March 21—On January 26, the International Court of Justice found that there was solid ground for the charge of genocide by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. That same day, Israel alleged that UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), the key aid agency holding back the pace of the genocide, had 12 of its 30,000 employees with some connection to Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel. UNRWA summarily dismissed all the 12 employees, without contesting the sketchy allegations of the accounts of Israel’s evidence, apparently in the hope that the Western powers would be content with the sacrifice.
Over the last eight weeks, the Israeli government ignored the ICJ’s provisional orders, in particular, orders to provide the food, water, and medicine sufficient to deal with the malnutrition and disease, while more than a dozen Western nations simply cut off all of their funding of the UNRWA. There’s something upside-down about this picture.
Yesterday, the Secretary-General of the UN stated that the independent investigation of UNRWA has now shown, as expected, that it is well-equipped “to ensure compliance with the Humanitarian Principle of neutrality,” and that the commission has identified the specific improvements to be dealt with.
So, where are the headlines about countries now jubilant that they can restore funding to UNRWA, the most immediate and efficient logistical capability to wage war on the desperate hunger, the diseases, and the deaths by starvation? And while there was no need to underline the point, surely enough, this morning the emergency U.S. budget to be voted on tomorrow forbids any funding for UNRWA for the next year!
The UN Security Council heard, on March 19, of the horror in Sudan, pushed out of coverage by the Western media, as our poor populations can barely handle what is happening in Gaza. According to the UN, about 730,000 Sudanese children are thought to suffer from severe malnutrition, more than 8 million people are displaced, and a record 18 million are facing acute food insecurity, even during their harvest season. In Haiti, the CEO of the Hospital Albert Schweitzer explained to ABC News that with “the ports shut down, there is now real concern that Port-au-Prince could actually run out of food and other essential supplies in the next two weeks.” A woman who has fled the violence, and has taken refuge in an abandoned government building is interviewed: “We are dying of hunger. The babies are dying of hunger. The disabled are dying of hunger. The young are dying of hunger. Everyone is dying of hunger. We can’t help each other.”
The ugliness and danger of the present situation requires an unflinching, resolute optimism that, as Friedrich Schiller put it, mankind was indeed born for something better. Last week’s International Peace Coalition deliberations provided a glimmer of that hope, driving a wedge in between hope and despair. Tomorrow, the IPC convenes an emergency meeting, in a “red alert” mobilization, leading the fight to fashion a way forward. That report will appear here tomorrow.
Meanwhile, study, as if your life—and many other lives—depended on it, the core of the solution, beginning with the 14-minute video overview of the “Oasis Plan”, and circulate it far and wide. Once this world gets turned right-side-up, you may wonder why we didn’t do that sooner.
