Informed Comment daily updates (11/22/2023)

 

50 Israeli Hostages to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian “Prisoners” — Why the Prisoners are also Hostages Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al Jazeera reports that Qatar successfully brokered the exchange of 50 Israeli hostages held by Hamas for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli jails (who are also hostages, as I will explain). The deal, which was approved by Israel’s national unity cabinet on Tuesday evening, also provides for a four-day humanitarian […]

Israel’s Sustained Bombing Created Massive Gaza Disease Risk: Overcrowded Shelters, Dirty Water and breakdown of Basic Sanitation By Yara M. Asi, University of Central Florida | – (The Conversation) – After more than a month of being subjected to sustained bombing, the besieged people of the Gaza Strip are now confronted with another threat to life: disease. Overcrowding at shelters, a breakdown of basic sanitation, the rising number of unburied dead and […]

When Palestinians “Die” and Israelis get “Killed” in the same War Written bySafa Written byMariam A. Federal Building, San Francisco, October 20, 2023. Hundreds of people from many backgrounds came together outside Senator Nancy Pelosi’s office, to paint a giant street mural. The message: BIDEN, PELOSI: DON’T AID AND ABET WAR CRIMES, and calling for a CEASEFIRE! With Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area, The Peace […]

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The Israeli Right Wing’s Genocidal Dream of the “River to the Sea” The Media must stop Enabling Trump’s Attention-Seeking use of Fascist Rhetoric The Humanitarian Paradigm and the Normalization of Ethnic Cleansing Having Vanquished Gaza’s Hospitals, Israel Turns to bombing Schools, Killing Dozens Is there any Hope of a Ceasefire in Gaza? Gaza/ Hiroshima: Could Israel Nuke the Palestinians? What does the Gaza Conflict Mean for the UAE, the Abraham Accords and Saudi Normalization?

Informed Comment daily updates (11/19/2023)

 

What does the Gaza Conflict Mean for the UAE, the Abraham Accords and Saudi Normalization? Exeter, UK (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – When the United Arab Emirates (UAE), along with several Arab states such as Bahrain and Morocco, normalized their relationship with Israel, this was believed to create leverage against Israel. Moreover, the UAE claimed this was their attempt to salvage a two-state solution. Indeed, when the UAE signed […]

How Colonialist depictions of Palestinians feed Western Stereotypes of eastern “Barbarism” Elizabeth Vibert, University of Victoria | – Like so many other Palestinians, my friend Abeer Salah (not her real name) lives in exile. For Salah, home is Baqa’a refugee camp 20 kilometres north of Jordan’s capital of Amman. But she has family and friends trapped in Gaza. Since the horrific Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 […]

The Hidden History of Hamas by Akil N. Awan Follow @Akil_N_Awan on Twitter L ( The National Interest) – The savagery of Hamas’ heinous terrorist attack on October 7, which left 1,200 Israelis dead and over 240 more held captive, marked a significant turning point in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel’s response has been unconscionably brutal, killing more than 11,000 Palestinians […]

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Is Israel deliberately Starving the Palestinians of Gaza? WFP Warns of Immediate Possibility of Man-made Famine “From the River to the Sea” – A Palestinian Historian explores the Meaning and Intent of a Scrutinized Slogan In the Shadow of War: Life and Fiction in Twenty-First Century America Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson is the Face of the Republican Party: Election Denialist, Forced Birth Enforcer, Homophobe and Christian Zionist The Psychological Consequences of the Trauma of War in Gaza Columbia University’s Suspension of Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine is Arbitrary and Wrong Axis War Crimes against Hospitals in the 1930s and 1940s led to our Int’l Humanitarian Law, which Israel Ignores

