Algeria’s ambassador, who brought the resolution, said Washington’s lone opposing vote should be understood as “approval of starvation as a means of war against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.”
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield casting the only vote against Algeria’s ceasefire resolution at the Security Council on Tuesday. (UN Photo/Manuel Elías)
As a United Nations agency on Tuesday halted aid deliveries in northern Gaza where acute malnourishment is rampant among children, the United States for a third time vetoed a cease-fire resolution at the U.N. Security Council.
As the World Food Program cited a “breakdown of social order” fueled by Israel’s bombardment of and blockade on the enclave, the U.S. blocled the measure, saying it was an inopportune time to demand that Israel end its massacre of Palestinians.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the cease-fire resolution, proposed by Algeria, would “negatively impact” negotiations for a truce that are ongoing.
Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the U.N., said the U.S. ambassador’s lone vote against the resolution “implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon” Palestinians in Gaza.
Thirteen countries supported the resolution, while the U.K. — which has veto power, like the U.S., China, France and Russia — abstained from voting.
The vote marked the third time the U.S. has vetoed a cease-fire resolution at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC). Meanwhile, the Biden administration has approved weapons transfers to Israel without the oversight of the U.S. Congress since the assault began in October. It has vehemently defended the bombardment as being focused on defeating Hamas, even as Israel has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians including more than 11,500 children.
“We should ask ourselves: How many innocent lives must be sacrificed before the council deems it necessary to call for a cease-fire?” said Bendjama. “Palestinian lives matter. Each one of us decides where to stand in this tragic chapter of history.”
Bendjama speaking at the U.N. on Tuesday. (UN Photo/Manuel Elías)
As the U.S. rejected the cease-fire resolution, chaos erupted in northern Gaza as Israel has blocked aid trucks from reaching starving civilians there.
The World Food Program (WFP) said Tuesday it was pausing deliveries after crowds of desperate people overwhelmed aid workers.
As Al Jazeera reported, children collected flour that spilled from an aid truck in Gaza City, before Israeli forces began firing on the crowd.
“We want to feed our children just like everyone else,” one Palestinian man told the network, “so we went to get some flour. But then we were shot at, shells were fired, and tanks advanced at us.”
The WFP and the U.N. Children’s Fund said Monday that starvation is particularly severe in northern Gaza, with 1-in-6 children under age 2 — more than 15 percent — acutely malnourished. An estimated 3 percent of children under 2 are experiencing a severe form of wasting — being underweight for their age and height.
In December, 15 agencies including the WFP warned that northern Gaza is at risk for a famine by May unless conditions significantly improve.
The United States’ veto of Algeria’s resolution on Tuesday, said Bendjama, should be understood as “approval of starvation as a means of war against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.”
The U.S. proposed its own resolution calling for a “temporary cease-fire as soon as practicable,” and warning Israel not to conduct an expected ground operation in Rafah, where more than 1.5 million people — most of whom have been forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza — are now sheltering.
The Permanent Mission of Liechtenstein to the U.N. called on the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) to take action to protect Palestinians.
Under Section A of Resolution 377A, also known as “Uniting for Peace,” the UNGA can convene an emergency meeting and make recommendations for collective measures if members of the UNSC can’t reach an agreement and fail to exercise their “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
Hossam Baghat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, suggested the U.S. veto should trigger “mass resignations of U.S. diplomats and public servants from the State Department and across the administration.”
Al Jazeera reported that Palestinians in Gaza expressed anger over the United States’ latest veto.
“There is a great deal of pessimism and frustration. Palestinians no longer trust the international community, as we have been hearing from locals here in Gaza,” correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Rafah. “During the Security Council meeting there have been more attacks on the ground here in Gaza.”
Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
WHAT IS SHE THINKING?????????? Or NOT!! The politicians are either blackmailed, compromised or extremely gullible. Of course we did have the situation where half of them went bombing a good portion of the planet going after the boogeyman Al-Qaeda for 20 years. Looks like the war mongers and bankers are using the same playbook with Hamas. People have not been educated to true history, only make believe. So it repeats again and again and again. Recommended is the James Corbett dot comm documentary History of Al-Qaeda. Also it would be good to have very precise definitions for Jew, Judaism, Zionism, Zionist and Nazism. It would be very eye opening to learn the true derivation of the word Nazi.
The shame at the US not supporting a ceasefire is almost unbearable. That our UN representative is a woman and a person of color is just salt in the wound. The voice of Marlon Brando’s Apocalypse Now character keeps echoing in my heart; “the horror, horror”.
2.21.24 – “Extreme times call for extreme measures,” eh? “America’s Back!” W/Linda Thomas-Greenfield, @ the U.N. Security Council, defending the indefensible, Biden-Harris, the USG, MIC, WHY?…. H O U S E (Congress); by “raising HER hand!” OPPOSING “Paz En La Tierra,” a Cease-Fire!!!
A question for “the wolf @ the door,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, “WTF?!?” Dontcha f/know, continuing America’s World Wide Web of Wars, is f.u.b.a.r!!!
“Listen, Linda,” pick a lane, Peace or War, i.e., NATO/USG v. Russia war in Ukraine, NATO/USG/I$RAEL v. Palestinians in GAZA war, USG vs. Syria, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Taiwan, China? “TIK/TOK. TIK/TOK.”
Times Up! “Many people,” believe Biden’s-Harris’ “Made In America,” domestic & foreign, crisis after crisis after crisis after crisis is NOT controlled by POTUS. WHO’S managing the bloody CRISES?!?
* “all the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic; and, a killer. It has never yet melted,” i.e., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., (the USG’s Board of Executioners), the “ONLY” vote!!! ONE (1) VOTE echoed ‘Round the World AGAINST Algeria’s ceasefire resolution at the Security Council on Tuesday, 2.20.24. IMO, IT’ S INDEFENSIBLE!!!
“Love your Country; NEVER, Trust its Government.”
* “Democracy in America was never the same as Liberty in Europe. In Europe, Liberty was a great life-throb. But in America Democracy was always something anti-life.
The greatest democrats, like Abraham Lincoln, had always a sacrificial, self-murdering note in their voices.
American Democracy was a form of self-murder, always. Or of murdering somebody else… The love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” D. H. Lawrence (1923)
What’s seriously f.u.b.a.r., “Common Democrats;” and, there are many, chanting “Biden-Harris, Four (4) More Years.” It’s gonna be another Selection Year of “Vote, BLUE. No Matter Who?!?” Those Common Democrats are f/clueless. The “elephant in the room,” LESSONS not learned, (A) WHAT happens when Voters Order a POTUS by U.S. Mail, i.e., “Awh, Mon, the Fruit (Biden-Harris) is ROTTEN!” (B) Fuhgeddabout the DNC, a Party of Wars w/a f.u.b.a.r. Voting Block (81 Million); C) Shut the Front Door on Biden-Harris 2024!!!
Onward & Upwards. Ciao…
People are being starved and murdered while the USA provides means to do so. The USA government has been highjacked by big money, substantially by Jews. What that leaves is force and the only people that provides such force is the Houthis and Hezbulla. The talking is over. It’s time for war.
The US is a partner in genocide. Gaza is the new holocaust, and the US and its Western countries are its enablers. Israel’s cry has always been that others deny her right to exist. In fact, Israel wishes to exist by denying that right to the Palestinians. Is is not clear that everyone has the right to exist but not at the loss of that right by others?
Israel may not have to “die” so that the Middle East can be made whole again, but just like Nazism had to be exterminated in order for Germany to recover its place in the world, certainly Zionism must be as well.
This is also true in Ukraine where its neo-nazi Bandera supporters have been lovingly embraced by the West (remember the Canadian parliment?). Only Russia is fighting to bring that malignancy to an end. Just who is on the right side of history here? It’s not the Western alliance, not in Ukraine and certainly not in Gaza.
