Israel is undergoing a change of management, with reliably hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being replaced by extreme nationalist Naftali Bennett. Bennett has at intervals favored the disenfranchisement of non-Jewish Israeli citizens and the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews from historic Palestine, killing them if necessary. He opposes the creation of any Palestinian state and routinely describes Palestinian protesters as terrorists while stating his belief that they should be shot on sight. He has also boasted of his shooting Palestinians during his military service, saying at one point “I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that.” He was heavily involved in “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in Lebanon in the 1980s, where his commando unit killed numerous civilians, and takes pleasure in recounting his participation in Israel’s war crimes.

All of which means that there will be no respite from the brutal Netanyahu reign of terror which has been prevailing on the West Bank, in Gaza and also in Jerusalem itself. If anything, the pressure on Arabs forcing them to leave will intensify. Evidence that the recently negotiated cease fire was little more than a pause in the plan to mitigate international pressure before continuing to make the former Palestine Palestinian free is already available. Israeli police and army units have been arresting hundreds of Arabs, many of whom are Israeli citizens, not because they have broken any of the “rules” imposed by the Netanyahu government, but as a preventive measure to have them identified, allowing them to be safely locked away when the next round of fighting begins. Eighteen hundred arrests have been reported since unrest began in April, but the figure is probably much higher than that. An estimated 25% of those who are detained are children and 85% of those children arrested report that they were physically abused.  Also, at least 26 Palestinians have been killed while resisting. It has been claimed that the police, embarrassed by being ridiculed by protesting Palestinians, are “settling scores” and “closing accounts,” frequently using savage beatings during arrests and as collective punishment to break the Arab resistance.

Israeli police have also been active at and around the al-Aqsa mosque, where they have been denying Muslims access to the holy site while promoting sightseeing visits by Israeli Jews. This is a clear violation of the rules established for access to the mosque and it sends a strong signal to Palestinians that there is more to come and the intention is clearly that they will eventually be removed by whatever means necessary from Greater Israel.

The Director for the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (ADALAH) Hassan Jabareen observed recently how the violence over the past month was deliberately provoked by Israel both to shore up Netanyahu’s electoral prospects while “the massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli police…is a militarized war against Palestinian citizens of Israel. This is a war against Palestinian demonstrators, political activists, and minors, employing massive Israeli police forces to raid the homes of Palestinian citizens.”

The Israelis, who clearly have a sense of humor, called the first phase of the mass arrests “Operation Law and Order.” The raids themselves have been carried out inside Israel itself and on the West Bank. Those Palestinians who are citizens of Israel have what has frequently been described as “second class rights” in the country’s judicial system. Although Israel claims its Arab citizens—roughly 20% of the nation’s population—have equality under the law, even the pro-Israel US State Department has repeatedly accused Israel of practicing “institutional and societal discrimination” toward its Arab citizens.

As a consequence, Palestinians who are arrested are indicted, charged and in some cases detained indefinitely under existing state of emergency and anti-terror legislation. A common charge is “incitement” which requires little or nothing in the way of evidence. Many of the arrested Palestinians have in fact been released after payment of exorbitant bails, averaging about $1,000. One Palestinian activist reportedly paying $7,400 to be set free.

It should be noted that the armed Jewish settlers who rioted in the lead up to last month’s fighting, destroying Palestinian homes and other property, have not been identified and detained by Israeli authorities. Activist Remi Kanazi notes how “Apartheid inside Israel is when Jewish Israeli mobs chant ‘Death to Arabs’ and brutalize Palestinians in their neighborhoods, while the cops do nothing, only for those same cops to conduct mass arrests of Palestinian citizens two weeks later.”

Outside of Israel proper, other Palestinians, who are citizens of the Palestinian Authority or who have United Nations documentation, have no rights at all under Israeli law and are being detained at will and, in many cases, indefinitely, without any access to legal counsel or to family members. Most of them were not doing anything illegal, even by Israeli standards, when they were arrested. They were guilty of being Palestinian.

In one example of how the process works, well-known Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat, who had previously been arrested at age 17 and imprisoned for two years for having thrown stones at Israeli soldiers has been targeted. He lives in Bil’in on the West Bank and has had his two sons abducted from their home in recent night invasions by Israeli security forces. Abdul Khaliq, 21 years old, was taken away on May 17^th and Mohammed, 19 years old, was abducted on May 24^th. They are being held in the Almasqubia detention center in Jerusalem and have been denied any contact either with their parents or legal counsel. The Israeli authorities have provided no explanation of why they were arrested in the first place.

In another recent example of the brutality of the Israeli police, al-Jazeera reports in detail how thirteen-year-old Mohammed Saadi was kidnapped, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with a gun to his head by five policemen working undercover in his hometown of Umm al-Fahem. Saadi was among thousands who gathered for a funeral procession held for Mohammed Kiwan, a 17-year-old boy who had been shot and killed by Israeli police a week earlier.

Activists among the Palestinians observe that the Israeli repression has proven counter-productive. Most Palestinians now understand that the Israelis intend to exterminate them. One observer notes that “The fear barrier has been broken. Israeli forces are up against a people who no longer have anything to lose. The young men in Jerusalem don’t see they have a future to look forward to, due to socioeconomic factors that is either the result of or exacerbated by the occupation policies towards them. These people are defending their right to exist, their homes and their homeland, and had it not been for their resistance, Jewish settlers would have taken control of many places in Jerusalem.”

