For those who have been paying attention, things in Israel and Gaza have begun to spiral out of control. I expect that sooner rather than later the Palestinians in the West Bank will also be drawn in. While we could, and I suppose someone somewhere will, recount all of the misdeeds on both sides going back decades that has led us to this moment, the real proximate cause of the current conflict occurred several weeks ago:
⬇️ This is what started it all https://t.co/ezNyy88X9O
— Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) May 11, 2021
I wrote about the events that took place up to and around that enclosure on 22 April. The Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) is that for several weeks, the newly empowered Israeli Jewish neo-fascist Kahanists of LeHava, now represented in Knesset by the Jewish Power Party, began a series of violent attacks in Jerusalem against anyone they think is Arab or Palestinian or is Israeli or Jewish, but not right wing. You can thank Bibi for this. He normalized them in his quest to remain prime minister, in power, and out of prison.
All of this is wrapped around an attempt by Israel to evict Israeli Arab/Palestinian residents from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Hayes Brown, in an excellent column for MSNBC laid out the basic asymmetry of the problem (emphasis mine):
As we’re watching what might well turn into a third intifada play out in Jerusalem, images of fires burning among the trees outside the Al-Aqsa mosque and reports of children being injured in a new volley of airstrikes in Gaza, I can’t get a line from the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry out of my head.
“Regrettably, the PA” — the Palestinian Authority — “and Palestinian terror groups are presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties, as a nationalistic cause, in order to incite violence in Jerusalem,” the ministry said in a statement Saturday, two days after anger in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem began to boil over.
Calling the catalyst of all this a “real estate dispute” is a particularly noxious way to diminish what’s actually occurring: Nahalat Shimon, a U.S.-based settler organization, is trying to have Palestinians who have lived in the neighborhood since 1956 evicted. Once they are evicted, the property — occupied by Israel along with the rest of east Jerusalem since 1967 — would then be turned over to Jewish settlers under Israeli law. The six families who have been fighting to keep their homes since 1982 would get nothing to ease their displacement.
Because this is about more than just six families. It’s about whether Palestinians will be allowed to live in east Jerusalem at all. The New York Times laid out the imbalance clearly: “In East Jerusalem, Jews are allowed to reclaim property that was under Jewish ownership before 1948. But Palestinian families have no legal mechanism to reclaim land they owned in West Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel.“
I want to take a moment and reinforce something that Brown wrote, specifically that the organization trying to force the evictions in court is a US based organization that promotes Jewish settlement of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The US is definitely part of the problem here and Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute wrote an excellent column for Foreign Policy on the US’s complicity in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
Washington’s response to the violence was notably muted. As Jewish Israeli extremists attacked Palestinians in Jerusalem, the U.S. State Department issued a generic statement that smacked of both sides-ism, rejecting the “rhetoric of extremist protestors chanting hateful and violent slogans” and calling for calm—but failing to identify the extremists or their targets. It was equally striking that hardly a single member of Congress could muster even a generic condemnation of violence perpetrated by Jewish Israeli extremists, particularly given how traditionally vocal they are whenever violence emanates from Palestinians. But none of it was surprising. Indeed, Washington remains firmly in denial about the growing trend of extremism in Israeli politics and society—a reality that has both enabled and fueled it.
Such actions might have triggered at least a mild rebuke by U.S. officials in the pre-Trump past, but the White House is effectively giving the evictions a green light by staying on the sidelines. Indeed, the United States has long been central to the growth of Israel’s pro-settlement and anti-Palestinian right.
Both Kahane and the movement he spawned were born and bred in the United States as was Kahane’s most notorious disciple, Baruch Goldstein—the Brooklyn-born physician who in 1994 massacred 29 Palestinians praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, Palestine, and whose photo is prominently displayed in Ben-Gvir’s home. Today, Lehava—whose funding remains shrouded in mystery—is similarly connected to support networks in the United States. Yet despite the strong personal, institutional, and financial links between Otzma Yehudit and Lehava and the Kahanist movement, both groups have thus far evaded any serious scrutiny by U.S. law enforcement.
Although Israeli political trends have always been reflected in domestic U.S. politics, the growing synergy between the Israeli and U.S. hard right is especially strong. At no point was this more evident than during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, which worked hard to do away with international norms and reinforce the permanency of both Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its settlements there.
Congress has also played a role in legitimizing extremist Israeli voices, both by failing to condemn or hold them to account—as they routinely do for Palestinians, for example—and by actively welcoming settler leaders to Capitol Hill. The fact that Kach-linked extremists take part in Israeli elections—and get elected to the Knesset—without eliciting a response from anyone on Capitol Hill directly legitimizes Israeli extremists and their views.
