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Au Kosovo, les statues et mémoriaux aux martyrs de l'UÇK saturent l'espace public, mais rien ou presque ne rappelle le destin des milliers de civils tombés durant la guerre de 1999 pour la liberté et l'indépendance. Hormis de rares musées privés. Reportage dans ces lieux méconnus, chargés d'émotion.

- Articles / Bombardements OTAN, Courrier des Balkans, Kosovo, Histoire, Société

Passionnée de sciences et étudiante en politique, comment Claudia Sheinbaum est-elle devenue la première femme présidente du Mexique ?

La Corée du Nord a lâché des centaines de ballons transportant des déchets en Corée du Sud, ravivant ainsi les souvenirs de la guerre de propagande que se livrent les deux parties depuis plus de 60 ans.

Commonwealth Secretary-General, Baroness Patricia Scotland, says Small Island Developing States need concrete commitments for climate finance. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, Jun 3 2024 (IPS)

Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Patricia Scotland is calling for concrete commitments to climate finance that will acknowledge the multi-dimensional vulnerability faced by the world’s small island developing states (SIDS).

There are 33 small states in the Commonwealth family, 25 of which are SIDS.

Speaking to IPS news on the sidelines of the Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4) in Antigua and Barbuda, Baroness Scotland said these nations are struggling with the devastating impacts of climate disasters and economic crises.

“This meeting (SIDS4) is pivotal, especially as we approach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals deadline. The small states have been disproportionately affected year after year. The aspirations and hopes for the small island developing states meeting were exceptionally high,” stated the Secretary-General.

SIDS4 was held from May 27 to 30 and small island developing states leaders used the platform to address their shared challenges and propose joint solutions. The four-day conference, held every decade, featured main and side events by United Nations organizations, the private and public sector, non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, youth leaders, and academia—all working towards a sustainable future for SIDS.

Baroness Scotland says the sense of urgency for action underscores the reality of life on many small island developing states, which are at the forefront of climate disasters and facing unprecedented challenges despite contributing the least to the climate crisis.

“We have witnessed a surge in climate disasters, occurring with alarming frequency. The impact is profound and the need for climate finance is urgent,” she told IPS.

A Confluence of Crises: Climate Change,  COVID-19 and Economic Shocks

The Commonwealth Secretary General says SIDS were already battling with the impacts of climate change when the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated their challenges, dealing devastating blows to their tourism-reliant economies. She says climate change has introduced new diseases, straining health systems and the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has triggered a global economic crisis, heightening food insecurity.

She says international financial institutions must factor in these realities and recognize the multi-dimensional vulnerabilities faced by SIDS.

“When a hurricane comes and takes everything that you have worked hard for, it does not take the debt with it and dump it in the ocean. It leaves you with more debt at a higher rate.”

“We are not just asking for sympathy or charity. We are asking for concrete actions and commitments to help us adapt to the changing climate and build resilience in the face of disasters.”

SIDS Leaders: An Urgent, Joint Message

The Secretary-General cited the sense of urgency felt and articulated by SIDS leaders such as Prime Ministers Mia Mottley of Barbados and Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda.

“Our leaders are stepping up,” she said. “All of our leaders of the small island developing states are saying, ‘we have to move.”

As the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting approaches, the Secretary-General is hoping to see a continuation of the momentum gained at the SIDS meeting. She stressed the importance of SIDS4 commitments being part of concrete actions at upcoming regional and international meetings, including the CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting, the Pacific Islands Forum and the United Nations General Assembly.

The Path Forward

The theme of hope echoed throughout the conference and Baroness Scotland says she too, is hopeful for a resilient future for SIDS, but she says some of that optimism rests on the equitable distribution of climate finance. She says SIDS receive only 1.5% of the UN’s climate funding, despite being disproportionately affected by climate change.

“We are asking for a fair share of the resources that are available to address the climate crisis,” she said. “We are asking for a recognition of our vulnerability and a commitment to help us build a more sustainable future.

There has been a push for specific, actionable plans that can be implemented across various regional meetings and global forums.

