U.S. vetoes UN resolution backed by many nations demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza
Last edited Fri Dec 8, 2023, 09:15 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: PBS News Hour/AP
Updated on Dec 8, 2023 5:44 PM EST — Published on Dec 8, 2023 4:33 PM EST
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States vetoed a United Nations resolution Friday backed by almost all other Security Council members and many other nations demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. Supporters called it a terrible day and warned of more civilian deaths and destruction as the war goes into its third month.
The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1 with the United Kingdom abstaining.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood criticized the council after the vote for its failure to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, or to acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself. He declared that halting military action would allow Hamas to continue to rule Gaza and “only plant the seeds for the next war.”
“Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution,” Wood said before the vote. “For that reason, while the United States strongly supports a durable peace, in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate cease-fire.”
Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-vetoes-un-resolution-backed-by-many-nations-demanding-an-immediate-cease-fire-in-gaza
Article updated.
Original article -
The United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
Friday’s vote came after Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for the first time invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which enables a U.N. chief to raise threats he sees to international peace and security. He warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said halting military action would allow Hamas to continue to rule Gaza and “only plant the seeds for the next war.”
Around 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.
= new reply since forum marked as read
There are posts I won't go near now.
I wish the defenders of the slaughter could spend just one day living in Gaza enduring what they are enduring. No better way to activate empathy and compassion than walking in their shoes and experiencing the horrors first hand. They might change their tune as nothing else seems to work to elicit a modicum of compassion for Palestinians.
This veto is heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time. It's like Israel wrote the entire U. S response.
The gaslighting and killings continue and there is no end in sight.
LOL. 😂🤣
LOL. 😂🤣
That well-worn trope has outlived its usefulness, don't you think? At this point its stretching credulity towards absurdity.
Grant you, it worked very well to justify the slaughter of civilians and the obfuscation of war crimes.
But now it's becoming clear that Hamas is but a bit player in the grand scheme of things. Eliminating them is just the icing on the baked cake of no-Gaza and no-homeland for Palestinians.
So yeah, when you justify your crimes by blaming your opponent for making you do it, by placing all responsibility for your own actions on someone else, all the while working towards a very different goal than you've stated and pulling the wool over the eyes of the gullible about your true intentions... it is GASLIGHTING.
And they have a right to defend themselves from Hamas. Hamas = Taliban = Isis and they must all be destroyed and wiped from the face of the earth. Hamas has made clear what their intentions are. They are the war criminals as they use civilians, women, children, elderly as human shields.
"gaslighting" ~~ LOL!
That sounds a lot like someone else who used to post here and challenge me. It'll come to me in a minute. Let me think on it.
Response to SYGDeb (Reply #17)
from the vote is just open cowardice on their part they just didn't want to have to be on record voting against it. In the last several days I saw David Cameron, now back in the UK Tory government, giving an interview where he said that the people of Gaza having elections and selecting new leaders is not important and would not happen for some time. He said that a "provisional government" must first be established, then institutions created and stabilized, rebuilding completed etc. before elections would be considered.
Sounds like the path of "nation building". After all it worked so well in other places like Iraq, Afghanistan etc. 
Sounds like the cake is baked and as I said from the beginning it will be a matter of Israel running the show and taking over most or all of Gaza by way of occupation and more or less an annexation. All while the US holds sway at the UN as always with a veto.
Wood is laughingly like "Baghdad Bob" standing there and spouting nonsense and giving reasons for an action that nobody believes. If all the things he claims should have been in the resolution had been included the US would have found another reason to use the veto. His statement about Hamas having no desire for peace and a two state solution is equally applicable to the government in Jerusalem as well. But of course the cake is baked. So now the world leaders stand by and express "concern" while people told to move to "safety" in the southern portion of Gaza now find themselves being bombed like someone shooting fish in a barrel. The ones doing the bombing claim that a neighboring country should open their border and take the millions of people. They have many defenders of such a position. But listen to all the howls of anger from Jerusalem and the defenders of such an action when others rightly label ethnic cleansing for what it is.
Oh but don't worry you people of Gaza. David Cameron and Robert Wood have probably already selected some "acceptable" people to serve and obey in the "provincial government". Cameron loves to talk and look important to the media and it is quite likely the US and Jerusalem would rather he hadn't said the quiet part out loud. So it will not be up to the Palestinians to decide when an election takes place or who will be candidates. That second layer for the cake will also be baked by people other than the Palestinians. You can safely bet that the Palestinians left alive will somehow have to manage to clear the "rules" established by the master bakers in order to even vote at some promised "future" time. The idea of promising the Palestinians that the bakers will address Palestinian concerns "down the road" has a history and it is one of the promises being disingenuous and never made to be kept but rather to be used by the bakers for their own purposes.
Yes, everybody wants the war and killing and hardships to end RIGHT NOW! It does seem plausible, though, that a ceasefire now without a diplomatic agreement on what comes next would allow Hamas to re-group, re-arm, and re-terrorize Israel "again and again"--indefinitely. In order to prevent that Israel believes it must continue damaging Hamas until they are no longer capable of reconstituting and carrying out Oct. 7 "again and again." I don't know how realistic that goal is but apparently the Israelis believe it is achievable.
