The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - October 2023 - Vol. XLII No. 6

RESISTANCE AND BUSINESS ON THE OLIVE TREE FRONT RESISTANCE AND BUSINESS ON THE OLIVE TREE FRONT

TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982

On Middle East Affairs

Volume XLII, No. 6

October 2023

INTERPRETING THE MIDDLE EAST FOR NORTH AMERICANS ✮ INTERPRETING NORTH AMERICA FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE

8

How Anarchy in the Jewish Supremacist Regime Affects Palestinians—Two Views

—Mouin Rabbani, Marwan Bishara

12 The Resistance vs. the Palestinian Authority: Will Abbas Lead Palestinians to Civil War?

—Dr. Ramzy Baroud

14 Arab States Normalize Relations and Navigate Their Own Futures—Two Views

—Dale Sprusansky, Dr. James J. Zogby

18 Israeli Border Police and Israel Defense Forces Have Free Rein to Torment—Two Views

—Gideon Levy, Yossi Melman

21 A Letter to IDF Soldiers Ellen Siegel

28 AIPAC Targeting Omar, Bowman and Other Progressives in Democratic Party Primaries

Michael Arria

30 Rep. Rashida Tlaib Speaks Out Rashida Tlaib

22 It Is Time to Confront Jewish Intolerance as Well as Anti-Semitism—Allan C. Brownfeld

26 Congress Attempts to Repair Relations With the Usual Tactics Julia Pitner

34 It’s Time to End U.S. Military Aid to Israel and Egypt

Walter L. Hixson

38 Blatant Hypocrisy in Response to Russian, Israeli and U.S. Aggressions Ron Forthofer

50 Georgetown Imam Hendi on His Life and Faith

—Phil Pasquini

44 British Government Pushes Anti-Boycott Bill

46

John Gee

Are Extremists Dragging Libya into a Dangerous Form of Islam? Mustafa Fetouri

52 Meet Samir LanGus: The Musician Who Brought Moroccan Blues to the U.S. Emilie Pons

62 Celebrating Zeina Azzam’s Some Things Never Leave You Ida Audeh

ON THE COVER: A woman waves a Palestinian flag during a demonstration on May 18, 2023, in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, protesting the annual Israeli flag march through Jerusalem. Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, Israel and the entire diaspora are united in their support for dignity, civil rights, as well as peace and justice for all.

(PHOTO BY YOUSEF MASOUD/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Other Voices Other Voices

Israel’s Rotten, Racist Justice System Is “Liberating” Jerusalem, Gideon Levy, Haaretz

“Apartheid,” Says Tom Friedman, Philip Weiss, mondoweiss.net

“Zionism Is an Ashkenazi Thing”: How Zionism Engineered the Expulsion of Iraq’s Arab Jews, Salman Abut Sitta, mondoweiss.net

It Should Be No Surprise Religious Nationalists Are Ascendant in the “Jewish State,” Ghada Karmi, mondoweiss.net

Judea vs. “Fantasy Israel”

Ilan Pappé, www.palestinechronicle.com

DEPARTMENTS

5 PUBLISHERS’ PAGE

6 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

54 WAGING PEACE: Will Saudi Arabia Normalize Relations With Israel?

59 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS: Introducing Kuwait’s First Female Ambassador to the U.S.

61 BOOK TALKS: The Causes of U.S. Militarism in the Middle East

64 MIDDLE EAST BOOKS REVIEW

70 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST—CARTOONS

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Palestinians Remain Holed up in Internment, Not “Refugee,” Camps, Thomas Suárez, www.middleeastmonitor.com

“Capital of Shatat” and Palestinian Agony: The Uncomfortable Truth

About Ain Al-Hilweh, Ramzy Baroud, www.ramzybaroud.net

For Arab Americans, Blue Is not Blue, Dr. James J. Zogby, www.aaiusa.org

OV-8

OV-6

OV-9

OV-11

The Time Oppenheimer Met Ben-Gurion to Discuss Israel’s Nuclear Quest, Amir Oren, Haaretz OV-12

Blackwater Paved the Way for Wagner, Ibrahim Al-Marashi, www.aljazeera.com

OV-15

American Educational Trust Publishers’ Page

Impunity Amid Obfuscation

Social media is abuzz with two disturbing images from Palestine. The first is a photo of a man whose face had apparently been branded with the Star of David by Israeli forces. Israel and its supporters maintain the image was the result of a shoe imprint. We’ll let you decide who to believe (pp. 1820). The second was video of a young man being shot in the back by Israeli soldiers as he was running to help an injured individual. The Washington Report relentlessly covers the stories, both infuriating and inspiring, that gain little traction across the mainstream news. Indeed, this issue begins with an examination of how Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is now being obfuscated by ongoing protests concerning proposed changes to Israel’s judiciary (pp. 8-11). Allan C. Brownfeld also provides a useful background on the often-ignored history of racism within the Zionist movement (pp. 22-24).

Israel on Debate Stage

Foreign policy didn’t play a prominent role in the first Republican presidential debate, but unsurprisingly Israel was at the forefront of the limited discussion. Nikki Haley, who bent over backward to appease Israel during her tenure as President Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador, accused entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy of wanting to cut off U.S. funding for Israel. Her criticism stems from Ramaswamy’s recent interview with Russell Brand, during which he expressed hope that by expanding the Abraham Accords and securing regional peace, the U.S. would be able to wean Israel off military assistance. In many ways, this is reminiscent of thencandidate Trump’s false promises of being a businessman-like mediator who could use fairness and economics to forge Middle East peace. Ramaswamy quickly stepped back his comments to Brand, telling Haley he admires Israel’s

border policies, tough on crime approach, national identity and Iron Dome system.

Same Old Same Old Politics

The Haley-Ramaswamy exchange is just the latest example of how both Democrats and Republicans constantly stomp over each other to prove their pro-Israel bona fides. Speaking of which, here’s a special shout out to former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who got a jump start on the pro-Israel lovefest by taking the debate stage wearing a U.S.-Israel flag pin! Perhaps he’s hoping the Israel lobby will jump in to support his underdog campaign. Speaking of which, Ramaswamy was decidedly right about one thing on the debate stage: Too many of our politicians are bought off by special interest groups. And few are stronger and more unashamed than the pro-Israel lobby. See pp. 26-30 for the latest on pro-Israel efforts in Congress.

Tragic Update

Our last issue featured an article about Hazem Muhanna, a Gazan antiques collector whose prized possessions were destroyed by an Israeli airstrike earlier this year. In August, we received word from author Ahmed Dremly that Muhanna suddenly passed away. Muhanna told the Washington Report that “The Israeli occupation relentlessly seeks to erase our historical existence, demolishing the tangible

remnants that connect us to our past.” Muhanna’s life may be over and his collection in shambles, but thanks to a Gazan reporter, the occupier has not successfully erased his memory. Palestinian history, culture and resistance will triumph.

Other Voices for All

This issue includes a complimentary copy of our Other Voices supplement. We hope you enjoy the extra 16 pages of gripping content and decide to add Other Voices to your subscription for just $15 a year.

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Our postcard insert also returns this issue. We encourage you to send this postcard to your elected officials so that they know their constituents are serious about peace and justice in the Middle East. If you’ve picked up this magazine at a conference, from a friend, at our bookstore or in your local library, classroom, house of worship or favorite restaurant, we hope you will use the subscription postcard to join our readers! If you’d like to see copies of the Washington Report in your community, or share the magazine with your book club, current affairs discussion group or classroom, email your name, mailing address, the date of your event(s) and the number of copies we should send to multiplecopies@wrmea.org.

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Make a Difference Today!

A Palestinian farmer in Nablus, in the West Bank, harvests her olives on Oct. 13, 2021. This ancient tradition has become an act of resistance amid the threat of attacks by Jewish settlers. (See pp. 31‐33).

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HOW TO RESPOND TO BOGUS CHARGES OF ANTI-SEMITISM

I would like to comment on an excellent article by Thomas Suárez titled “We need to stop confronting Israeli propaganda on Israel’s terms,” which was featured in the August/September edition of the Other Voices supplement. Suárez writes, “The response must correctly throw the charge [of anti-Semitism] back and include words that the smear was intended to silence: ‘No, don’t try to cover up Israeli apartheid. You’re the Zionist. That’s anti-Semitism!’ Or, ‘I’m arguing for simple human rights. You are smearing Jews as opposing these?’ Or, ‘The only anti-Semitism here is from Zionists defending Israeli apartheid against Palestine in the name of Jews.’”

I would like to add that I believe another appropriate response would be the following: “Look what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Although I am deeply disturbed by the mistreatment of the Uyghurs, I do not believe it is necessary for me to justify that I am not harboring anti-Chinese sentiments to anyone. Why is it that I never hear Chinese Americans yelling and screaming like crybabies whenever the Uyghur

issue is brought up? So, tell these Zionists to grow up and knock it off.”

Yuhuda Littman, Brooklyn, NY

FOLLOW-UP ON REVIEW ABOUT MUGHRABI QUARTER

I read the review of In the Shadow of the Wall in the August/September issue. While the information is fascinating, I can’t imagine ever having the time or patience to read all 400 pages of the book. Like the reviewer, I hope for an abridged version. In fact, a 2,500-word article by Vincent Lemire, perhaps accompanied by some of the Gilles Caron photos mentioned in the article, seems like a perfect fit for the Washington Report. I would like to learn more about the Mughrabi Quarter, and I’m sure many others would like to, as well.

Michael Keating, Olney, MD

CANADA’S SUPPORT FOR STATUS QUO IN ISRAEL

Canadian politicians quietly accept Israel’s gradual annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories where over three million Palestinians endure martial law. Gaza’s two million residents exist in a similar state of Israeli military control

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over all land borders, coastal regions and airspace. Canada is equally silent on this situation.

Israel’s traditional indifference to international accords such as the Geneva Convention is a vastly greater threat to its democracy than any judicial tinkering by Likud members. A genuine democracy requires more than formal mechanisms like voting.

Palestinians in the occupied territories face stark choices: exercise their legal right to resist, emigrate or accept Israeli domination. This situation can be changed and Canada ought to stop enabling and supporting the unjust status quo.

Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, Canada

SILENCE OF U.S. CATHOLIC CHURCH ON PALESTINE

I am a Catholic with a Jewish grandmother. My eyes and heart were opened to the suffering of Palestinians by my Jewish American theology professor. I have protested the occupation alongside Jewish Americans, Jewish Israelis and even a World War II Jewish Holocaust survivor. I have been a Catholic Church worker for parishes and dioceses and have developed a Holy Land ministry program that shines a light on the plight of Palestinians that is both informative and a call to action. Yet, the institutional church has done very little to raise the issue of Israeli human rights violations.

So I ask: Have people so given up on the U.S. Catholic Church that they don’t even call out the U.S. bishops for their silence on Palestine suffering under the apartheid regime of Israel? Muslims throughout the West Bank and Gaza are most certainly suffering from incursions, attacks, arrests, etc. And we should be acting in solidarity with their suffering and calls to the international community for justice.

But it is the “living stones” of our faith, Palestinian Christian families, who are also suffering from the daily horrors and humiliation of occupation, as well as land theft of Christian buildings through annexation!

And finally, our Jewish sisters and brothers living in Israel also suffer: some are killed (but many, many more Palestinians have been killed), but all are

KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS COMING!

Send your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>.

pawns (especially the fanatic fundamentalist settlers), used by the corrupt, racist, military apartheid regime of the Netanyahu government.

And yet, the U.S. institutional Catholic leadership, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is silent!

Richard DeBona, via email

TIME FOR BIDEN TO GET TOUGH WITH ISRAEL

I am appalled that our U.S. government is aiding terrorist attacks by Israeli settlers and the army on defenseless Palestinian civilians, including young children. For decades, the U.S. government has donated billions of dollars in aid and provided diplomatic impunity to facilitate these terrorist attacks.

From drone strikes to settler terrorist attacks, Israel is intensifying efforts to drive out all Palestinians to usher in a “greater Israel.” Israel has launched several attacks on Palestinians with new weapons, including deploying U.S.-made Apache helicopter gunships inside the West Bank and firing a targeted assassination aerial strike.

Jewish settlers have also raided Palestinian villages in the West Bank, attacking residents and setting fire to homes and vehicles. Mariam Barghouti, senior Palestine correspondent for Mondoweiss, calls the attacks “an intensification to completely take over Palestine.”

The growing violence is reflective of the leadership of Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar BenGvir, who recently called for

the renewing of Defensive Shield, a military operation in 2002 that has been condemned for “crimes against humanity.” This all comes as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has agreed to accelerate the process for approving new settlements in the West Bank despite criticism from the United Nations, European Union and United States.

Mr. Biden, it’s time to stiffen your spine and call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to immediately halt Israel’s terrorism, end the occupation and lift the siege of Gaza.

Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA ■

OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page supplement 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.

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Two Views

How Anarchy in the Jewish Supremacist Regime Affects Palestinians

Israeli reservists sign a declaration form refusing to volunteer and to be called for reserve duty during a protest in Tel Aviv on July 19, 2023. A contentious government plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary has cleaved deep rifts within Israeli society. Those rifts have infiltrated the military, where reservists in key strategic units have pledged not to show up for reserve duty if the legislative changes are pushed through.

Israel: Impunity Comes Home to Roost

By Mouin Rabbani

THE CONTENTION that the roots of Israel’s current political crisis are to be found in its policies toward the Palestinian people is gaining currency. According to this perspective, the authoritarian legislative agenda of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, and the methods deployed to achieve it, represent the inevitable and inescapable culmination of Israel’s 75 years of op-

Mouin Rabbani is a co‐editor of Jadaliyya and non‐resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.This article was posted on Aug. 5, 2023 on Al Jazeera. Copyright Al Jazeera and reprinted with permission.

pression and repression of the Palestinian people, and particularly its systematic eradication of the rule of law in the Arab territories it has occupied since 1967.

Some additionally suggest that Netanyahu and his far-right allies’ primary motivation for promoting the legislative program is to acquire powers with which to more intensively dispossess the Palestinian people.

It is an admittedly appealing argument, especially for those making the point that Israel’s claim to be a “Jewish and democratic state” is in fact a confession of ethnocracy and for those seeking to promote the inclusion of Palestinian rights within the agenda of the movement protesting the government’s reform plan.

The idea that Israel is experiencing a blowback in its domestic politics from its policies toward the Palestinians does have some

basis in reality. To state the obvious, a Jewish supremacist regime necessarily empowers Jewish supremacists.

This, coupled with expansionist policies which require systematic violence and the permanent subjugation and dehumanization of the Palestinian people, has over time elevated the most extremist and messianic leaders to the pinnacle of power.

As in similar situations throughout history, such forces tend to view any obstacle to their objectives, including established institutions and dissenting members of their own community, as disloyal elements that need to be neutralized.

The above notwithstanding, to interpret Israel’s current crisis as an organic product of its policies toward the Palestinians, or as a domestic replication of Israeli methods of rule vis-à-vis the Palestinians, is to fundamentally misunderstand both the nature of this crisis and the Palestinian reality.

Clearly, mass demonstrations carried out by Israelis at regular intervals throughout the country have not been criminalized, and those participating have, when confronted, encountered police forces using batons and water cannons rather than military units with snipers who shoot to maim and kill. Whatever one may think of Netanyahu and his plans for the Israeli judiciary, his government was constituted on the basis of an election and his agenda is being adopted by a parliament that the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens embrace as the legitimate if not exclusive representation of their collective political will.

All this is a rather far cry from the Palestinian reality of being ruled by a foreign military government under a colonial regime imposing extraterritorial legislation by force.

The assertion that this crisis could have been averted if Israel had adopted a constitution may well be mistaken since constitutions, like judiciaries, can be revised and indeed replaced altogether.

More clearly nonsensical is the claim that Israel refrained from adopting one because it would otherwise have to declare its borders, and either enshrine equality for all its citizens or formally proclaim ethnocracy.

Constitutions do not delineate borders. And it is a matter of record that Israel’s 1948 declaration of statehood promised equality to those it was in the process of ethnically cleansing from their homeland, and that in 2018, the Knesset adopted a Basic Law defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people rather than of the citizens of the state.

Israel’s failure to adopt a constitution primarily reflects its founders’ unwillingness to take a position on the vexed question of religion and state, thus avoiding polarization between the rabbinical establishment and secular elites. These two sides have clashed over the definition of Jewishness, but they have displayed remarkable consensus on denying Palestinians their rights.

Similarly, the current crisis is first and foremost an internal dispute within Israel’s Jewish population and elites about the governance of their ethnocracy and the role of its institutions.

If advocates of the government’s agenda state that it will better enable them to dispossess the Palestinians and annex their lands, which indeed it will, this reflects marketing more than motivation. In Israel, apartheid sells better than authoritarianism, and “Nakba

Now!” rates better than letting crooked politicians off the hook. The government would hardly garner the same level of support for its judicial agenda if it were to proclaim that a key objective is to enable senior politicians like Netanyahu and Aryeh Deri to dodge accountability for corruption indictments.

The broad Israeli consensus on the dispossession of the Palestinians has also been apparent in the fact that most protest organizers have actively fought to exclude the rights of Palestinians— including of those who are Israeli citizens—from their movement.

Meanwhile, Western governments also seem more incensed by the institutional degradation of Israel’s ethnocracy than its existence or persistence. Criticisms, condemnations and boycotts of Israel, its government, military and economy, considered taboo if undertaken in response to its eradication of Palestinian rights and lives, are proudly announced and even encouraged in defense of a judiciary that is institutionally guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The priority of the West—and its sole interest in the matter—is the stability of its strategic ally. That’s how the “rules-based international order” works—rules and rights only enter the equation if violated by rivals and adversaries.

Yet this crisis is, in significant part, of the West’s own making. For decades, and increasingly in recent years, it has ensured total impunity for Israeli leaders. It is only natural that these leaders conduct themselves like spoiled toddlers, grabbing and smashing anything and everything within reach, and directing tantrums at their enablers in Washington and Brussels at the slightest hint of reservation about their course of action.

They have, through endless repetition, been desensitized by their Western sponsors to consideration of consequence. It no longer exists in their calculations, and they have as a result become incapable of inhibition.

It might additionally be observed that it is a little rich for the West to spend decades celebrating Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, losing no opportunity to strengthen it with acts of commission and omission, and then have a meltdown about the entirely predictable consequences of doing so—primarily because Israeli authoritarianism complicates their Middle Eastern policies in ways that support for apartheid never could.

It is in this sense that impunity has come home to roost. As always, the price will be paid within the region, mainly by Palestinians and, to lesser extent, by Israelis as well.

Is Netanyahu Good for Palestinians?

By Marwan Bishara

“NETANYAHU: THAT’S GOOD FOR THE JEWS,” or so read the posters circulated by his ultraorthodox and ultra-Zionist Chabad supporters during the 1996 Israel elections, which the novice

Marwan Bishara writes extensively on global politics and is widely regarded as an authority on U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East and international strategic affairs. He is a senior political analyst at Al Jazeera, which posted this article on July 27, 2023. Copyright Al Jazeera. Reprinted with permission.

Likudnik leader won in a surprise upset against seasoned Laborite Shimon Peres. He has since won five other elections, becoming the longest serving prime minister in Israel’s short history.

But Bibi’s dishonesty, deceit and hunger for power eventually caught up with him. He was indicted on three corruption charges in 2019 and lost the premiership after the 2021 elections.

Instead of resigning, however, he godfathered a new coalition government of the most fanatical and fascist parties and bulldozed his way through the country’s justice system on the assumption that what’s good for Netanyahu and his contemptible allies is good for the Jews—in that order.

Bravo.

Netanyahu has quickly taken on the world of Israeli cutthroat politics, gutting the supreme court and the judiciary with a broad political razor and paving the way for the transformation of Israel’s Jewish democracy into a Jewish autocracy. In the process, he’s pitted Jew against Jew, the religious against the secular, the generals against the rabbis, and dragged the country toward the abyss. That’s hardly good for “the Jews,” but is it bad for the Palestinians?

True, this government is bent on expanding Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements and deepening its system of apartheid throughout “the Land of Israel” or historical Palestine. And it is determined to increase its terrible repression and violence in order to keep the Palestinians down or force them out of their homeland.