The Commonwealth is doing its part. She points to the Climate Finance Access Hub, located in Mauritius, as a source of pride. Through this initiative, member states receive assistance in applying for climate funds, but using data from a number of the world’s leading scientific bodies, including the British Space Agency.  A number of small islands, including Fiji, have benefited from the Hub.

“We managed to get USD 5.7 million for Fiji to create a nature-based seawall,” she said. “And USD 21.8 million for Antigua, Dominica, and Grenada. This is real money, but our countries need to do more to implement the changes.”

At SIDS4 there has been a concerted effort to ensure that while the vulnerabilities of small island developing states are recognized, their strength and resolve are brought to the fore. The conference showcased their struggles, but also their resilience and the fact that with concrete action from the international community, SIDS can have a bright future.

“We are not just talking about the next meeting or the next conference,” Baroness Scotland says. “We are talking about the future of our nations and the future of our people. We are talking about the need for urgent action to address the climate crisis and build a more sustainable world for all.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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IPS UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4), Antigua, Barbuda, Climate Change Justice, Climate Justice

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• Uniting for Climate Action: UN, World Bank and UNDRR Leaders Push for Climate Finance, Justice and Nature-Based Solutions for SIDS
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A rendőrség ismételten figyelmeztet arra, hogy az alkoholfogyasztás utáni vezetés rendkívül veszélyes, és súlyos következményekkel járhat. A múlt hétvégén Debrecenben három sofőr is a jogosítványát veszítette, miután ittas állapotban balesetet okozott.

A balesetek sorozata szombaton este kezdődött. Egy 24 éves férfi a Monostorpályi úton elvesztette az uralmát a járműve felett, és több fának is nekicsapódott. Szerencsére a balesetben senki sem sérült meg. Alig egy órával később, a 48-as főúton egy 37 éves férfi sodródott le az útról egy körforgalomban, és egy szalagkorlátnak ütközött. A sofőrrel szemben kiderült, hogy nem sokkal korábban egy másik autónak is nekiment, de itt sem történt személyi sérülés.

A harmadik baleset a Nyíl utcán történt, ahol egy 45 éves férfi figyelmetlenül akart kihajtani a parkolósávból a forgalomba, és nem vette észre a mögötte haladó autót. Az ütközésben ketten megsérültek.

Mindhárom sofőrnél pozitív eredményt mutatott az alkoholszonda, sőt, kettőjüknél a véralkoholszint a bűncselekményi értékhatár közel négyszerese volt. A rendőrök a helyszínen elvették a jogosítványukat, és járművezetés ittas állapotban elkövetett vétség miatt büntetőeljárást indítottak ellenük.

A debreceni rendőrök a hétvége folyamán további három ittas sofőrt is kiszűrtek a forgalomból, akik balesetet szerencsére nem okoztak. Hazánkban zéró tolerancia van érvényben az ittas vezetéssel szemben, ami azt jelenti, hogy a gépjárművezetőknek szigorúan tilos alkoholt fogyasztaniuk a volán mögött ülve, és vezetés előtt egyaránt. A rendőrség hangsúlyozza, hogy az ittas vezetés rendkívüli kockázatot jelent, nemcsak a sofőrre, de a többi közlekedőre is.

The post Három ittas sofőr okozott balesetet Debrecenben egy éjszaka alatt appeared first on Biztonságpiac.

Written by Tarja Laaninen.

As social media has become the main gateway to information for many young people, how will it influence the youth vote in the 2024 European elections? The turnout among young people in the 2019 European elections was relatively high, and many hope for a repeat performance in June this year. But ahead of the 2024 elections, the main European institutions have largely ‘excluded’ themselves from one of the most popular video-sharing platforms among young people – TikTok – over data security concerns. Social media in itself is a difficult phenomenon to study, as recommendation algorithms mean that everyone sees different content.