Even when they are not directly involved in policymaking, radical voices—whether in Israeli or U.S. politics—are still able to shape policy and policy discourse by shifting the political and diplomatic goal posts. Issues that were a matter of bipartisan consensus during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, for instance—like ending Israel’s occupation and affirming the centrality of the 1967 lines as the basis for negotiations—are now seen by many as highly contentious or even beyond the pale.
These trends could explain Biden’s relative silence and reluctance to tackle the Israel-Palestine issue. There are now increased political costs associated with taking positions once deemed uncontroversial. Even the Biden administration’s recent decision to reinstate the United States’ fairly modest and heavily scrutinized aid package to Palestinians—a minuscule fraction of U.S. money earmarked for Israel—set off a firestorm of outrage and hyperbole from congressional Republicans.
I’ve written here numerous times over the past five or six years about how Bibi has actively gone out of his way to make Israel a partisan issue in the US. Specifically by moving support for Israel into a Republican and movement conservatism litmus test. This includes manipulating American evangelicals into ever more fanatical support for Israel by encouraging their eschatological millennialist prophecies about what has to happen in order for the second coming of Christ: all the Jews have to return to Israel so they can be killed in the war of Armageddon with the exception of a handful of good Jews who will convert to Christianity and be saved. Just as one example, one of my former research managers from my team in Iraq, a retired Special Forces First Sergeant, belongs to a church where they fast for Israel every Wednesday. Every time we talk he tells me this, which is part of his way of identifying with me across the divide of his Evangelical Christianity and my Judaism. Because of the bonds one forms with teammates he’s a close friend, he sincerely means well, but if I told this to an Israel they’d laugh at him and his church for doing this.
Bibi and his trusted agents, like former Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, who is himself a US citizen in addition to the Israeli citizenship he was granted to become Bibi’s man in DC, is also former GOP political operative from south Florida, kicked this effort into turning Israel into a partisan issue into overdrive once Trump was elected president. Trump rewarded Bibi by closing the Consulate in Jerusalem, which was the oldest US diplomatic outpost and moving the US embassy there. He then appointed a fervent political and financial supporter of the settler movement as his ambassador to Israel, appointed another fervent political and financial supporter of the settler movement as his Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, and then put his son in law, Jared, who is also a fervent political and financial supporter of the settler movement, in charge of what passed for an Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the Trump administration. What could possibly go wrong?
Where this leads us is that right now the Israelis and the Gazan Palestinians and the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship known as Israeli Arabs are engaging in ever more violent clashes and ever more risky behaviors. If cooler heads don’t prevail soon, things will escalate and, I expect, that the Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as the Jewish settlers there, will also wind up involved. What is now something akin to civil unrest and a border clash/irredentism, if not handled quickly and carefully, has the chance to spiral out of control and turn into an asymmetric war.
Unfortunately, as Ron Kampeas of The Jewish Telegraphic Agency tells us, no one seems to be leading, but everyone seems to be led by the events as they’re occurring. I want to highlight three important points that Kampeas makes about what is going on. One dealing with the Israelis, one the Palestinians, and one the US.
The Israelis:
But exactly what Netanyahu says and does may not matter if other Israeli politicians, including some of his putative allies, behave differently — which they are.
Israel has seen politicians with little actual power spark conflict before. Back in 2000, Ariel Sharon was the leader of the parliamentary opposition when he strolled across the Temple Mount with an entourage, stoking tensions that would lead to the second intifada.
That scenario is playing out again now: Itamar Ben-Gvir, a newly elected Knesset member from a far-right party, has no current role in shaping Israeli government policy. That will be all the more true if Yair Lapid, the centrist leader tasked with setting up a government, succeeds in ousting Netanyahu.
It doesn’t matter. Ben-Gvir still carries the imprimatur of an elected official. When he appears with far-right protesters in the contested eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, it conveys the impression to Palestinians that anti-Palestinian violence has government approval.
Also helping that impression is Aryeh King, a deputy mayor of Jerusalem, who was caught on video yelling at a Palestinian activist that he should be shot in the head.
The Palestinians:
The Palestinian uprisings, or intifadas, launched in 1988 and 2000, stemmed in great part from frustrations with a Palestinian leadership that appeared adept at posturing but not at accomplishing anything. Following the years of marginalization by President Donald Trump, a pandemic-battered economy and a perception that the Arab world is eager for ties with Israel and couldn’t care less about the Palestinians, young Palestinians are taking things into their own hands.
