Israel/Palestine

THE MORAL COST OF THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS IS INFINITE:

Why are we ignoring the slaughter in Sudan?: There is no excuse for indifference when we pay such close attention to other wars (William Fear, 13 April, 2024, The Critic)

Since the war kicked off in April of last year, the RSF’s conduct in Sudan has been nothing short of horrifying. They have subjected the civilian population to countless massacres, rapes and pillages. In one sense, the RSF is fighting a military conflict against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), but in another, they are enacting a fanatical ethnic cleansing campaign against the Masalit people of Sudan. A UN report estimated that last year in the city of El Geneina alone, between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed by the RSF, and that the RSF appeared to be specifically targeting people of Masalit ethnicity. According to a report from Conflict Observatory, there is evidence the RSF forced Red Crescent aid workers to dispose of the dead. The piles of bodies are visible from orbit.

To make matters worse, the RSF appears to be on the front foot. Heavy fighting is going on in Khartoum between the RSF and the SAF. Although the capital isn’t yet under full RSF control, the government has evacuated to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. The British Embassy in Khartoum has long since closed. The RSF has gained a foothold in the south-west of Sudan, and has a particularly strong presence in Darfur.

Of course, the SAF is by no means a morally superior force to the RSF. The SAF are also indicted for war crimes and have been jointly responsible for massacres with the RSF before the conflict began. The key difference, of course, is that the only one side in this conflict is actively and currently enacting an ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur — and it’s the RSF.

The RSF’s progress on the battlefield has been in part due to their use of imported materiel, such as MANPADS (Man-portable air defence systems) to interrupt the SAF’s air superiority. With ground-to-air attack capability, the RSF can manoeuvre more easily and safely, with diminished fear of attack by air. Last year, the RSF successfully downed a highly prized SAF MIG-29 jet over Khartoum using a MANPADS. It isn’t entirely clear how the RSF is sourcing these weapons, but the US Treasury has issued a statement claiming Wagner Group acted as the supplier. Of course, such weapons may be being procured by multiple routes. Given the credible reports of materiel being provided courtesy of the UAE, it’s possible some of the alleged weaponry being offloaded at Amdjarass are MANPADS.

What does the UAE get in return from the RSF? Here, it’s important to remember the RSF has control of many of Sudan’s gold mines. In exchange for the arms it receives from the UAE, the RSF channels the spoils of its gold mines through the UAE, using various holding companies. […]

Aside from expressions of diplomatic “concern”, the United States’ response to the reports of the UAE funding the RSF — given the RSF’s ethnic cleansing campaign — has been decidedly limp. The reason why is geopolitical. The US maintains a strong relationship with the UAE, which is valued by both parties. The two nations have common regional interests, and cooperate for military and intelligence purposes. The prospect of losing such a strong foreign-policy partner in the Middle East would be a disaster in the eyes of the United States. The fact that a close ally is in league with a genocidal paramilitary group in Sudan is simply an inconvenient fact to the United States. The dead Masalit piled high in El Geneina, it seems, are an unfortunate casualty of diplomacy.

CONSIDER THE CONTRADICTIONS FORCED:

Hamas’s dark calculus: Pressure is mounting among Israel’s allies for a long-term settlement (HAMISH MCDONALD 10 APRIL 2024, Inside Story)

It took Israeli authorities some time realise that the death tallies and horrific video images made up the narrative mostly being seen by the outside world. Israel’s own media, with a few exceptions like the liberal newspaper Haaretz, concentrated on the violence against Israelis in the October attack, showing little of the carnage inside Gaza. After some weeks, Israeli embassies and lobby groups abroad began showing video and other evidence, emphasising child murder and sexual assault, to counter sympathy for the Gazans.

The high death toll and the destruction of more than two-thirds of dwellings in Gaza was meanwhile achieving the objectives stated explicitly by Mashal and other Hamas figures. They had seen the Palestinian cause slipping away, the West Bank being steadily annexed by Jewish settlements with little effective protest by Western powers pledged since 1993 to a two-state solution.

Under Donald Trump, the US embassy had been moved from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem: he was not holding out for a two-state settlement. Trump had also brokered the Abraham accords, which brought Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states closer to Israel: support for Palestinians seemed to be weakening among these Sunni powers.

Hamas set out to shatter this trend.

The Abraham Accords are nothing more than an attempt to normalize the suppression of Muslim self-determination.

IT’S NOT ABOUT HAMAS:

Allegations UNRWA collaborated with Hamas are ‘flat-out lies’: Van Hollen (MIRANDA NAZZARO, 3/17/24, The Hill)

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) ripped into Israel’s allegations that the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency, commonly referred to as UNRWA, is a proxy for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, arguing the accusations are an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to eliminate the agency.

