125 minute read
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Managing Editor: DALE SPRUSANSKY Contributing Editors: WALTER L. HIXSON JULIA PITNER IDA AUDEH
Other Voices Editor: JANET McMAHON Middle East Books and More Director: NATHANIEL BAILEY Finance & Admin. Dir.: CHARLES R. CARTER Assistant Bookstore Dir.: HAJIRA ASGHAR Art Director: RALPH UWE SCHERER Founding Publisher: ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016)
Founding Exec. Editor: RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013)
Board of Directors: HENRIETTA FANNER JANET McMAHON JANE KILLGORE
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LetterstotheEditor
WHY IS THE U.S. AMBASSADOR SUPPORTING THE IDF?
Under “Letters to the Editor” in the previous issue of the Washington Report, you quote Tom Nides, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, as stating that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) concurred that it was “likely—not intentionally by the way—the IDF shot her [Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh].” Poppycock. It was clearly intentional, they picked just the right spot under her helmet to kill her.
Nides goes on to say that he has a lot of respect for the IDF. Really? This is the military entity of the occupation whose job it is to suppress and kill Palestinians. And they do a very good job at that, indeed. But our ambassador respects and even supports them? How sadly ironic.
Laila Poje, New York, NY
ITAMAR BEN-GVIR AND U.S. POLICY TOWARD ISRAEL
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the hard-right member of Israel’s new coalition government, claims his extremist views resonate with everyone—secular and religious, ultraOrthodox and traditional, Sephardic and Ashkenazi.
Ben-Gvir played a pivotal role in returning Binyamin Netanyahu to power. He will now occupy the important role of Minister of National Security. He has promised to deal harshly with those “disloyal to Israel.” He is a fixture at right-wing rallies, where he encourages his supporters to chant “death to the Arabs.” He has developed a close relationship with Dov Lior, a rabbi who gave justification for the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a far-right Israeli.
Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power Party waged a populist campaign that resonated especially among young Jewish Israelis. Their stated mission is to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land and annexation of the West Bank. More Palestinians are being arrested without any due process and killed with blanket impunity by Israel.
Little wonder American Jews are expressing outrage over Israel’s rejection of democracy in favor of a radical theocracy and its crimes targeting the beleaguered Palestinians. It is time for President Joe Biden to break his long silence and demand an immediate halt to further ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land and slaughter of their people. He should halt all further aid to Israel in keeping with our stated goals of supporting human rights and democracy around the world.
Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA
DOUBLE STANDARD CONCERNING RUSSIA AND ISRAEL
The Economist recently published a letter to the editor encouraging the European Union to deny entry to Russian dissenters, warning that it’s “all too easy to conceal pro-Kremlin provocateurs within an uncontrolled mass migration flow.” Imagine the reaction if The Economist published a letter titled “Keep Israelis Out.” Such a letter would actually be justified, since the majority of Israelis unfortunately support the occupation and persecution of the Palestinians and their country’s bombing of Syria.
Yehuda Littmann, Brooklyn, NY
BIDEN AND MACRON DISPLAY HYPOCRISY
Earlier I was listening to President Joe Biden and President Emmanuel Macron of France speaking in front of the White House. Biden was going on about the human rights violations the Russians are bestowing on the Ukrainians. Yet, Biden said the Israelis, among other nations, would be sending more military support to Ukraine. (A few months back, Biden sent Israel a check for $5 billion to spend on weapons, despite the country’s countless human rights violations against the Palestinian people.)
Biden and Macron both made comments about the necessity of people speaking out about anti-Semitism. I can guess where this is going: laws against speaking out against fascist Israel, which deliberately conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
Barbara Gravesen, Lady Lake, FL
Re: “Canadian Humanitarian Organizations Demand Criminal Code Changes” (November/December 2022 Washington Report): I could be wrong, but ever since the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the father of the current prime minister, Justin, Canada’s foreign policy, whether with regards to the Middle East (Palestine), the Near East (Afghanistan), the Far East (China), the Caribbean (especially Haiti and Cuba) or Latin America (Ven e zuela), appears to be as reactionary and neoconservative as that of the United States, if not more so—even under socalled liberal administrations, such as the current one.
The only exception that I can think of is their welcoming of refugees and political asylum seekers, such as those from Syria. Whoever said, “Politics is a dirty game,” was right! I sure am glad Canada is not as powerful as the United States.
Mohammed Soussi, via Facebook CANADA AND THE IHRA DEFINITION OF ANTI-SEMITISM Re: “Canadian Government Holds Virtual Summits On Islamophobia and AntiSemitism” (October 2021 Washington Report): The Canadian government’s embrace of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) “working definition of anti-Semitism” is troubling, given the government’s indifference to Israel’s illegal occupation of conquered Palestinian territory and ongoing defiance of the Geneva Conventions and United Nations resolutions.
By supporting this non-legal “definition,” the government encourages the false notion that even accurate criticism of Israeli state policy is a form of antiSemitism. As one writer noted: “The trick is to enforce a set of boundaries around criticism of Israel without investigating whether these boundaries bear any relation to boundaries on the ground.”
Therefore, the act of documenting the offense becomes a greater sin than the offense itself to those who think the Israeli state deserves preferential treatment and ought to be accorded exceptional status.
Effective opposition to Canada’s role in Israeli misdeeds is hampered by mainstream media coverage that routinely portrays even peaceful Palestinian resistance as terrorism. Alternately, the Israeli state is automatically presented as an embattled democracy whose noble intentions sometimes go awry.
Recent reports by Amnesty International and Israeli peace groups have concluded that the Israeli state operates an apartheid system assigning inferior status to Israeli Arabs and open hostility to Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied territories and East Jeru salem.
Canada’s official rejection of accurate criticism of Israeli conduct has little to do with Zionism and everything to do with profitable deference to the U.S. government’s military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel.
Morgan Duchesney, Ot ta wa, ON CLARIFICATION ABOUT ALGERIA In the article, “Algeria’s Hirak Movement: A Success or Failure?” (November/December 2022 Washington Report), the published version omitted a number of key points I made during the George Mason University forum. While my support for that movement for reform and greater democracy in Algeria was fairly noted, I also emphasized that the Algerian government’s traditionally progressive role internationally—such as support for liberation struggles in southern Africa, Palestine and Western Sahara—has made it hard for some to challenge some of their
KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS problematic domestic policies. I COMING! also stressed how U.S. support Send your letters to the editor to the Washington for the far more repressive U.S. Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 backed Moroccan occupation of or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. Western Sahara, which Freedom House has ranked as having the least political freedom of any country in the world outside of Syria, makes it difficult for those of us in the West to raise concerns about Algeria. One of the best ways to support greater freedom in Algeria would be for the United States to stop supporting repressive governments elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East. Stephen Zunes, professor of politics, University of San Francisco ■ OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page sup pl e ment available only to subscribers of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. For an additional $15 per year (see postcard insert for Wash ington Re port subscription rates), subscribers will receive Other Voices inside each issue of their Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Back issues of both publications are avail able. To subscribe, telephone (800) 607-4410, e-mail <circulation@wrmea. org>, or write to P.O. Box 292380, Kettering, OH 45429.
tinian symbols and chants, the question puzzled them. “Palestine is in our blood. The love for Palestine runs in our veins,” an older man answered, overcome with emotion.
Multiple studies have been conducted to gauge Arab public opinion in recent years about the importance of Palestine, most notably the Arab Opinion Index survey conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in 2020. This poll found that 85 percent of respondents opposed normalization with Israel. Indeed, the Arab people remain clear in their allegiance to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. No Arab country deviated from this rule, from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa.
The Qatar World Cup, however, raises new questions, not about the centrality of Palestine to Arab political consciousness, but whether the representations of Palestine are merely political and whether Palestine is just another “issue” to be juxtaposed with other urgent Arab issues and causes.
Even the Israelis, with their much-touted intelligence agencies and a supposedly good grasp of the mood on the so-called “Arab street,” seemed confused and even angry as they rushed to Qatar to report on the World Cup, but also to use the international sports event as a way to translate diplomatic recognition and political normalizations into popular acceptance.
However, the two Israeli reporters, Raz Shechnik and Oz Mualem returned to Israel disappointed. Failing to connect the dots between Israel’s apartheid and military occupation in Palestine, the Yedioth Ahronoth journalists had reached this convenient conclusion: “Despite believing, as the open-minded liberals we are, that the conflict with the Arab world is between governments and not the people, Qatar has taught us that hate exists first and foremost in the mind of the man on the street.”
Not only did the “open-minded liberals” lack any sense of selfawareness, they, like most Israelis, had completely dismissed the Arab people as political actors, capable of thinking and behaving according to their own collective priorities. Moreover, they also confused the Arabs’ justifiable anger for the terrible injustices inflicted by Israelis on the Palestinians for random “hate” that seems to simply reflect the supposed hateful nature of the Arabs.
If the two reporters reflected on their own reporting with a truly— not self-proclaimed—“open mind,” they would have found some clues. “Whenever we report, we are being followed at all times by Palestinians, Iranians, Qataris, Moroccans, Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians and Lebanese…all giving us looks full of hate,” they wrote.
Considering the deep political divisions that presently exist among Arab nations, one wonders why ordinary people from vastly diverse Arab and Middle Eastern nations are united in “hating” Israel and loving Palestine. The answer does not lie in the word “anti-Semitism,” but in representations.
PHOTO BY JAMES WILLIAMSON - AMA/GETTY IMAGES Fans hold a Palestinian flag with Free Palestine written on it during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Group D match between Tunisia and Australia at Al Janoub Stadium on Nov. 26, 2022 in Al Wakrah, Qatar. For Arabs, Israel represents a history of Western imperialism and colonialism, military occupation, racism, violence, political meddling, military interventions, wars and more wars, daily images of handsome Palestinian boys and girls killed by Israeli soldiers, violent Israeli Jewish settlers forcibly expelling Palestinians out of their homes and farms, political arrogance and much more. Palestinians, on the other hand, represent something else entirely. They embody the unhealed wound of all Arabs. Courage and sacrifice. Refusal to surrender. Resistance. Hope. Most Israelis are unable to grasp the organic relationship between Arabs and Palestine simply because they refuse to accept that their country summons such negative feelings. Contending with this reality would mean deep and uncomfortable reflections. The likes of Shechnik and Mualem would rather explain such a complex task through some convenient references to inexplicable and unjustifiable Arab “hate” of Israel. The Arab embrace of Palestine is not only about Israel, but also about the Arabs themselves. Though the Palestinian flag was itself inspired by the pan-Arab flag of 1916, it has morphed, over the years, to serve the role of the unifying Arab symbol. The fact that Arab football fans in Qatar have spontaneously chosen, without any official instructions or government intervention to use the Palestinian flag as their symbol of unity, speaks volumes about Palestine’s position in the collective Arab consciousness. It also tells us that the love for Palestine is not a direct outcome of hating Israel, nor is it that the Arabs view Palestine as a symbol of defeat or humiliation. When Moroccan player Jawad El Yamiq celebrated his country’s national team’s victory over Canada on Dec. 1, thus guaranteeing the advancement of Morocco to the knockout stages of the World Cup, he raised a Palestinian flag. In the background, Moroccan fans were chanting for Palestine and Morocco. For them, Palestine is not an external cause, and their cheers are not simply an act of solidarity. For them, Palestine and Morocco are synonymous, describing the same collective experience of defeat, struggle and, ultimately, victory.
World Cup 2022: Palestine Beats Israel on the World Stage
By Dima Khatib
THE FIFA WORLD CUP in Qatar is over, and there is one clear winner: Palestine. It is scoring in the hearts and minds of fans from across the world.
Looking at the abundant number of Palestinian flags, seeing the Palestinian armbands and bracelets, and hearing the “free Palestine” chants at the stadiums, fan zones, in the streets and on social media, one may think that Palestine is among the 32 countries whose teams have participated in this World Cup. Indeed, some Latin American media outlets have branded it the “33rd country” at the tournament.
But the Palestinian national team is not playing, so why is Palestine so ubiquitously present? It is because the World Cup is much more than a sporting event. It is a huge gathering of people from around the world coming together to share their passion for football and celebrate diversity and human solidarity.
This year’s edition of the World Cup is the first one ever to be held in an Arab country. Hence, it has been more accessible—geographically, logistically and culturally—to people from the region than any previous World Cup. It has also given people from the region space to gather in large numbers without the usual fear of repression.
As a result, Palestine has automatically taken center stage, uniting Arabs in a joyful and celebratory atmosphere and reaffirming their commitment to the Palestinian cause.
FREE PALESTINE!
In this rare Arab vox populi moment, supporting Palestine appears to be an expression of freedom, a symbol of resistance not only against the continuous occupation of Palestine but also against the neo-colonial order of repressive Arab regimes. It brings memories of powerful moments during the attempted revolutions from more than a decade ago when Arabs also flew the Palestinian flag and chanted “free Palestine” alongside their demands for freedom and dignity.
Indeed, the Palestinian flag is a sign of Arab political agency and has been a constant feature in the stands at football matches. We saw a big one unfurled at the Tunisia-Australia match on Nov. 26 and then another one at the Morocco-Belgium match a day later. The giant flag kept coming back in subsequent matches.
At the Tunisia-France game, a Tunisian fan waving the Palestinian flag ran onto the field and did a few flips in the air before being forcibly escorted out by security; his feat inspired “Falastin, Falastin!” (Arabic for Palestine) chants in the audience.
Morocco’s players raised the Palestinian flag on the pitch to celebrate defeating Canada and making it to the round of 16 and then again when they scored a historic victory against Spain to qualify for the quarter-finals. Dima Khatib is managing director of AJ+ Channels. This article was printed on Dec. 7, 2022 in Al Jazeera. Reprinted with permission.
Moroccan fans have also been seen celebrating at Doha’s iconic Souq Waqif, singing the famous Rajawi chant:
Our heart is sad for you
Our eyes have been tearing for you for years,
Oh beloved Palestine
Where are the Arabs, they are sleeping
Oh, the most beautiful of all countries, resist
May God protect you…
A number of matches have also seen Palestinian flags raised at the 48th minute, accompanied by pro-Palestinian chants, to remind the world of the Nakba (catastrophe) Palestinians experienced in 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed and turned into refugees for life.
But it has not been just Arabs expressing their support for Palestine.
“Free Palestine, Free Palestine,” Brazil fans were heard chanting on the Doha metro, as they headed to their match against Cameroon. Fans from all over the world have been happy to accept and wave Palestinian flags given away by Palestinians in the streets of Doha.
