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Mexico, John M. Ackerman wrote recently for Foreign Policy, ”is not a functional democracy.” Instead, it’s a “repressive and corrupt” oligarchy propped up by a “blank check” from Washington.
Since 2008, that blank check has come to over $2.5 billion appropriated in security aid through the Merida Initiative, a drug war security assistance program funded by Washington. Negotiated behind closed doors in the last years of the Bush administration, the plan was originally proposed as a three-year program. Yet Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed aggressively to extend it, overseeing a drastic increase of the initiative that continues today.
Much of this aid goes to U.S.-based security, information, and technology contracting firms, who make millions peddling everything from helicopter training to communications equipment to night-vision goggles, surveillance aircrafts, and satellites.
This aid comes in addition to the direct sales of arms and other equipment to Mexico authorized by the State Department, as Christy Thorton pointed out in a 2014 New York Times op-ed. Those sales reached $1.2 billion in 2012 alone, the last full year of Clinton’s tenure. Indeed, as the Merida Initiative has grown, Mexico has become one of the world’s biggest purchasers of U.S. military arms and equipment.
But while sales have boomed for U.S.-based contractors, the situation in Mexico has badly deteriorated. The escalation of U.S. counter-drug assistance in the country has paralleled a drastic increase in violence, fueling a drug war that’s killed more than 100,000 people since 2006.
State Complicity
High-profile human rights cases -- such as the kidnapping and disappearance of the 43 students from the teacher-training college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero in September 2014 -- sparked renewed attention to the devastating effects of the U.S.-funded drug war in Mexico. Yet, they didn’t come out of nowhere.
Forced disappearances like these were ballooning even as Clinton was pushing Merida Initiative programs forward, with official records reaching upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 people a year in 2011 and 2012. According to the United Nations, these widespread kidnappings and disappearances often involve state authorities, and the problem is worsened by the government’s failure to investigate.
U.S. laws explicitly prohibit the delivery of aid to foreign individuals and units implicated in systematic human rights violations. But files released by WikiLeaks revealed that Clinton’s State Department regularly received information on widespread ”official corruption” in Mexico, even as they were bolstering the flow of equipment, assistance, and training that ended up in the hands of abusive and compromised security forces.
Indeed, in 2009 and 2010 -- the middle years of Clinton’s tenure at State -- U.S. embassy cables boasted that intelligence and military cooperation between the two countries had never been better. Such cables, and the full archival orbit of declassified and leaked U.S. and Mexican records, demonstrate that Clinton’s State Department repeatedly cleared the delivery of U.S. assistance training and equipment to security forces implicated in corruption or abuse.
One document from June 2011 recorded a visit of U.S. officials to the northern state of Tamaulipas in May 2011 to assess training needs for state security forces. The visit came as Mexico’s federal authorities were trying to cover up the discovery of mass graves from the recent San Fernando massacres in the region. Even as U.S. officials were reporting on the Mexican government’s complicity and cover-up of the massacres, the U.S. embassy recommended further training for Tamaulipas security forces.
The same document also reports that Mexican immigration agents had been fired for kidnapping migrants. Yet the delivery of biometric data equipment to the same agency continued unimpeded.
In the southern state of Guerrero, meanwhile, records from 2009 to 2010 show that the U.S. embassy cleared local and federal police, military officials, and investigative agents for training and assistance from units implicated in human rights violations. Even then, the U.S. embassy -- and not to mention reputable human rights groups -- knew about the direct involvement of government officials in abuses there.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2011, for example, on widespread cases of torture in Guerrero going back to 1994. The group noted regular abuses by police and military forces, including “cases of homicide, torture, and extortion” overseen by the judicial police chief in the northern part of the state. The same report highlighted strong evidence of the involvement of military officials from Chilpancingo in cases of kidnapping and disappearances in 2010, as the U.S. embassy was clearing officials for training from the same military base.
After government security forces killed two students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training school during a protest in December 2011, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne sent a cable reporting that “the evidence of heavy-handed police tactics is strong and disconcerting.” It was the same school where, less than three years later, 43 students would be disappeared -- and six others killed -- after being attacked by local police forces.
The Beneficiaries
In addition to training Mexico’s security forces, Clinton’s State Department bolstered Mexico’s wiretap capabilities, provided communications systems and computers, and installed information sharing software, biometric databases, and radar systems. It also peddled Blackhawk helicopters, surveillance aircrafts, satellites, and all-terrain vehicles, and built joint-intelligence fusion centers for targeting high-value cartel leaders.
