65th Anniversary of Plan Dalet - Blueprint for the Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians

This is from the Institute for Middle East Understanding:

PLAN DALET -

"Transfer" in Zionist Thinking

• From the earliest days of modern political Zionism, its advocates grappled with the problem of creating a Jewish majority state in a part of the world where Palestinian Arabs were the overwhelming majority of the population. For many, the solution became known as "transfer," a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.


• As far back as 1895, the father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl,wrote: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."


• By August 1937, "transfer" was a major subject of discussion at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. Alluding to the systematic dispossession of Palestinian peasants (fellahin) that Zionist organizations had been engaged in for years, David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first prime minister in 1948, stated:
  
  

  "You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund's] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arabfellahin." He concluded: "Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale."



• In June 1938, Ben-Gurion told a meeting of the Jewish Agency: "I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."


• In December 1940, Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund's Lands Department, which was tasked with acquiring land for the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, wrote in his diary:
  

  "There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution."

Details of Plan Dalet

• On March 10, 1948, Zionist political and military leaders, including Ben-Gurion, met in Tel Aviv and formally adopted Plan Dalet (or Plan D). The operational military orders specified which Palestinian population centers should be targeted and laid out in detail a blueprint for their forcible depopulation and destruction. It called for:



"Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:

"Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

"Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state."



• The Haganah (soon to be Israeli army) launched military operations under Plan Dalet at the beginning of April 1948. Although attacks by Zionist forces against Palestinian population centers actually began a few days after the UN Partition Plan was passed on November 29, 1947, with the adoption of Plan Dalet expulsions accelerated and became systematic, marking a new phase in the conflict in which Zionist and then Israeli forces went on "the offensive," in the words of Israeli historian Benny Morris.


• Following Israel's establishment on May 14, 1948, the new Israeli government set up an unofficial body, the "Transfer Committee," to oversee the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages or their repopulation with Jews, and to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes. In a report presented to Ben-Gurion in June 1948, the three-man committee, which included the JNF's Weitz, called for the "destruction of villages as much as possible during military operations."

Results

• By the time the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, more than 200Palestinian villages had already been emptied as people fled in fear or were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces, and approximately 175,000 Palestinians had been made refugees. By 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees, losing their land, homes and other belongings in what became known as the "Nakba" ("catastrophe"). Their flight was accelerated by massacres such as the one that took place on April 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, where approximately 100 Palestinian men, women, and children were murdered by Zionist paramilitaries. Today, refugees displaced during Israel's creation and their descendants number approximately 7.1 million people.


• Some 400 Palestinian towns and villages, including vibrant urban centers, were systematically destroyed or taken over by Israeli Jews. Most of them were demolished to prevent the return of their Palestinian residents, now refugees outside of what would become Israel's internationally recognized borders, or internally displaced inside of them.


• Only about 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel, many of them internally displaced people. Although they were granted Israeli citizenship, they were governed by Israeli military rule until 1966, had most of their land taken from them, and continue to suffer widespread, systematic discrimination today.

Controversy Surrounding Plan Dalet

• Over the years, Plan Dalet has been the subject of controversy, with some Israelis and their supporters claiming that it was not in fact a blueprint for expulsion or ethnic cleansing.


• Benny Morris, one of the leading so-called "new historians" of Israel, wrote in his landmark work The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: 1947-1949, that Plan Dalet was "a strategic-ideological anchor and basis for expulsions by front, district, brigade and battalion commanders" providing "post facto a formal persuasive covering note to explain their actions." Morris, a right-wing Zionist ideologically who has at times himself denied there was a premeditated plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, noted that from the beginning of April 1948, there were "Clear traces of an expulsion policy on both national and local levels with respect to certain key districts and localities and a general 'atmosphere of transfer' are detectable in statements made by Zionist officials and officers."


• In his memoirs, which were censored by the Israeli military but leaked to The New York Times in 1979, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recalled a conversation he had in July 1948 with Ben-Gurion, when Rabin was an officer in the Israeli army, regarding the fate of more than 50,000 Palestinian residents of the cities of Lydda and Ramleh. Rabin wrote:
  

  "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. [Yigal] Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Rabin added, "I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out."

Further Reading

• All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, by Walid Khalidi (1992).


• The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, by Benny Morris (2004).


• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé (2006).


• Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, by Nur Masalha (1992).


• War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Avi Shlaim and Eugene Rogan (2007).

