The UN Security Council passed a resolution today that calls
for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza.
The vote passed with 14 countries in favor, zero against
and one the US abstaining.
The temporary reprieve, which is if Israel complies, would last through April 9th,
which is the final day of Ramadan.
And it offers a much needed relief for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Palestinian people have suffered greatly.
This bloodbath has continued for far too long.
It is our obligation to put an end to this bloodbath before it is too late.
Algeria's UN ambassador Amar Benjamin told the council after the vote.
In addition, the resolution calls for the unconditional release of all hostages
and calls on all parties to follow international humanitarian law.
Upon passage, the chamber broke out into applause.
Take a look.
Please raise their hand.
Those against. Abstention.
The result of the voting is as follows 14 votes in favor,
zero votes against one abstention.
- The draft resolution. - Has been adopted.
Resolution 2728.
After the vote, US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas Greenfield
said we believe it was important for the council to speak out
and make clear that any ceasefire must come with the release of all hostages,
she told the council after the vote.
A ceasefire can begin immediately with the release of the first hostage,
and so we must put pressure on Hamas to do just that.
And again, the resolution demands the immediate and unconditional release of all
hostages in response to the US abstaining and not just using its veto power to kill
the resolution as it has done in the past.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he is canceling
his planned trip to the US, where he was expected to share his plan
for invading Rafah with US officials and potentially addressing Congress.
In a statement, the Prime Minister's Office put out reads regrettably,
the US did not veto the new resolution, which calls for a ceasefire that is not
contingent on the release of hostages.
This constitutes a clear departure from the consistent US position in the Security
Council since the beginning of the war.
Today's resolution gives Hamas hope that international pressure
will force Israel to accept a ceasefire without the release of our hostages,
thus harming both the war effort and the effort to release the hostages.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear last night that should the US depart
from its principled policy and not veto this harmful resolution,
he will cancel the Israeli delegation's visit to the US. In light of the change
in the US position, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided that the delegation will
remain in Israel, and the ceasefire comes at a time where every single Gaza resident
is experiencing food insecurity.
Half of them are at risk of famine.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN's office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs, said last week.
The famine thresholds may already be the case in northern Gaza.
There is literally nothing left.
Looking ahead, he warned that without more aid, Gaza could soon be looking
at more than 200 people dying from starvation per day.
And despite the risk of famine, Israeli officials informed the UN
yesterday they will not allow aid into the northern Gaza Strip.
The UN has warned Israel that the use of starvation
as a weapon of war is a war crime.
Now, I want to bring you in here. What do you make of the US?
I guess allowing this to happen by not vetoing this resolution,
as they have done in the past.
Is this something that the Biden administration should be commended for?
Yes and no. So it's a step in the right direction.
So I'll take it.
It's definitely a positive thing, not a negative thing.
Be clear about that.
Having said that, US is going right to the water's edge,
and they're trying to push Israel in every polite way they can without
actually touching the one thing that makes a difference, which is the money.
So so far Biden's been sending them hundreds of different orders of weapons.
He's, you know, gone around Congress and sent them literally hundreds
of millions of dollars in free weaponry to kill more Palestinians.
And so where the rubber is going to hit the road
is in the execution of this ceasefire.
So, yes, it's a step in the right direction.
Yes, it's America saying to Israel, cool it, cool it,
but will it actually have an effect?
No, Israel will not comply. They're an outlaw country.
They never comply with UN resolutions.
They're similar to North Korea in that way.
If that hurts your feelings, I don't really care.
It's a fact. You can look it up.
And second of all, don't tell me that you.
I'm supposed to care about your feelings or Bibi Netanyahu's feelings
when there's 1.1 million people about to starve to death, what do you
think is a more relevant consideration?
I mean, we already saw.
We showed you last week, 21 children starved to death.
We showed you the videos, and there were ghastly and ghoulish.
And right now, this monster, Bibi Netanyahu, is the one blocking the aid.
And he's saying things like, oh, we can't even trust the US to send in the Rite Aid.
We have to inspect the whatever the United States is bringing in
so the terrorists don't use it.
And now he says to us, well, I'm not sending my delegation to you now.
To which I reply who gives a crap? Good, keep them home.
What do we need to hear from them for?
So oh, you were going to send a delegation to lie to us about what your plans are,
which is what you do every time.
And now we're what our our feelings are supposed to be hurt
because you're not coming.
I don't give a goddamn.
I know that the people in Washington care because they're basically all
at the working at the behest of AIPAC.
Yes, that's also true.
And if that hurts your feelings again, I don't care.
Things that are true matter and things that and starving people
and 32,000 are already dead matter.
So look, guys, Netanyahu doesn't want to come and he
doesn't want to send his emissaries.
Wonderful. Give us a goddamn money back.
I mean, how how much have we given Israel over the decades
that we've been supporting them?
It's got to be into the hundreds of billions of dollars and the 14
billion we're about to send them.
Why are we sending it to them?
This guy keeps spitting in our face every single time,
and he's like, he's the boss of us.
Well, I don't believe in antisemitic tropes.
I don't think he's the boss of us.
I don't think there's any cabal that's the boss of us.
Okay? No, we should say Netanyahu.
You don't like it? You want to keep insulting us?
Great. No problem.
As long as Netanyahu's prime minister.
Here's what Israel is getting going forward.
Zero. And much more important than Netanyahu.