NORMALIZATION FAIL
Israeli media and citizens were allowed to attend the World Cup under FIFA requirements, although Israel and Qatar do not have formal diplomatic ties. The Israeli government probably thought the tournament was an incredible opportunity to demonstrate once again that it is able to overcome the decades-old Arab policy of not engaging with the Israeli colonial state. But it did not turn out that way.
Fans have overwhelmingly rejected Israeli media. Dozens of viral videos have circulated on social media showing Israelis trying to talk with fans and utterly failing. Lebanese, Saudi, Moroccan, Egyptian, Jordanian, Qatari, Yemeni, Tunisian, Palestinian, but also Japanese, Brazilian, Iranian, and other fans have been caught on camera adamantly refusing to engage.
“You are not welcome here,” a Saudi Arabian fan tells an Israeli journalist in one video. “Even though this is Qatar, it is still our country. There is no Israel, only Palestine.”
In another video, a few England fans line up behind an Israeli reporter appearing ready to talk. He asks them “is it coming home?” “It is coming home,” they respond. “But more importantly Free Palesteeeeen!” one of them shouts into the microphone before they walk away.
Apparently, it got so bad for the Israeli media that some of its reporters started to pretend they were from other countries, like Portugal, Germany and Ecuador. Others continued to try.
“We have peace, huh? You signed peace, you signed on the peace agreement,” implored one Israeli journalist, desperately trying to convince Morocco fans to talk to him. As they walked away, they shouted: “Palestine, no Israel.”
Indeed, in 2020, Morocco, along with Bahrain, the UAE and Sudan, signed agreements to normalize diplomatic relations. That allowed Israelis to travel to the UAE—among others things—where they had a warm reception. This experience may have misled them to think they would be welcome in the region, but that is not the case.
The Israeli media has been busy talking about Israelis feeling like
persona non grata in Qatar, being kicked out of restaurants and taxis as soon as they say they are from Israel. There seems to be a growing realization in Israel that normalization efforts may not be as successful as they may have thought.
Arabs have known it all along: normalization and peace deals are only valid on paper with governments that do not represent the people. Their hearts remain with Palestine until Palestinians become free, which will only happen when the rest of the region is also free.
The survival of the Israeli apartheid state is essentially dependent on dictatorial antidemocratic regimes that turn a deaf ear to the voices of their people on all things freedom, including Palestine.
PHOTO BY GLYN KIRK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Morocco's players celebrate at the end of the Qatar 2022 World Cup round of 16 football match between Morocco and Spain at the Education City Stadium in Al‐Rayyan, west of Doha on Dec. 6, 2022.
SUCCESSFUL BOYCOTT
The viral videos of Israeli misadventures in the World Cup seem to have receded. Israeli diplomats have reportedly expressed discontent with how Israeli citizens have been treated and called on FIFA and Qatar to ensure the safety and comfort of its journalists.
Complaints from the Israeli media have been received with mockery, with some pointing to the long list of Palestinian journalists Israel has abused, arrested and killed, including Al Jazeera’s reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Her portrait could also be spotted at the tournament.
This strong Palestinian presence has served as a reminder to the global community that the situation in Palestine is intolerable and cannot be ignored. As the World Cup proceeds, Palestinians are being killed, displaced, deported, intimidated and arrested with no solution on the horizon. A coalition of far-right parties has taken over the Israeli government, threatening to escalate apartheid violence against the Palestinians even more.
In the World Cup, the Palestinians have also seen an opportunity to strengthen their Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions move- P ment (BDS). While Ukraine and its supporters have managed to get FIFA and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) to suspend the Russian national team and football clubs from competing in their tournaments over Russian aggression, the Palestinian efforts to get the same treatment for Israel over its occupation of Palestinian land have so far failed.
Still, Palestinians and their allies have succeeded in making this boycott happen at FIFA’s biggest event in their own way: from the bottom up. While it remains to be seen how this powerful show of solidarity will translate into political action, this World Cup will definitely be remembered for a clear-cut historic victory: Palestine vs Israel 1-0. ■
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Special Report World Cup and U.N. Provide Context for Assessing the Abrahamic Accords By Ian Williams
The U.N. Security Council holds a meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, at the U.N. headquar‐ters in New York, on Nov. 28, 2022. U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland called for urgent steps toward a two‐state solution to the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict.
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING, and both the World Cup in Qatar and the United Nations in New York added their distinctive textures to temper the orthodoxies of geopolitics, not least about the Palestine issue. Sadly, I suspect you had to be on social media to see how the world trashed the Abrahamic Accords during the World Cup in Qatar. Were the Israeli TV reporters really as naïve and shocked as they appeared when fans gave them the finger? I watched with appreciation as fans from across the world scorned interviews with the oppressors. Brazilians, Japanese, and even seemingly stereotypical English soccer fans told them where to go. But the famous mainstream media ignored it, except perhaps in Israel where it followed the trope of how the rest of the world was out of step!
But since most Western media had been uncritically celebrating former President Donald Trump and Senior Adviser Jared Kushner’s triumph in securing the Abrahamic Accords, seeing the Arab Street response was so much more telling. Qataris, Lebanese and Saudis alike displayed a distinct lack of “accord,” more Cain and Abel than Abraham. Emblematic was the reaction of the Moroccan fans and team, which despite their king’s long-term attempts to cozy up to Israel, was triumphantly and in-your-face pro-Palestinian.
Arabs and many others across the world know apartheid when they see it. Just as the people of Africa reacted viscerally to apartheid South Africa because it explicitly subordinated and suppressed people like themselves, Arabs can see Israel oppressing Palestinians—because they are Arabs.
Over at the U.N., Arab delegations engaged in what their chums in Tel Aviv call “Israel-bashing.” Their degree of tolerance for Israel is in inverse proportion to popular involvement in government and foreign policy, but even their authoritarian elites dare not get too close to endorsing explicit apartheid against fellow Arabs.
Western media tends to ignore that the explicit breaches of international law that they denounce in Ukraine are perpetrated routinely by Israel in the occupied territories. But there is a subtext
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of U.N.told: the Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).
poking up through the bowdlerized Western headlines which is gradually osmosing through into popular discourse. It is occurring to people that if we are so upset about Russian invasion and annexation, bombing and killing civilians in Ukraine, then why the international acquiesce when Israel does the same?
Some of this surfaced in the annual round of General Assembly resolutions in late November and early December. Following President Vladimir Putin’s on and off bluster about annexation and nuclear weapons, condemned by all Western countries, delegates called on Israel to renounce nuclear weapons and accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Apart from the assorted atolls in the U.S. pocket, Israel, Canada and Australia voted against the resolution. It is of course all the more absurd since the resolution called upon Israel to renounce weapons it has never admitted having. Even more scandalously, France, Germany and Britain abstained. A British House of Commons report this July declared that “it is universally acknowledged that Israel possesses a nuclear weapons capability, outside of the framework of the NPT.” France knows this—it provided the nuclear knowhow for the Dimona reactor and the original versions of the Jericho missiles, while Germany has provided nuclear capable submarines.
But even the abstainers could not oppose the call for a Nuclear Free Middle East. Only Israel itself had the temerity to vote against the global equivalent of motherhood and apple pie even though it was not singled out for the criticism it so richly deserves. The U.S. delegation abstained, as though they could not make up their mind whether a nuclear free Middle East was desirable.
The Putinesque diplomatic gymnastics of the U.S. were well expressed by U.S. “public delegate” to the U.N. Rep. Andrew Weinstein, nominated by Biden for his work with the ADL and Democratic fundraising in Florida, who complained, “we are engaged in the annual U.N. ritual of rubber-stamping outdated and ineffective resolutions that purport to advance the cause for the Palestinian people but instead reveal a profound anti-Israel bias” and reaffirmed U.S. determination to oppose “all one-sided resolutions that denigrate Israel.” Far from being outdated, the resolutions all describe the current state of affairs on the ground, the wall, the apartheid, the settlements, confiscations, demolitions and killings of 184 Palestinians since the start of the year, and recently several a day. If the resolutions are ineffective, it is only because of U.S. financial, diplomatic and military support for the perpetrator.
We trust the U.S. will just as vehemently oppose all one-sided resolutions denigrating Russia. But perhaps sometime the State Department could keep a straight face and propose a balanced resolution condemning Palestinian settlement building in the Galilee and Negev, or Ukrainian occupation of Siberia. The atmosphere is attenuated on planet AIPAC, where the delegations of the U.S. and its more slavish allies seem to live.
The Australian delegation tied itself in a moebius striplike knot. As every topologist knows, a moebius strip only has one edge and one side. The diplomatic equivalent is to do what Australia did: to evoke the rule of law to welcome the successful reference of the occupation to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion— but to stress that it should be recorded that the opinion is non-binding. It knows Israel is committing grossly illegal acts and wants to distance itself when Israel is inevitably called out. In other words, the Western paragons of international law and order cannot disavow the instruments of international legality, so they seek to deflect it in advance.
So many at the U.N. drew at least spiritual comfort from the decision to dedicate next year’s work on Palestinian rights to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. It was even more satisfying that this provoked paroxysms of indignation from Israel and its supporters. It coincided with their massive campaign against the excellent Netflix movie “Farha” which movingly illustrated the realities of the atrocities of the Nakba as chronicled by survivors, Palestinian and other historians and many Israeli sources and denied by lobbyists and their paymasters.
The Nakba commemoration added spice to the decision to rename the U.N.’s program for Palestinian journalists after Shireen Abu Akleh. These are small triumphs but in the face of President Joe Biden’s stonewalling on investigating the Israeli murder of an American citizen, we have to celebrate them—“Lest we forget.”
On the “lest we forget” front, one could not help but wonder if the success of the Moroccan team, obviously so significant for Arabs everywhere, not to mention Africans, could have been made even more delicious if they had brandished the Sahrawi flag as well. However, we have to content ourselves with actual rather than imagined wins. ■
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hate-filled. As for domestic politics, Netanyahu long has been deeply implicated in a series of greed-drenched corrupt practices.
That Israel would return to power such a decadent and despicable individual is damning enough, but the situation is much worse than that. To recapture the government, Netanyahu offered key ministerial posts to neo-fascist religious zealots and openly racist ultra-nationalists. Illegal settlement (even under Israeli law) and formal annexation of occupied territories will be the order of the day. Religious extremists will no longer be bellowing from the sidelines—they will be shaping and driving policy.
Opposition parties and critical media warned that Israel was becoming a religious state like Iran, in which yeshiva students would be paid more than IDF soldiers; football matches would be outlawed on the Sabbath; and men and women would be separated in the public sphere (as they already are at the Western Wall in the Old City).
Settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing are likely to be turbo charged now. But the preeminent goal of Netanyahu and the neo-fascists is to arrogate to the new government the power to override the pesky Israeli Supreme Court, which occasionally rules against the most repressive actions of the government. Undermining the Supreme Court could also help Netanyahu escape justice for his corruption.
In addition, he promised to “neutralize” an agreement the outgoing government signed in October with Lebanon, resolving a long-standing maritime border dispute on the Mediterranean Sea. Netanyahu has long detested conducting diplomacy with Arab states—except of course for cutting deals with oil-rich monarchies that accede to recognition of Israel.
A master manipulator—especially of the United States, which he once bragged was “a thing you can move very easily” in Israel’s favor—Netanyahu declared he would “preserve Israeli democracy,” but what he intends to preserve is apartheid, repression and injustice. He has shown he will work with any coalition, no matter how extreme, to exercise power.
For the Biden administration and liberal American Jews who claim there are limits to their support of Israel, Netanyahu and his new extremist allies pose yet another embarrassing challenge as Israel takes on the character of a far-right religious state. Does anyone in the administration or Congress, other than a few progressives, have the courage to challenge the unquestioned political support and bankrolling of this increasingly reactionary and brutally repressive militarized regime?
If history is any guide, the answer, sadly, will be “no.” But history can deliver surprises on occasion, so we can hope that Israel’s growing extremism will eventually undermine the heretofore unquestioned—but never more indefensible— U.S. support for a virulent apartheid regime. ■
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By Julia Pitner
A view of the U.S. Capitol building on Nov. 28, 2022 in Washington, DC, as Congress wraps up the current lame‐duck session, tries to fund the government and pass an omnibus bill.
POST-ELECTIONS and the end of the current congressional session, the FY2023 is racing toward its end as an omnibus bill. The Senate’s good intentions for finishing its own bill (S. 4543) shifted to the House version (H.R. 7900) in late October, with the intention of replacing the House text with the Senate Armed Services Committee bill. However, the campaign and election season got in the way.
Yet, the Senate has used the Arm Services bill to negotiate changes on the House version instead. As a result of this approach, provisions that had no corresponding text in the two bills (i.e., conditioning arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Turkey) were eliminated. However, several Middle East-related provisions made it into the consensus/compromise H.R. 7776 omnibus bill. As has been noted previously in these pages, tightening the knot on Iran and supporting Israel remain the key features in these provisions.
Of note is the one provision that explicitly does both—the Middle East integrated air and missile defense act, originally known as H.R. 7987—DEFEND Act of 2022. Touted by congressional members as support for the Abraham Accords, while finding common cause with the anti-Iran negotiation members, this section of the omnibus bill states that, “The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, shall seek to cooperate with allies and partners in the Middle East with respect to implementing an integrated air and missile defense architecture to protect the people, infrastructure, and territory of such countries from cruise and ballistic missiles, manned and unmanned aerial systems, and rocket attacks from Iran and groups linked to Iran.”
Other related defense provisions include an increase of money for the extension of United States-Israel cooperation to counter unmanned aerial systems “including directed energy capabilities” and authorizing an increase of $15 million (to $40 million total) to support the “DOD to research, develop, test and evaluate joint
Julia Pitner is a contributing editor of the Washington Report. She lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
U.S.-Israel directed energy capabilities to address threats to both the United States and Israel.” This originated as H.R. 9256, “U.S.-Israel Anti-Killer Drone Act of 2022, sponsored by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (DNJ) and Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY).
Also included in the omnibus bill is $200 million in funding for the Iron Dome shortrange rocket defense system and Israel’s cooperative missile defense program, with co-development and co-production totaling $200 million. On Dec. 6, it was announced that Lockheed Martin and the Israeli company Rafael are cooperating to jointly develop, test and manufacture highenergy laser weapon systems.
