Dubai, UAE
“War is Hell,” said retired Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, or something close enough, back in 1880, fifteen years following his side’s victory in the American Civil War.
Wars kill people, and, let’s stipulate, they also are bad for air quality, which hardly compares to human casualties from the battlefield and collateral damage. U.S. climate envoy, John Kerry, obtusely admonished that war worsens the effect of climate change.
In keeping with this claim of the relationship between war and climate, such as it is, a panel at COP28 entitled, Grassroots Feminist Perspectives on Demilitarization for Climate Justice perhaps would provide substance to the issue. Instead, climate change was mentioned only as an afterthought, and a replacement panel of pro-Palestinian representatives aired their grievances against Israel and the United States. It was not restrained.
Chloe Henson, an organizer for the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), the moderator, set the tone by announcing that in light of this past October and the “ongoing genocide” by Israel of Palestinians in Gaza, 
the panel organizers decided to boycott COP28 for allowing Israel to participate. The new panel organizers, CJA, the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, decided to pivot the focus of the panel “with a particular eye on the genocide and occupation of Palestine and to speak about the colonialism as a root cause of genocide and the climate crisis,” Mr. Henson said.
First up was Jamal Juma, speaking remotely, who is a long-time Palestinian militant dating to his involvement in the 1987 Intifada and a founding member of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. He described the situation on the ground in Gaza: “One bomb provided by [the] American Army to Israelis” recently destroyed a building, killing 250 people with 1,000 missing and presumed dead under the rubble. The “genocide continues,” he said, including in the West Bank, where he claimed Palestinians are killed by Israeli settlers. This all “continues the 1948 [war] to ethnically cleanse” Palestinians, Juma said.
At no time did he or any panelist acknowledge the massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians, including young women, men, children, and infants, on October 7th by Gaza militants, nor their kidnapping of more than 200 hostages for ransom. It is as though it all never happened.
Next up came a representative of Friends of the Earth/Palestine, who is based in Detroit, Michigan. In addition to the killing by Israelis, he accused Israel of “dropping white phosphorous” to “poison land” as another means of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since such land becomes uninhabitable.
Julia Bernal, the Executive Director of the Pueblo Action Alliance, based in New Mexico, was next. She described indigenous areas of the state as “historically, a sacrifice zone” for resources for weapons manufacturing “that contribute to the war crimes that we are discussing today in Palestine and across the globe.” Extraction of uranium, oil, and gas in New Mexico has “induced a lot of harm to our people,” she said.
Other panelists, including one from Canada, blamed her nation for hosting “genocidal mining companies” for contributing to climate change and “having a deep role in what is happening in Palestine.” Another from the Young Arab Feminist Coalition said that “militarized genocide is a feminist issue, an environmental issue, and a economic justice issue” and that the solution “would be land back and end of the occupation” of Palestine by Israel.
The panelist from Friends of the Earth/Palestine said, “Protests are not enough…we need to actually disrupt things…the more things we are able to shut down, the less things are able to run as usual and that’s how change comes about.”
Indeed, such protests by pro-Palestinian groups in numerous cities and college campuses in the U.S. are following that script, including attempting to disrupt the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Also, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California canceled the tree-lighting ceremony at the state capitol in Sacramento out of fear of such protests.
This very one-sided panel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was virulent in its accusations not only against Israel but against the United States for its support of the world’s only Jewish state. The UN, with its long-term disdain for Israel, allowed this panel to proceed, surely knowing the direction it would take given that the participating organizations make no secret of their deep animus toward Israel, going back to the nation’s inception in 1948.
It also is notable how the climate issue and COP28 are being used to advance the Palestinian and other causes when the connections are tangential, or non-existent. While the United States is accused of aiding and abetting Palestinian “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” UN officials and numerous organizations demand billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers to finance climate projects.
This acrimony will continue during the COP28 climate summit, including this weekend for the “Global Day of Action,” where protestors will gather “in solidarity with Palestine siblings to demand ceasefire and an end to genocide,” said Mr. Henson, as he concluded the panel.
Stay tuned.