Reconsidering US Blanket Support For Israel

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Outer Banks, NC – November 2023 photo by Stephen P. Szymanski

Sometimes a friend, a family member or a neighbor asks you to help them solve a problem. You go along, thinking that you’ll be able to help out, only to suddenly find you’re deeply involved in something that could easily become either a reputation killer, or possibly even life-threatening to you.

And after five weeks of intense bombing, this is where America sits with the Israel/Hamas war. Our friend has caused us to get badly stuck in something and it’s become very difficult to see how to get out of it.

First, all right-minded people should agree that what Hamas did on Oct. 7 was a war crime. And the taking of non-combatant Israeli hostages is also a violation of international law, as is Hamas using Palestinians as human shields.

Second, it is possible to be committed to Israel and to its right to defend itself while at the same time being critical of its response in Gaza and sympathetic to the Palestinian’s plight.

Third, (and what is the focus of this column), is how Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has become close to violating the rules of war. Israel has launched near-continuous airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. According to Barron’s since the onset of the war, Israeli attacks on targets within Gaza have destroyed or damaged 45% of all housing units in the Palestinian territory.

In addition, the Times of Israel acknowledges that a lot of Gazans have died since the October 7 terrorist attacks. It cites the “Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza,” while arguing that the numbers cannot be confirmed and likely include Hamas fighters and victims of misfired Hamas rockets. They still put the number of dead north of 11,000. But there’s also allegedly 26,000 who have been injured and more than 3,000 that are missing. That adds up to 40,000.

The CIA estimates that Gaza began 2023 with a population of 2,098,389, so the total casualties (including the missing) in Gaza are about 2% of the population. And nearly a million people have had their homes damaged or destroyed so far. And the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates that 70% have been displaced from their homes.

The systematic bombardment of housing and infrastructure is prohibited under international law. You can’t destroy 45% of the housing units of a population of 2 million people in five weeks and argue that you are doing all you can to avoid harming civilians.

Indiscriminate bombing of cities became an issue before WWII. Concern about “ruthless bombing of civilians” began with the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1932, and the bombing of Barcelona and Guernica in Spain by Italian and German fascists in 1937-38.

An important review of the historical background to the law against bombing cities is in the late Daniel Ellsworth’s excellent 2017 book, “The Doomsday Machine” (TDM). Ellsworth says that the need for rule-making became clear after the German Blitz of London in 1940. That led to the US and Britain secretly adopting Hitler’s tactics. The actions of the three belligerents obliterated the distinction between bombing combatants and civilians for the rest of WWII.

Citizens in the opponent’s country were considered legitimate targets because they were contributing in some way to their country’s war effort. This led to the moral justification that it was better to kill civilians in order to get the war over quickly. After that, bomber attacks exclusively aimed at exterminating German population centers was accepted by Churchill: (TDM, p.239)

“This is the way to pay them back; it’s legitimate for us to do so, and in fact it’s virtually obligatory for us to do so….”

The near-exact words were spoken by Biden, Blinken and Netanyahu after Oct. 7. But even in WWII, there wasn’t true proportionality. From TDM: (pg. 245)

“For every ton of bombs dropped on England in the nine months of the Blitz, England and the US…dropped a hundred tons of bombs on German cities…”

And more than 500,000 Germans were killed.

In 1949, a series of treaties governing the laws of war were adopted. The Geneva Conventions and specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention attempted to create legal defenses for civilians in war, but it wasn’t explicit about bombardment.

In 1977, Protocol I was adopted as an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting the deliberate or indiscriminate attack on civilians, even if the area contained military targets. But Protocol I also says that locating military objectives near civilians “shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians“.

This has always been honored in the breach.

Aerial operations are supposed to comply with the principles of: military necessity, distinction, and proportionality.  An attack or action must be intended to aid the military defeat of the enemy. It must be an attack on a military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. But proportionality doesn’t hinge only on absolute casualty counts but on how harm to civilian lives and infrastructure is weighed against expected military gains.

That means theoretically, a lot of suffering is permissible.

Under the law of war, Israel’s proportionality calculation must take account of the civilian casualties its air strikes and ground invasion are causing. But Israel has in the past interpreted the rules to exclude damage to apartment buildings if terrorists occupy them.

Israel and America also believe that civilians who voluntarily serve as human shields are participants, not bystanders. But, how to tell the difference? Israeli officials say they have no choice: Hamas fighters are embedded within Gaza’s population and store weapons in and under civilian sites. They also say it’s impossible to defeat its enemy without killing innocents — a lesson that Americans learned at Hiroshima, Falluja and Mosul.

The NYT reports that during Blinken’s visits to Israel after Oct. 7, Israeli officials privately invoked the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They quoted Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman:

“In any combat situation, like when the US was leading a coalition to get ISIS out of Mosul, there were civilian casualties….[and] that Israel’s “ratio” of Hamas fighters to civilians killed “compares very well to NATO and other Western forces” in past military campaigns”.

When all you have for an argument is that your friend has done worse, you’re in serious trouble. Regev’s statement is also impossible to verify. US military officials have discussed the lessons learned from the battles in Iraq and in Raqqa, (the ISIS headquarters in Syria) with Israel.

