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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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 24, 2019

Trump survived the week. The Democrats got just about everything they hoped for out of 32 hours of impeachment hearings. Current and former Trump administration officials told different parts of a consistent story, and reinforced a consistent narrative of wrongdoing.

But Trump liked the week, since no cracks emerged in Republican defenses. On to cartoons. The real Impeachment jury:

Hearings gave another platform to GOP conspiracy theories:

Behold the noose of Sondland:

GOP talking points:

Trump and Bibi: Two pleas in a pod:

One if by Facebook! Two if by Twitter:

Prince Andrew will be spending more time with family and less with underage women:

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Bibi’s New News Isn’t News

The Daily Escape:

Spring Flowers in the Tejon Pass, as seen from Rt. 5, CA -2018 photo by Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel

On Monday, in a presentation in English, Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu attempted to give Donald Trump high altitude air cover for Trump’s pending decision to end the nuclear agreement with Iran. The basis of Netanyahu’s speech was that Israeli intelligence had gathered new and damaging information about the Iranian nuclear weapons program:

In a special address on Monday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented what he described as shocking, indisputable evidence that Iran had lied about its covert nuclear weapons program in the past and “continued to preserve and expand its nuclear weapons knowledge for future use” after signing the 2015 deal with six world powers to halt its nuclear activities.

Bibi presented 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs. Netanyahu said Iran hid an “atomic archive” of documents on its nuclear program. Reuters said that:

Most of the purported evidence Netanyahu presented dated to the period before the 2015 accord was signed…

Nancy Letourneau offered this: (emphasis by Wrongo)

But if you actually paid attention to the content of Bibi’s presentation two things stood out. First of all, the evidence isn’t so shocking. According to James Acton, the co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, “everyone involved in negotiating the JCPOA assumed that Iran was lying when it said that it had never had a nuclear weapons program and the JCPOA was developed on that basis.” He also pointed out that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) already documented much of what Netanyahu presented.

All Bibi had was old, dated Intel that he presented as new. This was stage-managed so that Trump can announce in 10 days that the US is pulling out of the accord because Iran “lied.”

If you followed the debate about the JCPOA during the Obama administration, you may remember that the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) said that any nuclear weapons program Iran had was stopped in 2003, and had not been restarted. That was “re-certified” in the US 2011 NIE, with the same conclusion.

During the development of the 2007 NIE, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) believed all Iran had was a “feasibility study” which was based on the fear that Saddam Hussein might have a nuclear weapons program. But once the US invaded Iraq in 2003, and handed over control of the country to Iran-backed Iraqi political factions, Iran immediately stopped whatever “studies” they had been doing.

A nation’s files about nuclear weapons technology are among the most sensitive documents in their national security archives. They are extremely tightly controlled. Yet, the Israeli story is that they managed to steal 1,000 pounds of files from a Top Secret facility in Iran.

Apparently, unlike Wrongo, Bibi has never moved an office. A thousand pounds would take about 60 “banker’s boxes”. And you would need a truck, or two trips in a car to haul all that away.

From a top-secret Iranian warehouse.

Just try to imagine the actual logistics involved in removing that many documents, and then loading them on a truck. This isn’t a five minute operation.

Leaving the JCPOA may happen on Trump’s watch. He can reinstate US sanctions, but he can’t change UN Security Council resolution 2231. So if Trump reinstates sanctions against Iran, he will not have pulled the plug on the JCPOA accord.

To reinstate UN Security Council sanctions without Russian and Chinese agreement, Trump must state officially that Iran violated resolution 2231. After a formal investigative process, the “rollback” of UN sanctions would come to a vote where five of the eight signatories of the JCPOA would have to agree that Iran violated the deal.

Given that Trump won’t get the Iranian, Russian and Chinese votes, he must get all four European votes. That seems likely to be an uphill climb. France and the UK may buy in, but convincing the Germans and the EU may be difficult.

In effect, walking out of the deal may work to Iran’s advantage in the long run. In the short run, it may simply move Germany and the EU closer to Russia and Iran.

That surely won’t be a happy outcome for Trump, or America.

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Israel Pays to Play

The Hill reports that on Monday, almost every freshman member of the US Congress jetted off on an all-expense paid trip to Israel for a week of briefings and lobbying. This year, the trip is intended to ensure they vote against the Iran nuclear deal.

