Israel’s international stance has become increasingly tenuous over the past year, with huge amounts of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip and wars expanding throughout the region. Their ties with specific nations are only worsening as well, exemplified by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s testy conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron today.
Macron has been deeply critical of Israel’s flouting on UN Security Council resolutions, as well as their recent attacks on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. Noting that Israel was itself founded in 1947 by a UN resolution, Macron cautioned that it “is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN.”
As is so often the case, Netanyahu offered a dramatically different version of history, insisting that it was not the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution on partition that created Israel, but rather the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, and that Israel was founded because that ended in a military victory.
French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu echoed Macron’s concerns, saying it is increasingly a “problem” that Israel does not respect UN resolutions. The exact number of resolutions that Israel is violating on a daily basis isn’t clear, but between occupations, annexations, and ongoing wars it is certainly in the scores of violations.
Netanyahu appeared not to be prepared to even countenance a situation in which Israel does what the UN says, insisting he and Israel are entirely opposed to a ceasefire in their ongoing war in Lebanon and calling international opposition to their various wars a “disgrace.”
He further dismissed French calls for an arms embargo to stop Israeli aggression, saying that Israel will wins the wars “with or without their support” and that international shame would remain after Israel is victorious.
France is far from the only nation calling for an embargo, however, and that number is only growing as Israel expands its attacks into more regional nations and spurns UN calls to stop attacking UN peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon.
Source: AntiWar.