But it is also true that the Palestinians have suffered for many decades at the hands of consecutive Israeli governments, regard-

less of their ideological leanings. In fact, the last coalition government was just as bad as the present one and yet got away with carrying out its misdeeds because, among other reasons, it included an Arab party.

In other words, the Palestinians do not have much more to lose but quite a lot to gain from the breakdown, anarchy and alienation produced by Netanyahu’s narcissist fanaticism. Especially because of Israel’s long history of defining its colonial presence as a zero-sum game in which Palestinian losses are Israeli gains. The opposite, in that case, is also true.

Here is how Israeli misfortunes might turn into Palestinian good fortunes—if Palestinians play their cards right.

For a starter, Israel can no longer boast, albeit falsely, that it is a liberal Jewish democracy when a simple parliamentary majority eliminates the judiciary oversight over the executive to pave the way toward autocracy and when Jews, like Palestinians, become subject to discrimination under the law for not being the “right” kind of Jews, as defined by the country’s ultraconservative religious fanatics.

This is sure to damage Israel’s image and standing among its liberal Western allies, especially the United States. In recent days, keen American observers have gone as far as to claim that “this is the end of the U.S.-Israel ‘special relationship,’” and long-serving Jewish American officials have called for the end of U.S. aid to Israel, which could translate into many billions of dollars of losses. Such development would also erode Israel’s regional and international standing, which has long been promoted and protected by the United States.

A group of protesters carry flags with watermelon illustrations, symbolizing the Palestinian flag with its colors red, yellow, black and white since they are not allowed to carry the real flags, as Israelis gather to protest Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform in Tel Aviv, Israel on Aug.12, 2023.

PHOTO BY MUSTAFA ALKHAROUF/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Although I do not buy into Israel’s apocalyptical vision of its security, the increasing number of reservists, including generals and pilots, who refuse to serve under a corrupt, autocratic government is chipping away at the army’s morale and the country’s deterrence. Indeed, considering the army’s centrality to the garrison Jewish state—an army with a state attached—fissures in the military could easily mutate into a violent societal fracture.

Such internal schisms are seen by Israelis as more dangerous to Israel than all external threats. This is especially the case as hard-nosed former generals and fanatical rabbis spearhead the growing secular-religious divide and in the process, militarize and theologize their fight, rendering reconciliation improbable, paralysis dangerous and leading to even greater escalation.

Already, the political, security and social instability created by Netanyahu’s move on the judiciary has prompted international credit rating agencies to warn against the “negative consequences” and the “significant risk” facing the Israeli economy. The country’s finances are shrinking, its foreign investments are contracting and the stock market is falling.

All of this will lead to fewer Jews immigrating to Israel and more Jews leaving it. In a July poll, more than half of the respondents feared civil war, and some 28 percent said they are considering leaving the country. That’s in addition to about a million Israelis already residing outside the country, notably in the United States,

which millions of Jews consider the true promised land. With the United States considering lifting the visa restriction on Israelis, expect many more to leave.

In sum, Bibi’s blessings in the form of dreadful international standing, social upheaval, political alienation, civil disobedience, human rights violations, economic contraction and greater exodus are not good for “the Jewish state” but could work in favor of the Palestinians.

This requires that the Palestinian leaders learn quickly how to manage the complexities of this new phase of their struggle with apartheid Israel, starting with national unity. Interestingly, as the Israeli leaders were busy tearing each other apart, the Palestinian leaders met in Ankara on July 26 at the initiative of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to arrive at national reconciliation and unity.

The timing couldn’t have been more pertinent. As Netanyahu drives colonial Israel toward the abyss, eyes wide open, it is incumbent upon the Palestinians to exploit the mounting Israeli dissatisfaction, alienation and bitterness and to connect with those elements of the Israeli society willing and able to fight along with them for a truly egalitarian democracy for all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, regardless of race, gender or religion.

The darkest hour of the night comes just before dawn. ■

Activists denounce the discrimination of women using public transport services in Israel’s ultra‐Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, on Aug. 24, 2023.The protest came after media reports that several bus drivers in recent weeks had forced women to either sit in the back or simply refused to take them on board.

PHOTO BY JACK GUEZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Resistance vs. the Palestinian Authority: Will Abbas Lead Palestinians to Civil War?

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

THIS IS THE PERFECT opportunity for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to exit the stage. But he will not.

Abbas’ brief visit to the devastated Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on July 12, in what was promoted as a “solidarity“ visit to the camp, demonstrated the absurdity and danger of the PA and its 87-year-old leader.

As he walked, Abbas struggled to keep his balance.

Thousands of frustrated Jenin residents took to the streets, hardly chanting Abbas’ name. Some looked on with disappointment; others asked where the president’s forces were when Israel in-

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book, co‐edited with Ilan Pappé, Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out, is available from Middle East Books & More. Dr. Baroud is a non‐resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is <www.ramzybaroud.net>.

vaded the camp, killing 12, wounding and arresting hundreds more.

The BBC reported on a “huge armed deployment” to secure Abbas’ visit, where “PA security forces joined a thousand-strong unit of Mr. Abbas’ elite presidential guard.” Their only job was to “clear a path” for Abbas into the camp.

On the initial and most deadly first day of the Israeli invasion of Jenin, Israeli media, citing military sources, said that 1,000 Israeli soldiers were taking part in the military operation.

Yet, it took more Palestinian soldiers to secure Abbas’ brief visit to Jenin.

Indeed, where were those well-dressed and equipped PA soldiers when Jenin was fighting and dying alone? And why does Abbas need to be protected from his own people?

To address these questions, it is important to examine recent contexts; three dates in particular stand out:

On July 5, Israel ended its military operation in Jenin.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the crowd during his visit to Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on July 12, 2023, after Israeli forces left the camp in ruins on July 5.

On July 9, despite protests by some of his security cabinet members, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would do its utmost to prevent the collapse of the PA. He stated outright that the PA “works for us.”

And, finally, on July 12, Abbas visited Jenin with a stern message to Palestinian resistance groups.

These three dates are directly related: Israel’s failed raid on Jenin has heightened the significance of the PA in Israel’s eyes. Abbas visited Jenin to reassure Israel that the PA is up to the task.

To live up to Israel’s expectations and to ensure its survival, the PA is willing to clash directly with Palestinians who refuse to toe the line.

“There will be one Authority and one security force,” Abbas declared angrily, only days following the burial of Jenin’s victims. “Anyone who seeks to undermine its unity and security will face the consequences,” he added, further promising that “Any hand that reaches out to harm the people and their stability shall be cut off.”

The hand in reference is not that of Israel, but any Palestinian who resists Israel.

Abbas knows that Palestinians despise him and his PA. Just days earlier, Fatah party deputy Chairman Mahmoud Aloul was removed from Jenin by angry crowds. The crowds chanted in unison, “get out,” to Aloul and two other PA officials.

They did, but Abbas returned to the same scene. He arrived in a Jordanian military helicopter. Waiting for him on the ground was

a small PA army that had taken over the streets and the high buildings—or whatever remained of them—in the destroyed camp.

All of this happened through logistical arrangements with the Israeli military.

But why is Netanyahu keen on the PA’s survival?

Netanyahu wants the PA to survive simply because he does not want the Israeli occupation administration and military to be fully responsible for the welfare of Palestinians in the West Bank and the security of the illegal settlers.

Despite its near complete failure, the Oslo Accords succeeded in one thing: it provided Israel with a Palestinian force whose main mission is to assist the Israeli occupation in its quest to maintain total control over the West Bank.

Abbas’ trip to Jenin was intended to reassure Tel Aviv that the PA is still committed to its obligations to Israel.

Another message was sent to U.S. President Joe Biden, who has, in a recent interview, cast doubts on the PA’s “credibility.” Biden told CNN, “The PA is losing its credibility,” and that has “created a vacuum for extremism.”

The message to Washington was that the hands of the so-called “extremists” will be “cut off,” and that there will be “consequences” for those who defy the PA’s will.

Abbas seemed to speak, not only on behalf of the PA but on behalf of Tel Aviv and Washington as well.

Even ordinary Palestinians understand this to be the case; in fact, they always

have. The only difference now is that they feel strong and emboldened by a new generation of resistance which has succeeded in reclaiming a degree of Palestinian unity, amid factional politics and PA corruption.

The PA is now seen by most Palestinians as the obstacle to full unity. While Israel was ramping up its deadly operations in Jenin and Nablus, the PA police was arresting Palestinian activists, angering resistance groups in the West Bank and Gaza.

If this continues, a civil war in the West Bank is a real possibility, especially as Abbas’ potential successors are equally distrusted, even by Fatah’s own rank and file. These men were also in Jenin, standing shoulder to shoulder behind Abbas as he was frantically trying to lay out the new rules.

This time around, Palestinians are unlikely to listen. For the resistance, the stakes are too high to back down now. For the PA, losing the West Bank means losing billions of dollars of Western financial handouts.

A clash between the resistance and their popular support, on the one hand, and the West- and Israel-backed PA forces, on the other, will prove very costly for Palestinians.

For Tel Aviv, however, it is a win-win. This is why Netanyahu is anxious to help Abbas keep his job, at least long enough to ensure that the post-Abbas transition goes through efficiently.

Palestinians must find a way to block such designs, preserve Palestinian blood and restructure their leadership, so that it represents them, not the interests of the Israeli occupation. ■

Two Views

Arab States Normalize Relations and Navigate Their Own Futures

How to Engage an Increasingly Autonomous Arab World

By Dale Sprusansky

ESTEEMED U.S. DIPLOMAT Chas Freeman joined the Middle East Forum of Falmouth on Aug. 6 to discuss the role of the U.S. in the Middle East, and perhaps more interestingly, the role of the Middle East in the world.

He began by discussing the increasingly independent thinking of many countries in the region. “The era of foreign dominance of the crossroads of the world that began with Napoleon’s 1798 invasion and occupation of Egypt is clearly over,” Freeman said. “The Arab states of the region are in the process of freeing themselves from past patron-client relationships.”

Freeman believes this new era of relations benefits the West. “In return for protection, these [Arab] countries offered obsequious deference to their patrons’ interests and policies but undertook no reciprocal obligations,” he said. “States in the region have been more likely to embroil their patrons in wars than to save them from enmeshment in them.”

The emerging new status quo also offers Arab states the freedom to form their own future, free from the demands of any one great power. The U.S. should not be offended or threatened by this approach, Freeman asserted. “What is happening is not, as Washington mindlessly asserts, an effort by China, Russia or any other great power to replace American hegemony in the so-called ‘Middle East’ with its own,” he stated. “Nor are the states of the region either open to or in search of alternative dependent relationships. They are in active pursuit of strategic autonomy through diversification away from political and economic overdependence on the United States….Rather than attaching themselves to a single protector, these states have filled their

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir‐Abdollahian (l) and Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud (r) hold a joint press con‐ference following their meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Aug. 17, 2023. Their countries are seeking greater diplomatic ties and regional stability.

Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

dance cards with multiple great power partners. They offer fealty to none.”

Amid the new reality, Freeman believes the U.S. should reassess the basis of its interaction with the region. “American policies that equate security with militarism, ignore political, economic, trade and cultural factors, and rely on sanctions and ostracism rather than diplomatic dialogue have proven seriously counterproductive,” he said. “This explains the paradox that, while U.S. air, naval and ground forces continue to be present in all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council as well as in Iraq and Syria, the United States is perceived to be in retreat from the region.”

The solution? “The countries of the region need reassurance that Washington is a reliable supporter of their interests rather than the unilateralist champion only of its own,” Freeman argued. “To this end, the United States must earn their cooperation by offering tangible economic and political benefits.”

While this advice seems straightforward, Freeman doubts that the U.S. will be able to put aside zero-sum competitions with Russia and China, as well as its own military-centric tendences and embrace the region’s desire for greater autonomy. “The operative question is whether the United States, with our current ‘you’re with us or against us’ mentality and obsession with ‘great power rivalry’ could muster the flexibility to help put in place a framework that would serve more than our own selfish interests,” he said. “It is hard to be optimistic about this.”

Meanwhile, Arab countries appear to be thus far benefiting from reducing their reliance on Washington. Taking their own initiative has allowed them to “make progress on issues that had long been viewed as intractable,” Freeman noted. “Years of ef-

forts by Iraq and Oman to facilitate the restoration of Saudi-Iranian relations culminated in the successful Chinese mediation of rapprochement between the two countries. Since then, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have normalized their previously hostile relations with Syria. Egypt and Turkey have moved to end the rift between them.”

Reality Check on Saudi-Israel Normalization

By Dr. James J. Zogby

THERE HAS BEEN a great deal of commentary about a possible U.S.-engineered Saudi-Israel normalization agreement: what it would actually do; whom it might benefit; and, most important, whether any such arrangement is even possible given current political realities in the United States and Israel. A Saudi-Israel agreement would, no doubt, be consequential, but to introduce a touch of reality, let’s look at some of the exaggerated claims that have been made.

THIS WILL BE END OF THE ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT

It most decidedly will not. Since the convening of the Madrid Peace Conference and culminating with unanimous Arab League endorsement of the Arab Peace Initiative, Arabs have

Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry (r) meets with his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan, in Cairo on Aug. 15, 2023.

Dr. James Zogby is president of the Washington, DC‐based Arab American Institute, founded in 1985. His highly ‐acclaimed book, Arab Voices, is available at Middle East Books and More.

made it clear that the conflict is not existential. The central issue of concern has always been Palestinian rights.

Even in countries that have made peace with Israel, public opinion indicates that normalization is desirable and that their support rests on the belief that engagement with Israel may give their governments more leverage to press for an end to violence and for Palestinian rights. Despite regional weariness with this conflict, Arab leaders and their publics still react with outrage when Israel commits new atrocities or violates Muslim rights in Jerusalem.

THIS WILL CHANGE THE MAP OF THE MIDDLE EAST

The map of the Middle East has already changed. For all intents and purposes, the once powerful military-led “Republics” of the Levantine and North Africa have lost their dominance in the Arab world, with leadership shifting southward to the Arab Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia and UAE, for example, are playing transnational roles across the region as well as with global powers. No longer allowing their policies to be solely directed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the UAE are deepening economic ties with China, remaining neutral on Ukraine, and reopening diplomatic ties with Iran. In pursuit of their ambitious economic development and societal goals, both Gulf powers are seeking regional stability and calm. This is how they are working to change the map of the Middle East.

Israel and the U.S. apparently want to turn back the clock from this changing Middle East with the goal of offsetting China’s growing role by swinging Saudi Arabia and the UAE back into an exclusive U.S. orbit and creating a united front to challenge Iran.

THIS IS A DISASTER FOR THE PALESTINIANS

A Saudi-Israel normalization would have no consequential impact on the plight of the Palestinians. In reality, Arab states have limited leverage over Israeli behavior. Agreements Israel made in the lead-up to the Madrid Conference made no difference, and neither did the Oslo Accords, the Arab Peace Initiative or the Abrahamic Accords. Israel continues to gobble up Palestinian land, build new settlements and brutally violate Palestinian rights. The only address that matters in changing Israeli behavior is in Washington. If the U.S. really wanted to make Arab-Israeli peace a reality, it would use its diplomatic and political capital to do so.

If Saudi Arabia holds out for terms that include a real end to the oppressive occupation and if the U.S. is intent on pushing this process forward, the entire effort might have a positive impact on the Palestinian future. If, however, the normalization process moves forward without anything positive for Palestinians, it wouldn’t be a disaster—it would be same old, same old.

THIS SPELLS THE END OF THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION

Normalization would not spell the end of the two-state solution because that ship has already sailed. There is no conceivable government that can be formed in Israel, now or in the foreseeable future, that would allow for anything close to the minimum

requirements of an independent, sovereign and viable Palestinian state.

At this point, the calls for a Palestinian “state” come from those who refuse to recognize the realities created by Israel’s massive settlement and Jewish-only infrastructure that have made real Palestinian independence and sovereignty impossible. Refusing to accept this and falling back on the mantra of “support for the twostate solution” may make them feel good, but it’s based less on reality and more on wish-fulfillment and the desire for absolution.

With Palestinian Arabs comprising slightly more than one-half of the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with Palestinians increasingly integrated into the Israeli economy, with Israeli settlements, infrastructure, “security zones,” checkpoints and with Israeli apartheid policies in place, we are in for a long hard slog forward toward creating a unitary democratic state with equal rights for all.

THIS WILL GIVE BIDEN A MUCH-NEEDED VICTORY BEFORE THE 2024 ELECTIONS

While it is doubtful that anything close to the kind of Saudi-Israel normalization being touted in the U.S. and Israeli press can occur, an agreement of any sort will not add five votes to the Biden column in 2024. Democrats and Republicans are deeply polarized, and independent swing voters won’t be moved by foreign policy issues—except for Ukraine. Jewish voters will overwhelmingly support the Democratic nominee because of the domestic policies embraced by the GOP. And while Jewish voters may be concerned with the future of Israel, because of their growing unease with the orientation of the current Israeli government, they will not be impressed with any White House celebration that puts Binyamin Netanyahu center stage.

All of this begs the question: Can any form of Saudi-Israel normalization even happen given current Israeli and American politics? This topic deserves a more complete discussion, but it should suffice to say that as much as Israel may want an agreement, leaders in Netanyahu’s coalition and leaders of the opposition have made it clear that they are unwilling to agree to Saudi Arabia’s insistence to process nuclear materials and their desire to purchase advanced military equipment from the U.S. Nor are any government or opposition figures in Israel willing to entertain even the most modest concessions regarding Palestinian rights.

While Republicans would be loath to provide President Joe Biden with support for any form of agreement that would enhance his election year standing, he will also find it difficult to find support within his own party for concessions to Saudi Arabia on nuclear material or increased sales of military hardware.

Bottom line: It’s time to end the hyperventilating over the prospects of a Saudi-Israel normalization agreement. The better approach is for the U.S. to embrace the new realities of a changing Middle East in which Israel is an outlier and for the U.S. to accept its responsibility as the enabler of the Israeli occupation and its apartheid system. ■

Two Views

Israeli Border Police and Israel Defense Forces Have Free Rein to Torment

Israeli “Heroes“ Execute Arabs with Impunity

By Gideon Levy

THE VIDEO CLIP is horrific. A group of young men are caring for a wounded man who is lying on the road, with cries of people living nearby heard in the background. A man wearing a white shirt is seen running toward the injured man. An ambulance sounds a siren. And then, suddenly, the horror. A gunshot is heard and a bullet hits the man in the white shirt, who is shot from behind. He falls on his face.

Amid Al-Jaghoun, a 33-year-old electrician with three children, is in the hospital in critical condition. On Aug. 22, he was transferred

from the Rafidiyya Hospital in Nablus to the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah. A photo of him laughing with his infant son is no less sad than that of Batsheva Nigri, also a mother of three, who was killed at almost exactly the same time near the West Bank settlement of Beit Hagai. Israel of course mourned only Nigri. It barely heard about Amid Al-Jaghoun from Beita, near Nablus.

Amid Al-Jaghoun was the victim of an attempted execution. There is no other way to describe the circumstances of this criminal and repugnant shooting. An unarmed man is going to assist a wounded man lying on the road, and a sharpshooter aims at his head and shoots him from a distance. This is the time to lament the fact that there is (still) no death penalty in Israel. If there were, perhaps Al-Jaghoun would at least have been executed after some legal proceeding.

In the meantime, one can carry out executions without a trial, for no reason, just for the hell of it. Perhaps in order to satisfy the lust for shooting or the wish for revenge among soldiers and Border

Israeli soldiers conduct a search operation in the Palestinian village of Beita in the occupied West Bank, on Aug. 21, 2023. Amid Al‐Jaghoun was shot from behind by an Israeli sharpshooter as he ran to assist a wounded man lying in the road.

PHOTO BY JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author. This article was first published in Haaretz,on Aug. 24, 2023. © Haaretz. Reprinted with permission.

Police. Maybe they wanted to say how they killed a terrorist when they got home. Perhaps it was because they knew that no harm would befall them if they shot a Palestinian in the head.