Israel isn’t exempt from learning from the past and applying the lessons to their current urban warfare. And this is coming from an ally that receives $ billions in US aid every year. Israel is obviously willing to use any justification to continue its destruction in Gaza.

It’s clear that Israel is following a deliberate policy of wrecking Gaza’s infrastructure and buildings. Netanyahu said on October 7 that the IDF would turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble.” On October 10, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, the Israeli Army’s coordinator of government activities in the territories, stated  “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

That gives context to the fact that almost half of the housing in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed since October 7.

Gaza is now well beyond a long and expensive reconstruction process. It’s approaching the point where Gaza is becoming a place where human beings will find it difficult to exist. It’s true that Hamas is also culpable; they’ve brought this upon their own people. They continue to hold the hostages, and that provides Israel with justification for fighting in the heart of Gaza, including near its hospitals.

If Hamas cared about their own people, they would do something to stop it.

The point is that these disproportionate attacks should make it clear that the US needs to find a way to stop blindly taking Israel’s side. We should not be making excuses for Israel’s targeting of civilian populations. Figuring out what we should be doing is urgent, since our current posture isn’t benefiting the US, while it is benefiting our many adversaries in the ME.

The world thinks that the US has leverage over Israel, but as this war shows, we do not. We’re joined at the hip, and no other two countries have had a closer relationship. And when the war broke out on October 7, Biden made it very clear we would give Israel whatever aid it needed, that we would support Israel to the hilt. And we’ve done that.

But, Israel rebuffed Biden’s efforts to talk Israel into arranging “humanitarian pauses” until world opinion started to turn against Netanyahu. CNN and others reported that Israel has finally agreed to move forward with four-hour pauses of military operations in Northern Gaza. We’ll see how that goes.

But should America sacrifice any more of what shreds remain of our moral standing in the world to cooperate with Israel in what seems about to become massive civilian slaughter? Even if Israel’s war efforts are justifiable, their actions are making Gaza uninhabitable.

And when the smoke clears, and much of Gaza’s population has moved south, will Israel allow them return to sit amongst the rubble that remains?

Finally, Israel may be doing exactly what Hamas hoped. It is radicalizing many Palestinians. It isn’t difficult to imagine that if you lived in Gaza and saw Israel’s bombs kill most of your family, you might be willing to walk a bomb into a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv after a ceasefire. If you’re going to live like a dog for the rest of your life, at least you could gain a modicum of revenge by taking a few Israelis along with you.

Time to wake up America! Israel is telling the world that it will stop at nothing to re-establish the security of its borders, even down to the last Palestinian. While the IDF tells us it is following the laws of war, Netanyahu is showing us that his strategy is to make his Middle East adversaries think that no one can out crazy Israel. Israel’s willing to do this even if it has to defy the rest of the world and even if it doesn’t have a plan for returning Gaza to the Palestinians on the morning after the war.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to U2’s 2001 hit “Stuck In A Moment That You Can’t Get Out Of”. Bono wrote the lyrics about the suicide of his close friend Michael Hutchence, lead singer of the band INXS. The song is an argument against suicide in which Bono tries to convince Hutchence of the act’s foolishness.

We also should see the foolishness of total war even against a terrible enemy. It could turn out to be suicide:

(This is Wrongo’s longest column ever. If you’ve read this far, thank you for your interest!)

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Sunday Soother – October 22, 2023

The demise of Sunday Cartoon Blogging was greeted without crying by the Wrongologist faithful, but maybe we need a laugh today. Herewith is the best cartoon of the week:

Jordan blew it:

And here is the best photo of art this week: West Bank wall – via Street Art by Banksy:

(This was executed in 2005 by Banksy on the West Bank barrier wall in Abu Dis.)

There’s only a small chance that we’ll get totally soothed after a most tumultuous week. John Dick, CEO of CivicScience reports that: (emphasis and brackets by Wrongo)

“People are glued to the Israel-Hamas war. In our 3 Things to Know this week, we found that 81% of US adults are paying close attention to the crisis in Israel – although [for] younger people, much less so. This high level of attention carries across age and political affiliations, but older adults and Republicans are much more likely to follow it very closely.”

Having both a war in Congress and the war in Gaza so dominate the news makes it hard for people to get sufficient distance to see these events in any real context. But, on this rainy Sunday in Connecticut, let’s give Soothing the old college try.

We had the local arborist come by to get a quote for tree work on the Fields of Wrong. When the cold weather comes, shaping and pruning trees and felling them is easier. We need all three. We’re delaying our fall clean-up for a few more weeks, since we still have many trees with green leaves. It looks like the clean-up will begin during the first week of November, or maybe when Congress is likely to select a new Speaker.

So here at the start of another week that will certainly be filled with momentous news, let’s try deep breathing and some robust coffee to start us off for the week. Let’s brew up a mug of Opus Dark Roast ($19.99/12oz.) from San Jose CA’s Chromatic Coffee. It is said to have notes of dark chocolate and burnt sugar. Yummy!

