On Friday 10 May the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to recognize Palestine as a member state of the United Nations. This is a historic vote, which photographs an increasingly evident reality: the United States is increasingly isolated in the international context, and its power could be based on an outdated conception of international cultural and economic power relations.
Friday’s vote will not produce concrete effects, in fact – except for the recognition of new rights and privileges for Palestine within the United Nations, albeit as an observer member – due to the previous US veto opposed within the Security Council. It is interesting to note that none of the other permanent members of the Council – Russia and China, but also Israel’s undisputed allies such as France and the United Kingdom – had voted like Washington there.
The Presidency Biden has already had the opportunity to stain itself with indelible shame through the veto opposed to the resolution for a ceasefire on February 20th. The resolution for the cease-fire passed on March 25th instead saw the United States present itself as the only nation to abstain out of 15 members of the Council (the other 14 naturally voted in favour).
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Il inflexible support of the United States to Israel, although tempered by verbal distancing deliberately devoid of concrete consequences, is perpetuated during a massacre of unimaginable dimensions, conducted without any respect for humanitarian law by a state that has ignored numerous UN resolutions for decades and reminders from the relevant judicial institutions. It shows the world and the new generations the hypocrisy of the major global power: ready to appeal to international law and democracy when it suits it, but to trample on them and support who despises them when the opposite is convenient.
The alternative to Biden’s Democratic faction – the Republican one Trump – is no exception: the former president is fiercely opposed to societies with a Muslim or non-white majority, and has implicitly recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, once again against all UN resolutions on the matter). The highest institution of international law is based in a nation that seems to despise it, although it has unilaterally proposed to interpret, in this century, what democracy and justice mean for the world, even at the price of wars with devastating consequences such as those against ‘Iraq and Palestine.
The General Assembly vote ended with 143 votes in favour, 25 abstentions and 9 against. The only countries of any demographic significance to have taken the extreme position of the USA are nations governed by the xenophobic far right, such as Hungary and Argentina. The presence of Italy among the small group of abstained (in which almost only European countries appear, and only a part of them) confirms how much the Meloni government is dominated by Washington, fully in line with the complete subservience in foreign policy desired in this century by the man who started his career, SIlvio Berlusconi.
The fragility, isolation and ideological unsustainability of these positions while Israel announces an inconceivable offensive on Rafah, are demonstrated by the neurotic reactions of the Italian and US (or French) governments in the face of peaceful demonstrations for Gaza, starting from university campus. Supporting Israel or the USA in the current global scenario, continuing to repeat the rigmarole of the pillars of freedom and democracy in the world, means making oneself co-responsible of policies that will lead the planet to catastrophe.
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More useful would be to look for solutions located in models of politics and society different from the current one, and organize ourselves around them. These models should reject religious or national supremacism and essentialism and not understand the concepts of freedom and democracy according to liberal standards, instead denouncing them as the expression of a civilization of colonization and human and environmental exploitation that it is not sustainable. Persisting in the justification of current policies means making the different communities of the planet a maneuvering ground for the various imperialisms, traditional or emerging – up to the increasingly concrete prospect of a global war catastrophe.