Clearly, the Joe Biden administration will do nothing even if the Israeli government were to arrest and torture 100,000 Arabs, but there is growing sentiment even in Congress and the Zionist controlled media that “what is wrong is wrong.” Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s has twice introduced a bill, which is languishing in congressional committee, that calls on the United States to block aid to Israel that can be perceived as being used to arrest, beat and imprison children. Her legislation the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act​ H.R. 2407 amends a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act known as the “Leahy Law” to prohibit funding for the military detention of children in any country, including Israel.

McCollum argues that an estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli security forces and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system since 2000. These children between the ages of 11 and 15 have sometimes been tortured using chokeholds, beatings, and coercive interrogation. As of September 2020 there were an estimated 157 children still detained in Israeli prisons, a number that has certainly gone up dramatically given the current crackdown by the police and army. Even though Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will surely block any attempt to let the McCollum bill see light of day one can at least honor the Congresswoman for what she is attempting to do and hope that some day the United States government will finally act honorably and help deliver liberty and justice for the long suffering Palestinians.

The first weeks of this year have been lively and deadly for Palestinians, with Israeli troops and settlers continuing to burn down, bulldoze and otherwise destroy olive trees, villages and farmland in the Palestinian territory they occupy. The long-term campaign against Palestinians was given impetus by the Covid-19 pandemic which presented the Israeli authorities with the opportunity on February 15 to block vaccine from being delivered to the besieged Gaza strip which is home to about 1.9 million Arabs.

On February 17 it was reported that “Israel has permitted Palestinian officials to send the first shipment of 2,000 coronavirus vaccine doses to the blockaded Gaza Strip” and an Israeli official was quoted as saying that “The 1,000 Sputnik vaccines delivery, donated by Russia and provided to the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian Authority, have just been transferred.” This sort of vicious fandango by the Israelis was playing with people’s lives, but it cannot be expected that there might be any expression of regret for holding up the desperately needed shipment.

Were the Israeli’s vaccine tactics not so devastatingly malicious and barbaric, it might have been amusing to hear the views of newly-elected President Biden on the subject of combating the global plague. On the day the Israelis reluctantly released some vaccines to the Palestinians, Uncle Joe made his first phone call to Prime Minister Netanyahu (who is currently under indictment for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three corruption cases) and praised him for “leadership in the fight against the coronavirus.”

The White House noted especially that “The President affirmed his personal history of steadfast commitment to Israel’s security and conveyed his intent to strengthen all aspects of the U.S.-Israel partnership, including our strong defence cooperation.” Further, as an afterthought, Uncle Joe “underscored the importance of working to advance peace throughout the region, including between Israelis and Palestinians.”

That might be easy enough to do if the Israelis succeed in destroying all of the Palestinians’ productive farmlands and basic dwellings which are being torn down in freezing weather during the pandemic. The Norwegian Refugee Council recorded on February 9 that “Israel seized more tents donated by humanitarian organisations to Palestinian Bedouins in Humsa Al-Bqai’a yesterday, continuing to block international aid since demolishing or confiscating 46 structures in the community in one week.” Although this is taking place in the depth of winter in the middle of a ghastly epidemic the Israeli authorities appear determined to continue their spiteful and venomous crusade against defenceless Arab civilians.

The Council’s Secretary General, Jan Egeland, stated straightforwardly that “Israel appears determined to force Palestinians out of their village of Humsa Al-Bqai’a, depriving them of basic shelter and making their lives miserable, while destroying international aid donated to the most vulnerable.” This is undoubtedly official policy, and it is difficult to see how it can possibly equate with Uncle Joe’s presumably serious declaration that he wants to “advance peace throughout the region.” In contrast to his psychotic predecessor he seems a reasonably compassionate and merciful sort of person — but he is never going to take any sort of action against the regime in Jerusalem / Tel Aviv.

Israel is always backed without question by successive administrations in Washington and can literally get away with murder in the occupied Palestinian territories. No U.S. president has ever condemned Israel for its excesses, and precious few Senators or Members of the House of Representatives would dare to openly challenge it. (Two Members of Congress did criticise Israel in 2019 and were promptly barred from visiting the country.)

The Norwegian Council is one of the few organisations that have the independence and the courage to make it clear that Israel’s behaviour is contrary to all that is decent, compassionate and honourable. It notes that “International humanitarian law requires Israel, as the occupying power, to protect the population of the territory that it occupies, and ensure the welfare and wellbeing of Palestinians, as well as respect for their human rights. Israel has a legal obligation to ensure and maintain health facilities, services, and supplies in occupied Palestinian territory. If unable to adequately provide for the needs of the occupied population, Israel must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief.”

But Israel cares nothing for international humanitarian law or any other international agreement or resolution. It certainly has a “legal obligation” as well as a moral one to be humane and merciful to Palestinians in the occupied lands, but its contemptuous flouting of civilised custom and convention attracts little criticism, never mind condemnation, in Washington’s halls of power where legislators are so dependant on financial support from pro-Israel agencies and lobbyists who are described as “a major force on American foreign affairs that looks to continue America’s military and fiscal support of the Jewish nation-state.”

