Tuesday 24 October 2023

United Nations Day

 Oh valiant hearts, who to your glory came

Through  dust and conflict and conflict and through battle flame;

Tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved,

Your memory hallowed in the land you loved.


Proudly you gathered, rank on rank, to war;

As who had heard God's message from afar;

All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave

To save mankind, yourselves you scorned to save.

 

Those lovely lines were written by Sir  John Stanhope  Arkwright and presumably published in his collection of poems, "The Supreme Sacrifice," in 1919.  We shall be singing them to a haunting tune on Remembrance Sunday in a couple of weeks time.  They are,of course, all lies.

Over 100 years later thousands of troops are currently gathering "rank on rank" to wreak havoc in the Gaza Strip and Russian and Ukrainian boys and now girls, men and now women, are lying tranquilly or otherwise, in Eastern European soil, having already given "their all."

 Except of course that they didn't "give" it: for the most part they are and were conscripts who had and have no choice.  Their lives were and are being taken because of a failure of politics

 Someone will write nice poems and songs or their equivalent in Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew,  Arabic or whatever  to sanitise the deaths so that their elders, relatives and friends can think of them as clean and noble.  But they won't have been; they well have been slow and agonising and frightening..

 Many soldiers left to die horrible deaths on the No-man's Lands of the First World War of which Arkwright wrote cried out for their mothers, in German, French or English, as appropriate.

 Today is United Nations Day, to celebrate the world's second attempt to say "never again,"  But it stands by impotent as the  leaders of the "Great Powers" look over their shoulders at the lowest instincts of their electorates. A simple motion to demand access for aid to Gaza was vetoed by the Americans.  Acting independently, the UK bravely "abstained." 

Two letters in today's Guardian call for grown-up leaders to emerge.  One, from a Prof Jeremy Holmes, asks "...what if Israel had not met horror with horror?"  Another, from a John Stone, calls for the "rules of war" to be replaced by the "principles of peace."  

Another article claims that, before the land invasion of Gaza has even started, a child is killed every 15 minutes by the aerial bombardment.  And the slaughter in Ukraine grinds on, no longer front-page news.

Prof Stone points out that Nelson |Mandela rose above the instinct of retribution and brought apartheid to an end.  We desperately need statesmen of similar calibre who are capable of harnessing our better natures.

I hope that when they appear we are prepared to support them, and that the next generation enjoys a new and refreshed United Nations.

 

PS.  As reported in the Guardian 25/10/23 the UN Secretary General " tells it like it is...."

Guterres said the 7 October attacks by Hamas were “appalling” but did not happen in a vacuum. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he said. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

 

The Israeli authorities rush to condemn him.  Now lets hope the "leaders of  the West" flock to his support.


 

 



9 comments:

  1. Thank you for this thoughtful post. I especially liked: 'Today is United Nations Day, to celebrate the world's second attempt to say "never again," But it stands by impotent as the leaders of the "Great Powers" look over their shoulders at the lowest instincts of their electorates. A simple motion to demand access for aid to Gaza was vetoed by the Americans. Acting independently, the UK bravely "abstained." '
    Creating the nation state of Israel was one of the first acts of the United Nations. But 75 years on, what can the UN do now? It can impose no military or economic sanctions. Even if Israel would allow a UN Peace-keeping force into Gaza, how would it be constituted and directed, and to what end? The Security Council includes Russia and China. The UN project has failed. All the same, it was refreshing to hear Guterres speaking truth unto power.

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    1. The UN project has failed.

      Failed? Not at all! It succeeded brilliantly. The point of the United Nations was to give a forum where states could throw tantrums, scream and shout and in extremis storm out of, in order that they had a harmless way to vent these frustrations without it leading to war. The very ineffectiveness by design of the UN, with a permanently deadlocked Security Council, was part of the point: if the UN mattered, if states had to take it seriously, then it couldn’t have fulfilled its function of allowing them to blow off steam without having serious consequences.

      And it is a rôle the United States played perfectly throughout the Cold War. Failed? No, the project — which was never to try to pave the way to a ‘world government’ nor to try to create a supranational body to impose its own version of ‘order’, either one of which would have crashed and burnt — was a great success.

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  2. Except of course that they didn't "give" it: for the most part they are and were conscripts who had and have no choice.

    In the case of the Russian army, that's true. In the case of the Ukrainian Army, exact figures are hard to come by, but a lot are volunteers; and as for Israel many thousands of ex-reservists living abroad have been voluntarily travelling back in order to serve.

    But that's hardy surprising given that Ukraine and Israel are fighting for a good cause: the survival of their homeland. I dare say that if a hostile nation invaded the United Kingdom there'd be plenty of volunteers to fight. I know I would; wouldn't you?

    So yes, they certainly are nobly giving of themselves.

