If Old White Men Can’t Convince Israel To Stop In Gaza, This Is The Moment For First Ladies To Step Up. At UNGA, Replace Heads Of State Speeches With First Lady Speeches.
If Old White Men, Doctors, And Parents Cannot Convince The State Of Israel To Stop Injuring, Maiming, Murdering, And Orphaning Children In Gaza, Isn’t This The Moment For First Ladies To Step Up And Step In?
Time For Political Shock And Awe.
Switching The Political Juries.
UN Secretary-General Gutierrez Should Cede UNGA Heads Of State Speech Time Slots To First Ladies.
Means Mrs. Trump And Mrs. Erdogan Delivering Messages About Gaza In Prime Time. Words Directed By Mothers To The Fathers Of Their Children.
This September, in advance of the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Antonio Gutierrez, Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), should do the political version of what a judge did during a criminal trial in the 1987 motion picture The Untouchables. Because the jury was tainted, he instructed the court clerk to switch the jury with another seated for a trial in an adjacent courtroom.
The Secretary-General must recognize the current heads of state and heads of government of the 193-members of the UN are tainted. Collectively and individually they have failed to halt the death and destruction defining the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza since 7 October 2023.
Time for some shock and awe. At this year’s UNGA, instead of the heads of state and heads of government delivering remarks on behalf of their citizens, the wives of those heads of state and heads of government should deliver the remarks, and their husbands should be seated and listening.
Since 7 October 2023, the voices of Muslim and non-Muslim heads of state and heads of government have repeatedly condemned the implementation of decisions by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) which at the direction of the State of Israel have resulted in the displacement of 2.3 million people, destroyed approximately 90% of dwellings and infrastructure, injured nearing 150,000 men, women, and children, made everyone hungry, and caused the deaths of more than 60,000 men, women, and children. Likely health-related issues will survive long after the IDF ceases to murder. Life expectancies will certainly decrease.
Who are these Muslim and non-Muslim voices? Primarily, they are middle age to older men.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership consists of an eighty-nine-year-old (89) head of state and a seventy-year-old (70) prime minister. The President of the United States is seventy-eight years old. Not inspiring. Where are the women?
Dr. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the Brussels, Belgium-based European Commission (EC) which represents administratively the twenty-seven member countries of the Brussels, Belgium-based European Union (EU), a mother of seven (7) and herself a physician- and married to a physician, has remained politically constipated in terms of doing anything to tame the State of Israel from her 13th floor office in the Berlaymont Building.
European Union (EU): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, a mother of one child and a stepmother to two others, and herself an attorney and former prime minister, remains unable to marshal unanimity among the twenty-seven heads of state and heads of government comprising the EU to do anything to tame the State of Israel.
Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the thirty-two-country member Brussels, Belgium-based North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while not a parent, has seven siblings, and remains unable to take any meaningful decision that would have consequences for the State of Israel.
(NATO): United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Albania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Turkiye, Latvia, and North Macedonia, Sweden.
In September 2025, the annual UNGA will commence in New York City. Representatives from its 193 member countries, kingdoms, nations, and states will assemble for meetings, speeches, and votes.
Tradition reveals that meetings, speeches, and votes at the UN- either within the Security Council with its five permanent members (China, France, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, United States) wielding a veto or in the General Assembly will not result in anything meaningful for the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza, or anyone else.
Recently, the BBC broadcast a segment including a video of three Jewish women posing, smiling, and taking a selfie on a bluff overlooking the death and destruction that defines Gaza- like they were at Niagara Falls (New York) or at the Eiffel Tower (Paris). Repulsive. Given their inability to appreciate suffering, one can imagine they would be callous and comfortable enough to create and share TikTok videos where they wink and nod approvingly while joyfully demonstrating how the doors open and close for the ovens at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland. Has any head of state or head of government condemned the three women?
For the last six hundred (600) days, the most vocal head of state, Muslim or non-Muslim, who has condemned, mourned, previewed, and warned the 193 members of the UN about the impact of decisions then implemented by the State of Israel is not from a member of the EU, is not from the Middle East, is not from the Global South. He does represent a country in NATO- and as requested, thus far without success, NATO leadership suspend cooperative agreements in place with the State of Israel.
These recent days may be the moment Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of Turkiye (2014-2028), and Emine Erdogan, First Lady of Turkiye (2014-2028), have been waiting for since the IDF commenced its death and destruction throughout Gaza. Although simultaneously the objective is one that wished had not been presented to them- or to anyone.
They may finally see their oratory on behalf of the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza transition from word choices that have offended, that some of their more continental peers in distant and near capitals find annoying, brutalist, distasteful, and unseemly, into decisions by governments that would punish rather than inconvenience the State of Israel. Or ideally begin to end the collective punishment inflicted by the taxpayers in the State of Israel upon 2.3 million men, women, and children inhabiting Gaza. Unfortunately, when the State of Israel accounts for all remaining hostages, dead or alive, the inhabitants of Gaza can expect to watch the IDF embark upon implementing an extinction-level event.
For Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the State of Israel (2022- , 2009-2021, 1996-1999), and his merry band of political paunchy deplorables they anticipate like a teenager upon their first sexual encounter to deliver choices to the inhabitants of Gaza: 1) swim into the Mediterranean Sea 2) force their way south through what will undoubtedly be a robust defensive posture by the Egyptian Armed Forces 3) commit suicide or 4) reduce the population by anointing death- self-culling.
The State of Israel has one goal- a Gaza absent anyone who is not Jewish. And if they are Jewish, there must be no Arab, Muslim, or Palestinian blood coursing through their veins. As a certain corporal did during World War II, the focus upon purity can lead to awful consequences.
Unfortunately, the horribleness unable to be corrected or reversed in a time machine by country-nation-state groupings- think Arab League, G7, G20, EU, NATO, and UN is the children in Gaza who have gone without consistently available food, medicines, schooling, vaccines, vitamins, and water, for six hundred days- nearing two years.
They will never, can never be made whole. They have permanent mental scaring, permanent healthcare issues, permanent social interaction issues, permanent trust issues. The only material inconvenience for citizens of the State of Israel have been intermittent suspensions of international airline flights and maybe a gourmet food store is low on chocolate.
The timing is opportune as the UNGA commences in September 2025 which provides a forum annually for the 193-members (heads of state, heads of government, minister of foreign affairs, and first ladies) to use their moments at the lectern and during Bilaterals and side events to advance their interests.
This year might be possible for a change from rhetoric about supporting the inhabitants of Gaza and condemning the decisions by the State of Israel to rewarding the inhabitants of Gaza and punishing the decisions by the State of Israel.
Reality Moment: in the early morning of 24 February 2022, the armed forces of the Russian Federation invaded and invaded further into the internationally-recognized territory of Ukraine. The EU has since adopted eighteen (18) packages of sanctions. The transition from the first package to the most recent package has been a journey of reducing first as much as possible the commercial, economic, financial, political, and societal impact upon the taxpayers (meaning voters) throughout the twenty-seven member countries of the EU. The mantra being have the Russian Federation feel it rather than inhabitants of the EU feel it. In 2025, that goal has is nearly accomplished with non-Russian Federation sourcing for most of what had been Russian Federation-sourced for decades. With the Russian Federation-Ukraine war continuing, the list of available sanctions- specifically the list of those that are implementable, is dwindling. Secondary energy sanctions would disrupt engagement by the EU and the United States with China and India among other countries. Washington DC and Brussels are loathe to go there. Confiscating the approximately US$320 billion in reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation frozen since 24 February 2022 is a formidable undertaking not least of which would be an expected tit-for-tat by the government of the Russian Federation- who could seek to confiscate a similar value- from companies located in the EU. And then a question of what to do with the approximately US$320 billion- transfer it to the government of Ukraine for it do whatever it wants with the money? Use solely for reconstruction? Use to purchase military equipment? Use to reimburse those country taxpayers who have delivered nearing US$300 billion to the government of Ukraine? One certainty: the funds will have been spent five times over by politicians in the EU, Ukraine, United States and other countries.
Reality Check: The plight of the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza is not enough to warrant any head of state or head of government to take a decision, particularly a provocative decision, and then implement it- and risk the lives of members of their respective armed forces to do it. If NATO wanted to, it could create a flotilla of cargo vessels escorted by military vessels and enter Gaza directly from the Mediterranean Sea. The IDF would not stop them. Yes, the Armed Forces of the United States did sloppily construct a temporary pier whose demise was comical and resulted in the loss of US$320 million in United States taxpayer funds. But, the thirty-two-country collective that is NATO should have the combined resources to design, construct, and then operate a permanent pier for Gaza regardless of what the State of Israel desires. The unknown is if such a proposal were submitted to members of NATO, would the Trump-Vance Administration (2025-2029) object? Even if it did object, would unanimity be required? That might need to be tested.
President Trump is rejoicing, self-congratulating that United States taxpayers will direct nearing US$100 million to provide nutrition of the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza. As though this is an act of charity that only United States taxpayers could and should provide. Reality check: While the Biden-Harris Administration (2021-2025) did demonstrably enable the State of Israel to rain terror upon the inhabitants of Gaza primarily through United States taxpayer funded gifts of weaponry to the IDF, the responsibility for the plight of 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza has one responsible party: The taxpayers of the State of Israel. United States taxpayers should not be delivering anything. Nor should anyone else.
During the next weeks, the First Ladies of the United Nations member states should coalesce to take ownership of the issue of Gaza since their husbands have continued to pathetically demonstrate an inability to do so.
It is far past the time for first families to get their hands dirty rather than focusing upon the use of their vocal cords.
The grand optic would be for the Secretary-General of the UN, to cede the first days of speaking slots at the UNGA from heads of state and heads of government to the wives of those heads of state and the wives of those heads of government. Do something different.
Paging Melania Trump, First Lady of the United States (2017-2021 and 2025-2029), mother of a son and stepmother to four children. Now is a moment to lead or at least be a member of a chorus whose members can do what a man cannot- give birth to a child. Maybe, Mrs. Trump is not watching as much cable television as does her husband. It might be time to watch. And prepare her UNGA speech- Mrs. Trump would be second-up in the first morning slot. Mrs. Erdogan would be soon after.
