In the fifth episode of Just World Ed’s “Gaza & the World” podcast series, the University of Chicago’s Prof. John Mearsheimer slammed the UN Security Council’s adoption November 17 of Pres. Trump’s “Comprehensive Plan” for Gaza.
“The resolution is disgraceful,” he said, adding,
I find it hard to believe that this is where we have ended up since we’ve been in the midst of a genocide in Gaza since October 7th, 2023. And all sorts of people understand that the Palestinians should have a state of their own, or have some sense of self-determination.
When you… look at this resolution, it’s just so counter to everything that would be sensible from my point of view.
Prof. Mearsheimer was talking to JWE’s Helena Cobban less than 20 hours after the Security Council took that fateful vote, in which 13 Council members supported the U.S.-proffered draft, which thereby became UNSC Resolution 2803. Two states, China and Russia, abstained. But by not using their veto, those two states allowed the resolution to pass.
You can see this full 62-minute conversation on YouTube here. You can listen to the audio version here. Or you can read the transcript here.
Prof. Mearsheimer is well known as both an elegant and oft-quoted theorist of international relations, from a determinedly “realist” perspective, and a forthright and courageous critic of the undue power that Israel has long wielded over the policies of the United States. The 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy that he co-authored with Stephen Walt in 2007 has been translated into 24 languages.