On February 20, as the death toll from Israel’s relentless bombing and attacks by ground troops approached 30,000 in four months of genocidal slaughter… the U.S. vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. 

In a 10-minute speech at the U.N., belligerently upholding vetoing a cease-fire, U.S. representative to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, repeated herself over and over and over again, dictating to the world: “this is not the time” for a cease-fire.¹  She might as well have been at the scene of a burning building, with desperate mothers holding babies out of windows calling for people to catch them, with screams and burning bodies falling out of the building. And in response, there she would be, railing and threatening that that this is not the time for firemen to come. 

Except. Except that what is going on in Gaza is tens of thousands of times worse. And what this representative of this monstrous system demands is more time to continue the barbaric slaughter of the Palestinian people, the destruction of their land, their ability to live, and their very humanity.

How Long Will “the World” Tolerate This?

Decent people everywhere, who care about humanity, are asking, why!? And how long will “the world” tolerate this?

In this article, we will expose the obscene excuses from the U.S. government for vetoing the resolution. We will confront the impact this will have, immediately, on over two million people in Gaza whose lives are on, or are crossing, the thinnest line between life, and death. And we will dig down to expose that the problem is not “the world” in the abstract, but the system that rules this world.

As we do, you who are reading this need to have the courage to go where reality points. U.S. backing—military, economic, and diplomatic—for Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza is one of a long, long list of American crimes against humanity around the world. It is an example of the reality of what America brings to the world. As Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader and author of the new communism calls out in BAsics (1:3):

The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.

And, here’s something that is most important: there is a chance now unfolding to actually overthrow the system responsible for these crimes against humanity, to stop wars of empire at the source, and make a giant leap to a much different and better world without wars of any kind, and any form of exploitation and oppression.

If this is news to you, if you’ve heard it but aren’t convinced, or if you need to dig into it more, give a serious hearing to the scientific analysis behind the understanding that this is a rare time in history when revolution is more possible even in a powerful country like the U.S. You get that in the most concentrated dose from revolutionary leader, author of the new communism, Bob Avakian in @BobAvakianOfficial social media dispatches, 1-11. 

This rare chance won’t last forever. What you do can make a world of difference.

What the U.S. Vetoed, and Why

The resolution before the U.N. Security Council, which the U.S. vetoed, demanded an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire that must be respected by all parties” in Gaza. No other country on the Security Council voted against this cease-fire resolution (the UK, the U.S.’S closest ally on the Security Council, abstained). But the U.S. used its veto power in the Security Council to overrule the vote.²

Linda Thomas-Greenfield claimed the resolution would delay the release of Israeli civilian hostages seized by Hamas on October 7. That’s bullshit.³ The resolution included a demand for the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” She claimed the resolution would hinder the declared objective of the U.S. for a "two-state solution.” Also bullshit. The resolution declared “unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-State solution.” And the “two-state solution” is really nothing more than a plan to establish a weak, defenseless, essentially puppet Palestinian “state” in small, disconnected, walled off areas surrounded by, and under constant threat from, Israel. 

Why wouldn’t the U.S. go along with the resolution? In short, because the United States supports Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Why is Israel’s slaughter being backed by Biden and the U.S.? In the social media post REVOLUTION Number 7, Bob Avakian answers that:

Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world? Here is the answer to that crucial question:

This is not because of “the power of the Jewish lobby”—or because of some ignorant, ridiculous and outrageous notion that “Jews are controlling everything.” It is because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.

(That is from my statement Some Basic Truths About the U.S.-Supported Israeli War Against Palestine, which is posted at revcom.us.)

What This Veto Means in Gaza

Right now, over half the entire population of 2.2 million Palestinian people are living in flimsy tents, without access to sanitation, sufficient food and water to survive, in constant terror, surrounded—literally—by death. And over the past week, things got much worse. 

• Starvation: When Israel imposed a genocidal siege on Gaza in 2008, they purposely set about limiting the caloric intake of people to just barely enough to survive. Maintaining that minimal level of subsistence required 500-600 trucks of food and other aid every day. Today, between  Israel enabling “protesters” to block aid, imposing impossible “inspections” of aid going into Gaza through Egypt, and bombing aid convoys, only about 100 trucks of food, water, and medicine reach Gaza each day. That is literally one-fifth of the aid needed to keep people alive.
  On February 24, a representative of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA⁴  said that agency can no longer provide services in north Gaza, citing few staff and a “collapse of social order” amid Israeli attacks on civilians and restrictions on food aid access that has left the population starved.

• Bombing Civilians: In just the past few days, more than 100 Palestinian people in Gaza were killed and 160 injured in Israeli bombing of residential buildings. Dozens were slaughtered in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, including at the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp. 