“There’s no doubt that the claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu and others are making, that somehow UNRWA is a proxy for Hamas, are just flat-out lies,” Van Hollen said Sunday in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “If you look at the person who’s in charge of operations on the ground for UNRWA, it’s about a 20-year U.S. Army veteran. You can be sure he’s not in cahoots with Hamas.”

Which was obvious from the beginning when Israel failed to offer any evidence.

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

How Oct. 7 is forcing Jews to reckon with Israel (Noah Feldman, March 5, 2024, Washington Post)

To see how this happened, and to get a sharper view of the Jewish love-struggle today, dive with me into one subtype of Jewish thought: progressive American Judaism. This worldview, prevalent today among Reform Jews (37 percent of the American Jewish population), Conservative Jews (17 percent), Reconstructionist Jews (4 percent) and many unaffiliated Jews, finds its roots among 19th century Jews living in Germany who sought to reform Judaism along the lines of Reformation Protestantism. Looking back to the Bible, they found a God who loves not only his people but all the peoples of the world; who wants social justice, not ritualized obedience; and who teaches that to be holy is to love your neighbor as yourself.

The social justice strand of progressive Judaism transferred well to the United States. An iconic photograph, taken on March 21, 1965, sums up its essence. Seven people, arms linked, lead the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery: John Lewis, Sister Mary Leoline, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Bunche, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Fred Shuttlesworth. The Black men in the picture, all Southern ordained ministers except Bunche, a Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, are giants of the civil rights movement. Heschel, born in Warsaw in 1907, was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi and later earned a doctorate in Berlin. After fleeing from Poland in 1939, he became a renowned teacher and scholar of Jewish mysticism affiliated with the leading Reform and Conservative rabbinical schools. His participation in the march, and the progressive beliefs that put him there, stand for a vision of God derived from the ancient Hebrew prophets and the most foundational teachings of the rabbis.

In the past half-century, the progressive teaching of divinely inspired social justice acquired a slogan: tikkun ‘olam, literally, repairing the world. The phrase echoed the much older Kabbalistic, mystical idea that in creating the finite world, the infinite God contracted, then shattered and broke into a multitude of shards. In the aftermath of that cosmic disaster, the ultimate, mystical purpose of the Jewish people is to repair the universe and the Godhead itself by redeeming the sparks of divine light that were lost or hidden in the process. As adapted by contemporary Jewish progressives, tikkun ‘olam has a this-worldly, concrete meaning. It calls for human effort, alongside God, to make the world more just.

In the 1980s and ’90s, the social justice vision of progressive Judaism acquired two new theological pillars: the centrality of the Holocaust and the redemptive narrative of the creation of Israel.

The slogan “Never Again” gave social justice guidance to the intuition that the Holocaust determined Jewish uniqueness. Jews must never again allow a Holocaust to occur.

Zionism, for its part, came to offer progressive American Jews a supplemental account of post-Holocaust redemption. The modern state of Israel had been born from the ashes of the Holocaust, so Israel redeemed the suffering of its martyrs. From destruction came rebuilding. And Israel’s existence would prevent another Holocaust from occurring by providing an escape hatch for diaspora Jews should antisemitic pressures make life untenable.

Progressive American Jews could thus integrate Israel into their theological picture of the relationship between God and the Jewish people.

This pairing made some partial sense of the deaths of the 6 million. And it enabled progressive American Jews to organize for two main purposes: memorializing the Holocaust and supporting Israel. Today 16 Holocaust museums and hundreds of public Holocaust memorials exist in the United States, with more planned to open soon. The United States Holocaust Museum, built on almost two acres of land allocated by Congress near the Washington Monument, has hosted 47 million visitors since it opened in 1993.

It would be crude and inaccurate to argue that the role of the Holocaust in progressive American Jewish thought is to drive support for Israel. The lessons of the Holocaust museums are meant to be universal. Yet the idea of Israel nevertheless comes into complex interplay with the idea of the Holocaust in progressive American Jewish thought. In the Middle Ages, Jewish theology around martyrdom existed in a complicated relationship with Christian ideas, even as Jews were being martyred by Christians. Today, progressive Jewish theology also exists in a complex relation with American Protestant thought. Seen in comparative terms, the Holocaust might stand in for the passion and the state of Israel for the resurrection. The social gospel of tikkun ‘olam can sit comfortably alongside this implicit theology.

To be clear, no progressive American Jewish thinker ever consciously intended to re-create the theological structure of American Protestantism. God forbid.

Consciousness of the fact doesn’t matter any more than it did when we Reformed Catholicism or as we do so to Islam, Hinduism, etc. The point is that at the End of History Judaism is a religion, not a race. Clinging to the latter is Israel’s existential threat.