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window and watch and listen to two different pieces, both of which gesture towards finding peace among combatants. First, from JS Bach’s “B minor Mass, here is “Dona Nobis Pacem” (Latin for “Grant us peace”). It is performed by the English Baroque Soloists & Monteverdi Choir and conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner:

Now for a change of pace, listen to Alicia Keys perform her 2014 song “We Are Here”. It describes Keys’ frustration with both national and international issues, including the conflict at the time between Israel and Gaza. Following the song’s release, Keys launched a movement, called the “We Are Here Movement” calling for a more equal and just world:

Sample lyric:

Let’s talk about Gaza
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about Israel
Cause right now it is real
Let’s talk about, let’s talk Nigeria
And the mass hysteria, yeah
Our souls are brought together
So that we can love each other, brother

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What’s Israel’s Strategy If They Eliminate Hamas?

The Daily Escape:

Escalante NM, UT – October 2023 drone photo by Brete Thomas

Last night, President Biden said that the world is at an inflection point. The next stage of the Israel/Hamas conflict is beginning. From the WaPo:

“Israeli troops are massing around the Gaza Strip, poised for a ground invasion that could involve heavy urban combat in the densely populated territory. The buildup of force comes after attackers from the militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave, crossed into southern Israel, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages.”has and will be written about the next stage concerns what is a “justifiable” retaliatory action by the Israelis. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have already pummeled Gaza with airstrikes, killing more than 3,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinians.

Much of what the Israelis seemingly are planning on doing is entirely justifiable, so long as there is an overarching strategy behind it. What we do know is that Israel has vowed to “destroy” Hamas. That means an extensive ground war in Gaza.

Without a strategy for what happens after Hamas is rooted out, this will look more like a reprisal strike whenever the IDF leaves Gaza. And there’s absolutely a moral problem with reprisals that kill many civilians. The law (and custom) of war would say there isn’t a problem with reprisals in which you’re killing only Hamas. But if the IDF happens to kill a lot of civilians along the way, even if it is lawful, the world would want to see that Israel has a long-term strategic objective that justifies those actions.

The WaPo quotes Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at Rand Corp: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“Basically what the Israelis are aiming for is complete regime change in Gaza, which is a notable break from past campaigns….If you want to root out Hamas, it’s going to last a lot more than 50 days like Protective Edge, (referring to the IDF’s 2014 Gaza operation)”.

The general rule is that armies are not allowed to target civilians, but you are allowed to target combatants or belligerents of the other side. Urban warfare has always shown that civilians and belligerents are not necessarily distinct from one another. Often the fighters aren’t wearing uniforms.

The US military saw this in Mosul and Raqqa while fighting ISIS. The bad guys are basing themselves in the same buildings that civilians live in. That means the military has to weigh factors like the necessity of the military strike, and whether the expected civilian harm is proportionate to the expected military gain.

Let’s game out how it might look on the ground in Gaza. Remember, that Hamas is thought to have a membership of between 20,000 and 25,000.

First, Israel will have control of the airspace over Gaza. That will make rooftops a very poor place for Hamas sniper and rocket positions.

Second, Israel has amassed artillery and tanks to provide massive firepower. This is an advantage to IDF troops since overwhelming firepower will reduce risk to its soldiers. But it is a huge disadvantage to civilian populations, and it’s incredibly destructive to the city. Also, tanks could be vulnerable to antitank weapons and will be limited by narrow urban streets.

Third, urban warfare tactics will probably be stalemated at the start. Expect Hamas to take up positions in buildings where they will have cover against attacking IDF forces. But Israeli soldiers will bring explosives to blow through walls and enter buildings or rooms from unexpected directions. The size of the IDF forces will gradually wear down Hamas.

Fourth, Gaza has many tunnels built for allowing Hamas to move around the city undetected. The IDF will either flood the tunnels or permanently entomb Hamas soldiers in them using explosives.

Regardless, many people in Gaza will die, some of whom will be Hamas members.

So the big questions are what is Israel’s exit strategy? How will Gaza be governed post-Hamas? And how will the IDF minimize civilian casualties?

Here’s some context. You can read this and say “what about” a fact or two? But the overarching issue is: Can these two peoples with different religions live peacefully in very close contact, given all that has happened since the Balfour Declaration? Israelis came to a land that already had a native population, and the land to share between them wasn’t very large. That required that some of the people who were already on the land had to be moved.

Sounds like America and it’s manifest destiny move westward.

A reality on the ground in Israel and in Gaza is that the Palestinian population is growing faster than Israel’s. This makes for continued contests (legal and illegal) over control of land, and this frozen conflict has now once again burst into active warfare.

And regarding strategy? It may be as simple as let’s get rid of Hamas. Let’s end the cycle of violence and rebuild. No one asked FDR what to do with Germany on D-Day.

If Israel can eliminate Hamas while minimizing civilian casualties, that would be a good start. Then if the Palestinians can put together a government that actually wants: a) to build a functioning economy (without having its existence justified by perpetual war) and b) can check the “Israel has a right to exist” box, perhaps peace could happen.

The Israelis will likely have to be pushed to accept a viable Palestinian state, since this will mean political conflict with its West Bank settlers. A critical question is how hard the US and other nations are willing to push for peace between the parties. It seems likely that the current conflict may create an opportunity to push for peace. Let’s hope Israel is ready to grasp it.

