Matthew
Hoh
That
is Gaza behind me.
The
fence line is 600m away. The northern part of Gaza, where Israel is carrying
out a genocide within a genocide, systematically starving 300,000 Palestinians
to death, is about 2km further.
The
absurdity and the obscenity of being able to be this close to 20,000 murdered
children, their bodies “prophetic voices from under the rubble” as a colleague
called them, is difficult to accept.
The
grotesque horror of a school field trip arriving at this location from two
hours away to watch the mass slaughter from an observation deck was a shock I
am overwhelmed by. The first wave of boys pumped celebratory firsts and thrust
middle fingers upon their sight of Gaza.
There
were no warplanes or drones visible. The school kids and other audience members
of a genocide who gawked and put money into a telescope left disappointed as
they saw no bombs or missiles, no artillery or tank fire. There were no blast
waves from controlled demolitions to wash over them, and the numbers of smoke
pillars from smoldering and cratered homes and schools were in the single
digits, their fires not vigorous enough to be smelled. It must have been
underwhelming and a let down; not much to boast about or revel in on the school
bus ride home.
It
was quiet. The sounds of those buried under rubble don’t reach the observation
deck. No torn and wrecked bodies could be seen, no sunlight reflected in pools
of blood, and no strips of clothes snagged on exposed bones fluttered in the
strong wind. We were as close as we could be but so separate and so safe from
it. It was sanitary and septic, picturesque.
I
felt I was a voyeur, a tourist, a spectator. I felt disgust and disbelief. And
I felt an absence within me that I cannot articulate.
To
be that close to the cleansing and destruction of 2.2 million people and to be
centering now my words on my feelings doesn’t escape me. Perhaps a
well-achieved purpose of that observation deck of genocide.
The
Nietzsche-ism, stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back at you, struck me
as I stood there.
Stare
into Gaza and Gaza stares back is what I am left with now, comfortable in my
Jerusalem hotel, just hours after looking into their genocide as if I were on a
platform at a national park or on the boardwalk at the shore.
The
horror of the genocide I expected but did not see. I thought I might curse and
cry. I did neither. The cruel and so very human spectacle of a caged people
being destroyed as a display for school children was what I encountered. I did
not expect that and I don’t know how to respond.
These
are my first thoughts on standing that close to Gaza. I may need to revisit
them.
I
am in Palestine this week as part of a delegation to be in solidarity with and
learn from those engaged in Palestinian liberation. Today, in addition to this
visit to the border of Gaza, we met with Rabbis for Human Rights and an October
7th survivor in the Sderot settlement, as well as a Palestinian Lutheran
minister in Bethlehem.
Please
comment and share. I will try and post more from this visit.
Viva
Palestina.
Ramzy Baroud
Francesca Albanese did not mince her
words. In a strongly worded speech at the United Nations General Assembly Third
Committee on October 29, the UN Special Rapporteur deviated from the typical
line of other UN officials. She directed her statements to those in attendance.
“Is it possible that after 42,000
people killed, you cannot empathize with the Palestinians?” Albanese said in
her statement about the need to “recognize (Israel’s war on Gaza) as a
genocide”. “Those of you who have not uttered a word about what is happening in
Gaza demonstrate that empathy has evaporated from this room,” she added.
Was Albanese too idealistic when she
chose to appeal to empathy, which, in her words, represents “the glue that
makes us stand united as humanity”?
The answer largely depends on how we
wish to define the role being played by the UN and its various institutions;
whether its global platform was established as a guarantor of peace, or as a
political club for those with military might and political power to impose
their agendas on the rest of the world?
Albanese is not the first person to
express deep frustration with the institutional, let alone the moral collapse
of the UN, or the inability of the institution to affect any kind of tangible
change, especially during times of great crises.
The UN’s own Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres himself had accused the executive branch of the UN, the
Security Council, of being “outdated”, “unfair” and an “ineffective system”.
“The truth is that the Security
Council has systematically failed in relation to the capacity to put an end to
the most dramatic conflicts that we face today,” he said, referring to “Sudan,
Gaza, Ukraine”. Also, although noting that “The UN is not the Security
Council”, Guterres acknowledged that all UN bodies “suffer from the fact that
the people look at them and think, ‘Well, but the Security Council has failed
us.’”
Some UN officials, however, are
mainly concerned about how the UN’s failure is compromising the standing of the
international system, thus whatever remains of their own credibility. But some,
like Albanese, are indeed driven by an overriding sense of humanity.
On October 28, 2023, mere weeks
after the start of the war, the director of the New York office of the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights left his post because he could no longer find any
room to reconcile between the failure to stop the war in Gaza and the
credibility of the institution.
“This will be my last communication
to you,” Craig Mokhiber wrote to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker
Turk. “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the
organization we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber added.
The phrase “once again” may explain
why the UN official made his decision to leave shortly after the start of the
war. He felt that history was repeating itself, in all its gory details, while
the international community remained divided between powerlessness and apathy.
The problem is multilayered,
complicated by the fact that UN officials and employees do not have the power
to alter the very skewed structure of the world’s largest political
institution. That power lies in the hands of those who wield political, military,
financial and veto power.
Within that context, countries like
Israel can do whatever they want, including outlawing the very UN organizations
that have been commissioned to uphold international law, as the Israeli Knesset
did on October 28 when it passed a law banning UNRWA from conducting “any
activity” or providing services in Israel and the occupied territories.
But is there a way out?
Many, especially in the global
south, believe that the UN has outlived its usefulness or needs serious
reforms.
These assessments are valid, based
on this simple maxim: The UN was established in 1945 with the main objectives
of the “maintenance of international peace and security, the promotion of the
well-being of the peoples of the world, and international cooperation to these
ends.”
Very little of the above commitment
has been achieved. In fact, not only has the UN failed at that primary mission,
but it has become a manifestation of the unequaled distribution of power among
its members.
Though the UN was formed following
the atrocities of WWII, now it stands largely useless in its inability to stop
similar atrocities in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere.
In her speech, Albanese pointed out
that if the UN’s failures continue, its mandate will become even “more and more
irrelevant to the rest of the world”, especially during these times of turmoil.
Albanese is right, of course, but
considering the irreversible damage that has already taken place, one can
hardly find a moral, let alone rational justification of why the UN, at least
in its current form, should continue to exist.
Now that the Global South is finally
rising with its own political, economic and legal initiatives, it is time for
these new bodies to either offer a complete alternative to the UN or push for
serious and irreversible reforms in the organization.
Either that or the international
system will continue to be defined by nothing but apathy and self-interest.
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