Calls are growing for the UN Security Council to be reformed after the US became the only member to use its veto power to block a Gaza ceasefire resolution, a move welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The UN chief says he will keep pushing for peace.
Which will be vetoed by all permanent members of the security council.
Nobody is surprised and that’s a bad sign. The UN was invented to give the nations of our world a shared forum to talk things out and find a “resolution” before genociding each other. The thing is we can’t expect the UN to stop conflict.
Edit: Some people seem to confuse the UN security council with the UN. The SC has only 15 members (5 permanent member nations, 10 rotating member nations) and is usually asked to vote on intervention once a resolution was passed. It can’t act with a veto.
Yeah, this is something people don’t quite understand. The UN primarily provides platform to initiate diplomatic discourse.
Even when there is demand to reform the UN to give it more power, most people will object because “'muh sovereignty”.
This is the point exactly. The UN is a voluntary forum for signatory nations to meet and talk shit out.
What some people think of instead is the UN security council made up of 5 permanent members (US, UK, France, China, Russia) and 10 rotating members (every two years) deciding on intervention in conflicts, but there can be no veto on resolutions. That’s been a problem in the past, because rival nations just cancel each other out on some issues, making meaningful progress difficult.
People shouldn’t blame the UN for initiating talks. We now know, 121 nations are in favor of a ceasefire, 44 abstained or are too afraid to take sides and only 14 veto’d it and wanna continue bombing, that sends a pretty clear message about what the majority of nations thinks should happen.
Instead blame the nuclear powers for not being able to talk to each other anymore, blame the radicals in any conflict. Don’t blame the diplomacy.
If the UN was serious about promoting peace, they’d have occupied Gaza themselves over a decade ago.
This vote, like all votes, is political. It’s not for some higher purpose
Or even better, come up with a solution that’s more than “unconditional ceasfire right now, you figure out the rest”. How is any country supposed to follow that.
Besides, the UN shits on Israel as a pastime, that should be the first thing addressed in a UN reform.
Which is hilarious because this split state was basically created by them. Anyone could see the tensions as a result of it and the only reason that Israel wasn’t pushed out on multiple occasions was they won. They exist because they ignored the UN beyond the initial state creation.
To be fair, it’s the same countries that ignored the UN’s resolution to create the two states and instead went to war against Israel that are also the cause of the constant petty resolutions against Israel. The system was broken from day 1.
The problem in this case is depending on the security council to act on an issue it isn’t designed to address.
The main purpose of the UN is to prevent global war, and the Security Council is the primary way in which that goal is achieved.
In that context, the P5’s veto power makes sense. It prevents resolutions pitting the world against one of the superpowers that can sustain that kind of war.
How does the security counsel prevent global war? They’re powerless to do anything to any of the super powers and by proxy also won’t do anything to anyone else either.
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Or the wonky intertwinement is the peace mechanism? How much more bloody would the world have been without it?
That’s the neat part! It doesn’t!
“Global War” isn’t all war on the globe. It’s war that pulls in the whole world. Having 4 of the P5 gang up on the 5th in a military campaign authorized by the UN would very likely result in WWIII.
The veto power prevents the UN from taking military action against a country the interest of countries that can sustain a war against the rest of the world.
American here, I support this call.
I mean, same. The ability of certain blocs to railroad the UN is obscene. We should protect our veto tho
We should protect our veto
The countries that currently have a veto make less sense the way the world is developing.
France and the UK have a veto, but Germany doesn’t? China has a veto but India doesn’t?
I get that it’s based on historic disputes after the war, but it doesn’t fit the current world well.
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I didn’t know India was offered! After some reading (skimming) the US offer in 1950 was to replace China, but Nehru didn’t want to stir up controversy. The Soviet offer in 1955 might not have made any headway, but I’m not sure why that’s the case.
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It’s a fair argument, but at this point, I suspect China would push back given their relationship with India isn’t the best. The major powers also probably don’t want to destabilize South Asia seeing as India’s rival has nukes and would feel extremely threatened. Idk I may be wrong.