The Arab states are looking on nervously. The outraged response to the hospital bombing in Gaza reminds us that even authoritarian governments sometimes must be responsive to their citizens. It’s possible that in the future, Israel may still face active challenges from hostile regimes in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. To assume otherwise is just wishful thinking.

The world is staring down the real possibility that this local conflict might morph into a regional war. There will be both short and longer term global consequences for America regardless of Israel’s strategy post-Hamas.

(Sorry, no Saturday Soother today. Instead, let’s hope for minimized deaths and casualties from the Israel/Hamas war.)

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Thoughts About The Israel/Hamas War

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Town Cove, Eastham, MA – October 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo

Wrongo and Ms. Right returned today from another fine stay on Cape Cod. Time with family and friends in a special environment is always fun and refreshing. It almost made us forget that we’re in the midst of a global hysteria surrounding the Israel/Hamas war.

What has happened so far and what may happen soon should be revolting to anyone who can empathize with other humans. Wrongo has a few thoughts for today’s Monday Wake Up Call: First, as terrible as the Israel/Hamas story is, we and the media shouldn’t obsessively focus on it to the exclusion of other important events. There are other problems that we need to keep a focus on.

And while it’s important to stay current, no one should subject themselves to watching the hostage videos that Hamas says they will be broadcasting of the hostages. Watching people suffer won’t make them suffer less. You can’t unsee these things. Moreover, you shouldn’t play into Hamas’ hands.

Second, Biden has been doing a reasonably good job in this crisis. From Dan Pfeiffer:

“Biden has been astride the world stage — speaking with strength, empathy, and moral outrage about the horrendous terrorist attack in Israel. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Republicans have been involved in an embarrassing spectacle of self-sabotage and narcissistic incompetence.”

Axios reported that on Sunday, Israel resumed supplying water to the southern Gaza Strip after strong pressure from the Biden administration.

But here at home, we still have the problem of Republicans fighting amongst themselves:

“Electing a Speaker is the most basic Congressional function, yet the Republican Caucus seems incapable of doing so. The dysfunction among House Republicans has left the U.S. with only one branch of Congress. Without a Speaker, Congress cannot pass a bill to keep the government open, send military aid to Israel or Ukraine, or even name a post office.”

Third, people often say horrible things in the aftermath of an attack. But shouldn’t political officials be self-censoring? That wasn’t so with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. He said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated:

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible….It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”

Herzog is asking: Why didn’t the people of Gaza rise up and overthrow Hamas? He implies that if they had, Israel wouldn’t have to attack them. The thought of a politician holding civilians in any country (half of whom aren’t adults) collectively responsible for atrocities committed by a unaccountable minority should be carefully parsed.

And using this as justification for destroying neighborhoods, for cutting off fuel and electricity to an entire population while ordering the mass evacuation of over a million people, seems to Wrongo to be a disproportionate response. There are a few ethicists who follow the Wrongologist Blog. Hopefully they will weigh in on Herzog’s justification for invading Gaza, and the ethics of targeting civilians in war.

From a political viewpoint, if Israel acts in a restrained way and doesn’t respond with overwhelming force, then Israel looks weak both to its citizens and to the Arab world. That’s likely to encourage more attacks, perhaps by other Middle East actors.

If Israel responds with overwhelming force, then lots of Palestinian civilians will die. Israel will be condemned and possibly other Muslim countries will join in an attack on Israel. So, perhaps Hamas’ attack wasn’t to create maximum casualties in Israel, but to trigger this lose/lose set of options for Israel’s response.

Finally, no one has a serious idea on a way to reach across the mammoth void between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Wrongo found a quote that may offer a way to think about a future for the region:

“At the end of 1918, Marshal Foch was in his Luxembourg headquarters examining with his international staff how to deal with Germany and the Germans. He had this thought: “The Germans, we either exterminate them, or we get along with them. Exterminating them is impossible. So, gentlemen, let’s work out how to get along with them.”

That didn’t work in WWI. It hasn’t worked in the Middle East. Yet, people are the same all over the world. They all want family, friends, a dependable job, and a secure place to live. That’s certainly true for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The question is: What must be sacrificed by either side to achieve it? And is either side capable of making a sacrifice today that will largely benefit their children’s grandchildren?

Time to wake up America! Do we ever take the long view? We seem to have forgotten how to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. It’s possible that the Gazans are invoking such a sacrifice right now.

This shouldn’t be a foreign idea to Americans, particularly to Christians. Much of Christianity’s beliefs involve sacrifice. For example, Christians believe that Jesus endured the sacrifice of torture, crucifixion and death for their redemption. That sacrifice is remembered in most Christian Sunday services.

There’s a major difference between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice about to be imposed on the men, women and children of Gaza. Christ sacrificed himself for others while Hamas is forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians to endure sacrifice for them. Those tens of thousands aren’t choosing to be sacrificed. It’s doubtful that Israelis want to be sacrificed: They’re just wishing the Palestinians would go away.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to “Zombie” by The Cranberries from 1994. The song was written by the late Delores O’Riordan, about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the decades-long conflict between nationalists (mainly Irish or Roman Catholic) and unionists (mainly British or Protestant).