In January Human Rights Watch pointed out that “the Fourth Geneva Convention obliges Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure the ‘medical supplies of the [occupied] population,’ including ‘adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventative measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics’ to ‘the fullest extent of the means available to it’,” and although this could not be clearer in terms of legality, humanity and simple decency, there is no intention on Israel’s part to pay attention to international law, to treat Palestinians humanely, or be even remotely decent.

What the Israeli government and its unquestioning international supporters fail to understand is that persecution of Palestinians is dangerously counter-productive. As has been made clear elsewhere in the world, infliction of pain and indignity can work in the short term to produce what is wanted by oppressors, but creates resentment and hatred that last for generations.

It is difficult to understand how anyone in their right mind can be a supporter of Hamas, an organisation described as the “militant Islamic Palestinian nationalist movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is dedicated to the establishment of an independent Islamic state in historical Palestine”. But when developments in Israel / Palestine are examined it becomes clear that there is little alternative for Palestinians other than to back Hamas because it is the only agency that is attempting to achieve what to them is right and proper — Palestinian self-determination in the lands that have historically been their home. The world, and especially the U.S., either fails to realise or wilfully ignores the fact that Israel’s oppression strengthens Hamas.

Nobody knows how many Palestinians, subjected from their earliest years to harassment, abuse and discrimination, have grown up to become fanatics, dedicated to destruction of Israel. It would not be surprising to learn that there are hundreds of them, who could have been guided to productive paths had there been Israeli and international support for their basic rights. Interruption of the supply of Covid vaccine to Palestinians and destruction of their olive trees and accommodation shacks in the depths of winter may be met with shrugs in Washington — but the long-term effects of such barbarity will be expansion of anti-Western sentiment and further destabilisation in the Middle East. Israel’s anti-Palestine campaign will not “advance peace” in the region, and it is up to President Biden to adopt a policy that will have such an effect. The first thing he should do is condemn Israel for its barbarity. Will he dare to do this?

Joe LAURIA

Within hours of the so-called Trump peace plan on the Palestine-Israel question being revealed on Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would propose the first phase of West Bank annexation to the Israeli cabinet on Sunday.

Netanyahu sprang into action after the plan, which he essentially created, was unveiled by Trump with Netanyahu at his side at the White House. It was the final piece of a strategy that only a U.S. administration as slavishly pro-Israel as Trump’s could give Netanyahu.

First the Israeli prime minister got the U.S. on Dec. 6, 2017 to recognize all of Jerusalem, including Arab East Jerusalem, as Israel’s capital with the move of the U.S. embassy there, something every previous U.S. administration had refused to do.

Then on March 25, 2019 Trump recognized Israel’s illegal 1981 annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights. Just three months ago Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared expanding Israeli colonies on the West Bank as legal, a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, which says: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The last piece Netanyahu needed was Tuesday’s much-awaited “peace plan” from the most anti-Palestinian administration in U.S. history.  Even The New York Times‘ coverage admitted the plan was strongly biased towards Israel and that Netanyahu was in on the secretive plan all along.

The operation was run by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose family are close personal friends with Netanyahu.  It is a plan being imposed on the Palestinians rather than arising out of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations as past U.S. administrations tried to do.

The Netanyahu/Trump plan calls for new Israeli borders that intrude on Palestinian territory.  The Palestinian “state” envisioned includes no military force and the Israeli military would control and patrol the Palestinian border with Jordan.  In the deal Trump is trying to buy off the Palestinians’ aspiration for independence for $50 billion.  (On Tuesday, as the plan was being unveiled, Trump was facing an impeachment trial in the Senate and Netanyahu was formally indicted on corruption charges.)

If the Israeli cabinet approves Netanyahu’s first annexation proposal, which will include the Jordan valley, Palestinians living in annexed territories would come under direct Israeli rule but, under the plan, would not be allowed to vote in Israeli elections. That is the very definition of apartheid.  (Though Israeli law forbids Israelis living outside Israel–except for diplomats and military–to vote in Israeli elections, Israeli colonists, known euphemistically called “settlers,”–though living legally outside Israel–have had the right to vote.)

Warnings Ignored

Netanyahu is simply brushing aside warnings that came from earlier Israeli leaders.

While many critics of Israel have pointed out that Israel was already running a de-facto apartheid system in its rule over four million Palestinians without rights, legal apartheid would come with annexation of the West Bank.  Negative public reaction to that appeared to be the reason annexation had been resisted by Israel until now.

No less than two former Israeli prime ministers have said so. “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state,” said Ehud Barak in 2010.

Three years earlier, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”

A former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Alon Liel, put it even more bluntly:  “In the situation that exists today, until a Palestinian state is created, we are actually one state. This joint state – in the hope that the status quo is temporary – is an apartheid state.”

Reactions

Apparently Netanyahu felt that the times had changed enough (for the worse) that Israel could withstand the negative regional and international outrage that annexation will cause.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas mocked Trump’s Deal of the Century as the “slap of the century.” And he told Trump where he can put that $50 billion.