    One, from a Prof Jeremy Holmes, asks "...what if Israel had not met horror with horror?"

    We know the answer to that: more Israelis would be dead. Israel is surrounded by enemies who wish to annihilate it; if Israel had not fought back in 1973 it would have been totally destroyed. If Israel does not meet force with force it will cease to exist. There is simply no negotiated settlement that can be reached when one side will not stop fighting until the other side is wiped out. As Golda Meir said, 'If the Arabs put down their guns there would be no more fighting. If the Israelis put down theirs there would be no more Israel.'

    “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he said. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

    So the Jews deserved what they got on the 7th of October, is that what you're saying? The beheadings and incinerations of children were appalling but understandable? Disgusting.

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  3. Here's a paragraph from Matthew Segalov's article in today's Observer (30/19/23):
    "Compassion is what will help halt this bloodshed in the longer term. For decades, civilians on both sides have been failed by political leaders who thrive off conflict and tension. Even now, western leaders defend the breaking of international law, and refuse to call for a ceasefire – the bare minimum. Joe Biden labelled Hamas “the other team”; Rishi Sunak wants Israel to “win”, as if it’s all a game for geopolitical manoeuvring"

    I suggest reading the entire article

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    1. Compassion is what will help halt this bloodshed in the longer term.

      No, it won’t. When one side wants to totally eradicate the other, and will not settle for anything less than that, then no amount of compassion will stop the bloodshed.

      Even now, western leaders defend the breaking of international law,

      Name one western leader who has defended the breaking of international law and the exact articles of international law, the breaking of which they have defended.

      and refuse to call for a ceasefire – the bare minimum.

      Hands broke the last ceasefire by laughing a surprise attack that killed over a thousand Israeli civilians. If there is another ceasefire they will use the time to regroup and rearm and then do exactly the same again. So who in their right mind would call for a ceasefire, knowing that?

      Rishi Sunak wants Israel to “win”, as if it’s all a game for geopolitical manoeuvring

      No, he wants Israel to win because Israel is in a war for its very survival. If Israel loses, it ceases to exist. ‘From the river to the sea,’ remember?

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  4. So you discount the views of a seasoned Jewish commentator?
    The problem with your approach is That it perpetuates the cycle of violence.
    Breaking it actually works.
    After the First World War the winners “squeezed Germany until the pips squeaked.” That led to the Second World War.
    After the Second the winners mollycoddled the losers with Marshall Aid. Result, relative peace in Europe for 70 years.
    On his release Mandela , rather than seeking revenge, set up a Peace and Reconciliation Commission. Results not yet perfect, but livable.

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    1. You seem to think there is some kind of negotiated settlement to be found here, and the problem is that people are just not willing to find it. But what negotiated settlement can there possibly be when one side wants to kill all Jews between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and the other side is Jews who live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean and who don’t want to be killed?

      I mean I suppose you could suggest a compromise like they get to kill half the Jews, would that be your idea? But I don’t think Hamas would go for that. I think for them it’s all the Jews or nothing. So what is the negotiated settlement there?

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  5. So you discount the views of a seasoned Jewish commentator?

    When they are wrong I do.

    The problem with your approach is That it perpetuates the cycle of violence.
    Breaking it actually works.


    How does a ceasefire ‘break the cycle of violence’ when one side just used the time to regroup, rearm, and then launch on another murder spree? It seems to me that if anything perpetuate the cycle of violence it’s that.

    After the First World War the winners “squeezed Germany until the pips squeaked.” That led to the Second World War.

    This is a total misreading of history. If the provisions of Versailles had been properly enforced, Germany would never have been in a position to launch the second World War. The problem was not that Germany was treated too harshly after the First World War but that it was treated too leniently and allowed to get away with breaching the terms of peace with regards to building up its armed forces.

    After the Second the winners mollycoddled the losers with Marshall Aid. Result, relative peace in Europe for 70 years.

    And again this is a total misunderstanding. For a start, the difference between the end of the Second World War and the First World War was that the Allies realised that they had made a terrible mistake at the end of the first by not invading Germany and making it clear that Germany had utterly lost, thus allowing various German factions to claim that their leaders had ‘sold them out’ when they could have won if they’d kept fighting, one of which factions eventually got into power. No such delusion was possible after the total defeat of the Second World War. This shows that if you are to defeat an enemy you must not leave the job half-done, as happened in 1918 and led to 1937; you must finish the job.

    Secondly, the 70 years of relative peace that Europe enjoyed until recently was primarily due to the existence of a shared enemy in the Soviet Union, together with the threat of devastating nuclear warfare should conflicts get out of control meaning that it was in everyone’s best interests to find ways other than war of resolving conflicts. The Marshall Plan, and indeed the EU, has nothing to do with it: it was entirely fear (of the USSR, of nuclear war) that kept peace.

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