By Rachel Hamdoun *
No, not from his hotel room in Manhattan. No, not from an office in the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Right from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday morning, Israeli ‘crime minister’ Benjamin Netanyahu issued orders to assassinate Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Hezbollah resistance movement in Lebanon.
Shortly after leaving the podium following his Churchill-like speech, the megalomaniac Tel Aviv regime premier ordered the carpet bombing of the southern suburb of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh.
Residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in the neighborhood were razed to the ground within seconds as Netanyahu walked away from the UN podium.
He addressed a bunch of UN delegates who have been cheering the Israeli genocide in Gaza for one year while others with conscience walked out of the hall, snubbing the war criminal.
Hours after the deadliest strikes on Beirut since 2006, an image emerged of Netanyahu speaking on the phone with two military officials standing behind him in what appeared to be from New York but is unknown whether it was taken at his hotel room or the UN headquarters.
It is irrelevant to know where the image was taken. What’s important is the platform was given and so was the green light to execute the order for his forces to assassinate the leader of the Lebanese resistance who had become a nightmare for Netanyahu and his fellow war criminals.
Where is the United Nations, you ask? Where is the International Criminal Court? Where is the International Court of Justice? Look at Palestine for the past 76 years: if you can explain the occupation, then you can explain the existence of international law - and how it has repeatedly failed, and top dollars paid for it to be so.
For the past week, since the start of the 79th Session of the UNGA on September 24, all we have heard from world leaders are calls to stop the suffering in Gaza and the aggression on Lebanon.
Their calls seem to have been oblivious to the cries of the children in Gaza found charred, in pieces and buried by their grieving parents, and the cries of the women in Lebanon wrapping their husbands, sons and brothers in the white shroud of martyrdom.
Briefly, let’s just go over some of the violations that the Israeli regime has committed concerning international humanitarian law and customary international law.
In violation of international law’s Geneva Conventions, and to include all sections of the following:
Rule 2: Spreading terror among civilians
Rule 7: Principle of distinction
Rule 11: Indiscriminate attacks
Rule 14: Proportionality
Rule 17: Illegal means and methods of warfare
Rules 25 to 30: Targeting medical units and personnel
Rule 31: Targeting humanitarian relief personnel
Rule 34: Targeting journalists
Rule 35: Targeting hospitals and safe zones
Rule 45: Destroying the natural environment
Rule 51: Destruction and seizure of properties in occupied territory
Rule 53: Starvation as a method of warfare
Rule 65: Perfidy
Rule 71: Weapons that are naturally indiscriminate
Rule 84: Incendiary weapons
Rule 90: Inhuman treatment and torture
Rule 93: Rape and sexual violence
Rule 97: Using human shields
Rule 106: Inhuman conditions of prisoners of war
Rule 112 to 117: The mistreatment of the dead and the missing
Rule 129: Forced displacement
Rule 133: Destroying property of the displaced
Rule 134: Endangering women
Rule 135: Endangering children
Over 30 international law violations and not one prosecutor could issue an arrest warrant against Netanyahu or Yoav Gallant or Benny Gantz, or even bar Netanyahu from speaking at the UN.
For what was the United Nations founded? Wasn’t the purpose of this organization to maintain and enforce peace and security? What is the purpose for which the International Criminal Court was established? Isn’t it to prosecute individuals who commit crimes against humanity and war crimes?
It is quite ridiculous to be asking these questions in a world where human rights have become selective and international law has come to serve those who violate it.
When the U.S. threatens the very core of international order if the men in order dare arrest or prosecute Netanyahu, then it is true to say that justice is blind.
The United States is the top funder of the UN and many of its bodies, so it’s safe to say money talks (or silences in this case). The United Nations was born out of the League of Nations which was established in 1920 for world peace by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson who himself endorsed and approved the Balfour Declaration responsible for the occupation of Palestine.
After having failed following the outbreak of World War II, the UN was founded by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and none other than British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The UN, the ICC and the ICJ, through their silence and inaction, have become complicit and have given Netanyahu - and the US administration - the ‘license to kill’.
It goes without saying that the mass atrocities and horrors wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for American-supplied F-35s, bombs, drones and the bunker-buster bombs used to assassinate Nasrallah and Iranian military advisor Brigadier Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan.
Yet, the United Nations rolls the red carpet and gives time and space to murderers like Netanyahu, Biden, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to try and justify the violations of international laws and the relentless strikes against civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.
This is a narrative the U.S. administration has been used to, ever since its genocide against the Native Americans, its wars and invasions against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and the list goes on. The spoiled and illegitimate offspring of the US is just trying to continue that doctrine and the international ‘dis-order’ is paving the way for it.
During his speech at the UNGA, hours before he ordered the carpet bombing of Beirut, Netanyahu used the rhetoric that Israel has always resorted to, by claiming that ‘missiles are kept in every kitchen and rockets in every garage’ of civilian homes in Lebanon before he went on to claim that Israel is a peaceful nation being accused falsely of genocide.
He claimed that Israel helped bring in 700,000 tons of food to Gaza, but targeting of aid trucks this year such as the Kuwait Roundabout incident called the Flour massacre and the deliberate strike of the World Central Kitchen that left 7 of its humanitarian workers killed in Gaza, would prove otherwise.
Netanyahu, as expected, went as far as attacking the organization, calling it a joke, and actually counted how many times the UN condemned Israel and how many times it condemned others.
In the end, he called it antisemitic. Ah yes, the antisemitic card that Israel and the U.S. pull out every time they commit a crime and want to play the victim.
What Netanyahu said, be it at the UN or during the speech to the U.S. Congress in July 2024 which garnered a repulsive 58 standing ovations, was nothing new and it never is - with the same words but a different parrot every time.
The U.S. and Israel do not know what they have just done.
Nasrallah’s name will never be seen in the same sentence as ‘was.’ He is more than a leader. He is an idea, he is a school, and ideas and schools never die, and resistance never wilts.
Generations were born, and generations were raised. I am grateful and blessed to have been born and raised during his lifetime with him leading the fight against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon until its liberation in 2000, and against the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006, and now witnessing his path to liberating the occupied Al-Quds, stopping the genocide in Gaza and the massacres in southern Lebanon and Dahiyeh.
Israel believes it buried the Lebanese resistance, but it does not know that it buried seeds.
He is a father of the free, the liberator, the great man who gave hope to the hopeless and was the voice of the defenseless, the man who children like me grew up after hoping one day to meet, the legendary leader who instilled faith in our hearts and spoke on the meaning of love, the man who protected Lebanon and Al-Quds with everything he had.
The martyrdom of the hero, who terrified the Israeli occupation with just the lift of his finger, has only made our resistance against occupation more resilient and worth being proud of.
Sayyed Nasrallah promised us that we would liberate Palestine together and we will pray soon in Al-Aqsa. That is not just a promise. That is the truth on the horizon that we already see near.
* Rachel Hamdoun is Press TV's correspondent in the United States.