The Troubles ended, while the Israel-Palestinian standoff continues.

The song was written in response to the death of two young boys, Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball, who were killed in an IRA bombing when two IRA-improvised explosive devices hidden in trash bins were detonated in Warrington, England. Ball died at the scene:

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Proposed Israeli Judicial Overhaul Threatens Civil War

The Daily Escape:

St. Augustine Beach, FL – 2015 photo by Wrongo

(New columns will be light and variable for the next 10 days as Wrongo and Ms. Right are off to our annual family reunion in Florida. New writing will begin in earnest sometime after April 12. As always, keep your tray tables in their upright and locked position and your arms inside the blog at all times.)

Are you following what’s going on in Israel? It’s been an important story, but it now seems to be getting bigger. From the NYT:

“Civil unrest broke out in…Israel Sunday night after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for criticizing the government’s judicial overhaul, which Gallant said is causing turmoil in the military and threatens Israel’s security.”

Here’s what Minister Gallant said that got him fired: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The rift within our society is widening and penetrating the Israel Defense Forces….[the schisms have caused]…a clear and immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state — I shall not be a party to this.”

By some media accounts, 600,000 people came out to protest across the country, which would mean that 6.5% of Israel’s population was on the streets.

The judicial overhaul was designed to give the government greater control over the selection of Supreme Court justices and to limit the court’s authority over Parliament. It would give Netanyahu power to handpick the judges presiding over his corruption trial (he’s charged in three cases and faces potential prison time).

The proposed overhaul has pitted liberal and secular Jewish Israelis against more right-wing and religiously conservative citizens. The firing of the Defense Minister also prompted Israel’s largest workers’ union to call a general strike, while leading universities closed down, and Israel’s consul-general in New York resigned. Flights from Tel Aviv’s airport were grounded.

The near-rebellion has caused Netanyahu to announce a suspension of the proposed legislation. From the WaPo:

“Out of national responsibility, from a desire to prevent the nation from being torn apart, I am calling to suspend the legislation….When there is a possibility to prevent a civil war through negotiations, I will give a time-out for negotiations.”

That wasn’t enough for the leaders of the months-long protests against Netanyahu’s push to remake Israel’s judicial system. They called for demonstrations to continue since Netanyahu announced that he was suspending, but still planned to pass the legislation.

The Movement for Quality Government called on the leaders of Netanyahu’s political opposition to continue fighting, saying:

“The coup d’état laws must be shelved completely….Not paused, not halted. Shelved. The suspension of the legislation looks like a cheap political exercise designed entirely to wait for a good time to bring the blitz of anti-democratic legislation back into our lives.”

Wrongo generally doesn’t agree with Tom Friedman, but he’s right about this:

“Netanyahu and his coalition thought they could pull off a quick judicial coup, disguised as a legal “reform,” that would enable them to exploit the narrowest of election victories — roughly 30,000 votes out of some 4.7 million — to allow Netanyahu & Co. to govern without having to worry about the only source of restraint on politicians in Israel’s system: its independent judiciary and Supreme Court.”

More from Friedman on the multi-front wars that Netanyahu has undertaken since being reinstalled as Israel’s Prime Minister:

“Netanyahu’s extremist coalition is now taking on the Palestinians and Iran militarily while ignoring the wishes and values of its most important ally, the US government; its most important diaspora community, American Jews; and its most important source of economic growth, foreign investors.

And it’s doing all of that while dividing the Israeli people to the brink of a civil war.”

Civil war in Israel? Even Netanyahu mentioned the possibility in his offer to suspend the effort to pass the judicial overhaul.

Meanwhile Haaretz reported that Israel’s far-right party Otzma Yehudit said that they have struck a deal to allow Netanyahu to delay the judicial overhaul until after the Knesset recess in return for the establishment of a national guard under the control of the Party’s leader, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Netanyahu caved to Ben-Gvir after the ultra-nationalist minister had threatened to resign over Netanyahu’s announcement to shelve the legislation. The idea of a national guard under Ben-Gvir isn’t new. Early versions of the proposal included siphoning off Border Police officers to the national guard, as well as the recruitment of 10,000 volunteers.

This would be a highly inflammatory step given that Ben-Gvir has, in the past, called for the police to use live ammunition on rock-throwing protesters. Haaretz reports that Ben-Gvir told Netanyahu that he would vote against the state budget if it does not include funds for establishing a new national guard. From Haaretz:

“Israel’s oldest human rights organization, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, responded immediately by describing the proposed national guard as “a private, armed militia that would be directly under Ben-Gvir’s control.”

And the irony of Netanyahu treating ordinary Israelis like, well, Palestinians, can’t be lost on anyone right now. Biden should make it clear that it stands by a democratic Israel, not the one being fashioned by Bibi and his coalition partners.

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Biden’s Excellent Middle East Adventure

The Daily Escape:

Early morning, Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO – July 2022 photo by Steve Volke

In an op-ed in the WaPo on July 9, Biden focused on security and said his administration had “reversed the blank-check policy we inherited” for Saudi Arabia:

“From the start, my aim was to reorient — but not rupture — relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years,”

Biden started his trip in Israel, and according to al-Monitor, his visit to Israel is mostly about Iran:

“The visit is expected to take US-Israel defense cooperation to a whole new level with an eye toward Iran and a plan B in case the nuclear talks collapse, or as a deterrent posture, even if they do.”