If the UN isn’t reformed, there’s nothing stopping these rising states from starting their own UN
from
startingignoring their ownUN
Our veto is the problem here. Vetoes in general are the problem.
Because of “one nation one vote,” it is trivially easy for the more hardcore Muslim bloc or authoritarian nations to shove things through that should absolutely not be shoved through.
And basing it off population would essentially give China and India the power to vote themselves whatever they wanted. It’s the US legislative problem all over again and do we really want one world government in the end?
Yeah, many people fail to realize that the places in the world where individual rights are (mostly) respected are actually few, with only a minor portion of the world population.
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So there were no “calls for reform” after a similar Russian veto about Artsakh in 2020 or recently. If nobody cares about that, then why should I care about anything else really.
There has been “calls for reform” almost every time Russia has vetoed
I haven’t seen any in those cases I mentioned. In others - yeah.
Not sure how to help you with that one. People call for an end to vetos literally every time it’s used
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There shouldn’t be a security council
It’s less a council of nations who actively keep the world secure, but moreso a council to keep the world secure from those nations. The security council is there so the world’s most dangerous countries don’t just go to war, and it makes them maintain a dialogue.
It’s unfortunately functioning as needed. The vetoes may piss others off, but it keeps them at the table. The ability to veto anything is a great incentive to stick around.
How are they supposed to cater to the MIC if some random bunch of countries can cut off their markets like that?
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Israel only exists in its current form because the advocate for the original UN plan was assassinated by a zionist terrorist. Israel was born an enemy of the UN.
How about we disband the Disunited Abominations?
We don’t need UN.
This is far from perfect, even far from functional at times. But without it we don’t have a forum. Without a forum, how do you deal with adversaries? It’s not words… This UN is better than no UN
Things just dont make sense. Hamas, a very weak power, sneak attacks Israel, a relatively strong power, then hides amongst the civilian population with military targets scattered throughout neighborhoods and municipalities.
Is Hamas surprised by the mass civilian casualties or are you (the reader) the one who is surprised? Is Hamas actually weaponizing their civilians by showing the world how many are dying and being an agent of change in the UN?
Is Hamas considering these civilian deaths as martyrs? Because martyrdom is not the same as innocent death.
You’re god damn right I’m surprised.
If terrorists hid in your family’s basement and then your family home and all those in it, plus their whole neighborhood, was wiped off the face of the earth, you’d sing a real different tune then.
Try to imagine Palestinians as real people, instead of faceless terrorists who “sealed their fate” when they “supported the wrong side” (basically just by existing).
Yeah I’d be pretty fucking pissed at the terrorists there, ngl
Unfortunately the residents of Gaza are prevented from importing weapons
I mean that’s an extremely strong positive right now.
Picture a bank hostage situation. Police officer comes in with a fully loaded gun. A bank teller is being held at gunpoint by the robber. Never once in the history of ever has the police officer shot the bank teller.
That’s what Israel is doing.
It’s more like the cops throw a grenade at the robber and teller, and when they kill the teller, the officers try to imply the teller’s complicity because they allowed the robbers to control the bank to begin with.
And then when the robbers rationalize the bank teller’s death as martyrdom for their cause, should we really feel bad for the teller?
Closer to the usaf bombing the entire neighborhood that the bank is in.
No police in the world would say “ok, go free, and keep the hostages”. And by the way, a murderer would be better analogy than bank robber.
Also, hostages did die in real world hostage situations too, while police was targeting those hostage takers.You are an ill little man. I wish you better help.
disgusting
Yes, when your own analogy fails attack a person who showed this to you. Never reevaluate your position.
Thanks for clarifying for me. Didn’t realize it was such a simple scenario like a bank robbery.
You clearly can’t grasp the real complicated scenario so he gave you a simplified version to make it easier to understand.
