African American diplomat Linda Thomas Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, arrived at the Security Council Oct. 18 dressed to the hilt and prepared to raise a war-mongering hand that will go down in history. The resolution would have allowed “humanitarian pauses in the conflict between Israel and Hamas to enable humanitarian aid access to the Gaza strip.”
Because the membership rules for votes and vetoes in the Security Council are stacked in favor of the great powers, the U.S. knew its sole vote could prevent the humanitarian pauses. And so, alone against the world, the U.S. voted for war.
Although much of body language analysis is, I believe, pseudoscience, I was struck by Linda Thomas Greenfield’s sartorial choice as she knew what she was going to vote for on the day. She wore a chic Chanel style top, suited to the solemnity of her anti-peace vote. Madame Coco Chanel was, as some may remember, unconditionally pro-Nazi. But what strikes the observer most is the color choice and the pattern: large black and white rounded checkers.
At first glance, one associates [this with] mourning colors, although one wonders what she is mourning, since she was on the point of voting for an exponential increase in Palestinian deaths.
But then I did a double take and wondered: Was she wearing, intentionally or unintentionally, an elegant vest that, seen from a distance, could have been cut out of a Palestinian headscarf — and what message did that send?
Was she trying to have her cake and eat it too — donning a suit with curved black squares similar to those on keffiyehs worn by the very people she was sentencing to death — as if attempting to send the message that standing alone to save the world against “human animals” is martyrdom too? In any case it would seem she was hijacking her victims’ clothing.
We know our own symbols are often co-opted and that these things are scripted.
As I sign off, at the Security Council the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., as well as his delegation, have theatrically pinned yellow stars to their expensive suits, once again obscenely battening on the Holocaust to play the victims and with a lack of empathy likening them to the Nazi final exterminators. This histrionic and cynical recourse to history is to “collectively punish” Secretary General António Guterres and his U.N. colleagues for not totally towing the Israeli war mongering narrative. (tinyurl.com/2j3jzux6)
Israeli ambassador to UN during Security Council vote, Oct. 18, 2023.
As for Linda Thomas Greenfield, her sartorial choice is a symbol of the widening cracks, divisions and embarrassment of the U.S. government over the Biden-Netanyahu joint genocidal pact.
Widespread dissension spurs resignations and protests
- Josh Paul, a Congressional staffer, has not only resigned but has borne witness to widespread dissension against the neocons and the hawks inside the U.S. government.
Mirroring these ominous divisions are the increasing street protests in Tel Aviv fed by a growing number of anti-Netanyahu Israelis who were opposing his far right judicial reforms way before Oct. 7 – to the point where it is said that Netanyahu welcomed the Hamas attack and the pretext to invade Gaza to distract from his unpopularity. Just as Biden seems happy to have Israel’s war to support now that his war in Ukraine is not doing as well as planned.
- Another factor that is creating a tectonic geopolitical shift worldwide is the unstoppable grassroot factor of massive street protests that by now approximate the anti-Vietnam war resistance movement. Not even a budding backlash can equal the street tsunamis.
And as Vijay Prashad and Zoe Alexandra reported on People’s Dispatch, the synch Oct. 27 timeline between the U.N. General Assembly adopting a toothless resolution for a sustainable humanitarian truce — with so many cowardly abstentions — and in real time just down the street the takeover of Grand Central Station by thousands from Jewish Voice for Peace is truly indicative of people’s power.
As Angela Davis said Oct. 27: “Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world.”
Throughout the world, there are daily marches, rallies, sit-ins, direct actions, walkouts, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) actions and the shutting down of arms factories: Globally the trade union movement is becoming a cornerstone of this grassroot upsurge. (tinyurl.com/4frt2xds)
In some Middle Eastern countries like Jordan, U.S. brands like Starbucks, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are being boycotted. Calls to revive the BDS movement are resonating in Europe and the U.S.
- Until the ground invasion took place, the Western media blackout on Gaza was replaced by teams of on-the-spot independent journalists and civilians who became the journalists of their own ordeal by documenting the crimes against their humanity with their laptops, smartphones, makeshift mikes. The internet was weaponized, and the world was able to see the genocide unfold in real time, going digitally viral.
For the third day now, to cover up any incriminating footage, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) has plunged Gaza in darkness, cut internet and power lines on top of the fuel, water, food, medicine blockade. But it is too late. The world saw enough to get moving. What is left to imagination is always worse.
- As the Oct. 16 and 18 anti-humanitarian votes at the Security Council show, the United States is now clearly a rogue state in the eyes of the world. And the rogue votes also show that the U.S. will continue to hold the United Nations hostage unless the Security Council is not just reshuffled but radically restructured to reflect the rise of the collective Global South.
- Eighty percent of the world’s population — most of the Global South — condemns the Israeli genocide.
- One-half to two-thirds of U.S. voters are now favorable to voting for independent parties.
- Sixty-six percent of U.S. voters agree the U.S. should call for a cease-fire.
- Only a minority of countries in the world recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization — essentially those in North America and Western Europe, as well as Australia, Egypt and Japan. See map at 24:16 in this video: tinyurl.com/4ntnj8kc
- The Oct. 27 United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a sustained humanitarian truce introduced by Jordan reveals increasing unity in the Arab world in favor of a free Palestine. Here again the pro-Palestinian pressure of the streets is a determining factor destabilizing those U.S. vassal Arab elites who increasingly would rather side with their people to stay in power. (tinyurl.com/24rtsyyh)
- The Israelis — past world masters of public relations spin and mind control technology — are losing the war narrative.
- The resistance of the people of Gaza against Apartheid is the resistance of all liberation movements against Apartheid and colonialism everywhere. As the late Nelson Mandela said, “South Africa will not be free until Palestine is free.”
- Alongside Angela Davis, the Critical Resistance movement has stated that abolition means no more war and that dismantling the Prison Industrial Complex is connected to the global movements against war, militarism and colonialism.
Likewise, we in the Mumia coalition say that if Biden has the hypocrisy to claim he cares enough to send planes and bombs to free those taken hostage in Gaza, he should also look inwards to his own hostages — aging U.S. political prisoners, invisible and unrecognized, buried under decades of rubble of media blackout and cruel and inhumane treatment.
- Everywhere the youth, the students, and the campuses are moving with uplifting messages from the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM); they refuse to be seen as victims but would rather stand up as “agents of revolutionary change,” as noted in CounterPunch, Oct. 29. (tinyurl.com/p5wj4v39)
- Already radical scholars, academics and the Stop Cop City movement are connecting the militaristic dots whereby the cop cities of the U.S. are often heavily dependent on Israeli training.
- Following cracks in the armor of the U.S. government and divisions in the Israeli government, Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York Office of the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights, has just resigned over what he calls the U.N.’s failure to address “a textbook case of genocide.” His principled and caring letter of resignation will find its way in all people’s history books on the liberation of Palestine. Ben Norton, founder of Geopolitical Economy Report, analyzed the letter, available on video. (tinyurl.com/yka4n77a)
- Chile and Colombia have recalled their ambassadors to Israel while Bolivia has cut diplomatic ties with Israel, citing crimes against humanity and a threat to international peace and security. This should be the beginning of a domino effect.
- China has started to delete the state of Israel from its online maps.
Chinese remove Israel from maps.
(c) Julia Wright. Nov. 1, 2023. All rights reserved to the children of Gaza – 47% of the population.