“Jerusalem is not for sale, our rights are not for sale and are not for bargain and your deal, [this] conspiracy will not pass,” Abbas said Tuesday.

Palestinian activist Fakhry Abu Diab told Al Jazeera: “It is obvious that Trump is repeating history by establishing a new Balfour Declaration. He [Trump] is giving away what he does not own, to people who have no right to it.”

International law professor Francis Boyle, who was an adviser to the PLO and Yasser Arafat, toldConsortium News: “As this plan moves forward, I don’t think there will be much of Palestine to speak of. It will be Greater Israel. Then there will be another Nakba forcing a lot of Palestinians into Jordan: Jordan is Palestine.”

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted:  “This plan was negotiated with no one but the Israelis, and thus it’s not a peace plan at all. Peace can only be achieved through agreement between Israel and the Palestinian people. By setting these new terms, it makes it harder for Israel to compromise later.”

Murphy said,

“Any claim that this plan envisions a Palestinian state is just false. The plan allows Israel to control all security matters inside the Palestinian ‘state’, and thus it’s not a state at all. The unilateral annexation of the Jordan River valley and existing settlements, deemed illegal under U.S. and international law, will set back the peace process decades. And it risks real violence and massive destabilization inside places like Jordan.”

Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian Authority spokeswoman, tweeted:  “Netanyahu is clear: Trump is the first world leader to say it is alright for Israel to steal land.”

Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement: “The shameful peace plan imposed by America on the Palestinians is the treason of the century and doomed to fail.” Jordan warned against the “dangerous consequences of unilateral Israeli measures that aim to impose new realities on the ground.”

To make it work, Netanyahu needs the support of Arab governments that have long abandoned the Palestinian cause. In a statement, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba, portrayed Trump’s plan as  “a serious initiative that addresses many issues raised over the years.”

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said it “appreciates the efforts of President Trump’s administration to develop a comprehensive peace plan.” The Egyptian government, which is dependent on Saudi financing, urged Israelis and Palestinians to “carefully study” the plan and said it appreciated the U.S. effort to solve the decades-0ld crisis.

Israeli troops were reinforced on the West Bank anticipating a violent reaction.

What the mendacious and cynical Pompeo omits to add is that the Trump administration has been dramatically fueling the change in “realities” – specifically the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory and the demolition of Palestinian homes.

This week the top US diplomat declared that Washington would no longer adopt the international consensus position, backed by several UN resolutions, that Israeli settlement-building and occupation of Palestinian territory was a violation of international law. Washington is henceforth recognizing Israeli settlements as legitimate.

The move overturns more than four decades of official US policy which adhered to the UN-backed position of condemning Israeli occupation in the Palestinian West Bank and in East Jerusalem as illegal and a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Since the 1967 Six War, successive Israeli governments have overseen a relentless process of annexing Palestinian territory. Over that period, Palestinian lands have diminished and become increasingly fragmented with little contiguity that would be normal for a future state. There are estimated to be around 200 Israeli new-build settlements of towns and villages with a population of 600,000 Jewish settlers who have usurped Palestinian land and properties. The UN has repeatedly condemned the annexation and occupation as illegal, to no avail.

The latest move by the Trump administration is a flagrant repudiation of UN resolutions and international law. It follows previous declarations by President Trump recognizing Israeli claims to Jerusalem as its capital, as well as Israel’s annexation of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights.

“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” said Pompeo on Monday. “The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”

That is an astounding dereliction of international law by the American government. The “hard truth” that Pompeo ignores is that US administrations have constantly undermined “judicial resolution of the conflict” because they have, to varying degrees, over the decades pandered to Israeli criminal occupation of Palestinian lands.

What the Trump administration is doing is not entirely unprecedented. Successive American presidents have merely paid lip service to a supposed peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, declaring their support for a “two-state solution” and presenting Washington as some kind of “honest broker”. The reality is that Washington has consistently undermined Palestinian national rights by its systematic bias towards Israel, indulging the latter’s criminal policies of occupation and military aggression towards Palestinian population.

However, Trump and his coterie of Middle East aides have taken the American bias and complicity with Israel to naked levels. Part of that is no doubt payback for the multi-million-dollar funding of Trump’s 2016 election campaign by Jewish-American billionaire and arch-Zionist Sheldon Adelson.

Israeli peace groups have recorded a surge in Israeli expansion of settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past three years of the Trump administration. Demolition of Palestinian homes by Israeli bulldozers are at a record high.

There is an imperative business reason for this. President Donald Trump has personally invested in Israeli settlements, as have his ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and the White House’s special envoy to the region, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

One of those settlements is at Beit El which is described as “one of the most aggressive” in terms of expansionist scope. It overlooks the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank which is supposed to be the administrative seat of the Palestinian Authority.

Trump, Friedman and the Kushner family have in the past funneled millions of dollars into Beit El and other Israeli settlements. In return, Israeli financial companies have made huge investments in Jared Kushner’s family real-estate business back in the US. For example, Menora Mivtachim, a pension and insurance firm, invested $30 million in apartments in Maryland owned by the Kushner family.