The implementation and delivery of this equipment took place hand-in-hand with private contractors. Major players like General Electric, Honeywell, Motorola, Sharp, IBM, and Dell appear throughout records of these transactions, along with scores of others -- including Science Applications International, Rapiscan, American Science and Engineering, RCA, and many more.
Several contractors benefited significantly from helicopter deliveries and services in particular. These played a prominent role in both the conduct and the promotion of the broader drug war effort.
Three Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, for example, were sent to Mexico’s federal police in November 2010. Just two weeks after their handover, they were deployed in the largest aerial operation conducted to date against the La Familia de Michoacan drug cartel. The U.S. embassy boasted in a secret cable that the operation -- which reportedly led to the killing of drug kingpin Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, or “El Chayo” -- was a ”needed win” for then-president Felipe Calderon in his increasingly unpopular war against the cartels.
El Chayo’s killing was the first clear evidence the State Department could highlight to show Congress that Calderon’s strategy -- and the U.S. intelligence and security aid behind it -- was leading to results. Yet the operation, which also caused large-scale civilian deaths, appeared to be in vain: The Mexican government reported that El Chayo was killed again, years later, in an operation carried out against the cartel in March 2014.
Nonetheless, the 2010 operation provided the justification to further ratchet up U.S. support. In May 2011, embassy staff accompanied Mexican federal police representatives to review an aircraft project in North Carolina and receive presentations from the AMCOM missile command and industry representatives. More aircrafts were subsequently delivered.
Sikorsky, along with other companies such as General Electric, continued to reap the benefits of the drug war in Mexico even after Clinton left the State Department. In March 2015, the department approved the sale of three Black Hawk helicopters to the Mexican military for $110 million. This followed a larger deal in April 2014 for 18 Black Hawks at $680 million.
Notably, several of the contractors that profited from U.S. security assistance in Mexico -- such as General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies Corporation, which owns Sikorsky -- reportedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation. And according to the transparency group Open Secrets, Clinton currently tops the list of all 2016 presidential candidates in campaign contributions from the military contracting industry.
Back to Business as Usual
Naturally, Clinton herself was aware of how her department’s support for the Mexican drug war would look in light of the revelations about corruption and human rights abuses.
In January 2011, shortly after the release of a huge tranche of leaked diplomatic cables, Secretary Clinton apologized to her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa for any “embarrassment” caused by the WikiLeaks documents, announcing her intention to get
“beyond WikiLeaks” and reaffirm the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Clinton expressed optimism that they could create a better “narrative” than the waste, fraud, and abuse revealed in the cables and regular media accounts and “explain to Congress why foreign assistance money under ‘Beyond Merida’ should continue.”
Getting beyond WikiLeaks, of course, meant getting back to business as usual -- and back behind closed doors.
While thousands of Clinton’s own emails have since been released, the secrecy continues -- with much of the important information still heavily redacted. For example, the emails contain potentially important documents, such as a memo to President Obama with a report on Clinton’s trip to Mexico City and Monterrey. This document, however, is completely redacted, except for one line.
In his piece for Foreign Policy, John Ackerman argued that Clinton’s defense of the status quo in Mexico is “grounded in a vicious cycle of complicities between economic and political elites on both sides of the border.” Indeed, the record available for public scrutiny shows that Clinton’s State Department -- rather than addressing human rights concerns over the Merida funding -- focused on ensuring that security assistance continued in the face of abuse, cover-ups, and ongoing impunity.
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Mexico, John M. Ackerman wrote recently for Foreign Policy, ”is not a functional democracy.” Instead, it’s a “repressive and corrupt” oligarchy propped up by a “blank check” from Washington.
Since 2008, that blank check has come to over $2.5 billion appropriated in security aid through the Merida Initiative, a drug war security assistance program funded by Washington. Negotiated behind closed doors in the last years of the Bush administration, the plan was originally proposed as a three-year program. Yet Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed aggressively to extend it, overseeing a drastic increase of the initiative that continues today.
Much of this aid goes to U.S.-based security, information, and technology contracting firms, who make millions peddling everything from helicopter training to communications equipment to night-vision goggles, surveillance aircrafts, and satellites.
