Informed Comment daily updates (06/02/2024)

 

Far Right Totalitarians in Israeli Cabinet threaten to Crash the Government if it Agrees to Biden’s Gaza Plan Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that extremist government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich continue to put pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and are threatening to bring down the government if he agrees to the suggestion for a truce put forward by US President Joe Biden on Friday […]

Far Right Totalitarians in Israeli Cabinet threaten to Crash the Government if it Agrees to Biden’s Gaza Plan JUAN COLE06/02/2024 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that extremist government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich continue to put pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and are threatening to bring down the government if he agrees to the suggestion for a truce put forward by US President Joe Biden on Friday afternoon, calling it an Israeli proposal. Washington officials are calling it the “last chance” for an agreement. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the minister of national security and the minister of finance respectively, threatened Saturday evening to dissolve the ruling political coalition and cause the government to fall if Israel were to agree to Biden’s proposal for a temporary truce in the Gaza Strip. These two ministers are from the Religious Zionism bloc, and Ben-Gvir is from one of its most dangerous components, Jewish Power. They are the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis and were brought into the Netanyahu government in late 2022 to provide it a majority in the 120-member Knesset or Parliament. Religious Zionism-Jewish Power won 14 seats, giving Netanyahu and his other allies a 64-seat majority. In parliamentary systems, coalitions are often put together after the election, and they require a majority of seats, otherwise the prime minister could lose an important vote or be subject to a vote of no confidence. When that happens he or she has to call new elections and the government is said to “fall.” For instance, just last fall on December 11, the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki lost a vote of no confidence. He was succeeded by Donald Tusk. The closest equivalent in the American system regards the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who likewise has to keep the confidence of a majority. Kevin McCarthy failed to do so and was replaced by Mike Johnson. So the long and the short of it is that if Smotrich and Ben-Gvir pull out of Netanyahu’s cabinet, his government would fall and snap elections would be called. Polling suggests that the right-wing Netanyahu’s centrist rivals would be elected by a landslide and so he would lose the prime ministership. Netanyahu is on trial for corruption, and those trials could then proceed apace, once he was out of office, and he might well go to jail. Some Israeli political observers believe he is prolonging the Gaza campaign for his own personal reasons, to remain a free man. PBS NewsHour: “Netanyahu clashes with Biden over conditions for permanent cease-fire in Gaza” Smotrich said on his social media sites, “I have spoken just now with the head of government and I made clear to him that I would not be any part of a government that agreed to the suggested outline, and which would end the war without annihilating Hamas and returning all the hostages.” In the past, Smotrich has said that returning the hostages was not a priority for him, so I think his position is actually driven by the prospect of annihilating “Hamas,” by which he means the Palestinian people, as he has often made clear. Smotrich added, “We will never agree to end the war before Hamas is annihilated, nor will we agree to undo the achievements of the war so far by withdrawing the Israeli army and allowing the return of Gazans to the northern Gaza Strip, nor will we accept the wholesale release of terrorists who, God forbid, would return to kill Jews.” He continued, “We demand the continuation of the fighting until the elimination of Hamas and the return of all the abductees, the creation of a completely different security reality in Gaza and Lebanon, the return of all residents to their homes in the north and south, and a huge investment in the accelerated development of these areas [for Jews].” Ben-Gvir of the Black Shirt-like “Jewish Power” bloc also said he would withdraw from the government: “The deal,the details of which were published today, means the end of the war and giving up on the destruction of Hamas. This is a humiliating deal, a victory for terrorism and a security threat to Israel. Approving it does not represent absolute victory, but absolute defeat.” He warned that if Netanyahu approved the Biden deal, “the Jewish Power [Otzma Yehudit] party will dissolve the government.” Opposition politician Gideon Sa’ar, head of the small New Hope party and an ally of opposition leader Benny Gantz, also said that any agreement that ends with Hamas being the ruling and military power in Gaza means that the average Israeli citizen would continue to live under threat. He said it would be a victory for Hamas and a defeat for Israel with far-reaching consequences. Religious Zionism’s Orit Strock, Minister of Settlements and National Missions, piled on, rejecting the Biden Plan. She said, “I did not find a fundamental difference between Biden’s ‘new’ and ‘promising’ plan and the previous plan. Another surrender deal that saves Hamas, begins the countdown to the next massacre, and leaves the hostages with no means of being released other than ending the war.” A leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, struck out at Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, saying “Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s threats (to topple the government) are negligent and represent a complete abandonment of national security, the hostages, and the residents of the north and south. This is the worst and most corrupt government in the country’s history. As far as they are concerned, the war here can continue forever. Zero responsibility, zero management: a complete failure.” Lapid’s ally Benny Gantz, who is serving in the war cabinet (essentially a government of national unity during the crisis), tried to counteract the bitter and defiant words addressed to Joe Biden by the members of the far right wing current government: “The United States in general, and since the beginning of the war in particular, has demonstrated its commitment to Israel’s security and the return of the hostages. We feel full appreciation for President Biden and all our American friends for their support.” He seemed to commit to the Biden plan, and called for an emergency meeting of the war cabinet with the Israeli negotiators who are talking indirectly to the Palestinian leadership through the mediation of Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. Gantz also played to the section of the Israeli public that prioritizes the return of hostages: “Tonight, I would like to fortify the families of the hostages and tell them that I and my friends are committed to the return of their loved ones, and that this goal is the highest moral obligation, and a goal with clear priority on [policy] the timetable.” Many Israelis are demonstrating against the extremist Netanyahu government, demanding that he prioritize securing the release of the hostages, and Gantz appears to believe that there is a constituency for this position in the Israeli public. I take away from this reporting, and from the remarks of the politicians, that as long as the far right remains in power, Biden’s plan is dead in the water. The centrists, such as Gantz and Lapid, would probably go for it if they were in power, but they aren’t. The main hope for an end to hostilities appears to be the fall of the Netanyahu government over some issue that inflames passions among his coalition partners, such that parties with 5 or more members withdraw from it. Another possibility is that Biden could actually stop supplying the Israelis with arms and ammunition on a daily basis. They have run out of ammunition of their own and need American supplies. But that step would require that Biden show an independence and courage on the Israel issue that he has never displayed before. The Delhi Heatwave is Testing the Limits of Human Endurance, in an Omen for us All By Liz Hanna, Australian National University | – (The Conversation) – Delhi is reeling from the most extreme heatwave India has ever seen. While the record-breaking maximum recorded temperature of 52.9°C has been called into question by India’s Meteorological Department, it’s entirely possible. The city has been sweltering, with top temperatures ranging from 45.2°C to […]