• An Israeli airstrike on one residential building in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed at least 17 people, including four children. Survivors and neighbors carried their bodies, wrapped in blankets to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. 
• As we post this update, the death toll is still being counted after Israeli jets bombed an area near Rafah, where over a million people are crammed into flimsy shelter of plastic tents. Al Jazeera reported that in the immediate aftermath, “bodies are scattered on the road."
• “A Medical Apocalypse”:  On February 20, The Nation reported, “Israel has created a medical apocalypse in Gaza. The hospital system is barely functional. Disease is running rampant. Medical workers are being kidnapped, tortured, and killed. And the world is letting it happen.” The World Health Organization reports that as of January 30, only 13 of 36 hospitals in Gaza remain partially functioning, and only 13 of 77 primary healthcare facilities are operational. And Israel has launched hundreds of attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza.

• Israel Bans Toilets to Inflict the Spread of Deadly Disease: Over a million Palestinians, driven from their homes to packed encampments, struggle for access to enough food and water to live another day. And all of them, including elderly, children, pregnant women, stand in line for hours to use one of the few latrines provided by aid agencies. People dig holes in the sand in their crowded shelters to relieve themselves. They struggle to manage the accumulating human waste. The air is thick with the stench. The situation is dangerous, humiliating, and deadly. Prominent epidemiologists (scientists who study the spread of disease) project the spread of disease under these conditions could cause up to 85,000 additional Palestinian deaths in Gaza (on top of death by Israeli bombs and snipers). And all this dehumanizing, degrading, and genocidal situation is perpetrated, specifically, and on purpose by Israel which bans aid organizations from bringing in portable toilets, sanitation facilities, and sanitary pads, claiming—according to the New York Times—that these items could be used by Hamas for military purposes!⁵ 
• NOT War, Annihilation: On February 16, the LA Times ran an op-ed by Irfan Galaria, a U.S. surgeon who spent 10 days in Gaza in January. It was titled “I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation.” 
  Dr. Galaria reports what it was like to arrive in Gaza: “Our ears were numb with the constant humming of what I was told were the surveillance drones that circled constantly. Our noses were consumed with the stench of 1 million displaced humans living in close proximity without adequate sanitation. Our eyes got lost in the sea of tents. We stayed at a guest house in Rafah…. We stood on the balcony listening to the bombs, and seeing the smoke rise from Khan Yunis [six miles away].”
  Dr. Galaria describes conditions at the European Gaza Hospital where people were sheltering, hoping to be safe from Israeli killers. People were living in the hospital hallways, stairwells, and storage closets, stringing up blankets to provide a “sliver of privacy.” He describes operating in a room that often shook from bombings as frequent as every 30 seconds. He performed amputations of arms and legs using Civil War era saws. Over and over and over, Dr. Galaria writes, patients told him they were sleeping in their homes when they were bombed and were in mourning for loss of children and spouses. And that he lost track of how many orphans he operated on. 

The U.S. and Israel—Illegitimate Mass Murderers Enforcing an Illegitimate System

So when the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. insists “this is not the time” for a cease-fire, and Biden and every other significant actor in the U.S. capitalist-imperialist ruling class insist that Israel has a “right to self-defense,” that is nothing but a ghastly embrace of genocide on a historic scale. 

And invoking “Israel’s right to self-defense” to justify genocidal war crimes calls to mind other depraved “explanations” and excuses the U.S. has, over and over and over again, made for an unrivaled record of war crimes. Their officers in the Vietnam War said they had to rape, kill, and burn villages “in order to save” them. Their commanders said they had to incinerate over 150,000 innocent civilians with nuclear bombs in Japan “to save American lives.” Their former Secretary of State insisted the U.S. had to enforce sanctions on Iraq that killed 500,000 children because “the price was worth it.” (For more details, and more crimes, see and share the American Crime series at revcom.us.)

Back to the existential question here: Everywhere people are asking, in anguish, how could “the world” have failed the people in Gaza. So, let’s get back to the assertion we started with: it is not “the world” that has failed. It is the system of capitalism-imperialism that dominates this world. 

Last week we wrote the following about Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza (and the West Bank). And the following becomes more urgent to confront literally every day:

What's driving this are the dictates of this system of capitalism-imperialism. A vicious, outmoded and illegitimate system—a system that should not be allowed to rule for one more day. A system that needs to be... that can be... overthrown through an actual revolution to bring a different system into being.

Because of the sharpening divides throughout this whole society, we have a rare opening to make this revolution. A precious opening to get this system off the backs of the people of the world. Everyone needs to be part of acting to stop this genocidal slaughter! And for that action to be guided by a strategic approach to making a real revolution in this time, with the goal of a whole new way to live, and a fundamentally different system.

A key part of that approach—Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution—includes involving masses of people in rising up to resist the continuing crimes of this system, while exposing the source of the problem and the solution to it.  The achingly intense struggle now going down in Gaza is one of those crimes.

Again, will you step into this now as if the people of the world depend on it? 

Because they do.