This aid comes in addition to the direct sales of arms and other equipment to Mexico authorized by the State Department, as Christy Thorton pointed out in a 2014 New York Times op-ed. Those sales reached $1.2 billion in 2012 alone, the last full year of Clinton’s tenure. Indeed, as the Merida Initiative has grown, Mexico has become one of the world’s biggest purchasers of U.S. military arms and equipment.
But while sales have boomed for U.S.-based contractors, the situation in Mexico has badly deteriorated. The escalation of U.S. counter-drug assistance in the country has paralleled a drastic increase in violence, fueling a drug war that’s killed more than 100,000 people since 2006.
State Complicity
High-profile human rights cases -- such as the kidnapping and disappearance of the 43 students from the teacher-training college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero in September 2014 -- sparked renewed attention to the devastating effects of the U.S.-funded drug war in Mexico. Yet, they didn’t come out of nowhere.
Forced disappearances like these were ballooning even as Clinton was pushing Merida Initiative programs forward, with official records reaching upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 people a year in 2011 and 2012. According to the United Nations, these widespread kidnappings and disappearances often involve state authorities, and the problem is worsened by the government’s failure to investigate.
U.S. laws explicitly prohibit the delivery of aid to foreign individuals and units implicated in systematic human rights violations. But files released by WikiLeaks revealed that Clinton’s State Department regularly received information on widespread ”official corruption” in Mexico, even as they were bolstering the flow of equipment, assistance, and training that ended up in the hands of abusive and compromised security forces.
Indeed, in 2009 and 2010 -- the middle years of Clinton’s tenure at State -- U.S. embassy cables boasted that intelligence and military cooperation between the two countries had never been better. Such cables, and the full archival orbit of declassified and leaked U.S. and Mexican records, demonstrate that Clinton’s State Department repeatedly cleared the delivery of U.S. assistance training and equipment to security forces implicated in corruption or abuse.
One document from June 2011 recorded a visit of U.S. officials to the northern state of Tamaulipas in May 2011 to assess training needs for state security forces. The visit came as Mexico’s federal authorities were trying to cover up the discovery of mass graves from the recent San Fernando massacres in the region. Even as U.S. officials were reporting on the Mexican government’s complicity and cover-up of the massacres, the U.S. embassy recommended further training for Tamaulipas security forces.
The same document also reports that Mexican immigration agents had been fired for kidnapping migrants. Yet the delivery of biometric data equipment to the same agency continued unimpeded.
In the southern state of Guerrero, meanwhile, records from 2009 to 2010 show that the U.S. embassy cleared local and federal police, military officials, and investigative agents for training and assistance from units implicated in human rights violations. Even then, the U.S. embassy -- and not to mention reputable human rights groups -- knew about the direct involvement of government officials in abuses there.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2011, for example, on widespread cases of torture in Guerrero going back to 1994. The group noted regular abuses by police and military forces, including “cases of homicide, torture, and extortion” overseen by the judicial police chief in the northern part of the state. The same report highlighted strong evidence of the involvement of military officials from Chilpancingo in cases of kidnapping and disappearances in 2010, as the U.S. embassy was clearing officials for training from the same military base.
After government security forces killed two students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training school during a protest in December 2011, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne sent a cable reporting that “the evidence of heavy-handed police tactics is strong and disconcerting.” It was the same school where, less than three years later, 43 students would be disappeared -- and six others killed -- after being attacked by local police forces.
The Beneficiaries
In addition to training Mexico’s security forces, Clinton’s State Department bolstered Mexico’s wiretap capabilities, provided communications systems and computers, and installed information sharing software, biometric databases, and radar systems. It also peddled Blackhawk helicopters, surveillance aircrafts, satellites, and all-terrain vehicles, and built joint-intelligence fusion centers for targeting high-value cartel leaders.
The implementation and delivery of this equipment took place hand-in-hand with private contractors. Major players like General Electric, Honeywell, Motorola, Sharp, IBM, and Dell appear throughout records of these transactions, along with scores of others -- including Science Applications International, Rapiscan, American Science and Engineering, RCA, and many more.
Several contractors benefited significantly from helicopter deliveries and services in particular. These played a prominent role in both the conduct and the promotion of the broader drug war effort.