Cornerstones of Israeli apartheid make for a one state solution

Here's a very useful article in Jadalliya which I just found via the Angry Arab News Service In it Noura Erakat explains why the singular legal regime necessitates one state solution by reference to the various laws and practices which allow for Jewish colonial settlement and the dispossession and segregation of the Palestinians:

The Law of Return (1950) defines a Jewish national as someone born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and is not a member of any other religion. Said nationality confers exclusive rights and privileges including the right to enter Israel at any time, to obtain citizenship at any time, and to live in Israel and/or the settlements in the West Bank. In practice, this distinction affords more rights to Jewish nationals living outside Israel who have never visited or cared to visit the State than it does the State’s own non-Jewish citizens. 

Israel’s efforts to maintain a Jewish majority drives its policy of forced population transfer throughout Mandate Palestine. Population transfer seeks to alter the demographic composition of an area by moving people into and/or out of the area. Specific components of the policy of population transfer amount to war crimes under the Rome Statute (arts. 7 and 8) and the Geneva Convention IV (arts. 49 and 147). The Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the former Commission on Human Rights has clearly defined population transfer as:

the movement of people as a consequence of political and/or economic processes in which the State Government or State-authorized agencies participate. These processes have a number of intended or unintended results that affect the human rights of the transferred population, as well as the inhabitants of an area into which settlers are transferred. (…) The State’s role may involve financial subsidies, planning, public information, military action, recruitment of settlers, legislation or other judicial action, and even the administration of justice.

This policy is as prevalent within the West Bank as it is within Israel. In both instances, it aims to facilitate the migration and settlement of Jewish nationals whilst ensuring their dominant and legal status at the expense of the rights of Palestinian Arabs in order to compel and/or enforce their forcible displacement. Said policy, together with other policies based on the distinction between Jewish nationals and non-Jewish nationals, specifically violates Articles II(c) and II(d) of the Apartheid Convention. 

Israel’s discriminatory land laws constitute a core component of the policy of population transfer. This litany of laws begins with the Absentee Property Law (1950), which authorized the State to establish a Custodian to confiscate the lands of those persons deemed absentees or present absentees. Absentees refers to those refugees who fled during the war and who were denied entry as a matter of fact. Similarly, present absentees refers to those Palestinians who fled their homes but remained within Israel, also known as internally displaced persons. They too were not permitted to lay claim to their homes and lands. Under the Absentee Property law, the Custodian transferred the lands to the Development Authority (DA) whose purpose was to “to work with relevant Government agencies to acquire and prepare lands for the benefit of newly arriving Jewish immigrants.” Under the law, the DA may transfer acquired land only to the State and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to be used for the exclusive benefit of the “Jewish people.” Through this land law, Israel has transferred ninety-three percent of Palestinian lands owned or collectively held by Palestinians before 1948 into ‘Israel lands’ and cannot be challenged in court because it has been nationalized. Consider that Palestinian-Israelis who constitute one-fifth of the population use or control 3.4 percent of the land today. 

And she concludes:

Beyond appropriate legal regimes is a question of pragmatism. While two-state adherents emphasize the pragmatic nature of the two-state solution relative to the idealistic proponents of a single and democratic state, the facts on the ground demonstrate firstly, the inextricable population distribution of Palestinian Arab and Jewish populations. Indeed, the Gaza Strip may be the only territory where there exists a homogenous population. In light of this, achieving a two-state solution will not only necessitate land swaps but population transfers of Jewish and Palestinian populations as well. Such transfers should be opposed by the international community as they are likely to fuel accelerated ethnic cleansing policies akin to those seen in the former Yugoslavia. Advocating for equality among citizens of a single state is arguably more practical than is supporting the forced removal of ethnic populations aimed at achieveing homogeneous ethno-national entities. In a quickly shifting Middle East where citizenship, democracy, and plurality have gained increasing salience it is especially troubliing to advocate for reverse trends in Israel and the OPT. Not only is the two-state solution insufficient to treat Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, but it is impracticable as well. 

 I wonder if Norman Finkelstein has read it...

Margaret Atwood believes in dialogue, unless she is criticized, and she likes submissive natives as well

My previous post, Novelistic Scabs, criticizing Atwood and Ghosh, didn't get approved in the comments to her posting of the two's "acceptance speech" for the Dan David prize on Atwood's blog. It was deleted twice.

She does allow critical views. My post wasn't more critical than other comments she let through. It was more detailed, and rather than merely challenging them on moral grounds, it also paid close attention to how poor the logic of their arguments was. I guess that was just too painful. So much for openness to views not her own, that she so pretentiously described as her trademark and the reason for accepting the prize!

