USA 🇺🇸
(at 1:36:00)
"heartbroken and horrified" by Rafah attack
"do more to protect innocent Palestinian lives" and conduct an investigation
"Israel has a right to defend itself" but has "obligations to protect civilians"
"Israel must do more" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Sierra Leone 🇸🇱
must "secure a ceasefire"
Rafah operation "exacerbated situation"
There are "breaches of IL" in Rafah
"condemns" Rafah attack. IHL must be complied. "Respect and protect civilians and civilian objects" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Switzerland 🇨🇭
"outraged" by the events. "condemn" Hamas' indiscriminate attacks. "strongly condemns" the Israeli strike in Rafah.
IHL requires parties to distinguish civilian/military objects; take precautions in attack
"opposition" to Rafah operation webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
France 🇫🇷
"calls for a ceasefire" and expresses "opposition to Israeli operation in Rafah" - operation must end "without delay". Expresses "indignation" with Rafah attack. Israel must "immediately halt its military offensive". Condemns Oct 7 and rockets webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Russia 🇷🇺
"Bloody military operation of 7 months"
"Israel continues to indiscriminately bomb" Rafah despite the ICJ/UNSC
Rafah "condemned by absolute majority of intl community"
"we condemn" Rafah "war crimes". Israel must comply with IHL webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Japan 🇯🇵
"unimaginable suffering", "starvation and disease on the rise", "no safe space in Gaza".
"Opposes full scale military operation in Gaza"
Calls for ceasefire
(does not specifically refer to the May 26 attack)
Slovenia 🇸🇮
rejects military operations in Gaza
"our worst fears [re Rafah] have come true" due to the attack.
"Firmly condemns the strike on displaced persons in Rafah"
Rafah strike not an isolated event. Violations not being investigated webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Ecuador 🇪🇨
"Images [from Rafah attack] are difficult to forget", "time to put an end to the cycle of violence" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Guyana 🇬🇾
"Displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents were set on fire after Israeli airstrikes"
"there is no safe place in Gaza". Calls for swift independent int'l investigation.
"no justification for killing of innocent civilians" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
South Korea 🇰🇷
"Israel claims that the killing of dozens of civilians in tents ... was a tragic mistake, but when such instances are repeated again and again... it would be difficult to regard them as just mistakes" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
UK 🇬🇧
"appalled by the deeply distressing scenes emerging from Rafah following Israeli airstrikes"
"call on Israel to launch swift comprehensive and transparent investigation"
"do not support" military operation in Rafah without a humanitarian plan webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Algeria 🇩🇿
"Haunting images from Gaza flood our screens"
"If they don't steer the spirit of humanity in all of us then words will be useless"
Israel "continues to cover up murders and commit what they say are tragic mistakes" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Mozambique 🇲🇿
Resulting global outrage and condemnation [of Rafah attack] further enhances Israel's int'l isolation.
"condemn Rafah operation"
Israeli offensive "blatant violation of all laws of war" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Palestine 🇵🇸
instead of halting its offensive Israel "has bombed people it has displaced". It is unbearable "to hold a beheaded child in your arms". "Unbearable human suffering". "There is no red line imposed by legality that Israel has not crossed" webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
Israel 🇮🇱
Rafah attack was a "precise strike", done with "extensive verification to avoid civilian casualties". "Fire broke out due to secondary explosions from terror munitions". "It is Hamas who must be held accountable". webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
UAE 🇦🇪
(on behalf of Arab Group)
The Rafah attacks are "unspeakable" and require "special condemnation". "The heinous massacre ... is merely the latest episode in this series of systematic war crimes against Palestinian people". Israel has defied IL webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k…
France 🇫🇷
(Already summarised this one above, but putting it here since it is easier to access than finding it in a 2 hour long live feed of the UNSC meeting)
This is what I call “legal vulturing”. Salo loiters above the text looking for anything he can slap a red underline and claim “he is the only one who noticed”. It’s bad faith work that deserves no serious engagement. So let me treat this like the piece of disinformation it is 🧵
Salo claims there is a secret paragraph 141 that scholars ignore on purpose to deny Israel a right to self defence. But article 141 is part of a subsection of the Opinion dealing specifically with self-defence. It goes from §138 to §142.
