The United Nations General Assembly voted 124-14 on Wednesday to strip Israel of the right to self-defense in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

The test of the resolution was based on the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in July that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory was illegal.

The resolution also calls on member states not to sell arms or military equipment to Israel that would be used in Gaza, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem.

Among the 43 countries that abstained were Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Some 12 of the 27 European Union countries abstained, including Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden.

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    Why list a select 15 abstainers in the summary rather than the 14 voting against? Besides the obvious ones (Israel, US, Czechia), there’s Hungary, Argentina, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Palau, Nauru, Malawi, Tuvalu, Tonga and Micronesia.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOP
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      Besides the obvious Genocide Joe administration countries like Palau, Tuvalu, and Micronesia do not evoke much significance.

      Rather I found listing the more mainstream countries still silently supporting israel and refusing to condemn their obvious violation of international law more interesting.

      On closer consideration Hungary might be of relevance, since they are allegedly responsible for the recent israeli supply chain terror attack on Lebanon.

      • doingthestuff@lemmy.world
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        So we’re back to genociding Israel again? I feel like no one has a plan that isn’t at least a little genocide.

        • halyk.the.red@lemmy.ml
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          My slopes aren’t as slippery, where did you buy yours? I get why you said that, given the tumultuous nature surrounding Israel since it’s founding in the 1940’s, but the Arab nations said they would cease aggression when Israel did. Perhaps Israel having it’s sticks taken away is a step towards a peaceful Middle-East?

        • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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          Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.

          During the current war, Hamas officials have said that the group does not want to return to ruling Gaza and that it advocates for forming a government of technocrats to be agreed upon by the various Palestinian factions. That government would then prepare for elections in Gaza and the West Bank, with the intention of forming a unified government.

          Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution

          Sources

          Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ

          The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

          • Avi Shlaim

          How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

          ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

          One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

          Hamas officials should be held accountable for all war crimes committed, same as all Israeli officials. That said, there are many parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Gaza.

          In the Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen, the situation in Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghettos. The comparison was also made by a Palestinian poet who was later killed by an Israeli airstrike. Adi Callai, an Israeli, has also written on the parallels in his article The Gaza Ghetto Uprising and expanded upon in his corresponding video

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        Palau, Tuvalu, and Micronesia do not evoke much significance

        Well, that’s why I kinda sorted the list by “relevance”. Still, you should at least mention top 5-6 opposers if you’re going to bother with any abstainers.

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        The COFA states are very strongly aligned with the US and pretty much always vote with them. I don’t know much about, say, Tonga, but I’m guessing it’s a way of signaling cooperation to the US as well.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        It is possible none of us will live to see Czechia vote against the interest of Israel as all parties support it and there is pretty much no organized pro-Palestine movement. Israel says we’re their top partners in the eastern hemisphere, which means a lot because most countries are in the eastern hemisphere, including itself. At least, aid toward them is not nearly as popular among politicians and citizens as for Ukraine (we have a sizable, well-behaved Ukrainian minority already and took the most refugees per capita at the height of the crisis).

        As for why pretty much every politician is either oblivious or bootlicking Israel: see my comment under a post about the shredder escapade 4 months ago

        • glaber@lemm.ee
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          Thank you for the explanation! Such a shame that anti-Zionism is so often conflated with antisemitism

          • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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            What’s funny is that lots of people outside Prague are racist and most of them make no effort to hide it. Our nation very much prides itself in dark humor and very few topics are taboo, we even have racial and Auschwitz jokes. However, most people are oblivious to what’s happening in the area so even if you made a really good point for Palestine and composed it into a joke, it’s not going to resonate with any audience. Maybe university students (though a great deal of them are pro-Israel so you might get cringey faces and boos).

  • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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    “Rights” can only be taken away by force, if there is no method to ensure compliance, this is yet another meaningless resolution.

    • scutiger@lemmy.world
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      The UN is a diplomatic organization. It is a forum to discuss things and literally has no actual means to enforce anything. Its goal is not enforcement, it’s to discuss.

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        Exactly. Every time the UN does something, people say “they can’t enforce it”.

        Well, that’s the whole point of the UN. To resolve things without using force.

        It’s a good design, designed by people who learned from the horrors of WW2.

        It’s sad to see how many people nowadays forget those lessons and are itching for global war.

      • filister@lemmy.world
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        And prevent such global wars like WWII. Funnily enough, the state of Israel was funded exactly by an UN resolution, and now Israel is trying to discredit the same institution that’s responsible for the existence of their state.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        So about as useful as us here as far as getting anything to actually happen :(

        • scutiger@lemmy.world
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          When it comes to Israel, they have very little incentive in changing their ways when the US refuses to join the rest of the world in condemning them.

          Still, there are 124 countries that made it clear that they think what Israel is doing is wrong.

          • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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            so you agree, Palestine has a right to defend itself, including with armed resistance? or is this a case of “FAFO for me, but not for thee”?

            • kerrypacker@lemmy.world
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              Nope it definitely goes both ways, but one side has everything to lose. I might be morally justified trying to take on ms13 but I’m still going to get my ass handed to me.

              • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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                one side DOES have everything to lose, and it’s the side being ethnically cleansed, starved, kidnapped, bombed, mauled by dogs, indiscriminately shot, and thrown into rape camps for about 75 years now. I’m glad you agree Palestinians have a right to resist their own eradication 🫡

              • NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world
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                So for every victim that died at the hands of a rapist, your judgement is that they should not have fought back as hard. Got it.

          • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
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            So you’re saying you condemn the rapist soldiers at Sde Teiman, the mob that rioted in their defense, and the administration that fostered an environment where that would happen?

            Because surely you aren’t refering to the fabricated hoax about Hamas doing mass rape. You’ll reject it out of hand, but I guess for anyone else reading this, another good breakdown.

    • erenkoylu@lemmy.ml
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      It was never about self defence.

      Ever since 1948, Israel has been systematically killing everyone in their ‘promised land’.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      Honestly it would be an open and shut case here in the US.

      My neighbor throws grenades into my window, me running into their house with my friends and shooting everyone there who looks like they might have had a grenade is not self-defense…

      • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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        More like, im occupying my neighbor house while having him locked on the basement, he throws a rock at me and I’m just go around killing everyone I see.

  • erenkoylu@lemmy.ml
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    We need to expel Israel from the UN. These religious fanatics have no place in the civilized world.

    • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
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      Removing a country from the UN for doing horrible things would defeat the UN’s entire purpose.

      • erenkoylu@lemmy.ml
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        Israeli fanatics have killed more people in a year than Iran has in decades. Israel is a terrorist entity.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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          Whilst I disagree with your earlier point about expelling Israel from the UN (or anybody else: the whole point of the place is as a diplomatic talking shop for everybody) I wholehartedly agree with this one.

  • wheelsbot@lemm.ee
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    Israel is illegally occupying Palestine. The violence they commit is the furthest possible thing from self defense.

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    What a shitty title and crappy biased article. That’s not what the resolution was about.

    Here’s the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/19/un-resolution-israel-palestinian-territory-countries-vote/

    U.N. General Assembly demands Israel end occupation of Palestinian territory The nonbinding resolution says Israel must end its “unlawful presence” within a year, pull out military forces, halt settlement expansion and evacuate settlers.

    • Eiim
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      The resolution has declaratory power only but provides international backing to those countries that want to take additional steps against Israel.

    • potate@lemmy.ca
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      There’s a difference between defending oneself and engaging in collective punishment and genocide. I am Jewish and the descendent of holocaust survivors. Not in my name.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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        I mean yes, but this ruling is fhat they can’t do either. Since these regions are illegally occupied, their inhabitants have the right to resist said occupation and, therefore Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself in the same way it would against an independent country.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        Yup. Israel is treating them like land that’s free to colonize, when in reality a nation (albeit one with unstable government, and only recently UN-recognized) lives there.
        Similarly, Japan can’t claim it’s “defending itself” if it hypothetically performs violent acts in Lebanon.

    • erenkoylu@lemmy.ml
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      Israel has been murdering Palestinians for decades now. It’s a country founded on mass murder and genocide.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        It’s a country founded on 19th century White Colonialist ideology (this bunch of people who see themselves as Whites being Jewish rather than Christian makes no different to their victims) which, unlike the places from were such thinking hailed, has never evolved away from it, quite the contrary: just like Apartheid South Africa, with time they just become more violent and oppressive against those they see as lesser races, only Apartheid South Africa was forced to stop whilst Israel just kept doubling down on it and getting more violent.

        It’s not by chance that most Israelis and their leadership say that they “have Western Values”: they do have Western Values it’s just that they’re 19th century Western Values.

    • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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      Given that its ‘defence’ is indiscriminately bombing civilian populations and blowing the limbs off children, they shouldn’t be allowed to. Israel shouldn’t have committed war crimes similar to the Nazis.

  • Enkrod@feddit.org
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    Germany abstaining is actually a big deal.

    The defense of Israel is one of our “Reason of State” and not voting in favour of Israel is a serious signal that politicians are fed up with Netanyahus bullshit.

  • SoJB@lemmy.ml
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    Shoutout to the libs wetting their pants over non-Russian weapons being used against Ukraine

    I’m not sure what could be worse than literally bulldozing all of Palestine to the ground and killing the survivors that crawl out. And that is not hyperbole. Literal bulldozers are going in a line through Palestine.

    Maybe PugJesus can enlighten us?