A Bloody Ratio: Israel’s Tent Camp Massacre shows futility of its Rafah Campaign by Binoy Kampmark It was much like witnessing a boy killing flies, with a slight afterthought of apology. The spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, did little to acquit himself, or the cause, as to why more Palestinian civilians had been indulgently killed in yet another Israeli airstrike. “Despite our […]

Old posts you may have missed

Biden on Trump: “No one is above the Law;” Except for Israel’s Netanyahu Beyond a Two State Solution – Why Recognising the State of Palestine is Important Israel’s Experiments in Gaza are the new Face of America’s imperial Laboratory Trump’s attempt at Planeticide was Worse than Hush Money Sex Pay-Off Climate Emergency: India’s Massive Heat Wave Signals extreme Danger for an Aging Global Population Israel’s Onslaught of Revenge Israel’s Stalking Operation against the ICC is Mirrored in its Canary Mission attack on US Universities

Informed Comment daily updates (05/31/2024)

 

Trump’s attempt at Planeticide was Worse than Hush Money Sex Pay-Off Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is great good news, of course, that Trump was finally held accountable for his hush money pay off to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their hook-up so as to win the 2016 presidential election. Had she gone public in October, 2016 in the wake of […]

Climate Emergency: India’s Massive Heat Wave Signals extreme Danger for an Aging Global Population By Deborah Carr, Boston University; Enrica De Cian, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Giacomo Falchetta, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Ian Sue Wing, Boston University | – (The Conversation) – A deadly heat wave gripped large regions of Asia for weeks in spring 2024, sending temperatures in India’s capital region over 120 degrees Fahrenheit […]