“Young Palestinians are displaying a fearlessness that we haven’t seen” since the launch of the second intifada in 2000, said Daniel Seidemann, who runs Ir Amim, an organization that reports on how Jerusalem’s disparate communities coexist (or don’t). “I mean, they’re taking the police on face to face.”
The Palestinians in the street, he said, “can’t imagine a trajectory where their lives get better and they become free. They can’t imagine it.”
“All these [protests] are taking place outside of the repressive reach of the Palestinian Authority, which tells us something pretty important — that the leadership of the P.A., which is sitting in Ramallah, either does not want to capitalize on this momentum or is not capable of it because of the situation that they’re in,” said Munayyer, who is Palestinian.
The US:
The Biden administration, meantime, is preoccupied with rolling back a pandemic and reviving the economy crippled by the pandemic.
The capacities that would usually be in place to stem violence — consultations between the Israeli and Palestinian governments and the United States — have either disappeared or are diminished. Biden has yet to name an ambassador to Israel or reopen a dedicated consulate for the Palestinians in Jerusalem, veteran U.S. negotiator Aaron David Miller noted on Twitter.
“I realize the Administration has lowballed and deprioritized the Middle East and Israeli-Palestinian issue,” he said. “But the lack of an Ambassador to Israel and a consul general in Jerusalem is a serious problem during a crisis.”
The Biden administration has shown little appetite for roiling domestic politics by pressuring Israel to halt far-right demonstrations or stop the potential eviction of Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem.
The Trump administration slashed diplomatic engagement with the Palestinians and ended aid. Biden wants to revive both, but it is early in his presidency, and U.S. diplomats in the region do not have the outreach to Palestinians they once did, nor the leverage to effect change even if they could get someone on the phone.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has taken steps to tamp down tensions. But Israeli officials have indicated that they do not want U.S. intervention. Meanwhile, American lawmakers have taken to social media to offer cautionary notes and takeaways that match their beliefs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, potentially attenuating any concerted response.
A number of moderate Democrats, including pro-Israel stalwarts like Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, have robustly criticized Israel with respect to the evictions while upholding its right to defend itself against rocket fire — a departure from pro-Israel orthodoxies unimaginable during the 2014 war.
What I really want to emphasize are three things from Kampeas’s reporting.
The first, and I think the most important, is that younger Palestinians have had enough. They’ve spent their whole lives watching promises be made and broken, they’ve watched how their parents, grandparents, and their friends have been treated, they’ve grown up learning the history of how their great and in some cases great great grandparents were treated. It doesn’t matter whether the history they’ve learned is any more or less slanted than what Israelis or Americans have learned about the conflict. And, frankly, it doesn’t matter for them who started the dispute and who is right and who is wrong. What matters is that they’ve had enough. They are tired of living under the conditions that they’ve inherited. Frankly, I’m amazed it took this long to happen. I’ve been predicting a third intifada or equivalent since I was working on this for the US Army and DOD in 2014. While everyone else, especially Americans, may have the leisure to sit around and argue the minutiae of every key point in the long, unfortunate, and tragic conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the reality for the Palestinians is that nothing ever gets better and often it gets worse. While no one can ignore the weight of history, when every day life is somewhere between less than optimal and terrible, eventually someone is going to rebel and revolt.
The second is that the US is not in a position to lead on this right now. The Biden administration has rightly prioritized the COVID response, as well as related matters such as resolving economic issues that arose from or where exacerbated by the pandemic. But this choice has a cost. For every bit of reporting on some new Biden nomination or nominee getting a hearing or markup of a bill that the Biden administration is pushing, there are political appointments that are not being filled because they’re outside of the areas that have been chosen as urgent and needing immediate attention. While Aaron David Miller is correct that we do not have a US ambassador to Israel or a consul general in Jerusalem, who is the de facto ambassador to the Palestinian Authority (PA), we also do not have a Special Envoy for Middle East Peace. I’m not even sure that a Special Advisor on this topic has been appointed for Secretary Austin as was done for the Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration. Right now the US’s focus is elsewhere because of what the Biden administration has prioritized and that is also contributing to what we’re seeing occur in Israel and Gaza right now. Given that the issue of Israel has been turned into a major partisan political issue within US domestic politics, that also crosses over into the realm of religion and politics, I am not surprised that the Biden administration is proceeding cautiously.
The third is the escalation has actually been beneficial for Bibi. Because of the escalating dispute, one of the Arab parties pulled out of talks to form a centrist, or what passes for centrist in Israel in 2021, unity coalition government yesterday. This makes it more likely, though not determinative, that Bibi will limp along for a couple more months as caretaker prime minister until another election is held. And if he can do that while successfully managing this conflict with Hamas or, even better, leading Israel to victory in a war with Hamas, that is all, unfortunately, likely to benefit him politically.