Jared Kushner officially stepped away from his family’s property conglomerate when he was appointed by his father-in-law as special envoy on the Middle East “peace process”. But few would believe his future wealth will not benefit from investments in and from Israel. He is still a beneficiary of trusts that have holdings in Kushner properties, notes Haaretz newspaper.

It seems incredible given this blatant conflict of interest that Kushner has been tasked with producing a “peace plan” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Trump had previously boasted about as being the “deal of the century”. That plan has since wilted to non-existence. The media don’t even talk about its expected publication, so far off the radar is it.

The latest move by the Trump administration to effectively reward and accelerate further Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory has American self-interest and profit written all over it. It mirrors Trump’s declaration in March this year recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, where there is irrefutable evidence that Trump and the Zionist clique in the White House have major business interests in oil exploration and production in that contested region.

Russia warned this week that Washington’s policy is inflaming further conflict amid an intensification of air strikes by Israel on Gaza where more than 30 people have been killed over the past week, including one Palestinian family of three adults and five children. The bloodshed makes Pompeo’s announcement all the more repulsive.

The Arab League and the European Union have also condemned the unilateral rejection of international law by the US. Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states said the United States has forfeited its right to act as a peace broker in the region.

The “reality on the ground” – to use a talking point favored by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and now Mike Pompeo – is that the US is an accomplice in Israel’s illegal occupation and war crimes. Even more heinous, the US policy is being driven by Trump’s family business profits.

Occasionally, however, the light does shine in darkness. The efforts by Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to challenge the power of the Israel Lobby are commendable and it is worth noting that the two women are being subjected to harassment by their own Democratic Party in an effort to make them be silent. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has attempted to make them the face of the Democrats, calling them “Jew haters” and “anti-Semites” while also further claiming that they despise the United States just as they condemn Israel. This has developed into a Trump diatribe claiming that American Jews who vote for Democrats are “disloyal.” By disloyal he meant disloyal to Israel, in a sense ironically confirming that in the president’s mind Jews have dual loyalty, which, of course, at least some of them do.

And Trump has further exercised his claim to the Jewish vote by accepting the sobriquet “King of Israel” bestowed by a demented talk radio host. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already asserted that Trump’s election victory was the result of divine intervention to “save Israel from Iran,” the kingship is presumably an inevitable progression. One can only imagine what will come next.

One Democratic congressman who has apparently become fatigued by all that bipartisan pandering to Israel is Ted Lieu of California. Last Thursday Lieu rebuked Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman over his support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to allow Tlaib and Omar to visit the West Bank where Tlaib’s grandmother lives under Israeli occupation. Friedman had issued a statement saying that the United States “respects and supports” the Israeli action. He went on to elaborate “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is not free speech. Rather, it is no less than economic warfare designed to delegitimize and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. [Israel] has every right to protect its borders against those activists in the same manner as it would bar entrants with more conventional weapons.”

As Friedman was describing two thirty-something nonviolent first term congresswomen as nothing less than armed attackers about to be unleashed against the Jewish state because they support a peaceful boycott movement, Lieu apparently felt compelled to courageously respond to the ambassador, tweeting “Dear @USAmbIsrael: You are an American. Your allegiance should be to America, not to a foreign power. You should be defending the right of Americans to travel to other countries. If you don’t understand that, then you need to resign.”

Later that day, on CNN, Lieu explained his objection to Friedman’s actions, saying “Actually, I think he should resign because he doesn’t see to understand that his allegiance is to America, not to a foreign power. He should be defending the right of Americans to go abroad to other countries and to visit their relatives.”

The outrage from the mighty host of friends of Israel came immediately, with accusations that Lieu was accusing Friedman of “dual loyalty,” that greatly feared derogatory label that is somewhat akin to “anti-Semitism” or “Holocaust denial” in the battery of verbal munitions used to silence critics of the Jewish state. Indeed, Lieu was accused of employing nothing less than a “classic anti-Semitic” trope.

Under considerable pressure, Lieu deleted the tweet and then issued something of an apology, “It has been brought to my attention that my prior tweet to @USAmbIsrael raises dual loyalty allegations that have historically caused harm to the Jewish community. That is a legitimate concern. I am therefore deleting the tweet.”

But the reality is, of course, that Friedman does not have dual loyalty. He has real loyalty only to Israel, which he demonstrates repeatedly by uncritically supporting everything the kleptocratic Netanyahu regime does with nary a pause to consider actual American interests. He has supported the weekly slaughter of unarmed Gazan civilians by Israeli sharpshooters, praised the bombing of Syria, pushed for the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, applauded the recognition by Washington of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and is an active supporter of and contributor to the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank. He has even pressured the State Department into ceasing its use of the word “occupation” when describing the situation on the West Bank. It is now “disputed.” So, it is no surprise that David Friedman, formerly a bankruptcy lawyer before he became ambassador, lines up with Netanyahu rather than with two American Congresswomen who, apart from anything else, have good reasons to travel to a country that is the largest US aid recipient in order to see conditions on the ground. To put it mildly, Friedman is a disgrace and a reflection of the character or lack thereof of the man who appointed him. If he had any decency, he would resign.