Putting additional squeezes on Iran, the omnibus bill also includes provisions requiring the modification of the annual report on the military capabilities of Iran and related activities, to include “Iranianlinked proxy groups” and its support of specifically named groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen; maintaining sanctions against Iranian officials and embargos on arms and resources as well as additional constraints on the transfer of funds and ultimately on any progress on the Iranian nuclear negotiations. At the same time, a provision was added supporting the IAEA’s work on monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities.
RESPONDING TO IRANIAN PROTESTS
In October and November, as demonstrations in Iran expanded, congressional tweets flew. The majority of tweets by Democratic members expressed support for the demonstrators, especially women and girls who are at the forefront, calling for free speech and decrying Iran’s closure of social media platforms. The majority of their Republican colleagues, however, tweeted that the demonstrations were not only a reason to call for an end the nuclear negotiations with Iran but to also fire the special envoy, Rob Malley. Post-election results, a few began to call for investigations into Biden’s foreign policies.
On the practical side, noting the closure of internet sites by the Iranian government, on Dec. 1, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (DVA) sponsored H.R. 9397—INFO Act of 2022, together with co-sponsors, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) and Rep. William Keating (D-MA) “to promote internet freedom through programs of the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that preserve and expand the internet as an open, global space for freedom of expression and association, which shall be prioritized for countries (1) whose governments restrict freedom of expression on the internet; and (2) that are important to the national interest of the United States.” The text of the bill specifically mentions Iran as one of those countries.
AN IRONIC TWIST
In a twist of the ironic, while U.S. congressional members began demanding that Iran allow the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in to investigate human rights abuses of the protesters, several were continuing their push to defund the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel/Palestine. Not satisfied with just targeting the COI and UNRWA, on Nov. 3, Reps. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Steve Chabot (R-OH) sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the Biden administration make the “retiring” of two Palestinian-focused U.N. bodies—the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) and the Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR)—a U.S. diplomatic priority and “urgently press other countries with whom we cooperate” to join the U.S. in voting against annual U.N. resolutions that approve their continued functioning and activities.
After letters from Congress to the administration, lobbying by the family, and the inclusion of language of the House NDAA (and now omnibus bill) calling for an independent investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh’s death, on Nov. 14, it was reported in Israeli media that the FBI was launching an investigation. In response, Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) and 18 cosponsors introduced H.R. 9291, the “Justice for Shireen Act” requiring “not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this act, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secretary of State, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report on the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Matters to be included (1) an identification of those individuals or entities that carried out, participated in, or were otherwise complicit in, or responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh; and (2) an identification of any United States defense materials or services that were implicated in the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. (c) The report required shall be submitted in unclassified form and made available to the public at the same time on the website of the Department of State.” By Dec. 1, the bill had 22 all Democrat cosponsors. The Republicans cried “bias” and “politicization of DoJ” over Twitter.
A final piece of news on the Israel Visa Waiver request—it was denied after advocates lobbied members of Congress regarding Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Americans and others visiting the occupied territories.
The Washington Report will begin anew tracking the efforts of the 118th Congress as they try to shape U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa region with legislation and appropriations, or just tweet about it. And, as of this writing, they may begin their session with the FY23 budget. ■
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Special Report Israel Lobby Targeted Key Democrats in 2022 Midterm Elections By Walter L. Hixson
THE ISRAEL LOBBY pumped unprecedented millions into the November 2022 midterm congressional election cycle, with most of it concentrated on Democratic Party races. Zionist political action committees (PACs) targeted for defeat a select group of candidates deemed proPalestinian, anti-Israel or insufficiently pro-Israel.
According to an in-depth analysis by Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action), the Israel lobby injected more than $70 million into the 2022 races, far exceeding contributions in any previous election, including the 2020 presidential canvass. “ProIsrael groups collectively contributed more than $30 million to candidates in congressional races across the U.S.—more than triple the contributions of abortion rights, gun control, and environmental groups and individuals combined,” according to the AJP report. In addition to money provided to individual campaigns, the lobby spent $40 million to influence voters’ perceptions for or against candidates in specific elections.
Pro-Israel organizations donated to Democrats at twice the rate of Republican candidates, collectively contributing $20 million to Democrats compared to $10 million to Republicans. AJP Action explains the disparity as an effort by rightwing Zionist groups to counteract the growing influence of pro-Palestinian members of the Democratic Party.
PHOTO BY CHERISS MAY/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D‐NY), incoming House Democratic leader, speaks at the 2019 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. Pro‐Israel funders were his second largest contributors in 2022. Until 2021, AIPAC did not raise funds for political candidates itself. Its members raised money for candidates through political action committees. In late 2021, AIPAC formed its own political action committee (AIPAC PAC) as well as a Super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP). The Democratic Majority for Israel Super PAC, founded in 2019 by right-wing pro-Israel groups, is touted as an advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies among the U.S. Democratic Party’s political leaders. It was created after AIPAC affiliated too closely with the Republican right during the Obama and Trump administrations, opening a schism among Israel’s supporters in Congress. Together the Democratic Majority for Israel and AIPAC’s new UDP Super PAC spent $40,277,175 to influence the 2022 midterms. The Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Architects of spending represented a dramatic increase from the $6 million spent Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and in the 2020 presidential election cycle, according to the AJP Action Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy and Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Pales‐tine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along report, entitled “Rightwing Zionist Money & its Influence on U.S. Elections.” Not to be left out of the pro-Israel debate, the J Street with several other books and journal articles. He was a professor of PAC and its affiliates spent $3,262,066 on candidates, who were history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor. often challengers to AIPAC’s chosen list.
All of AIPAC’s UDP Super PAC spending went to Democratic elections, the majority spent in the primaries to either support or oppose candidates. AIPAC PAC, meanwhile, spent 66.1 percent of its money in Democrat races, with little spending on Republican races, while its affiliate lobby groups such as the Republican Jewish Coalition, Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs, and the U.S. Israel PAC, to name a few, were actively supporting Republican races.
However, the AJP report found that lobby spending was “hyper focused against vulnerable Democrats that were deemed as not sufficiently pro-Israel.” The lobby largesse succeeded in a few races, as some of the targeted candidates went down in defeat, though many others weathered the onslaught. Notably only one (Rep. Marie Newman, D-IL) of the heavily targeted co-sponsors of the proposed Defending the Human Rights of Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation (H.R. 2590) was defeated. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), has 32 co-sponsors and is bitterly opposed by the Israel lobby.
All ten of the highest grossing recipients of pro-Israel contributions were Democrats.
The spending pattern highlights the two Super PACs’ efforts to undermine progressive Democrats in the House, who comprise essentially the only coalition that defies the lobby and is openly critical of Israel’s illegal occupation and repressive policies. The massive contributions to Rep. Shontel Brown’s (D-OH) campaign had less to do with her and more to do with her primary opponent, Nina Turner, a Bernie Sanders-allied critic of Israeli repression. Similarly, the lobby heavily funded the primary campaign of Glenn Ivey in a successful campaign to defeat former Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), an opponent of Israeli apartheid.
But the Zionist PACs also targeted moderates, notably Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI), deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel, who was defeated by the lobby-backed candidate Rep. Haley Stevens. AIPAC and other lobby groups invested heavily in Michigan, spending more than $10 million altogether on three congressional races, headlined by Stevens’ ouster of Levin.
Top Ten Recipients of Israel Lobby Funding The lobby did not win them all, in the 2022 Congressional Elections however, and the progressive anti1. Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH): $1,038,202 apartheid coalition in the House 2. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI): $790,729 remains largely intact. Rep.-elect 3. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA): $731,038 Summer Lee (D-PA), targeted for 4. Rep.-elect Glenn Ivey (D-MD): $697,205 defeat, fended off a heavily funded 5. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): $689,375 lobby backed opponent (Steven 6. Steven Irwin (D-PA)*: $687,367 Irwin) to win her seat. 7. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ): $548,262 Recognizing that Israel was 8. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): $459,670 not a central public issue in the 9. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH): $436,625 nationwide campaigns, lobby po10. Rep.-elect Valerie Foushee (D-NC): $429,305 litical advertising homed in on *Defeated in primary election other issues while shrouding its own motives. The UDP Super PAC touted Ivey for his support for gun control, abortion and public-school investments, while ignoring Israel altogether. Likewise, the lobby alleged that Lee would “defund the police” and was “more interested in fighting Democrats than getting results.” In addition to targeting critics of Israel, the lobby contributions shored up longstanding support for two New York power brokers, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the newly chosen leader of the House Democrats. In 2020, the Israel lobby did not even rank in the top twenty sources for funding Jeffries’ campaign, but in 2022 “pro-Israel funders were the second largest contributor,” AJP Action notes. The full AJP Action report can be accessed at: <https://ajpaction.org/wp-content/ uploads/2022/11/Rightwing-ZionistMoney.pdf>. ■
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Israel and Judaism The Growing “Battle” Inside U.S. Jewish Institutions As Israel Embraces Racist Parties
By Allan C. Brownfeld
PHOTO BY ILIA YEFIMOVICH/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES Itamar Ben‐Gvir (r), leader of the Israeli far‐right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, during a memorial ceremony for the late Israeli‐American Rabbi Meir Kahane, in Jerusalem on Nov. 10, 2022. Kahane, a cofounder of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), was convicted of acts of terrorism and assassinated in 1990. Ben‐Gvir will be Israel’s national security minister under a coalition deal with Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.
THERE IS A GROWING EFFORT to stifle free speech within the American Jewish community. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the AntiDefamation League (ADL), recently called for a battle inside Jewish religious denominations against Jews who oppose Zionism, a group which is growing dramatically in number.
“Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism,” he declared at the World Zionist Congress’ August meeting in Basel, Switzerland. “We must reckon with the fact that there are anti-Zionists within the Jewish community. We must be honest and acknowledge that reality. The reality is just because you are Jewish doesn’t exempt you from trafficking in antiZionism…We have got to deal with this openly…This will be a fight.”
David Wolpe, a Conservative rabbi in Los Angeles, endorsed the idea of a battle against anti-Zionists at the same August conference. He said that his “Sinai Temple takes the largest delegation to the AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] conference every year of any synagogue in the country. We have an absolutely unapologetic Zionist commitment…It’s true in America, as you know, Zionism is a word that often draws tremendous ire, but it’s a battle that is important for Jews to fight.”
In October 2022, Mondoweiss noted that, “Wolpe and Greenblatt are trying to stop the tide: young Jews are giving up on Zionism, with sizable numbers saying they believe Israel is an apartheid state.”
In an interview with the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), Zachary Lockman, professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History at New York University, provided this assessment: “The Jewish community—the organized, very Israeli-connected Zionist mainstream organizations—think they don’t have as much power as they did because the community has changed. Younger American Jews don’t care about those big organizations. They may or may not belong to a local synagogue, but the synagogues themselves have changed.”
In Lockman’s view, “there’s been a sea change...Segments of the American Jewish community were actively hostile to Zionism [and] into the 1930s and 1940s, Reform Judaism was formally opposed to Zionism...Polls show that a good chunk of the younger generation don’t feel much connection to Israel, or are critical of it, have no great desire to visit...The assaults on Gaza horrify a lot of people. The asymmetry of power and violence and death is hard to miss.”
All of this discussion in the American Jewish community comes just as far-right racist groups are gaining extraordinary influence in Binyamin Netanyahu’s new Israeli government.
In 1984, Rabbi Meir Kahane won a seat in the Knesset pledging to expel Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories. He also advocated Nuremberg-like legislation to make marriage between Jews and non-Jews illegal. He and his Kach party were expelled from the Knesset for racism. Today, that same racism is welcomed in the Knesset.
Discussing the Nov. 1 election results, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz declared, “Kahanism won. Israel is now closing in on a rightwing, religious authoritarian revolution. The big winner is Itamar BenGvir. The big loser is Israel.”
In October, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) noted that when Ben-Gvir, the extremist follower of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, was in talks in 2019 to coordinate tactics with other parties, “the message from the U.S. Jewish community was clear: Don’t.” That’s no longer the case.
According to JTA, “At least four of the major Jewish groups that spoke out in 2019 say they will not get involved this time: AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Two groups that spoke up in 2019, the Anti-Defamation League and the Reform movement, told JTA that they are just as alarmed now as they were then. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said a failure by the organized Jewish community to present a solid wall of opposition to allowing into government a party based on the teachings of the racist late
Rabbi Meir Kahane would have far-reaching consequences not just for the U.S.Israel relationship but for Israel’s relationship with U.S. Jews.”
Ben-Gvir was, the Washington Post notes, “for decades a political untouchable. His roots in the overtly racist Kach party...banned by Israel, put him beyond the fringe of even the most right-wing parties. That changed last year when then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu...desperate for a few more parliamentary votes, invited Ben-Gvir into his alliance.”
Ben-Gvir, who one commentator called the “David Duke of Israel,” first came to prominence as a 19-year-old in 1995 in the wake of a peace deal with the Palestinians signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Post reports that, “An outraged Ben-Gvir brandished a car ornament reportedly ripped from Rabin’s Cadillac and said, ‘we got the car. We’ll get to Rabin, too.’ Weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist. Ben-Gvir was not connected to the killing, though he campaigned for the assassin’s release from prison. He has been prosecuted for inciting violence and was known to keep on his wall a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the American Israeli who massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs.”
The Times of Israel noted that Ben-Gvir and his allies “appear to have staked positions even more extreme than the far-right parties troubling Europe…their most prominent policy positions…include encouraging Arab citizens of Israel to emigrate; annexing the West Bank without affording Palestinians the right to vote or other civil rights;… using live fire against Palestinian rioters; refraining from prosecuting IDF soldiers for military actions they carry out; overhauling the legal system, crimping the high court’s ability to strike down legislation and giving the government the ability to pack the bench with ideological compatriots.”
Yaakov Katz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, told BBC, “Ben-Gvir and [coalition member Bezalel] Smotrich want to change the type of democracy we have. They want to take us into a potential dark moment. They would have the power and influence to dramatically change the country and that’s what they say they want to do. When it comes to Arabs, when it comes to LGBTQ rights, when it comes to the rights of women, they could do a lot of damage.”
The silence of major American Jewish groups is coming under increasing criticism. Susie Gelman, who heads the Israel Policy Forum, told the Times of Israel, “It takes an excessive measure of cognitive dissonance to condemn displays of racist supremacy at home as American citizens while dismissing similar displays as irrelevant or beyond our legitimate concerns when they so prominently occur in the Jewish state.” Israeli apartheid is worse than that of South Africa. The evidence for this is clear, but the West refuses to notice it.