Anyone with even an ounce of empathy understands why Israel bombing children is always unacceptable. Nobody should need to explain it to you really
So, which is less acceptable:
Hamas, a military threat to Israel who hides behind children.
Or
Israel, a country with a military who is responding to military threats in a way a military would.
BTW, my original post is asking questions, but you Lemmy Users just keep making it seem I’m pro Israel just for asking.
But is Israels actions appropriate? Indiscriminate bombing across all of Gaza? Collective punishment? If they really wanted to A) save hostages and B) take out those responsible, they could do a surgical strike with special forces. Raining hellfire upon innocent people just because their might be hamas there is absolutely disgusting.
Before I answer your questions, you answer mine. Which is less acceptable?
Israel commiting genocide is awful. Hamas is just a response to that.
As you laid out your question, probably (cynically), hamas. The world has been happy to tolerate some incredibly awful governments - especially if you start looking at African dictators.
Both are unacceptable but clearly Israel is more so. In a hostage situation, you don’t bomb the neighborhood. I’d also like to point out that nobody is really defending Hamas, which is more acceptable is missing the point entirely.
Israel has serious military advantage, they can basically force a cease fire at any time. They aren’t under threat and tbh, probably let the events that started all this happen for causus belli.
The article talks about a mostly symbolic UN vote that was vetoed by the US at the request of Israel. They don’t want a ceasefire, they don’t want their hostages back, they don’t want a solution.
They just want to keep bombing.
I’ll agree israel is worse in hindsight, but Hamas kicked this off with this sneak attack that has led to this situation, so I’d say that is worse. Hamas was so successful in causing an Israeli intelligence disaster, which I feel like caused their military to lash out. All militaries do is destroy, they are not nation builders. Surgical special force operations can take a long time to plan and wouldn’t work since there were so many hostages and they kept moving them around.
What about the decades before this where Israel had been killing people, imprisoning without charges, and forcing them off their land? When that’s added for context, Israel is the one who kicked this off.
All militaries do is destroy
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of violence generally. The purpose of destructive capability is deterrence, and hence the protection of things. This is really crucial to get in order to understand anything about violence at all.
This is why a mother cat bares her fangs when she’s cornered. She’s not attempting to destroy, but rather to prove that she can destroy, in order to deter an attack.
Weapons, by existing and being visible, send signals that make violence less likely to occur.
When weapons are being used actively to destroy, it’s because their initial purpose failed.
Stop trying to wash Bibi’s ass and depose him already. You are going to get Israel destroyed if you don’t.
Why are you acting like Hamas and Israel are the only parties in the conflict? That makes no more sense than talking about a war between Palestine and Likud.
Pretending Hamas is the same as Palestinians is anti-Palestenian, which to any person with a moral compass is just as bad as antisemitism, the same as being hateful towards any ethnic group.
It’s black and white thinking, just like the whole mindset of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Hamas and the Israeli regime are enemies. The people of Palestine and the Israeli regime are enemies, therefore Hamas and the people of Palestine must be friends. Also people opposing the actions of Israel must thus be friends with Hamas.
I’m just not sure how much of it is in bad faith because they support the evil actions (possibly even including the evil actions of Hamas that they believe gives justification for the evil actions of Israel), or because they are just stupid and don’t understand that people fit into more than two categories.
It’s interesting how just asking critical questions of Hamas entails that I support Israel’s response.
“just asking questions” is the excuse for assholes to be assholes. It’s never “just asking questions” it is always “asking misleading questions to evoke an emotional reaction out of someone”.
It’s never “just asking questions”
Do you have any evidence of this claim? Because that doesn’t make any sense to me. People do, indeed, ask questions to clarify things. It’s a crucial part of communication and thinking.
Labeling all questions as attempts to troll sounds like the sort of knee jerk reaction of a person who doesn’t want their beliefs questioned. And someone who doesn’t want their beliefs questioned probably hasn’t developed them very thoroughly.
You should be asking yourself questions all the time. When I said it’s a crucial part of communication and thinking I mean that if you don’t ask questions about things, then you don’t communicate or think. And that’s very bad.
