Flying or otherwise

Flying or otherwise

I don’t give a fuck (flying or otherwise) whether or not the Israeli government’s claims are true that there are “terror” tunnels underneath the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Not one single fuck.

You do not bomb hospitals. You do not bomb schools. You do not bomb residential areas. You do not bomb overcrowded refugee camps. 

A few days ago Facebook reminded me that in 2015 I made this my cover photo.

I don’t remember what was going on eight years ago to make me post this, but, as a friend commented at the time, the message is (tragically) perennially apt.

When I was a kid watching episodes of the original Star Trek series, I loved the fact that the crew was of many nationalities and races. I was too young to realise how hopelessly flawed the United Nations is. To me the Federation was like an intergalactic United Nations. 

If only the United Nations could be what it was supposed to be. 

Established with great optimism in the aftermath of World War 2, the lofty goals of its charter state, in the very first Article that “The Purposes of the United Nations are”:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

All very laudable. And perhaps even achievable in an alternate universe where the charter hadn’t also appointed the five “winners” (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) as permanent members – all with veto power – of the Security Council. That decision condemns the organisation to be a paper tiger.

Yes, it can offer humanitarian assistance and refuge to the displaced, as it has been doing for decades at the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, now bombed three times by the Israeli military, most recently killing dozens at a UN-operated school. But it can do nothing except bluster and protest about the war crimes being committed in Gaza. (Or the war crimes being committed in Ukraine.) 

All it can do, all I can do, all anyone (with the exception of Joe Biden) can do is scream into the deaf ears of Benjamin Netanyahu (and Vladimir Putin): STOP KILLING PEOPLE, YOU FUCKING TWATS.