But half a million dollars can sooth a lot of wounds to a writer's ego.

Oh, by the way, she went to the West Bank. If you're interested in how one can make literary experiments, nouveau roman and poliphonic turds out of apartheid, go and read her collection of "Israelis said, Palestinians said" cliches.

There, in the Occupied West Bank, Atwood had an amazing discovery:

Nor was there an avoidance of the situation: on the contrary, people really wanted to talk about it. These people were from many areas, but self-selected, of course. (That is: There are a lot of people from extremes and semi-extremes who would not have talked to me, and certainly not freely).

Some people didn't avoid talking about the situation with a visitor who tours the West Bank and meets them in the process of explicitly pretending to be interested in the situation. Can you imagine? But what about those "from the extreme and semi-extremes." who wouldn't talk to her? Why not call them extremists, given that this is what she wants to say? How did Atwood realize that some people don't care whether she understands them? Did they refuse to meet with her? Or is it simply her projection? She doesn't say. What exactly does she mean by saying that people "from the extreme and semi-extremes" would not be speaking "freely"? What opposition between freedom and lack of it is being presented?

People from the semi-extremes are people who shun conversation, or make preconditions, or if they speak, they do not speak "freely." Presumably, their "extreme" politics gets in a way of providing Atwood with decontextualized shreds of discourse. That is, presumably, people from "extremes and semi-extremes" tend to maintain their right to speak in their own voice, to make sense and present a coherent speech rather than to become formelss material for someone's else discourse. That means they do not speak "freely." To speak freely consists on providing Atwood with cliches such as

'A war of the strong against the weak will always fail.’ ” “There are no stereotypes that fit.” “It’s like a roll that’s stuck in your throat: you can’t swallow it, you can’t cough it up.”

That is, "freedom," for Atwood, is willingness to submit, to be someone else's raw material, not to make sense but to be the object one makes sense of. To speak freely is to speak like one speaks to a therapist, hesitantly at first, but with increasing openness once one realizes "the other" is a blank stare, without any identity or content, the ideal, apolitical, neutral listener:

there was some initial tentativeness about me—where did I stand, did I have preconceptions? Being neither an Israeli, nor Jewish, nor Muslim, nor Christian, nor American, was probably facilitating.

Free speech is therefore the opposition of politics, that is of speech that is engaged in the demand of freedom. Free speech is speech free from the constraints imposed by a concern for freedom. Lack of freedom is the condition of those who insist of a measure of control of their position in the conversation. They are constrained by, made "unfree", presumably, by their claim to speak as one who is free, or as one who wants to be free; they might not even speak to her. The main opposition that structures Atwood's impression of the native is thus the one between "speaking freely" and speaking as a political Subject who demands freedom. That is, what Atwood's calls the freedom of the native, is in fact the freedom of the ethnographic visitor to control the representation of the native.

I assume that a quite a few Palestinians told her not to bother dropping by, given that she accepted a prize at Tel-Aviv University that violated the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Painful! But again, half a million dollars can sooth a lot of wounds to a writer's ego.

Hannah Arendt and Israel's dependence Day

In 1944, four years before the Zionist paramilitaries ethnically cleansed Palestine and Ben Gurion establish a state of Jewish dependency upon global white power, Hanna Arendt wrote a re-appraisal of Zionism after 50 years of existence. It is a good moment as ever to re-appraise that reappraisal, but given time constraints, a long quote would have to suffice.

Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts in nothing but the rude force of the nation. A nationalism that necessarily and admittedly depends upon the force of a foreign nation is certainly worse. This is the threatened state of Jewish nationalism and of the proposed Jewish state, surrounded inevitably by Arab states and Arab people. Even a Jewish majority in Palestine--nay even a transfer of all Palestine's Arabs, which is openly demanded by the revisionists--would not substantially change a situation in which Jews must either ask protection from an outside power against their neighbors or come to a working agreement with their neighbors.

If such an agreement is not brought about, there is the imminent danger that, through their need and willingness to accept any power in the Mediterranean basin which might assure its existence, Jewish interest will clash with those of all other Mediterranean people; so that, instead of one "tragic conflict" we shall face tomorrow as many insoluble conflicts as there are Mediterranean nations. for these nations, bound to demand a mare nostrum shared only by those who have settled territories along its shores, must in the long run oppose any outside--that is, interefering--power creating or holding a sphere of interest. These outside power, however powerful at the moment, certainly cannot afford to antagonize the Arabs, one of the most numerous peoples of the Mediterranean basin. If, in the present situation, the powers should be willing to help the establishment of a Jewish homestead, they could do so only on the basis of a broad understanding that takes into account the whole region and the needs of all its people. On the other hand, the Zionists, if they continue to ignore the Mediterranean people and watch out only for the big faraway powers, wil appear only as their tools, the agents of foreign and hostile interests. Jews who know their own history should be aware that such a state of affairs will inevitably lead to a new wave of Jew-hatred; the antisemitism of tomorrow will assert that Jews not only profiteered from the presence of foreign big powers in that region but had actually plotted it and hence are guilty of the consequences.

