Compilation image showing the West's figureheads, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu (Left), the UN general assembly (Center) and the carnage in Gaza (Right). Photo: Geopolitical Economy Report.
By Ben Norton – Sep 22, 2025
The US has vetoed six Security Council resolutions that called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Meanwhile, a UN commission stated conclusively that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
A United Nations commission has conclusively stated that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
This genocide has had the full support of the United States, under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
In fact, since October 2023, the US government has vetoed six resolutions in the UN Security Council that called for peace in Gaza.
The latest example was on 18 September, when 14 of the 15 members of the Security Council voted for a resolution that demanded a ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
The United States was the only country that opposed it, and Washington has veto power, so it killed the measure.
The Joe Biden administration vetoed four UN Security Council resolutions that called for peace in Gaza (in October and December 2023, and February and November 2024).
Thus far, the Donald Trump administration has vetoed two similar resolutions (in June and September 2025).
China criticizes US veto of UN Gaza resolution
By contrast, China was one of the countries in the Security Council that vocally called for peace in Gaza and supported the resolution.
China’s ambassador to the UN, Fu Cong, criticized the US veto, writing:
China is deeply disappointed by the result of today’s vote.
The conflict in Gaza has been dragging on for nearly two years, causing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Time and again, the Security Council has attempted to take actions, only to be forcefully blocked by the United States.
How many more innocent lives must be lost before a ceasefire can be achieved in Gaza?
US and Israel cause famine in Gaza
In its report on the latest US veto, the UN news agency pointed out that the Security Council meeting was convened “against the backdrop of famine spreading in the besieged enclave and an ongoing Israeli offensive to take full control of Gaza City”.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) officially confirmed in August 2025 that famine is widespread in Gaza.
The WFP reported, “More than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths”.
“By the end of September, more than 640,000 people will face Catastrophic levels of food insecurity”, the WFP added.
This famine is not an act of nature; it is an intentional man-made famine, created by Israel, with the full support of the US government.
The US and Israel are using starvation of Palestinians as a weapon of war, as part of an attempt to ethnically cleanse the indigenous residents of Gaza and to colonize their land.
Even mainstream Western human rights organizations like Amnesty International have stated clearly, “Evidence points to Israel’s continued use of starvation to inflict genocide against Palestinians”.
UN commission: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
UN experts in international law have warned for well over a year that Israel has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
This September, a UN commission came to the same conclusion.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel published a legal analysis for the UN Human Rights Council on 16 September.
Citing exhaustive evidence, the UN commission wrote (all emphasis added):
the Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have had and continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The report added:
The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the following actus reus of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
The legal definition of genocide in international law was established by the Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948 (which, coincidentally, was the same year that Israel was founded through the ethnic cleansing and mass killing of indigenous Palestinians, in what is known as the Nakba).
The Genocide Convention states the following:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The UN commission’s September 2025 report concluded that Israel has committed the first four of these five genocidal acts.
The UN legal experts also reported on other crimes that Israel has committed against Palestinians:
In its previous reports to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, the Commission found that the Israeli security forces have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including extermination, torture, rape, sexual violence and other inhumane acts, inhuman treatment, forcible transfer, persecution based on gender and starvation as a method of warfare.
Furthermore, the Commission found that the Israeli authorities have (i) destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births; and (ii) deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group, both of which are underlying acts of genocide in the Rome Statute and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“Genocide Convention”)
This was the same conclusion reached by the world’s leading academic experts on genocide.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution in a landslide in August, with 86% of votes in support, stating that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
US continues to sell Israel billions of dollars worth of weapons, in violation of international law
Countries like the United States and Germany, which have helped Israel carry out this genocide, could face legal consequences.
The UN commission’s report emphasized, “The duty to prevent and punish genocide applies not only to the responsible State but to all States Parties to the Genocide Convention and indeed to all States under customary international law”.
The UN experts likewise told all member states, “Cease the transfer of arms and other equipment or items, including jet fuel, to the State of Israel”.
Despite this, the US government plans to continue selling more and more weapons to Israel.
The Donald Trump administration wants approval from Congress to sell Israel $6.4 billion in military equipment, Reuters reported on 19 September — just three days after the UN commission published its legal analysis.
In February, the Trump administration greenlit another arms sale to Israel worth nearly $3 billion.
It is not just Trump who has supported Israel’s genocide, however; this is bipartisan in Washington.
The genocide in Gaza started when Joe Biden was in the White House, and he facilitated it as well.
From October 2023 until Biden left office in January 2025, his administration sent more than $18 billion of so-called military aid to Israel.
Although this is often referred to as military aid, it must be emphasized that much of this consists of US arms sales to Israel.
That is to say, US corporations in the military-industrial complex have profited from the genocide in Gaza, by selling tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to Israel.
US rogue regime attacks UN and international legal institutions
To ensure continued impunity, the US government has launched desperate attacks on international legal institutions, thereby showing itself to be a rogue state.
In November 2024, after a year of genocide in Gaza, the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally issued arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken had made it clear that Washington was considering imposing sanctions on the ICC, to try to stop it from prosecuting Israeli war criminals.
Just a few weeks after Trump returned to the White House, he did exactly that.
In a February 2025 executive order, Trump hit the ICC with unilateral sanctions, claiming that the court had “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.
“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest”, wrote the White House.
Trump cited the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002. This law, popularly known as the Hague Invasion Act, was passed by the neoconservative George W. Bush administration. Human Rights Watch noted at the time that it “authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court, which is located in The Hague”.
Trump’s attack on the ICC came after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) made a similar ruling stating that Israel can be investigated on accusations of genocide in Gaza, in a case that was initiated by South Africa and now has the support of many Global South countries, particularly those in Latin America.
Amnesty International stated that Israel, with US support, has been blatantly violating the orders of the ICJ, the top UN judicial authority, located at the Hague.
The rogue state in Washington has launched attacks on even more multilateral organizations.
Trump has withdrawn the United States from numerous UN bodies, including the Human Rights Council, UNESCO, and the World Health Organization.
Moreover, for the first time in history, the United States has rejected the UN Human Rights Council’s global human rights review.
Human rights lawyer Lawrence Moss explained this scandal in an article at The Hill. He wrote (emphasis added):
Every four-and-a-half years, on a revolving basis, each of the 193 member countries of the United Nations submits a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on its domestic human rights record under international standards.
…
We are now in the fourth cycle of review of the 193 UN members. And for the first time, one country — the United States — has refused to submit a national report or participate in the human rights dialogue.
…
Attempting to justify the U.S. refusal to participate, an official claimed it was in response to the UN Human Rights Council’s “persistent failure to condemn the most egregious human rights violators.”
But this is exactly wrong.
For the last 17 years since the universal review process began, every country the U.S. might consider an “egregious human rights violator” — including China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Belarus and Russia — has repeatedly participated in the process, received the statements of NGOs and U.N. agencies publicly posted in the process, and subjected itself to a dialogue on its human rights record, in which every other U.N. member, including the U.S., European Union members and other democracies, actively participate. Every one has received recommendations for improving human rights compliance.
What this shows is that the United States is a rogue state that spits in the face of international law.
Washington’s accusations about adversaries like China are in fact hypocritical projections of exactly what the US does.
The United States is sponsoring a livestreamed genocide in Gaza, while sanctioning international legal institutions and waging war on multilateral organizations. This is the behavior of an out-of-control rogue regime.
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