As Salo shows, in §139, the ICJ concludes that art. 51 of the UN Charter, which sets out the right of self defence, is not applicable to Israel’s actions in Palestine because
1) the threat it claims is not imputable to a state and article 51 only applies between states
So far I’ve seen the ongoing collapse of US hegemony as a protracted process of imperial decline, driven by a rally-to-the-flag retreat from the world known as “MAGA”. But now I’m wondering if that rally to the flag will actually lead to a much more violent and sudden process
The US has a heavily armed population which lacks access to mental healthcare and social safety nets. Increasingly, the random and senseless school shooting is being overshadowed by the targeted political assassination as the go-to “exhaust vent” of these social processes
Obviously, this is terrible. A Democratic representative, a healthcare CEO, a conservative commentator and the attempted assassination of the current president can’t be dismissed anymore as fluke accidents. Arguably, some are choosing to do this instead of mass shootings
The IDF’s new international hasbara law excuse to justify imposing conditions of life that make civilian life in Gaza impossible seems to be that the military advantage of destroying a camera justifies the “incidental” civilian harm of dozens of homes destroyed
Imagine for a second this logic replayed for residential buildings in Tel Aviv. There’s security cameras managed by the city hall on top of the building and a Palestinian group is planning to attack the city. Thus, so the IDF does not use it, they blow up the whole building
It would be deemed one of the worst terrorist attacks in Israel’s history. An act of “barbarism” that should be condemned again and again. The logic behind it “oh but we wanted to make average Israelis turn on the IDF so we need to pummel Tel Aviv” would be deemed insane
I’ve been thinking a lot about this tweet and how it perverts decolonial epistemology in service of coloniality. It argues that there is a parallel “non-Eurocentric” history of indigeneity where Jews worldwide are the colonised “natives” of (somehow) 8th C BCE Arab “colonisers”
But this is a manipulation. The very concept of indigeneity and nativeness emerged because of notions that can’t be simply transposed to every single defeated / expelled people in history. The Gauls were not “indigenous” to the Roman “colonisers”
Indigeneity emerges from oppressive racist discourses proper to European modernity, not as vindications by the colonised. The Inca and the Haudenosaunee did not want to be “Indians”. The Herero and the Zulu did not want to be “Natives”
This works only if you draw an artificial line between Iron Age Israelites and 20th century Zionist Jews and not between those who lived in what is today Palestine in ancient times and those who live there today.
“Name 3 ancient Israelis” is just as much a “gotcha” if you don’t
We get that when we say Ancient Egyptians there’s been a lot of changes since the Pharaohs. Hellenisation, Arabization, etc. We are able to recognise these differences and changes over time. It’s the same with the original inhabitants of what is today Israel-Palestine
You could tell the history of the Canaanite people, how some Canaanite tribes became the Israelites, and how over time, just like the Ancient Egyptians, they Hellenized and Arabized until they got to be modern-day Muslim and Christian Palestinians and the Old Yishuv
This kinds of argument is why it is important to understand Israel as a colonial endeavour. There is a reason why the demographics of the area look like this and it is not because of any kind of “Palestinian apartheid” 🧵
Gaza’s current form is the direct result of the Zionist plan to “cleanse” the land of Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcefully expelled to Gaza from other parts of Palestine. After Egypt’s intervention, an armistice line separated Gaza from Israel
But these hundreds of thousands of refugees were living sometimes a couple of kilometres away from their old homes and the area was sparsely populated and not under clear Zionist control, so often they could simply walk into Israel and tend their crops or recover lost property