Shooting someone trying to give first aid to a wounded person is a war crime of the highest degree. I hope that as a result of the judicial overhaul, Border Police like the one who shot the electrician from Beita in the head will from now on be vulnerable to prosecution by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. There they might pay for their crimes. Here, they will be considered heroes.

Their victim threatened no one, he was unarmed, and one may assume that he did not take part in the legitimate resistance of Palestinian residents to the invasion of their village Beita by Border Police. Beita has been fighting for many months against the robbery of their land by the insolent and evil outpost of Evyatar.

Amid Al-Jaghoun is not the first victim in this village, nor is he the last. He is also not the first or last person to be executed in recent weeks.

This week I was in Jericho in order to record the circumstances of the death of a 16-year-old youth, who was on his scooter in the adjacent refugee camp of Aqbat Jaber. He too was shot to death by Border Police, from a distance, not in the head but in the chest, a small tactical change. This too was an execution.

Last week we related the insane shooting at a car that was driving by. One student was killed and his friend was wounded, for no reason. A month earlier, another crazy shooting at a moving car. This time, the shooting left two young people disabled. What about the soldier in Nabi Saleh, who fired from a distance, hitting two-anda-half-year-old Mohammed Tamimi in the head and killing him in June? Was this not an execution? When you fire a volley at a parked car, in which a baby has just been placed, you execute him.

In the prevailing reality, such executions will only increase. The

media almost never reports them. No one would be flustered even if they were duly reported. The protest movement is looking the other way—in its view, street executions are not related to democracy.

When everything is enveloped in the framework of a war on terrorism, with only Palestinians deemed terrorists, with the army and police carrying out executions without being designated as the killing agencies of a terrorist state; when attacks are defined as terror attacks only when Palestinians kill Jews—it’s no wonder that the story of the attempted execution of an electrician from Beita was published almost exclusively in Haaretz. After all, who is interested in someone being shot in the head, just like that, as if it were nothing?

Israeli Police are Sadists With a Gun License

By Yossi Melman

THE SHOCKING ABUSE of a 22-year-old Palestinian from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shu‘fat by 16 Border Police officers is reminiscent of the worst days of dark regimes. A Star of David was branded on the detainee’s cheek; he was suspected of drug dealing.

In June 1962, members of an Argentinian organization called Tacuara kidnapped a young Jewish girl, Graciela Sirota. Tacuara was a radical, right-wing, proto-fascist group and among its members were police and army officers.

Yossi Melman is an intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent for the Haaretz newspaper who covers military issues. This article was first published in Haaretz on Aug. 21, 2023. © Haaretz Reprinted with permission.

A freezeframe from a video shows the moment before the unarmed Amid Al‐Jaghoun, wearing a white shirt, is shot from behind in Beita on Aug. 21, 2023

AGENCY

The kidnapping came amid a wave of anti-Semitism that swept Argentina and other countries in South America. The spike in anti-Semitic incidents was a response to the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann by Mossad agents in Buenos Aires two years earlier, and his execution by hanging following his trial in Jerusalem a few weeks before Sirota was kidnapped.

Sirota’s kidnappers carved a swastika on Sirota’s forehead before releasing her. The incident caused shock and horror in Argentina’s Jewish community. The headlines in Israel screamed of the dangers to Jews. Just like at the time of the pogroms in Czarist Russia, where the mob would shout out “Kill the Jews and save Russia,” a similar sentiment was prevalent in Argentina.

Following the torture endured by Sirota, a Mossad unit called Bitzur was sent into action. The unit’s role was to bring Jews to Israel from countries where they were in danger and also to organize Jewish self-defense units in Jewish communities around the world. Bitzur agents recruited young Argentinian Jews, mostly from Zionist youth movements, and brought them to Israel where they underwent training in weapons and sabotage, intelligence collection and radio and surveillance techniques. When they returned home they would join the “frameworks.” The frameworks had first worked in Morocco in the 1950s and then later in Algeria and Tunisia. Now they were expanding to South America.

The Palestinians don’t have a Mossad or frameworks that can defend them from the cruel occupation and the abuse they suffer. The way the settlers conduct themselves today is reminiscent of the pogromists in Russia: Beat the Arabs and save Israel.

On the face of it, the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police as the sovereign in the occupied territories are supposed to defend the Palestinians as well. That is clearly stated by international law and the Geneva Convention. Moreover, for years Israeli governments explained that the courts—which are held in high esteem by the international community for their independence and judgment—serve as a shield for IDF officers against prosecution for war crimes and occupation by the International Criminal Court. That is also the main argument made by the defense establishment against the annulment of the reasonableness standard which the High Court of Justice is scheduled to debate in September.

But in Israel 2023—where Netanyahu rules with a tailwind from a radical, right-wing, messianic, clerical coalition—neither the IDF, the courts nor the police are capable of defending the Palestinians, assuming they even want to.

Unlike Argentina in the 1960s, in Israel today there is no need to set up proto-fascist militias—although the settler militias are certainly reminiscent of them—in order to fulfil the right wing’s desire to savage the Palestinians. Most members of the Israel Police—run by a minister who is a convicted terrorist, fascist and radical racist—understand which way the wind is blowing.

The growing violence perpetrated by Israel’s police against demonstrators at the anti-judicial overhaul protests and against Palestinians shows that the spirit of their commander, National

Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the apathy of Netanyahu and the rest of his government, are seeping into the ranks.

It’s hard to believe that what looks like a Star of David is not a Star of David and that any resemblance is purely coincidental and nothing more. What’s more, lying, coordinating witness statements and whitewashing investigations have reached the level of a work of art at the Israel Police. I have never come across a case, in which shoelaces—according to the police version of events—can carve lines on to a young man’s face. But if that transpires to be the case, it is still difficult to understand why 16 strong, stocky and armed policemen are required to use “reasonable force” to arrest one young man.

There are similarities between fascist police forces all across the globe. One common trait is that violence toward civilians is routine. Some of the police are sadists with a gun license, and they enjoy using the powers vested in them to beat the helpless and the weak.

Police forces in fascist regimes create the false appearance that they investigate acts of violence, abuse and injustice. But this is no more than a pretense. When they “investigate,” no one is ever found guilty.

The result is likely to be the same this time around in which a young Palestinian’s face was marked with a Star of David. ■

Arawa Sheikh Ali, a 22 ‐ year ‐ old Palestinian suspected of drug trafficking, who was allegedly imprinted with a Star of David while he was handcuffed and blindfolded. There is no body camera footage of his arrest, even though 16 police and Border Police officers took part in the operation.

PHOTO COURTESY WHATSAPP

A Letter to IDF Soldiers

IN SEPTEMBER 2012, on the 30th anniversary of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, I wrote a letter to the Israeli soldiers who were on duty there <www.972mag.com/a-letterto-the-idf-soldiers-at-sabra-and-shatila>.

This September 2023, on the 41st anniversary of that massacre, we mark another atrocity in a Palestinian refugee camp, this one in Jenin, in the Occupied Territories. I am again writing a letter but this time to those Israeli soldiers on active duty who were in Jenin. I wonder if the children of those soldiers who were in Beirut participated in the invasion and destruction of this West Bank city.

Dear Israeli Soldiers:

Did you notice what a refugee camp looks like before you attacked? Were you aware of the massive overcrowding, the lack of ventilation, the open sewage system and the poor delivery of proper health care or an inadequate educational system? Did you realize that you live in a better world?

Let me remind you of another Israeli attack on another Palestinian refugee camp. In 1982, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Beirut surrounded the camps, thus not allowing anyone to leave, provided a communication system between the IDF and the Lebanese Phalange militia, supplied the flares so the Maronite Christian forces could systematically make their way through the camps slaughtering men, women and children. The Israeli soldiers observed the camps with binoculars from a forward command post and provided body bags and bulldozers to bury bodies.

In Jenin, the IDF directly killed civilians including children, critically injured many, left thousands homeless and

Ellen Siegel is a Jewish American nurse who has been an anti‐war, anti‐occupation activist since the late 1960s. In the early 1980s, she helped organize one of the first Jewish peace organizations in Wash‐ington, DC, Washington Area Jews for an Israel Palestinian Peace (WAJIPP). She was working in a hospital in the Sabra camp during the 1982 massacre and subsequently testified before the Kahan Commission of Inquiry in Jerusalem. For decades she returned to Beirut every September to commemorate and remember the victims of the massacre and support the work of National Institution of So‐cial Care and Vocational Training (Beit Atfal Assumoud www.social‐care.org). She is also a dedicated supporter of Animals Lebanon (www.animals lebanon.org) and an active advisory board member of Anera (www.anera.org).

By Ellen Siegel

displaced, destroyed infrastructure that provided clean drinking water and electricity. Other results: a lack of milk powder for babies, crushed cars, trashed and charred property, ripped up streets, restricted access of medical teams, ambulances and health care. Have any of you ever experienced any of these interruptions in your lives?

In Sabra and Shatila, the refugees could not defend themselves because the PLO had been evacuated. In Jenin, Palestinians fought back with some anti-tank barriers, a few guns and some improvised explosives against a mighty army using drones and fighter jets. There were repeated air strikes as well as a ground assault with a massive number of troops and bulldozers that entered the camp. Truly, a David and Goliath scenario.

The Israeli Kahan Commission, established after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, found the IDF and Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible. Sharon’s hatred of the Palestinians has been passed on to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Will there be an inquiry into the Jenin invasion and will they be found directly responsible?

The aim of the massacre in the camps in Lebanon was to rid the camps of Palestinians. In the Occupied Territory Israel’s goal is to get rid of the Palestinian population. It is no secret, expulsion of the original inhabitants of this land is what Israel has expressed.

Has history repeated itself, have we not learned anything? Why are we abusing a people’s human rights?

Many of you and/or your parents have been demonstrating, organizing for an end to the violence and a just resolution to the conflict. Are you or your relatives members of Combatants for Peace, Refuser Solidarity Network, Breaking the Silence, Parents Circle…to just name a few?

Will you grow old in an apartheid state? As we approach the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah 5784), I ask that you vow to make peace. As we sing “Avenu Malkenu” (Our Father, Our King) at the closing service of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), may we be renewed for a year of goodness.

Think about the future. Will your children continue on this path of hatred and violence? L’dor v’dor (From generation to generation), we must learn from the past in order to create a better future. And may the memory of those lost be blessed. ■

It Is Time to Confront Jewish Intolerance as Well as Anti-Semitism

By Allan C. Brownfeld

olent attacks and incidents of vandalism targeting Christian pilgrims, clergy and institutions. Victims have been jostled and spat at, religious symbols and icons defaced and inflammatory graffiti has appeared near Christian institutions. Most of the attacks have taken place in Jerusalem’s Old City, near churches and monasteries.

An American tourist attacked and toppled a 10‐foot statue of Jesus in the Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem on Feb. 2, 2023. When the church’s doorman tackled the man, Jewish ritual tassels that had been concealed under his clothes emerged. It was the fifth incident of violence against the church in recent weeks, coming after a group of religious Jews attacked tourists in the Christian Quarter.

WHILE THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE has launched a campaign against anti-Semitism, which it has redefined to include criticism of Israel, little attention has been paid to growing Jewish intolerance and the promotion of Jewish superiority in Jewish literature, including the Talmud

A recent headline in Al-Monitor (June 19, 2023) declared: “Christians Horrified by Hate Crimes in Jerusalem.” It reports that Tag Meir, an Israeli anti-racism organization, has documented an increasing number of hate crimes against Christians. These include a case of two young Israeli Jews spitting at a disabled priest upon his leaving the Greek Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem’s Old City and then threatening with pepper spray another priest who was trying to help their victim. In another case, a young Jewish man entered the Tomb of the Virgin Mary on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives with an iron bar to threaten worshipers.

Tag Meir documents hate crimes against Christians and Muslims and tracks the authorities’ response to them. The group’s chair, Gadi Gvaryahu, believes that these attacks can be attributed to the current right-wing coalition. He says there has been a “disturbing” rise in vi-

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.

He noted that most Knesset members from the Jewish Power party, headed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, advocate for segregation of Jewish and Arab mothers in hospital maternity wards. They believe Jews are forbidden from renting or selling apartments to Arabs and that there is no such thing as Jewish terrorists.

On May 28, demonstrators, including Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Aryeh King, protested against Christians visiting the Western Wall. They carried banners reading “Missionaries Go Home!” Father Francisco Patton, the Vatican Custodian of Christian Sacred Sites in the Holy Land, says, “I am very concerned as I watch the rise in acts of violence and hatred against Christians. Not a week goes by without Christians being heckled and spat at, graffiti, vandalism and other forms of harassment…Israeli authorities know what to do, but they do not want to put an end to this serious phenomenon.”

To determine whether the claims of increased violence and hate crimes directed against Christians were true, on June 26 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz sent one of its journalists dressed as a priest into downtown Jerusalem. Within five minutes, the journalist, Yossi Eli, “was derided and spat at, including by a child and a soldier. A bit later, a man mocked him in Hebrew, saying ‘Forgive me father for I have sinned,’ and then an 8-year-old child spat at him as did another soldier when a group of troops passed by later on.”

JEWISH FUNDAMENTALIST TEACHINGS

Jewish fundamentalism shows contempt toward non-Jews, and this religious tendency is growing in Israel. Rabbi Kook the Elder, the revered father of the messianic tendency in Jewish fundamentalism, said, “The difference between a Jewish soul and the souls of non-

PHOTO BY MOSTAFA ALKHAROUF/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Jews—all of them in all different levels—is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”

Rabbi Kook’s entire teachings, which are followed devoutly by, among others, those who have led the settler movement in the occupied West Bank and many in Israel’s current right-wing government, is based upon the Lurianic Cabbala. In their book Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel, Norton Mezvinsky and Israel Shahak note that this school of Jewish mysticism dominated Judaism from the late 16th to the early 19th century.

“One of the basic tenets of the Lurianic Cabbala,” the authors write, “is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. According to the Lurianic Cabbala, the world was created solely for the sake of the Jews: the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary. If an influential Christian bishop or Islamic scholar argued that the difference between the superior souls of non-Jews and the inferior souls of Jews was greater than the difference between the human soul and the souls of cattle, he would incur the wrath of all and be viewed as an anti-Semite by most Jewish scholars…”

Common to both the Talmud and the Halacha (Orthodox religious law) is a differentiation between Jews and non-Jews. The respected Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who headed the Chabad movement and wielded great influence in the U.S., explained that, “The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person stems from the common expression, ‘Let us differentiate.’…We have a case between totally different species…The body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of (members) of all nations of the world…A non-Jew’s entire reality is only vanity…The entire creation of a nonJew is only for the sake of the Jews…”

Among the religious settlers in the occupied territories, the Chabad Hassids constitute one of the most extreme groups. The Hebron mass murderer Baruch Goldstein was one of them. Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, who wrote a chapter in a book in praise of Goldstein and his massacre of Muslim worshippers in Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, is another member of this group. He speaks freely of Jews’ genetic-based,

spiritual superiority over non-Jews. “If you saw two people drowning, a Jew and a non-Jew, the Torah says you save the Jewish life first,” Ginsburgh states. “If every simple cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is part of God. Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA...If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has infinite value.”

Shahak and Mezvinsky point out that “Changing the words ‘Jewish’ to ‘German’ or ‘Aryan’ ‘non-Jewish’ to ‘Jewish’ turns the Ginsburgh position into the doctrine that made Auschwitz possible in the past.”

INTOLERANCE IN THE JEWISH TRADITION

The views that characterize Israel’s now dominant right-wing are understood by few Americans. At the funeral of the ultra-Orthodox extremist Goldstein, Rabbi Yaakov Perrin stated that “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” Shmuel Hacohen, a teacher in a Jerusalem college, said: “Baruch Goldstein was the greatest Jew alive, not in one way, but in every way. There are no innocent Arabs here.”

Intolerance can be found throughout the Jewish tradition. Most Jewish Americans are unfamiliar with this material and it is certain that the vast majority would find it objectionable. The earliest code of Talmudic law which is still of major importance is the Mishneh Torah, written by Moses Maimonides in the late 12th century. The most authoritative code is the Shulhan Arukh composed by R. Yosef Karo in the late 16th century. According to religious law, murder of a Jew is a capital offense. When the victim is a Gentile, the position is quite different. A Jew who murders a Gentile is guilty of what Talmudic law calls a sin against the “laws of Heaven,” to be punished by God rather than by man in a court of law. To cause the death of a Gentile indirectly is no sin at all.

One of the two most cited commentators on the Shulhan Arukh explains that when it comes to a Gentile, “One must not lift one’s hand to harm him, but one may harm him indirectly, for instance by removing a ladder after he had fallen into a crevice…There is

no prohibition here, because it was not done directly.” However, an act leading indirectly to a Gentile’s death is forbidden if it may cause the spread of hostility toward Jews. A Gentile murderer who happens to be under Jewish jurisdiction must be executed whether the victim was Jewish or not. However, if the victim was Gentile and the murderer converts to Judaism, he is not to be punished. Perhaps the most troubling rabbinic statement about non-Jews was attributed to the second century sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: “The best of the Gentiles should be killed.”

Maimonides, in his interpretation concerning prohibitions on intercourse (Halachot Isur Bia, 12,8) writes: “But an Israelite who has intercourse with a Gentile woman…she is to be killed; since she caused Israel trouble, as if she was a beast of burden.”

THE CHURCH HAS REJECTED ANTI-SEMITISM

For many years, Jewish organizations have been in the forefront of urging Christian churches to remove from their sacred literature those elements which have helped to produce religious intolerance, in particular anti-Semitism. The Christian world has, in large measure, responded to these calls and has formally apologized for the narrow teachings of the past which led to widespread persecutions.

In 1985, for example, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews produced “Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church.” Here the church took up the anti-Judaic language in some of the Gospels. Matthew 27:25, for example, has the Jews saying, “His blood be upon us and our children.” The “Notes” reflected the views of Pope John Paul II on the subject of Judaism and he was a key source and motivator of the Catholic rethinking. The covenant between God and the Jews, he said in the Mainz, Germany synagogue in 1980, “has never been revoked.” Speaking in the synagogue in Rome in 1986, the pope declared: “With Judaism… we have a relationship we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers. It is not lawful to say that the Jews are repu-

diated, for the Jews are beloved of God, who called them with an irrevocable calling.”

The General Convention of the American Lutheran Church in 1974 dealt specifically with the anti-Jewish writings of Martin Luther: “American Lutherans are the heirs of a long history of prejudicial discrimination against Jews…Lutherans bear a special responsibility for this tragic history of persecution, because the Nazi movement found a climate of hatred already in existence… That the Nazi period fostered a revival of Luther’s own medieval hostility toward Jews…is a special cause of regret. Those who study and admire Luther should acknowledge unequivocally that his antiJewish writings are beyond any defense.”

GROWING INTOLERANCE TOWARD NON-JEWS IN ISRAEL

While Christian churches have sought to excise from their tradition those teachings of the past which led to intolerance, there has not been a similar effort to cleanse Jewish sacred literature of its own hostility to those of other traditions and backgrounds. Instead, in Israel, such hostility is growing. The respected Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, citing evidence from a study conducted by other scholars, declared: “The values of the (Jewish) religion, at least in its Orthodox and nationalistic form that prevails in Israel, cannot be squared with democratic values. No other variable—neither nationality, nor attitudes about security, nor social or economic values, nor ethnic descent or education—so influences the attitudes of (Israeli) Jews against democratic values as does religiosity.”

Mordechai Nisan, a lecturer at the Hebrew University, wrote in an official publication of the World Zionist Organization, relying upon Maimonides, that a non-Jew permitted to reside in the land of Israel, “must accept paying a tax and suffering the humiliation of servitude.” He said that “nonJews must not be appointed to any office or position of power over Jews.”

When it comes to Maimonides, his view of non-Jews is less than positive. His “Guide To The Perplexed” (Book 3, Chapter 51) discusses how various sections of humanity can attain the supreme religious value, the true worship of God. He identifies the following groups who are “incapable” of even approaching this: “Some of the Turks (i.e., the

Mongol race) and the nomads of the North and the Blacks and nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion, they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey, because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey does.”