Other than expecting things to get worse pretty quickly, including the conflict spreading into the West Bank, I honestly do not know what is going to happen here. It may be that things get so bad that everyone blinks and space is created to resolve the conflict, but I doubt that. Ultimately, there is no military solution, short of violent ethnic cleansing or genocide by either party, to the Israel-Palestinian dispute. It has to be a negotiated settlement. And that means Civic Action and leadership. As Bernard Fall, one of my professional forebears, wrote about another asymmetric low intensity war:
Civic action is not the construction of privies or the distribution of antimalaria sprays. One can’t fight an ideology; one can’t fight a militant doctrine with better privies. Yet this is done constantly. One side says “Land reform,” and the other side says “better culverts.” One side says “we’re going to kill all those nasty village chiefs and landlords.” The other side says “Yes, but we want to give you prize pigs to improve your strain.” These arguments do not match. Simple but adequate appeals will have to be found sooner or later.
It is possible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to injure and kill each other into submission. Much more possible for the Israelis, due to the power asymmetry between them and the Palestinians. And while that would be a solution to the dispute, it shouldn’t be one that any sane or responsible person strives for. The simple reality is that the Palestinians are calling for self determination, for the liberty to finally be allowed to order their lives themselves. The Israelis are calling for security and safety. The basic premise of every solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – trading land for peace or, at least, the absence of violence/cessation of hostilities – is itself asymmetric. Land can be measured. It is a tangible thing. Security and safety are intangible. But, as Fall wrote about the war in Vietnam, simple, but adequate appeals will have to be found sooner or later.
Full disclosure: From DEC 2013 through JUN 2014 I was assigned as the Cultural Advisor/Senior Civilian Advisor under temporary assigned control (TACON) to the Commanding General of US Army Europe to provide subject matter expert inputs on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to the Commanding General and his staff working on the problem set for the Department of Defense as part of the 2014 US efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. As part of that assignment I was the primary author of the historic introduction on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute for what would become the US Army Europe (US Army and DOD) report on the capabilities of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces. I also prepared an analytical primer for the Commanding General and his staff on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. From JUN 2014 through AUG 2014 I was assigned by the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue in the Middle East (OSD-SD) as the Cultural Advisor/Senior Civilian Advisor under operational control (OPCON) to the Commanding General of US Army Europe to provide subject matter expert inputs on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to the Commanding General and his staff working on the problem set for the Department of Defense as part of the 2014 US efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. As part of that assignment I served as the executive editor and quality assurance/quality control officer overseeing the completion of the US Army Europe report on the capabilities of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces. I also prepared a strategy and policy assessment for the Commanding General and the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace regarding the clear shift away from a two state solution by the members of Israel’s governing coalition and the implications of this shift for the US’s policy and strategy to facilitate resolution of the dispute.
Cacti
Israel is Europe’s last middle eastern colony.
West of the Rockies
Thank you for an informative and nuanced presentation. I will confess that I had heard only the thinnest of news soundbites: Palestinians fired rockets towards Jewish cities and so the Israeli military fired back. Both sides! ?
Rightwingers of every stripe stink.
Another Scott
Thanks for this.
Dennis Ross was on BBC radio (3:23) saying that the Biden administration really doesn’t want to devote much energy to this conflict right now, but that it has ways of requiring sufficient attention or things get much worse… That does indeed seem to be the case.
Cancelled Palestinian elections, Bibi trying (yet again) to form a government, Ramadan ending soon, the evictions, etc., etc., are happening all at once.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: What is going on is pretty much the perfect storm or sequence of events all at the same time for really negative effects to occur.
Brachiator
Thanks Adam for this post. I had read about the evictions, but did not have a clue about the background to this.
Morzer
“Ultimately, there is no military solution, short of violent ethnic cleansing or genocide by either party, to the Israel-Palestinian dispute.”
Bibi has been doing his best to achieve a quiet ethnic cleansing for decades, while Republicans (and some disgraceful Dems) ran interference on his behalf. I very much doubt that he’s going to do anything to stop increasingly violent, racist and genocidal behavior by the Israeli right wing, because without them he’s just another crooked politician serving time for his corruption.
I think the US needs to radically reassess its relationship with Israel and realize that without US support Israel is nothing, for all its posturing. The longer the US is jerked around by this repellent apartheid state, the less it will be able to have any sort of good relations with the Arab/Muslim world. Enough is enough. No more aid to Israel, no more covering for its misdeeds, no more tolerance for Israeli interference in US politics.