In a much-discussed article, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a long-time supporter of Israel, used the headline, “The Israel We Knew Is Gone.” He quotes Moshe Halbertal, a Hebrew University Jewish philosopher, who notes, “Israeli hawkishness toward Palestinians is now morphing into something new—a kind of general ultranationalism” that not only rejects any notion of a Palestinian state, but also views every Israeli Arab, who make up about 21 percent of Israel’s population, as a potential terrorist.”
Halbertal declares that, “The Torah stands for the equality of all people and the notion that we are all created in God’s image. Israelis, of all people, need to respect minority rights because we, as Jews, know what it is to be a minority— with and without rights. This is a deep Jewish ethos and it is now being challenged from within Israel itself.”
Writing in Mondoweiss, Philip Weiss says that, “Finally, American Jews will see what Zionism has done to us, corrupted almost every Jewish institution with racism, turned Jewish leaders into apologists for persecution and massacres.”
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, largely ignored by American Jewish groups, has been compared to South African apartheid by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem.
John Dugard, a South African jurist, and scholar of international law who was a prominent opponent of the apartheid regime in South Africa and served as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, provides this assessment of South Africa’s Bantustans and Palestine’s territorial enclaves: “South Africa’s Bantustans were a devious and wicked device designed to exclude black South Africans from participation in the political life and wealth of the Republic of South Africa, but the apartheid regime of South Africa spent millions of dollars on establishing schools, universities, clinics, hospitals and industries designed to provide jobs for black South Africans. The comparison provides further evidence, if evidence be needed, that Israeli apartheid is worse than that of South Africa. The evidence for this is clear, but the West refuses to notice it.”
On Nov. 10, 1975, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379 declaring that Zionism “is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” It was revoked in 1991. Recent events in Israel indicate that this revocation might have been premature. Those Jews who opposed Zionism from the beginning are now looking increasingly prophetic. The argument that Israel and America share common democratic values will be increasingly difficult to advance in light of Israel’s turn away from any notion of genuine democracy and its embrace of what looks increasingly like racism. American Jewish leaders will have a difficult time explaining their opposition to racism in the United States and their continuing embrace of Israel, as it appears to adopt the very mindset found so objectionable at home.
The reason that more and more Jewish Americans feel ambivalent about, and increasingly critical of, Israel is clear. Isn’t it time for American synagogues to finally stop displaying Israeli flags and to reject Israel’s claim that it is the “homeland” of all Jews? No other nation in the world claims to be the “homeland” of millions of people who are citizens of other countries. Hopefully, the latest events will move American Jewish opinion further in this direction. ■
Special Report How a Right-Wing Definition of Anti-Semitism Got Foisted on a Liberal Community
By Susan Kerin
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND isn’t the first and won’t be the last community to pass a resolution that redefines anti-Semitism to include criticisms of Israel. However, the unanimous passage by the County Council on Nov. 1 is destined to serve as a legacy turning point in the growing national policy trend to suppress Palestinian human rights activism.
At the core of the debate is the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. It gives eleven examples of what the IHRA considers to be anti-Semitic discourse, some of which are simply criticisms of Israel/Zionism. IHRA’S ROOTS IN RIGHT-WING IDEOLOGY The model legislation is rooted in President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13899 of 2019, “Combatting Anti-Semitism,” and has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), American Association of University Professors and the National Coalition
Against Censorship. That same year, Florida State Representative Randy Fine began contacting conservative politicians who had just returned from an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference to launch an expansion of the IHRA definition across right-wing municipalities nationally. In an email to attendees a week after the meeting Rep. Fine wrote, “Students for Justice in Palestine is now treated the same way as the Ku Klux Klan—as they should be.” Fine’s racial underpinnings gained national attention when he used the hashtags #bombsaway and #nomercy during Israel’s 2021 assault on Gaza, including in response to a picture of a dead Gazan child. While Trump’s Executive Order authorizes the Department of Education to adMost people in Montgomery County, MD would support a resolution that condemns anti‐Semitic judicate and withhold Title VI funds from hate, but the council passed a resolution without a public hearing using the IHRA definition of entities deemed to be anti-Semitic using anti‐Semitism, which could quash criticisms of Israeli government policies and actions. this new definition, the department needs local data to substantiate the allegations. So local resolutions are intended to change how local police departments track bias incidents. Local protests of Israel’s bombing of Gaza or attempts to ethnically cleanse Sheikh Jarrah would be counted as anti-Semitic incidents. PASSED WITHOUT PUBLIC DEBATE Prior to its passage in Montgomery County, the resolution had already begun creeping into less conservative municipalities like Arlington, VA and Washington, DC. But those resolutions passed unnoticed, for the most part, by activists and elected officials who had no idea that it went beyond affirming that anti-Semitism was a form of racism and would not be tolerated. According to Rosie Saah, from the county’s chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, “The situation in Montgomery County was very different. Our elected officials heard from hundreds of residents and nearly 40 organizations concerned about the implications. But they chose to pass it anyway. And refused to allow a public hearing.” Susan Kerin is chair of Peace Action Montgomery, a chapter of Peace The council, which unanimously supported the resolution, refused Action, the nation’s largest peace organization. to allow a public hearing. During a packed meeting, most of the council
PHOTO COURTESY MD2PALESTINE
members peppered their comments with claims that the county is a beacon against hate, bigotry and discrimination. But Council President Gabe Albornoz acknowledged that there “is a lot of emotion in the room” and Councilmember Will Jawando expressed “dismay over the process.” When Councilmember Evan Glass, who co-sponsored the resolution, said that he appreciated the conversation, several activists interrupted him: “this is not a conversation,” they told him, and “this is not how democracy works.” Yasmine, a college student who is a member of the Palestinian diaspora, attended the meeting but wasn’t one of the disrupters. She noted that “audience members’ comments were acts of frustration not only because the council rejected our request for a public hearing but also because we learned the sponsors held closed-door negotiations excluding stakeholders like us.” In fact, three Palestinian-led organizations lodged a formal complaint to the councilmembers about the closed door deliberations earlier that week. And within hours of receiving that notice, lead sponsor Councilmember Andrew Friedson sent an internal email to his colleagues saying that the resolution “was discussed and agreed upon by…leading advocates and organizational leaders.” According to Yasmine, “the lack of transparency has really undermined our trust in our elected officials. Here we were advocating for months against the resolution because it silences Palestinian voices. And it turns out that councilmembers were already silencing us with their secret deliberations.” Lobbyists supporting the resolution included the local Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). While they publicly claimed the resolution was non-binding and only intended for educational purposes, there was already an instance during Israel’s 2021 assaults where the county’s school system sent out a notice to parents intended to chill student and teacher discussions. The note warned that the “ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has resulted in a significant uptick of threats of violence, expressions of bigotry and anti-Semitism locally and across the nation. These reports have raised anxiety and concerns about safety among students and staff, particularly Jewish students and their families. Students must feel safe in school to learn.” The note concluded with recommended resources and teaching materials for educators and parents to use to stop the rise of anti-Semitism. Internal documents revealed that the JCRC advocated for the notice and had specifically referenced criticisms of Israel in its allegations of anti-Semitism.
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Within a week of the resolution’s passage by the County Council, Friedson sent an email to all constituents who criticized the resolution indicating that he already had begun implementing the “educational” component of the resolution. Saah notes: “We know that our work isn’t over. We intend to continue to push back on the implementation of the resolution into our schools and community. But we also don’t want this issue to distract us from our main advocacy, which is to end the Israeli occupation and support Palestinian human rights.” ■
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Gaza Fishermen’s Nightmare
By Mohammed Omer
A view of a fiberglass repair workshop for fishing boats supervised by the United Nations at the Gaza seaport, Nov. 29, 2022. Israel allowed fiberglass into the Palestinian enclave for the first time since 2007 under international supervision. Israel bans scores of items needed to repair fishing boats, claiming materials can be used for military purposes.
“GAZA’S FISHING INDUSTRY is dying,” says Nizar Ayash, head of the Palestinian Fishermen Syndicate. He pauses a moment and continues, “We are watching its gradual destruction.”
In the old days, before Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2006, Ayash would sit just before sunrise by the harbor and await the safe return of the fishermen with their catches: sardines, sea bream, Sultan Ibrahim, sea bass, mullet, meagre and gilt-head bream. His office colleagues would sit outside, preparing Gazan hot tomato and dill salad with toasted bread, awaiting the night or early morning’s catch.
These days, Ayash cannot always enjoy this friendly gathering; often the fishermen come bearing grim news. In the past, the fishermen would have had fish with their early breakfast. They continue to make their salad but today there are fewer fish. Gazan fishermen were once known for making tatbilit samak (fish marinade). Today, the catch is sent to the local hisba, the fish market, yet sales do not cover the cost of boat fuel and lighting.
Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, Israel is obligated to permit fishing up to 20 nautical miles, but this has never been implemented and over the years Israel has set varying limits to the fishing zone, which has been reduced to as low as 3 nautical miles. Ayash explains: “Israel has restricted fishing rights off the coast of Gaza from 25 to 6 miles,” a narrow over-fished area. “The Israeli occupation has increased its attacks on the seashore targeting fishermen and their fishing gear,” Ayash explains. The fishing trade is Gaza’s second largest, after agriculture; there are 4,500 fishermen in Gaza and 1,000 fishing boats, supporting some 50,000 family members. “The fishermen are critical for Palestinian food security,” he continues, and they “are being targeted by gunboats.” Each time they set off to fish, “they risk imprisonment or death.”
Hundreds of fishermen have been killed or arrested off the coast Gaza for fishing beyond 3 nautical miles; their job is among the most dangerous. The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, a non-governmental human rights organization, stated that in 2022, there were over 441 violations by the Israeli navy against fishermen who were shot at, arrested or had their fishing boat confiscated; 64 were arrested, 21 were injured and 23 boats were confiscated.
Award‐winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports regularly on the Gaza Strip.
“Gazan fishermen can no longer support their families,” Ayash says. Israel has banned the import of spare parts for maintaining fishing vessels. Most boats have now been destroyed or fallen into disrepair. Ayash expects the fishing industry in Gaza to collapse and the number of fishermen to halve.
In the last week of November, Israeli gunboats opened fire on Palestinian fisherman Mubarak Baker, shooting him in the foot. He sailed back while bleeding and then had to await evacuation to Shifa Hospital’s emergency room.
Palestinian fishermen complain that they cannot work freely. Israel claims that they are permitted to fish across an area spanning 15 nautical miles to the south and 6 to the north of the Strip. The reality is that these fishermen can sail no further than 3 nautical miles before coming under fire, limiting them to a small over-fished area.
Another Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor report states that poverty levels have increased by nearly 30 percent over the last 16 years, while unemployment has risen by 26.6 percent. This report links these figures with import restrictions upon reparatory materials and spare parts.
A NIGHTMARE FOR REPAIRS
In Gaza City, Fawzi Alnajjar states that over the past three years, he has only worked one day per week.
“I have to visit the mechanic every week; I am accumulating unaffordable debt,” he says, while attempting to mend leaks in his boat himself. When he finally sets sail, the leaks soon force his return; “We are being suffocated by these restrictions.” Alnajjar calls upon the international community to put pressure on Israel to allow spare parts into Gaza’s coastal enclave.
There was a time when repairs were easy and affordable. With the blockade, however, they have become costly and scarce; some fishermen have given up, dumping their no-longer-salvageable boats in the cemetery. Ayash insists that if Israeli restrictions are not relaxed, Gaza’s fishing sector risks complete collapse; the number of unserviceable boats continues to grow. Some are already 30 years old.
In defense of its actions, Israel cites its own security needs; the fishermen argue that their fishing boats aren’t security threats and that they have been forced into poverty.
Following months of negotiations, a U.N.initiated program was implemented to allow the import of repair materials for fishing vessels. However, related requests must still be submitted to and approved by Israel. In mid-November 2022, the first batch of these materials entered Gaza—the first since 2007. The shipment included 227 kg of fiberglass; 500 kg of polyester resin; and 31 kg of blue, white and yellow paint.
Many fishermen have no savings left. As Alnajjar explains, you will not find a fisherman who has not been forced to sell his wife’s engagement gold. Alnajjar knows that his 20-year-old boat is no longer fit to sail. Imported fiberglass is only a temporary solution; he must often sail back manually when his motor breaks down.
“It’s a tough job but we knew this when we inherited the trade from our fathers and greatgrandfathers,” the 59-year-old man says.
Most Gazan fishermen are left with few options. They must either accept bankruptcy, leaving their disused boats on the roadside, or surrender them for spare parts. SUSPENDED LIVES The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recently released a report titled “Gaza’s Youth: Suspended lives, fading opportunities,” presenting the findings of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey which found that 90 percent of young people in Gaza believe their lives to be “abnormal.” At least 20 percent of Gazans are between 18 and 29 years old. Almost all these individuals believe that “the next phase of their lives will continue to be defined by the same critical challenges they have faced in recent years.”
Approximately 66 percent of respondents stated that they depend on their families for income, while 40 percent said they had “no hope of finding a job opportunity in the next 15 years.”
The ability to purchase motors, propellers or fiberglass for their boats has become a dream for fishermen like Alnajjar; the tough reality is that, even should these become available, Israeli gunboats remain unlikely to allow passage into deeper waters, where bigger fish are found.
“Someone has to say enough is enough,” Alnajjar insists. “Gazan fishermen have seen enough suffering. The time has come for us to be allowed to survive.” ■
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Special Report David Grossman Wins Prizes, But He’s Not The Real Hero of the Israeli Left By Gideon Levy
PHOTO CREDIT© CLAUDE TRUONG-NGOC / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS PHOTO CREDIT© OREN ROZEN COURTESY CREATIVE COMMONS
Israeli journalists who dare to write about “controversial” topics: (l) prize‐winning David Grossman, giving a talk at Bibliothèques idéales, in Strasbourg, France on Sept. 4, 2014, and (r) Israel Frey, who was fired by DemocraTV, at an anti‐settlement protest outside the illegal outpost of Evyatar on Feb. 18, 2022.
