US President Joe Biden is fast losing his moral authority. And, in the same vein, the United States’s upright standing in the international community is also waning.
There are many reasons for the decline of the once-mighty US, reasons too many to mention.
However, what takes the trophy is this week’s preposterous remarks by Biden that “he does not believe” the Palestinian authorities’ data on the fatalities caused by what the Arab League refers to as Israel’s “genocidal” annihilation of the Palestinians living in Gaza.
Biden, like many of his congress’s men and women, is blatantly conflicted in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The US administration makes no bones about its naked bias against the seven-decades-long suffering of the Palestinian people.
What I find particularly insulting to intelligence is the woeful attempt at diplomacy by the Biden administration to pretend to care about the plight of the Palestinian people.
The case in point happened also this week when Biden bemoaned the inherent violent-to-fatal attacks on the Palestinians by the illegal Israeli settlers who occupy land that’s not theirs.
The United Nations has previously spoken out against the mushrooming Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. The UN’s warnings, as always, fall on deaf ears.
Like apartheid South Africa, apartheid Israel’s Jewish settlers launch unprovoked attacks on the beleaguered Palestinians, beating them up and killing them in other instances without any fear of legal repercussions.
What the Israeli settlers do to Palestinian men, women and children is basically “the law”. They unleash all kinds of violence on the oppressed Palestinians with no fear or regard for the dictates of international law. They fear no one, neither institutions nor country. Why would they? “Big brother”, the US, always has their back.
So, when Biden says the settlers’ attack on the Palestinian in the occupied West Bank during the ongoing conflict is tantamount to pouring gasoline on the fire, his main concern must be exposed for what it is: The settlers need not be foolish by spreading the war from the Hamas-led Gaza to the occupied territories led by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
See, since the outbreak of the fresh conflict on October 7, triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on foot, the US has led diplomatic shenanigans by hordes of pro-Israel Western powers in attempting to separate the Palestinians who live in Gaza from their brothers and sisters who live in the West Bank.
“Divide and rule”, an old trick from time immemorial that the Western powers perfected particularly during the Scramble for Africa and throughout colonial and apartheid years, is a trusted leaf out of their imperial booklet.
Since October 7, Israeli bombs and guns have been systematically destroying Gaza as the world knows it, blowing up residential buildings, hospitals, UN schools, ambulances and anything that moves.
More than 7 000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. More than 1 000 of those are children. Women, mostly mothers doing what normal mothers do, protecting their children, have perished amidst Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.
The pro-Israel Western media outlets, too, are complicit in the Western propaganda. In their reportage of the conflict – and its causes – they hardly make any reference to the illegal occupation of Palestine land by Israel.
They make no reference, too, to the numerous UN resolutions that have called for a two-state solution, where Palestinian statehood and sovereignty is guaranteed to exist side-by-side with the Zionist Israel.
For the uninitiated, one would be forgiven for thinking that the conflict between Israel and Palestine started on October 7. To a plethora of pathetic news anchors and field reporters, history and context matter so little, if at all.
They mime the propaganda of their governments, shirking their noble responsibilities as members of the Fourth Estate.
It has been three weeks since Israeli rage blinded them as they decimate Gaza and kill, and lock up scores of Palestinians living in the West Bank in an attempt to scare them out of taking to the streets in support of their fellow oppressed brothers and sisters in Gaza.
The failure of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution ordering the immediate cessation of hostilities in the conflict exposes, in particular, a stark naked truth: The body has become obsolete and requires immediate alteration.
The veto power possessed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council reveals time after time that the system has passed its sell-by date.
The US, one of the five permanent members of the UNSC, along with their strong allies in the United Kingdom and France, are intrinsically at variance with their other two permanent members – Russia and China.
When the UNSC was set up, the majority of the global south was under the colonial rule of the global north, led by the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
The colonies had no say, no power. When former colonies gained independence, the UN systems only accepted them on the basis of nothing else but their compliance with the status quo.
But the architecture of international relations has gradually changed. The US is no long the only superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the turn of the 90’s. Russia has proven to be a force to reckon with.
China’s rapid rise on all fronts – economically, militarily and geopolitically – has resulted in an inevitable remake of the global order.
The global north might be suffering from a colonial hangover. But the nations of the global south that, like Palestine, know and understand too well the perils of living under the yoke of racial oppression, continue to raise their dissenting voices.
The Arab League is united in their condemnation of the Israeli obliteration of Palestine. The Muslim world is united behind the two-state solution. The African Union supports Palestine’s course.
The ignorant and arrogant powers in the global north may not be aware, but times have changed. The UNSC will be overhauled. All nations will have an equal voice. One nation, one vote will prevail. The story of the global community can no longer be written by the hunters alone. The hunted have found their voice. They have mustered their courage.
The insulation of Israel by the US will not become a permanent feature. Israel’s security guarantee is intertwined with the secured future of their next-door neighbours, the people in Palestine.
Security and military options are no solution, ask history. Diplomacy, round-table, face-to-face negotiations are the only guarantee for peaceful co-existence. Just inquire from South Africa.
No amount of threats, coercion or intimidation – or even brutal killings – can stop the oppressed people from demanding their freedom. Palestine shall be free. Free Palestine!