If you're going to starve a million people, you're not going to get money
from the American taxpayer.
I'm not going to go to work every single goddamn day, take money
out of my check to go starve or bomb or kill endless number of Palestinians.
You're not getting a goddamn money.
That's what anyone with any decency, sanity or strength would do.
Instead, we have these half measures where we abstain from a vote at the UN,
and then when they go to, actually execute that decision, Israel will say no,
and America will go, I'm sorry.
You're gonna take all the money, take all the money.
Taxpayers give Israel the goddamn money. But we abstained in a vote.
We abstained in a vote.
So that's the reality of what happened today.
Whether you like it or not.
Yeah.
I talked to, the head of a foreign policy organization today to better understand
the ramifications of this decision.
Right.
The Security Council, those are more binding than just a standard UN,
just General Assembly vote.
And even he was saying it really doesn't matter if Israel doesn't comply,
if the US doesn't hold Israel to account, if the US continues sending them weapons,
and the US continues to exercise its role as a permanent member on the Security
Council to veto future resolutions, this might not amount to anything at all.
I mean, we'll see in the in the remaining few days of Ramadan whether Israel
actually does oblige and does hold off invading Rafah, continuing this this
onslaught in northern Gaza, it we'll see.
But the US has made it clear in its posturing and messaging from press
conferences today through statements put out through John Kirby, this isn't a shift
in their posture to try to assuage concerns and, Bibi's temper tantrum.
Nothing's changed about their posture.
So it really does seem like, yeah, they abstained because it would make them
look extremely bad because this had everything the US purported to want
in a resolution that they said would garner their their support, and they
really could just allow Israel to continue on carrying like carrying on, of course.
And as we talked about like the the humanitarian cost is devastating.
Over 30,000 people have already died that we know of.
And people talk about the death toll slowing, thankfully.
But part of that is also because it's harder and harder as this war
rages on to get accurate numbers, I, I don't even want to think about
what the real number number is, how many missing people are actually dead.
That's just what we know for sure confirmed.
It is so much higher.
The devastation is untold and the the hunger levels are rising faster
than I think the UN said in recent years or potentially ever.
The fact that they rapidly have gone into a situation where famine is imminent
is horrifying, and 200 people are dying of hunger a day that is entirely preventable,
that isn't that has nothing to do with fighting Hamas.
And as we'll get to later, AOC, I thought, pointed out really well
in the CNN show this weekend.
The actions of Hamas should not be linked to the suffering of a child in Gaza.
Like, again, we'll get to that.
But I think that's a really important point to underscore all of this, the use
of starvation that Israel is very clearly doing as a weapon of war is a war crime.
But again, if the US doesn't hold their feet to the fire
and the US blocks any attempt by the UN to punish Israel, what does it matter?
- What is a war crime, then? - Yeah.
The problem is that, our politicians are deeply immoral
and they will do anything for money.
And it doesn't matter which lobbyists give it to them.
Big pharma, even big sugar down in Florida.
That's incredibly powerful.
Real estate interests, bank interests, oil interests, etc.
You just give these guys money and they will let you do the most morally depraved
actions you've ever seen in your life.
Do you know that 85% of Congress right now is still against the cease fire?
85% of the US Congress, 32,000 dead, about 25,000 women
and children dead women and children.
And now they're starving them to death.
You can't get any more intentional than that.
Oh, Hamas was hiding behind their human shields, so we starved a million people.
No, no. It's unconscionable.
And please never say never again.
If you're in that crowd, if you're in Washington,
you're a US congressman, you're in power, you're Joe Biden, you're Donald Trump.
Hey, they have the same exact position.
Oh. Never again. Oh, unless it's Palestinians.
Let's go murder them. Let's go starve them to death.
Let's go do the same exact thing that was done before to them now.
And let's annihilate them.
Let's destroy almost every building in Gaza.
Let's make them all homeless.
Let's humiliate them, kill them, starve them, abused them in every imaginable way.
But never say never. Oh, no.
Never again, never again, never again, never again.
For who? Okay.
We believe never again for all innocent lives.
So what's happening in Gaza now is 100% unjustifiable.
The world just said it's 100% unjustifiable.
But the problem is there will be no consequences because the US leadership is
filled with monsters who care so much more about their campaign contributions
than they do about the rest of us.
It's true.
When it comes to school shootings, the Republicans in that case go, yeah,
but I'm getting bribed by the NRA and gun manufacturers.
I don't care if your kids are dead.
I cash a check this morning and I feel great about it.
That's the kind of vampires and ghouls and disgusting human beings
who are in the United States Congress and in the white House.
So, no, this resolution is important as it is rhetorically and symbolically
and historically is totally irrelevant because the United States will never
enforce it, no matter what Israel is.
If they starved all 1 million of those Palestinians, we would still send
them $14 billion and we'd send them 4 billion next year, and we would do
whatever Netanyahu demanded of us.
And that's the reality, and everyone knows it.
And if you want to deny it, you can.
But you seem like an utter fool, because that is literally historically
in my lifetime, what has happened 100%
of the time, not 99%, 100% of the time.
Facts matter. Thanks for watching the video guys.
We also love it if you hit the join button below because that makes you a member
and members allow us to be independent, honest.
We could be as progressive as we want.
No corporate media influence. And that's all because of you guys.
We love doing the show with our members. Hit the join button.
Become one of the Young Turks.