In the popular translation of Maimonides’ Guide To The Perplexed, first published as far back as 1925 and since reprinted in many editions, the Hebrew word Kushim, which means blacks, was simply transliterated and appears as “Kushites,” a word which means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew. Israel Shahak points out that “During all these years not a word has been said to point out the original deception…and this throughout the excitement of Martin Luther King’s campaigns, which were supported by so many rabbis, not to mention other Jewish figures, some of whom must have been unaware of the anti-black racist attitude which forms part of their Jewish heritage.”

The Book of Education, a popular Orthodox religious manual subsidized by the Israeli government, was written by an anonymous rabbi in early 14th century Spain. A central aim of this book is to emphasize the “correct” meaning of the Bible with respect to such terms as “fellow,” “friend” and “man.” Thus #219, devoted to the religious obligation arising from the verse “Thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself” is entitled, “A religious obligation to love Jews.”

In #322, dealing with the duty to keep a Gentile slave enslaved forever (whereas a Jewish slave must be set free after seven years), the following explanation is given: “And at the root of this religious obligation (is the fact that) the Jewish people are the best of the human species…and worthy of having slaves to serve them.”

The authors of the Bible used magnanimous language such as “Thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself” (Leviticus 19:13) but is interpreted by Orthodox Judaism as an indication to love one’s fellow Jew, not any fellow human being.

In his book Arab and Jew, David K. Shipler, who served as The New York Times correspondent in Israel, writes: “As

the 11- and 12-year-old boys in Kiryat Arba explained, they are learning in their yeshivas that the Arab is Amalic, the enemy tribe that God instructed the Jews to fight eternally and destroy.”

EXCISING CONTEMPT FOR NONJEWS FROM JEWISH TEACHINGS

All through history, we have seen great horrors inflicted upon mankind in the name of one or another narrow view of religion and God’s will. Jews have all too often been the victims of such religious-mandated intolerance. It is a hopeful sign that Christian churches have rejected the anti-Semitism that some of them preached in the past. As we have seen, there is much ethnocentric contempt for those who are not Jewish to be found in Jewish sacred literature. It is now time that Judaism be purged of its own intolerant teachings.

Reform Judaism, at its beginning, abandoned the ethnocentric bigotry to be found in the Talmud and other Orthodox religious writing. It looked to the God of the Prophets who was not a God for Jews alone, but the Lord of all creation. Second Isaiah proclaims God the God of all people: “Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” In Chapter 56 of the Book of Isaiah we find the famous passage epitomizing universalism: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

The idea of one God for a particular people was not the unique contribution of the Jews. There had been other peoples who promoted such ideas. Judaism’s unique contribution was the idea of one God for all peoples representing a single standard of morality with one set of moral values applying to all peoples. This was the revolution in religious thinking the Hebrew prophets brought about.

The time has come for Judaism to excise those teachings and declarations which preach contempt for the “other.” Judaism tells us that men and women of every race and nation are created in the image of God. The intolerance which is growing in Israel at the present time is a rejection of this unique understanding of the nature of man and God which Judaism originally brought to the world. Nothing could be a greater rejection of Jewish values than what we are now observing in Israel. ■

Palestine. in reedom f foor truggl e s h and policymakers who affect t ef r the movements, activists ove e c At Mondoweiss, w

Congress Attempts to Repair Relations with The Usual Tactics

By Julia Pitner

GROWING CRITICISM of Israeli government actions and policies has been expressed in the U.S. media and by a few Democratic Congress members. In July, New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof wrote separate pieces urging the Biden administration to reassess its ties with Israel, and perhaps even consider, as Kristof wrote, the “unmentionable”: gradually “phasing out American aid for Israel.” These articles were preceded by Jacob Siegel and Liel Leibovitz’s piece in

Tablet, “End U.S. Aid to Israel,” in which they contend that aid only serves to benefit the U.S. military-industrial complex.

With the country in the midst of the 2024 election cycle, the U.S. House leadership and members turned to trusted mechanisms to control this divergence from the familiar script.

First was H. Con. Res. 57, introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) on July 17, only 10 days after Israel’s assault on the Jenin refugee camp: “That it is the sense of Congress that (1) the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state [in response to Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-WA) comments during a conference, taken out of context]; (2) Congress rejects all forms of anti-Semitism and

xenophobia [a nod to the Biden administration’s stance on the Visa Waiver, and against codifying the IHRA definition]; and, (3) the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel [against growing calls to condition U.S. funding of Israel’s military]. It passed with 412 yeas, 9 nays, and 1 present.

The nays, some providing reasons, were Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO); Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY); André Carson (DIN); Jamaal Bowman (D-NY); Summer Lee (D-PA), who said, “I reject anti-Semitism and xenophobia in all its forms…I cannot vote for unconditional support of any nationstate”; Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who stated “[This resolution] was designed by MAGA

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D ‐ NY) at his weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol Building on July 14, 2023, in Washington, DC. Critics have questioned why Jeffries led a trip of two dozen Democrats to Israel funded by AIPAC, which endorsed the campaigns of Republicans who tried to block Biden’s presidential victory.

PHOTO BY ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY IMAGES

Julia Pitner is a contributing editor of the Washington Report and director of programs and operations at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, DC.

Republicans to target and shame a colleague, Pramila Jayapal, for comments for which she apologized and clarified”; Ayanna Pressley (D-MA); Delia Ramirez (D-IL); and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who stated, “Mr. Speaker, I am the only Palestinian American serving in Congress, and I have family members all throughout the West Bank and what many people call the illegally occupied territories. We are here again reaffirming Congress’ support for apartheid.” Tlaib’s full statement can be seen on p. 30.

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), who voted “present,” stated that it “just seeks to silence important conversations about Palestinian human rights. I will not be silenced” In McCollum’s full statement about her vote against the resolution, she mentioned that she had reintroduced H.R. 3103, “To promote and protect the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, and for other purposes” with 28 Democrat cosponsors.

H.R. 3103 is once again in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. However, this time, it is being used against McCollum and the other cosponsors, as reported in the Washington Free Beacon under the headline “Democrat-Led Anti-Israel Bill Relies on Research from Designated Terror Group.” The “terror group” is in fact Defense for Children International-Palestine, which was smeared by the Israeli government. Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) pointed to the “disturbing” trend among Democrats, saying McCollum’s recent legislation “crosses the line.”

The second traditional pro-Israel maneuver in Congress was a trip to Israel two weeks after passing H. Con. Res. 57. Led

by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), two dozen Democrats went to Israel to shore up their bona fides as staunch supporters of that country. The trip was funded by AIPAC’s American Israel Education Foundation to strengthen ties between the two countries, which are being challenged because of the widening ideological rift between the Biden administration and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. As reported in Haaretz, sponsored travel to Israel in 2022 cost $2.6 million and was the most frequented destination by Republicans and Democrats alike. This was Jeffries’ second trip to Israel this year.

In the meantime, the Senate approved Biden’s nomination of Daniel Shapiro for the position of Special Envoy for the Abraham Accords within the Department of State. The position was mandated with the passage of H.R. 3099 that established the envoy position with the rank of ambassador to encourage countries to establish or strengthen relations with Israel and reporting to the Congress annually on those efforts. Thus, U.S. taxpayers now fund an ambassadorial position acting on behalf of Israel. His main goal is normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. (See p. 14-16)

In addition, H.R. 4564, Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors Act, was introduced July 11 by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) with no cosponsors. Tenney’s press release stated the legislation would “prevent the federal government from entering into contracts with entities that support the radical, anti-Semitic BDS movement targeting Israel.” It’s been

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referred to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTION ON MENA ACCOUNTABILITY

On July 13, Reps. Tlaib and Omar introduced H.Res. 590, The Justice for Syrians Resolution, which states: “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding calling on the president to direct the United States Representative to the United Nations to use the voice, vote and influence of the United States to immediately promote the establishment of an appropriate regional or international justice mechanism through the United Nations and United Nations General Assembly to investigate and prosecute possible war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of internationally recognized human rights stemming from the conflict in Syria, and for other purposes.” It has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

On July 3, Reps. Dean Phillips (D-MN), Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and 13 other House Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the Biden administration to push the U.N. Security Council to reauthorize and expand cross-border humanitarian operations in Syria.

In response, their Republican colleagues Reps. James Baird (R-IN), Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) introduced H.R. 4847, “To provide for limitations on general license authorities under the Syria Sanctions Regulations” aka limiting waivers for humanitarian assistance. It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, as well as to the Committees on the Judiciary, Financial Services, Oversight and Accountability and Ways and Means.

On Aug. 4, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) led a letter to President Biden arguing that the U.S. “must take a more assertive role in shaping Lebanon’s trajectory, or risk losing Lebanon entirely as an Iranian client state. The United States must better support credible political candidates and a robust civil society, increase sanctions against corrupt Lebanese officials across the sectarian spectrum, impose costs for Hezbollah’s use of civilian areas to store weapons that threaten Israel, expand support to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), seek to

Continued on page 37

AIPAC Targeting Omar, Bowman and Other Progressives in Democratic Party Primaries

By Michael Arria

THE AMERICAN ISRAEL Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is gearing up to spend heavily on the 2024 elections and target lawmakers who are critical of Israel in the Democratic primaries.

Recently Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus donated another $1 million to AIPAC’s super political action committee (PAC), the United Democracy Project (UDP). Marcus is a GOP mega-donor (he donated $7 million to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign), but UDP is the political action committee AIPAC has used to influence Democratic primaries. Marcus’ donation brings UDP’s war chest to nearly $9 million with a little over a year until the 2024 elections.

UDP typically runs ads targeting incumbents or progressive challengers who have criticized Israel or supported policies designed to

Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss, which pub‐lished this article on Aug. 12. He is the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Reprinted with permission.

hold the country accountable. It never mentions Israel in the ads it bankrolls, because support for the country has declined among Democratic voters in recent years

TARGETING SQUAD MEMBERS

AIPAC is reportedly eyeing a number of progressive incumbents to target in 2024. The Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports that the lobbying group is in talks with Minneapolis council member LaTrisha Vetaw to potentially run against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in Minnesota’s 5th district. Since Omar was elected to the House in 2018, pro-Israel groups have been trying to oust her over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. AIPAC secretly spent $350,000 on Omar’s primary in 2022, backing centrist Don Samuels. Samuels came close to delivering a shocking upset, with Omar prevailing by just 2,500 votes. After the election, Samuels criticized pro-Israel groups for not investing more money in his campaign.

Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar at an event to launch a canvass in support of Pressley in Boston, MA on Sept. 24, 2022. AIPAC is targeting progressive Democrats.

“[AIPAC] acknowledged they missed an opportunity last cycle but have said that, based on their internal assessment, Don has reached his capacity,” a Democratic operative privy to the discussions told Kassel.

AIPAC is also courting Westchester County executive George Latimer to run against Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th district. “If George Latimer runs he will be a formidable candidate— even more so if he’s well-funded,” Democratic strategist Chris Coffey told Kassel. “If he doesn’t run, it’s harder. Not impossible but harder. In the last cycle, Bowman was able to convince enough pro-Israel voters that he wasn’t extreme. That’s not the feeling now.”

“We just got word: AIPAC is at it again. They’re trying to recruit an establishment executive to run against my brother in The Bronx, Jamaal Bowman,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in a recent fundraising email. “We know what comes next. AIPAC won’t wait much longer to start funneling dark money against Jamaal and ramping up attacks against our movement.”

Bowman joined Omar as one of the only lawmakers to vote against a recent House resolution declaring that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state.” They also both boycotted Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s recent address to Congress.

PROGRESSIVE GROUPS

AIPAC’s gargantuan budgets put progressive groups that work on elections in a challenging position. In July, the organization Justice Democrats, which has backed prominent progressive members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley (D-OH), laid off nine of its 20 staff members.

Justice Democrats has supported some of the only Congress members willing to call for Israel to be accountable for its action. The group’s super PAC spent over $1 million helping to elect Summer Lee in Pennsylvania’s 12th district last election. AIPAC spent more than $4 million backing her opponent, former GOP staffer Steve Irwin. Irwin lost by less than a point.

AIPAC called Lee “anti-Israel” because she condemned the country’s brutal attack on Gaza in May 2021. Since being elected, she signed onto Rep. Betty McCollum’s (D-MN) historic bill defending the rights of Palestinian children and called for the Biden administration to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money isn’t used to expand illegal settlements. She also voted against the apartheid resolution and skipped Herzog’s speech.

Kassel’s report notes that Edgewood council member Bhavini Patel has been raising money to run against Lee, but whether AIPAC will support her remains unclear.

The organization’s executive director Alexandra Rojas told HuffPost that the group has had to adapt to primaries becoming more expensive and criticized Democratic leadership over its failure to act on the issue.

“It is unfortunate that after years of grumbling to the press on the paramount importance of protecting incumbents, Democratic leadership has seemingly turned its back on ours—allowing outside groups like AIPAC to target them with multimillion-dollar primary challenges,” she told the website.

Many haven’t just turned their back on their issue. Despite AIPAC supporting dozens of Republicans who refused to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory, many Democratic lawmakers continue to accept the group’s money and embrace their anti-Palestinian agenda.

Last week House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) led a delegation of 24 House Democrats to Israel on a trip organized by AIPAC. “With this trip, House Democrats reaffirm our commitment to the special relationship between the United States and Israel, one anchored in our shared democratic values and mutual geopolitical interests,” said Jeffries in a statement. On the subject of settler violence against Palestinians, Jeffries claimed that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “doesn’t condone violence, no matter where it originates. And I take him at his word.”

“This, of course comes against a backdrop of Israeli soldiers protecting settlers as

they attack Palestinian villages, towns and farmlands, and an enormous escalation, even by Israel’s standards, in the level of direct state violence against Palestinians,” notes Mitchell Plitnick, president of ReThinking Foreign Policy.

The progressive Jewish group IfNotNow recently launched a campaign calling on Democratic candidates to reject endorsements and financial contributions from AIPAC.

“Our Jewish and American values demand that we speak up and take action in defense of freedom, human rights and communal well-being,” reads an open letter to congressional candidates from the group. “We envision a thriving future for all here in the United States and in Israel-Palestine where everyone enjoys equality, justice and freedom. AIPAC has demonstrated time and again that it is actively opposed to these basic values. We ask you to uphold these values by committing to reject AIPAC’s endorsement and contributions.”

JVP Action, which backed Omar and other Israel critics during the 2022 primaries, told Mondoweiss that AIPAC is spending big money because it knows support for Israel is declining among voters. “As we head into the 2024 cycle, the Democratic voter base is significantly more sympathetic to Palestinians and more critical of the Israeli government— and at an unprecedented rate. AIPAC understands that the rapidly growing progressive movement is a direct threat to its racist and warmongering agenda, so it is already making plans to flood Democratic primaries with money in an attempt to oust the progressive incumbents who stand up for Palestinian human rights,” said the group in a statement. “Palestinian rights and accountability for the Israeli government will be a central issue in the Democratic primaries this cycle, and JVP Action will be mobilizing our massive base of Jews and allies to get Democrats to dump AIPAC. We’ll be protecting—and growing—the number of members of Congress who understand that all people, no exceptions, deserve freedom.” ■

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Speaks Out

an apartheid government. Let’s take a moment just to hear Israeli government’s own politicians in their own words. Direct quotes, not mine. Current Prime Minister Netanyahu on his policies toward Palestinians said: “Beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up until it is unbearable.’’ He said that Israel must “crush Palestinian hopes for a fully sovereign state.’’

THE HOUSE PASSED H.Con.Res. 57 on July 18, which asserts that Israel “is not a racist or apartheid state,” days after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) criticized Israel as a racist state and ahead of Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s July 19 speech to a joint meeting of Congress. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) denounced the resolution and the policing of speech by women of color in Congress in an impassioned floor speech, reprinted below.

RASHIDA TLAIB: Mr. Speaker, I am the only Palestinian American serving in Congress, and I have family members all throughout the West Bank and what many people call the illegally occupied territories.

We are here again reaffirming Congress’s support for apartheid.

Policing the words of women of color who dare to speak up about truth and about oppression is just not what we should be doing here in Congress.

Let’s just get the record straight here. This is not something that is made up. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Israel’s own largest human rights organization, B’Tselem, all agree that Israel is an apartheid state.

To assert otherwise, Mr. Speaker, in the face of this body of evidence is an attempt to deny the reality and to normalize violence of apartheid.

This week we are going to hear consistently people touting about, oh, this is bipartisan support here.

Don’t forget, this body, this Congress, supported a South African apartheid regime, and it was bipartisan as well.

You don’t have to take it from me to understand the racism of

One of the former defense ministers said that Palestinians are “beasts. They are not human.’’ He is talking about people like my grandmother, Mr. Speaker.

How about a former justice minister who said: “They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.’’

How about another former defense minister who said: “Those who are against us, there is nothing to be done. We need to pick up an ax and cut off his head.’’ Another quote: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.’’

How is that not racism at its core?

Israel’s own President Herzog is going to come before Congress tomorrow. He has long advocated against interracial marriages. Did you all know that? Do you care? He said it on a news segment. Look it up.

When he came to America, he said: “I encountered something that I called an actual plague. I saw my friends’ children married or coupled with non-Jewish partners.’’

Israel is an apartheid state. The Israeli government is deeply problematic in the way that they are proceeding in the structure of oppression.

Mr. Speaker, just like I speak up against injustices here in America, this is about speaking up against violence. Congress must stop funding apartheid.■

Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit native of Palestinian heritage, represents Michigan’s 12th Congressional District. In 2019 she became one of the two first Muslim women in Congress. She fights for vulnerable communities around the country, advocating for clean air and water, social justice, ending poverty and strengthening public education.

Rashida Tlaib (D‐MI) sets the record straight, quoting racist Israeli leaders and asking Congress to stop funding apartheid.

PHOTO COURTESY C-SPAN

Resistance and Business on the Olive Tree Front

By Jenny Jacoby

FOR PALESTINIANS, land is the essence of their existence. It underpins their primary industry and has been at the heart of their struggles during the 75-year Israeli oppression. Land represents not only a means of sustenance but also a symbol of identity, heritage and the hopes of millions.

The double significance of land, as both the backbone and the center of the Palestinian cause, is reflected in the fittingly named Al’Ard Palestinian Agri-Products Ltd. Founded 15 years ago, the family-owned company acts as an anchor firm for Palestinian farmers to unify their products under a brand that can be exported to

Jenny Jacoby was an intern from the 2023 National Council on U.S.‐Arab Relations' Washington, DC Summer Internship Program. She contributed numerous articles during her 10 ‐ week program as a Washington Report Helen Thomas summer intern. Jacoby is editor‐

the world. But their mission has always been about both the social impacts and the profit margins.

In 2000 Ziad Anabtawi, CEO of the Anabtawi Group (originally a distributor for international foods and consumer goods), was asked what he was doing for the Palestinian economy. A prominent importer of other country’s goods, Ziad thought about the question and concluded that he was not doing enough to uplift the products of his own people. “I thought, let’s try to do it the other way around.”

Around the same time there was a surplus of unsold olive oil in Palestine that led farmers to reach out to private companies for assistance in marketing and distribution. Seeing his opportunity to make a difference, Ziad took his years of experience and directed it to a new project: Al’Ard, meaning the earth or the land in Arabic.

“It reflects our deep bond with the Palestinian land and its agricultural heritage. The name symbolizes our commitment to pre-

in‐chief of The Miami Hurricane and a Singer Scholar at the Univer‐sity of Miami, FL.

A Palestinian farmer in the West Bank town of Nablus harvests olives. While Palestinian farmers living in the West Bank welcome the olive harvest season with joy, in some areas the joy gives way to anxiety due to the threat of attacks by Jewish settlers or soldiers.

PHOTO COURTESY AL’ARD

serving Palestinian tradition, culture, and sustainable agriculture,” Subhi Anabtawi, the deputy general manager of Al’Ard and son of Ziad, told the Washington Report.

At the core of the company is the family: Ziad and his children, Subhi; Hani, head of Supply Chain; and Qamar, sales and marketing coordinator. “We’re the face of it, and we look after what we are doing,” Qamar said. “We all have the same goal: the success of the company and its social impact.” Together, they have overseen the company’s growth to become the top exporter of Palestinian olive oil, an important product for the family and the nation.