This signals to Wrongo that Biden has very low expectations that a return to the Iran Nuclear Deal is possible. It’s also probable that Biden doesn’t want the Nuclear Deal to be another political football in the 2022 mid-terms. We also learned this week that Iran will be supplying drones to the Russians, ostensibly to use in Ukraine, another reason to further isolate Iran rather than close the Nuclear Deal.

Biden will also try to create a new initiative tying Saudi Arabia into an eventual participation in the Abraham Accords. He’s also seeking an agreement with the Saudis that would permit Israeli commercial jets to fly over Saudi airspace.

Biden’s visit comes when Israel is holding its fifth election in under four years in November after the government headed by PM Naftali Bennett collapsed last month. The previous four elections were largely referendums on Netanyahu’s fitness to serve as PM while under indictment for corruption. Of note, former Prime Minister (and accused felon) Netanyahu only got a 15 minute audience with Biden on Thursday.

Biden visits East Jerusalem and the West Bank today, meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. His reception will be frosty. Biden has angered Palestinians when he said on Wednesday that a two-state solution was not feasible “in the near term”, although he walked that back later in the visit. Biden will also announce a $100 million grant to six hospitals in East Jerusalem.

Later on Friday, Biden touches down in Saudi Arabia, the country he said was a “pariah.” According to Bloomberg, this visit follows months of shuttle diplomacy that attempted to repair the alliance.

A pressing decision for Biden this week may be choosing an appropriate greeting for the Saudi leader he said he would snub. And his decision is more complicated after Biden had an extended handshake with Netanyahu, and then couldn’t seem to stop doing the same with other Israeli officials.

Bloomberg says that Biden wasn’t supposed to shake hands with any foreign leaders during his Middle East trip, largely as a Covid precaution. That would also have helped avoid a handshake with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Now a handshake with the pariah in chief seems certain to happen.

The Saudi visit isn’t about American influence. Rather, it highlights America’s need to try to control its costs of energy. The “get” for Biden is whether Saudi Arabia will again be a swing producer of oil when American needs it. But the Saudis and the UAE are the only members of the OPEC with significant unused output. Together they have a buffer of about 3 million barrels a day, or about 3% of global oil output. That’s roughly equivalent to the amount of Russian oil that is being kept off the market by sanctions.

This is what Biden is bargaining for. Of course, he could cut a deal with Iran or Venezuela, but that would cause serious political fallout at home.

As Wrongo has said, world crude production and refining output are struggling to keep pace with the post-pandemic rebound in demand. It is clear that the price of gasoline remains a source of political peril for Biden heading to mid-term elections. So we’ll see how far Biden will bend to get an oil deal done, even though it won’t do much for gas prices.

The other big thing that may come from meeting the Saudis would be to weld Saudi Arabia into the anti-Iran Middle East military alliance that Israel wants. To facilitate this, the Biden administration is considering lifting its ban on selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia.

That’s a huge turnaround. Just days after taking the presidential oath, Biden announced the US planned to cut off arms sales for Saudi Arabia’s operations in Yemen, and reverse the decision to designate the Iranian-backed Houthis as a terrorist organization.

Eighteen months later, there’s a cease-fire in Yemen, an underreported diplomatic victory for Biden. It’s proving more durable than anyone thought, and the US is again thinking about selling the Saudis more weapons.

Whatever the outcome of Biden’s trip, the US remains overcommitted in the ME, so the quagmire will continue.

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Should America Still Be 100% Behind Israel?

The Daily Escape:

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Cambridge MD – photo by abitslippy

America has supported Israel since it became a country. That support has largely been through foreign and military aid, as well as diplomatically, against threats from its Arab neighbors. Throughout this period, most Americans have supported that policy. Biden supports it today.

But things may be changing, considering what’s happened in Israel and Gaza for the past two weeks. It may be time to reassess our unqualified support.

A major flash point was the campaign led by Israeli settlers to evict Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. There was also an Israeli police raid on the Al Aqsa Mosque on the first night of Ramadan, not to prevent violence, but to cut off its loudspeakers preventing Muslim prayers from drowning out a nearby speech by Israel’s president.

The violence surprised those who believed that the 2020 Abraham Accords and subsequent agreements to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan would somehow move the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians to the backburner. In fact, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner who was dubbed the architect of the Abraham Accords, said this in March in the WSJ:

“We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict,”

But he was wrong. The reason nothing changed is that the “Arab-Israeli conflict” has always been about the Israelis and the Palestinians. Kushner was even more wrong when he said:

“The Abraham Accords exposed the conflict as nothing more than a real-estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians…”

Aren’t most wars real estate disputes?

No matter how many treaties Israel signs with Arab states, nothing will change until they make a peace deal with the Palestinians. And that peace deal will require justice for the Palestinians. From the NYT’s Michelle Goldberg:

“Palestinians fear, not without reason, that Israel is trying to push them out of Jerusalem altogether. That, in turn, has let Hamas position itself as Jerusalem’s protector. And Israel seems to consider its right to defend itself from Hamas justification for causing obscene numbers of civilian casualties.”