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies: What the Israelis learned today is what some of us have been saying for a long time: their vaunted Iron Dome works if only a limited amount of rockets are launched at any time. If a lot of rockets are launched at once, the Iron Dome isn’t very effective at all. If this drags on we’re going to find out just how many rockets and launchers Hamas has been stockpiling since 2014 and just how effective they were at hardening the sites where they have them emplaced.
Cacti
His current coalition depends on the support of the ultra-orthodox lunatics, who were recently in the news for trampling a bunch of their own children to death.
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: I’d have to go and fire up the external hard drive – NOT THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE, ANYTHING BUT THAT!!!! – to get it, but I have a chart I did for a keynote I gave back in October 2004 that shoes Hamas attacks over time in the 1990s and early aughts. What was interesting is the spikes in the Hamas attacks always correlated with Bibi seeking to bolster his position in his campaign to be elected or reelected prime minister. Circumstantially, it is very strong evidence that, at least, Bibi and Hamas recognize they need each other to remain in power.
Mike in NC
Read a rave review in USA Today for a series on Apple TV called “For All Mankind” and tried it last night. After the first episode we were hooked. It’s an alternate history of the space program.
Cheryl Rofer
Agree with your analysis of the Biden administration’s position. Maybe it’s time to let Israel do its horrendous thing and pick up the pieces later. That means that people will die – several have already died on both sides – but not dealing with the pandemic also means people will die.
This makes action by the Biden administration even more difficult. To make a difference, Biden would have to take a hard line with Israel, which would set off evangelical screams and perhaps empower Trump. Not gonna happen.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I’ll bet that Hamas is keeping track of the numbers of missiles and times to interception. Nothing works forever.
Cheryl Rofer
Someone is trying to do something.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
If this correlation holds up from 2004 until present, then people including in Israel (press) and the area should know about it.
Has this been discussed in public recently?
Mike in NC
Young Kushner regrets not getting that Nobel Peace Prize, because he came *this* close.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: I know very little about the historical or current conflict, but when I saw a news report about the increased hostilities today, I immediately thought “oh, Bibi’s in trouble again, let’s have a war.”
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
Also, they are surely thinking about other countermeasures to reduce Iron Dome’s intercept effectiveness. (And other weapons.)
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: If it ever becomes possible to get the Israelis and the Palestinians into neutral corners, we’re going to see a lot of long delayed Israeli on Israeli disputes. You’ll have the long simmering fights between the ultra-devout, the observant/Israeli equivalent of modern Orthodox, and everyone else who are labeled secular Jews become full fledged out in the open disputes. You’ll also have the long simmering racism problem between the Askhenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and African Jews become fully engaged.
Matt McIrvin
This is particularly repulsive.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: A whole bunch of Israeli journalists and security experts were doing it in real time on Twitter, so I’m guessing it isn’t going to be hard for Hamas.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: I’ve never seen it occasionally discussed publicly in reporting outside of my keynote, but that was all during the late 1990s. The data all came from public sources.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: I think I can take your word for it without disturbing MR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: Iron Dome, also known as Rusty Helmet
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Bibi could do a lot to stop this by calling the people he’s empowered to account, but he won’t.
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: If you say it three times into a mirror, it will appear…
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Well, won’t that be all kinds of fun… : /
Roger Moore
@Morzer:
It’s been going on for longer than Netanyahu has been in Israeli politics, but yes, this is basically correct. The whole point of the settler movement is to steal Palestinian territory one community at a time.
Fundamentally, there is no one state solution that results in an Israel that is Jewish, democratic, and moral. You could very easily have a single state that’s democratic but not Jewish; just give all the Palestinians an equal say. You could have a state that’s Jewish but not democratic by not giving the Palestinians political rights. Or you could have a state that’s Jewish and democratic but has gotten rid of the Palestinians through ethnic cleansing or genocide. But you can’t have all three.
Roger Moore
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yeah, saturation attacks have always been a weakness of anti-missile defense.
Mary G
Thank you for this, Adam. I follow a couple of Palestinians who live outside the region and do different things, and are nearing middle aged so not usually hot headed about anything or talking exclusively about Israel, but they are outraged about this with the heat of all the suns in the universe. The retweets of the “private real estate dispute” remark are through the roof.
The video referenced in this Al-Jazeera article is insane, infuckingsane:
Israeli military has been breaking heads in the neighborhood in the last couple of weeks:
Appears the Israeli courts suck and are trying to kick them out any way they can.
I am ready to join BDS and I’ve always been a big fan of Israel since I read James Michener’s book “The Source” as a child. I’ve learned better since.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: If you use the latest Bamboo Scanner tech, you only have to say it twice.
