 The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution on Gaza, but without calling for an immediate ceasefire. What is stopping this body from calling for an end to Israel's brutal bombing? South Korea's Supreme Court has upheld two rulings that ordered Japanese companies to pay compensation for Korean forced labor victims. And this was under Japanese colonial rule. What are the implications of this verdict? This is a daily debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before we go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. The United States actively sabotaged the UN Security Council resolution on a ceasefire in Gaza by forcing a change in the language. The resolution had initially called for, to quote, a sustainable cessation of hostilities. But under US pressure, it ended up calling for, to quote again, urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access and also for creating conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities. Now, after this intervention, the US ended up not voting for the resolution anyway and abstained. The resolution passed with 13 votes in support and two abstentions. We go to Abdul for the details. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. First of all, could you take us through what happened at the UN Security Council? A lot of discussion over the past few days, the US really pushing its agenda and then abstaining. What happened? Well Prashant, the United Nations Security Council finally voted on a resolution which basically demands for greater humanitarian aid inside Gaza and talks about creating a mechanism which basically provides aid to all parts of Gaza without any interruption. It does not, of course, it talks about release of captives and talks about the ways to find, ways to be found to kind of seize hostilities. But does not say anything about ceasefire has basically US has been delaying the voting for last three days at least four days in which it basically had objections to the earlier drafts which talked about suspension of hostilities. First it talked about ceasefire, then it was watered down to suspension of hostilities. None of these provisions were acceptable to the United States. Even while the Security Council was voting on it on Friday, after all the negotiations, US did not agree to kind of support any draft which basically talked about or hinted about ceasefire. So it is a kind of compromise which basically has resulted in a very mild resolution which does not say anything and does not give any hope about peace in Gaza. It basically means that Israel can continue bombing Gaza and its ground offensive can continue. It also means that there is no pressure on Israel to basically do something about kind of to basically stop the war in Gaza. At the last moment, Russians tried to introduce an amendment which basically talked about some kind of suspension of hostilities for a while. Even that was vetoed by the US and that basically led to a situation where Russia basically abstained on the final draft which was finally accepted. By the way, the strange fact is even after negotiating all of this and forcing the other members of the United Nations Security Council to water down their appeals of ceasefire, US ultimately did not vote in favor of the resolution and abstained. It did not want to look as if it wants to kind of sit with the countries which basically are in favor of ceasefire in any way, even remotely. And that is the only message which comes out of what happened in the Security Council on Friday. So that is the situation about the United Nations Security Council resolution which was adopted on Friday. And the resolution has no meaning and does not have any impact on the overall hostilities in Gaza. It does not have any impact on any possibility. It does not bring any possibility of ceasefire there. We are ending of course another week, another week of continuous attacks, very brutal attacks. Would you give us the situation to tell us a bit about the situation on the ground in Palestine right now? Well Prashant, as far as the situation in Gaza is concerned, the fighting continues. Israel has continued to bomb different parts of Gaza. In fact, there are reports coming that it has used the maximum number of ammunition and one of the most deadly weapons inside Gaza in the last few days. And the overall casualties of Palestinians has reached almost 21,000 and more than 55,000 Palestinians have been wounded. There are reports coming that there are fights going on between the invading Israeli forces and the Palestinian resistance forces in different parts of Gaza. As for the latest report, the Israeli forces have suffered some kind of, you can say, setbacks in terms of a number of their soldiers being killed. But of course that number remains a very small number. The actual number of Palestinians being killed in every hour in the Gaza is increasing day by day. Overall humanitarian situation is becoming worse, bad to worse. According to the UN's latest finding, almost 500,000-plus Palestinians are living in complete starvation in a very dire situation where they are not able to get even the minimum food which is required for them to survive. And that number is basically going to increase given the fact that despite the fact that the Security Council has voted for greater access for humanitarian aid, it does not seem that Israel is in any obligation to basically implement that resolution. Because there is no punitive measures which is going to be taken in the future if Israel says it will not implement the Security Council resolution. And that means that the overall hurdles and the restrictions which Israel has imposed on the delivery of humanitarian aid inside Gaza will continue