November 17, 2023 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

November 17, 2023 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON NOV 18 In an NPR piece yesterday, Bill Chappell noted that “the war between Israel and Hamas is being fought, in part, through disinformation and competing claims.”  Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s leadership team currently in Qatar, told Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times that Hamas’s goal in their attack of October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists crossed from Gaza into Israel and tortured and killed about 1,200 people, taking another 240 hostage, was to make sure the region did not settle into a status quo that excluded the Palestinians.  In 2020 the Palestinians were excluded from discussions about the Abraham Accords negotiated by then-president Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (and later Morocco). More recently, Saudi Arabia and Israel were in talks with the United States about normalizing relations.    Al-Hayya told the reporters that in order to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash,” Hamas leaders intended to commit “a great act” that Israel would respond to with fury. “[W]ithout a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” al-Hayya said, but “[w]e had to tell people that the Palestinian cause would not die.”  “Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” al-Hayya said. “This battle was not because we wanted fuel or laborers,” he added. “It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.” Hamas media adviser Taher El-Nounou told the reporters: “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us.” Hamas could be pretty certain that Israel would retaliate with a heavy hand. The governing coalition that took power at the end of 2022 is a far-right coalition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to hold that coalition together to stay in power, not least because he faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.    Once it took power, Netanyahu’s government announced that expanding Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank was a priority, vowing to annex the occupied territory. It also endorsed discrimination against LGBTQ people and called for generous payments to ultra-Orthodox men so they could engage in religious study rather than work. It also tried to push through changes to the judicial system to give far more power to the government.  From January 7 until October 7, 2023, protesters turned out in the streets in huge numbers. With the attack, Israelis have come together until the crisis is resolved. Netanyahu’s ability to stay in power depended in large part on his promises that he would keep Israelis safe. The events of October 7 on his watch—the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust—shattered that guarantee. Polls show that Israelis blame his government, and three quarters of them think he should resign. Sixty-four percent think the country should hold an election immediately after the war.  Immediately after the attack, on October 7, Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance” against Hamas, and Israeli airstrikes began to pound Gaza. On October 8, Israel formally declared war. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the country’s retaliation would “change the reality on the ground in Gaza for the next 50 years,” and on October 9 he announced “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed…. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Israel and the U.S. have strong historic and economic ties: as Nicole Narea points out in Vox in a review of their history together, the U.S. has also traditionally seen Israel as an important strategic ally as it stabilizes the Middle East, helping to maintain the supply of Middle Eastern oil that the global economy needs. That strategic importance has only grown as the U.S. seeks to normalize ties around the region to form a united front against Iran. For Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and other envoys, then, it appeared the first priority after the October 7 attack was to keep the conflict from spreading. Biden made it very clear that the U.S. would stand behind Israel should Iran, which backs Hamas, be considering moving in. He warned: “[T]o any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t.” The movement of two U.S. carrier groups to the region appears so far to be helping to achieve that goal. While Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and Yemen’s Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel since October 7, Iran’s leaders have said they will not join Hamas’s fight and are hoping only to use the conflict as leverage against the U.S. Militias have fired at least 55 rocket and drone strikes at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since October 7 without killing any U.S. soldiers. In retaliation, the U.S. has launched three airstrikes against militia installations in Syria, killing up to seven men (the military assesses there were not women or children in the vicinity) in the third strike on Sunday. The U.S. keeps roughly 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 troops in Iraq to work with local forces to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State. At the same time that Biden emphasized Israel’s right to respond to Hamas’s attack and demanded the return of the hostages, he also called for humanitarian aid to Gaza through Egypt and warned Netanyahu to stay within the laws of war. Rounds of diplomacy by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who flew to Israel and Jordan initially on October 11 and has gone back repeatedly, as well as by Biden, who has both visited the region—his second trip to a war zone—and constantly worked the phones, and other envoys, started humanitarian convoys moving into Gaza with a single 20-truck convoy on October 21. By early November, over 100 trucks a day were entering Gaza, the number the United Nations says is the minimum needed. Yesterday the Israeli war cabinet agreed to allow two tankers of fuel a day into Gaza after the U.N. said it couldn’t deliver aid because it had run out of fuel.  