An agrarian society with olive trees at its heart, Palestine’s land and olives have always held meaning beyond their commercial value. Proverbs equate land with people’s honor and many believe that olive oil holds healing power. “It’s knitted into the fabric of society and culture and folklore,” Ida Audeh, a Palestinian whose family has 20 olive trees, told the Washington Report She and her siblings plan their visits to Palestine from the United States to coincide with the olive harvest. “I can’t imagine Palestine without olive trees. It seems inconceivable to me.”

Al’Ard is working to help save this 8,000year-old industry, defining its mission as a social investment in Palestinian people

and the land, rather than as a competitive business. “We, as a company, will not invest in agriculture, so we will not be competing with the farmers,” Subhi said. “The whole focus is to build the capabilities of the farmers we want to work with and facilitate market opportunities to showcase the incredible products that Palestine has to offer to the world.”

The company, in essence, “connects the supply chain.” They invest and buy raw materials from local farmers where it is transported to the headquarters in Nablus to be tested for quality, and either stored or bottled for shipment. The packaged products, varying from soap to oil, are then sent out to distribution hubs either within Palestine or abroad.

An important step in advancing the quality of the products to meet Al’Ard standards is integrating technology in a way that does not threaten the farming practices passed down for generations—as Subhi puts it, “to modernize their production practices while preserving their heritage.” This includes teaching sustainable techniques that preserve the fertility of the soil and the strategic use of water, as climate concerns threaten the region.

Al’Ard actively works to safeguard traditions endangered by Israeli oppression that directly imposes harsh restrictions on Palestinian businesses. “It comes with the

package,” Ziad remarked. Operating from Nablus, the company constantly manages crises. Israeli checkpoints surrounding the city and unexpected military operations can abruptly interrupt the supply chain, especially in recent months with Nablus under siege.

The issues are amplified when shipping abroad. In order to be moved across the border, all shipping pallets must pass through Israeli scanners, significantly smaller in size than traditional pallets. This forces the company to break the containers down prior to shipment and pay a company on the other side of the border to reassemble them. The scanners also prevent them from filling the containers completely, drastically decreasing the amount of movable product as compared to other companies. About 40 percent of buyers are domestic, leaving the other 60 percent subject to international constraints and higher costs.

The everyday impediments can make business unpredictable, but at some point the state of anxiety Al’Ard operates under becomes commonplace, Subhi explained. “If you were raised or you live in a harsh environment, the harsh living is normal for you,” he said. “We got used to having hardships; the challenges have become a motivator for us.”

The emotional weight of the occupation poses a different kind of obstacle, one that has required the Anabtawis to be friends with their coworkers. To Qamar, the employees are a second family she cares deeply about. She does her best to bring them her positive attitude on hard days. “I just try to listen,” she said. “I tell them, no matter what, I’ll be by your side.”

Many of the employees live in refugee camps that are under threat of raids by the Israeli army or are weighed down by having loved ones in prison. One of Hani’s best employees suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and on days when he is feeling stressed, does not come to work. Seeing people tired or emotionally exhausted is normal. “You have to be gentle, but firm. You worry about their safety, but at the same time if they do not

The Israeli army fires tear gas at Palestinian farmers near the outpost of Evitar while they are picking olives in the village of Beita, south of Nablus in the West Bank on Oct. 15, 2021.

PHOTO BY NASSER ISHTAYEH/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

show up to work today, at the end of the month they may not have food on the table,” Hani said.

The family also is not exempt from the toll of living in Palestine. “I wake up in the morning and I get a call and it’s like, oh, the army’s here, don’t go to work right now,” Qamar said. Qamar and Hani explain it would be easier for them to not show up for work some days, but they know they are working for something greater. “We all have to support one another because this is also part of the game, which is working and benefiting the farmers and the agriculture,” Qamar said. “Here, we get to protect our culture through a different approach.”

As part of this fight, the company has launched the Palestinian Fertile Land Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works to unite farmers, producers and manufacturers to promote ethical agricultural practices and facilitate market access. A personal project of Subhi’s, PFLA pro-

vides farmers with essential tools and international certification. The alliance also launched its own initiative in Canada, the Trees for Palestine Project, that takes charitable donations to buy native olive trees and strategically plant them in Palestine. Both provide stability and longevity to the company, while empowering farmers who continue to harvest despite the threats of Israeli army and settlers.

These projects are based on the belief that to be successful in Palestinian business, the company must inherently be tied to the Palestinian cause. “Al’Ard shows that we’re firm on our land, we’re standing here, we're staying here,” Subhi said. They do not expect their work to free Palestine, but they do believe it gives Palestinians something to hold onto. “It is preservation and determination that plants hope in their hearts for later on.”

For Palestinians abroad, products like Al’Ard are a “lifeline.” Images of olive trees

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Telling Farmer Stories Rooted

being ripped out of the ground or “beheaded” in settler attacks appear frequently in the news, with an estimated 800,000 uprooted since 1967. For people coming from an agrarian culture, “That really hits you in the gut,” Audeh said. To see olive oil successfully harvested and sold in international markets gives a sense of hope and connection to a homeland many have had to flee.

Messages of support from international customers are a large part of what keeps the family committed to the company. Customers have written to tell them that tasting their zaatar seasoning reminds them of meals back home with their grandmothers. For Ziad, though, what really makes the business worth it is the everlasting aspiration for a better future. “This makes life easier for a group of people who are working with me, and it’s generating an income for them so they can live and they can stay on their land,” Ziad said. ■

the soil of Palestine.

farm families continue the unbreakable bond they have with their land. They are reviving their

sustainable farming methods and making Palestine into the food forest it once was.

It’s Time to End U.S. Military Aid to Israel and Egypt

By Walter L. Hixson

Campaigners against the arms trade from various faith and solidarity groups protest outside Twickenham Stadium against the Inte rna‐tional Armored Vehicles (IAVs) event on Jan. 23, 2023 in Twickenham, UK. The IAVs event is the world’s largest of its type, with 750+ attendees from more than 40 nations, including some responsible for human rights violations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Bahrain and the UAE.

IN THE WASHINGTON REPORT we often allude to the absurdity of Israel, a small country of nine million people, already the military powerhouse of the Middle East, receiving $3.8 billion in military aid each year from the United States, cumulatively receiving more than any other nation in the world—over $150

Walter L. Hixson is the author of Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy and Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (avail‐able from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He was a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

billion, since its founding in 1948. As the 26th largest per capita GDP in the world, ahead of the UK, New Zealand, France and Japan, Israel is more than capable of purchasing its own weapons. The U.S. places conditions on other countries receiving weapons, but Israel gets a blank check and can use U.S. tax dollars on its own domestic weapons industry.

Less often analyzed is the country that ranks second in annual U.S. military handouts—Egypt. Like Israel, Egypt’s problems are primarily internal these days, so why does it need American largesse, amounting to some $1.3 billion annually to continue to build up its military? The answer is that it doesn’t.

The original goal of the massive annual U.S. military aid was

to ensure that Egypt abided by the separate peace it signed with Israel in the wake of the 1978 Camp David Accords. Today, Egypt poses no threat to Israel; indeed, it bolsters the inhumane blockade of Gaza while periodically stepping in to sponsor ceasefires after Israel unleashes its U.S.-enhanced military might on the defenseless Strip.

Washington claims, of course, that U.S. arms sales to Egypt serve the “national interest.” Both the term and the claim are dubious but there is no ambiguity or debate about whose interests indisputably are served by the military assistance: that would be the U.S. arms manufacturing industry—the venerable “military-industrial complex.”

As the Congressional Research Service notes, “All U.S. military aid to Egypt finances the procurement of weapons systems and services from U.S. defense contractors.” U.S. military assistance thus forms the bedrock of a massive corporate welfare policy in which the United States government orchestrates profittaking (if not privateering) on the part of private arms manufacturing industries.

U.S. military aid has enabled Egypt to purchase major U.S. defense systems, including the F-16 fighter aircraft and the M1A1 Abrams battle tank— both of which provided statesponsored guaranteed profits for General Dynamics—and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, which did the same for Boeing. These are weapons systems in search of a mission, and they do nothing to address Egypt’s severe economic woes, which include widespread poverty, inflation and indebtedness to foreign creditors.

EGREGIOUS RECORD ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Washington offers some economic assistance and has made periodic and tepid efforts to link military aid to an Egyptian commitment to advance democracy

or curb the dictatorship’s egregious and worsening record on human rights. Under the militarist President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, there’s little free speech but lots of arbitrary arrests, political prisoners, torture, disappearances and executions, and religious and gender discrimination—the usual gamut of abuses that have rarely impeded U.S. funding to disreputable regimes in the name of national security.

Egypt, to be sure, is an important country. With more than 104 million people it is the largest Arabic-speaking nation and long a leader of the Arab world. Cairo is a historic and alluring capital city. Egypt controls the Suez Canal, which links the Red and Mediterranean Seas and has long been a crucial artery for commerce, including the transit of oil.

The United States receives little loyalty from Sisi and his generals in return for the military aid. The regime has close relations including weapons purchases and development projects with Russia. In the past it has even bought arms from North Korea. Sisi is fighting insurgency in the Sinai Peninula, east of the Suez Canal, presumably with

U.S. weapons. Egypt's war against terrorism has cost at least $33 million a month since the 2011 uprising that ended the 29-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. In sum, it’s not apparent that the U.S. “national interest” and “national security” are genuinely enhanced by arms sales to the reactionary regime in Cairo.

PARALLELS WITH IRAN?

After some initial hesitation by President Barack Obama, the United States has backed the Sisi regime since it ousted the legitimately elected Egyptian government in a 2013 coup. Anger roils beneath the surface in Egypt and no doubt serves as a source of recruitment for radical Islamists.

In 1953 Washington helped to foment an undemocratic coup in Iran and went on to arm and support a repressive regime for 26 years, culminating in the overthrow of the Shah, Islamization of the republic, and unceasing hostility with the United States ever since. Will U.S. support for the repressive Egyptian regime produce a similar backlash? If so, the “national interest” clearly will not have been served. ■

London Reneges on Long-Standing Commitment to International Law

By Ian Williams

THE LAW DOES NOT concern itself with trifles, the old legal saw held—and held it in Latin, which surely makes it true. (De minimis lex non curat, for the detail oriented.)

In the last issue of the Washington Report, we examined how the seemingly inconsequential issue of some examples listed in the footnote to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Council’s “non-legally binding working definition of anti-Semitism” rebranded criticism of Israel as hate speech.

In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels the vexed question of whether to begin eating boiled egg from the little end or the big end achieved similar exaggerated significance. In Swift’s book the controversy led to a bloody war, which is perhaps the consummation devoutly wished for by Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, who raises the issue of anti-Semitism continually at all levels of the U.N.

But if this be madness, there’s method in it. These “examples” played a signal role in removing UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (and in excoriating Pink Floyd star Roger Waters). If Israel

and its friends were able to squeeze the foot in the door any more than they already have, they would have a weapon of massive disruption to wield against human rights efforts in the U.N. and the entire world.

We could assume, cynically, that the major spur for Erdan’s hyperactivity is a traditional Israeli ambassador’s motivation—to attract the attention and support of donors in the U.S. for his future political career in Israel. But we would be better suspecting a fairly widereaching Hasbara plot to disable the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Looking at the retrenchment of the BDS movement from the days of the anti-apartheid and the Arab boycott, it is almost heartening to see the degree to which Israel supporters fear the movement. Of course, the Abraham Accords are a real high-water mark for the anti-BDS movement, and the various threads come together.

The Guardian revealed in July that London was reneging on its long-standing commitment to international law, in large part because of the successful brandishing of anti-Semitism charges in Britain and the consequent marginalization of human rights activists there. In its brief for forthcoming discussions on seeking the opinion

U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).

President of Israel Isaac Herzog, CEO of Golden Solutions Leah Goldin, U.N. Secretary‐General Antonio Guterres, Israeli Ambassador and Permanent Representative Gilad Erdan pose during a meeting at U.N. Headquarters in New York on July 20.

of the International Court of Justice on the Israeli occupation of the territories, the British recommend that the court should not rule on the case. Among the spurious objections are that the case will interfere with bilateral negotiations. So they wipe away 60 years of oppression and confiscation and occupation—because the oppressor claims to be negotiating. It should be beyond belief but apparently it is not.

It can only do this because of relentless and sadly successful Israeli lobby pressure on ministers and members of parliament. When I left the UK in 1980, senior MPs on both sides had no problems supporting international law and the Palestinians. Today it probably is safer to support Palestinian rights on Capitol Hill than in the House of Commons.

It is a characteristic of narrowly focused lobbies that they encourage transactional politics which push principles out the window. It’s sadly significant that even although President Joe Biden almost certainly would not have explicitly recognized a formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Golan, nor Moroccan usurpation of Western Sahara, he has not yet disavowed it. (Acknowledgment of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara is part of a package deal on the Abraham Accords.)

But then London and Washington wonder why they cannot persuade the rest

of the world that the invasion and occupation of Ukraine demands an immediate boycott of Russia. The law does care about little things and above all, the jury at the U.N. needs some convincing to move beyond the stage of the newly converted St. Augustine, who allegedly cried, “Lord make me virtuous—but not just yet!”

Both the U.S. and the UK have some way to go to persuade other countries that they are law-abiding global citizens when they invoke the law, and that Russia is notably less law abiding than Israel. ■

Congress Watch

Continued from page 27

eliminate Iranian revenue streams that keep Hezbollah afloat and prioritize accountability as a pillar of American policy.”

On Aug. 10, the State Department, in coordination with the UK and Canada, designated for sanctioning the former governor of Lebanon’s central bank, Riad Salameh, and four of his close associates “who enriched themselves at the expense of the Lebanese people.”

On Aug. 10, Rep. Meeks led a letter, cosigned by 10 fellow House Democrats, to Secretary of State Blinken. The letter expresses the signers’ “concerns over the State Department providing the $320 million conditioned on human rights” in the FY22

State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) appropriations. After recognizing the importance of Egypt, the signers note, “we are strongly concerned by reports from both the State Department as well as numerous credible human rights and civil society organizations about the persistent and continued systemic violations of human rights in Egypt.” After laying out details of these concerns, they conclude: “as the Department weighs whether to grant Egypt the $320 million in FY22 FMF [foreign military financing] or to withhold such funds from obligation, we call on you not to certify that Egypt has taken ‘sustained and effective steps’ to implement the criteria as required by law…” The letter closes, “as we continue to stand for the prioritization of basic human rights in our foreign policy and call on the administration to adhere to the spirit and letter of the law.”

Almost immediately, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (funded by AIPAC’s top three mega donors) attacked Sen. Chris Murphy (DCT) in a tweet in support of the letter: “Almost as if he wants to push the most populous Arab country toward economic collapse, while also undercutting the successful peace deal it enjoys with Israel. What could possibly go wrong?”

In his response, Murphy wrote: “A. $300 million less U.S. military equipment is going to collapse a $380 billion economy? B. There’s nothing more Washington than a group called Foundation for Defense of Democracies arguing to keep giving no strings weapons aid to a country with 60,000 political prisoners.”

Concluding contentious negotiations with the 1,500+ amendments in the House and hundreds in the Senate, members are now on recess with the national budget debate still looming. The House and Senate drafts are at odds as it is turned over to committee with only a short time remaining before the Sept. 21, 2023 FY 2024 deadline. The table is set for the House Republicans’ desired outcome of a continuing resolution that will force cuts that they were not able to secure during the debt ceiling negotiations. Remember sequestration? ■

Special Report

Protesters hold “Peace now'” placards during the demonstration in Regent Street. Protesters marched through central London calling for an end to the war in Ukraine.

THE U.S. MAKES CLEAR its shameful hypocrisy about war and occupation in its contrasting treatments of actions taken by Russia and Israel as well as of Ukrainians and Palestinians. Israel attacked and invaded Arab lands in 1967. Palestinians and Syrians have been living under Israeli occupation since then, and Israel has been able, with steadfast U.S. support, to defy and undermine the rule of law and to maintain these occupations. By contrast, parts of Ukraine have been under Russian occupation since 2022, and there has been a strong U.S./NATO military effort to weaken Russia and to end its occupation of Ukraine. Can you imagine the difference in the Middle East if the U.S. had

Ron Forthofer, Ph.D., is a retired professor of biostatistics and a volunteer for peace and social justice organizations. Forthofer, who was a Green Party candidate for governor and Congress, has written articles published in numerous newspapers and websites. He went on two delegations to Palestine with the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

supported international law and, with the U.N., demanded that Israel end its occupations?

But the U.S. only selectively invokes international law. It certainly didn’t follow the rule of law when it led the attack on Iraq in 2003, which constituted a major war crime for which Iraqis are still paying a terrible price. Twenty years later, that country remains contaminated with depleted uranium, divided and devastated with little hope of recovery. There is little concern for Iraq in the United States today.

POLITICIANS LIE AND MEDIA SPREAD THE LIES

PHOTO BY VUK VALCIC/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET

VIA GETTY IMAGES

then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Burns also warned that Russia would likely respond militarily.

Moreover, U.S. moves to expand NATO violate the 1990 U.S. promise not to expand NATO one inch to the east if the Soviet Union would allow the reunification of Germany. And in 2014, the U.S. supported the violent coup against the democratically elected president of Ukraine. Most of the U.S. public is still unaware of these U.S. provocations that predictably resulted in war.

WEAPONIZING ANTI-SEMITISM

Israel and its supporters are trying to expand the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israeli policies. Israel realizes that the barbarity and cruelty of its policies are criminal and indefensible, so it must either change its policies (which it is unlikely to do) or criminalize criticism of its actions. If this new definition is adopted, legitimate criticism of Israeli crimes may be banned from the web and other sources of information.

Working in the mainstream media, Katie Halper, Emily Wilder, Nathan Robinson and Marc Lamont Hill lost their jobs for critical comments about Israel. In his article “How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel,” Robinson wrote about his experience and other groups that have been targeted by apartheid Israel supporters in Current Affairs. Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (fair.org) has pointed out that on numerous occasions, the New York Times and the Washington Post may violate their own conflict of interest rules in their appointment of reporters covering the Middle East. Reporters are expected to present information from an Israeli/U.S. perspec-

tive, not from the perspective of those suffering decades of brutal occupation.

Norman Finkelstein, Steven Salaita and Kenneth Roth lost university positions for speaking the truth about Israel’s policies toward Palestinians. (Roth was eventually hired.) According to an Intercept article by Murtaza Hussain in 2021, an Israeli consul general even made baseless claims of anti-Semitism against a graduate student, Kylie Broderick, who was teaching a course on the conflict between Israel and Palestine at the University of North Carolina. To its credit, UNC did not give in to these politically motivated charges and Broderick taught the course as she planned it.

Israel and its supporters continue to wage intense campaigns on college campuses, on the internet and social media sites, in the media, in state legislatures and in Congress to stop criticism of Israeli crimes and to limit the impact of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Israel understands that its savage and criminal behavior, not BDS activities, raise questions about its legit-

imacy. No wonder, then, that it worked diligently to redefine anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israeli policies.

WEAPONIZING THE CHARGE OF BEING PRO-RUSSIAN OR PRO-PUTIN

Ukraine seems to have studied the Israeli playbook on how to control the narrative. The media coverage of the Russian conflict with Ukraine and NATO does not provide the vital context; the reporting conveys only the Ukrainian/U.S./NATO perspective, it says little about the leadup to the war, and it has been overly optimistic about a quick Ukrainian victory, which is not feasible. People with a view that dissents from the mainstream narrative are essentially charged with being pro-Putin or pro-Russia tools; their views are not sought by the media, and their social posts are often quickly removed.

There is little hope for global security if the rule of law doesn’t apply equally to all states, including Russia, the U.S., and Israel. There is no U.S., Israel or Russia exception. ■

ESSENCE Festival Reveals Blacks and Arabs Share the Same Struggle for Justice

By Diana Safieh

ESSENCE FESTIVAL has been going for more than 25 years, and this year was the year I finally managed to attend. Why did it matter to me? It is a festival celebrating Black music and culture, and I am not Black. But as a Palestinian, I am most definitely not White either.