WARM WISHES to David Grossman. The King of The Netherlands has just awarded Grossman the prestigious Erasmus Prize at the royal palace. One of the members of the prize committee explained that Grossman received the prize, among other reasons, for “daring to write about controversial political topics such as the occupied territories and the lives of the Palestinian minority in Israel.” Every one of these words is true. The wonderful author never distanced himself from “controversial topics.” But Grossman has always taken care to fight for positions within the bounds of Zionism. That is his belief and his right.
Grossman probably paid a price for his moderate positions, but it’s doubtful if much courage was required in stating them. In our camp, as they say, it’s allowed and even desirable to say “two states,” “Jewish and democratic,” and “a hollow leadership.” Grossman is an eloquent and impressive presenter of such positions, in Israel and around the world, having exposed the harsh conditions in the territories as far back as 1987, in his book The Yellow Wind. He is unrelenting in his campaign. After the death of Amos Oz, Grossman remains the sole spiritual leader of the Zionist left. At the royal place in The Netherlands they also probably think as Grossman does, that the occupation is bad and that peace should be made.
While Grossman was shaking the hand of the king, another writer, less famous and glittering, was summoned for questioning by the police. Journalist Israel Frey was called to an interrogation after praising, on Twitter, a terrorist who was caught last September in Jaffa, since the terrorist had wished to harm only soldiers, not civilians. “Look what a hero he is. He made it all the way from Nablus to Tel Aviv, and even though all the Israelis around him somehow take part in oppressing, crushing and killing his own people—he still looked for legitimate targets and avoided harming the innocent. In a just world, he would have received a medal,” the tweet read.
Frey was fired from his job at DemocraTV, the quintessential leftist-Zionist TV station, and was later summoned for questioning by the police. He has already paid a price for his statement that no one on the Zionist left has ever paid. If the test of courage is paying a personal price, Frey is a hero.
Frey will not be invited to the royal palace in The Netherlands and will receive no prize for “daring to write about controversial political Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author. This article was first published in Haaretz, Oct. 2, 2022 © Haaretz. Reprinted with permission.
Just Another Dead Palestinian
By Andrew Mitrovica
ON A RECENT MONDAY MORNING, Nov. 21, an Israeli soldier killed Mahmoud AbdelJalil al-Saadi on his way to school. We should not forget him and how he died.
By now, the boy’s name has long been buried along with his body.
Just another forgotten Palestinian reduced to an anonymous number who joins the 199 other Palestinians, including 47 children, who have been killed by an apartheid regime this year alone. [Those numbers grew within days of publication as Israeli violence escalated.] Israel is determined not only to drive Palestinians from their ancestral homelands using illegal edicts and brute force but to obliterate them in invasion after invasion and by attrition.
His name was Mahmoud alSaadi. He was 17. His home was a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. A picture of Mahmoud reveals a teenager with a thick mat of short-cropped, black hair, wearing a happy, if slightly wry, smile. A faint, thin black moustache was the unmistakable sign that this effervescent boy was on the cusp of becoming a man.
That Monday morning, Mahmoud was heading to school along with a gaggle of friends. His father, a relative said, had worked hard to make sure that his son and three daughters got an education as a way out of the grinding despair and toward, if possible, a “dignified future.”
“The occupation killed this joy,” the relative said.
Indeed, it did.
On the way to his high school, Mahmoud—who was at the top of
his class—encountered Israeli soldiers who, in the pay and at the direction of an apartheid state, were raiding Jenin in a convoy of armored jeeps yet again. Mahmoud decided to turn around and return home rather than risk, I suppose, the same fate as Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian-American journalist who was shot in the head while wearing a blue vest with “PRESS” written on it by an Israeli assassin on May 11 in Jenin. Mahmoud did not make it home. (Nor, sadly, did a Canadian youngster, Aryeh Shechopek, PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE AL-SAADI FAMILY aged 16, who was murdered on Nov. 23, while waiting for a bus on Jerusalem’s outskirts to take him to a Jewish seminary.) Instead, Mahmoud was shot in the stomach by an Israeli soldier because he was a Palestinian and nearby. An easy, convenient killing of a child whose capital offense Palestinian high‐schooler Mahmoud Abdel‐Jalil al‐Saadi in Jenin, in the Occupied West Bank. Defense for Children says he was 17 was, apparently, walking to school. and the 50th Palestinian child killed in 2022. A wounded Mahmoud called out to his mates for help, telling them that he had been shot. They thought he was kidding. He stumbled forward for about five meters before resting on the ground. Frantic, his friends ferried his bloodied body by car to a nearby hospital. He could not be saved. He was pronounced dead at 9 a.m. “A civilian succumbed to critical wounds after he was hit by live [Israeli] occupation bullets in the abdomen, in Jenin,” the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed. The Palestinian foreign affairs ministry described the killing as a “field execution” and a “heinous crime,” approved by powerful Israeli politicians. A video taken at the hospital shows Mahmoud lying lifeless on a Andrew Mitrovica is an Al Jazeera columnist based in Toronto. This gurney. Friends and family hover over his pale body, weeping. One article was published on Nov. 25, 2022 in Al Jazeera. Reprinted with man leans in to kiss Mahmoud, now wrapped in a shroud, on his brow. permission. For Palestinians, it was a familiar scene of death, grief and mourn-
ing. But the murder of children no doubt makes that grief and mourning more acute and deeply felt.
It has happened so many times before. A 7-year-old child dying of fear after being chased by Israeli soldiers. Children flying kites have been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers perched on hills. Children playing football on the beach have been dismembered by rockets fired by Israeli pilots from high above.
None of the killers have been held to account. And they never will. Rather, they have been shielded and saluted as “heroes” for having protected Israel by killing Palestinian kids and journalists.
The predictable excuses will be trotted out again to defend the inexcusable. Israel is not to blame for Mahmoud’s death; Palestinians are, for resisting the occupation. Mahmoud was in the wrong place at the wrong time—as if he had another place to live and study. Given the confusing cacophony of war, the Israeli soldier made a regrettable, but understandable, “mistake.”
Much of the international press treated Mahmoud and the violent, state-sanctioned manner of his death as unworthy of their notice or attention.
Just another dead Palestinian.
Western governments and their preening leaders, who are always quick to denounce the killing of innocents by the usual gallery of “rogue” states, have gone mute for fear of offending a nation they believe enjoys carte blanche to shoot Palestinian boys and girls.
It was, of course, left to Palestinians to celebrate Mahmoud’s full life and to condemn his sudden death.
Mahmoud was remembered as a generous soul with a “golden heart” who showed promise and purpose as a member of the Jenin Freedom Theater, where he was a mentor to younger students and a champion of “hope” over misery.
“Your heart was big enough to embrace the whole camp, its streets and its homes,” a friend wrote. “I think of you coming to the stage, and joining the workshops to have fun and play. This is what hurts me the most, that the boy with a golden heart is gone.”
Mahmoud’s body—wrapped in a Palestinian flag—was carried aloft on an orange stretcher through the streets of Jenin, followed by a throng of chanting mourners.
A grey backpack lay at his feet. A poignant reminder of Mahmoud’s youth and his intent to fulfil his father’s dream to enjoy a “dignified future” by going to school.
Mahmoud must not be forgotten. To forget what happened to Mahmoud would mean to accept what happened to him and where and why he was killed. To accept what happened to Mahmoud would mean accepting what happens every day to every imprisoned Palestinian—young or old. To accept what happened to Mahmoud would mean exonerating the perpetrators responsible for his death.
While others may be eager to forget and accept what happened to Mahmoud, we should not. Decency and history demand that we not forget.
Je me souviens. ■
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identified the victim of the abduction as an Android software developer from Gaza, and indicated that he was not the intended target of the operation. “A second Palestinian, who was the alleged target of the abduction, alerted local police,” said the Haaretz article.
The eleven Malaysians who were arrested in connection to the incident could face life imprisonment or death if convicted of kidnapping.
Only four years ago, on April 21, 2018, Dr. Fadi Mohammed al-Batsh, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who was a lecturer in electrical engineering at a Malaysian university was gunned down by two men on motorcycles while walking to a local mosque in Kuala Lumpur for dawn prayers. Hamas later confirmed that he was a member of the organization, but other sources said that he took no part in producing weapons. Israel denied any role in his assassination, although then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman alleged that he was a rocket expert. He ascribed the murder to an internal Palestinian dispute. In January 2022, it was reported that Malaysian police had requested Palestinian cooperation in extraditing a man who was detained on January 10, accused of the assassination. The Hamas-run interior ministry reported that he had confessed to having been recruited by Mossad. Malaysia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
AUSTRALIA CORRECTS BAD DECISION
In October, Australia’s recently elected Labor government announced that it was reversing a four-year-old decision to recognize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. That initiative was taken by the previous Liberal-National Party government of Scott Morrison.
Morrison raised the prospect of transferring Australia’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in October 2018, when his Liberal party faced a key by-election in the Wentworth seat of Sydney, where there is a sizeable Jewish community, whose votes he hoped to rally. The ploy failed and the Liberals lost the byelection, but that December, Morrison announced that Australia would recognize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but keep its embassy in Tel Aviv. Because Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its capital, this was seen as a compromise move at the time in the face of opposition from many people in Australia and from Indonesia, one of its most important bilateral relationships.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that the 2018 decision had undermined peace and “put Australia out of step with the majority of the international community,” although she stressed that Australia was a friend of Israel. The decision was criticized by the Israeli government and welcomed warmly by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh. Hamas gave the move a cooler reception, saying that it was a step in the right direction—no doubt in consideration of the fact that overall Australian policy remains weighted against the Palestinian people.
Bad policy decisions of previous governments in international relations can be put right. When President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. embassy there, he thought that it was an irreversible decision, but it shouldn’t be, especially in light of international resolutions and law. ■
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The Next Iran
By Sohrab Ahmari
WHEN I WAS TURNING 8 or 9, my parents let me pick the restaurant we’d dine at to celebrate my birthday with a few friends. I picked an Indian restaurant not too far from our house in Tehran, more because I was intrigued by the idea of this spicy exotic cuisine than because I yearned for the thing itself. Seemingly playing to such ethnic curiosity, the owners of the restaurant had cranked the tacky-Indian-décor factor to eleven. No matter where you looked, your eyes ended up resting on some tapestry featuring an ornamented elephant fit for a Mughal prince or a statuette of Shiva the god destroyer.
The place was secluded when we arrived, the lighting was dim, and it felt so private that the dining area might as well have been an extension of our own living room (that is, if we lived in a house that could have doubled as a set for “Indiana Jones: The Temple of
Doom”). The sense of secluded comfort must have made an especially strong impression on my mother, who did something unspeakable in the Islamic Republic of Iran as we sat down: she took off her headscarf and laid it on the back of her chair. I won’t soon forget the reactions of our friends and of the waiter hovering in the background—or the mix of bafflement, fear and excitement that overcame me. All of us might as well have witnessed one of those Shiva statuettes coming to life to announce the end of the age in some inscrutable tongue and otherworldly voice. No one said a word, but the looks of shock alerted my mother that something was amiss with her appearance. You don’t do that in Iran, all said, silently. Think of the morality police! After another beat, she raced to bring herself into conformity with the law of the land. The torn fabric of everyday reality reconstituted itself, and A woman standing on top of a vehicle as thousands make their way toward Aichi cemetery in Saqez, soon we, my mother and the waiter inMahsa Amini’s hometown in the western Iranian province of Kurdistan, to mark 40 days since her death. cluded, were laughing about the incident. Now, nearly three decades later, that fabric is coming apart on a much greater—indeed, national—scale. When it finally does reconstitute itself, the country won’t be the same. In response to the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Zina Amini last September (which set off waves of protest that continue to this writing), Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, said in early December that the morality police, known as the gasht-e-irshad, had been disbanded. He added that the government is reconsidering the compulsory hijab rules that have pestered more secular-minded Iranian women, like my mother and my late maternal grandmother, since the revolutionary regime’s beginnings. Although it is unclear whether Montazeri’s statement represents a real shift in policy, it is significant that his off-the-cuff remarks were memorialized by state-run media—though other state organs have notably contradicted him. Whether the hijab rule has been abrogated, and whether the morality police have been formally abolished, the old order is de facto kaput. As the nationalist vlogger Omid Dana—a far more reliable Iran watcher than the likes of the BBC and Voice of America, though sadly
UGC/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Sohrab Ahmari is a founder and editor of Compact magazine, a con‐tributing editor of The American Conservative, and a visiting fellow of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University. First published by The American Conservative on Dec 6, 2022. Reprinted with permission.
his content is exclusively in Persian—has reported, easily 50 percent of women in large cities are no longer covering up. The figures, Dana says, are likely higher in the more affluent neighborhoods. Enforcement is no more. Filmmakers dealing with domestic scenes are reportedly doing double takes of each scene, one with female actresses in hijab and the other without it, in the expectation that they will soon be permitted to show uncovered women on state TV.
What was once unthinkable and unsayable in the Islamic Republic has become quotidian. On state TV, for example, a cleric named Reza Gholami explained why Iran has been exploding with social turmoil:
“In years past, we committed mistakes in governance, and these mistakes have increased of late. One reason has to do with the growing complexity and delicacy of the governing arena. Governance in today’s global conditions has nothing to do with governance 30, 40 years ago...In today’s atmosphere, we have to accept that the security forces have done wrong. For starters, the security forces shouldn’t have been in the business of enforcing hijab in the first place, and this person [Mahsa Amini, the woman whose death at the hands of the morality police sparked weeks of protests] wasn’t even wearing bad hijab to such a degree that it required her detention...And in recent months, as a result of a long process, we confront a vast social polarization, a polarization that is now accelerating, and elements within the Islamic leadership and system caused this polarization to widen.”
These are stunning words. Here you have a member of the ruling clerics taking to state media to blame not the United States, nor Israel, nor Britain, but the regime’s own mismanagement of popular demands. And they are popular. Last month Mostafa Rostami, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative to the universities, conceded that 55 percent of the population, or roughly 44 million Iranians, approved of the anti-hijab protests, according to the regime’s own internal surveys.
What comes next remains unclear. There are those in the West who think these transformations prefigure a regimechange scenario. I used to be among their ranks. But the Middle East’s experience over the past two decades has taught me to be wary of turmoil.
Fact is, the regime enjoys a hard core of supporters who fervently believe its message and materially benefit from it. I would put the figure at about 20 million—20 million people who have given life and limb for the Islamic order founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini and who happen to control the most powerful and prestigious elements of the security forces. Iran, moreover, is a multinational state riven by ethnic and sectarian fault lines. No one should welcome its violent dissolution amid internal turmoil, because a civil-war scenario in Iran would make Syria look benign.