Three Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, for example, were sent to Mexico’s federal police in November 2010. Just two weeks after their handover, they were deployed in the largest aerial operation conducted to date against the La Familia de Michoacan drug cartel. The U.S. embassy boasted in a secret cable that the operation -- which reportedly led to the killing of drug kingpin Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, or “El Chayo” -- was a ”needed win” for then-president Felipe Calderon in his increasingly unpopular war against the cartels.
El Chayo’s killing was the first clear evidence the State Department could highlight to show Congress that Calderon’s strategy -- and the U.S. intelligence and security aid behind it -- was leading to results. Yet the operation, which also caused large-scale civilian deaths, appeared to be in vain: The Mexican government reported that El Chayo was killed again, years later, in an operation carried out against the cartel in March 2014.
Nonetheless, the 2010 operation provided the justification to further ratchet up U.S. support. In May 2011, embassy staff accompanied Mexican federal police representatives to review an aircraft project in North Carolina and receive presentations from the AMCOM missile command and industry representatives. More aircrafts were subsequently delivered.
Sikorsky, along with other companies such as General Electric, continued to reap the benefits of the drug war in Mexico even after Clinton left the State Department. In March 2015, the department approved the sale of three Black Hawk helicopters to the Mexican military for $110 million. This followed a larger deal in April 2014 for 18 Black Hawks at $680 million.
Notably, several of the contractors that profited from U.S. security assistance in Mexico -- such as General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies Corporation, which owns Sikorsky -- reportedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation. And according to the transparency group Open Secrets, Clinton currently tops the list of all 2016 presidential candidates in campaign contributions from the military contracting industry.
Back to Business as Usual
Naturally, Clinton herself was aware of how her department’s support for the Mexican drug war would look in light of the revelations about corruption and human rights abuses.
In January 2011, shortly after the release of a huge tranche of leaked diplomatic cables, Secretary Clinton apologized to her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa for any “embarrassment” caused by the WikiLeaks documents, announcing her intention to get
“beyond WikiLeaks” and reaffirm the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Clinton expressed optimism that they could create a better “narrative” than the waste, fraud, and abuse revealed in the cables and regular media accounts and “explain to Congress why foreign assistance money under ‘Beyond Merida’ should continue.”
Getting beyond WikiLeaks, of course, meant getting back to business as usual -- and back behind closed doors.
While thousands of Clinton’s own emails have since been released, the secrecy continues -- with much of the important information still heavily redacted. For example, the emails contain potentially important documents, such as a memo to President Obama with a report on Clinton’s trip to Mexico City and Monterrey. This document, however, is completely redacted, except for one line.
In his piece for Foreign Policy, John Ackerman argued that Clinton’s defense of the status quo in Mexico is “grounded in a vicious cycle of complicities between economic and political elites on both sides of the border.” Indeed, the record available for public scrutiny shows that Clinton’s State Department -- rather than addressing human rights concerns over the Merida funding -- focused on ensuring that security assistance continued in the face of abuse, cover-ups, and ongoing impunity.
Mexico, John M. Ackerman wrote recently for Foreign Policy, ”is not a functional democracy.” Instead, it’s a “repressive and corrupt” oligarchy propped up by a “blank check” from Washington.
Since 2008, that blank check has come to over $2.5 billion appropriated in security aid through the Merida Initiative, a drug war security assistance program funded by Washington. Negotiated behind closed doors in the last years of the Bush administration, the plan was originally proposed as a three-year program. Yet Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed aggressively to extend it, overseeing a drastic increase of the initiative that continues today.
Much of this aid goes to U.S.-based security, information, and technology contracting firms, who make millions peddling everything from helicopter training to communications equipment to night-vision goggles, surveillance aircrafts, and satellites.
This aid comes in addition to the direct sales of arms and other equipment to Mexico authorized by the State Department, as Christy Thorton pointed out in a 2014 New York Times op-ed. Those sales reached $1.2 billion in 2012 alone, the last full year of Clinton’s tenure. Indeed, as the Merida Initiative has grown, Mexico has become one of the world’s biggest purchasers of U.S. military arms and equipment.
But while sales have boomed for U.S.-based contractors, the situation in Mexico has badly deteriorated. The escalation of U.S. counter-drug assistance in the country has paralleled a drastic increase in violence, fueling a drug war that’s killed more than 100,000 people since 2006.
State Complicity
High-profile human rights cases -- such as the kidnapping and disappearance of the 43 students from the teacher-training college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero in September 2014 -- sparked renewed attention to the devastating effects of the U.S.-funded drug war in Mexico. Yet, they didn’t come out of nowhere.