Sure. With that logic, you can win every argument. Done talking to you now, thanks
I see you Likechecker. I know you’re not just here to be an ass. Just wanted you to know this hate isn’t universal.
Thanks for noticing haha
Boo hoo. With your “just asking questions” you try to absolve yourself of the type of questions you are asking. And if someone calls you out on it, you run away because you know what kind of questions you are asking.
Calling someone on something they didn’t do is antisocial
iS hAmAs SuRpRiSeD!?
Who cares what Hamas even thinks for fucks sake. Innocents are dying. If you’re all so “civilised” then maybe you should realize that indiscriminately killing innocents isn’t right, no matter who does it.
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Stop Israel oppression of Palestine so Hamas doesn’t have a cause to recruit people behind? They’re already not supported by the majority of people in Gaza, but if someone is left an orphan because Israel bombed their block, of course they’ll be easier to recruit to Hamas.
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They have a cure already. They have giant walls, the iron dome missile defense system, hundreds of drones patrolling Gaza, supposedly a state of the art intelligence apparatus, mass mandatory recruitment (well… Except for the orthodox Jews), large towers, fences, etc. There’s a reason this is unprecedented. They just had their resources positioned to take over West Bank settlements instead, and ignored warnings from multiple sources about an imminent attack. Their leadership fucked up. And are continuing to fuck up by positioning the rest of the world against their genocide.
The thing is more genocide won’t fix the cancer. The US figured that out in Vietnam, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. It just makes the survivors want to kill you more. That doesn’t fix the cancer like you think it does. It was fine for the US to fuck up those other places because we can just leave and we often make a bunch of money during the conflict, but Israel can’t. They need to learn to coexist, take lessons from places like South Africa, or the UK and IRA. It was actually negotiating that stopped the attacks in those places. They tried the killing everyone thing for awhile but it doesn’t work.
Personally, I think the cure is teaming up with a local alternative secular group, like the PLO, and empowering them without undermining their authority and support by doing things like the shit they do in the West Bank, or preventing travel between the two sectors from, or controlling their water, power, food supply, etc, or giving up on negotiations because Hamas does an unrelated terrorism. It’s like negotiating with MLK, Jr so you don’t have to negotiate with Malcolm X. Hamas has negative popularity but no one has the resources to stop them, and no random civilians are going to bother trying to while Israel controls more aspects of their daily life in a more obviously negative way (electricity, water quality, incoming supplies, travel, work visas, drone buzzing, etc.). And to demand you do before helping them even though you have all the power in the relationship is like the cops telling a mom and pop shop to try fighting the mafia first before they do something about the mafia extorting them.
My solution would be to remove the blockade on Gaza. Let the people there exercise their human right to be armed.
Then they can either overthrow Hamas, or join them.
The only problem with my plan is the time lag between the Gazan population being armed, and when to hold them responsible for their government. As they exist now, Hamas exists without their consent. There’s no internal check against that “government”.
You left out the part where Israel, of their own accord, goes in and kills these civilians to retaliate against what you’ve stated as a “very weak power.”
What? I was asking questions and they are not rhetorical.
Gotcha. Asking questions is the new wild accusation these days. It’s a good way to avoid critical thought.
Yes now that some wiki somewhere has published it, it is now a fact that those asking questions are troublemakers.
No. There’s a big difference between asking questions and asking pointed, leading questions. One is Socratic dialogue, the other is JAQing off.
Hamas wants dead civilians. That’s how resistance/terrorism movements work (your choice of descriptor, it’s the exact same thing).
IRA, Tamil Tigers, Viet Cong, etc. They all benefit from civilians on “their” side dying, that’s just the game they are choosing to play. Acting like you’re pwning somebody by pointing out an obvious fact won’t get you far.
And for the record, fuck Hamas.
Hamas might be, but the millions of non-terrorist Palestinian’s lives are worth more than to end as collateral damage.