The Palestinian current anger stems from the ongoing moves by Netanyahu’s government to locate more settlers in East Jerusalem. This is seen in Palestine as straightforward ethnic cleansing, further encouraged by the far-Right Jewish parties that Netanyahu now must depend on to retain power.

Let’s remember what defines “Ethnic Cleansing”: It refers to the expulsion of a group from a certain area. Other than that, it hasn’t been defined, and isn’t recognized as a crime under international law. The lines between ethnic cleansing and genocide can be blurry. As James Silk, of Yale Law says:

“Your motivation may be that you want the people out, but if in doing that you intend to destroy the group, then it’s also genocide…”

OTOH, by targeting Israeli civilian areas with unguided rockets, Hamas is certainly committing a war crime. It may also be true that Israel is committing war crimes by its bombing of Gaza. Despite Israel’s claims that its strikes are against military targets, the vast majority of those killed and injured in Gaza are civilians.

The core of Israel’s justification for expelling Palestinians is that they are bad actors who can’t be trusted. And Israel is justified in launching attacks to defend itself. That’s partially true, but you can’t defend yourself in a court of law by saying that the other guy is even worse than you are, so you shouldn’t be in court at all.

Today’s Republicans are 100% behind any Israeli government, no matter what actions they take. And right on cue, 44 Republican Senators used the conflict with Gaza as a pretext to demand that Biden break off talks with Iran regarding restoring the Nuclear Deal.

On the Democrat’s side, there seems to be a growing divergence, with people under 50 saying they are disenchanted with the decades of bad behavior by Israel. Older Democrats agree generally with the Republican position. In fact, the Biden administration approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel two weeks ago.

We should remember that Israel is the regional superpower. It possesses nuclear weapons. Its GDP is 26 times that of the Palestinians. While it styles itself as the only regional democracy, it practices elements of apartheid and ethnic cleansing with the Palestinians.

Where do we go from here? Wrongo’s guess is that it will be more of the same, only more intense, and brazen.

The West really doesn’t care enough about the Palestinians to attempt bringing Israel to heel. Despite lukewarm calls by Biden for a cease fire, the US blocked a proposed UN Security Council statement aimed at reducing the escalating violence.

Every member of the UN Security Council except the US unanimously supported the statement, which had no force of law.

If our government is content to protect successive Likud (or Likud-like) governments at the UN, no serious diplomatic pressure will be possible. Someday, a US Administration will abstain from some Israel related vote at the Security Council.

Then you might see some accommodation of the Palestinians by the Israeli government.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 16, 2021

Both Houses of Congress have finally agreed to set up a committee to investigate the causes of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Democrats wanted a Congressional investigation to reveal the causes of the insurrection so Congress could pass laws to prevent it happening again.

Republicans had been blocking its creation. Initially, they wanted to investigate all political violence in the country, including that caused by “Antifa”. Their strategy was that could water down the committee’s report and possibly obscure the role of Trump’s supporters in the insurrection.

The 10-person bipartisan commission will be evenly split between the parties. The Speaker of the House and Senate Majority leader will together appoint five commissioners, including the chair. The House and Senate Minority leaders will appoint the other five commissioners, including the Vice Chair.

Commissioners cannot be current government appointees and must have significant expertise in the areas of law enforcement, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, intelligence, and cybersecurity.

This might look like a victory for the Democrats, but it isn’t. The Republicans can control the investigation through the committee’s subpoena power. To issue any subpoena, at least 6 members of the committee must agree. This gives the GOP the power to veto calling any witnesses.

It will probably result in a milquetoast committee report. The GOP’s inherent veto over the subpoena process is a flaw that potentially dooms the investigation to failure. On to cartoons.

Same as it ever was:

If the elephant’s trunk was like Pinocchio’s nose:

How business’s view changed from stimulus #1 to #2:

Fox keeps the anti-vax message going:

Market for fake IDs seems to be the gas hoarders:

Will this ever end?

Israel is losing control of the narrative because there are only so many viral videos of brutality that it can dismiss by saying, “Actually this is way more complicated than it looks.” As Caitlin Johnstone says, a nation that cannot exist without nonstop warfare is not a real nation, it’s a military operation with suburbs. This map should tell you that there is no possibility of a two-state solution. Palestine won’t be viable unless large numbers of settlers are removed, and that’s not happening:

More: Back in the Nineties, Netanyahu said that then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was “against Jewish values” for offering to withdraw from some of the occupied territories in exchange for peace. He led a mock funeral at which his followers brandished signs with Rabin’s head in the crosshairs of a gun. And when Rabin was assassinated by one of Netanyahu’s followers, he said he never condoned violence.

He’s also the guy who hasn’t been able to form a government after four tries, who’s also in danger of going to prison for corruption, assuming he can’t somehow cling to power.

The US has to think carefully about what our role should be in this conflict.

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Donny and Bibi’s Folly

The Daily Escape:

Hyner View State Park, Hyner, PA – photo by Scott Hafer.