Mike in NC
I can think of someone not named Bibi who wanted very much to stay in power and out of jail.
HypersphericalCow
The actual Kahanists were banned; is there a reason why their modern compatriots are not. Does that require a Supreme Court ruling?
JMG
Dear Mr. Silverman: I admire you and learn very much from your posts. But I suspect we both know what the end game is here. Israel will either forcibly expel Palestinian Arabs from its territory, original and seized, or will rule a state where none but Jews have rights. And the United States, let alone the rest of the world, will do fuck all about it.
West of the Rockies
@Adam L Silverman:
And that sounds ugly.
Mike in NC
Anybody remember photos of then-governor Sarah Palin proudly posing next to an Israeli flag in her office? I suppose every governor does that, right?
Rob
Thank you for this analysis, Adam.
Another Scott
@JMG: I’m reminded of some lyrics:
As Adam has taught us many times, asymmetrical warfare is a thing, and it’s not pretty for the overlords.
Israel really doesn’t want to get in an all-out war with the Palestinians, no matter how much Bibi likes beating up on them…
:-(
I keep hoping that a few people will finally “cut and cut cleanly” and move on from Bibi and back toward a pre-Likud politics. That probably will happen – sometime. But it probably won’t be soon, and may take decades…
Cheers,
Scott.
Steve in the ATL
JFC what a clusterfuck. How many conflicts in the world are as intractable as this one?
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: Don’t get me started on those knuckleheads.
Villago Delenda Est
Likud and their right wing allies are to Palestinians as the Nazis were to the Jews.
Adam L Silverman
@HypersphericalCow: No, Bibi basically got a waiver from his coalition majority to allow the neo-Kahanists in around the ban because they would back the coalition and help to keep him as prime minister and, potentially, out of prison.
Adam L Silverman
@JMG: I often worry that this is, indeed, close to what will eventually happen.
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies: It will be horrible. Basically Jewish on Jewish pogroms.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: There are several, but this has to be in the running for the worst of them.
debbie
Bibi’s been jonesing for this moment for years.
Mary G
Are there no decent Israeli groups objecting to this heel turn? Are they afraid to speak out because the goons threaten their families?
Martin
I’m done with Israel until they elect leadership that is motivated toward peace. Israel chose sides in US politics, let the GOP bail them out.
Mary G
OT did I miss a post about the gas pipeline hack causing it to be shut down and leave a lot of the East Coast with no way to fill their tanks? Conservatives I see and even some lefties I follow are screaming bloody murder and comparing Biden to Carter. Having lived through the early 70s when I had my first car, this is really, really damaging if not fixed asap.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: There are, but they have very little political power.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: I haven’t done a post on it yet. Frankly, I predicted this would happen in some work I did for Army Special Operations back in 2018 based on earlier work from 2017.
But I had to force myself to do this post, so you’ll either get the pipeline post tomorrow or Thursday depending on how self motivating I am.
Dmbeaster
Israel was founded by ethnic cleansing. The settler movement represents the founding spirit of Israel.
In Israel, it is considered acceptable political discourse to advocate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the captured lands.
These people are not our friends.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore:
Bibi’s been in Israeli politics since I was a teenager, I remember him as a spokesman for Likud back in the mid 70’s.
Another Scott
@Mary G:
Krebs:
Reuters story says some of their smaller pipelines are back up and they’re working on the others.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mary G
?BillinGlendaleCA
Why is there a problem, I was told that Jared settled all the mid-east problems. //
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: I would much rather have had this post. I’ve been wondering if I was going crazy or had fallen for Palestinian propaganda and you assured me that neither is true, about this at least. I have written postcards to Biden, Feinstein, and Padilla about this just now. We cannot let our government whistle past it.
Jay
kindness
I no longer think Israelis want peace. I used to believe there was a great middle that wanted peace. Israel has gone much farther right than I had imagined. Too many parallels to us here. The playbook is the same all over. Villify your rivals, make them out to be less than civilized & thus less human. That way when atrocities happen, it can be swept aside as not mattering. Me, I used to be a Two State Solution person but now would prefer Israel, Gaza & the West Bank became one country. Which I realize will never happen. Jewish Israelis will refuse to be a minority. I guess I can’t blame them but it’s too bad. I really do think one of things that makes America strong is our differences, our variety of peoples. I wish the rest of our country and the world would think the same but that’s a crazy thought.
Tehanu
I always think of Sting’s song, “History Will Teach Us Nothing.” The idea being to just toss the history — forget who did what to whom, who massacred this, who stole that … just start fresh, from where people are now. It seems like every time I read anything from either side, it’s just a litany of past injustices and excuses; nobody is willing to give up their demands for redress. There probably isn’t a real-world way to get around this, though.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: At the macro and historical level, there are no clean hands here. At the level of what is going on right now, all that matters is each side wants to hurt the other.