We Arabs in the diaspora are difficult to pigeonhole ethnically, and therefore difficult to understand culturally and represent legally. Do we panic whenever we see a section on the form asking us our ethnic origin? Often. Do we pray there will be an “other” box so we can just tick that and be done with it? Every time. Are we Middle East and North African? Yes and no. Are we Middle Eastern? Sure. Are we Arab? Obviously. But are we White, too? Legally, in the U.S., yes.

I don’t feel White, and I am definitely not treated as White in many

Diana Safieh is a writer and podcaster, with a focus on Palestine and anything even slightly unusual. She co‐hosts a true crime pod‐cast with her sister Randa. For nearly 20 years she has worked on development projects in her homeland of Palestine, and she was recently invested as a member of the Order of St. John for her efforts, just like her father, Ambassador Afif Safieh, and great uncle.

situations, like trying to get through airport security, or looking for a foundation that matches my skin tone. I didn’t learn much about my culture in schools, I couldn’t find a doll in the Barbie range with my heritage, and people like me weren’t represented on mainstream media when I was growing up, unless you count very unhelpful stereotypes, like Jafar in “Aladdin” and every bad guy in every action film.

There was also the casual racism, which I refuse to call microaggressions: when they occur regularly and hit the same nerve every time, they feel pretty macro.

As Arabs, we also didn’t have the luxury of “not doing politics,” which is perhaps the perk of White privilege I envy most. To not do politics means you are happy with the status quo. It suits you. You might not even be aware that it is not so comfortable for others and that politics actually “does” us daily.

This question of “whiteness” is an increasingly topical and timely issue when it comes to Arabs in the U.S., where our tick box is officially “White.” During (more open) segregation, newly arrived Arabs into the U.S. fought to be considered White by law, because you did

PHOTO COURTESY DIANA SAFIEH

LEFT AND RIGHT: “For nearly three decades, the ESSENCE Festival of Culture™ has been an international and joyful gathering that empowers community throughout the global Black diaspora. As the nation’s largest festival by per day at‐tendance, it continues to be a crown jewel of Black culture and plays a pivotal role in the amplification and celebration of the contributions of the Black community through business, music, and more.”

not want to be anything else at the time, or you would be sent to the back of the bus.

But what this means for Arab Americans now is that there is literally no way of knowing how many there are. And as we know, if you’re not counted, you don’t count. Arab Americans cannot have health services, social services and education tailored to suit their background. And they can be largely ignored in any political debate, rather than treated as the very significant minority group that they are.

With Donald Trump ignoring the recommendations to add a Middle East and North Africa (MENA) option to the 2020 Census, it went ahead without this new category. Will the 2030 census include something more appropriate for Arab Americans, like a box that actually says Arab? There is a proposal to add a MENA as well as a Latino/Hispanic tick box; let’s see whether this is implemented in time.

So when I learned of ESSENCE Festival and its aim to empower Black people and promote their culture, I instantly wanted to be in that space. And I can’t help but imagine how amazing it would be if we had our own festival on the scale and impact of ESSENCE.

But what is it actually like to go to the ESSENCE Festival as a non-Black participant? Well, first, it is a bucket-load of fun. It’s New Orleans, baby! If you can’t have a good time there, there is something wrong with you.

And New Orleans is the perfect place for a group of disenfranchised people in their own country to congregate. Held between June 29 to July 3, the dates placed us in New Orleans to witness the run-up and the actual day of 4th of July. Surprisingly, it was just like any other day. The only signs or mention of it were one topless veteran with

a flag on Bourbon Street, and the tram app informing us that they would be operating a Saturday service as it was technically a holiday. I don’t know whether it is the long complicated history of New Orleans, or more recently Hurricane Katrina and Trump, but something is making the people of New Orleans absolutely not bother about celebrating the birth of their nation.

And speaking of celebrations, this year the world celebrated 50 years of hip hop. So the number of artists there that I grew up with was mind-blowing: Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Salt-N-Pepa, and various states of Ices in the forms of T and Cube. I was in ’90s nostalgia heaven.

Did I feel self-conscious or out of place? I thought I might. I wasn’t sure if this event would be primarily for Black people to celebrate themselves among themselves, or if it would also aim to promote an understanding of Black culture to others. It happened to be both, and even though I was probably one of only a handful of White-presenting people among the 200,000 attendees, I couldn’t have felt more welcomed.

In fact, I could do nothing but find common ground with the message of the festival and the issues that were important to the attendees.

For a start, we Arabs also have serious hair issues that cannot be resolved by anything in the White market. Is our hair thick and luscious? Yes. But does it turn into an unmanageable mess the minute it hits any humidity? Also yes. It did beg the question, why torment us all by having this event in a climate like that of New Orleans? The struggle was real, and the free anti-frizz samples for our textured, ethnic hair were greatly appreciated.

But more significant are the incredible similarities between the Black Lives Matter and Free Palestine movements. Both are part of the same postcolonial narrative, i.e. how the colonial powers did a number on our countries and our peoples in a way that still affects us negatively to this day. As KRS-One, who also performed this year at ESSENCE Festival, told us in his classic “Sound of da Police” song, “there can never be justice on stolen land,” and that triggers Blacks and Palestinians.

We also both live under the banner of “no justice, no peace,” a variation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement “There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice.” The short form might sound like a threat, and to be honest, maybe it is. We won’t lie down quietly through our oppression. Sorry, not sorry. Can you really expect a sustainable peace without affording everyone the same rights, opportunities and kindness?

In a nutshell, I found us as Blacks and Arabs to be like Batman and Superman; we have slightly different origin stories, but we are concerned with the same fight for justice. And any collaboration between these movements should be encouraged and could be empowering for both. After all, it is in an oppressive ruling system’s best interest to divide and conquer minority groups, and if we don’t support our siblings in the Black, queer, Hispanic, Native American and other communities, there will be no one left to support us when they come for us.

So, if you are Arab American, do go to ESSENCE Festival. You will be with your people. And also, check out Amer Zahr’s documentary on YouTube “We’re not White”; it may confuse or clarify you on which boxes you tick. ■

PHOTO COURTESY DIANA SAFIEH

Kashmir Reaction to Imran Khan’s Jail

Sentence, Politics Ban

By Junaid Kathju

THE ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in a corruption case has angered many in Indian-administered Kashmir. A resident of Srinagar’s Habba Kadal area, Ghulam Mohammad, 70, said he was in disbelief at seeing the turn of events in a country that claims Kashmir in its entirety and has been supporting a struggle for self-determination on the Indian side. Mohammad said it was the second time in the past year he felt anguished after seeing the popular leader being “ill-treated” which he believes “Khan doesn’t deserve.”

“I am at a loss for words. I don’t know what to say any more,” he said, sitting in his small room on the second floor of his house and watching the updates from Pakistan on his mobile phone. This time, though, Mohammad was mentally

Junaid Kathju is a Kashmir ‐ based freelance journalist. This is an excerpt from a longer article published on Al Jazeera.com 0n Aug. 9, 2023. Reprinted with permission.

ready to see the action against Khan without endangering his health.

That wasn’t the case last year. On the evening of April 10, 2022, soon after Khan was removed as prime minister after he lost a vote of no confidence in parliament, Mohammad complained of chest pain and was rushed to a hospital where the doctors said he had suffered a “mild heart attack” due to stress. “I got very upset when I heard that Khan had been removed from office,” Mohammad explained.

ANGER OVER KHAN CRACKDOWN

Khan, who served as prime minister between 2018 and 2022, was charged in nearly 150 cases after his removal, including corruption and “terrorism.” The charges came after he blamed the country’s powerful “establishment”—a euphemism for the powerful military which also dabbles in politics—for his removal.

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan visits earthquake victims at a hospital in Mirpur in Kashmir on Sept. 30, 2019. Many Kashmiris believed Khan was their best bet in negotiating with India to find a solution to the Kashmir crisis.

Finally, after a series of court appearances and a brief arrest in May, a court in the capital Islamabad on Aug. 5 sentenced the 70-year-old cricketing legend-turned-politician to three years in prison in a case related to the non-declaration of gifts he received from foreign leaders and governments when he was the premier. Pakistan’s election commission also barred him from politics for five years due to his conviction. Khan has denied all the charges.

Khan’s Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party says nearly 10,000 of its leaders and supporters have also been arrested in the government crackdown since May, while dozens of top PTI leaders have quit the party, reportedly under pressure from the military.

Mohammad, who describes himself as an avid political observer, said that Khan’s approach toward India on the Kashmir issue was the most striking thing about him. “I believe if Khan would have continued as a prime minister and Modi [India’s prime minister] would have shown some flexibility, the resolution of the Kashmir issue could have been possible,” he said.

Mohammad is not alone in thinking along these lines in Indian-administered Kashmir, where pro-Pakistan sentiment is rampant. A decades-old rebellion against New Delhi there seeks to either merge with Muslim-majority Pakistan or form an independent state.

Many Kashmiris remember Khan’s first address as prime minister in 2018 when he urged India to “take one step forward, we [Pakistan] will take two” in resolving the dispute. The call was well received in Indian-administered Kashmir and many residents saw a rare glimpse of hope.

Months later, a new and unprecedented misfortune struck the region. On Aug. 5, 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government unilaterally abrogated the region’s special status guaranteed by the Indian constitution and brought the country’s only Muslimmajority region under direct federal control. The move forced Pakistan, led by

Khan’s government, to downgrade diplomatic and trade ties with India, which have not yet been restored.

Meanwhile, a series of laws and policies imposed by New Delhi to further tighten its grip over Indian-administered Kashmir have worsened the already tense relations between the two South Asian nuclear powers.

But many in the region still believe Khan was their best bet in negotiating with India to find a solution to the Kashmir crisis.

In an interview in June this year with the Atlantic Council, a prominent United States-based think tank, Khan said despite India’s 2019 move, the then-Pakistan government headed by him was working on a “peace proposal with India” that would have seen New Delhi announce “some sort of road map” for the Kashmir issue and could have also led to a visit by Modi to Pakistan.

“[There] was supposed to be a quid pro quo . India was supposed to give some concessions, give some sort of a road map to Kashmir, and I was going to host Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi in Pakistan. But it never materialized. So it never went further than that. That’s how it was,” Khan said.

FEELINGS TOWARD PAKISTAN HAVE CHANGED

The Himalayan territory of Kashmir has been the subject of a bitter dispute between Hindu-majority India and mainly Muslim Pakistan since 1947, when the borders of the two countries were drawn along religious lines by the departing British colonial rulers.

Since then, the two countries have fought two of their full-scale wars over Kashmir. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since an armed rebellion against Indian rule began in 1989.

New Delhi accuses Islamabad of backing the rebels with weapons, money and training. Islamabad denies the charges, saying it only provides diplomatic support to the rebel movement.

But the crackdown against Khan and

his party has angered many Kashmiris.

“I am stunned to see this face of Pakistan. I never expected that its army could be so brutal against its own people. My thoughts toward Pakistan have completely changed after seeing what has happened with Imran Khan and his party,” said Irfan, a 27-year-old shopkeeper from the Rajbagh area of Srinagar.

Pakistan’s military has organized several coups and directly ruled over the country for more than three decades. Many observers call it the most powerful institution in Pakistan, which had even backed Khan during his rise to power. But the relations soured when Khan was in power, resulting in his eventual overthrow.

Irfan now says Pakistan is the most “corrupt country where the army holds the ultimate power. These days you can’t hide things. With social media, you come to know about everything. The way police are arresting and humiliating women and the media is being muzzled, it feels like Kashmir,” he said.

Khan’s rise to fame in Kashmir is largely attributed to him portraying himself as an anti-corruption crusader.

“What have Nawaz Sharif [former prime minister of Pakistan] or [former president Asif Ali] Zardari done for us all these years apart from filling their own coffers and living luxuriously in European countries? They are all a bunch of corrupt people who looted Pakistan all these years,” Imran Hussain, owner of a Kashmiri handicraft business said.

Kashmiri political analyst and scholar Sheikh Showkat Hussain told Al Jazeera that although Kashmiris do feel negatively about Pakistan and its army after Khan’s imprisonment, it is Pakistan’s state policy on Kashmir that matters in the long run, not an individual’s approval or dislike.

“The political and economic stability of Pakistan has always been a factor in orienting Kashmir politics. But ultimately it is the Pakistan state’s narrative that prevails over here [in Kashmir],” Hussain concluded. ■

British Government Pushes Anti-Boycott Bill

By John Gee

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT is seeking to make it illegal for public bodies to boycott Israel. On July 3, Parliament held a vote on “The Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill.” Individual MPs arguing against it came not only from the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Scottish Nationalist and Green parties, but also from within the ruling Conservative Party. Nevertheless, the bill passed this first vote and then went through a committee stage, where changes could be introduced, before being returned to Parliament for a final vote in September.

An anti-boycott bill was proposed in the Conservative election manifesto in 2019. It was presented to the electorate as a measure against allowing political considerations to interfere with sound financial policy: local government bodies should seek to obtain the best possible return on taxpayers’ money whether spending or investing it and no other considerations should interfere with that. It sounded like a principled objective that would appeal to many conservative (with a small “c”) voters.

Section 1.1 of the anti-boycott bill states that public bodies will not be able to take a decision or seek to influence such a decision when it has “regard to a territorial consideration in a way that would cause a reasonable observer of the decision-making process to conclude that the decision was influenced by political or moral disapproval of foreign state conduct.” Put simply, foreign states might torture, invade and occupy neighboring lands; discriminate against women, national minorities or gay people; or wreck the environment, but that should not factor into decisions on public money. Moreover, the proposed bill would gag local office holders: they would not be permitted to say that they would favor boycotting a delinquent state if it were legally permitted.

It has been obvious all along that the central purpose of the proposed legislation was to counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights. Government ministers will have the power to authorize certain countries to be exempted from anti-boycott measures—notably, countries that are the subject of British government sanctions—but there is one exception to this rule. Israel and the territories under its control (“Occupied Palestinian Territories” and “Occupied

John Gee is a free ‐ lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

A march calling for justice for Palestinians moves through the streets of central London on May 11, 2019. An anti‐boycott bill was proposed in the Conservative election manifesto that year, presented to voters as a measure against allowing political considerations to in terfere with sound financial policy.

PHOTO BY DANIEL LEAL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Golan Heights”) will not be exempted under any circumstances.

Pro-Palestinian organizations have rallied to oppose this bill, lobbying MPs and petitioning and protesting against it. Many organizations concerned with civil and human rights have also protested, for a variety of reasons: support for the Palestinians, awareness that the new legislation will block boycotts of odious regimes such as any that torture and murder citizens or are particularly destructive of the environment, or simply because they believe that elected representatives ought to be able to include ethical considerations in financial decision-making and allow the voters to call them to account if they object. Some 70 civil society organizations joined together to oppose the bill.

As MPs who spoke against the bill pointed out, had such a law been in force before 1990, it would have made it an offense for local authorities to support the boycott of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa—a boycott that was very effective in discrediting that regime and helping to bring about its downfall. Of course, this is exactly the example that Israel and its supporters have in mind in seeking to stigmatize and destroy the BDS movement.

MAGGIORE MYSTERY

Lake Maggiore’s waters stretch along a valley spanning the Italian-Swiss border, reaching into the Alps. It is known as a place of mild temperatures and beautiful views, but from time to time, its waters can be swept by sudden violent storms. On May 28, one such unexpected storm capsized an overloaded boat, spilling those on board into the lake and drowning four of them. When police subsequently began to look for information about those on board, they discovered that this was no ordinary tourist excursion. The passengers were eight members of the Italian and 13 members of the Israeli intelligence services.

The boat, called the Gooduria, had a capacity of 15 passengers, but was carrying 23 people, including two crew.

Of those drowned, one was a crew member, two were Italian secret service agents and the fourth was reported to have been a retired member of the Mossad. Ital-

ian media reports named the dead Israeli agent as Erez Shimoni, but this may well have been a false name. The Israeli government eventually confirmed that the dead Israeli had served in the Mossad, but did not name him. An official statement from Israel’s prime minister’s office said:

“The Mossad lost a dear friend, a devoted and professional worker who for decades dedicated his life to the security of the State of Israel, even after his retirement.”

The story quickly disappeared from the news, leaving unanswered a key question: what were all those agents up to?

The Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reported the theory that they had been spying on Russian oligarchs who had been buying properties by the lake, spending money held in Swiss bank accounts to evade European Union sanctions following the Russian assault on Ukraine. Another theory was that they had met to monitor the activities of Iranian companies in the Lombardy industrial region.

Neither sounds very likely—unless they were excuses for an agents’ junket. Would it really have required 21 agents, 13 of whom were not Italian, to investigate either Russian or Iranian covert business or property dealings? How many feet on the ground would that take, since much of any such investigation could have been undertaken remotely?

The immediate reason for the spooks taking a boat ride was reportedly a birthday celebration, which may be true. The boat visited tourist spots before the storm

struck and this may well have been a postmeeting jaunt.

Neither the Italian nor the Israeli government wanted information about the purpose of the agents’ meeting to emerge. The Israeli agents were flown home in a specially dispatched plane after hurriedly collecting their luggage and without returning their hired cars. The Italian police made it clear that their investigation was confined to looking into the circumstances of the accident on the lake and not into what lay behind the agents’ conclave.

The May 31 issue of Times of Israel, reporting the funeral of the dead Mossad agent, noted that senior Mossad officials attended, including the agency’s head, David Barnea. Except for Barnea, the others took pains to conceal their faces and Israeli television blurred their images in its coverage of the funeral.

Barnea eulogized the deceased agent, saying:

“You worked in secret throughout your adult life—even after your death we will not be able to tell publicly about your many significant and beneficial actions for the people of Israel.” He praised him as specializing in “pioneering fields and methods of operation.”

References to the agent’s decades of service and Barnea’s words “throughout your adult life” would seem to cast doubts on the identification of the dead agent as “Erez Shimoni,” a 50-year-old retired agent: the eulogy suggests he was still working with Mossad when he died. As to the real purpose of the agents’ meeting, that remains a mystery. ■

Recovery operations on May 29, 2023, the day after an overloaded boat carrying passengers from the Israeli and Italian intelligence services capsized on Lake Maggiore in Lisanza.

PHOTO BY MATTIA OZBOT/GETTY IMAGES

Are Extremists Dragging Libya into a Dangerous Form of Islam?

By Mustafa Fetouri

AS A PREDOMINANTLY Sunni Muslim country, Libya has long been known for its moderate practice of Islam based on tolerance and acceptance of others. Christians in the country, nearly all of whom are foreigners including Egyptian Copts, are welcomed by the people and have their own places of worship. They seldom face any prejudice based on their religion.

Last May, Libya’s General Authority for Awqaf and Islamic Affairs (GAAIA), a public organization, announced the creation of what it called the “Guardians of Virtue.” A body that would guard Islamic and traditional social values in the country was needed, it claimed, because many young Libyans were “deviating” from the correct Islamic path and are even being converted to Chris-

Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He received the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written ex ‐tensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues. He has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafafetouri@ hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri.

tianity through foreign and local nongovernmental organizations operating in the country.

Proselytizing Christianity in Libya is not only illegal but socially condemned. Anyone accused of that (and their families) are shunned by society and treated with contempt, even if their innocence is proved later in a court of law.

Late last year Libya’s Internal Security Agency detained half a dozen young Libyans and accused them of converting to Christianity. The agency later published a couple of video clips purporting to show at least two of the detainees confessing to becoming Christians with the help of foreigners including Jeff Wilson, who is described as an American citizen teaching English in a private school in Tripoli. The U.S. State Department acknowledged that an American citizen was detained but did not mention Wilson by name; he is described online as a businessman helping American companies work in Libya.

Regardless of how true the allegations are, the fact that a few Libyans are accused of converting to Christianity is unprece-

Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al‐Mangoush speaks during a joint press conference with her Kuwaiti counterpart in Kuwait City on Oct. 3, 2021.

PHOTO BY YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

dented in Libya. At least one such individual has already received the death sentence; a court in Misrata, east of the capital Tripoli, condemned Diaa al-Din Balao to death for apostasy.

Libyans have always been proud of their open interpretation of Islamic teachings. They believe that their country has one of the highest rates of mosques per capita in the Muslim world. The country is nicknamed “the country of a million memorizers of the Qur’an,” a huge number in a nation of only seven million people. In international Qur’an recitation competitions Libyan competitors tend to win the top places. Most of the infrastructure of Islamic education, including the curriculum, were founded and developed under Muammar Qaddafi to propagate mainstream Islamic teachings.