Hamas is evil. Wanting to get rid of them is understandable. Commuting mass civilian death to remove them is still a war crime.
What’s ironic is that I thought you were talking about Hamas, wanting to get rid of Israeli authorities. It just highlights how similar the two are. The IDF and Hamas both have no qualms about killing innocent people to further their agenda.
The difference between the IDF and Hamas is that the IDF serves a civilian population that is heavily armed and almost 100% veterans.
Hamas forcibly rules a civilian population that is unarmed.
Given Israel actively prevents the people of Gaza from being armed (as is their human right) they are completely wrong to hold Gazans responsible for Hamas, given the Gazans have no power to consent to or reject Hamas’s rule.
I don’t disagree at all. I see Palestinians as a completely separate entity. I also see Israeli civilians as a separate entity from the IDF, however. Netanyahu isn’t universally supported. No civilian in this situation is culpable.
Maybe we should look at parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Gazan resistance.
Yeah all those Holocaust survivors who flooded the nearby villages to rape murder and kidnap random folks back to the ghetto oh wait that parallel actually makes no sense whatsoever.
What about collaborators?
For decades we had the IRA and we didn’t level Northern Ireland. The IRA were a terrorist organisation and repeatedly bombed civilians in UK.
The IRA didn’t target civilians though, they targeted the military or they tried doing economic damage.
Nah they killed plenty but I was trying to draw attention to the fact that the British army were vastly superior but didn’t level NI.
WIKI has a list of the bombings.
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True but they were still hidden and helped by the local population. Point is though that the vastly superior British army didn’t level NI.
Point taken. However Hamas isn’t just a terrorist organization, they are the elected political party of Gaza. They are the government. So not really apples to apples.
Elected years ago, by people who are mostly dead?
Answering that question is a whole rabbit hole I will not go down. Just wanted to point out that comparing Hamas with any other terrorist organization is imo not really possible.
Comparing them to the Taliban or Hezbollagh is pretty possible.
What’s surprising to me is that Hamas was able to succeed in the attack in the first place.
Also that people are actually starting to think for themselves and find nuance in a situation that is filled to the brim of it.
You are being downvoted, but Hamas said exactly this on international TV.
People are downvoting because it’s a dumb ass take. Not because of what hamas said or not.
Killing civillians en mass is not right. You’re no better than hamas if you do that, no matter how “civilised” you claim to be.
…except that was literally Hamas’ goal. I didn’t say it wasn’t stupid.
Hamas isn’t surprised by the casualties, because the casualties are a desired goal for Hamas. They shot civilians who tried to flee south at the start of the war. They tell civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings that have been “knocked.”
Mass death is their goal, because they know it will do shit like manipulate the UN into protecting them.
We could save so much money if we just disbanded the UN.
Th UN gives all countries the ability to have a voice on the world stage, yeah the security council can suck sometimes but not having the UN would be so much worse than having it
I understand this logic and I’ve made this argument in the past. As time goes on, however, I’m coming to the understanding that the major thing the UN actually provides is deniability. It creates an aura of accountability without actually accomplishing it. The pageantry of rhetoric around the UN’s mission would have us believe that merely shining light on the wrongdoing of powerful nations will lead to some kind of justice. It never does. It actually breeds complacency in the same way that ranting about politics online does. You feel like you are changing something, but you aren’t. I think we need something like the UN, but the UN as currently constructed is fatally flawed and may be making things actively worse in some important ways.
A government without an army can’t govern.
Not that I’m in favor of a single government over all humanity. But the UN can’t govern anything because it’s got no teeth.
If only we had some global communication system that allowed people to post their opinions. Maybe a packet based one.
Are… Are you actually suggesting that “the internet” is a viable substitute for the UN?
Sure. At least I don’t see the internet driving around Mercedes in NYC and parking wherever they want
Yeah, lets replace the UN with a fuckin’ facebook group.
Moms Against Thermonuclear War has been marked as a private community.