Israel’s Onslaught of Revenge ( Tomdispatch.com ) – As Amal Nassar lay in pain on a bed at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in northern Gaza, the echoes of explosions and artillery fire could be heard all around her. It was mid-January and she had made her way to the embattled hospital to give birth to […]

Old posts you may have missed

Israel’s Stalking Operation against the ICC is Mirrored in its Canary Mission attack on US Universities Innocence is under Siege, with a psychological Toll on Gaza’s Children Turning Universities into Homeland Security Classes, 101 Ireland Recognizes Palestine, Broaches sanctions on Israel for “Barbaric” Airstrikes, Settler Violence How America’s 25 Gigs of New Solar will help keep Power on during our Coming Scorching Summer The intersectionality of Hate helps us understand the Ideology of Donald Trump and the Far Right Burning the Indigenous Population up in their Tents is an old Colonial Technique of Genocide

Informed Comment daily updates (05/30/2024)

 

Israel’s Stalking Operation against the ICC is Mirrored in its Canary Mission attack on US Universities Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Biden administration has signaled that it will not cooperate with a Republican-led effort to place legislative sanctions on the International Criminal Court for having requested warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The move reverses a pledge by Secretary of State Antony Blinken last […]

Innocence is under Siege, with a psychological Toll on Gaza’s Children By Aijaz Ahmad Mir | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – The ongoing conflict in occupied Palestine has had a major effect on the mental well-being of Palestinian children. The trauma of living in a war-ravaged region, enduring displacement and witnessing extreme violence can result in a variety of mental health concerns, such as […]

Turning Universities into Homeland Security Classes, 101 By Michael Gould-Wartofsky ( Tomdispatch.com ) – The academic year that just ended left America’s college campuses in quite a state: with snipers on the rooftops and checkpoints at the gates; quads overrun by riot squads, state troopers, and federal agents; and even the scent of gunpowder in the air. In short, in the spring […]

excerpt: 

Consider the building of just such a homeland security campus a seven-step process. Here they are, one by one.

Step 1. Target the movement for divestment.

As a start, unconditional government support for the state of Israel triggered a growing movement of student dissent. That, in turn, came to focus on the imperial entanglements and institutional investments of this country’s institutions of higher learning. Yet, instead of negotiating in good faith, university administrators have, with a few exceptions, responded by threatening and even inviting state violence on campus.

Nor, in a number of cases, did this offensive against the student left start, or end, at the campus gates. For instance, a targeted campaign against Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) kicked off in October, when the State University System of Florida, working with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, announced that “based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism… the student chapters must be deactivated.”

Private universities would soon join in with their own public displays of intolerance. Brandeis, Rutgers, George Washington, and Harvard all imposed similar sanctions on student groups. Columbia broke new ground by suspending not only SJP but also Jewish Voice for Peace after its student chapter held “an unauthorized event… that included threatening rhetoric.”

Over the course of the academic year, the student movement has been elevated, at least rhetorically speaking, to the level of a national security threat — one which has figured prominently in White House briefings and House Republican hearings. And by far the greater part of the threatening rhetoric overheard in recent weeks has been directed not by the movement, but at the movement.

Buy the Book

“We have a clear message,” said House Committee on Education and Labor Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) in announcing the latest round of congressional inquisitions. “American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back. No stone must go unturned while buildings are being defaced, campus greens are being captured, or graduations are being ruined.” Held on May 23rd, the hearings were an exercise in twenty-first-century McCarthyism, with House Republicans going on the warpath against “radicalized students” and “so-called university leaders.”

President Biden, when speaking of the student movement, has struck a hardly less belligerent tone, declaring that “vandalism, trespassing… shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations — none of this is a peaceful protest” and that “order must prevail.”

Step 2. Censor pro-Palestinian speech.

For all the talk of free speech and the right to protest, pro-Palestinian advocacy and antiwar activism have, in these last months, come to represent a notable exception to the rule. From the words of commencement speakers to the expressive acts of student occupiers, outright censorship has become the order of the day.

Take the case of Asna Tabassum, a graduating senior scheduled to give this month’s valedictorian address at the University of Southern California. When, on social media, Tabassum dared link to a page denouncing “racist settler-colonial ideology,” she was subjected to an organized smear campaign and ultimately barred from speaking at commencement.