But Libya is changing and the country is being dragged into a more extreme version of Islam that is completely alien to Libya. Since the civil strife that began in 2011 and ended with the NATO military intervention that killed Qaddafi, ended his government and plunged Libya into chaos, a major casualty appears to be Libya’s moderate Muslim way of life.

For example, women today are expected to dress in ways that have no basis in traditional local customs. It is now common to see even working women wearing burqas, which is very unusual in Libya where women used to enjoy a wide range of freedoms protected by laws, including equal pay with men. Under Qaddafi hundreds of women worked as lawyers, judges, airplane pilots, military and police officers and civil servants, including ministers. Now they are discouraged from working in such professions.

Rights and civil society groups, both foreign and local, have noted the recent crackdown on young people because of their alleged anti-Muslim behaviors, which are perceived as a threat to Libya’s Islamic traditions and way of life. Last March, Amnesty International accused the security agency of persecuting “young Libyans” under the guise of protecting “Libyan and Islamic values.”

Many observers believe what is happening is a war between different Islamic ide-

ologies aiming for influence in politics and a place in society, said Hassan, a law professor in Benghazi who does not want his family name published. Referring to women’s current dress code, he observed that “the way many women dress is not even Libyan” but rather a foreign “Talibanstyle attire.” Twelve years ago it was rare to see head-to-toe veiled young women. Today, it is rare to see women, even ministers and other civil servants, dressed in suits or Western-style clothes. The country’s foreign minister, U.S. educated Najla al-Mangoush, is constantly ridiculed and bullied on social media for wearing Western-styled attire and not wearing a headscarf.

Another new trend is occurring in which female and male pupils, some as young as six, are taught in separate classrooms. They are taught an Islamic-focused curriculum and are required to wear an outfit similar to those found in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

ISLAMIC IDEOLOGY USED FOR POLITICAL GAIN

Beneath the surface, a battle is raging, mainly between Fatwa House (Dar il-Aftaa), led by Sheikh Sadiq al-Ghariani, and GAAIA, headed by Mohamed al-Abani. Both are considered extremists in their own ways. The fight made history last April when both unelected men disagreed about the date of Eid al-Fitr, dividing the country for the first time in its history. The outcome: the holiday was not celebrated by Libyans on the same day even within the same city.

Both Al-Ghariani and Al-Abani are accused of wasting millions of dollars in public funds. The country’s Public Audit Bureau implicitly accused them of corruption while the country’s Central Bank says the Fatwa House, for example, has spent over five million Libyan dinars (approximately $1.1 million) from January to June this year—a huge amount for this institution. The Audit Bureau said both institutions spent large sums on clothes and unwarranted celebrations. Legally, Sheikh al-Ghariani is no longer even the mufti since he was fired by the parliament seven years ago and the institution itself was abolished. Yet he is still spending millions on his own TV channel

broadcasting out of Istanbul, Türkiye, where the sheikh spends most of his time while preaching to Libyans back home about their religion. Al-Ghariani issued a fatwa in 2012 banning women from traveling abroad without a chaperone. This year law enforcement tried to implement the fatwa but abandoned the idea in the face of public outrage.

Politically and because of his religious status, Al-Ghariani is seen as a divisive figure, constantly meddling in politics. The man has been known, on many occasions, to encourage internal divisions, fights and “jihads.” Loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sheikh is considered to be one of the top unofficial leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, a group designated as a terrorist organization by Libya’s parliament back in 2019.

Many Libya watchers think what is going on is an attempt to create a Talibanstyle Islamic emirate on the southern banks of the Mediterranean, a horrific scenario for Libya and the region including Europe, which helped create this mess. On at least two previous occasions extremists tried to establish an Islamic emirate in the far eastern city of Derna; the first time, in 2011, led by mostly foreign elements, and the second, in 2014, led by the local Ansar al-Sharia, a group implicated in the murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

One of the less apparent outcomes of the 2011 civil war and the subsequent foreign meddling in the country’s affairs is the way Libyans understand and practice Islam, a religion based on tolerance. The West’s military intervention in Libya helped create a dangerous land instead of the free and democratic nation the Libyans were promised.

Tolerant Islam faces a serious existential challenge in Libya, as political divisions grow and the battle for the minds of Libyans intensifies. Aided by publicly funded institutions like GAAIA and Fatwa House, Libya’s educational system and media are changing, and extremists are slowly gaining the upper hand. The longterm future is not promising for Libya, the region and maybe the world. ■

Canadians Held in North and East Syria Despite Repatriation Ruling

By Candice Bodnaruk

SOME CANADIAN SENATORS and former diplomats say Canada has abandoned four Canadian men still held by the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, even though earlier this year a federal court judge said that the men must be repatriated to Canada immediately.

In January, federal court judge Henry Brown ruled the men were entitled to federal government help to return to Canada. Yet in May the Canadian government appealed that decision and today the men still remain in the camp.

Independent Senator Kim Pate, former Canadian diplomat Scott Heatherington and former Amnesty International Canada Secretary General Alex Neve traveled to Syria in late August on a humanitarian mission to visit the four Canadians still held there. None of the four men has been charged with a crime. The delegation’s intent was to

Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg.

report on the challenges the people in the camps face in North and East Syria.

Neve, who is also a senior fellow in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs in the University of Ottawa and adjunct law professor at University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University, said the delegation was deeply concerned that Canada’s policy of largely abandoning and ignoring Canadians who are residing in the camps or held in detention centers leaves them vulnerable to ongoing and very serious human rights abuses.

“It is unconscionable that the Canadian government is not taking all possible steps to bring them home,” Neve said in an emailed statement to the Washington Report in July. Neve added that although a number of women and children have been repatriated, none of the men have and some women and children remain in unsafe conditions in the region.

During their visit, the delegation hoped to gain access to all the Canadians in the camps and detention centers to get a sense of how they are doing and to see if they have any pressing health or other basic needs.

Protesters at Winnipeg’s City Hall support Jenin refugees.

PHOTO BY LAWRENCE SUTHERLAND

“We will also be having discussions with local officials to explore options for laying the ground for repatriation. We continue to make it clear to the Canadian government that we are ready and prepared to assist with repatriation, which, in our view, has to be the eventual way to resolve these cases,” Neve explained.

He pointed out that while the Syrian Kurdish administration has made it clear that it is prepared to deal with designated humanitarian representatives of foreign governments in order to facilitate repatriation, the Canadian government has not been receptive to working with the delegation and has declined their offer to help facilitate repatriation.

Neve explained the delegation sees the visit as important from a humanitarian welfare perspective.

Why did the Canadian government appeal Justice Brown’s decision? In Neve’s view, “The government appears to be averse to in any way being seen as sympathetic or providing assistance to a group of individuals who have all been tarred with the accusation of being supporters of ISIS, even though that is unfair, inflammatory and inaccurate generalization and disregards basic human rights protections that apply in all circumstances,” Neve said.

At the time of his July 2023 communication with the Washington Report, Neve was optimistic about the delegation’s trip.

“We anticipate having constructive discussions with Syrian Kurdish officials that will help open avenues for advancing repatriation of the Canadians still residing or detained in the region,” he concluded. In early July, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) announced that two women and three children who had missed a repatriation flight to Canada in April have now returned to Canada.

He encouraged Canadians who care about the issue to reach out to their MPs and Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly and to demand that Canada initiate the process of repatriation for all Canadians who remain trapped in North and East Syria.

MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT AIMS FOR STRAIGHT TALK ON ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Have you ever written to a local or national media outlet to complain about unbalanced coverage of Palestine and gotten a generic two-line response thanking you for writing?

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) recently launched The Media Accountability Project (MAP) to encourage Canadian media to provide professional and fair-minded coverage on the Middle East, especially Palestine-Israel.

MAP’s work is based on professionally recognized ethics, established by the Canadian Association of Journalists and Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Anyone who is interested in holding the Canadian media accountable for fair coverage can go to the CJPME site <www.cjpme.org> and sign up to be a media responder. They will regularly receive media alerts through email.

For the past several months the project has seen some real successes. In one case, a CJPME letter-writing campaign successfully pressured seven media outlets, including the Toronto Star, Hamilton Spectator and Winnipeg Free Press, to issue corrections to a misleading headline in July. The Associated Press headline read “A Palestinian militant kills an Israeli in the West Bank, a day after Israel’s military raid in the area”; the headline was misleading because the Israeli killed was in fact a soldier, not a civilian. The Associated Press also corrected the headline.

The CJPME site offers essays that cover common media missteps on PalestineIsrael and analysis of terminology used, such as “occupied” and “disputed.”

MAP also labels coverage as “poor,” “good” or “excellent” and provides reasons for the ratings.

Media responders are also asked to write to specific reporters or media organizations to thank them for balanced coverage of Israel-Palestinian and to defend that media outlet against pressure from groups like Honest Reporting that demand they revise their coverage to favor Israel.

WINNIPEG STANDS WITH JENIN

Dozens of people gathered at Winnipeg’s City Hall on July 6 to remember and to stand in solidarity with the victims of Israel’s July 3 attack on Jenin refugee camp.

Motorists honked their support for the “Stand with Jenin” rally as they drove by during the busy rush hour. Participants waved Canadian and Palestinian flags and held banners that read “End Apartheid,” “Justice Not Fascism” and “Jenin Bleeds But Resists.”

On July 6, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) called on Canada to respond to Israel’s attacks on the refugee camp. The organization said that Israel’s withdrawal did not mean the end of the crisis for the camp’s residents. CJPME called Israel’s attack both a form of collective punishment and a war crime.

The organization also demanded Canada immediately suspend military trade with Israel.

In March, Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly said Canada was deeply concerned over the escalation of violence in the West Bank. In May, she said the Canadian government rejects the argument that Israel is pursuing a policy of apartheid against the Palestinian people. The following month, Canada called on Israel to reverse thousands of West Bank settlement approvals. At that time, Joly issued a joint statement with her Australian and UK counterparts, saying she is gravely concerned by the expanded settlements. ■

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Georgetown Imam Hendi on His Life and Faith

By Phil Pasquini

Georgetown in establishing a Muslim chaplain position on their campuses.

Imam Hendi noted that when he first came to the university he had “no role model for how to create a chaplaincy” as it was not then a part of Islam. And so he traveled around the country to learn from his Christian and Jewish counterparts what he needed to do. Now several Muslim and Arab countries are beginning to establish such positions and are seeking out his advice and guidance.

The Washington Report sat down recently with Imam Hendi to discuss his life’s work along with his views of the challenges of contemporary life and spirituality.

WHILE MUSLIM STUDENTS in colleges and universities across the U.S. today can avail themselves of the services of a Muslim chaplain, that has not always been the case. Historically both Christian and Jewish students have a long tradition of access to chaplaincy services at higher education institutions, but it wasn’t until 1999 that Georgetown University, a Catholic Jesuit school, hired a full-time Muslim chaplain, the first institution in the U.S. to do so.

That chaplain, Imam Yahya Hendi, had previously served as an imam both in Jordan and in several states in the U.S. before assuming his new full-time position at Georgetown as director of Muslim Life. Much to his credit, Imam Hendi is responsible for having created the new fully functioning Yarrow Mamout Mosque on campus. That project took 12 years of hard work and planning, including fundraising, to complete. The project also called upon the imam’s profound sense of design and attention to detail, reflected in the final magnificent masjid. (See Washington Report June/July 2023.) The university enthusiastically embraced the project by providing a dedicated space to create the first of its kind masjid on a college campus in the U.S. Today, many universities and colleges across the country have followed the lead of

The long road of success enjoyed today by the 57-year-old Imam Hendi began in the small northern West Bank Palestinian village of his birth, Kefl Hares, where his family roots go back to the 8th century. The religiously oriented village is where it is believed by both Muslims and Jews that the tombs of Joshua and Caleb are located. As the seventh child in a family of 11 children, Hendi, along with his siblings, was encouraged by both parents to seek out “advanced education to be informed and to keep growing.”

Taking his parents’ advice to heart, the young Hendi spent time in the library at the village mosque reading his schoolbooks, and it was during this formative period of his life that he began “hearing many different messages about Islam, some saying Islam is logical; some saying Islam is freeing. Hearing different interpretations about women in Islam; about Islam and tolerance. Somehow, the arguments did not make sense as they contradicted one another.”

By the age of 14, those early investigations into the meaning of Islam and women in the religion culminated in his researching and writing about women’s role in Islam “to understand my faith in a scholarly way and intellectual way.” In his ongoing immersion to better understand his religion and in furtherance of his studies, Hendi left for college in Jordan where, as an undergraduate, he majored in Islamic Studies while doing his training in and then becoming an imam at the age of 24. In 1990, after having worked as an imam in Amman, he traveled to the U.S. where he put himself through graduate school, eventually working as an imam in several states across the country before becoming a U.S. citizen.

On becoming a citizen, the imam noted that, “I formerly lived in a nation that was occupied and I had to travel without a passport. Be-

Phil Pasquini, the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets, is a Cali‐fornia native who is a staff photojournalist at the Washington Report, as well as a contributor to other international publications.

Imam Yahya Hendi speaks at the March 2023 dedication ceremony of the Yarrow Mamout Mosque at Georgetown University.

STAFF PHOTO P. PASQUINI

coming a citizen of a nation for the first time in my life was a profound experience.”

In 2012, Imam Hendi was named by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center at the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman, Jordan as one of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims for his work as an interfaith dialogue activist and trainer. Imam Hendi has also served as a Muslim chaplain at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda (Walter Reed) as well as Imam at the Islamic Society of Frederick, MD.

When asked about the proudest accomplishment in his life, the imam answered that it is his four children. He confessed, too, that he was immensely proud of the new Yarrow Mamout masjid, which provides a functioning space for all students at Georgetown in service of his vision of strong interfaith understanding, dialogue, diversity, and relationships.

Imam Hendi pointed to two photographs of himself with President Bill Clinton on his office wall. He remarked that through his work with the administration, Clinton became the first president to celebrate Eid al-Fitr while in office. During the presentation, Clinton recited a Qur’anic verse (49:13) that he later used on other occasions. Sometime afterward, the imam went to the Oval Office and presented Clinton with the verse in calligraphy as a gift.

Another proud achievement for the imam was his invitation by Montgomery College president Dr. DeRionne Pollard to

deliver the commencement speech to the graduates of the class of 2018. That honor made him the first imam in the U.S. ever to make a commencement speech at a public college. His words centering on inclusiveness and racial and social justice were enthusiastically received by the graduates: “You are what makes me believe that the American Dream is still alive.”

When asked how he deals with the inevitable challenges and difficulties that come his way, he responded: “Spiritual upbringing and my Palestinian life story told me that life is like a rollercoaster—that even when you go down you come up again. The Palestinian story, they keep going when people say they are going to give up. They never give up; they keep going despite so many disappointments. What keeps me going is my faith, my sense of spirituality, my understanding that life is not meant to be perfect and the need to have hope for tomorrow. Palestinians, too, deserve a state and Palestinian lives matter.”

“What stresses me out is racism, Islamophobia,” he said. “I went out of my comfort zone to study Christianity and Judaism so why don’t my fellow Americans go out of their comfort zone to study Islam?” He emphasized that “Islam is misunderstood by ignorance and misinformation, by hidden agendas and on what Islam is and is not.”

Describing the words he lives by, the imam said, “Knowing that God is the ultimate power gives me so much peace.” And the word love—in Arabic and not in English—is a big part of his life. The

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sounds of the word love mean “to be open, to be patient, to be close.”

On a personal note, he mentioned that whenever people ask him where he is from, he sometimes detects a certain divisive arrogance, which led him to seek a universal answer. He found that answer in the Qur’an where in several verses it mentions people being made from and returning to dust. And so he responds to the question by saying that “When we all die, we return to dust. So we are all brothers and sisters in dust. We are Dustonians.”

For relaxation, the imam loves cooking and finds it a spiritual exercise; he especially enjoys preparing and artistically presenting Palestinian dishes. The imam also remains a prolific reader of all subjects, writes poetry in Arabic, and enjoys swimming.

His dream is to establish a cancer hospital in Nablus that will help the entire Palestinian population. For many years now he has wanted to publish his writings and teachings.

At the end of our conversation, he shared a personal experience. “If you were born under occupation with little access to the outside world, everyone tells you that you do not matter and that there is no way of moving forward and succeeding. I did not buy into that. I believe in myself. I believe in the world. And I believe that [only] I limit myself and my potential. I need to maximize my potential; there is so much to do for my people and for the world around me. Life is meant to be a challenge for us to grow and be in service to others.” ■

Meet Samir LanGus: The Musician Who Brought Moroccan Blues to the U.S.

By Emilie Pons

MOROCCAN MUSICIAN

Samir LanGus plays Gnawa music, an ancestral art form which originates from different Sub-Saharan African countries. Gnawa culture is a mix of pre-Islamic African cultures and Sufism. Gnawa music was brought to Morocco by formerly enslaved Africans, and tells of their journey, trials and history. It is a mix of various African languages and instruments. In fact, according to Maâlem Mokhtar Guinea, “at first there was no guembri (a three-string African guitar used in Gnawa music), only voice and percussions.”

Gnawa music captures the pain of the stories of former Black slaves who used the music as a way to survive, psychologically. The music is about “missing home, about happiness, love, family,” LanGus says. “It’s about the Prophet, spirituality, trance, dance and healing.” LanGus believes his music also speaks to the experiences of Black Americans.

LanGus plays the guembri, an instrument which is now essential for Gnawa music. “Morocco really innovated this style of the guembri ,” LanGus says. He was trained by Gnawa

Emilie Pons is a multimedia journalist and producer based in New York City. Her work has been featured on PRI, TRT World, Radio DW, CBC News, AFP and JazzTimes, among others. In addition, she produces the arts and culture podcast of the New York Foreign Press Association.

master Hamid el Kasri. Gnawa music is an ancestral, Black music. In essence, it is the blues of Morocco. As late Ugandan poet Okot p’Bitek describes in his book, Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, “the African primitive songs and dances are not just entertainment. They also establish links between members of the community, those who are alive and those who have died.” Malian vocalist Mamani Keïta, from the all-female West Africa collective Les Amazones d’Afrique, says she hears her maternal grandmother’s voice in the new composition of her colleague Beninborn vocalist Fafa Ruffino, which is reminiscent of Gnawa music.

Ruffino, who is also a member of Les Amazones d’Afrique, says that “Gnawa music is West Africa, Mali, Burkina. It’s traditional bass guitar. And it’s often played during ritualistic ceremonies—it’s mysterious, it’s spiritual. It’s not just any type of music. And when you see people dance, you know something special is happening.” When people dance in a Gnawa performance or ceremony, as LanGus explained, they are saying “I have no chains, I have no handcuffs. I am a free man, I am a free human. You cannot force me and just put me in any position. I can be whatever I want.” He sees the same qualities in the blues and in jazz. “The jazz, the blues and Gnawa come from the same mother—which is Africa. That’s why it’s so easy when you play with jazz musicians.”

Samir LanGus with his guembri instrument.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY HICHAM LAABD

Ruffino recently performed with Les Amazones d’Afrique at the yearly Gnawa Music Festival in Essaouira, on the west coast of Morocco. Around 300,000 people attended the festival this year and 480 musicians from Morocco and 15 other countries performed.

LanGus comes from Aït Melloul, about two hours south of Essaouira and very close to Agadir. “So many talented musicians came out of Agadir,” LanGus says. But there aren’t as many opportunities as there are in Casablanca or Rabat, where “you have more cultural spaces. In Agadir, you don’t have that much.”

For LanGus, moving to New York City in 2014 changed everything but it still took him nine years to make a name for himself. He believes one should continuously dig deeply and learn from one’s culture. But he also thinks musicians should “listen to other styles of music, get inspired by that, and do fusion.”

LanGus, who has been featured in the New York Times, recently performed with

a samba band in Miami, and he performed in Jerusalem last year. He is now getting ready to record his first album, which will be a mix between traditional Gnawa songs and jazz, blues and pop.

“It’s nice to mix Gnawa music with these other styles of music,” LanGus says. The project has been years in the making and involves a huge band.

