THE US has scored a hat-trick by vetoing, for the third time, a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. As Israel’s campaign of genocidal violence in the forsaken Strip refuses to abate, even some of Tel Aviv’s staunch European supporters have joined the global demand for a cessation of hostilities. But one country’s ‘iron-clad’ support for Israel remains, as the US is determined to back the Zionist state regardless of the number of innocent people it has slaughtered in Gaza. As America’s representative to the UN observed while justifying the veto, moves towards a ceasefire must be made “the right way” and come “at the right time”. For Washington, with 29,000 Palestinians so far massacred in Gaza, that time obviously has not come. Other permanent UNSC members, including Russia and China, used stinging language to rebuke both the US and Israel, with Moscow’s ambassador saying the American veto had given Israel “a licence to kill”, while Beijing’s representative equated it with a “green light” to “continued slaughter”.

While America has firmly been in the Israeli camp since the 1967 war, where the current butchery in Gaza is concerned, the Biden administration has lost all sense of right and wrong as it defends Tel Aviv with an almost religious zeal. Following this grotesque display of biasness, the US can forget about being a serious player in Middle East peace-making, while its desire to win hearts and minds in the Arab and Muslim worlds has been obliterated in the rubble of Gaza. By constantly defending Israel’s unconscionable violence in the occupied territories, the US has told the world that it stands with the oppressor; in other words, its mantra about defending human rights globally is hardly believable, as 29,000 Palestinian lives were clearly of no worth to it, even though tens of thousands of Americans have bravely denounced their government’s complicity in the blood-stained Israeli campaign on the streets of New York and Washington. Meanwhile, the Muslim world is comatose, with some states reportedly aiding Israel clandestinely. As Algeria’s UN ambassador noted, “today, every Palestinian is a target for death, extermination, and genocide”. Sadly, members of the international community are either complicit in these crimes, or the silent majority mutely watches the live-streaming of the Palestinian slaughter.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2024