in the coming days. Meanwhile, the health situation in Gaza of course is deteriorating. More hospitals have come under attack and it becomes impossible now to the health workers, health staff in the operating inside Gaza to function anymore. Primarily, in fact, the majority of the hospitals have now completely shut down and new hospitals which have been operating despite all the problems in the last few months are on the verge of shutting down. So this is the overall situation inside Gaza and it has deteriorated in the last 24 hours. Hundreds of more Palestinians have been killed and that situation will continue because the Security Council has refused to adopt a resolution asking for immediate ceasefire. Right. And finally, could you also maybe take us through what is happening regionally? We know that there has been a lot of pushback from resistance forces across the region. So what is happening over there? Well Prashant, as far as the global and regional responses to both the UN Security Council resolution as well as the overall situation in Gaza is concerned, it seems that apart from Russians there are more countries which were not happy with the way the US pressurized the UN Security Council to basically adopt a resolution which does not have any meaning in fact. And that has basically led to greater disenchantments. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has claimed that they basically started a new set of attacks against the Israeli forces in northern Gaza, in northern Israel, particularly in response to what the Israeli forces have been doing, attacking the southern Lebanon, destroying a lot of homes, civilian infrastructure in the last few days. According to the latest report Hezbollah has claimed that its attack has led to the kind of destruction of some of the Israeli military posts and killing of a couple of Israeli soldiers, though of course these reports are not verified. Meanwhile, Houthis have reacted to the US attempts to create an international coalition, the basically prosperity guardians, the operation prosperity guardians, which is basically a naval alliance created by the US. According to the US there are 20 countries now which have become part of it. Houthis have said that despite this creation of the alliance it will not seize attacks against the Israeli ships heading to Israel. And it has basically appealed the countries in the region not to join the US alliance because that basically would mean, Houthi argument is, that would mean adding the Israeli war against Palestinians. They have also claimed that this particular alliance is nothing but an attempt to protect the Israeli interest and to militarize the Red Sea in the name of protecting the freedom of navigation. So it seems that the Houthis have been determined to basically continue their offensive against the naval shipments crossing the Red Sea. So if you see there are also reports of course not confirmed that the Iraqi militias have basically fired rockets which basically has reached the Iraqi, sorry Israeli city of Elat, though again this is not yet confirmed that this is the claim made by the Iraqi militias. So if you see countries in the region are not happy with the way US has basically watered down the UN resolution and made it meaningless. At the same time the militias in the region have basically continued to take aggressive actions against the Israeli war in Gaza demanding the immediate situation of hostilities, immediate situation of war. So this is the overall situation as if now inside in the region. Thank you so much Abdul for speaking to us. The South Korean Supreme Court upheld two rulings by lower courts that ordered Japanese companies to pay compensation to 11 Korean forced labour victims. This was under Japanese colonial rule. The case was against Mr. Bishi Heavy Industries Limited and Nippon Steel and was filed by Koreans who were forced into labour during World War II. However, this is not merely an incident from history as its implications continue today and the South Korean government has been moving closer to Japan despite many such issues being unresolved. We go to Anish for more. Anish, thank you so much for joining us. A verdict of course about incidents, horrific incidents which took place many, many years ago during World War II but also which has ramifications in today's context. So could you first take us through what the case is about and who are these companies who are being against whom this verdict has gone? Well there are two cases actually and the rulings that were given by the appellate courts and even lower courts before was that individual claims of damages during the war time, especially those who were forced to do unpaid hard labour in Japan who were drafted by the Japanese colonial government at the time. They are liable to have the right to file for damages and also secure those damages to begin with. Now we are looking at some of the very few last surviving wartime forced labour victims. This includes women, four of the victims, at least the three of them who are surviving at least are women who were put into what was called the volunteer women scopes. And then there is who were drafted by Mitsubishi heavy industries at the time for a airplane factory and then there is the other set of group who were hired by Nippon Steel. Now in both cases all the people were drafted against their will. They were taken by the colonial government to work in very extremely brutal conditions and many of them did die. In many of these factories and mines and these are generally considered war crimes in general and also colonial crimes. But Japan has yet to confront that especially when it comes to Korea because Korea was never a signatory to the San Francisco Treaty. So