slowly kill its own soldiers just today in Gaza City, as well as he hostages—and in a psychological sense also their families in Israel. https://thecradle.co/articles/several-israeli-soldiers-missing-following-resistance-ambush-in-gaza-city
This cannot be stressed enough. It would be very useful if every debate on the urgency of the current conflict and how to end it started from this fact and the history you have outlined. Next is the West to do canibalise its own people by, as you say, stealing each other through creation of economic and military dependencies and vulnerabilities, such as by the use of tariffs, economic sanctions, the use of military power differentials and so on
Your concise and effective summary of the history needs to be widely disseminated. I pick up cues that those making decisions in EU (where I am located), are not interested in the historical detail; they do not know it nor want to know it by fear of having to act. This needs to lead decision making in EU, UN, WTO, etc....: "Most of the “new Israeli historians” who wrote in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, after Israel opened its archives, have had to leave Israel as they were unable to continue working in the universities there. The crime they committed was showing (by the use of Israel’s own documents from pre 1948) that the Zionist militias had ethnically cleansed Palestine in order to create Israel. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes through acts of terror (blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and eventually driving out the British who were in the way, blowing up trains to rob money and weapons, massacring entire villages- some estimates as high as 200 villages, murdering large groups of Palestinians, enforced marches). This was a plan that had been conceived in the initial creation of Zionism. Herzl, the father of Zionism, clearly stated that the Palestinians (they were fully aware that Palestine was NOT a land without people for a people without land) would not willingly leave their homes and would have to be forcefully removed by whatever violent means necessary. David Ben Gurion (formerly David Green from Poland), the first Prime Minister of Israel, also stated the need to forcefully expel the Palestinians. He countered complaints that he shouldn’t have accepted the division of Palestine (they wanted all of it) by saying they would take this “for now” and take the rest later, cautioning that they would have to do it incrementally as the world would never allow such mass expulsions again. Little did he know that 75 years later the world would sit on its hands and watch a genocide. All of this is proven by Israel’s own original documents."
You forget Israel was created by British Zionists, United Nothing was created by the Rothschild family, World Bank, ECB, NATO, E(non)U etc., are all Zionist created and funded organisations therefore invoking Articles within Chapter 6, 7 or even 10 will never happen. I suggest you delve deeper into the so called 'international laws' and the Zionists creation of what was an ideal situation from the murder of millions of people (not just Jews) during WWII, in who and what funded UN etc., because it was done for 1 purpose only, and the Zionist took this opportunity to start domination. Look into the UN and their agreements with Palantir, Cellebrite (in other words unit 8200) etc. The laws that have been created within the UN Chapters and other agencies are worthless, and it's a joke to believe that people can create these new laws, legislations because the first thing that needs to be done is the downfall of Zionism, Capitalists, and a full refund education on the bs the majority have been taught in school about history, geography, politics etc.
The world is a long, long way to being an inclusive community based environment for all, as are the laws that have been written to benefit Zionists / colonialism and monarchies. The increase in far right support also doesn't help.
proofs abound; receptivity to them absent
See:
Youtube: Siege to Genocide: Gaza’s history from 2005–2025 | Muhammad Shahada | UNAPOLOGETIC
I wish this was more widely known. What is the point of a United Nations if, in times of desperate need, carnage and senseless, deliberate suffering, they stand by and offer empty words and no action? They did not help the people in Bosnia during the ethnic cleansing in the 1990s and still they do nothing to help the people in Gaza and Palestine as they are being starved and massacred. Shameful in my view
Think why this was? Muslim people... United Nothing are a gross, corrupt entity in all forms!
UN: Useless Non-entity (founded by the Rothschilds to forge a one world government ruled from Greater Israel).
100%, just created a post on here about this article. United Nothing are a gross, corrupt entity in all aspects. If bringing in Palantir and Cellebrite (8200) technology to UN agencies didn't (doesn't) alarm people, then what will!
it's wrong wrong wrong no matter what words are used. never should have been allowed to get this far. fuck Israel. death to the idf. free Palestine. delete Israel.
I love him so much! He’s absolutely right! I pray the Lord makes it come true!!❤️❤️❤️
Think you need to read up on United Nothing aka UN, they're a gross entity, and do not help Muslim nations, and they've had numerous options within Chapter6, 7 and 10 to invoke various Artickes and have not!
Seeing all those vetos one after the other it is an undeniable Zionist salute.
Thank you Mark. Can we get a petition going calling for Uniting for Peace to be discussed and voted on at the UN
Act fast urgently!
Citizens of UN countries need to step up to the plate and start pushing their governments to support a Uniting for Peace Resolution at the UN. I don’t hold up much hope for anyone in the current US
administration doing anything ethical or humane.
A nice shot of Hopium. Don’t hold your breath. The UN serves only its own imperialist USRAHELL interests.
Great video. Thank you for hope!