How the West thinks it can continue to muddle along with the weight of these twin monstrosities on its shoulders is beyond me.
And once again…the Anglo/Saxon ‘civilized’ world at work. You have no SHAME America, you have no SHAME United Kingdom, you most certainly have no SHAME israel. The Anglo/Saxon ‘asses of evil’.
What cognitive dissonance it is to see an African-American raise her hand in support of an apartheid state committing genocide on its indigenous inhabitants.
Or, is Linda, Hillary’s shill?
Linda’s illegal shilling for Israel inflicts death on the Palestinians. Linda, Hillary is not your friend; why are you working so hard to be hated?
Isn’t it the exact same cognitive dissonnace, when an Anglo-American blindly raises her/his hand in support of everything Ukraine demands, yet is silent when it comes to addressing the ongoing genocide of Palestinian Arabs???
If the US thinks that this kind of support for genocide will be missed by the rest of the world, they have another thing coming….
The UN as it was set up is essentially useless due to the ability of any one of five countries to exercise veto power (and no provision to override). Why anyone thought that was a workable idea is beyond me.
You have to like using a black woman to veto a resolution that essentially is trying to stop the wholesale lynching of dark people. It shows you that it’s not the person in power that decides, you can’t get there unless you’re already bought. That American ambassador will have no friends at home or abroad when this is over; she will forever known as an Aunt Tom.
“Yes, Ambassador Greenfield, you have your hand raised?”
“Yes, sir, may I please go to the bathroom?”
That would have been the only legitimate reason for her to raise her hand at that time ,,,
Bingo!
Linda Thomas-Greenfield should resign. How can she live with herself?
When one has no conscience, there’s no inner conflict. I’m sure she sleeps just fine.
She does as she is told but yes, if she had an ounce of integrity and self-respect…RESIGN instead of being a collaborator to America’s murder.
It’s jarring, gruesome seeing a POC on Americas rep collaborating in a genocide against other POC. In a similar sad way African American cops can often be the most brutal to their own communities…trying to gain acceptance from the white establishment.
Washington’s lone opposing vote should be understood as “approval of starvation as a means of war against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.”
======================================================================================
—–To the surprise of no one.
Just one example: Washington casually murdered 40,000 Venezuelans—its elderly, its sick, its children, in a vain, stupefyingly vicious attempt to punish everyday Venezuelans because the Maduro government refused to allow Venezuela to become a U.S. vassal. Also, the U.S. government refers to Maduro as illegitimate, as a ‘dictator.’ If he’s a dictator, then everyday Venezuelans have no say in his arrival and persistence in power. Why, then, would you punish them so brutally?
“Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela,” by Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot:
hxxps://cepr.net/report/economic-sanctions-as-collective-punishment-the-case-of-venezuela/
Not surprising since we seem to have no qualms about using malnutrition as a weapon domestically.
The set up makes no sense. Abstentions are essentially yes votes. If one vote has total veto why bother voting? Just accept the dictator’s dictate.
Coming from an African-american woman it hurts even more, especially when in other instances, she said, “Colleagues, we cannot have peace without human rights…” perhaps that is why she voted against Algerian resolution, until Israel violates human right we can’t have peace? makes sense.
Same was the Ugandan lady ICJ judge, the only member of the panel who rejected all of the court’s provisional measures during South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
The “Wakandan world”, the “coconuts’ world” at the service of the white world. Black power is an illusion, a fraud.
In the second Wakandan movie “the director” of the movie, the CIA, even wanted a role in it, as a hero who helped the wakandans. He had to be white.
Black women corrupted by power and money, the Ugandan lady judge was even elected vice-president of the ICJ, Those women represent the senseless/ludicrous idea that race and gender can make a better world. it does not. Those women are contributing to the preservation of a neopatriarcal society in which men’s idea and perception dominates society, in which men manipulate women to their own benefit.
The United States one vote should be counted as ONE VOTE – not the deciding factor! Shame on the USA!!!