The saner route, as I argued Commentary in 2018 and the New York Post a year later, is a managed transition involving figures inside the security forces, men who realize that Khomeini’s brand of Islamism has run its course, that an Iran governed along more nationalist lines can deliver the normalcy—which is not necessarily liberal democracy—for which the people are so desperate. At stake is nothing less than the stability and territorial integrity of one of the most strategically significant nations on earth. ■
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Special Report U.S.-Saudi Ties Hit a “Rough Patch”
By Stasa Salacanin
THE 13 OPEC member countries plus 10 other oil-producing countries including Russia (referred to collectively as OPEC+) announced in Vienna, on Oct. 5, a sharp cut of output by two million barrels per day, which equals around two percent of global supply.
The announcement immediately caused shockwaves across the entire globe. The decision was roundly condemned in Washington, which believed it had achieved an understanding over this issue during the July meeting between President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and that Saudi Arabia would boost oil production to bring down global oil prices. It has become evident, however, that Biden’s trip has not produced the desired outcome and just confirmed the assumptions of those who criticized his meeting with the Saudi de facto ruler. U.S.-SAUDI DIVERGING INTERESTS The Biden administration immediately accused Saudi Arabia of supporting Russia by increasing its oil profits and lowering the
impact of the sanctions, but the Kingdom as well as OPEC members dismissed the accusations. Suhail al Mazroui, the energy minister of the United Arab Emirates, said that the decision is “technical, not political,” and Haitham al Ghais, the secretarygeneral of OPEC, insisted that OPEC+ is working to provide “security [and] stability to the energy markets.” Many Arab leaders don’t want to take sides in a conflict between Russia, China, the U.S and other Western Despite sporadic at countries. U.S. President Joe Biden and Arab leaders attend the Jeddah Security and Development Summit in tempts to fix the deteri Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on July 16, 2022. orating relations (such as Biden’s July visit), numerous frictions have accumulated over the years between Washington and Riyadh over such issues as the war in Yemen, foreign policy, pricing of oil in the Chinese yuan, energy prices and the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In the words of Joseph A. Kéchichian, a prominent expert on Saudi-U.S. relations and a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, “beyond any misunderstandings that may exist between Saudi Arabia and the United States over the October OPEC+ decisions, there is a desire on the part of the Kingdom not to be taken for granted.” Although Washington is the senior partner in this relationship, he explained that “Riyadh is no longer interested in playing a third fiddle, and would very much like to be taken far more seriously than the United States is willing to grant.” This is the crux of the matter, he insists; this is “the legitimate search for relevance by the world’s premier oil producer.” Washington was naive to expect that Saudi Arabia will automatically follow the U.S.-led crusade against Russia and simply deliver enough oil to keep the prices low. The Saudis evidently refused to Stasa Salacanin is a widely published author and analyst focusing take a hit and opted to continue to fund its own diversification proon the Middle East and Europe. He produces in‐depth analysis of the region’s most pertinent issues for regional and international publications including the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, Middle East jects at home. The Kingdom has significant development plans to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons, such as the erection Monitor, The New Arab, Gulf News, Al Bawaba, Qantara, Inside of the smart city of NEOM—the country’s flagship business and Arabia and many more. tourism project, expected to cost a $1 trillion upon completion.
PHOTO BY ROYAL HASHEMITE COURT/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES
Washington views the recent decision of OPEC and OPEC+ as a hostile and politically motivated act. While the Western world, led by the U.S., tries to enforce the narrative that the current crises and hostilities with Russia and China will reshape future strategic and international relations and expects the rest of the world to choose sides, the conflict is viewed differently in the developing world, particularly in Asia and Africa and including the Gulf region.
Joe Macaron, an independent geopolitical analyst and consultant, observes that the problems between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia predate the conflict in Ukraine and that the Saudi position remains relatively neutral on this issue, neither endorsing the Russian invasion nor imposing sanctions on Moscow.
Kéchichian recalls that Riyadh upheld Ukraine’s sovereignty and voted with Kyiv at the United Nations in a decision that irritated Moscow. This, above all else, “illustrated that Riyadh has not chosen the Russian side—notwithstanding poorly informed Western propagandists whose agenda is to portray a Saudi-American crisis where only temporary misunderstandings exist,” he told the Washington Report. As Saudi leadership is keen to forge solid ties with all global powers, Kéchichian is convinced that Saudi Arabia will continue to pursue such an approach.
However, Macaron thinks that the “conflict in Ukraine reinforced how U.S. and Saudi interests are no longer aligned, especially when there is a Democratic president in the White House.” He noticed that “the Biden administration might seek to mend fences with the Saudi leadership in the coming period,” but believes this might be complicated “given the U.S. domestic pressure and the Saudi perception that this might be Biden’s last term as president.”
ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE MIDTERM ELECTIONS?
While it is no secret that Saudi-U.S. relations had been far warmer during the Trump administration than they are today, some media outlets and authors have speculated that the Saudi decision to cut output was actually aimed at shaking up U.S. domestic affairs just before midterm elections to weaken the position of the Democratic Party. Although it is difficult to assess the calculations of the Saudi leadership, Macaron thinks that although “they definitely considered the political impact of their oil decision on the U.S. domestic politics, this might not have been the primary motivation for their decision.” He noted that “Riyadh’s oil decision is above all a self-serving act.”
Kéchichian also categorically plays down such speculations. He is convinced that “Riyadh is not part of, not interested in, and cannot possibly influence American domestic political life even if wanted to.” He attributes such theses to “daily alphabet soups of entertaining rhetoric” of some media aimed “to fill pages and airwaves.”
WILL THE U.S. RETALIATE?
Loud voices in Congress have called for retaliatory measures against Riyadh. Macaron believes that only a consensus in Congress can impose a change of policy on the White House. However, a cut in oil production does not provide a legal ground for punitive measures; “the U.S. can resort to other outstanding issues to take retaliatory actions against Saudi Arabia if that’s the path it wants to choose.”
Members of Congress have debated legislation that would inflict pain on the Kingdom. For instance, legislative director for Middle East policy Hassan El-Tayyab, from Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), recently published an article on FCLN’s web site that argues that the Yemen War Power Resolution would end U.S. military support to Saudi Arabia—and implicitly Saudi aggression in Yemen. Enacting this legislation would significantly change U.S.Saudi relations, and El-Tayyab believes that this would be an appropriate response to Crown Prince Salman, showing him that Washington’s support for Riyadh is not unconditional and that it is ready to reconsider security guarantees.
The export of U.S. military equipment is also seen as providing leverage over Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is the largest customer for U.S. military equipment, with more than $100 billion in active military contracts. According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Riyadh bought 23 percent of all U.S. weapons sold between 2017 and 2021.
But halting security cooperation could be very short-sighted. “It is not in the interest of the United States to threaten Saudi Arabia; one ought not to cut off one’s own nose as it seeks short-term gains that smack more of revenge than calculated policies,” according to Kéchichian. He recalls that “Washington is the ultimate beneficiary of the eight-decades-long securityfor-oil relationship that has been forged by several administrations, which will continue as long as the United States aspires to lead the international community.” While there is always the option of punishing Saudi Arabia by curtailing or severely cutting the security relationship, he warns that this is a double-edged sword that will accomplish very little.
Indeed, recalibration of U.S.-Saudi relations may affect the overall ties with Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The council members share similar diversification strategies toward great powers, and the U.S. may further weaken its stance in the Middle East.
Both the U.S. and France sought to appease the Saudi leadership ahead of the next OPEC meeting. French President Emmanuel Macron called on the Biden administration to recommended that the U.S. not sue bin Salman in U.S. courts for the killing of Khashoggi. Biden agreed, but this might not be enough; the Saudi prince seeks to ascend to power with the widest global recognition possible. Given the status of the global energy market, “one should not expect a big Saudi policy shift in the next OPEC meeting,” Kéchichian concluded.
The Kingdom’s plans to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons require a steady cash flow, meaning that oil prices must remain at a certain level. It’s that simple. ■
essary measures” to “protect civilians and civilian populated areas” allegedly under attack by the Qaddafi government. At this point the U.N. hardly understood what was happening inside Libya, yet it went ahead and, literally, invited any willing state to bomb Libya.
On March 19, France, the U.S. and UK launched the first sea and air attacks against targets inside Libya. By the end of March, NATO took over by launching its own military operation, code-named “Unified Protector,” to enforce Resolution 1973, aiming to protect Libyan civilians by imposing a no-fly zone over the country. At the time the entire Libyan air force and its civilian aircrafts were already grounded by Resolution 1970. More countries like Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar joined the NATO-led campaign.
NATO STRIKES IN LIBYA
On the night of Aug. 4, 2011, Mustafa alMorabit, his wife Ibtisam, his two sons Mohamed, 5, and Mo’taz, 3, were sleeping in his home in Zlitin, about 170 k.m. east of Tripoli, Libya, when a NATO rocket hit, at 6:30 a.m., killing Ibtisam and their two children. Until today Mustafa, who survived, still does not know who killed his family or why.
In Souq al-Juma’a district, east of the capital Tripoli, Mohamed al-Gharari was asleep on the night of June 19 when a NATO missile hit his family home, killing his brother Faraj, 48, sister Karima, 38, her 44-year-old husband ’Abdallah Shihab, and their two children, Jomana, 2, and Khaled, 7 months old. Eight others sustained injuries. This is the only occasion in which NATO admitted that it might have killed civilians. Later on the same day, the alliance’s statement said “NATO regrets the loss of innocent civilian lives” and blamed “a weapons system failure” as a possible cause for the strike. The bombardment continued and civilian causalities kept mounting, but NATO never acknowledged any more civilian deaths despite conducting some 26,000 sorties over Libya. The destruction of Libya continued for seven months. By the time the bombardment stopped, in October 2011, hundreds of civilians were killed, Libya was ruined and ungovernable, and Qaddafi himself was murdered, paving the way for NATO to declare victory as if it had just prevailed over a superpower.
Eleven years later, no one knows exactly how many women, children and elderly Libyans were killed. While most deaths are well documented, a precise figure has eluded even major international rights groups who investigated what happened. Amnesty International, for example, puts the death toll at 55 civilians while Human Rights Watch estimates the number to be 72, one-third of whom were children under the age of 8. In the latest investigation conducted just last year by Airwars, an independent investigation web site, estimated that anywhere from 223 to 403 civilians were killed by NATO air strikes over Libya from March to October. I conducted numerous eye-witness interviews in 2015 and think the figure is around 200 Libyans killed. Most of the civilian deaths occurred in residential areas, private homes and farm land in more than 10 cities and towns across western Libya, including Tripoli; Surman, west of Tripoli; Bani Walid in the southwest; and Berga, east of the capital.
NATO has never investigated the deaths and still does not acknowledge any responsibility. Over several years I wrote to NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, asking for answers, but no one answered my questions. In October 2015 I attended a NATO-organized event in Madrid, Spain, where I confronted the alliance’s then Deputy Secretary General, Alexander Vershbow and asked whether NATO knew how many civilians were killed in Libya. He denied that a single civilian ever was killed despite NATO admitting to at least one incident—the aforementioned incident in Souq al-Juma’a. His colleague, Catherine Royle, Political SEEKING JUSTICE THROUGH THE COURTS
In 2012, Khaled el-Hamedi, who lost his entire family when NATO destroyed his family residential compound in Surman, in June 2011, brought a case before a Belgian court. Two years later his lawyer, Jan Fermon, told me that the case was rejected because NATO, as an organization, has diplomatic immunity. In October 2021, in Paris, France Fermon reported that he is preparing to file a case before the European Court of Human Rights as a last resort to get some kind of acknowledgment and maybe an apology from the alliance. However the prospects of getting either are pretty slim.
In 2012, survivor Mohamed al-Gharari appointed a Belgian lawyer to hold NATO accountable. He paid him several thousand dollars but nothing happened and the lawyer never contacted him again. Desperate, Al-Gharari turned to me asking if I could get in touch with the elusive Georges Henri Beauthier, the lawyer. I tried several times but in vain.
RESPONSE OF LIBYAN OFFICIALS
The other painful side of the tragedy for NATO victims’ families is purely Libyan. All successive governments that have come to power in Libya since October 2011 failed to do anything to help them. They do not seem to think that their fellow Libyan civilians killed by NATO deserve some kind of recognition.
Worst still, the entire judicial community in Libya, including private lawyers, have for political reasons shunned the issue and hesitated to even meet with the victims’ families. The latest attempt was last summer when Al-Gharari and Al-Morabit petitioned Libya’s Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the matter. Several months later the petition was shelved. Just last November I wrote to several private lawyers in Tripoli asking whether they would meet some of the victims’ anContinued on page 72
Talking Turkey Handshakes and Tensions in Elections Countdown By Jonathan Gorvett
Turkish flags line Istiklal Avenue after the deadly terror attack in Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey on Nov. 16, 2022.
WHEN TURKISH PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdogan grasped the hand of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at November’s opening of the soccer World Cup in Qatar, jaws dropped from Doha to Cairo, and from Luxor to Ankara.
The Turkish leader had supported the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government in Egypt—and even adopted the MB’s four-finger salute after el-Sisi’s troops killed hundreds of MB supporters in August 2013. He had spent years slamming el-Sisi and his military rule.
Yet this enormous U-turn was only one of several undertaken by Erdogan recently, with peace overtures also now underway to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the government of newly reelected Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel.
On the domestic front, former foes in Turkey’s Kurdish political movement have also been courted by senior figures in Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP)/National Movement Party (MHP) coalition government.
Those overtures ended when a horrific bomb explosion on Istanbul’s crowded Istiklal Caddesi Avenue killed six and wounded many more on Nov. 13. Blamed by the government on Kurdish militants, the bombing led to a wave of Turkish airstrikes and artillery barrages on Kurdish targets in northern Syria, along with repeated threats of a ground invasion.
For many, what lies behind these expected and unexpected developments is a single event: the June 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections. Widely described as the most significant in two decades, the balloting will pitch Erdogan and his AKP/MHP coalition against a collection of opposition parties, who have their best chance in years of taking office.
Yet Turkey’s veteran president has a range of cards to play still and a lot of new hands to shake.
Jonathan Gorvett is a free‐lance writer specializing on European and Middle Eastern affairs. THE LONG AND THE SHORT
Elections are often won or lost on the back of economic concerns— and Turks certainly have plenty of those right now.