The big nations that can afford to play the game of power politics have found it easy to forsake King Arthur's Round Table for the poker table; but small powerless nations that venture their own stakes in that game, and try to mingle with the big, usually end by being sold down the river. The Jews, trying their hand "realistically" in the horse trading politics of oil in the Near East, are uncomfortably like people who, with a passion for horse-trading but disposing of neither horse notr money, decide to make up for the lack of both by imitating the magnificent shouting that usually accompanies these gaudy transactions. (Hannah Arendt, Zionism revisited, 1944, in Kohn, Feldman (eds.) The Jewish Writings, 2007)

Happy White Power Day, Israel!

Paris: Action against the inauguration of the Ethnic Cleansing Promenade

The Mayor of Paris, in the presence of nuclear proliferator extraoridnaire Shimon Peres, inaugurated a naming of a Parisian promenade after Ben Gurion.

Some Parisians didn't like having to stroll the banks of the Seine on the new "ethnic cleansing" promenade.

The Ben Gurion promenade is not just an affront to Palestinians and a show of support for Israel a year after the Gaza slaughter. It is also a white French affirmation of France's own colonial history. It is primarily an establishment "up yours" to the immigrants from Algeria and Africa, Rwanda, the French Caribbeans and Haiti. It is a statement of white pride. That is how it ought to be understood universally. Many French Jews are proud of this promenade and think it is a great victory of theirs. It could be their victory, but only in the wake of a colossal betrayal. The new Ben Gurion Esplanade is a white messianic text that dares not speak its name. It is yet confined to riddles; but it is slouching fast to Paris to be born. In the video you can hear the mayor say that he "fully assumes, nay claims, the legitimacy of Ben Gurion's struggle". One shouldn't doubt that he is ready to claim that struggle, namely, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and its transformation into a European colonial settler state, as all of France's political class is. "Ben Gurion" is the figure of speech, Palestine is its literal referent, Jacques Massu is its allegorical meaning and the Marechal Pétain is its timeless eschaton.

From now on, never visit Paris without a stroll on the Esplanade Marechal Pétain.

Protest against an ethnic cleanser in London

URGENT ACTION: Protest against Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Monday 22nd March, 5pm, London

Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem behind the announcement of 1,600 new settlement units in East Jerusalem, will be visiting London early next week. A total of 50,000 housing units have planned in the coming years - doubling the settler population - and reducing the Palestinian population to a third. Israel's plans to restore Hurva synagogue a few hundred meters from Al-Aqsa mosque has led to clashes over the last few days - men under 50 have been refused entry into Al-Aqsa since Friday. Israel has deployed some 3,000 security forces across the city.

He will be speaking at Chatham House (10 St James's Square, London SW1Y 4LE). Come along and protest against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, British Muslim Initiative, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Friends of Al Aqsa; Friends of Lebanon, Friends of Sabeel UK, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, Britain Palestine Twinning Network.

You can let Chatham House know what you think about their recent briefing ‘Jerusalem: the Cost of Failure' and the event by ringing 020 7957 5700 or emailing: contact@chathamhouse.org.uk.

Palestine Solidarity Camoaign

Independent letters

There are five letters on Palestine in The Independent today, three of which challenge Israel's "right" to exist as a Jewish state. They were responding to a letter from a chap called Dr (!) Jacob Amir in yesterday's Indie:

Criticism of Israel's policies, even very harsh criticism, is totally legitimate and has nothing to do with antisemitism (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, 8 February) . It is being done in Israel itself daily. But critics, Jewish or not, who deny the right of Israel to exist, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, while not opposing any other nation-state, exhibit a clear racist attitude and can be rightfully called antisemites.

Dr Jacob Amir

jerusalem

And here are the responses:

Israelis, Jews and antisemitism

Why is it antisemitic to deny the right of Israel to exist (letter, 9 February)? If I call for a united Ireland, thereby denying the right of majority Protestant Northern Ireland to exist, I am not opposing Protestants, only arguing that they would be better off in a different political environment, like the Protestants of Donegal. I am not insulting or racially abusing them, or defacing the graves of their departed.