The U.S. has insisted from the start that Israel’s military decisions must not go beyond the laws of war. Israeli officials say they are staying within the law, yet an estimated 11,000 civilians and Hamas fighters (the numbers are not separated out) have died. Gaza has been crushed into rubble by airstrikes, and more than a million people are homeless. That carnage has sparked protests around the world along with calls for a cease-fire, which Israel rejects.  It has also sparked extreme Islamophobia and antisemitism exacerbated by social media. In the immediate aftermath of October 7, Islamophobia inspired a Chicago man to stab a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy to death; more recently, antisemitism has jumped more than 900% on X (formerly Twitter). On Wednesday, Elon Musk agreed with a virulently antisemitic post on X. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded: “We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans.” Advertisers, including IBM and Apple, announced they would no longer advertise on Musk’s platform. While calling for humanitarian pauses in the fighting, the Biden administration has continued to focus on getting the hostages out and has rejected calls for a cease-fire, saying such a break would only allow Hamas to regroup. In The Atlantic on November 14, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who negotiated a 2012 cease-fire between Hamas and Israel only to see Hamas violate that agreement two years later, explained that cease-fires have only kicked the can down the road. “Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed,” she said.   Clinton called for the destruction of Hamas on the one hand and “a new strategy and new leadership” for Israel on the other. “Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead,” she wrote.  Central to those choices is the long-neglected two-state solution that would establish a Palestinian state. Biden and Blinken and a number of Arab governments have backed the idea, but to many observers it seems impossible to pull off. Still, at the same time Clinton’s article appeared, King Abdullah II of Jordan published his own op-ed in the Washington Post  titled: “A two-state solution would be a victory for our common humanity.” “[L]et’s start with some basic reality,” he wrote. “The fact is that the thousands of victims across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank have been overwhelmingly civilians…. Leaders everywhere have the responsibility to face the full reality of this crisis, as ugly as it is. Only by anchoring ourselves to the concrete facts that have brought us to this point will we be able to change the increasingly dangerous direction of our world….  “If the status quo continues, the days ahead will be driven by an ongoing war of narratives over who is entitled to hate more and kill more. Sinister political agendas and ideologies will attempt to exploit religion. Extremism, vengeance and persecution will deepen not only in the region but also around the world…. It is up to responsible leaders to deliver results, starting now.” — Notes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-gaza-war.html https://www.npr.org/2023/11/16/1212889717/satellite-images-us-israel-gaza https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-axis-resistance-against-israel-faces-trial-by-fire-2023-11-15/ https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/11/16/us-troops-iraq-syria-attacked/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/up-seven-killed-us-air-strikes-syria-us-official-2023-11-14/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/10/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-israel-2/#:~:text=Let%20me%20say%20again%20%E2%80%94%20to,but%20our%20resolve%20is%20clear. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-puts-israel-deal-ice-amid-war-engages-with-iran-sources-say-2023-10-13/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/middleeast/netanyahu-corruption-charges-israel.html https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/history-its-importance-and-irrelevance-plus-some-books https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/17/three-years-on-how-have-the-abraham-accords-done-for-the-uae https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/09/saudi-israel-normalization-agreement-horizon https://apnews.com/article/west-bank-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-government-e36ed7260e0398406d9a8ba319b0b741 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/protesters-outside-israeli-pm-netanyahus-house-anger-grows-2023-11-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-netanyahu-vows-mighty-vengeance-against-hamas-2023-10-07/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-tells-gazans-move-south-or-risk-being-seen-terrorist-partner-2023-10-22/ https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-takes-over-gaza https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23916266/us-israel-support-ally-gaza-war-aid https://il.usembassy.gov/secretary-blinkens-travel-to-israel-and-jordan/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/17/politics/inside-joe-biden-israel-trip-planning/index.html https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/attack-gaza-hospital-unprecedented-scale-who-says-2023-10-17/ https://www.state.gov/humanitarian-assistance-for-gaza/ Diplomatic, by Laura Rozen Israel agrees to fuel for Gaza after US privately warned of humanitarian catastrophe A day after the United Nations said it could no longer deliver aid in Gaza because it had run out of fuel and American officials warned Israeli counterparts… Read more 11 hours ago · 7 likes · Laura Rozen https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/gaza-rising-death-toll-civilians/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/technology/hate-speech-israel-gaza-internet.html https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-condemns-elon-musk-post-x-supported-antisemitic-claim-rcna125709 https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/apple-twitter-x-advertising-elon-musk-antisemitism-ads https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/hamas-israel-ceasefire-humanitarian-pause-gaza/675992/ https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/egypt-s-gaza-summit-starts-with-arab-call-for-two-state-solution-1.1987632 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/14/king-abdullah-jordan-two-state-solution/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-netanyahu-says-no-gaza-ceasefire-until-hostages-returned-2023-11-05/ Twitter (X): Yair_Rosenberg/status/1724883596379349434