There is no benefit for the United States when an American Ambassador excuses the brutality of a foreign government, quite the contrary as it makes Washington an accomplice in what are often undeniably war crimes. Even though Congressman Lieu was clearly read the riot act and made to fly right by his own party’s leadership, it took considerable courage to speak up against both Israel and an American ambassador who clearly is more in love with the country he is posted to than the country he is supposed to represent. Of course, in never-any-accountability Washington a buffoon posing as an ambassador as Friedman does will get away with just about anything and, as the subject is Israel, there will hardly be a word of rebuke coming from anyone, to include the mainstream media. But the tweet by Lieu is nevertheless significant. Hopefully he will be among the first of many congressmen willing to put at risk their careers at times to speak the truth.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to the Palestinians – using Gulf Arab oil money – has so far been a resounding failure, as was widely predicted.

The so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ turned out to be a shabby swindle.

I watched Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, deliver the first part of his big deal to a bunch of tame Arab oil monarchs and assorted hangers-on. Kushner looked like a nervous sophomore taking a tough oral exam. There were no Palestinians or Israelis present. But Israel’s powerful American backers were watching from the sidelines as their ‘deal’ was enunciated.

Trump’s offer was pure New York City real estate hipper dipper. He would get the rich Gulf Arab states, all of them American protectorates, to offer some $60 billion in payments, credits, loans and other financial inducements to the Palestinian Authority – but nothing to the democratically elected Hamas government in the open-air prison of Gaza that holds two million Palestinian refugees.

The $60 million would be a payoff to the US-managed Palestinian leadership of Mohammed Abbas, another US pawn, to give up the PLO’s rights to most of the West Bank so Israel can annex it, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu just vowed. This follows Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights and growing US recognition of Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem.

In other words, Israel hopes to gain most or all of the West Bank and Jerusalem by getting the rich but dim Gulf Arabs and Saudi Arabia to pay the proposed bribe money. The US and Israel will more or less divvy up the central Mideast. Just this week, the director of Israel’s Mossad said that his spy agency had played a key role in bringing the Arab oil monarchs into alliance with Israel.

Egypt, the leading Arab military power, has been bought off with Saudi money and US protection. The military dictatorship in Cairo is, in fact, acting as a co-jailer of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Turkey, long a supporter of Palestinian rights, has suffered US-backed coup attempts and intense economic warfare orchestrated from Washington that have left it destabilized and weakened.

If the tragicomical ‘Deal of the Century’ were to actually come to pass, what will become of the Palestinians, sold down the river by their Arab oil brothers? The Trump administration has not yet specified the details. The unwritten hope is that the two million Palestinians in the Gaza hellhole will remain there, locked up by Israel and Egypt.

The three million plus Palestinians on the West Bank – which is slated for Israeli occupation – will be `encouraged’ to decamp to other inhospitable Arab countries or simply driven into neighboring Jordan, 60% of whose population are already of Palestinian origin. Israeli rightists are fond of claiming that Jordan is really the true Palestinian state.

But Israel’s Arab neighbors, notably Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, as well as Jordan, already have large numbers of Palestinian refugees and don’t want any more. Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinian refugees during the wars of 2001/2003. Israel, which drove the original Palestinian refugees from their homes, insists it will never take back these Arabs.

Meanwhile, no one in Washington seems to have bothered talking to the Palestinians, aside from a few quislings and yes-men. Palestinians totally reject the Trump-Kushner proposal. They have always looked on the Saudis and Gulf Arabs as traitors and back-stabbers. Young Mr. Kushner has not begun to understand these complexities.

This whole ‘peace deal’ is a big smokescreen to cover Israeli land expansion and more ethnic cleansing. Many thoughtful Israelis are dismayed by their far right-wing government’s expansionist plans, seeing nothing but more troubles and violence ahead.

In Trump’s world, almost everything can be bought. What he can’t buy directly, his mentor casino billionaire Adelson can. Trump’s real Mideast mover and shaker is Mr. Greater Israel Adelson, not junior Kushner.

ericmargolis.com

To date, 62 Palestinians have been shot dead in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army and over 5,500 wounded by gunfire.  Their crime: protesting the loss of their ancestral homes in the West Bank.

Here was an example of Gandhi-style passive resistance that failed.  Israeli sniper teams just fired at will at the protesters, some of who were throwing rocks or firing sling shots.  High concentration tear gas was dumped by drones on the demonstrators.  Israel claimed it was killing ‘terrorists.’

The United States, Israel’s patron and financier, reveled in the move of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move seen by Bible Belt religious fundamentalists as a key step to the return of the Christian Messiah and Armageddon.  The rest of us, Jews included, are fated to be burned alive.  The American Republicans, who have become a far-right theocratic party, cheered this good news.  The Trump administration, by now an extension of Israel’s hard right Likud Party, was cock-a-hoop.

There was no joy in Gaza.  This miserable, squalid human garbage dump is a giant open-air prison packed with 2 million Palestinian refugees driven from the newly created state of Israel in 1948.  Israel and its close ally Egypt keep Gaza bottled up on its land and sea borders.  Palestinians are only allowed to fish along the shore. Coastal gas and oil reserves have been expropriated by Israel and Egypt.

Gaza’s two million people subsist on the edge of starvation. Israel openly boasts that it allows just enough food into the enclave to prevent outright starvation. Chemicals to treat water are banned. Electricity runs only a few hours daily because the power plant was bombed by Israel’s US-supplied air force.  Hospitals have almost no medicines.  In short, wartime conditions in the open-air prison. Even the wretched animals in Gaza zoo are starving.