In October 2022, inflation was running at an official 85.51 percent,
although many would claim that was an under-estimation. The Turkish lira has received a battering in recent times, too, making vital imports, such as oil and gas, much more expensive.
At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered lockdowns, which in turn led to a major slump in one of the country’s most important sectors, tourism.
These factors—and a perception that Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies were fanning the flames of inflation and currency depreciation—have led to a significant boost for the opposition. Six of the opposition parties have also managed to establish an alliance, dubbed the “table of six,” which many Turkish voters appreciate.
Yet Turkey’s wily leader is still very much a force to be reckoned with. On the economy, Erdogan has recently announced a new housing incentive program and an early retirement scheme, popular policies previously advocated by the opposition.
Inflation is likely to fall, too, due to the “base effect”—prices have already risen so much that further rises will start from a much higher baseline. The summer of 2022 was also a good one for the tourism industry; currency devaluation made Turkey a much cheaper destination than its European rivals.
Erdogan’s foreign policy has also helped the economy. NATO member Turkey has maintained good relations with Russia, receiving a flood of Russian oligarchs, oppositionists and draft-dodgers— along with their money—since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More discreetly, Turkey has also become a sanctions work-around for Russian trade with Europe and the West.
Iranians now constitute the third largest foreign purchasers of real estate in Turkey, as their country rumbles with protests and uncertainty.
Erdogan’s sudden friendships with old regional foes also have a major economic angle. “With the economy on a tightrope, Erdogan needs to find as much investment as he can,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, from the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, told the Washington Report. “So he has been much more conciliatory with countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”
A major influx of foreign exchange has thus recently enabled the central bank to stabilize the currency, which in turn should help bring down inflation and ease the burden on Turkish voters.
OPPOSITION DILEMMAS
Erdogan’s domestic woes have been eased further by the inability of the six-party opposition to coalesce around a single presidential candidate to run against him.
The 73-year-old Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the largest opposition grouping, the left-of-center Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), has made it clear he would like to run. But so would Meral Aksener, leader of the right-wing Good Party (İYİ Party). And most opinion polls suggest that the CHP mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, would be more popular than either.
A further divisive issue is the “seventh leg” of the six-leg opposition table—the proKurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP). This is also very much opposed to Erdogan and the AKP/MHP coalition. The CHP is open to including the pro-Kurdish party, but the right-wing İYİ Party cannot work with a group many of its members see as a front for the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), with whom the Turkish state has been fighting since the 1980s.
Sensing this division, the AKP made some conciliatory moves toward the HDP earlier this year, consulting them on possible future constitutional changes and allowing the HDP’s imprisoned leader, Selahattin Demirtas, to visit his ailing father.
After the Istanbul bombing, however, those goodwill gestures ended. The AKP/MHP now uses the HDP (and its alleged connections to the PKK) as a wedge issue to break support away from the İYİ Party.
Meanwhile, on Dec. 14, Imamoglu was sentenced to two years and seven months in jail and banned from politics for criticizing the election officials who overturned his mayoral election victory back in March 2019. While Imamoglu was elected mayor again a few months later, he had called the decision by the AKP/MHP-appointed officials “foolish.” His sentence and the ban must be confirmed by an appeals court.
This illustrates another of Erdogan’s weapons in the 2023 vote: the AKP/MHP’s control over what can and can’t be said, thanks to a battery of draconian media laws.
This control was tightened further in November with the passing of a new online censorship law, which introduced the crime of “disinformation.” This received its first usage after the Istanbul bombing, when social media channels were shut down and TV was banned from broadcasting news of the blast.
That blast was blamed on Kurdish militants from Syria, with the chief suspect described as having got to Istanbul via a shortlist of places Ankara has been looking to attack for several years.
These include Kobane—where U.S. special forces are also deployed, alongside the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and People’s Defense Units (YPG)—and Tell Rifaat, where Russian forces are stationed alongside the SDF and YPG.
Retaliatory strikes on these areas, which came shortly after the bombing, were thus likely limited by the presence of these foreign powers, both of whom have warned Turkey against wider action.
With winter now here, a Turkish ground offensive is less likely, although further air and artillery strikes are almost certain. In the spring, with the Turkish elections by then only a few weeks away, that calculation could change.
“We’ve seen this all before,” Erdem Aydin from the political risk and corporate intelligence consulting firm RDM Advisory in Istanbul told the Washington Report. “In 2015, 2016, 2017—there was an escalation of violence in the run up to elections.”
Until Nov. 13, there had been no bombings in major Turkish cities since 2017. Many will be hoping and praying that the atrocity in Istanbul does not signal a repeat of those grim old days as the Turkish Republic prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2023. ■
USD 300. A policeman or member of the army used to earn the equivalent of USD 1,000 a month and now earns USD 70 and is usually obliged to take on a second or third job, for example driving a taxi, to try to cope.
There are stark contrasts and sharp inequalities. While many shops and restaurants have closed, a number of new ones are being opened. While many of the lovely old Lebanese buildings are in disrepair, huge skyscrapers now fill the skyline and construction is underway on new buildings, for example near the American University Hospital. While Hamra is a shadow of its former self, the Gemmayze night life is vibrant and lively. If one’s salary is dollarized, one can afford to go out, if one is paid in Lebanese pounds it is desperately difficult to survive.
People are unable to access savings in their bank accounts and the fear is that a lot of that money is no longer there, stolen and moved to bank accounts overseas. Rumors suggest that many banks in Lebanon will not survive the present crisis. At the same time, I heard that investment is starting again in Lebanon, which would be encouraging, but I was told it will be essential to stabilize the currency in order to move forward. Some argue that it is good that the present economic collapse happened because in the past the government was heavily subsidizing the costs of medicine and fuel and going quietly deeper into debt, which was not sustainable.
The day before I arrived, Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun had stepped down at the end of his six-year term. People expected it could take more than six months to reach consensus about his successor. In the most recent elections, ten new independent candidates were elected to the parliament. Although this is not a large number, it was a positive step and these new parliamentarians are now endeavoring to share with the public the discussions in government, a welcome change from the past when little was known about such deliberations. In the wake of the maritime oil exploration agreement with Israel, and the last elections where they lost seats, I heard that (Top) An old building in the Hamra area of Beirut. (Above): The American University of Beirut gate on Bliss Street.
The corniche boulevard along the sea coast. INSERT: The old lighthouse in the Manara area of Beirut.
Hezbollah had reduced its level of preparedness for conflict.
Many feel that the present crisis is the worst Lebanon has ever faced. Some are doubtful the country will be able to recover this time. Some people I asked bristled when I referred to the fabled resilience of the Lebanese population. People are tired and discouraged. The country is still feeling the repercussions of the devastating Beirut blast and the failure of the government to be held accountable. Many people who can are again leaving the country, as they did during Lebanon’s civil war. On the other hand, one person quoted to me a proverb that if you throw a cat in the air, it will always land on its four feet. It remains to be seen.
It is of course impossible to know what the future will bring for Lebanon but on a personal level it was good to be there. I took long walks across Beirut, revisiting my high school and the Raouche neighborhood I lived in 50 years ago, sparking many memories but also noticing a lot that has changed.
I went to a multimedia exhibit called “Allo Beirut” in the Beit Beirut building. It uses video and audio tapes to recall the Beirut of the 1960s, and through the civil war, and is evocative of Lebanon’s multi-confessional character. Beirut remains a beautiful city, with the corniche and the sea, the lovely green haven of the AUB campus and the old buildings still standing. Of course, it goes without saying that Lebanese food is still the best in the region.
Despite the current obstacles, I still believe in the strength and positive energy of the Lebanese people and hope they will once again be able to meet the formidable challenges facing their country. ■
Special Report Flooded with Corruption: Pakistan’s Relief Effort By Hasan Aga
A disheveled man stands in front of what used to be his home.
*The names of people and organizations have been changed for reasons of confidentiality and safety concerns.
AS THE MONSOON clouds congregated over Pakistan, people barely batted an eyelid. A country born out of conflict has grown accustomed to being tested in various ways and often without warning.
Pakistanis are enduring a plummeting economy, skyrocketing inflation and serious political upheaval with the popular Prime Minister Imran Khan having been ousted in a controversial move in April 2022. So when the skies turned grey and the clouds rained down mercilessly, the Pakistanis just took it in stride. But as the days went by and the rain failed to relent, the water levels rose and the battlehardened Pakistanis knew what was coming. Neglected infrastructure eventually relented and people, homes and everything in between were washed away in another blow to an exhausted society.
Pakistan is no stranger to natural disasters. The 2005 earthquake took almost 80,000 lives, and the floods of 2010, 2011 and 2012 devastated the country; thousands lost their lives, and damages were estimated at $16 billion. According to Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority, the death toll from the 2022 floods has reached nearly 1,700, displaced over 33 million and caused economic damages to the tune of $40 billion.
Hasan Aga, an avid explorer of foreign cuisines, cultures and history, writes on his travels and work across conflict zones, natural wonders and all places in between. GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO UNPRECEDENTED FLOODING
Visiting Pakistan in October 2022, I met and spoke with individuals representing various associations who are playing an active role in the flood relief and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
I asked district-level government official Junaid Khan* about the government’s strategy to address the country’s most recent aquatic disaster and its rate of progress.
“I would say if we break it down into three phases—immediate response, relief work and rehabilitation—we are into the last one. I would say we are currently at 60-70 percent completion. We have faced a number of challenges, such as getting people back into their homes where the water has receded, helping rebuild these homes, stopping waterborne diseases and getting general life back on track. Then we have to implement permanent changes before the next disaster, and that is what would bring the process up to 100 percent,” Khan said.
Earlier in the relief effort, he said, their responsibilities included settling internally displaced persons (IDPs) in makeshift and established tent sites, ensuring education isn’t disrupted, tending to sick and injured residents and vulnerable livestock and creating medical camps.
“More recently the flood has ended and water is standing still, so we have focused on ration packs and hygiene kits, nonfood items,
setting up water filtration systems and dewatering the flooded areas so people can go back.”
Did he feel the government’s response where he was working—the north western provinces of Pakistan—has been adequate?
“Within the government, the usual limitations have remained: a lack of manpower and the need for more resources. Most flooded areas have flooded every 10-12 years with smaller floods in between. The weather and climate patterns here are well-established and people did prepare for them.
“Reforms the government took after the 2010 floods, such as modifying irrigation channels or building embankments, were probably not enough. But on the whole, the government responded fairly well. On the provincial and federal levels, a lot has been done to structure relief efforts and give working capital to district commissioners, which has helped in mitigating some issues.”
That is a fair and modest response: acknowledging room for improvement while conveying a belief that the government was there for its people in their time of need.
Pakistan is home to a large contingent of local and international NGOs who specialize in a broad range of social issues. Often in developing countries, concerns are raised that charitable funds go missing, never quite reaching the intended recipients, or are misused. Well-intentioned donors have expressed a need for accountability to ensure that donations reach those in need.
One such Karachi-based organization, Sindh Charitable Trust (SCT)*, was started at the turn of the millennium. Operated with efficiency, it consists of a handful of board members responsible for raising and providing funds, an accountant, and one man on the ground who does it all— Iftikhar Abbasi.*
Abbasi has been with SCT for the past 17 years, organizing and executing all relief operations for every disaster which has taken place in the country over the past two decades. SCT relies solely on Abbasi’s network, experience and volunteers to carry out its action plans. “The people of Pakistan have big hearts,” Abbasi observes. “We have never had an issue in recruiting volunteers who come out in great numbers at a moment’s notice.”
SCT plays a significant and active role in the flood relief; it provides temporary shelters and access to healthcare, distributes essential ration bags and rebuilds homes in affected areas. I asked Abbasi for his opinion on how the government has responded to the country’s latest crisis. He hesitated to comment on the government’s efforts for obvious reasons: as making the wrong enemies in a country like Pakistan can easily be a fatal move.
“When the 2005 earthquake happened, I worked in the affected areas for five years. For two and a half years we worked in Muzaffarabad and the government at that time was giving 25,000 rupees per house. I often observed a team of four people—a local teacher, a patwari (government official who keeps records regarding the ownership of land), an army official and a member of an NGO—go to homes to survey the damage before handing out the payments, which could also go up to 50,000 rupees (roughly $250). At that time, about 95 or 96 percent of people received the money promised; we used to ask people whether they actually received it.”
Abbasi added that people might have received money after the recent monsoon, but since he is not a government worker he has no way of knowing for sure.
“The biggest difference between this time and the 2005 disaster is that the losses people have suffered have not yet been compensated for. Not only were people’s homes and possessions destroyed, but also their livelihoods; the majority of the victims are farmers, and their crops have been washed away and their livestock reduced significantly.”
In Abbasi’s opinion, the government could do more. “All the survivors I have met and helped are so worried. They are concerned about their living conditions and how they will build their homes to take care of their families. They need homes as soon as possible so that they can focus on their work and earning money. These are poor people who do not have much to their names and if they don’t work they don’t earn. They need stability,” Abbasi said.
“This time the government has not responded in a manner commensurate with the scale of the crisis. I haven’t heard it from anyone within my NGO network, nor seen for myself where the government is helping
PHOTO BY HASAN AGA A relief worker walks through the rubble.
flood victims in a particular area or doing anything extraordinary for them.
“People didn’t get basic facilities such as food and water from the government which they should have received. I’m sure it did contribute to the relief effort, but it hasn’t done anywhere near enough. Maybe the government has not received enough funds, though with funds coming in from around the world I don’t think that is the case. Unfortunately, what is more likely to be the case is that they are receiving funds but those funds aren’t reaching the flood victims.”
It seems to be the country’s worst-kept secret that so-called leaders plot and scheme their way into power to fill their foreign bank accounts before joining the back of the queue for another go. This abuse of power and selfish mentality has infiltrated the society top-down.
“I have heard that the government has received funds but they haven’t yet announced that they will donate money to people, or how they will divide between building them homes and repairing the damage.”
Abbasi seemed pensive when I asked him about government neglect. “It saddens me to say this because I love my country and I don’t want this type of message to be sent out—but I believe that this government has no interest in their people anymore, especially the poor.”
Unfortunately, I understood what he meant by that. My last visit to Pakistan in 2019 brought me nostalgia and optimism. A hopefulness for the future. Even though things were difficult back then, the people’s spirit and resilience shone through during my six-week trip. I left wanting to return sooner than I did and felt that the people of Karachi were unbreakable.