Forced disappearances like these were ballooning even as Clinton was pushing Merida Initiative programs forward, with official records reaching upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 people a year in 2011 and 2012. According to the United Nations, these widespread kidnappings and disappearances often involve state authorities, and the problem is worsened by the government’s failure to investigate.
U.S. laws explicitly prohibit the delivery of aid to foreign individuals and units implicated in systematic human rights violations. But files released by WikiLeaks revealed that Clinton’s State Department regularly received information on widespread ”official corruption” in Mexico, even as they were bolstering the flow of equipment, assistance, and training that ended up in the hands of abusive and compromised security forces.
Indeed, in 2009 and 2010 -- the middle years of Clinton’s tenure at State -- U.S. embassy cables boasted that intelligence and military cooperation between the two countries had never been better. Such cables, and the full archival orbit of declassified and leaked U.S. and Mexican records, demonstrate that Clinton’s State Department repeatedly cleared the delivery of U.S. assistance training and equipment to security forces implicated in corruption or abuse.
One document from June 2011 recorded a visit of U.S. officials to the northern state of Tamaulipas in May 2011 to assess training needs for state security forces. The visit came as Mexico’s federal authorities were trying to cover up the discovery of mass graves from the recent San Fernando massacres in the region. Even as U.S. officials were reporting on the Mexican government’s complicity and cover-up of the massacres, the U.S. embassy recommended further training for Tamaulipas security forces.
The same document also reports that Mexican immigration agents had been fired for kidnapping migrants. Yet the delivery of biometric data equipment to the same agency continued unimpeded.
In the southern state of Guerrero, meanwhile, records from 2009 to 2010 show that the U.S. embassy cleared local and federal police, military officials, and investigative agents for training and assistance from units implicated in human rights violations. Even then, the U.S. embassy -- and not to mention reputable human rights groups -- knew about the direct involvement of government officials in abuses there.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2011, for example, on widespread cases of torture in Guerrero going back to 1994. The group noted regular abuses by police and military forces, including “cases of homicide, torture, and extortion” overseen by the judicial police chief in the northern part of the state. The same report highlighted strong evidence of the involvement of military officials from Chilpancingo in cases of kidnapping and disappearances in 2010, as the U.S. embassy was clearing officials for training from the same military base.
After government security forces killed two students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training school during a protest in December 2011, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne sent a cable reporting that “the evidence of heavy-handed police tactics is strong and disconcerting.” It was the same school where, less than three years later, 43 students would be disappeared -- and six others killed -- after being attacked by local police forces.
The Beneficiaries
In addition to training Mexico’s security forces, Clinton’s State Department bolstered Mexico’s wiretap capabilities, provided communications systems and computers, and installed information sharing software, biometric databases, and radar systems. It also peddled Blackhawk helicopters, surveillance aircrafts, satellites, and all-terrain vehicles, and built joint-intelligence fusion centers for targeting high-value cartel leaders.
The implementation and delivery of this equipment took place hand-in-hand with private contractors. Major players like General Electric, Honeywell, Motorola, Sharp, IBM, and Dell appear throughout records of these transactions, along with scores of others -- including Science Applications International, Rapiscan, American Science and Engineering, RCA, and many more.
Several contractors benefited significantly from helicopter deliveries and services in particular. These played a prominent role in both the conduct and the promotion of the broader drug war effort.
Three Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, for example, were sent to Mexico’s federal police in November 2010. Just two weeks after their handover, they were deployed in the largest aerial operation conducted to date against the La Familia de Michoacan drug cartel. The U.S. embassy boasted in a secret cable that the operation -- which reportedly led to the killing of drug kingpin Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, or “El Chayo” -- was a ”needed win” for then-president Felipe Calderon in his increasingly unpopular war against the cartels.
El Chayo’s killing was the first clear evidence the State Department could highlight to show Congress that Calderon’s strategy -- and the U.S. intelligence and security aid behind it -- was leading to results. Yet the operation, which also caused large-scale civilian deaths, appeared to be in vain: The Mexican government reported that El Chayo was killed again, years later, in an operation carried out against the cartel in March 2014.
Nonetheless, the 2010 operation provided the justification to further ratchet up U.S. support. In May 2011, embassy staff accompanied Mexican federal police representatives to review an aircraft project in North Carolina and receive presentations from the AMCOM missile command and industry representatives. More aircrafts were subsequently delivered.