Social media as a new campaign front in elections

According to Eurostat, 84 % of young people in the EU used the internet to participate in social media networks during 2022. Social media platforms have thus become a significant channel for political campaigning. As an example, the spring 2023 parliamentary elections in Finland were dubbed the ‘first TikTok elections‘, with some of the young candidates gaining publicity – and a seat in the parliament – quite possibly thanks to their visibility in the social media used by teens and young adults. Back then, some 70 % of 18-21 year-olds said they had seen political advertising on TikTok. Social media platforms are also the dominant news sources for 16-24 year-olds. TikTok, as the 24/7 news channel for many young people, has surged in popularity in recent years in Europe, particularly against rivals such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. Fact-checking services have found that social media platforms’ recommendation systems have a ‘funnelling effect‘, promoting a narrow selection of videos and narrowing the range of views to which users are exposed. There are concerns, but not yet enough research, as to whether social media and its recommendation algorithms are pushing users into bubbles, echo chambers with like-minded users, or even to ‘rabbit holes’ towards increasingly extreme content.

Young people’s participation in European elections and their media habits

The European Youth Forum has been campaigning to lower the voting age to 16; this is a national competence, however, and is therefore for the Member States to decide. In the 2024 European elections, four Member States (Belgium, Germany, Malta and Austria) will allow their citizens to vote from the age of 16, and in Greece the voting age is 17.

After declining ever since the first European elections in 1979, electoral turnout in the 2019 elections rose by 8 percentage points compared with 2014, reaching 50.6 %. This increase was driven by a surge in youth participation. The results of a Eurobarometer survey on youth and democracy published on 13 May 2024 show that 64 % of young people (aged 15 to 30) plan to vote in the upcoming European elections. However, 19 % of young people say they are not interested in politics and 13 % say they are not interested in voting. Although voting was considered the most effective action for making their voices heard by decision-makers, ‘engaging in social media’ came in second place, selected by 32 % of the young respondents.

A 2023 European Parliament study highlights that ‘young people have never withdrawn from politics or become inactive, but engage in various forms’. Social media is the preferred channel for young people’s online political engagement, offering the possibility to mobilise a massive number of people, at an incredible speed, across borders. On social media, young people inform themselves about politics and current affairs that they consider relevant to them.

The Eurobarometer News & Media Survey 2023 showed that, while older respondents have a preference for using the website of the news source (of a newspaper etc.) to access news, younger respondents are more likely read articles or posts that appear in their online social networks, or content shared by friends on messaging apps. Compared with the previous survey conducted in 2022, the use of TikTok as an online social media platform had increased across all age groups.

Examples of EU policies affecting social media ahead of the elections

In its meeting of 15 May 2024, the European Commission discussed the danger of disinformation accelerating ahead of the June elections. ‘Disinformation is on the rise, cheaper to produce with artificial intelligence and more widely distributed through social media’, Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová warned. The Commission had identified narratives that are pushed to undermine trust in media and election processes, and warned about deepfake video or audio clips trying to discredit candidates shortly before the elections.

In February 2023, the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council banned their staff from using TikTok on their devices using work-related apps, owing to cyber security concerns. The Parliament also blocks the app on its internal Wi-Fi. However, during the winter and spring of 2024, ahead of the European elections, many of the candidates and the Parliament finally went back on the app, considering their presence on TikTok to be essential if they want to reach young voters.

The Commission has taken numerous actions regarding social platforms under the recent Digital Services Act – for example, requesting more information from X on its content moderation activities, in particular curtailing its team of content moderators and reducing linguistic coverage from eleven EU languages to seven. The Commission has also opened probes into Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, as well as TikTok. Although critical voices in the fact-checking community point out that these probes are too late to make a change ahead of the European elections, they will be useful for the future.

A strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation, signed by 44 companies – including Google, Meta and TikTok – was set up in 2022. The signatories committed to taking action in several areas to combat disinformation, inter alia setting up a rapid response system to ensure swift cooperation during election periods. Originally among the signatories, X later withdrew from the code in May 2023.