Across the country, the cancellations have piled up. The Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd was banned from speaking at the University of Vermont. The artist Samia Halaby saw her first American retrospective cancelled by the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University. And a group of Jewish students seeking to screen a film critical of Israel were denied space at the University of Pennsylvania.

Again, the trail of repression leads all the way back to Washington, D.C. Over the course of the past year, since the White House released its “National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have shown an increasingly active interest in policing what can and can’t be said on campus.

According to the latest White House fact sheet, dated May 7th, “FBI and DHS have taken steps to expand and deepen engagements with campus law enforcement and others.” Such “engagement” has been evident for all to see in the recent crackdowns on campuses like Columbia’s, where the administration bragged, in a leaked internal memo, about “coordinating with the FBI.”

Step 3. Punish student protest.

It was not enough, however, for certain university administrators to ban Students for Justice in Palestine or censor pro-Palestinian speech. It was also imperative that they make students pay. The punishments have varied, ranging from interim suspensions to permanent expulsions to evictions from campus housing. What they have in common is a logic of retribution for even distinctly nonviolent student protests.

It became common practice for administrations to demand that students leave their on-campus encampments or be barred from graduating. In Harvard’s case, the Corporation went ahead and struck 13 pro-Palestinian students from the rolls anyway, just days before commencement.

Expulsions have also proliferated in the wake of the occupation of administration buildings, from Columbia’s Hamilton Hall to Vanderbilt’s Kirkland Hall. In justifying the expulsions, Vanderbilt’s chancellor helpfully explained, “My point of view had nothing to do with free speech.”

Last but not least, student dissidents have been the victims of doxxing, with their names and faces prominently displayed under the banner of “Leading Antisemites” on billboards in public places and on websites belonging to a far-right organization, Accuracy in Media. The group was recently revealed to be bankrolled to the tune of nearly $1.9 million by top Republican megadonors.

Step 4. Discipline faculty dissent.

Students have not been the only targets of such repression. They have been joined by faculty and other employees of colleges and universities, who have also faced disciplinary action for standing up for the rights of Palestinians. By one count, more than 50 faculty members have been arrested, while hundreds more have been disciplined by their employers.

The backlash began last fall with the suspension of two educators at the University of Arizona, then ramped up with the summary firing of two teaching assistants at the University of Texas at Austin. Their offenses? Sharing mental health resources with Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students, who had specifically requested them in the wake of October 7th.

Further controversy attended the suspension of a tenured political science professor, Abdulkader Sinno, at Indiana University following an “unauthorized event” held by the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee (which Sinno advised). Then came the removal of a noted Palestinian-American artist and activist, Amin Husain, from his adjunct position at New York University.

The University of Florida, for its part, circulated a directive threatening that “employees will be… separated from employment” should they be “found responsible for engaging in prohibited activities,” including “disruption,” indoor demonstrations, or outdoor encampments.

And Washington University in St. Louis, in April, placed six employees on leave after they were accused of participating in a Gaza solidarity protest and allowing “unauthorized persons” onto campus. That same day, another Palestinian-American professor, Steve Tamari, of Southern Illinois University, had nine ribs fractured and one of his hands broken while exercising his right to film the police.

Step 5. Lock the community out, but let the vigilantes in.

In the face of sustained student protest, universities have converted themselves into heavily guarded, gated communities, each with its private security force, and each with its own laws to enforce. “Harvard Yard will be closed today,” read a typical text, in bold red letters hanging from Johnston Gate. “Harvard affiliates must produce their ID card when requested.”

Other schools have responded to the encampments with a new architecture of control, extending from the metal barricades erected around George Washington’s University Yard to the plywood walls now surrounding New York University’s Stern School of Business. Still others, like Columbia, went as far as to cancel their major commencement ceremonies, given “security concerns.”

At the same time, the private firms entrusted with the public’s safety on college campuses have failed to intervene to keep far-right agitators out. Instead, as seen at the University of California, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, they have allowed vigilante violence to run wild.

At UCLA, on the night of April 30th, a gang of anti-Palestinian militants, wearing white masks and bearing blunt instruments and incendiary devices, were permitted to terrorize the school’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment for more than three hours before public officials felt compelled to take action. At least 16 serious injuries were reported. Not one of the attackers was detained.

