The world is in a terrible state. For 42 days, Israel has been pulverising the Palestinians — infants, children and women — and those who can stop the genocide don't want to. And those who don't have the power just can't stop the massacre.
We saw that at the extraordinary summit of the Arab and Muslim countries on Saturday. They called for the carnage to end and Israel to be tried for war crimes.
It was noise on paper and mere sound bites. No more. Oh yes, there were dissenting Arab voices, too, when it came to a call to sever ties with the murderous Zionist regime.
To these countries, economics trumped human lives. What a shame. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had the audacity to threaten the Arab nations not to interfere in its mission to annihilate the Palestinians. His Hobson's choice for the Arab countries? Sit tight and watch Israel do what it wants.
What world are we living in? One thing for sure, it is one where the rule of law plays no part. It is a free-for-all as long as you are allied with the superpowers.
The Zionist regime in Tel Aviv is, hence the licence to kill. Look at how they have got away with bombing two refugee camps out of existence.
No opening of investigations. No issuance of warrants of arrest. No, these are only for Russia and nations of the Global South.
Just see what the United Nations has become: sound and fury, signifying nothing, to borrow the words of Shakespeare.
Yes, Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general, had some harsh words for Israel, but the reality is he alone can't do much. Neither can the UN General Assembly (UNGA).
Recently, the 198-member body passed a resolution by 120-14 calling for a humanitarian truce in Gaza. None materialised. All it did was to add another resolution to the UNGA library. And so the Israelis continue to bestialise the Palestinians with the encouragement of the superpowers.
Not that the UN has no legal instruments that it can make use of against the Israelis. It has plenty. There is the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Plus, it has at its disposal the much-peddled Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
There is also the Statute of Rome that created the International Criminal Court which gives the UN Security Council (UNSC) the power to make referrals to the court.
Laws aren't the problem; there are more than is necessary. The problem is the UNSC, a body that must necessarily bear the responsibility for all the disorder in the world, including for what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
For 78 years, this most unrepresentative body of the world has gone around creating nations, peoples and regimes. Is it any surprise that the world is in such a mess?
The UN, especially the UNSC, must be reminded of the preamble of the UN Charter: "We the people of the United Nations." No, there isn't a "we". The UNSC has split the world into "you" and "us".
This is no way "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small", as the preamble of the UN Charter trumpets. Mean it, we say.