Fast forward to October 2022, and just ten days in the former capital eradicated any sense of hope I once had. The struggle of daily life had reached a new level of chaos. The underlying mood of the public was on a knife edge. It felt like they’ve just had enough. That they have been let down one too many times, and now they are doing whatever they need just to survive. I caught glimpses in markets, businesses and homes of what Abbasi meant when he said the government just doesn’t care.
A makeshift tent beside flood water.
THE NEED FOR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
Iftikhar Abbasi’s insinuation that government funds were mismanaged was somewhat confirmed by Khan’s* response when I asked him what he thinks the government can do better moving forward.
“More accountability over spending, more third-party validation and watchdogs, more training for long-term relief work. This is especially needed in ignored areas, such as child and women protection, protection from violence, encouraging psychosocial support. And finally, some evidence that we will fix our water and drainage systems in the long term to minimize loss of life and property damage when this happens again.”
I pressed him further on the very first recommendation, accountability over spending and he said: “It’s not as easily discernible how well each district administration has spent this money, how much is toward longterm change, and how accountable we can hold everyone.”
When I asked Khan how corruption influenced this year’s natural disaster, he pondered the question before confessing it was hard to say. “In the 2005 earthquake and the 2010 floods, a lot of private and state actors made money—as is true everywhere in every crisis. Funds are pilfered and relief trucks burgled. Things go missing. Receipts forged. However, I can say quite a lot of work has been done to try and tackle this. Donors and nonprofits especially have kept us accountable. Nonetheless, more accountability and transparency won’t hurt.”
Pakistan has always been a country with limitless potential. It’s a land blessed with an abundance of natural resources, landscapes of vast range, a culture steeped in tradition and a complex culinary cuisine the people take great pride in. However, as I have found through my travels in many developing countries across Asia, it’s the people who are emblematic of all that is right and wrong with the state.
Having a strong connection with Pakistan and having travelled there often since childhood, it’s been highly frustrating and saddening to witness a country and people of such promise gradually being brought down to its knees. Talented and gifted people who have the ability to excel in all walks of life are held down by a culture of systemic corruption, bribery and nepotism, which has slowly become woven into the fabric of the country. Whereas those at the top do engage in corrupt practices for fortune, the rest do it simply to survive. If Pakistan wants to break this downward spiral, the collective must finally be prioritized over the individual. ■
fiance, Dr. Forough Khadem, was a passenger on Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 from Tehran to Kyiv, brought down by an Iranian missile on Jan. 8, 2020.
Canada’s recent measures target 10,000 IRGC personnel by making them permanently inadmissible to the country, as well as restricting their financial transactions in the country. Doustshenas’ organization says those actions are a “significant step” as they aim to limit the influence of the Iranian regime in Canada and support the feminist uprising in Iran.
He said he hopes Canada also targets some of the people involved in the shooting down of Flight PS752 and in the crackdown on the popular uprising in Iran. Amini’s death has had a far-reaching impact, he noted. “Her name is becoming code for the revolution. The Iranian people don’t just want relaxed hijab rules, they don’t want the Islamic regime anymore,” he said.
Immigration lawyer Arghavan Gerami said she believes if Canada does decide to include the IRGC on the Terrorist Entities List, the move could have far-reaching and “unintended” consequences. Anyone who worked for the organization would have to prove they did not make a major contribution to the crimes committed.
Gerami told the Washington Report that even if a person was working for the IRGC to support family but they opposed the regime themselves, they could still be caught up by the “potential of inadmissibility.” According to Gerami, a finding of inadmissibility for human rights violations will not subsequently allow the person to make an application for humanitarian and compassionate permanent residency to overcome inadmissibility.
“The only option would be to seek relief through a government minister, which may take several years and in some cases more than a decade, with very low chances of success,” she said.
Gerami explained that having an inadmissible family member will also cause problems for other family members. “I think this is why Canada has been reluctant to make a decision on this, and I do not disagree with proceeding with extreme caution because of the far-reaching consequences,” she explained.
Canada recently sanctioned six more individuals and froze their Canadian assets. Two companies that support the Iranian regime also face Canadian sanctions. Qods Aviation Industries designs and pro-
duces combat drones and was founded by the IRGC. Shahed Aviation Industries, a research and development firm connected to the IRGC’s Aerospace Force, is also on the sanctioned list. As of November 2022, Canada had imposed sanctions on 99 Iranian individuals as well 181 Iranian entities, including the IRGC and the regime’s security, intelligence and economic organizations. NDP TAKES A STAND ON PALESTINIAN RIGHTS BUT MORE COULD BE DONE In an August 2022 letter to specific party supporters, New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh presented 13 policy (Advertisement) demands he plans to pursue with the federal Liberal government on Palestine. Palestinian advocacy organizations like Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and the National Council of Canadian Muslims have since thanked him for his announcement. Singh has been criticized over the years for refusing to discuss Palestine when speaking with Canadian media and for preventing candidates from running in the 2019 federal election because they supported Palestinian rights. He Playgrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds for our children. It is a minimal recognition of their right has also been hesitant to supto childhood and creative expression. It is an act of love. port the BDS movement and has regularly met with leaders Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 non- from the Center for Israel and profit organization, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunteer organization (no paid staff) that raises money through- Jewish Affairs (CIJA) to hear out the year to construct playgrounds and fund programs their concerns. for children in Palestine. However, several NDP MPs Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestin- have also signed IJV’s Together ian olive oil is PfP’s principle source of Against Apartheid pledge. fundraising. This year, PfP launched “New Democrats believe AIDA, a private label olive oil from Palestinian farmers. Please come by and Canada must do far more to taste it at our table. work toward peace in Israel and We hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry. Palestine,” Singh’s letter said. For more information or to make a donation visit: In his 13 demands, Singh https://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 • Yardley, PA 19067 asks the federal government to specifically respond to the
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports, refer the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to the ICC, and condemn the construction of illegal settlements and home demolitions in the West Bank and evictions from East Jerusalem, including in Sheikh Jarrah.
“It is time for Canada to show the principled commitment required to help bring an end to the occupation,” he writes.
Yet Just Peace Advocates and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute are now calling on the NDP to go further and withdraw from the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group (CIIG). Former NDP MPs, as well as Noam Chomsky, Roger Waters and Linda McQuaig are just a few of the 200 signatories to the request, made in an open letter to Singh. “Over the past 18 months the NDP has made important strides in opposing Canada’s contribution to Palestinian dispossession,” the letter states, pointing out Singh's 13 demands to the Trudeau government on Palestinian rights. Yet, the writers continue, the NDP is still part of a group promoting “greater friendship” with Israel.
In 2018 the NDP was asked to leave CIIG when Israel launched an attack on Gaza. At the time, the party said no NDP MP would be leaving the group.
Heather McPherson, the NDP Critic for Foreign Affairs, says the party’s policy on Israel/Palestine is unchanged. “Our party believes that both Israelis and Palestinians have the unconditional right to live in peace and security, and that all actors involved have responsibilities they must uphold in order for peace to be achieved,” McPherson said in an emailed statement to the Washington Report.
She added that at their most recent convention, the party passed a resolution to advocate an end to trade and economic cooperation with illegal settlements as well as to suspend bilateral trade of all weapons and related materials with the State of Israel until Palestinian rights are upheld. Yet McPherson did not respond to a question from the Washington Report about the NDP’s membership in CIIG going forward.
Meanwhile, as a response to Singh’s 13 demands, the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) started an email campaign called “Tell Jagmeet Singh This Letter Doesn’t Promote Peace,” asking their supporters to take action and email Singh in protest.
PHOTO COURTESY SAKEENAH
Sakeenah’s executive director Zena Chaudhry.
WINNIPEG MUSLIM WOMEN’S SHELTER OPENING SOON
A new women’s shelter that aims to serve the needs of Muslim women in Manitoba is set to open in Winnipeg soon. Sakeenah (Arabic for serenity) already operates shelters in Toronto, Ottawa, Brampton, London and Montreal. With room for 13 women and their children, the Winnipeg shelter is a partnership with Islamic Social Services Association (ISSA). The shelter receives no public funding and is mainly funded through private donations, grants and community partners.
“There is a growing Muslim population in Manitoba, and there are a large number of immigrants that have settled, and will continue to settle, in Winnipeg,” the shelter’s executive director, Zena Chaudhry told the Washington Report. Chaudhry added that she founded Sakeenah in 2018 to “fill a gap in the system.”
Chaudhry said the organization decided to open a shelter (their first one west of Toronto) in Winnipeg when they began receiving an increasing amount of phone calls from Muslim women in Manitoba during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet Chaudhry said the need for a Muslim women’s shelter in Winnipeg already existed several years before COVID.
“Muslim women are looking for refuge and safety, but mainstream shelters do little to address their religious and cultural needs,” she said. Chaudhry also explained that from her own research, uneducated refugees who face language barriers and financial struggles are challenged when trying to access services.
Islamophobia is prevalent at a lot of shelters. “I personally have heard stories where Muslim women have tried to escape abusive situations at home, only to be met with abuse at shelters,” she explained. Some women will actually stay in an abusive situation rather than deal with the mainstream system.
Reaction to the shelter from the Manitoba public has been positive. Corporate donors, families, other shelters and the community at large have all been working together to help the organization set up.
Sakeenah plans to open three more locations soon, including in Winnipeg and Mississauga. “These services are for the community and we are elated when we see the community come together to ensure that those who need these services are able to access them,” Chaudhry concluded. ■
Special Report The Rise of Dubai-Based Reality TV: They Weren’t Kidding About the Bling By Diana Safieh
(L‐r) Ebraheem Al Samadi, Danya Mohammed AKA Diva Dee, DJ Marwan Al‐Awadhi AKA DJ Bliss, Fadie Musallet, Zeina Khoury, Safa Siddiqui, Lojain Omran, Loujain Juffali, Brianna Ramirez, Farhana Bodi and Kris Fade attend the Netflix celebration of the latest Arabic reality show “Dubai Bling,” with an exclusive gathering of Dubai's “elite ton" at the INTI Edition Hotel, on Oct. 20, 2022, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
WATCHING “DUBAI BLING” reminded me of Lola and Bruce, sibling canines who found homes at the same time. When I got my dog Lola, she was driven around in a Citroen C3, while the wealthy couple who adopted Bruce flew him around the world on a private jet—two very different dog (not to mention dog-owner) experiences. Watching “Dubai Bling” is a bit like that. They are Arab like I am Arab, but the similarity ends there. And who doesn’t love a bit of voyeurism into a lifestyle so unlike one’s own? The morbid fascination is akin to watching a true crime documentary or road traffic accident: It might horrify us, but we can’t look away, and we love to be given a safe space to judge how others brought misfortune on themselves. The characters on “Dubai Bling” almost beg to be judged; after all, they chose to go on this public platform where the only thing they are offering, rather than any kind of actual talent, is an insight into their personal lives.
The cast of “Dubai Bling” describe themselves as “materialistic and proud” and feature real estate CEOs, Saudi TV personalities and socialites alike. They shop for trinkets like a $300,000 necklace that involve the same amount of deliberation as I put into deciding whether to splurge on a cafe latte.
Does this program give you insight into Dubai culture, where 88 percent of the population are expats? To be honest, I don’t know. This show definitely confirms what I presumed about Dubai being the Arab Disneyland full of extravagance and luxury. But I can’t tell you how realistic it is. I don't think anyone is watching it hoping to get a representative sample of the population!
What it does show us is that every day is a school day. Or at least, that the fights are definitely very school playground in nature. Seriously, is anyone capable of having a party or a professional work event without a loud argument and someone storming out, followed by days of all the interested parties having lunches to discuss the interactions? Whatever happens, in
Diana Safieh hosts We Knew The Moon Podcast, on all things em‐path, spiritual, witchy, unexplained, creepy and spooky. She is a co‐founder of The Goddess Temple, Twickenham, which holds guided meditations and workshops, like Tea & Tarot and Make Your Own Smudge Sticks. She hosts a monthly webinar series on the situation in Palestine/Israel for The Balfour Project charity.
Dubai, every day is definitely a fashion show.
Now, I confess, I love this kind of trashy TV. After a long hard day, I no longer have the headspace for any kind of intense viewing where I have to think too hard. My mum always complains that these shows put her to sleep, and I argue that that is one of their main purposes: easy viewing to help you unwind.
So I’ll admit I had already seen “Bling Empire,” from which “Dubai Bling” has spun off. Set in Los Angeles and focusing on its wealthy Asian population, think the reality TV show version of “Crazy Rich Asians.” But unlike that show, “Dubai Bling” is half in Arabic. This makes a pleasant change and it is wonderful hearing all the different accents. It is also fantastic to hear some Arab music on the soundtrack.
On a serious note, this show does tackle some issues often taboo in Arab cultures, such as divorce and therapy, and one of the main storylines involves Safa debating surrogacy for her next pregnancy. Watching everyone, including other women, telling Safa what to do with her body, what God would be OK with and what is “natural” was incredibly hard viewing, especially from a Western perspective.
There is one scene where Ebraheem mansplains feminism to the women (who sadly in this case, needed it). I had to remind myself that the fact that these conversations were happening at all on an Arab show was progress. And it had its unintentionally comical moments, involving people with Botox and breast implants accusing one another of being fake.
One thing I take issue with is the lack of diversity within the cast. There is no one openly from the LGBTQI+ community, for example. This is understandable with the laws regarding this in the region. But to a Western audience, it is noticeably absent. There isn’t anyone who isn’t fabulously wealthy. They do all technically have jobs (in the real estate and entertainment industries, CEOs and influencers). A lot of the scenes are at their work events. Whether they work is a different matter!
The majority of the cast are from the Arab world. If you want a bit more diversity in terms of origin stories, check out “Real Housewives of Dubai,” which features a bunch of ethnicities, including the fabulous model Chanel Ayan from Kenya. I mean, who brings a goat to a party as a gift? The opening credits start with “Those that think money can’t buy you happiness clearly haven't been to Dubai” and that sets the tone for the rest of the season.
If you want an iota more substance with your viewing, try “Dubai Hustle.” The Dubai equivalent of “Selling Sunset,” you at least get to see inside some obscenely flamboyant properties in between the office politics and the shouting matches.
Did these shows make me feel sick? Yes.
Did it feel obscene during this cost-ofliving crisis? Yes.
Did I binge the whole season of “Dubai Bling” anyway? In one sitting, no joke.
Will I watch season two when it comes out? Most definitely. ■
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