The junket is an annual affair organized by AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and just 3 freshman are not going. 67 of the total of 70 are expected to go this year, flying business class and staying at five star hotels. AIPAC’s stated goal is that 80% of any Congress has been on one of its trips to Israel at least once. Among the world’s democracies, it is an unparalleled example of one country’s attempted influence on the political system of another.

The trip is paid for by The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), the educational wing of AIPAC. According to the National Journal, over the past 14 years, the foundation has spent more than $9.4 million on Congressional travel. There are two separate trips organized along party lines, one for Democrats, and another for Republicans. The Democrats’ trip begins on August 3, and will be led by House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland). The Republican trip begins on August 8, and will be led by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California).

Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress had as much interest in the concerns of America as they apparently have for the concerns of Netanyahu? The bribe visit comes during the 60-day period in which Congress is reviewing the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. President Obama has threatened a veto if the GOP-led Congress votes to reject the agreement. That would place the onus on lawmakers to muster enough votes to override the president, and the trip gives Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a fierce critic of the Iran deal, another chance to make his case directly to lawmakers.

This despite polls showing that 84% of US Jews favor Iran nuclear deal. The trip draws new attention to the fact that just about the ONLY opposition to this deal (discounting oil sheikhdoms) comes from the Republicans and Bibi. It will make it even more obvious that those Congress people who oppose the agreement do so not out of loyalty to their own country, but to Israel. But, a look at 2014 pro-Israel donations to Congress critters shows that Republicans have no monopoly on Israeli money. The data below are from OpenSecrets.org:

FireShot Screen Capture #060 - 'Pro-Israel_ Money to Congress-page-0This is just what they gave in 2014. When will we demand that our Congress act to benefit Americans before seeking to benefit another country?

Think of the hypocrisy. We send $3.1 billion each year to Israel. Since 1948, we have sent $121 billion in total to them, all paid by taxpayers, most in the form of military assistance. And some of that money comes back in the form of donations to our Congress.

Israel is not our 51st state, yet we’ve sent them our dough rather than using it to repair our roads or to build new bridges at home. We’ve allowed them to meddle in our internal politics, we’ve invited them to disrupt our presidential elections.

Now, we will release Jonathan Pollard on parole after 30 years in prison. Pollard is a spy who stole US defense secrets and gave them to Israel. Pollard will be greeted as a hero in Israel, should he get to leave the US as a condition of his parole. Pollard’s release is dubious because he provided Israel with information during the Cold War that allegedly was then traded to the Soviet Union (reportedly in exchange for allowing Jews to emigrate). Think about it: Our #1 ally sent our secrets to the Soviets?

How long before Americans see the Israeli effort to buy Congress for what it is?

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 1, 2015

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them” – Albert Einstein

Israel PM Bibi Netanyahu is addressing Congress on March 3rd about his problems with a potential Iranian nuclear deal. He is looking to turn Republicans in Congress against any deal, an effort designed to undercut President Obama’s negotiations. Bibi has big problems with Mr. Obama, but he has apparently already found a soul mate in Saudi Arabia.

According to the Times of Israel, it is looking as if two former enemies have developed a behind-the-scenes alliance against Iran. Saudi Arabia has agreed to let Israeli warplanes overfly Saudi territory while attacking Iranian nuclear sites. From their report:

Saudi Arabia is prepared to let Israeli fighter jets use its airspace if it proves necessary to attack Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli TV station reported Tuesday, highlighting growing ties in the shadow of Tehran’s nuclear drive.

This works for Israel since using Saudi airspace provides Israeli planes a direct route for reaching Iran. It means they won’t have to fly around the Persian Gulf, which would take more time and fuel. The Times says that Israel and Saudi Arabia also share intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program at a very detailed level. The alliance works for the Saudis, who are also concerned about a possible agreement coming out of the Geneva. Netanyahu has warned repeatedly that the Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, although Iranian officials insist the nuclear program is purely for civilian use.

The Times of Israel reporting suggests that Netanyahu may have laid the groundwork for his own plan to attack the Iranian nuclear sites, if the international negotiations are successful.

Bibi rocks the House:

COW Bibi's Band

 

Bibi is ALWAYS non-partisan when in DC:

COW Bibi

 

GOP gets adjustment, extends DHS funding for a week:

COW Reid Spine

 

Republicans didn’t realize the immigration order was already off the table:

COW DHS Funding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeb Bush says he’s not in the family business:

COW Bushco

RIP Mr. Spock:

COW Spock

 

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