The intensive punishment of Gaza, a crime under international law, began after its people voted in a free election for the Hamas movement over the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which is more or less run by Israel and the United States.  Israel helped found Hamas in 1987, but then sought, with the US, to destroy the organization, branding it ‘terrorist.’

Israel has extensively used US-supplied arms and money to fight Hamas in Gaza, a clear violation of the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 that bars the use of American weapons against civilian populations.

The question remains, where did all the Palestinians come from?  Israel long claimed there were no such people, or a made-up nationality. This was a pretty rich claim coming from Israelis, many of whom hailed from Russia, Poland and Eastern Europe and who had assumed biblical identities and asserted a direct link to the Hebrews who had lived two thousand years earlier in the Levant.

When Israel was created by the US and UN (with Soviet support) in 1948, from 750,000 to one million native Palestinians were driven from their ancestral home at gunpoint or panicked to flight by massacres and ethnic cleansing.   Their villages were bulldozed.

When Israel conquered and annexed the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, another 500,000 Palestinians were made refugees.   Some 50,000-250,000 Syrians were driven by Israel from the strategic Golan Heights.  Bedouins were driven from Israel’s Negev Desert.

By our era, the number of homeless Palestinians has grown to 5 million refugees helped by the UN and at least another million scattered about the Mideast.  The actual number could reach as high as 8-9 million thanks to the Palestinian’s high birth rate and strong family values.

Half of Jordan’s people are Palestinian refugees.  Kuwait had 400,000 Palestinians until they were expelled in 2002-03 after their leader, Yasser Arafat, foolishly backed claims by Saddam Hussein that he was occupying Kuwait in order to trade it for a Palestinian state.  This was the biggest Palestinian expulsion since 1948.  Egypt’s brutal dictator, Gen. al-Sisi, is now the biggest persecutor of Palestinians after Israel, keeping them locked away in the Gaza prison.

The Arab states have done very little for the Palestinians save slogans and hot air.  The Saudis are now in cahoots with Israel to repress the Palestinians lest they spread modern secular ideas in the medieval Mideast. Interestingly, some of the most extreme Palestinians, like George Habash, were Arab Christians. Palestinians remain some of the best educated and most commercial of the Mideast’s peoples.  For a long while they ran most of the Gulf Emirates until replaced by Indians.

‘Sand in the eye of the Mideast’ is what I called this oppressed people without a home. Their plight could be greatly eased by the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. But this would interfere with plans for Israel’s right-wing government for planned expansion.  So, the future for Palestinians is bleak.

ericmargolis.com

One of my favorite literary expressions is the term ‘Parthian shaft.’ It refers to the favored tactic of the Parthians, a Persian people, of turning while on horseback and firing arrows while retreating.

The Roman consul Crassus, who defeated Spartacus, may have died from such a Parthian shaft after his defeat at the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC.

This week, outgoing President Barack Obama loosed his own Parthian shaft at Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, by refusing, for once, to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s ongoing expropriation of Arab land on the occupied West Bank.

There was no mention of similar expropriation and ethnic cleansing on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights which legally belong to Syria.

For the past eight years, the Obama administration has discreetly argued with Israel over its settlement building on the West Bank and Jerusalem. In public, the Obama government maintained the ludicrous but convenient fiction that fruitful talks were under way that would lead to creation of two states in historic Palestine.

No one really believed this nonsense: not Israel, not Mahmoud Abbas, the US and Israeli-installed Palestinian Quisling, not the UN, not America’s allies, including its client Arab states. By keeping this lie going meant that no one would have to do anything to block Israel’s in-you face expansion.

When Barack Obama and his feminist foreign policy cadre made occasional public peeps of protest, he and VP Joe Biden were slapped down and abjectly humiliated. It mattered not that the Obama administration pledged to give Israel $ 38 billion of US taxpayer’s money to buy arms, vetoed an endless series of UN resolutions condemning Israel for illegal expansion and massive violations of human rights, Israel made clear who was really boss in Washington, and it wasn’t Barack Obama.

When Netanyahu did an end run around Obama by coming to address Congress, US congressmen and senators, made giddy by Netanyahu’s presence and its promise of lavish political donations caused these yes-men to jump up and down in crass adulation of the ‘King of Israel.’

America’s media, no less adoring, lauded Netanyahu and blasted Obama for trying, however feebly, to assert America’s interests in the Mideast and slow down Israel’s quest for lebensraum. As the wise Voltaire observed, `TO LEARN WHO RULES OVER YOU SIMPLY FIND OUT WHO YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE.’

Obama should have taken action eight years ago, not in the last minutes of his administration. Now, the specter of bumptious Donald Trump hangs over the moribund administration, accentuated its manifest failures abroad. If we believe Trump’s Tweets this week in response to the US refusing, for once, to veto a mild UN resolution on Palestine, the Mideast is in for a rougher time than usual.

Trump does not know much about the Mideast. He will rely on a tight circle of extreme Zionists he has named to deal with the issue. That’s crazy and utterly deluded – unless Trump somehow hopes to push Israel into a real two-state peace deal by somehow using his cohorts of Greater Israel expansionists.

