Why the Marshall Islands Made the Right Vote on Gaza at the United Nations

Damage in Gaza Strip during October 2023 (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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This newspaper article was published in the Marshall Islands Journal on November 17, 2023. Below is the full article, along with the original clipping of the article from the newspaper:

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In last two editions of the Marshall Islands Journal, many contributors have expressed their disappointment at the RMI government in voting against a UN Resolution for a ceasefire in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. I want to make the case that the RMI made the right vote.

First, there seems to be this strange idea going around on social media and even in the press that the state of Israel is “occupying” or “colonizing” the Palestinians on their rightful land. But, historically speaking, that is not true.

Map of the Ottoman Empire in 1914 (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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The territory of Palestine in the early 1900s belonged to the Ottoman Empire. When the Ottomans were defeated in the First World War, the victors—Great Britain and France—governed the former Ottoman territories with supervision from the newly created League of Nations. These European nations then created the states of the Middle East that we know today, including Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The Arabs of these territories didn’t even identify with these newly created borders drawn up by Europeans—the only thing they had in common was that they were all Arabs who were formerly subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

League of Nations mandates after World War I (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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But by 1917, one year before the end of the First World War, Britain’s Balfour Declaration stated its intention to support a national home for the Jews. And it was this declaration that drew the Jews to Palestine. Many Jews who were persecuted in Nazi Germany then fled to Palestine—and who could blame them? By 1939, there were already 450,000 Jews in Palestine. And after the Second World War, the world began to learn about the Holocaust: Hitler’s deliberate extermination of six million Jews by execution squads and death camps. This sympathy for the Jewish plight led the United Nations to divide Palestine into both the Jewish state of Israel and the Arab state of Palestine in 1948.

The Balfour Declaration (1917) (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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Knowing all of this, how can anyone say that the Jews are occupiers or colonizers? They simply took advantage of a situation where the governors of their biblical holy land offered them refuge and the opportunity to settle in the region to have own nation—and they took full advantage of it.

Second, this war is not between Israel and Palestine; it is between Israel and Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and their main goal is to destroy Israel and replace it with one Islamic Palestinian state. They are supplied with a large number of weapons and money from Iran, whose president in 2005 described Israel as a “disgraceful blot” that “must be wiped off the map.”

Iran’s views have since not changed. After Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, a day for the Jewish Sabbath and a Jewish High Holiday, the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: “We support Palestine and its struggles… This attack is the work of the Palestinians themselves, and we salute and honor the planners of this attack.”

And Hamas is to blame for why the United Nations is having such a hard time delivering aid. Israel knows that Hamas will take that aid, especially the petrol, for its military instead of using it on hospitals and water desalinization.

Since taking power in Gaza in 2007, Hamas has shown that it cares nothing for the Palestinian people. In the last 16 years, they have done nothing to alleviate the Palestinians from high levels of poverty and unemployment, and they knew that it would only be a matter of time before they were discredited by their political rival: The Palestinian Authority. The only way Hamas could gain points over their rival was to do something to make it seem as if they were making some sort of progress, and the method they chose was to attack Israel. The result is the ongoing war that has destroyed the lives of innocent civilians on both sides. But that did not seem to matter to Hamas because, to them, political power is more important than the lives of their own people.

Since Hamas cares nothing for the Palestinians, it makes no sense to send them aid in hopes that, somehow, they will use it responsibly; if anything, it sounds like wishful thinking.

Published in the Marshall Islands Journal, November 17, 2023

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Why the Marshall Islands Should Start Thinking About World War III

U.S. Marine Corps via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

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This article was published in the Marshall Islands Journal on November 11, 2022. Below is the full article, along with the original clipping of the article from the newspaper:

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As the world history instructor at the College of the Marshall Islands, my students often laugh when I mention that world leaders tried to make peace with Adolf Hitler. In 1936, Hitler had marched his German troops into the Rhineland, which had then belonged to France, to take the land back after having lost it post-World War I. And the world did nothing to stop him.

Two years later in 1938, Hitler had marched his troops into Austria and annexed it as part of his Nazi empire. And again, the world did nothing to stop him.

Six months later, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland – a German populated area south of Germany in the country of Czechoslovakia. This worried world leaders, and they finally sat down with Hitler to make peace. They gave Hitler permission to take the Sudetenland, and in exchange Hitler promised peace.

But Hitler’s promises meant nothing, and the following year Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia. Six months later he took the western half of Poland. Just like that, Hitler had successfully swallowed up nearly half of the European map – and the world did nothing to stop him. What did this European affair mean for the Marshall Islands?

Japan’s alliance with Hitler emboldened them to bomb the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in hopes of destroying the American fleet in the Pacific. The USA declared war, and the Marshall Islands would now be involved in the battle for the Pacific.

Two atolls suffered the most during the years 1943–1944: Mile and Jaluit. Of the 185 days of recorded bombing activity in the Marshall Islands, Mile and Jaluit were bombed 51% of those days, with Jaluit being bombed every single day from March to May of 1944.

Maloelap was bombed 43% of those days and suffered the worst survival rate out of all the atolls with only 34% of the garrison surviving – counting both Japanese and Marshallese – while Wotje was bombed 35% of those days and had the second worst survival rate at 37%.

All of this war and suffering started with one man in Europe having the vision of conquering the world for his Nazi regime. So let’s learn from history and not make the mistake of thinking that what is happening in Europe cannot spill over into the Pacific.

Vladimir Putin has been swallowing up the European map: he took Chechnya in 2000, he annexed Crimea in 2014, and now he wants Ukraine. He also has a growing alliance with China and North Korea.

My honest belief is that Putin is invading Ukraine to test the West, and he is not bluffing when he threatens to use nuclear weapons. If the West doesn’t respond with strength, then this may embolden Russia even further and embolden China to invade Taiwan, sowing the seeds for World War III.

RiṂajeḷ should start planning now what they would do in the case of a new global war taking place in the Pacific. As for me, I would probably enlist in the military to join the fight, as I don’t think I would be able to teach with a sound mind while the world is at war. I believe the world faces the most dangerous decade since the 1940s, and only time will tell if the world can remain at peace for much longer.

Published in the Marshall Islands Journal (Nov. 11, 2022)

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