Sikorsky, along with other companies such as General Electric, continued to reap the benefits of the drug war in Mexico even after Clinton left the State Department. In March 2015, the department approved the sale of three Black Hawk helicopters to the Mexican military for $110 million. This followed a larger deal in April 2014 for 18 Black Hawks at $680 million.
Notably, several of the contractors that profited from U.S. security assistance in Mexico -- such as General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies Corporation, which owns Sikorsky -- reportedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation. And according to the transparency group Open Secrets, Clinton currently tops the list of all 2016 presidential candidates in campaign contributions from the military contracting industry.
Back to Business as Usual
Naturally, Clinton herself was aware of how her department’s support for the Mexican drug war would look in light of the revelations about corruption and human rights abuses.
In January 2011, shortly after the release of a huge tranche of leaked diplomatic cables, Secretary Clinton apologized to her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa for any “embarrassment” caused by the WikiLeaks documents, announcing her intention to get
“beyond WikiLeaks” and reaffirm the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Clinton expressed optimism that they could create a better “narrative” than the waste, fraud, and abuse revealed in the cables and regular media accounts and “explain to Congress why foreign assistance money under ‘Beyond Merida’ should continue.”
Getting beyond WikiLeaks, of course, meant getting back to business as usual -- and back behind closed doors.
While thousands of Clinton’s own emails have since been released, the secrecy continues -- with much of the important information still heavily redacted. For example, the emails contain potentially important documents, such as a memo to President Obama with a report on Clinton’s trip to Mexico City and Monterrey. This document, however, is completely redacted, except for one line.
In his piece for Foreign Policy, John Ackerman argued that Clinton’s defense of the status quo in Mexico is “grounded in a vicious cycle of complicities between economic and political elites on both sides of the border.” Indeed, the record available for public scrutiny shows that Clinton’s State Department -- rather than addressing human rights concerns over the Merida funding -- focused on ensuring that security assistance continued in the face of abuse, cover-ups, and ongoing impunity.
Against a backdrop of Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.
At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, the "release of all hostages" held by Hamas, and for Israel to "immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid" into the besieged strip.
Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump's deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move "will come as no surprise," as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.
Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel's right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council."
The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the "bare minimum" that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”
“Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again... humanitarians and journalists targeted... while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this," Mansour added.
Following the UNSC's latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to "forgive" the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," Bendjama said. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”
Benjama also asked Gazans to "forgive us" for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel."
Condemning Thursday's veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide," which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.
Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.
Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.
UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday's failed UNSC resolution that "we need a ceasefire more than ever."
“Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza," Woodward said.
Thursday's developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip's capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump's proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.
Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into "a lifeless wasteland."
Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians "are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter."
Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were "safe zones," including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.
"Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space," Azzoum added. "That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky."
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to silence his critics Thursday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that outlets that give him "bad press" may have their broadcast licenses taken away.
The threat came just one day after his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) director, Brendan Carr, successfully pressured ABC into pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show from the air by threatening the broadcast licenses of its affiliates over a comment the comedian made about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me," Trump told the press gaggle. "I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they're 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity... I mean, they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away."
"When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do," the president continued. "If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
He said that the decision would be left up to Carr, who has threatened to take away licenses from networks that air what he called "distorted" content.
It is unclear where Trump's statistic that networks have been "97% against" him originates, nor the claim that mainstream news networks "haven't had a conservative on in years."
But even if it were true, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says "the FCC doesn't have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content."
In comments made to Axios Thursday, Gomez—the lone Democrat on the five-member panel—said that the Trump administration was "weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel," as part of a "campaign of censorship and control."
National news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC do not have broadcasting licenses approved by the FCC, nor do cable networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The licenses threatened by Carr are for local affiliates, which—despite having the branding of the big networks—are owned by less well-known companies like Nexstar Media Group and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, both of which pushed in favor of ABC's decision to ax Kimmel.
Gomez said that with Trump's intimidation of broadcasters, the "threat is the point."
"It is a very hard standard to meet to revoke a license, which is why it's so rarely done, but broadcast license to the broadcasters are extremely valuable," she said. "And so they don't want to be dragged before the FCC either in order to answer to an enforcement complaint of some kind or under the threat of possible revocation."
Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration's pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”