A year ahead of the elections, the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) established a Task Force on the 2024 European Elections. The EDMO fact-checking network, covering all 27 EU Member States, has been publishing daily, weekly and monthly reports analysing disinformation narratives and trends linked to the European elections at national, regional and European level, as well as investigations to counter disinformation. Examples of disinformation circulating ahead of the elections include the EU ‘forcing people to eat insect food‘ against their will, and various themes linked to the Green Deal, such as the EU wanting to ban repairing cars older than 15 years. In Germany, false stories about how to use voting ballots have been circulating that would actually make the vote invalid.

On 21 May 2024, the Council approved conclusions on safeguarding elections from foreign interference, providing an overview of the various mechanisms that the EU has at its disposal. On 10 May, Eurostat also launched a temporary fact-checking service for the election period.

Possible future steps

According to the 2023 News & Media Eurobarometer, 79 % of young Europeans (aged between 15 and 24) follow influencers – content creators who post content on social media and video-sharing platforms – while only 14 % of those aged over 55 do so. In the meeting of Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Ministers on 14 May 2024, the Council adopted conclusions on the rise of influencers as part of the EU’s media ecosystem, noting that influencers are having an increasing impact on the online content and information that people consume on a daily basis in the EU. While this impact is often positive, it can potentially be harmful, both to individuals’ mental health and at a societal level in areas such as democracy. The Council conclusions stress that influencers need media literacy skills to understand the potential negative impact of sharing mis- and disinformation, online hate speech, cyberbullying and other illegal or harmful content.

Among the recommendations proposed by the EU Youth Conference – held in March 2024 in Ghent, Belgium, as part of the 10th cycle of the EU Youth Dialogue – is a proposal to implement critical thinking workshops in schools, enabling youngsters to gain long-term critical thinking and media literacy skills. The youth representatives also proposed that the EU should, in cooperation with the Member States, establish a campaign for young people on how to identify quality information and fight disinformation.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Youth, social media and the European elections‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

L'homme d'affaires, qui fut le « banquier du DPS », est emprisonné au Monténégro depuis son extradition de Grande-Bretagne le 30 avril. Duško Knežević promet de tout révéler sur Milo Đukanović... À condition d'être remis en liberté.

- Le fil de l'Info / Courrier des Balkans, Monténégro, Corruption Monténégro, Défense, police et justice, Politique intérieure

Americas All Clear Repair Services won a $15 million firm-fixed-price contract for UH-60 Black Hawk maintenance and overhaul. Bids were solicited via the internet with two received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of May 30, 2029. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting […]

A view of Antigua and Barbuda, the host of the fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4), 27-30 May 2024. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jun 3 2024 (IPS)

“We are facing unenviable decisions, between the recovery of today or the development of tomorrow”. These were the words of Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, of Samoa at the opening of the 4th International Conference on Small Islands Developing States (SIDS4).

Few can deny the true of the powerful message of the Samoan Prime Minister who is also the leading the international group representing the small island states, formally the Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS.

Yet who is listening? The small island states conclave that was hosted by Antigua and Barbuda between the 27 and 30 of May had two central goals.

On the one hand, once again raise awareness on the moral responsibility that the industrialized world, together with the petrostates have towards the most vulnerable, most fragile nations in the world.

On the other hand, the gathering was centered on charting the way forward with a new global plan that would replace the SAMOA Pathway, the blueprint that guided the priorities of these nations in the last decade that was built on the Barbados Plan of Actions, the first ever global plan for small island nations.

The new framework, entitled The Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for Small Island Developing States or ABAS like its predecessors, does not like ambition. It sets key and vital priorities and strategies upon their implementation the real survival of these nation islands will depend on.

It is also predicated on the indispensable and unnegotiable role that rich countries should play to support small island nations while they navigate climate warming.

Unsurprisingly, the problem is that, as always, developed nations struggle to walk the talk while claiming doing their part in supporting the island nations. Perhaps we should not question their good intentions but the problem is that the means put at disposal are not nearly close to what is needed: trillions and trillions in American dollars.

Certainly, the entire world was not focused on St. John’s, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda. No matter the hype that the United Nations tried to give to the event, unfortunately the world was not watching.