Informed Comment daily updates (10/31/2023)

 

Is Iran satisfied with the Derailing of the Abraham Accords by the Gaza Conflict or does it Want More? “For the last few months Jerusalem has become the center of nationality struggles. Until then we were living peacefully. The Orientals were grateful to their European coreligionists for the help they brought to their moral and material misery. Zionism was created supposedly to bring about closer relations within Judaism; all it has succeeded in doing […]

How Jewish Nonviolence can help guide the Path forward on Israel-Palestine Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb  ( Waging Nonviolence ) – In an article entitled “What does Jewish law say about the war between Israel and Hamas,” Jay Michaelson explores biblical, talmudic and medieval sources to answer that question, noting the long arc of rabbinic tradition bends toward nonviolence. In Jewish life, the normative perception of Torah is […]

In the Israel-Hamas Conflict, Children are the Ultimate Pawns — and Ultimate Victims By Omer Bartov, Brown University | – (The Conversation) – In 1903, a local mob killed 49 Jews, including several children, and raped and wounded 600 others, in the city of Kishinev, then part of the Russian Empire. These three days of violence later became known as the Kishinev pogrom. A few days later, the […]

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Informed Comment daily updates (10/08/2023)

 

New Gaza Conflict shows that “Abraham Accords” can’t bring Peace as Long as Israelis keep Palestinians Occupied and Stateless Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The conflict that broke out on October 7, 2023, between Palestinian militants and Israel underlined once again that the status quo, with Israel occupying 5 million stateless Palestinians, is unsustainable. In the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign, Republican standard-bearer Mitt Romney was recording giving a fundraising speech in which […]

Israeli Troops Kill 6 West Bank Palestinian Protesters, including a Minor, as Demonstrations against Israeli Killings of Civilians Break Out ( IMEMC ) – An 18-year-old Palestinian man and a 13-year-old child were the latest in a long list of civilians killed on Saturday, October 7th. Following the massive attacks in Gaza, in which over 200 Palestinians were killed on Saturday, marches and protests broke out across the West Bank, calling for justice, freedom, and […]

Medicare Advantage Overbills Taxpayers by $140 Billion a Year — Enough to Wipe Out Medicare Premiums   Jake Johnson ( Commondreams.org ) – A report published Wednesday estimates that privately run, government-funded Medicare Advantage plans are overcharging U.S. taxpayers by up to $140 billion per year, a sum that could be used to completely eliminate Medicare Part B premiums or fully fund Medicare’s prescription drug program. Physicians for a National Health […]

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RSN: FOCUS: Ken Klippenstein | Intel Report Warned Abraham Accords Would Fuel Violence

 

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FOCUS: Ken Klippenstein | Intel Report Warned Abraham Accords Would Fuel Violence
Ken Klippenstein, The Intercept
Klippenstein writes: "In 2020, as then-President Donald Trump was busy touting the newly signed Abraham Accords as a historic peace agreement in the Middle East, his own Department of Homeland Security was warning that the agreement, far from ushering in peace, heightened the risk of terrorism, according to a document obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act."

President Joe Biden is now pushing for a version of the Abraham Accords on steroids, leaving Palestinians behind.

In 2020, as then-President Donald Trump was busy touting the newly signed Abraham Accords as a historic peace agreement in the Middle East, his own Department of Homeland Security was warning that the agreement, far from ushering in peace, heightened the risk of terrorism, according to a document obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Abraham Accords, which were spearheaded by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are commonly described as normalizing relations and establishing formal diplomatic ties between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel. At its heart a business deal, the Abraham Accords facilitated financial investment between the countries, as well as military and surveillance cooperation. But in order to accomplish what had previously been considered nearly impossible, Kushner’s deal carved out the major question at issue: Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories. Striking a peace agreement that didn’t resolve that question would only inflame tensions, Homeland Security warned.

