Russia stood tall among the 120 countries that voted that Israel cease fire in Gaza for the protection of civilians and to uphold legal and humanitarian obligations.
Casting a grim gaze over Gaza, over torn human nerves and tons of rubble, Russia, and indeed China, championed the humane cause to reclaim our sanity at a time when the world seems to have lost its soul.
Russia, China and 118 other countries voted for a United Nations resolution demanding Israel to stop the carnage that Hamas started, though this mutual exchange of hate and harm predates October 7.
UN Vote For Israel to Cease Retaliatory Attacks on Gaza
Albeit, Russia and other peace-loving countries defeated 14 countries that the United States led in voting against the cessation of hostilities on both sides.
Russia and the rest of the world won despite the 45 countries that abstained from voting for a ceasefire led by the United Kingdom and its Western counterparts.
Yet Israel is not backing down. Hamas still holds hundreds of people hostage, and sadly, the killing of little children and innocent women and men continues, with far more casualties on the Gaza side.
Why is Benjamin Netanyahu adamant? Why are Hamas and its armed sympathizers defiant? Why is Vladimir Putin’s call for peace ignored?
Could it be that a third of countries in the United Nations are telling Russia to look at the man in the mirror?
If Russia looked into its mirror, it would see a country more defiant to global reason than Israel currently is. Russia continues its invasion and aggression on Ukraine today despite a more resounding UN vote that condemned the act.
“The United Nations General Assembly has voted to demand that Russia stop its offensive and immediately withdraw all troops, with world powers and tiny island states alike condemning Moscow.
“The vote on Wednesday saw 141 states vote in favour of the motion, five against and 35 abstentions, “ Al Jazeera reported.
UN Vote for Russia to Cease its Invasion and Aggression against Ukraine
Russia is more adamant about the voices of 141 countries calling for peace in Ukraine than Israel’s defiance to the voices of 120 countries suing for peace in Gaza. Maybe Putin lost his moral ground against Netanyahu here.
Yet, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has shown that Russia prefers to reduce Ukraine to rubble than revamp its own troubled rouble.
Russia’s Troubled Rouble
As things are now, graffiti of troubled countries and their tumbled currencies may have Russia scribbled on some corners of the mischievous art.
In August, one Russian rouble was finally reduced to below 10 cents in the United States.
Forbes reported in August that Russia’s rouble slipped past 100 roubles per U.S. dollar, “a nearly 17-month low that has sparked internal discord over monetary policy as economic pressures from its ongoing war in Ukraine mount and international sanctions erode Moscow’s income streams.”
“The slump, part of an accelerating downward trend in recent weeks, is a long way from the ruble’s record low in March 2022—it hit around 120 against the dollar shortly after Moscow launched its invasion—but almost half its value in June 2022, when it hit a multi-year high despite international sanctions.
According to CBS, the slide in the currency’s value comes “as Russia continues to face international sanctions as well as its ongoing military conflict. The nation has used aggressive measures to keep money from leaving the country, while also benefitting from fossil-fuel sales to prop up its economy.
“But a weaker ruble could increase the cost of imports, while also boosting inflation — with central bank deputy director Alexei Zabotkin on Friday saying that he expects inflation to continue to rise.”
However, by October, the Russian ruble surged after Putin ordered 43 companies to prop up the slumping currency by selling some of their foreign cash, Fortune reported.
Then came the turn of Israel’s shekel to plunge in value against the US dollar. The troubled country saw its currency tumble to 3.912 shekel to a dollar two days after the country was invaded and attacked by Hamas.
Israel’s Central Bank hastened to defend the shekel by offering to sell up to $30 billion of foreign currency, Reuters reported.
Yet these currency and economic troubles could extend beyond Israel to the Middle East, with early signs in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iran.
Gaza’s Tons of Rubble
Like the cities Russia proudly ruined in Ukraine, one visible spectre of doom in Gaza is the mangled bodies of boys and girls and of women and men, retrieved with bare hands from tons of rubble.
CNN reports that Gaza has one of the youngest populations in the world, with 47% under 18 years old, and the health ministry is reporting that as of November 6, 4,104 children have been killed. UN officials estimate that as of November 5, about 1,270 children have been reported missing and may be trapped under rubble.
Yet Israel's bombing of vulnerable people in health facilities still trails behind Russia’s violence against vulnerable people during its invasion of Ukraine.
“Ukraine experienced nearly 600 attacks on health care in March and April 2022, the first full months after Russia launched its attack on that country, according to WHO data. By comparison, there have been more than 200 such attacks in occupied Palestinian territory since October 7, but far more people have died,” CNN further reports.
Beyond the screenplay of horror that Hamas acted out in Israel on October 7, Israel’s daily deadly reprisals on Gaza have tested the limits of rage and clearly set the stage for a global rumble over the use and abuse of weapons of welfare in a time of warfare.
Global demonstrations in response to the recent Israel-Palestine conflict have been more in the Middle East and North Africa than in any part of the world, with 1,400 of such recorded in the region, of all the 4,200 protests across the world.
According to ACLED, “The Hamas attack on southern Israel and subsequent Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip have triggered a wave of protests and rallies around the world.
“During the first three weeks of the current round of hostilities, ACLED records approximately 4,200 demonstration events related to the conflict in almost 100 countries and territories, accounting for 38% of all demonstration events reported globally.”
Yet, Russia’s preachment for peace and global protests for mutual pity on hostages and displaced people in Gaza would yield more fruit if Russia immediately repents of its defiance of the global order to stop its costly show of might in Ukraine.
The literal and graphic figures of human suffering and sorrow in Gaza must not blind us to the souls of innocent children and harmless people who perish daily in Sudan and Ukraine due to the same reckless acts of war.
Mortality, morbidity and all layers of human misery thrive when we situate them in a balance of power between the West and the East, Arabs and Jews, Muslims and Christians, and other false balances that perpetually return one’s own local group superiority.
One of the many useful measures of the ruthless execution of this war is that more reporters have been killed during the first three weeks of the Israel-Palestine war than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Ukraine.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that “The number of journalists killed in the course of their work in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 7 to 23 October exceeds the total of 11 killed in connection with their work since the war began in Ukraine, seven of whom were killed during the first month after Russia launched its invasion.
“It also exceeds the number of reporters killed during the first 20 days of the war in Iraq in 2003, and those killed in Afghanistan in 2001, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11…More recently, shortly after the outbreak of the civil war in Yemen, six journalists were killed in April and May 2015.
“So, in just over 15 days, the number of reporters killed in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon has broken records.”
Numbers as these classify and clarify, but numbers also numb our best feelings. Every other report on the metrics of evil reduces our ability to sense and respond. Yet, we must not succumb to measuring Gaza’s tons of rubble by our false religious balance or vain diplomatic weights.
Thanks for reading this Data Dive. We hope to read next week that Russia and Israel have ceased hostilities in Ukraine and Gaza and that Hamas has released all its hostages. What a wonderful weekend that will be!