I’m trying to find a rational explanation to this whole thread, but I’m still failing.
Leaded gasoline? Leaded pipes? CO poisoning? Anything else?I think just a memo would do the trick. No need to get into all that lead stuff
I wish there was lemmy gold
We already had world leaders tweeting their opinions at other, but they still meet in person to discuss issues and form agreements.
A structured system is necessary when you have meetings with representatives for nearly every person on the planet
And again how is that working?
Instead of replying with that same comment again, why don’t you explain what alternative you have in mind. Don’t just vaguely mention ‘packets’
Oh I am sorry I wasn’t aware that I had to come up with a solution if I point out the current solution isn’t working. Shit. Better say nothing ever again and just keep giving my money to a corrupt institution that fucks up everything it touches. Sorry for pointing out the emperor has no clothing here is free fucking money
That’s kind of the point here
We all agree that the current system has issues.
You’re saying the next move should be to disband it, and others are saying that we need an alternative first. I don’t think anyone here is saying the UN is perfect the way it is
An imperfect system doesn’t mean we need to throw out the whole system. And if we did throw it out, you can’t just not have a replacement for it.
People making posts on the Internet is not equivalent to real people meeting and being forced to at least give an answer.
We can all agree homelessness is a problem, what matters is the solutions to the problem
Some want to house these people, some want to build more homeless shelters, some want dedicated camping sites in the city, some want dedicated camping sites outside the city, some want to simply ban them from existing in a city, etc, etc
If all you do is focus on the problem and not coming up with solutions then the problem will never be solved
This is an example of why coming up with solutions is important when discussing issues
What you need to do is define “working” in order to point out that the current solution isn’t working.
To define “working” you either need to come up with a standard for how such organizations should operate, or barring that name some alternative solution that it can be compared to.
Last I heard we haven’t descended into nuclear war in the last 75 years.
Or having gone into another World War.
Are you familiar with the failure of the League of Nations? I’d look into it if you’re not.
Nuclear war is prevented by nuclear deterrence. Nothing published by the UN has the ability to stop a nation from firing its nuclear weapons at another nation’s cities.
As for world wars, let’s wait a year and see if we’re willing to define this interconnected set of conflicts as a world war.
Could you not say thats because of MAD from nuclear weapons?
No, MAD seems to be a failed philosophy as it assumes that aggressive actions are attributable to clearly defined parties. MAD got shook the fuck up as soon as we realized dirty bombs could exist.
I hope that our long standing mostly peace is due to the UN and media innovations… I cynically suspect that it’s due to neoliberalism and globalization making a grand war too economically costly.
The geopolitics understander has logged on
I used to think the same way. But with UN, at least someone “official” has a responsibility to “raise the voice”. It is better than nothing, I guess.
And how is that going for us? The Middle East doing fine now?
Why do you think it would not be worse without the UN?
Do you think this is the only thing the UN does? Or that everything else it does does not matter?
I think they spend a lot of money and park in handicapped spots.
We got an edgy one here. No one get cut
Got an argument go ahead and make it.
Because your argument of taking up parking spaces is so worth debating lol
You’ve made the same point about parking twice in these comments now, got anything else to add
The UK and the US voluntarily walked in to that. Multiple times. That has less than nothing to do with the UN.
I see. So the UN has had no impact on the region?
Just because it isn’t 100% effective that doesn’t mean it has no impact.
Right just one identical to not existing
You’re welcome to move to Russia any time you want
In the global scheme of things the UN is so fucking cheap. I can’t understand your point at all.
Those parking spaces must be worth thousands of dollars!
Don’t you think it would be possible to just operate it more cheaply?
Or have some conception as to its value? I mean we could save so much money if we never paid for anything. And yet we do pay for things. The question is, why? If we could save money by never paying for anything, why not?
Oh right. Things have value.
Yeah but like, what’s the ‘value’ in their expensive forums? I’m sure there is a lot of fat to trim that only exists so the public servants get to live like kings.
