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Un appel à ceux qui rendent possible le génocide, (alias la #communauté_internationale) pour stopper le génocide.

We, Israelis, are calling for global pressure on Israel to force an immediate ceasefire | Open letter | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/24/israel-immediate-ceasefire-open-letter

More than 2,000 Israelis have signed this letter, published in 11 languages, asking the international community to use ‘every possible sanction’ to ‘save us from ourselves’

The US won’t run for another term on UN human rights council. Israel is likely why | Kenneth Roth | The Guardian
►https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/11/us-un-human-rights-israel

Something unusual happened this week at the UN: the US government decided not to run for a second term on the human rights council. Taking a year off is mandatory after a country serves two three-year terms, but the Biden administration chose to bow out after a single term. That is extremely unusual. What happened?

Various rationales are circulating, but one, in my view, looms large: Israel. Or more to the point, Joe Biden’s refusal to suspend or condition the massive US arms sales and military aid to Israel as its military bombs and starves the Palestinian civilians of Gaza.

The election for the 47-member human rights council in Geneva is conducted by the 193-member UN general assembly in New York. The balloting would have provided a rare opportunity for the world’s governments to vote on US complicity in Israeli war crimes. The US could have lost. The Biden administration seems to have calculated that it was better to withdraw voluntarily than to face the prospect of such a shameful repudiation.

(...)
This year, something seems to have gone wrong with this cozy if detrimental practice. In the election this week, the western group had three seats to fill. Iceland, Spain and Switzerland had all put their hats in the ring, and the United States was expected to seek renewal of its term that was coming to an end. Three years ago, when a similar possibility emerged of four western candidates for three positions, Washington persuaded Italy to withdraw, allowing it to run unopposed.

But this year, by all appearances, none of the other three Western candidates were eager to abandon their quest. That could have reflected the possibility that Donald Trump would win the US presidential election next month. In 2018, he notoriously relinquished the US seat on the council to protest its criticism of Israel. Iceland, Spain and Switzerland must have wondered: why defer to the US candidacy if Trump may soon nullify?

(...) It is rare that the UN general assembly has the chance to vote on the US government’s conduct. A competitive vote for the UN human rights council would have provided such an opportunity. Given widespread outrage at Israeli war crimes in Gaza – and at Biden’s refusal to use the enormous leverage of US arms sales and military aid to stop it – that vote could easily have resulted in an overwhelming repudiation of the Biden administration. Rather than face the possibility of a humiliating reprimand, the US government withdrew its candidacy.

These events show again how devastating Biden’s support for Israel has been for the cause of human rights. By virtue of its diplomatic and economic power, the US government can be an important force for human rights. Other than on Israel, its presence on the council has generally helped the defense of human rights.

But US credibility, already compromised by Washington’s close alliances with the repressive likes of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has been profoundly undermined by Biden’s aiding and abetting of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. With Biden seemingly constitutionally unable to change, the defense of human rights is taking a hit.

That doesn’t mean an end to that defense. The human rights council functioned well despite Trump’s withdrawal. Without the baggage of Washington’s ideological animosity, Latin American democracies led a successful effort to condemn Venezuela. Tiny Iceland secured condemnation of the mass summary executions spawned by the “drug war” of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, whom Trump had embraced.

But it is a sad state of affairs when, rather than join the frontline defense of human rights at a time of severe threat – in Russia, Ukraine, China, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere – the Biden administration has gone sulking from Geneva back to Washington. It says it won’t run again for the council until 2028.

Kenneth Roth was executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022. He is now a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs

The US won’t run for another term on UN human rights council. Israel is likely why | Kenneth Roth | The Guardian
►https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/11/us-un-human-rights-israel

Balloting would have provided a rare opportunity for the world’s governments to vote on complicity in Israeli war crimes

#états-unis #leadership

Sur LCI, cette très belle #logique_du_chaudron :
– Israël n’a pas tiré sur la FINUL, ça n’a pas de sens de dire ça…
– d’accord Israël a tiré sur la FINUL, mais c’était inévitable parce que la FINUL n’a pas obéi aux demandes d’évacuer les lieux,
– d’accord Israël a tiré sur la FINUL volontairement, mais c’est parce que la FINUL est dans le camp du Hezbollah.

▻https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1844663701778948099/pu/vid/avc1/1280x720/ZAOlUvwPT2QGwle9.mp4

Facing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the US looks feeble. But is it just an act? | Adam Tooze | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/10/war-middle-east-ukraine-us-feeble-biden-trump

There is one school of thought that says the Biden administration is muddling through. It has no grand plan. It lacks the will or the means to discipline or direct either the Ukrainians or the Israelis. As a result, it is mainly focused on avoiding a third world war.

If so, that is a sad testament to the decline of American hegemonic ambition. No wonder there are calls in the US for Washington to develop an “independent” foreign policy – independent, that is, of Ukraine and Israel.

But what if that interpretation is too benign? What if it underestimates the intentionality on Washington’s part? What if key figures in the administration actually see this as a history-defining moment and an opportunity to reshape the balance of world power? What if what we are witnessing is the pivoting of the US to a deliberate and comprehensive revisionism by way of a strategy of tension?

Revisionist powers are those that want to overturn the existing state of things. In an extended sense, this can also mean a desire to alter the flow of events; for instance, to redirect or halt the process of globalisation. Revisionism is often associated with resentment or nostalgia for an earlier, better age.

By comparison with Trump, the Biden team boast of their commitment to a rules-based order. But when it came to the world economy and the rise of China, Biden has been every bit as aggressive as, perhaps more so than, his predecessor.

Under Biden, Washington has been committed to reversing years of decline apparently brought on by excessive favour shown to China. The US has tried to stop China’s development in tech. To do so, it has strong-armed allies such as the Dutch and the South Koreans. When the World Trade Organization dared to protest against US steel tariffs, the White House reaction was contemptuous. Bidenomics is Maga for thinking people.

In what is now called the Indo-Pacific, the US is not merely defending the status quo. The very definition of the strategic arena is new. In the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), Washington is putting in place a new latticework of alliances that ties India, Japan and Australia to the US. If nothing else had happened in the past two years, the judgment would be clear. The geo-economic policy of the US towards China under Biden is a continuation of the revisionism first seen under Trump.

#états-unis

Tales of infanticide have stoked hatred of Jews for centuries. They echo still today
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/06/tales-of-infanticide-have-stoked-hatred-of-jews-for-centuries-they-echo

A year after the 7 October attack, the myth of ‘blood libel’ persists in the media coverage of Gaza violence

Dans les médias occidentaux, même ceux qui se prétendent de gauche, on a le droit de publier les pires saloperies du moment qu’on défend Israël.