The document, dated October 19, 2020, is an intelligence assessment disseminated by the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis to other government agencies. Its title summarizes the short brief: “Terrorists’ Longstanding Grievances Very Likely Exacerbated by Israel’s Normalization of Relations with Two Gulf States.” Citing the example of the mass shooting by a Saudi military officer at a U.S. air base in Pensacola, Florida, in 2019, motivated by the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, the report warned that the Abraham Accords normalization would almost certainly intensify terrorist grievances and could endanger people not just in the region but also in the U.S.

“We assess that US-based foreign terrorist organization (FTO) supporters’ existing grievances about the US Government’s Middle East foreign policy, such as viewing the United States as responsible for Israeli actions, will almost certainly be exacerbated by Israel’s normalization of relations with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates,” the assessment states.

The intelligence report’s warnings have renewed significance in light of President Joe Biden’s push for a version of the Abraham Accords on steroids — in which Israel would “normalize” relations with Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca, the holiest site in Islam, as well as a far larger Arab population than that of the UAE or Bahrain. Like Trump, the Biden administration has sought to portray this as a peace agreement. But it is, again, essentially a financial deal in which Israel and its Gulf neighbors are choosing economic benefits and shared security concerns about Iran over their moral responsibility to the Palestinian people. Experts warn that normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia without addressing the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories will worsen regional tensions.

“It’s going to intensify the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, said of Saudi-Israel normalization. “This is giving Israel a green light to keep occupied territory and continue to expand into Palestinian territory. That will make the problem worse and push us farther away from any workable peace.”

What’s more, normalization poses a cost not just to Palestinians but to the United States as well. This takes the form of a heightened risk of terrorism in the U.S., as the intelligence assessment notes, but also leaves the U.S. on the hook to respond to resultant instability in the Middle East. Given the unpopularity of the proposal in the Arab world, which sympathizes with the plight of Palestinians, the Biden administration would have to offer a sweetener to make the deal more palatable to the Arab governments. The Biden administration has reportedly discussed security guarantees with the UAE, in which the U.S. would promise military assistance at its request.

On Wednesday, the Council on Foreign Relations released a high-profile report calling for “increased security assurances from the United States in exchange for greater Saudi mediation of oil prices … and further diplomatic normalization with Israel.”

“The U.S. government is engineering, and paying handsomely for, an expansion of an authoritarian alliance in the Middle East that is already coming back to bite us in the ass,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said. “Bringing Saudi into the Abraham Accords will only strengthen the power of this new axis to negotiate as a bloc with the U.S., as they’ve already been doing: They have in unison refused to support the U.S. on Ukraine and in unison demanded concessions for their cooperation, including a new security agreement obligating the U.S. to defend them.”

“This will only weaken the U.S.’s ability to pursue its own interests on a bilateral basis with any one of these axis states, while further emboldening them to pursue reckless aggression and criminal behavior in the Middle East.”

The intelligence report — unlike the Abraham Accords — makes repeated mention of Palestinian concerns. In one redacted passage, the assessment mentions an unnamed entity as having “claimed the Palestinian people were betrayed” by the “establishment of diplomatic ties between Israel and the UAE.” Another passage, also partially redacted, mentions another unnamed entity “encouraging violence” against Israeli and UAE officials and interests in response to normalization.

While the report’s predictions have mostly borne out in the Middle East if not in the U.S., with periodic violence continuing to erupt over Israel’s occupation, it is impossible to isolate the effects of the Abraham Accords specifically. The report also suggested that the Iranian government would try to use the normalization’s lack of concessions to Palestinians to suggest “that the US government engages in racism and colonialism.” The assessment notes that this narrative would likely “amplify violent extremist activity” in the domestic United States, including against Jewish people.

“The main downside of Biden pushing Saudi-Israeli normalization is mistaking that for doing something useful,” said Marc Lynch, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. “The downsides really lie in further enabling Israel to ignore the Palestinian issue, which most Arabs really do still care about and which is likely to erupt in repeated crises as long as it goes unsolved. It actually makes such eruptions more likely because it emboldens Israel to push faster and harder in its appropriation of land and homes in the West Bank.”

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