To call for a united state of Palestinians and Israelis where neither is privileged is to oppose discrimination, not to uphold it. We should look at the example of Daniel Barenboim; his orchestra, the West-East Divan, is composed of Jewish and Arab musicians, where excellence alone is privileged. To many people Barenboim is showing the way forward; his orchestra is a template for the future of Israel-Palestine. Surely no one could call him antisemitic.

Christopher Walker

London W14

Dr Jacob Amir is wrong (letter, 9 February). There is nothing wrong and certainly nothing racist about being opposed to the existence of the State of Israel while not opposing the existence of the other nation states.

Nation states are states that represent all of the people of the countries they rule over. Israel is the state of the world's Jews and it exists at the expense of the native non-Jewish Palestinian people. There is no other state that exists more for people that do not come from there than for people that do come from there.

Mark Elf

Dagenham, Essex

Dr Jacob Amir claims Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Britain is the nation-state of British citizens, regardless of their ethnic or religious background; can he not tell the difference?

Janet Green

London NW5

Quite a result, that.

Discover your inner Kurtz with an Israeli Safari

The 'Israel Law Center,' contrary to what you'd expect from the name, is not interested in such arcane things as legal principles, or that old-fashioned and discredited idea of 'equality before the law'. Indeed, the word 'law' in its name refers most likely to that common colonial expression, 'the law of the jungle.' So it is fitting that one of its important businesses is to organize Safaris for American Jews. Come to Israel, see the beasts, smell the blood, meet the hunters! Gone are the days you'd have to choose between risking your life as an 'explorer' or 'adventurer,' or wait for some Marlow to come back home and tell you riveting stories from the Heart of Darkness. Courtesy of the 'Israel Law Center' you can now have both the thrill of immersion in Kurtz's world and the safety of a five stars hotel room. Colonialism decaf.

The Ultimate Mission to Israel

Experience a dynamic and intensive eight day exploration of Israel's struggle for survival and security against Iran, Syria and Hezballah.

Join with doctors, attorneys, accountants, programmers and other professionals from around the world on an unparalleled and unprecedented Israeli reality-check at June 8 - 15, 2009 in Jerusalem:

* Briefing by Mossad officials and commanders of the Shin Bet

* Inside tour of the IAF unit who carries out targeted killings
* Live exhibition of penetration raids in Arab territory
* Observe a trial of Hamas terrorists in an IDF military court
* First hand tours of the Lebanese front-line military positions and the Gaza border check-points
* Inside tour of the controversial Security Fence and secret intelligence bases
* Meeting Israel's Arab agents who infiltrate the terrorist groups and provide real-time intelligence.

• Briefing by Israel's war heros who saved the country.
  
• Meetings with senior Cabinet Ministers and other key policymakers.
  
• Small airplane tour of the Galilee, Jeep rides in the Golan hights, water activities on Lake Kinneret, a cook-out barbecue and a Shabbat enjoying the rich religious and historic wonders of Jerusalem's Old City.

First Class Accomodation [sic!]

• Five-star accommodations at the Sheraton Plaza Jerusalem (Glatt Kosher);
• Personal cell phone for each participant.
• Three meals a day (all Kosher);
• Luxury bus transportation and knowledgeable tour guide;
  
• A dedicated Executive Communications Center at the hotel;
  

I'm particularly impressed with the Kosher food. Here's a thought for Dr. Simon Goldberg, Los Angeles, CA, quoted in the ad gushing over "the adventure of a lifetime" he "will never forget" from his Safari:

no matter how many Kosher meals you'll have, you and your fellow Safari tourists will always remain swine.

UN endorses the Goldstone Report

Voting record of UN members on the General Assembly resolution:

In favor: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Cyprus, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against: Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Netherlands, Palau, Panama, Poland, Slovakia, FYR Macedonia, Ukraine, United States.

Abstain: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Samoa, San Marino, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Tonga, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uruguay.

Not voting: Bhutan, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Honduras, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Togo, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.


An interesting factoid: How did Colonialism vote?

Settler Colonial States:

In Favor: None
Against: Australia, Canada, Israel, United States
Abstain: New Zealand

Colonial Metropoles:

In Favor: Portugal
Against: Germany, Italy, Netherlands
Abstain: Belgium, Japan, Spain, Russian Federation, France, United Kingdom

Just saying. It ain't over til its over.