Kent
Technology keeps advancing relentlessly. I expect eventually Palestinians will acquire weaponry that will be able to target and destroy whole city blocks by remote control. Or erase whole “settlements” from the map. Israel will never have security unless they reach some reasonable negotiated solution.
Roger Moore
@Dmbeaster:
The are, however, the Republicans’ friends.
Steve in the ATL
I’ve never been clear on what US interest is furthered by fluffing Israel. Is it just tweaking the Wahhabist Muslims who want to detect us or sucking up to the evangelical nutters?
trollhattan
BBC interviewed an Israeli diplomat (UN ambassador?) pressing him on the eviction of Palestinians from the Temple Mount area and he went all “but we were here first, so fuck you.”
I cannot wait for the response from the Cro-Magnon representative.
If climate change doesn’t do us in it will be the Likuds.
PJ
@kindness: Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of white Americans who refuse to be a minority as well, and will do everything in their power to make sure a democracy where they are not the majority of voters does not happen.
The Pale Scot
@Adam L Silverman:
I’ve always thought that Palestinian attacks were the only thing holding Israel together. From history of Jewish communities rioting in Grecian and Roman cities despite having their culture/religion getting nice opt outs from the requirements of supporting the majorities dogs/temples to Haridim violence against other Israelis and or women for taking a bus ride.
Adam, what’s your opinion on the “New Scholars” writings about Jewish villages protecting Arab villagers during the ’48 war? Makes an impression on me. From what I’ve read European Jews bought out absentee landlords, but didn’t own valuable property that was well watered, had olive groves, or were at crossroads. The Arabs should have just sat back and waited and not told the Palestinians to evacuate. Unfortunately desert warrior culture combined Islam combined with dictator’s desire to keep their people from seeing what fuck ups they are. The history could have been different
PJ
@Tehanu:
“This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTwOs9O69JI
Adam L Silverman
@The Pale Scot: I’ve not read a lot of the New Scholars stuff, but the history of what actually occurred during the Yeshuv is complex and requires a lot of nuance and subtlety. It is true that both individual settlers, as well as what passed for government in the Yeshuv sussed out who were the actual landowners, a lot of them absentee living in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, etc, went to them, and bought their property. Unfortunately, the Palestinians on the land had no idea they actually didn’t own it. Other land was taken using the Ottoman laws that were in place, by building a tower and walls overnight.
As for Jewish villagers protecting Palestinian villagers during the Yeshuv and the 48 war, I’ve seen some of the history on this. I’ve also seen history on the atrocities done to each community by each community. Hence, the need for subtlety and nuance in the history and historiography.
Adam L Silverman
I’ve got an early morning tomorrow followed by a Zoom at noon. I’m gonna go give the dogs some attention, watch some TV, and rack out.
Catch everyone on the flip!
Parfigliano
@Villago Delenda Est: Likud is/are Nazi. Sugar coating this is part of the problem.
Bill Arnold
@Mary G:
Ugh. That is an accurate description of the statement (towards the end of the video). There is no other reasonable way to interpret it; he was attempting to mellifluously normalize ethnic cleansing. Ambassadors rarely slip up verbally, so it was deliberate. (Israelis can be abrasive even by American standards.)
Guy is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark Regev former recent Israeli ambassador to the UK.
Cameron
Just keeps getting worse. I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and had a few Palestinian neighbors (refugees and descendants of refugees) in the latter. This is a remake of a movie we’ve all seen before. By 2022, Palestinians will be as much a part of ancient history as Scythians or Babylonians. Ashes and dust.
Feathers
I remember the infighting in the Irish-American community leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. Real threats by politicians that Irish-American gun running and fundraising for the IRA would no longer be tolerated. The post 9/11 financial crackdowns probably did a lot to help maintain the peace in Northern Ireland.
Diaspora is a real problem in conflicts around the world. Emigrants leave during crisis periods, passing their trauma down to their children. The children and grandchildren then fund the continuing fight, based on the moral understanding of a previous generation, without having to face the consequences of violence that the people living in their homeland do.
As someone whose family came at the turn of the 20th century, it is fascinating to watch the newer immigrants to America insist that their situation is completely different. The other thing that I am seeing in my Twitter feed is that the younger generation sees Isreal as Europe’s last colony and that post WWII Europe had no right to make their treatment of the Jews a Middle Eastern problem.