No matter the passionate speeches given there, including the pleas by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres “SIDS can make an almighty noise together to deliver meaningful change to benefit the whole of humankind”, Guterres said during his opening address.

He went further. “Small Island Developing States have every right and reason to insist that developed economies fulfil their pledge to double adaptation financing by 2025”.

While there was plenty of heads of governments from within the SIDS and senior officials within the United Nations, the gathering was mostly a no-show for many of the top players.

For example, Ajay Banga, the President of the World Bank was not there. The same could be said of Masatsugu Asakawa, the President of the Asian Development Bank and for Nadia Calviño, the President of the European Investment Bank.

These are the biggest multilateral lenders and it is hard to understand why they did not show solidarity with the most threatened nations in the world. You can now understand why no major funding initiative exclusively focusing on SIDS was launched during the SIDS4.

Yes. both the United States and the EU made some announcements but none was specifically designed for small islands nations. The States announced a scale up of international public finance to over USD 11 billion annually by 2024 while the EU committed to step up its Global Gateway by mobilizing EUR 300 billion in public and private investments by 2027 in sustainable development.

These are important commitments but will they really materialize? Out of them, how much SIDS nations will get? These are genuine questions that are feeding a well justified sense of skepticism for what the so called North is going to do for vulnerable and in danger nations.

In all truth, agencies like the UNDP and UNICEF stepped up their game.

The former announced an array of initiatives, including the Blue and Green Islands Integrated Program (BGI-IP), a $135 million joint initiative with the Global Environment Facility.

The program “emphasizes the crucial role of nature and expand nature-based solutions to combat environmental degradation in three key sectors: urban development, food production, and tourism”.

UNDP also produced an important policy brief, “Breaking through the disaster-response cycle in SIDS: aligning financing to urgent climate action” that offers an analysis of what is needed for the island nations to win over the battle against climate change.

UNICEF instead led the organization of SIDS Global Children and Youth Action Summit held before the official governments led forum. It is a symbolically important manifestation on how young people should be in the driving seat when leaders and global institutions talks about policy formulations that will directly impact the future generations.

Once again, another action plan or as called this time a Commitment to Action, was issued by the youths but we do know that such documents, despite the noble intention and efforts putting in preparing them, do not count.

That’s why we should ask ourselves when young people will be really allowed to take part in the real discussions, when the real decisions are taken. Unfortunately, we are still far from that moment.

The ABAS plan itself contains some interesting proposals but they are mostly technicalities that still need full endorsement of the international community. These include the SIDS Debt Sustainability Support Service and Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI), that are going to be tools tailored made for island nations to be able to have better deals in terms of getting the resources needed not only to cope with their vulnerabilities but also thrive despite of them.

After the closing of the summit, we can say that, despite the rhetoric, SIDS nations are on their own. They should all learn from some of their peers like Vanuatu and Barbados who both have been punching above their weigh with global initiatives to defend their own strategic interests.

The former has been taking the lead with a petition to the International Court of Justice for the so-called Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States relevant to Climate Action.

The latter instead create a buzz in the international financial systems with Bridgetown Initiative that is supposed to free considerable financial resources for developing nations endangered by the climate crisis.

The new Maldivian President, Mohamed Muizzu, that so far came to be known to the international community for his strong anti-India stance, tried to mobilize the global attention on the St John’s summit with an op-ed essay for The Guardian.

He and the host of the event, Gaston Alfonso Browne, the PM of Antigua and Barbuda, are behind the SIDS Debt Sustainability Support Service and indeed have been relentlessly advocating for the rights of the small island nations.

One of the outcomes, important though hardly a gamechanger, will be the creation of a SIDS Center of Excellence in Antigua and Barbuda that, among other things, will be focused on data.

Interestingly enough on the 21st of May, UNIDO, probably one of the weakest UN entities, announced a similar imitative in partnership with the government of Barbados.

I would call all these initiatives “Add-Ons”, nice but not what is required.

An analysis by UNCTAD brings even more clarity on the daunting needs of SIDS.

