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The United Nations has been busy attempting, with little efficacy, to address Israeli violence toward Palestine. On June 1, ten members of the Security Council voted in favor of a resolution that would have helped protect Palestinians from Israeli violence, and would have criticized that violence. Four members abstained, and the United States, of course, vetoed the resolution. Later that same day, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., the incompetent and clown-like Nikki Haley, introduced legislation that would have condemned Hamas for its purported violence. The only nation that voted to support that resolution was the United States; this may have been the first time in U.N. history that a resolution was introduced in the Security Council that gained only a single vote, and that by the nation that introduced it.

On the very day that the U.S. opened its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, in defiance of nearly the entire international community, Israel killed at least 60 unarmed Palestinian protestors. Haley has made a variety of statements concerning the protests, which are worth examining. We will look at just a few here.

“Those who suggest the violence has anything to do with the embassy in Jerusalem is sorely mistaken….”

Palestinians have been protesting at the border since March, demanding that they be granted the internationally-recognized right of return; this means that those Palestinians who were driven from their homes at any time since the Nakba (catastrophe; the expulsion of three-quarters of a million Palestinians and the slaughter of thousands more to establish the ‘nation’ of Israel) have the legal right to return to their homes, or be compensated for the loss if the homes are no longer standing. The protestors planned to culminate their protest on the day that the U.S. violated international law and opened its embassy in Jerusalem. On that day, Israelis killed dozens and dozens of unarmed protestors. The violence perpetrated by Israel upon defenseless Palestinians is very much connected with the embassy move. The source of that violence is Israel.

“…rather it comes from people who will not accept Israel in any part of Israel.”

One must ask if Haley has absolutely no concept of reality. Does she really believe this? Does she think that Palestinians are living in freedom and prosperity, but demonstrate against Israel because they “will not accept Israel in any part of Israel”? It isn’t even that Palestinians will not accept Israel in any part of Palestine. It is that Palestinians will not accept a brutal occupation; the continuing demolition of their homes and theft of their lands. They will not accept arrests and long detentions of men, women and children without charge. They will not accept being denied access to their own farmlands for planting and harvesting; they will not accept countless checkpoints, arbitrarily opened and closed by Israeli soldier-terrorists. They will not accept rationing their water, while Israel accesses Palestinian water sources to fill their swimming pools. They will not accept electricity for only a few hours a day, because Israel has bombed their power plants.

“They light kites to cause as much destruction as possible.”

If it were possible for anyone to take Haley seriously before, surely she is now dismissed universally as an ignorant buffoon. Palestinians are lighting fire to “kites to cause as much destruction as possible.” This is in response to Israeli sharpshooters, shooting medics who are clearly marked as such. Flaming kites are in response to drones, tear gas, sniper fire and all the violence that Israel seems to take such pleasure in raining down on the Palestinians. Does Haley believe that the sight of a burning kite causes mass terror among Israeli soldiers? Does she believe that the entire city of Tel Aviv is in grave dangers, because a kite that has been set on fire approaches, or even crosses, Israel’s border?

Does she not see that Palestinians might feel terror when, in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers break into their homes at any hour of the day or night, ransack and loot them, and carry away all the males over the age of 12? Does she have no empathy or sympathy for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip whose homes are periodically bombed by Israel? Does she feel nothing for those who flee to clearly-marked United Nations refugee centers, only to be bombed there? Has she no compassion when Israeli soldiers attempt to arrest children under the age of ten?

Is she without any knowledge of international law, human rights, or even basic human decency?

The world has grown tired of all this, even if Israel and the U.S. seem to relish it. While the recent resolution passed by the General Assembly is non-binding, it does serve to further tarnish Israel’s already blackened reputation, and further isolate it, and the United States, on the world stage.

Sadly, however, the worldwide condemnation of Israel changes nothing on the ground for Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians still live in abject poverty; they are unable to export their goods, or import much needed building and medical supplies. They continue to be shot at, and sometimes killed, and have their boats ‘confiscated’ (read: stolen), by Israeli terrorists, when fishing well within the internationally-recognized Palestinians waters. In the West Bank, they still must deal with checkpoints, brutal and often fatal harassment by illegal Israeli settlers, and all the horror that accompanies the actions of the brutal Israeli apartheid regime.

Change will only come for the Palestinians when the world’s people finally say ‘Enough!’. When those in the U.S. defeat elected officials who are owned by Israeli lobbies, and when either one of the two major political parties supports the Palestinians, or another party grows in sufficient strength to effectively do so.

The U.S. and Israel are losing influence in the world; the actions of their two heads of state, the erratic and delusional U.S. President Donald Trump, and the violent and racist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are accelerating this. Unfortunately, like a once-powerful animal that has been mortally wounded, their violence may increase in direct proportion to their waning influence. Cooler heads of state must work to prevent a worldwide catastrophe at the hands of these two rogue, violent regimes.