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'This Is About What Has to Happen to Stop This Genocide': Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed IPS's Phyllis Bennis about the Gaza ceasefire resolution for the March 29, 2024, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.


Reuters: Russia, China veto US-led UN resolution on Gaza ceasefire

Reuters (3/22/24 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: Reuters reported on March 22 ([link removed]) that the United Nations Security Council had rejected a resolution, proposed by the US, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and a hostage deal between the Israeli government and Hamas. Russia and China vetoed the measure, readers were told, while Algeria also voted no and Guyana abstained on a measure that "called for an immediate and sustained ceasefire lasting roughly six weeks that would protect civilians and allow for the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”

US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield ([link removed]) , cited in AP ([link removed]) , said that the US had been "working on a hostage deal for months" that would call for a "six-week period of calm," from which, she said, “we could then take the time and the steps to build a more enduring peace.” Well, what does that wording mean, and what do UN resolutions generally mean, if politicians and news media interpret them variously?

So helping us to sift through these attempts to respond to the violence of Israel's ongoing war on Palestinians in Gaza is Phyllis Bennis; she's senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies ([link removed]) and international advisor to Jewish Voice for Peace ([link removed]) , as well as author of, among other titles, Understanding the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict: A Primer ([link removed]) .

She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Phyllis Bennis.

Phyllis Bennis: Great to be with you, Janine.

JJ: So the US introduced a resolution at the UN, nominally calling for a ceasefire, but also vetoed another resolution calling for a ceasefire, because, Thomas-Greenfield said, it would interfere with negotiations around freeing Israeli hostages. And then there's this effort to portray the current decision as non-binding. It's very confusing, especially for laypeople. Does the US want a real ceasefire or not? What's happening here?
Al Jazeera: A history of the US blocking UN resolutions against Israel

Al Jazeera (5/19/21 ([link removed]) )

PB: You raise all the right questions, Janine. The real issue has to do with the US view of the United Nations, which is that it's annoying at best and a threat to US domination at worst, from Washington's vantage point. So that earlier veto by Russia and China and opposition by Algeria, the abstention by Guyana, of the US resolution came after a history, a long history ([link removed]) that goes back years, in fact, of the US vetoing calls for a ceasefire in situations when Israel is attacking, mostly Gaza, on occasion Lebanon, and the Security Council calls for a ceasefire, and the US says, “No, we don't need a ceasefire yet.” Always meaning, “We haven't killed enough people yet.” So there's a long history of that. We don't really have time to go into that.

But the US did it twice in a row on the Gaza question, where there were proposals for a ceasefire that the US vetoed, which would've passed. The US refused. Then the US comes up with its own resolution, which was a very, very sneaky one, because that quote that you read about what it says, those words were indeed in the resolution, but it did not call for them. The resolution did not call for an immediate ceasefire. There was a recognition by the Security Council, according to this resolution, that a ceasefire would be a good idea, and then went on to say and therefore the Security Council should go on cheerleading—they didn't use that word— but saying should support the US-controlled negotiations that are already underway in Qatar.

So it was a fake resolution. That's why others did not like it, and weren't willing to accept it as if it were an actual call. In international law, which is very complicated in a lot of ways, but certain parts of it are pretty clear. One of the parts that's pretty clear, Article 25 ([link removed] 25,accordance with the present Charter.) of the UN Charter, says that all decisions, all resolutions, passed by the Security Council are international law. They're all binding. That's what the real world of international law says.

So when a resolution is passed, it needs to say the Security Council demands a ceasefire, period, full-stop. If it talks about how the Security Council recognizes that such and such would be a good idea, that's nothing to be binding on, right? That's just a statement of what we think is nice.
Common Dreams: UN Security Council's Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution Is Not Enough—But It's a Start

Common Dreams (3/25/24 ([link removed]) )

So that's what was distinctive, the new resolution that was passed just a few days ago that the United States was willing to allow to be passed, 14-to-0, with one abstention—the US abstained rather than vetoing it; that was a great step forward. And that one, crucially, did call for an immediate ceasefire, and it also called for release of all the hostages and compliance with international law in the treatment of all those detained by all sides, which is a clear reference to the Palestinian prisoners that Israel is holding. And it also, crucially, demanded lifting all barriers to the massive amount of humanitarian assistance that's desperately needed as famine is moving across Gaza. So that was a huge shift.

At the same time, the US had weakened it in many ways. It removed the word “permanent” from the description of the ceasefire it was demanding, and said, “We just want a 'lasting’ ceasefire”; nobody knows what that means. And, crucially, the other weakness was that the ceasefire is only called for for two weeks. It said that the ceasefire should last for the month of Ramadan, but it was passed two weeks into Ramadan, so there's only about two weeks left, so that's way too short. And there's other limitations as well. But it was a very significant shift in the US position, and it really speaks to how the Biden administration is hearing, if not yet fully responding to, but feeling like they have to answer, the demands of this rising movement that is so powerful across the United States and now globally, saying we need a ceasefire now, and we need access for massive amounts of humanitarian aid, without any of the barriers that Israel is putting up.

