One of the first major projects of the the leadership of the United Nations after its Charter was ratified in San Francisco in 1945, was to call on the General Assembly to ratify the creation of Israel. In 1947-48 the UN’s plan of partitioning Palestine to establish a Jewish and Arab state, was partially implemented.
The problematic and partial implementation of Israel’s international existence as outlined in Resolution 181, was accompanied by the passage in 1948 of a sparsely-worded international law entitled the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. The concurrence of the passage of the Genocide Convention with the establishment of the Israeli entity in the international community was not coincidental.
Clearly the Genocide Convention was included to announce that Israel’s creation was placed behind a “Never Again” meant to block any repeat of the assault on European Jewry. Who could have anticipated that the Jewish state along with its US backers would become the protagonists on the delivering side of what is frequently described as the world’s first livestreamed genocide? Who could have imagined in 1948 that the onus of enforcing the Genocide Convention would be falling on those presently implementing an elaborate scheme of mass murder starting with the elimination of native Palestinians?
For two years now the world has been witnessing a campaign of systematic annihilation by the government and corporate leadership of Western Civilization with the Armed Forces of Israel and the United States as the tip of the invasive spear. The incapacity of the United Nations to produce any kind of armed force to protect the native Palestinians from a steady and multi-faceted process of ongoing annihilation has been flabbergasting to behold.
Even this late in the day, however, there is apparently a fall back position that some have argued must be attempted as the US-Israeli mass murderers move in for the final kill to be followed by forced displacement of any Palestinian survivors from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The formation of a UN Protection force with a mandate to protect the targeted population from annihilation can take place under the auspices of the UN General Assembly. The strategy, entitled United for Peace, was formulated in 1950 when the Generally Assembly passed Resolution 377 A (V). The member delegations of the Generally Assembly acted because one of the veto-holding permanent members of the Security Council, the top authority in the UN’s Chain of Command, prevented the UN from doing its duty in maintaining international peace and security.
https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/ufp/ufp.html
The UN Security Council has been similarly disabled since October of 2023 by the exercise of the veto power of the United States. The US government has consistently prevented the United Nations from intervening to protect the Palestinian targets of the ongoing genocide underway in Gaza and the West Bank.
Craig Mokhiber has emerged as one of the most thoughtful and determined voices of the movement to mobilize member countries of the UN General Assembly to make troops available to form a UN multinational Force. Such a Force would be devoted to protecting against the continuing and accelerating genocidal incursions building to some sort of culmination this autumn.
The United Nations General Assemble is becoming the site of a building crescendo of political and intellectual ferment concerning how to respond to the most contentious consequential case of genocide ever faced by UN members.
Craig Mokhiber was a top UN official who resigned from his job in October of 2023 as Director of the Office of Volker Turk, the UN’s High Commissioner of Human Rights. Mokhiber did so as a mark of his indignation that the situation in Occupied Palestine and in the UN had become so fraught. In his letter of resignation he wrote,
“This is a textbook case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.”
As Mokhiber sees it, the moment is such that the “stars may be aligned” to create the context that a significant portion of the UN General Assembly’s 193 countries may opt to provide contingents of UN soldiers to go into Gaza to protect the surviving targets of what some have come to see as the most ruthless genocidal onslaught ever. Mokhiber outlined the various operation that could take place with his colleagues including Ali Abunimah on the Electric Intifada.
The video was made following a public presentation made by Abunimah and Mokhiber presenting the substance of the latter’s essay in Mondoweiss.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/08/how-the-un-could-act-today-to-stop-the-genocide-in-palestin
Craig Mokhiber has been outspoken about his condemnation of the United Nations and its member countries for allowing the concept of universal human rights to deteriorate to the point we are at now. He resigned from the United Nations as a statement of how bad things have become, how far we have fallen since all the bold principles were unpacked in the international community especially in 1948.
Mokhiber makes it clear, however, the times are such that we must pull out all the stops in the effort to face down this final push to annihilate the remaining Palestinians. The native Palestinians of Palestine are perceived as an affront to the securing of the religious and racial basis of Jewish supremacy as the main pillar of Israel’s highest ideal.
yeah - this is what should have happened Oct 8th. Russia and China and all the other 157 countries that recognize Palestine need to do this - already. As far as the legitimacy of the Israeli State - it needs to be revoked.
The UN Security Council might be able to stop the genocide, but Israel has nukes, subs with missiles, fighter-bombers and surface to surface missiles. They may have warheads in key western capitals and other cities. NYC has long been rumored to have such radiation deteced in the Israeli embassy. I read that in the 1990s. It is unverifiable, of course.