Mideast peace hardly seems in the offing. Israel’s hardline far right, increasingly ascendant, appears bent on further expanding Israel’s ‘temporary’ borders into parts of Syria. Some ultra-Zionists even talk about Iraq’s oil in Kurdistan. Why not. The feeble Arab states are collapsing. Egypt is run by a ferocious dictator funded by Saudi and Israeli money. The Saudis are useless and crazed by childish dreams ofpower. The US is now safely in Israeli hands. There’s oil and gas off in the Mediterranean (Palestinians will get none, of course.)

What to do with all those Palestinians? The late Gen. Ariel Sharon had the answer: shove them into the barren wastes of Jordan, a US-Israeli protectorate, and call it Palestine.

If the world does not like it, too bad. Israel may look small on the map but it’s a giant of a country, filled with very smart people who know just what they want and how to get it.

But that’s a very short-sighted victory. By thwarting a UN peace deal that would have ended nearly a century of strife, Israel guarantees endless more years of violence, growing anti-Semitism, and its continued estrangement from the rest of the world. A new apartheid state is being born. All of President Obama’s perfumed orations about Mideast peace have come to nothing.

ericmargolis.com

Now, I am about as pro-Israel as they come and feel very protective of Israel. I strongly believe in Israel's right to exist and I am a huge admirer of the State of Israel and the Israeli and Jewish people. All my closest friends at university were Jewish and I attended meetings of the Cambridge University Jewish Society as well as speaking in defence of Israel at the Cambridge Union. It was one of the greatest privileges of my life to visit the great State of Israel back in November 2013. It was one of the most poignant and memorable trips of my life. My group were taken to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as well as the Israeli-Lebanese border and the Israeli-Syrian border up in the Golan Heights. We got to visit the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament where we had consultations with various Israeli MPs from the Labor Party, Kadima and Likud. We also visited the inspiring Shimon Peres Peace Centre as well as Galilee and Yad Vashem. I would one day love to live in Israel. A magnificent country, only the size of Wales, yet extremely dynamic, innovative, cultured and intellectual with a prodigious output and work ethic. Truly an amazing country and people. But it was not just Israel we visited. We went into the West Bank to Ramallah and met with the de facto Palestinian Foreign Minister as well as Palestinian peace activists. 

My meetings in Israel and Palestine made a profound impression upon me and confirmed my belief that one can be at the same time both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. I have always believed that Israel must relinquish the land it conquered in the 1967 Six Day War and return the West Bank to Palestinian rule while sharing Jerusalem. I have absolutely zero tolerance for the Israeli West Bank settlements. It really is a very simple proposition. Israel's proper, internationally recognised legal borders are what they were prior to the Six Day War. The West Bank settlements are not only illegal but they are a transparent policy of crude imperialism. The 500,000 Israeli West Bank settlers are colonists, colonizing other peoples land, and they should not be living where they are and should be removed, immediately. The West Bank is Palestinian land, not Israeli land. End of story. If the illegal Israeli colonists on the West Bank what to remain there and will not go or be forcibly removed then they will have to live under Palestinian rule, not Israeli. 

My visit to Israel and my work on attempting to revive the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative also reinforced my contempt for Binyamin Netanyahu and his extremist right wing Likud Government. Netanyahu is a terrible man and has done a great disservice to Israel. He is full of hate. He does not believe in the rights and dignity of Palestinians and does not want a State of Palestine living side by side with a State of Israel. One of my greatest Israeli political hero's was the late, great Yitzhak Rabin. While Rabin was showing the greatest of visionary statesmanship, strength and courage in the early 1990s striving to make peace with the Palestinians, the odious Netanyahu was out protesting on the streets against Rabin's efforts and helping to incite and whip up the atmosphere that would eventually contribute to the assassination of Rabin. Netanyahu has done everything in his power to frustrate peace between Israelis and Palestinians, including making the viability of a Palestinian State seriously problematic given his horrible Governments unrelenting, enhanced and accelerated colonial settlement building activity in occupied Palestinian land of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

Netanyahu called the passage of the UN Security Council resolution as «shameful». What is shameful is not the resolution but Netanyahu himself and his inbred, disgusting Government, which brings continual shame on Israel. It was heartening to see America pull back from vetoing the condemnation though it would have been even better if it had of voted with Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom to support the resolution. In the end, to achieve a Two State Solution, which is the only possible path to secure long term, long lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians it could be that the United States and Russia will have to work together with peace loving Israelis and Palestinians to produce, finally, a Two State Solution.

It is only the United States and Russia who have the credibility and clout with Israel and the regional prestige and standing to help resolve this issue, even if it means imposing upon the Netanyahu Government a Comprehensive Final Peace Plan. Britain is but a very minor player in the Middle East and does not command the respect or attention of Israel. It has little credibility with Israeli Governments given the deep anti-Israel bias of its Foreign Office, media and populace. It is of no use in brokering peace between Israel and Palestine. Just as the United States and the late Soviet Union came together and cosponsored the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, so too should the new Trump administration and the Russian Government partner together to finally achieve a Palestinian State living side by side in peace and harmony with a secure State of Israel.