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UN Membership for Palestine Now - CounterPunch.org - Guest Post by John Whitbeck
UN Membership for Palestine Now - CounterPunch.org
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/15/un-membership-for-palestine-now
COUNTERPUNCH
November 15, 2024
UN Membership for Palestine Now
John Whitbeck
On May 10, 2024, the UN General Assembly passed overwhelmingly, with only nine negative votes (Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the United States) a resolution (https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/ltd/n24/129/97/pdf/n2412997.pdf) which “Determines that the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations” and “Accordingly recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably.”
Early foreign policy appointments, both formally announced and authoritatively rumored, by President-elect Donald Trump make clear that there is absolutely no chance that his incoming administration would permit the Security Council to approve an upgrade in the status of the State of Palestine from observer state to full member state.
In addition, prominent members of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, are expressing the expectation (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/11/far-right-israeli-minister-orders-preparations-for-west-bank-annexation) that, in 2025, the second Trump administration will bless and recognize Israel’s formal annexation of the West Bank, as the first Trump administration recognized Israel’s formal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, thereby definitively destroying any possibility of Palestinian self-determination and freedom, and Trump has named a public supporter of Israeli annexation of the West Bank as his ambassador to Israel (https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/12/trump-picks-mike-huckabee-supporter-of-israeli-annexation-as-ambassador-to-israel).
There is, however, one tiny glimmer of hope in this darkness.
On December 23, 2016, after Trump’s first election but before he took office, President Barack Obama instructed his UN ambassador to abstain, and thereby to permit the adoption by a 14-0 vote, in the vote on UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm), which reaffirmed that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation of international law, and which reiterated the Security Council’s demand that Israel immediately cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.
Obama’s abstention decision constituted an act of insubordination and disobedience which shocked the Israeli government, and it would have been inconceivable at any previous time during his presidency or if Hillary Clinton had been elected to succeed him. One may assume that Obama did not wish virtually has last act as president to be a final demonstration of his contempt for international law and the views and values of the vast majority of mankind.
While Israel could and, unsurprisingly, has ignored UN Security Council Resolution 2334, a UN Security Council resolution approving full UN member state status for the State of Palestine would create a fact that no country could ignore. The occupation of the entire territory of a UN member state by another UN member state, which, in the case of Palestine, the International Court of Justice has recently confirmed (https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176) is unlawful and must rapidly end, could not be permitted to stand indefinitely or without prompt and significant consequences.
Might Biden, who has been repeatedly humiliated and treated with contempt by Netanyahu notwithstanding his having given Israel everything it has sought, militarily, financially and diplomatically, as it has pursued its genocidal assault against the Palestinian people, follow the Obama precedent and finally assert his personal freedom and independence by instructing his UN ambassador to abstain from a Security Council vote on a new application by the State of Palestine for full UN member state status?
The period between today and January 20 offers the best opportunity for full UN membership which the State of Palestine has ever had, and it may be the last opportunity.
The State of Palestine and its friends throughout the world should try.
John V. Whitbeck is a Paris-based international lawyer.
Exposing Big Tech’s Complicity in Genocide | The Chris Hedges Report
Exposing Big Tech’s Complicity in Genocide | The Chris Hedges Report
This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.
The vast censorship and suppression campaign launched by American tech companies since October 7, 2023 has been both systemic and deliberate. Instagram, Facebook, X as well as other tech platforms and companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple have actively worked to stifle information regarding the genocide in Gaza. Dissent against policies or individuals who enable these decisions is often met with swift reprimand in the form of job loss.
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report are three courageous individuals who chose to put their careers on the line to fight against Big Tech suppression of voices fighting for Palestinian lives.
Saima Akhter, a former data analyst at Meta; Hossam Nasr, a former software engineer at Microsoft; and Tariq Ra’ouf, a former tech expert at Apple, speak about the internal struggles they dealt with in light of the genocide, which ultimately led to each of their dismissals.
Tariq recalls how Muslim Slack channels at Apple were often subjected to mass flaggings for innocuous things such as posting Quran verses yet Jewish Slack channels, “were advocating for the genocide… calling all Palestinians terrorists. They were saying that we need to stop this company supporting pro-Palestinian causes.” Those messages, Tariq says, were never removed and nobody was ever fired for them.
Saima details the problematic dangerous organizations and individuals [DOI] policies, which she says are heavily influenced by the Israeli and American governments. “Even though this is a platform that is global—Instagram and Facebook is the way the world communicates, but it is an American company, and the American government heavily influences what it determines to be a terrorist,” she tells Hedges.
The most critical and perhaps frightening part, Hossam describes, is the actual complicity many of these tech companies have on the genocide. “The truly scary part of this is that all the major American cloud companies—Google, Amazon and Microsoft—are deeply critical to that infrastructure, providing cloud services, storage services, artificial intelligence services without which the Israeli military would not have been able to be as effective,” Hossam says. Israel simply does not have the in-house power to be able to collect and process the data that is being used to target Palestinians, according to Hossam, and tech companies, at the objection of hundreds of employees, fill that need.
The Robots are coming: Genesis - by Michael Spencer
The Robots are coming: Genesis - by Michael Spencer
In December, 2024 the Genesis project was announced: a physics engine able to generate 4D dynamical worlds powered by a simulation platform designed for general-purpose robotics and physical AI applications. This is a new framework for training robots. Put simply, this is an open-source physics engine that allows fast creation of 4D environments for robotics and AI [Be sure to watch the 3-minute video on it]. Morgan Stanley has projected that the number of U.S. humanoid robots will be 40,000 by 2030 and swell to 63 million by 2050, with a $3 trillion impact on wages.
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