The Lead

What Good Does Acting on Principle Do?

by David Shavin (EIRNS) — Mar. 28, 2024

March 28, 2024 (EIRNS)—The International Court of Justice ordered Israel today to take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary….”

Israel substantially ignored the ICJ orders of January 26, and now the potential famine in Gaza is an actual famine. As long as the Netanyahu clique is sponsored by London and Washington, of what value is today’s ICJ action?

Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defense Micheál Martin, the Tánaiste, or second-ranking official in the Irish government, announced yesterday that Ireland will intervene on the side of South Africa’s legal action against genocide in Gaza. He declared: “What we are seeing in Gaza now, represents the blatant violation of international humanitarian law on a mass scale…. The purposeful withholding of humanitarian assistance to civilians.…” Ireland has decided to take this step now, he said, because “the situation could not be more stark; half the population of Gaza face imminent famine and 100% of the population face acute food insecurity. As the UN Secretary General said, as he inspected long lines of blocked relief trucks waiting to enter Gaza during his visit to Rafah… ‘it is time to truly flood Gaza with life-saving aid. The choice is clear: surge or starvation.’ I echo his words today.”

There were around 7,000 aid trucks stalled at the Rafah entry into Gaza, by Israeli actions allowing, on a good day, around 2-3% of them through. Of what use is the echoing of such words?

In a pre-Easter call to action, over 140 faith leaders from across the world urged “the U.S. and other world powers to halt additional arms sales to Israel, and make clear that Israel, the U.S., and all countries must abide by [the] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.… The United States and other nations’ further militarization of the conflict makes no one safer and instead prolongs suffering and causes more death and destruction.” President Biden was called upon to have the courage to stop shipping weapons into Israel. When was the last time Biden put moral courage above his political machinations?

Another State Department official, Annelle Sheline, yesterday resigned, writing that the starvation of 2 million people is done with “the diplomatic and military support of the U.S. government…. Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities,” she ended her passionate call to conscience: “I am haunted by the final social media post of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old U.S. Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25: `Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.’”

What good is Ireland’s action, the world religious leaders’, or Annelle Sheline’s?

Look again at Aaron Bushnell’s radical choice to sacrifice his life. It haunted Annelle Sheline. So, have Dr. Martin Luther King’s words from the mountaintop, before his death; as have those of the “White Rose” youth in Nazi Germany, haunted generations. If civilization is to pull out of a tailspin, that haunting voice must be allowed to work its power.

The alternative is to plunge deeper into a mind-numbing, heartless, soul-sickness. Witness the pathetic position poor State Department spokesman Matthew Miller is reduced to, as he explains that UN resolutions—referring to this week’s UN Security Council vote for an immediate ceasefire—are not binding, except when the U.S. wants them to be binding. This is a Humpty Dumpty, in Alice’s Wonderland, reduced to saying: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” This is Israel claiming that all the food in the world can go into Gaza, or the Biden administration pretending that massive weapons sent into Ukraine or Israel defends “democracy,” etc.

If democracy means anything, it is that every citizen may wrestle with their conscience, and have society come out stronger in the process. Don’t calculate the day and hour when such actions bear fruit. Don’t make book on such processes.

Do make book on the two weeks of focused activity leading up to the April 13 intervention on the world’s pathway, “The Oasis Plan: The LaRouche Solution for Peace Through Development Between Israel and Palestine and for All of Southwest Asia.”