While only contributing to 1% of global carbon dioxide emissions, they only had access to $1.5 billion out of $100 billion in climate finance pledged to developing countries in 2019.

Perhaps the most important recent news related to small island nations did not come from the gracious St. John’s but from the opposite side of the Atlantic. In Hamburg, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, delivered an Advisory Opinion on the request submitted to the Tribunal by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change, a new SIDS led body, itself an interesting developed created just few years ago thanks to the leadership of Tuvalu and Antigua and Barbuda.

The conclusions of this opinion are fundamental because, slowly, step by step, we are building legal cases against green houses big emitters. First the tribunal ruled that “Anthropogenic GHG emissions into the atmosphere constitute pollution of the marine environment”.

Second, it said that “States Parties to the Convention have the specific obligations to take all necessary measures to prevent, reduce and control marine pollution from anthropogenic GHG emissions and to endeavor to harmonize their policies in this connection”.

Though non-binding, these statements will count on day.

The final press release issued by the UN at the closing of the SIDS4 summit, says that “The SIDS4 Conference has set the stage for the Summit of the Future taking place at UN Headquarters in New York from 22 to 23 September 2024”.

Do not count on that and the leaders of the SIDS nations that gathered in Antigua and Barbuda know it.

What perhaps is the most interesting aspects of the SIDS4 Summit might not be found in the official statements, a flurry of already well-known talking points. Rather what could matter the most is what the leaders of these nations have discussed among themselves behind the scene, far from the limelight.

The start reality is that they cannot rely on anyone to convince the world about their case.
That’s why only their determination, acumen and tactics will make a difference and what they know for sure is that they have to keep punching beyond their weight.

Simone Galimberti writes about the SDGs, youth-centered policy-making and a stronger and better United Nations.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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L'Association culturelle franco-hellénique Nisiotis, créée voici 14 ans, a le plaisir de vous convier à un stage exceptionnel de danse grecque a Paris, les 1° et 2 juin 2024 : un stage de Zeibekiko, LA danse grecque.
Avec Thomas Kolovos, danseur, professeur, et directeur du Centre Hellénique du Zeibekiko à Athènes.
Voici – enfin – et pour la première fois à Paris, le stage tant attendu pour comprendre, apprendre et intégrer les règles de cette danse, seule danse en Grèce a réunir, (…)

- Agenda / Région parisienne, Grèce

According to a recent World Bank assessment, 62 percent of all homes and 84 percent of health facilities in Gaza have been destroyed. Credit: Hosny Salah

By Melek Zahine
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Jun 2 2024 (IPS)

Throughout his long career, but especially these past heart-wrenching eight months, President Biden has consistently placed his ironclad loyalty to Israel over his fidelity and duty to the United States. The consequences this week have been catastrophic for the Palestinian people, made Israelis even less secure, and betrayed American national security and democratic integrity.

The entire Gaza Strip and its 2.3 million civilians, nearly fifty percent of whom are children, are now pushed to their limits, struggling to survive the complex humanitarian crisis literally facing every Palestinian man, woman, and child in the beleaguered enclave. By restricting the flow of food and essential aid through every land crossing, including U.S. humanitarian assistance, while simultaneously bombing civilian areas across the entirety of Gaza, Israel is accelerating levels of famine and displacement (The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Scale). By doing so, it also violates multiple U.S. and international laws, preventing states from blocking humanitarian aid during times of war. “Israel has effectively created a gulag by sealing all borders and access to the sea, a cruel irony for a nation founded on the memory of Jewish ghettos in Warsaw (Anonymous source).”