Those things are desperately needed, and what we're looking at now is a question of how that movement is rising, what the impact could be on the elections, that's one of the biggest pressure points for the Biden administration. If they want to win this election, they have to be seeing that the only way to do it is to change their policy on what has been, up until now, unconditional support for Israel.

With all the language about criticisms of Netanyahu, and the massive amount of press about how there's this big divide between Biden and Netanyahu, between the US and Israel, that's true only on the level of talking. On the level of acting, the US hasn't changed a thing. $4 billion a year as a starting point of military aid; all the additional weapons that Israel wants, Israel gets.
Al Jazeera: Minnesota’s ‘stunning’ uncommitted vote reveals enduring problem for Biden

Al Jazeera (3/6/24 ([link removed]) )

There's just been no shift in the reality that the US is arming and financing a genocide, and as long as that's underway, there's people across this country that are mobilizing this "uncommitted" campaign ([link removed]) , in places like Michigan and Minnesota, where those votes really matter, and it's spreading. It's about to happen in Wisconsin.

And at the end of the day, this isn't just about the election, this is about what has to happen to stop this genocide. And I think what has to happen is that there has to be a way of convincing Joe Biden personally, not just others in his administration.

And right now, the pressure is rising, and the issue is going to be, how much longer can he keep up the political credibility, when he has people in his own administration resigning in protest of his policies? He has the staff of his own Biden/Harris campaign committee coming out with a public letter ([link removed]) saying, “Mr. President, we can't do our job. We can't get you reelected with this policy.”

You have the White House interns. This is my personal favorite of all these protests. These are the most ambitious kids in the country. They all want to be president, right? And yet they're willing to come out and say ([link removed]) , “Mr. President, we are not leaders today, but we aspire to lead in the future, and we can't do it with this kind of a model, when there is a genocide underway.”

So the US can do all it wants to say that this is a non-binding resolution ([link removed]) , but that's just not true ([link removed]) . They can go out of their way to say that the South African initiative at the International Court of Justice, that led to a finding that Israel is plausibly committing genocide right now, or is moving towards a genocide, that that extraordinary brief ([link removed]) prepared by the South African legal team somehow is “meritless.” ([link removed]) They can claim that, but the rest of the world isn't buying it, and increasingly US voters aren't buying
it.

JJ: Let me just ask you, finally, I do see also just a lot of regular folks reading things like US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood calling for a "lengthy pause ([link removed]) to this conflict" and saying, “Well, we're not calling for a pause to the conflict. We're calling for a resolution. We're calling for a way forward.” And then you see with concerns about a wider war, we have folks like John Kirby, White House National Security Council, on the Today Show ([link removed]) saying, “Well, we don't want a wider war in the region, but we got to do what we have to do.”

This is terrifying, but I also feel like folks are seeing through it. And so maybe let's end on that note, that folks are figuring out that this politics-speak, they're seeing it for what it is—and, more importantly, for what it isn't.
Phyllis Bennis

Phyllis Bennis: "What we need is a real ceasefire. That doesn't mean two weeks to release all the hostages, and then we go back to war."

PB: That's exactly right, Janine, and I think the good news, if there is any in this extraordinarily devastating time of real genocide in real time in front of our eyes on an hourly basis, the good news is exactly as you say: More and more people in this country and globally are seeing through those false claims.

It's a false claim that the UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire is not binding. It is binding. It's a false claim that the South African charges at the International Court of Justice were meritless. They had all the merit in the world.

All of these claims are designed to distract us. It's all a distraction. The change in language is a distraction.

What we need is a real ceasefire. That doesn't mean two weeks to release all the hostages, and then we go back to war. That's not the point here. The point is to stop the fighting, stop the slaughter, stop the denial of food and water and medicine, which is deliberately causing massive starvation on a level that all of the experts in international humanitarian crises admit is the worst they have ever seen ([link removed]) —not in terms of ultimate numbers, because the population in Gaza is not very big, but in terms of the percentage of people. Never have we seen 100% of a population facing extreme hunger, with 55% facing immediate famine. This has never happened before, as long as the international humanitarian organizations have been tracking famines. It's shocking.

And the fact that it is going on while we watch, with weapons we provide, that we pay for with our tax money, is finally reaching everybody in this country. More and more people are saying no, not in our name, not with our tax money, not anymore.

JJ: We've been speaking with Phyllis Bennis. You can find her recent work ([link removed]) on UN resolutions on Gaza on CommonDreams.org ([link removed]) , as well as ips-dc.org.

Phyllis Bennis, we have to end it here for today, but of course we'll stay in conversation. Thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

PB: Thank you, Janine.


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