At this point the country should be suspended from UN, like Apartheid SA was before, in 1974. See https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/13/archives/south-africa-is-...
Maybe without a UN, we would already be having a WWIII. It is impossible to weight its influence, but I very much doubt it is having any nefarious effect.
No need to sledgehammer the world until it gets better
Israel is a satellite state of the US in all but name. You'd have a better shot at dissolving the UN entirely than suspending Israel.
What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council, considering it is a nuclear armed state.
The US is more reflexively pro-Israel than Israel is pro-US in international policy, the opposite of what you’d expect if Israel was a US vassal.
> What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council
There are lots of reasons, but one that renders all the others secondary is that the US can’t add permanent Security Council members.
> considering it is a nuclear armed state.
India, Pakistan, North Korea, and, when it was a nuclear-armed state, South Africa also are (and were) not permanent UNSC members, a set whuch hasn't expanded, though two seats have switched hands, since the UN was founded.
The whole organization needs to be uprooted and rebuilt. It's become a farce.
Just by allowing Russia to keep the permanent seat of USSR legitimizes their revanchist goals to regain the territories they controlled during the cold war
The best move UN could do is to kick Russia out of permanent seat as it was done with Republic of China, US has the mechanisms to do it but sadly they never will
To be clear, I totally expected a comment like that, but I can guarantee you 1000% that no Ukrainians will be hanging on to Russian cargo plane wheels once they are booted out.
It is very clear that the current administration is backed into a corner and trying to make the best of the situation.
FWIW: This is not a knock against the current administration.
However, Israel left Gaza in 2005 with no deal as part of US pressure (which led to the current situation). Israel offered a Palestinians a country which included east Jerusalem twice based on US pressure. Israel left Lebanon alone due to such pressure.
Israel didn't attack Lebanon for a year and tried to settle due to US pressure despite an average of 25 rockets per day towards civilian population.
Imagine a country being attacked and fired on for nearly 20 years (by Hamas) and keeping reposes "moderate". That's US pressure and influence right there. Israel delayed going into Rafah due to US pressure, it turns out Sinwar and quite a few hostages were there...
The reason it seems that US pressure isn't working is mostly because no one knows what to do exactly. Hostages are still held by Hamas. Hezbollah is still firing rockets/drones even now. I'm 100% for a hostage exchange but right now there's no deal, part of that is because of Netanyahu (who is terrible) but not all of it. The US can't fire Netanyahu (I wish they could...), and that's a problem. They want to strengthen anti-Netanyahu forces within Israel while still moderating its actions, that's a very tight rope to walk on.
Now, just to short-circuit the reply chain, you're going to say that Hamas would have just used the borders to move in weapons. Sure, that's true. In fact, they dug a bunch of tunnels under the Israeli controlled border crossings and smuggled in a bunch of weapons. Normal stuff like food and medicine though were constantly blocked or delayed.
By the way, I don't know how to solve this problem well at this point. Both sides have done enough evil shit to each other that they will want to kill each other for generations. Israel though, has never withdrawn from Gaza, and Israel has never agreed to abide by the terms of UN Resolution 242 that obligates them to withdraw from the 1967 occupied territories. What I expect to happen based on the ground reality and statements from members of the Israeli government is that the Palestinians in Gaza will either die or have their lives be made so intolerable that they leave, and then Israel will annex the land, just as they have in Jerusalem and many areas of the West Bank.
On which occasions?
This does not seem clear at all. What has led you to think so?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-...
https://m.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-822306
It goes on and on. Escalating conflict in the ME, such as with Israel and Lebanon, regardless of who is at fault, is not in the interest of the US. The administration feels attempts to deescalate are falling on deaf ears, but is in a politically precarious situation.
That isn't the criteria for being a council member, if it were they'd need to allow India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Plus, pretty sure the US does not officially recognize Israel as a nuclear power, it's one of those open secret things
Besides that, how would the US benefit from another country being able to veto anything they want to do in the UN? Sure, they'd probably agree with far more things than Russia or China, but the US wouldn't gain anything from them being there.
Israel provides us zero military bases, even when Arab countries provide us dozens. Despite all of the support we give them and have given them, they have repeatedly escalated conflicts when the U.S. asked them to stop. Today, we are unable to ship goods through the Red Sea because the Houthis are upset over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
In many ways Israel does the US' dirty work, like crippling Hezbollah which is responsible for numerous attacks against US (and other Western) personnel.
The Houthis are squarely to blame for the disruption of Red Sea shipping; Israel's military operation in a different country isn't a legitimate reason to attack (almost) random ships.
Many in the U.S. feel that protecting Israel is a moral cause, but it is undeniably a strategic albatross for us.
You can't know that. The Iranian Islamic revolution happened not because of Israel. Iran would have probably tried to gain influence through proxies and destabilize the Middle East regardless of Israel. It would have joined forces with Russia and China. It would have probably tried acquiring nuclear weapons and it would have hated the U.S (which it calls Big Satan to this day). In short Iran would have been a huge headache and security risk for the U.S and the West even if Israel didn't exist imo. The U.S is definitely strong enough to deal with Iran without Israel, but its helpful to have allies in a very very unstable neighborhood.
No, another is that they are proxies of Iran, which the US has problems with that go beyond attacking Israel.
In one case, Mainland China got the bomb in '64 and replaced Taiwan on the security council within a decade.
The USSR didn't test one until 1949, the UK in 1952, France in 1960, and China (as you mentioned) in 1964. The Soviet Union had an early start because of their spies in the Manhattan Project, while the UK contributed to it during the War. 15 years would pass before another permanent member caught up.
And Russia took the USSR's seat just as China did Taiwan's.
For example, it's hard to comprehend how a country like Russia is not suspended?
A country which signed the Charter, and is member of the security council, is trying to annex a country of 40 million people, claiming they and their culture don't exist.
They don't even hide the genocide intent, and yet Guterres is visiting the BRICS conference in Russia legitimizing the regime. Despicable.
Besides, ethnic cleansing and genocide are their own special kind of evil- I'm not sure Russia is guilty also of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
Both things could be bad at the same time.
Because Russia has struck more than 1.500 medical facilities, including a Maternity and a Children's Hospital.
By the way, this is also a common tactic, which was recurrently used in Chechnya.
One of these we have 0 control over (Russia). The other one (Israel) we're funding, supporting, aiding, and abetting.
Do you realize that in less than 3 years Russia has caused more than 1.000.000 casualties, Russia has kidnapped more than 25.000 Children, and made 10.000.000 people into refugees some of them filtrated in Russia?
It's like the destruction of +1,500 medical facilities, deliberately, isn't much of a big deal...
Both are horrible events but at completely different scales. We're talking about a country of 40.000.000 people who was at peace, posed no threat to anyone, and never attacked any neighboring country. There are several days of +1.000 casualties - these are human beings, I don't know why you're deliberately dehumanizing Ukrainians and Russians.
Europe hasn't seen anything like this since WW2, even after we witnessed the genocide of Chechens at the hands of Russia, another one.