Biden’s announcement on Friday that Israel had agreed to a ceasefire is the same plan that Israel said it would support a month ago and then decimated the Jabilia refugee camp and pushed forward with its ground assault on Rafah. Like his response to the I.C.J. ruling for Israel to halt its assault on Rafah earlier this week, President Biden has been utterly silent about Israel’s ongoing humanitarian blockade and military operations throughout the enclave. The only reply so far has been from his National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby. During a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Kirby essentially said, “Any loss of civilian life is heartbreaking…but for the moment, the U.S. won’t be making any changes to its foreign policy or its military aid to Israel. We don’t believe Israel’s actions in Rafah represent a major ground invasion. A major ground operation is thousands of troops maneuvered against targets on the ground.” Yet according to Omar Ashour, a Professor of Security and Military Studies at The Doha Institute of Military Studies, Israel’s “limited military operation” in Rafah is anything but limited, as “six brigades consisting of more than 30,000 ground forces and tanks reached the heart of Rafah on Tuesday” the same day that Kirby made his statement. In the week since Israeli forces entered Rafah, 70 Palestinian civilians have been killed and hundreds injured.

Thankfully, President Biden’s reckless foreign policy doesn’t speak for the entire U.S. government and nation. The millions of Americans bravely challenging his unquestioning diplomatic and military aid to Israel represent a cross-section of American society, including thousands of Jewish Americans as well as numerous Holocaust survivors and their descendants (www.doubledown.news, www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org). More than half of American voters, including a majority of democrats, republicans, and independents, disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza, according to a March Gallop Poll, and two-thirds of American voters have called for the United States to support a permanent ceasefire and a de-escalation of the violence in Gaza (Data for Progress, 27.02.2024 Survey).

Not only is President Biden consistently ignoring diverse calls for moral action on Gaza from college students and the general public, but he has foolishly sidelined critical voices from public servants across multiple U.S. government agencies as well as within his own administration. As early as October, Josh Paul, a Director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, responsible for U.S. defense diplomacy, security assistance, and arms transfers, was the first to ring alarm bells against “adding fuel to the fire.” Before resigning, Paul implored Biden Administration officials to apply the Leahy Law, a U.S. Foreign Assistance Act that prohibits military assistance to any force in gross violation of human rights. Amidst a mounting civilian death toll and countless war crimes being reported by multiple independent sources, not only was Paul’s warning dismissed, but President Biden doubled down and circumvented U.S. Congressional oversight on two separate occasions to expedite a $250 million sale of highly lethal weapons to Israel. Also in December, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pressed upon the president to consider that as Israel’s principal arms provider, “the United States is not a bystander in Israel’s war against Hamas” and of the “unacceptably high civilian casualty rates in Gaza” due to Israel’s “very loose rules of engagement” and its “lack of restraint in pursuing Hamas leaders.”

On February 2, more than 800 civil servants signed an open letter calling on the Biden Administration to reconsider its unconditional support for Israel’s war in Gaza, stating that “Israel has shown no boundaries in its military operations and has further risked the lives of the remaining Israeli hostages.” In April, Hala Rharrit, a veteran U.S. Diplomat, and in May, Lily Greenberg Call, a Jewish-American political appointee, stepped down from their positions after months of warning that continued unconditional support for Israel from the White House was exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and failing to serve American foreign policy interests. As I write this opinion piece, two more U.S. Government officials have announced their resignations, bringing the number of U.S. government resignations to nine.

The plight of the Israeli hostages is growing more desperate by the day, and the number of casualties in Gaza has now reached 120,000. While President Biden’s renewed push for a ceasefire is welcome, it doesn’t go far enough. President Biden must personally lead efforts for a truce between Israel and Hamas by showing the United States is serious about peace. He can achieve this by taking three principled, immediate, and actionable steps to mitigate the violence and harm that the United States is contributing to in Gaza. President Biden must personally demand Israel reopen all land crossings, announce an arms embargo until a lasting peace is achieved, and enforce a no-fly zone over Gaza so that the hostages can be released in a calm environment and humanitarian organizations can safely and rapidly scale up desperately needed assistance efforts.

When the moment of reckoning comes, President Biden and his administration won’t be able to claim ignorance. All along these past eight months, Americans from both inside the U.S. government and the general public have spoken with moral clarity, asking President Biden to simply abide by the principles and domestic and international laws for which the United States is already a party.

The author is a Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Response Specialist

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Mapping the European Parliament’s powers in different areas

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