Maybe it’s early to have a full perspective on Trump’s decision to leave the Iran Nuclear Accord, but Wrongo is reminded of this quote from Benjamin Netanyahu, on September 12, 2002:

If you take out Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you it will have positive reverberations on the region.

He said this while he was pressing for the US to attack Iraq, who was an Israeli foe in 2002. Naturally, the results were far from positive for the region, and the outcome for the US was catastrophic in both financial and human costs.

Bibi has again been successful in urging another Republican president to start an adventure in the Middle East, this time, by backing out of the Iran deal. Once again, Bibi has set up an opportunity for the US to attack another Israeli foe. This decision is a truly consequential foreign-policy blunder.

Steven Walt in Foreign Policy:

It is important to understand what’s really going on here. Trump’s decision is not based on a desire to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb; if that were the case, it would make much more sense to stay firmly committed to the deal and eventually negotiate to make it permanent.

Walt says that this is what’s really going on:

Abandoning the JCPOA is based on the desire to “keep Iran in the penalty box” and prevent it from establishing normal relations with the outside world. This goal unites Israel, the hard-line wing of the Israel lobby…and hawks including National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and many others.

Walt says that the hawks’ great fear was that the US and its Middle East allies might eventually have to acknowledge Iran as a legitimate regional power.

The preferred strategy to keep Iran from becoming a regional power has been regime change. US neo-cons and others in the Middle East have pursued this for decades. The neo-cons see two possible routes to regime change. The first relies on ramping up economic pressure on Tehran in the hope that popular discontent will grow, and that the clerical regime will simply collapse. This is the same strategy that worked so well failed in Cuba. Since the Nuclear Accord would end the sanctions that were keeping Iran weak, it was reason enough for most Republicans and hawks to be against it.

The second option is to provoke Iran into restarting its nuclear program, which would give Washington the excuse to launch a preventive war. The Israelis and Saudis would be happy to watch the US and Iran fight. The thought is that a war would eliminate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and inspire its people to rise up and overturn their leaders.

This scenario shows how little thought these people give to outcomes: If we bomb Iran, their first reaction will not be one of gratitude. Bibi will again be wrong, there will be no “positive reverberations”. Rather, it would trigger fervent Iranian nationalism and the regime would become more popular.

Leaving the deal is another spectacular “own goal” from the Trumpkinhead. They must be dancing in Moscow and Beijing, the two biggest winners of the Trump withdrawal.

Other winners include the Iranian far-right, who will say that Rouhani and the reformists were naive to trust that the Americans would honor any agreement, and the Iranian public should move to the right in the next parliamentary election.

Bibi and his government will now campaign on how every Israeli should be terrified at the prospect of returning Iran back toward the possibility of becoming a nuclear power, something Bibi has worked hard to bring about.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia get closer to a pretext for the direct military confrontation that they want, purchased with the blood of Americans, blood that the American neo-cons will be happy to spill. With friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia, who needs enemies?

Ultimately, Iran will probably end up getting nukes. But, every other country also wants some atomic insurance. The hawks need to remember that nuclear fission and fusion are 75-year old technologies. Even North Korea, among the poorest countries on earth, has mastered it. The bar just isn’t that high.

So, nuclear proliferation has a natural tailwind, and destroying America’s credibility removes the last wisp of an obstacle to it.

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 16, 2016

(There will not be a Monday Wake Up column this week, as Wrongo continues to deal with getting the Wrong family tax return fininshed by Tuesday)

Why won’t the Syrian tar baby let us go? Why can’t we quit Syria? Some clues from Robin Wright in the New Yorker: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Henry Kissinger made twenty-eight trips to Damascus—fourteen in a single month—to deal with the fallout from the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. He finally brokered an agreement with Assad, in 1974, to disengage Syrian and Israeli troops along the Golan Heights.

Jimmy Carter met Assad in Geneva, in 1977, to explore prospects for a U.S.-Soviet conference on Middle East peace. Assad was unyielding. He demanded the return of territory seized by Israel.

Tensions between Ronald Reagan and Assad turned openly hostile after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, where Syria had thousands of troops deployed.

Between 1993 and 1996, Secretary of State Warren Christopher made almost thirty trips to Damascus, to broker a deal on the Golan Heights.

In 2007, the C.I.A. corroborated Israeli intelligence that Syria, with North Korean blueprints and technicians, was building a secret nuclear reactor in the remote city of Deir Ezzor. Israeli warplanes attacked the site.

The New Yorker article’s headline calls the Assad family “The Nemesis of Nine US Presidents”. It assumes that this is a one-sided story, but it seems that it is also about America’s little nuclear-armed apartheid partner on the Mediterranean, and the weeping sore of its occupation and annexation of Syrian territory. And we wonder why Russia and Iran have insinuated themselves in the Shiite Middle East.

On to a shortened version of cartoons. The Easter Egg Roll, which takes place at the White House on Monday, is one of the WH’s biggest annual events. Last year, more than 35,000 people attended, but about 20,000 are invited this year. It has been an annual event since first lady Dolley Madison started it in the early 1800s. Trump is at Mar-a-Lago for Easter weekend. There’s an Easter hunt there too:

Steve Bannon isn’t getting the message:

Bannon was “volunteered” to give up his seat on AF One:

 

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