RELEASE BARGHOUTTI, HONOR THE ELECTIONS, RECOGNIZE THE NATION:

Netanyahu’s ‘day after’ plan for Gaza is unviable (Ishaan Tharoor, 2/26/24, Washington Post)

Much of this flies in the face of the stated expectations of the United States, European and Arab governments. The Biden administration has repeatedly stressed that Israel should not maintain an indefinite occupation of Gaza and wants to see the Palestinian Authority assume responsibilities there. Egypt has rejected any Israeli role on its border with Gaza. UNRWA is a vital institution for the delivery of services to millions of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, and, for all the controversy surrounding some of its employees, would be difficult to replace.

In the West Bank, Palestinian Authority officials rejected Netanyahu’s approach. “The plans proposed by Netanyahu are aimed at continuing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “Israel will not succeed in its attempts to change the geographical and demographic reality in the Gaza Strip.”

On Monday, the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister presented the resignation of the beleaguered entity’s entire government, as the United States and other governments look to it to reform and pick up the slack after the fighting eventually stops. The PA is deeply unpopular among Palestinians for its role as handmaiden to Israel’s occupation, as well as the alleged corruption of its entrenched political elites.

Recognizing Likud’s mission of the river to the sea is Israel’s existential threat.

FORCING THE CONTRADICTIONS:

How Israel’s war went wrong (Zack Beauchamp, 2/20/24, Vox)

At the end of November, Israeli reporter Yuval Abraham broke one of the most important stories of the war in Gaza to date — an inside look at the disturbing reasoning that has led the Israeli military to kill so many civilians.

Citing conversations with “seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community,” Abraham reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had changed its doctrine to permit far greater civilian casualties than it would have tolerated in previous wars. IDF leadership was greenlighting strikes on civilian targets like apartment buildings and public infrastructure that they knew would kill scores of innocent Gazans.

“In one case,” Abraham reported, “the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander.”

Abraham’s reporting showed, in granular detail, the ways that this war would not be like others: that Israel, so grievously wounded by Hamas on October 7, would go to extraordinarily violent lengths to destroy the group responsible for that day’s atrocities. In doing so, it would commit atrocities of its own.

At least 28,000 Palestinians are already confirmed dead, with more likely lying in the rubble. Around 70 percent of Gaza’s homes have been damaged or destroyed; at least 85 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced. The indirect death toll from starvation and disease will likely be higher. One academic estimate suggested that nearly 500,000 Palestinians will die within a year unless the war is brought to a halt, reflecting both the physical damage to Gaza’s infrastructure and the consequences of Israel’s decision to besiege Gaza on day three of the war. (While the siege has been relaxed somewhat, limitations on aid flow remain strict.)

It’s not about Hamas.

IT’S NOT GENOCIDE WHEN WE DO IT:

HOW 95% OF JEWISH ISRAELIS SUPPORT A ‘PLAUSIBLE’ GENOCIDE (ZACHARY FOSTER, FEBRUARY 2, 2024, Religion Dispatches)

Jewish Israelis, however, see things differently: 95% of Jewish Israelis believed the Israeli military had used either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza, according to a mid-January 2024 poll. That’s 95% support for a plausible genocide:

Polling data from the Agam Institute suggests that some 60% of Israeli Jews oppose allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is, 60% of Jewish Israelis believe all 2.2 million people in Gaza should die of dehydration and starvation.

Israel’s problem is not its lunatic fringe, as Gideon Levy said earlier this week, “Israel’s problem is its mainstream.”

THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF PALESTINE:

Could Barghouti be the Palestinian to make peace with Israel? (Alain Catzeflis, 1/19/24, the Article)

For decades the international community has clung to the idea that peace in the Middle East could be imposed from the outside: essentially by American power and Arab money. Time and again this has proved a dangerous illusion. A go-between can, well, go-between warring parties. But, as every peace initiative in history shows, all you can do is take a horse to water.

Ami Ayalon is a straight-talking Israeli war hero with the ageing good looks of a combat veteran from central casting. Ayalon headed both Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, and the country’s navy. He thinks he has the answer.

Ayalon believes the Palestinian who ticks all the boxes has been sitting in an Israeli jail for 22 years. He’s talking about Marwan Barghouti, the most senior Palestinian leader behind bars and by far the most popular, though not a man widely known to the world beyond.

A veteran of the 1987-93 and 2000-2004 intifadas or uprisings, Barghouti is serving five life sentences for his role in the death of Israelis during the second intifada.

Ayalon told the Guardian recently, that Barghouti is the only leader who can lead Palestinians to a state alongside Israel “because he believes in a two-state solution and because he won his legitimacy by sitting in our jails.”