“At first, I couldn’t understand why,” reported one eyewitness to the bloodshed. “But an hour in, and then two hours in, and then three hours in, it just reached the point where I was like, ‘UCLA knows this is happening, and they don’t care enough to protect their students.’”

“I thought I was going to die,” recalled another. “I thought I’d never see my family again.”

Step 6. Call the cops. Incite a riot.

Again and again, administrators have turned to the baton-wielding arm of the law to sweep Gaza solidarity encampments off school grounds. In calling the riot squads out on their own students, they have launched the most wide-reaching crackdown on campus protest in more than half a century, with some 3,000 arrests and still counting.

The military-style raid on Columbia’s Morningside campus, on April 30th, was just one case in point. It was one I watched unfold with my own eyes a few paces from occupied Hamilton Hall (or “Hind’s Hall“). It started with a group of students linking arms and singing “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and ended with 112 arrests and one gunshot fired from an officer’s Glock 19.

First, I watched three drones surveil the protesters from above, while a veritable army of beat cops, clad in riot gear, surrounded them on all sides. Next, I saw paramilitary squads with names like Emergency Service Unit and Strategic Response Group, backed by an armored BearCat, stage an invasion of the Columbia campus, while their counterparts laid siege to nearby City College.

In the end, law enforcement unleashed a full “use-of-force continuum” on students and workers, including that live bullet that “unintentionally” discharged from a sergeant’s service weapon “into the office they were attempting to gain access to.” Said one officer to another: “Thought we fucking shot someone.”

And Columbia was but the tip of the spear. A similar pattern has played out on campuses across the country. At Emory University, a Gaza solidarity camp was met with stun guns and rubber bullets; at Indiana and Ohio State universities, the police response included snipers on the rooftops of campus buildings; and at the University of Texas, gun-toting troopers enforced Governor Greg Abbott’s directive that “no encampments will be allowed.”

Step 7. Wage information warfare.

In most, if not all, American cities and college towns with such protests, the police, pundits, and elected officials alike have doubled down on their defense of Repress U., while vilifying the student movement in the media. In doing so, they’ve engaged in the kinds of “coordinated information activities” typical of a classical counterinsurgency campaign.

It began with House Republicans like Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who dubbed the student protesters a “pro-Hamas mob,” and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who called them “lawless agitators and radicals.” Donald Trump took it a step further, claiming that “many of them aren’t even students, and many of them come from foreign countries. Thousands and thousands are from foreign countries… I’m like, ‘Where did these people come from?’”

Novel conspiracy theories, blaming the outbreak of campus protests on groups ranging from Hamas to Antifa (or even Jewish billionaire George Soros), have reverberated across the echo chambers of the right. But the agitprop didn’t stop at the far-right fringe. Democratic officials have since taken it up, too, with New York Mayor Eric Adams leading the charge: “What should have been a peaceful protest has been coopted by professional outside agitators.”

Within 24 hours of the raids on Columbia and CCNY, the New York Police Department had, in fact, produced its own live-action propaganda from the scene of the crime, concluding with these words of warning: “To any other individuals that wanna protest… If you’re thinking about setting up tents anyplace else… think again. We’ll come there. We’ll strike you. Take you to jail like we did over here.”

This is the future envisioned for America’s college campuses by the partisans of Repress U. It’s a future where what passes for “homeland security” takes precedence over higher learning, where order prevails over inquiry, and where counterinsurgency comes before community. Then again, the next generation — the one behind the “People’s University” protests — may well have other plans.

Copyright 2024 Michael Gould-Wartofsky

Via Tomdispatch.com

Old posts you may have missed

Ireland Recognizes Palestine, Broaches sanctions on Israel for “Barbaric” Airstrikes, Settler Violence How America’s 25 Gigs of New Solar will help keep Power on during our Coming Scorching Summer The intersectionality of Hate helps us understand the Ideology of Donald Trump and the Far Right Burning the Indigenous Population up in their Tents is an old Colonial Technique of Genocide Is Israel’s War on Gaza destabilizing Egypt? Iranian President’s Death Could Trigger ‘Power Competition’ For Next Supreme Leader Supreme Court Upside Down, Driven by Christian Theocracy