Feathers
@Adam L Silverman: This comment seems to tie to what Dr. Sarah Taber has been saying on Twitter the last few days about landed aristocracy and their willingness to destabilize governments as a way of maintaining their own political interests. Sorry to not port the text, I’m on my tablet and it’s very late.
https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1391777917005410306
https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1391370651173273607
Mary G
O/T Photos of dogs catching treats (or trying to).
sab
Maybe Fox will send Tucker Carlson. As I recall, he nearly got himself killed covering the last intifada. He was tryimg to play war correspondant while his camerman and producer were screaming at him to get down because those projectiles coming at them were real.
Cacti
@Mary G:
What’s happening is the same thing that happened with toilet paper at the start of Covid.
People on the east coast are panic buying gasoline and creating an artificial shortage in places where there otherwise wouldn’t be.
Citizen Alan
@Steve in the ATL:
It’s to keep the Evangelicals in line. Blind, unthinking support for Israel in subservience to biblical prophecy is the #3 most important political agenda for Evangelicals, behind abortion and white supremacy. For a good chunk of them, it probably rates higher than those other two.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sab: Tuckems ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
Citizen Alan
Adam,
I know you’re probably too nice a guy to do this to someone you consider a friend, but I genuinely wonder what he’d say if you asked him point blank whether he thought you were going to hell for being Jewish.
Jay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Tuckums is a tool,…….
NobodySpecial
@kindness:
One of the other things that makes us “strong” is that we ethnic cleansed the shit out of the prior inhabitants and stole their land.
They ain’t doing nothing new.
Mary G
TMC
I was in Gaza for 6 months working with an international NGO during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. It totally changed how I viewed this conflict. I don’t often talk about my time there other than to say that I made many friends, many of whom are now gone.
I used to watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. A year after I returned home and Jon said something about this conflict that has stuck with ever since and I often use it to end heated discussions that I try to avoid. From his show on June 10, 2010:
Thank you, Dr. Silverman, excellent article on a difficult subject.
Geminid
I’ve been following Israeli electoral politics the last couple of years, mainly through the Jerusalem Post the Times of Israel. They present a lot of information, but one thing I’ve noticed is that both are very reticent when it comes to reporting on injustices done to Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli security forces and administrators. I suspect their readers just don’t want to hear about these things, which is certainly no excuse for their editors.
The liberal Haaretz, on the other hand, is much more forthright about abuses by Israeli institutions and settlers. While Haaretz is paywalled, I’ve noticed that many of their articles on injustices inflicted on Palestinians are available in full.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t know about subtlety, but I have very clear memories of American Jewry’s dismissal of the value of landownership when there were only a bunch of olive trees on the land. I’d be curious to know how settlers would respond to similar statements about what they’ve created on the land they’ve stolen.
evodevo
@Feathers:
Yes…her comment on Iowa tenant farms could be said about KY when I moved there in the Fifties…at least half the farms I knew of personally were farmed by tenants who lived in run down houses with questionable water and electric supplies, an old truck, had 7 kids and a wife who looked like she was 55 but was 35, etc. etc. And no future to look forward to if the kids didn’t get a factory job to support them in their old age. It was the rule, rather than the exception. Sometimes the owners lived on the farm, but most lived in town and had jobs/careers, and just looked in on the farm when it was harvest time or some big problem arose.
J R in WV
Great article, Dr Silverman, thanks.
Not really news, since the mid-1940s the story in Israel has been about someone stealing ancient land from someone else.
Olives are one of the desert’s cash crops, along with dates and goats. No surprise they have been planted on this land for a very long time now, since the art of treating them to make them useful was discovered. Olive trees do take a very long time to become productive, so cutting down a 100 year old orchard is particularly despicable.
Right wing is right wing, everywhere. Full of hate for everyone else.
Don Quijote
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nobody in particular
Nice quote Bill in Glendale, from the only guy who looks legit in an eye patch. I’d like to dredge some history up for you kids. The 1948 letter to the New York Times from Einstein, Arendt, Sydney Hook, Cardozo, and 20 other Jewish signatories. Very difficult to find unless you go to a library but it’s been archived.
https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948
Greenwald was thrilled when I dug up this personal letter to a long-time friend ‘Swede’ Hazlett from the Eisenhower library papers back when he was at Salon.
Times have changed. Today he might be accused of soft “antisemitism” because back then politics did end at the water’s edge. We can now use portmanteaus like “intermestic.”
And if Cheryl pops in, I’d point her to this site:
https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/articles/active-vs-passive-immunity-differences-and-definition-335112
It also allows you to sign up for newsletters Gratis
I was clumsily throwing shade on the CDC’s messaging. Everyone is piling on now. It’s Trump’s fault.