For a second consecutive year, the US State Department has denied visas to members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority seeking to attend the upcoming session of the UN General Assembly. This petty and unreasonable action violates international law. When the UN’s headquarters were established in New York, it was agreed by treaty that the United States “shall not impose any impediment” to the travel of representatives of U.N. missions to the “headquarters district” in New York. “When visas are required,” it says, “they shall be granted without charge and as promptly as possible.”
What is the State Department’s reason for blocking the Palestinians? It’s their “failure to reform … and their ongoing activities that undermine the prospects for peace.” I guess the Israeli delegation, by contrast, gets its visas stamped because the far-right Netanyahu regime is reforming by supporting settler violence in the West Bank and promoting peace through bombing in Gaza and Lebanon.
And this news just in from The Guardian: A UN investigation of US attacks last February on a sports complex and a school, in the latter case resulting in 156 deaths including 120 children, has “found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.” Several months after the Pentagon concluded its own investigation into the attack on the school by a Tomahawk missile, it has yet to reveal the results. Another example of peace through strength?
In the Human Interest - Mel Gurtov 