it was never seen as party to the kind of wartime reparations that Japan had to pay say to United States at the time or UK France and so on. And so this is a very different kind of problem that has always been there that has always been the dispute between Japan and South Korea. It's not the first time that Korean courts have actually favored victims of wartime forced labor before in 2018. The same Supreme Court had favored victims against the same set of companies Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel to grant them a similar set of compensation. Most of them are dead now in fact since they have filed the case. It was like many of these litigations began in early 2010s and most of them couldn't survive because obviously they're too old right now and it remains to be seen if they ever get paid in their own lifetime. At the same time what we're looking at as you pointed out there are real time implications right now because obviously the current conservative government has been trying to push through you know ram through actually a sort of reconciliation with Japan that actually comes at the cost of national interest. Very often done at the behest of or at the encouragement of the United States who wants to create a sort of access against China obviously and also North Korea. And this sort of drawing of war lines has actually cost and will cost Korea a situation where it is going to overlook its own citizens needs and you know the demands of wartime victims. And not just wartime victims colonial era victims many of which includes all sorts of other crimes including the comfort women issue that that Korea doesn't really want to address in most instances. And that is being done at their cost and this thought that that is being lauded by mainstream media in the West and also in Japan is coming. It's time when North Korea is sorry South Korea is ready to just forget its colonial history with Japan and the kind of crimes that has been inflicted on its people. I want to ask you a bit more about that what has been the trajectory of ties between Japan and South Korea in the past how have they sort of you know dealt with it and what has changed over the past few years. Well, one of the things that we need to understand is like every time there has been a conservative government that has always been a rightward tilt and that rightward tilt meant that they tried to secure very close military ties with Japan. You know, for getting a large part of the colonial baggage that exists and which has never been resolved. And this was something that was pretty much a legacy of the military dictatorship that existed until the 80s, especially under Park Changhee who actually, you know, led the process of signing the 1965 treaty, which pretty much gave Japan a very quick short cut out of, you know, paying reparations paying for or, you know, even giving an apology, a formal apology for not just colonizing the country, the peninsula, but also inflicting a significant amount of damage and, you know, crimes and atrocities against the Korean people. And it's not just Korea. Obviously, Japan has a, you know, very terrible history of colonialism, especially in the 40s and late 30s, when it colonized parts of China, parts of Southeast Asia, and committed the kind of crimes that are yet to be reckoned with. And that is something where, you know, often there are political divisions in South Korea as well and obviously not Korea to where it's not so much divisions but obviously it has been demanding but has been overlooked over any talks of settlements or reparations. Nevertheless, under the previous government of Moon Jae-in, there was an attempt by the South Korean government to actually support the victims of war crimes, support the victims of forced labor of women who were forced into being comfort women. And that actually created tensions. But it wasn't like the kind of tensions that broke relations or created irreparable damage. It was just tensions where Japan just refused to acknowledge any of these crimes. But under the UN government, the government has been trying to, you know, pretty much bend over backwards to actually accommodate Japan. Even right now what we're seeing is the government trying to give a roundabout way by creating this foundation where it will make, you know, Korean refugees, obviously who, you know, who gained from the settlement of 1965 to pay for the victims but it pretty much gives Japanese companies and Japan itself a way out of even giving an apology or paying for the victims or even taking responsibility for the kind of crimes that they have committed. So this is the kind of thing that that is being done just so that South Korea can actually have stronger military ties. Earlier today, there's already been statements given by both the governments of trying to, you know, go for a more dynamic relationship and, you know, spearhead the situation where, you know, Japan might even possibly have a base access military base access or even have a military base in South Korea. So that is the kind of situation that they're in. But these court cases kind of remind the conservatives, the conservative ruling dispensation that it is not going to be as simple as that because obviously a lot of these victims have very great public support. They are not forgotten. It pretty much reminds people of the nationalist history that existed and much of what has been betrayed by this different kind of right wing regimes and conservative governments over the years. So this is definitely one of the stumbling blocks that South Korea will have to deal with when it tries to build the kind of alliance and anti-China alliance with Japan and the United States. Thank you very much for that update.