Other important musicians, like Marcus Miller or saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, have performed with Gnawa artists. “The music is very simple and it has so much room and so much space for other styles to blend in,” LanGus explains. “It’s not a full music; it is full, but it’s empty. There is space…you have the bass, the gimbri, and then you have the castanets and then you have the singing—that’s it! You have space where you can add violin, like in an orchestra; you can add trumpet, like a big horn section. You have space where you can put drums, percussions. You have space

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where you can create anything.”

Examples of jazz and Gnawa fusion are the 1994 album “The Trance of Seven Colors,” by the late Maleem Mahmoud Ghania and Afrofuturist saxophone player Pharoah Sanders; the 2016 recording of Bill Laswell entitled “Night Spirit Masters: Gnawa Music of Marrakesh” and “Tagnawwit: Holy Black Gnawa Trance” with Mokhtar Guinea; and the performance of Hassan Hakmoun with free jazz trumpet player Don Cherry and world music composer Adam Rudolph.

Overall, Gnawa culture, originally created by a marginalized community, has become the face of Morocco in countries like Poland, Brazil and Japan, which have been promoting Gnawa music in various performances and schools. Gnawa culture has had a fascinating trajectory— and its future, with traditional Gnawa performances or fusion ones, could be just as exciting. ■

WAGING PEACE

Will Saudi Arabia Normalize Relations With Israel?

Amid reports that U.S. diplomats are working fervently to forge official ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, the Center for the National Interest held a webinar on July 27 titled “The U.S. Push for Saudi-Israel Normalization.”

Firas Maksad, the director of strategic outreach at the Middle East Institute, believes the establishment of official ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel is an inevitability. “It’s a question of when and how,” he said.

That being said, Maksad believes “quite a bit of daylight” remains between the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia. One obstacle to a deal is Riyadh’s desire for a mutual defense treaty with the U.S., which Congress is likely to oppose due to substantial anti-Saudi sentiment stemming from the Yemen war and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

There’s also the issue of Israel’s rightwing government, which has intensified longstanding anti-Palestinian policies and driven a wedge within the country’s Jewish population. Maksad noted that the “Saudis have to contend with public opinion” and are likely uneasy about the domestic and regional consequences of appearing to abandon Palestinians. The orientation of the current Israeli government, meanwhile, makes it unlikely that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will offer any substantial concessions to the Palestinians in exchange for diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

Jonathan Lord, the director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security, said one should not assume Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is overly concerned about the Palestinian angle. “I’ve heard theories that many of the questions and concerns about what MBS might demand of the Israelis are overblown,” he said. “He has a tremendous amount of favor among the [Saudi] population…he has a lot going for him

and that gives him a lot of latitude to make decisions his father and his father’s father never could have imagined.”

Maksad agreed that it remains to be seen how much MBS is willing to stand behind Riyadh’s traditional support for Palestine. “Is he this new breed of Saudi leader that is driven by Saudi nationalist interests and economic interests, or does he have this Arab nationalist element in him where he really does care about the Palestinians?” At the very least, Maksad believes the crown prince is using his country’s presumed concern for Palestinians as leverage in negotiations.

Ultimately, Maksad said Saudi Arabia is more interested in “regional integration” than “normalization” with Israel. The country’s recent diplomatic agreement with Iran is indicative of Riyadh’s desire to engage all prominent regional players. “Israel is a part of that region, a part of that reality,” he said.

Maksad noted that the Biden administration has political reasons to forge a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia before the 2024 elections, but that the Saudis are likely content with a gradual warming with Israel. He noted that the two counties have been talking and collaborating under the radar for years, and “that’s exactly how the Saudis

want it….The Israelis want to kiss and tell and the Saudis don’t want to tell, they want this to remain behind closed doors.”

Thus, despite ongoing U.S. efforts, Maksad does not expect a dramatic accord to be finalized soon. “I think we have to scale this back,” he said. “A staggered approach is a much better approach for both sides and one that is closer to the realities on the ground.”—

Dale Sprusansky

Türkiye, Arab Gulf States Begin Warming Relations

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s July visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates generated interest not only within the region, but globally, as Ankara appears to be thawing relations with the Arab Gulf. Washington DC’s Gulf International Forum hosted a webinar on Aug. 1 to review this evolving situation.

“Besides the visit’s symbolic significance, the [economic, defense and humanitarian aid] agreements that were signed carry serious potential to upgrade relations to a new level,” moderator Sinem Cengiz, a nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, pointed out.

Tarek Cherkaoui, manager of the Istanbul-based TRT World Research Center, said economic concerns are at the fore-

Members of the Israeli delegation pose for a picture during the FIFAe Nations Cup, on July 8, 2023 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The participation of the Israeli team in the soccer video game competition hosted by Saudi Arabia shows the country’s gradual opening to Israel.

GONZALO ARROYO-FIFA VIA GETTY IMAGES

front of Türkiye’s decision to ease relations with regional leaders. “The Gulf offers a lot of wealth and capital and can inject a lot of money into the [Turkish] economy,” he noted.

Gulf countries, meanwhile, are interested in greater diversification of their economies beyond oil. “This is why Türkiye is engaging with them,” Betul Dogan-Akkas, a researcher at Durham University and Qatar University, said. “In the current policy making of Ankara and Gulf capitals, the priority is investment, and it is important to have a [regional] trust-building process.”

According to Gulf International Forum board member Abdullah Baabood, what we are seeing now with the Gulf states is a “new thinking and a new mode of operation.” In lieu of conflict, there is more focus on building sustainable economies.

“I think this is something quite fundamental and…it will stay because the challenges that the Gulf states are going to face in the future with the global energy dynamics and the transition in energy is going to push these oil-producing states to have a much more sustainable economy and to do so you need to have good relations with your neighbors,” he pointed out. “You have to trade with them, you have to co-invest, you have to be able to get technology and know-how and obviously open up and en-

large the markets.”

“This is a time when Middle Eastern countries can have their say and can play their role in developing their own economies,” Baabood added. “And they can only do that if there is peace, prosperity and stability.”

Another consideration to warming relations is the geopolitical shift in which the U.S. is no longer perceived as “the power that is going to guarantee the security of the region,” Baabood said. “This has impacted the thinking of the leaders of the region to start to work together...to ensure their security and the security of the whole region. Again, this requires new thinking.”

Another important dimension of the GulfTürkiye relationship is the defense industry. The Saudis have observed the success of Turkish drones in Syria and Libya and “like what they see in terms of efficiency and weaponry that is battle tested,” Cherkaoui pointed out.

Murat Yesiltas, director of foreign policy studies at the SETA Foundation, noted that Türkiye has a number of concerns regarding Syria, many of which are shared by the Gulf. While Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar originally supported the Syrian opposition, they are now in the process of resuming relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

With respect to Syrian refugees, Türkiye’s interior minister Süleyman Soylu announced in May that homes were being built in northern Syria with funds provided by the Qatari government to house one million Syrian refugees now residing in Türkiye.

Elaine Pasquini

Prospects of U.S. Sanctions Against Israel

Nicholas Kristof’s July 22 New York Times op-ed, “With Israel, It’s Time to Start Discussing the Unmentionable,” quoted several former high-ranking U.S. officials who suggested Washington ought to cut or outright eliminate military aid to Israel, which currently amounts to at least $3.8 billion annually. While the article cited Israel’s military and economic self-sufficiency—and not its treatment of Palestinians—as the main reasons for reassessing aid, the mere raising of the topic by a mainstream paper signifies the changing nature of the discourse surrounding Israel in the U.S.

But is the mainstream press and political establishment ready to discuss sanctions against Israel, precisely because of its welldocumented daily abuses of Palestinian rights? Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network held a webinar on May 4 to assess if—and how—the U.S. could impose sanctions against Israel.

Panelists Nada Elia, a professor at Western Washington University, and Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, agreed that sanctions targeting Israel would not (and should not) take the same crippling form as prior sweeping sanctions regimes, such as the one imposed on Iraq following the First Gulf War.

“I think, realistically speaking, sanctions would include a demand for greater accountability from Israel in how it uses weapons purchased with U.S. aid,” Elia said.

Both speakers noted that existing laws could be used to hold Israel accountable. “U.S. laws already exist to prohibit the use of military aid by forces engaged in gross human rights violations,” Elia said. “It is really a matter of enforcing policies that are already in place.” Elgindy specifically pointed to the Leahy laws and the Arms

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan meet at Al Watan Palace in Abu Dhabi on July 19, 2023.

MURAT KULA/ANADOLU AGENCY

Export Control Act as levers to sanction Israel. “Even just applying our own laws, which isn’t being done, can go a very long way in terms of modifying Israeli behavior and achieving some minimal accountability,” he said.

Other measures Elgindy believes the U.S. could take include “congressional hearings on Israeli policies and the use of U.S. military assistance, official investigations into the murders of U.S. citizens and merely offering public condemnation of Israel’s human rights abuses. These are all common practices in cases of U.S. support to other nations, and ones that could significantly impact Israel’s behavior.”

Elia noted that “none of the possible sanctions the U.S. may take would actually harm the Israeli people,” but are rather intended to strip the “comfort” with which they live as collective oppressors of the Palestinian people. “There’s a very clear distinction between sanctions imposed upon a people who are already oppressed by their leaders, such as Iran or Iraq, and sanctions imposed upon a country that has repeatedly elected its leaders and supported their policies,” she said. “Imposing the kind of sanctions that we are talking about is simply a form of accountability, a form of consequences. It’s not collective punishment, it does not penalize the people as much as hold them accountable

for their political decisions.”

Elgindy added that removing punitive sanctions against Palestinians must also be part of the conversation. “The irony here is that the only party in this arrangement that is subjected to broad sweeping sanctions by the U.S. are the Palestinians, at every level,” he noted. “The PLO Embassy was shut down, as was the U.S. Mission to the Palestinians. The U.S. eliminated nearly all forms of aid, thanks to the Taylor Force Act and new laws like the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act.”

The panelists also debated the efficacy of describing efforts to rein in Israel as “sanctions” rather than “accountability measures.” “I think calls for sanctions and punitive measures generally will turn people off, especially when it comes to Israel,” Elgindy argued. “Conversely, I think talking about accountability is something that resonates with a lot of people. It’s a term that even the Biden administration uses, including in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder.”

Elia said she worries that “calls for accountability in lieu of sanctions may work to further Israel’s exceptionalization….Calls for accountability alone may not go far enough, and be used to encourage ‘constructive engagement’ between the U.S. and Israel’s apartheid regime.”

Dale Sprusansky

The Destructive Impact of Israel’s Artificial Intelligence Industry

Israel is on a mission to become an artificial intelligence (AI) “superpower,” retired Israeli Maj.-Gen. Eyal Zamir said earlier this year. Already subjected to Israeli mass surveillance and facial recognition technologies, Palestinians will likely face greater risks as AI technology grows, argued panelists on the Arab Center Washington DC’s June 15 webinar, “Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights: The Case of Israeli Surveillance of

An Israeli soldier films a Palestinian protester during a demonstration against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank village of Beit Dajan, on Aug. 4, 2023.

NASSER ISHTAYEH/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

A surveillance camera is pictured at an Israeli checkpoint in the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron, on Nov. 9, 2021.

HAZEM BADER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Palestinians.”

Mona Shtaya, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, referred to Palestine’s state of reality as a “panopticon.” “You are watched, you are spied on, you are surveilled all the time—if you are walking in the streets, if you are in a public square, if you are on the internet,” she said.

This is already having an impact on the personal relationships of Palestinians. People are finding workarounds, such as altering phone conversations, but “relationships are collapsing” due to constant suspicion, Shtaya noted. “It’s not only between people and the government, but also between people within the same community,” she said of the growing trust deficit.

A key factor to Israel’s leading role in the AI sector is “the close ties that have been developed and maintained between the military and Israel’s technology industry,” noted Sophia Goodfriend, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University. Israel’s intelligence units grew exponentially from 2002-2010, and today there are more soldiers in Israeli intelligence units than there are in its navy, she explained. Notably, many private AI companies are led by former military members, feeding further into the inseparable loop binding the military and technology industries in Israel.

A few months ago, Amnesty International exposed how AI technology perpetuates a state of apartheid in Palestine in its report “Automated Apartheid.” The report found AI has been critical to restricting the movement and promoting the segregation of Palestinians through databases, facial recognition technology and physical infrastructure. In East Jerusalem, Mabat 2000, a network of thousands of cameras, monitors Palestinians’ daily movements and specifically identifies protesters. In Hebron, biometric data is being collected non-consensually with Red Wolf, the latest technology that adds to Blue Wolf and Wolf Pack surveillance already in use.

Shtaya also noted the development of the Smart Shooter, an automated gun installed in Palestinian areas capable of deploying tear gas and sponge and rubber bullets. “We are talking about an open lab-

oratory where they are first developing and then testing such kinds of technologies on Palestinians before they start selling them worldwide,” she said.

Amnesty International is one of the leading voices in the campaign against facial recognition technology, and has been since 2020. “We consider facial recognition technologies for identification as a tool of mass surveillance, which is never a proportionate interference with the rights to privacy, freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly,” Rasha AbdulRahim, director of Amnesty Tech at Amnesty International, said.

Film Uncovers Truth About JNF’s Tree Planting in Israel

The planting of more than 250 million trees in Israel since 1901 by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) has been a major part of efforts to uproot the native people of Palestine and reshape their land, said Mazin Qumsiyeh during a July 16 online discussion hosted by Voices From the Holy Land.

Qumsiyeh noted that Palestine lies within the Fertile Crescent, “where the local people have been intertwined with their environment for 12,000 years of agriculture and settled communities. So, when you dislodge a community, you’re also dislodging habitats.” As an example, he pointed to what happened in the Hula Valley when Israel drained wetlands and replaced agriculturalists using rain-fed techniques with those who relied on irrigation-based techniques: 219 species of flora and fauna disappeared.

Jenny Jacoby

Privacy is not an absolute right, noted Rohan Talbot, the director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians. However, international human rights law has established a four-part test to justify interferences of privacy, including that it must be on the basis of clear and precise laws and in the interest of serious matters such as security or health. “These requirements cannot ever be true of a generalized mass surveillance technology which is processing the biometric data of all people crossing a camera network’s path. Interferences with privacy must be done on a case-bycase basis, not be blanket in nature, as appears to be the case in the West Bank,” Talbot said.

Qumsiyeh, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, offered his comments during a discussion of the documentary “My Tree.” The 2021 film follows Canadian filmmaker Jason Sherman as he embarks on a quest to find the tree planted in Israel as a gift to him back

A woman overlooks the Hula Valley in northern Israel, on Nov. 22, 2022. According to Palestinian environmentalist Mazin Qumsiyeh, 219 species of plants and animals have dis‐appeared from the valley since 1948, due to Israeli mismanagement and abuse of the land.

in 1975 on the occasion of his bar mitzvah, and to learn more about the consequences of that planting.

Iymen Chehade, professor of Middle Eastern history at Columbia College, Chicago, characterized the JNF’s tree planting tactic as a form of physical memoricide. Also alluded to in the film is the physical memoricide the JNF committed through the theft and redistribution to Jewish immigrants of property owned by Palestinians following their ethnic cleansing in 1948.

As the film makes clear, the claimed Zionist objective of “making the desert bloom” obscured another objective, which was to create forests over destroyed Palestinian villages. This prevented the villagers from returning to their homes while also hiding the evidence that those homes ever existed.

Panelist Seth Morrison appeared in the film discussing his 2011 resignation from the Washington, DC board of the JNF after he learned that the organization was stealing Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem and giving them to Israeli settlers, using subsidiaries to hide its involvement.

Morrison announced his resignation in an op-ed printed in the Forward and as a result, lost his job with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, an organization that brings together Palestinians, Jewish Israelis and North Americans to focus on the environment. He also lost friends. “But I learned the truth about what was really going on,” he said. He now believes that “the only way to deal with Zionism is to directly oppose it and to focus on the Palestinian movement of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).” Another route of action is to support the “Stop the JNF” international solidarity campaign.

One question Morrison and filmmaker Sherman have frequently fielded is why it took them so long to recognize what the JNF was doing. Both described their upbringing as culturally Jewish and not particularly religious. Nonetheless both were indoctrinated to offer “unflagging support for Israel,” as Sherman put it, which took years to unpack. While the filmmaker had knowl-

edge of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, he was unaware of the JNF’s role. “They were simply off the radar, which a number of people that I interviewed for the film pointed out is almost a deliberate strategy. That’s what was new to me and why ultimately the JNF becomes the focus of the film.”

Sherman’s documentary has yet to be accepted into a Jewish film festival. Yet “it’s important for Jews who don’t know the story to see the film,” he said, so they realize what the JNF continues to do, such as its current efforts to replace the Bedouin people in the Naqab (Negev) Desert with a forest.

The July 16 event was cosponsored by Kehilla Community Synagogue and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church USA.

Catherine Baker

Amid Environmental Destruction, Qumsiyeh Sees Reason for Hope

Conditions in Palestine are pretty dire these days, but Mazin Qumsiyeh—a Bethlehem University professor and founder of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability—is an optimist.

As part of a 12-state tour of the United States to talk about Palestine and to raise

Chehade offered a final comment about olive trees that have been uprooted by the hundreds of thousands. Some of them are thousands of years old and have incredibly deep roots, he said. “Oftentimes the olive tree will grow back, split the pine tree, and take its rightful place on the land. And I really believe that this is symbolic for the Palestinian people,” he said. “Despite 100 years of dispossession and oppression, they one day, just like the olive tree, will have an opportunity to stand in their homeland. And everybody living there, no matter what religion or background or color, can live as equals, with dignity, freedom, justice and opportunity.”

funds for his center, Qumsiyeh addressed a group of 50 people assembled at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington, VA on August 16 to discuss “Decolonization of Minds and Nature in Palestine and Globally.” A scientist by training, he structured his remarks with a medical metaphor: If Palestine is a patient, what are the environmental symptoms of the problem, what diagnosis best explains the symptoms and what is the appropriate treatment?

Despite the undeniable distress afflicting the patient, Qumsiyeh exudes optimism regarding the long-term prospects, related in part to the innate strengths the patient draws upon: Palestine was historically a

Despite Zionist attacks on the people and land of Palestine, Mazin Qumsiyeh believes in a shared future between Israelis and Palestinians.

PHOTO COURTESY JAMAL NAJJAB

multiracial and multilingual country with rich biodiversity. The attempt to turn it into a Jewish state has required the use of overwhelming force, yet even with that, Israel hasn’t succeeded in its goal.

The environmental damage has nonetheless been massive. Water sources and even the Dead Sea water levels are diminishing. Israel taps aquifers within the West Bank and then sells the water to Palestinians at high cost. Turning a rich agricultural tradition that relied on rainfed plants into one that relies on irrigation is more labor and resource intensive. The destruction of indigenous trees and their replacement with European pines served political, not ecological, purposes (primarily to disguise the presence of earlier Palestinian settlement), and when fires break out, these nonindigenous trees are quick to burn (and reveal the terraces built by Palestinian farmers centuries ago).

The assault on indigenous farming through various means—the apartheid wall, which separates villages from their farmlands; vicious settler attacks on farms; attacks on sheep and goats; the banning of the traditional practice of foraging for herbs—has a single purpose: to make indigenous life unsustainable. Israel deprives Palestinians of land by designating tracts as nature reserves and protected areas, yet places them adjacent to (environmentally destructive) military firing zones.

These are only some of the environmental symptoms of settler colonialism, not difficult to identify because so many countries have gone through similar experiences. Throughout his remarks, Qumsiyeh drew parallels with the experiences of Indigenous people in North America. The least bloody resolution to settler colonialism is not a “twostate solution” but rather the intermingling of the indigenous and foreign populations, as occurred throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and elsewhere, he said.

Just as having a strong immune system is key to resisting infection, popular resistance is essential to resisting and recovering from the deliberate harms of settler colonial policies. Qumsiyeh argues that Palestinians have a tradition of resistance (he wrote about this in his book Popular

Resistance in Palestine) and clearly draws inspiration from that work.

A good portion of the presentation described projects of the biodiversity center to address some of the challenges faced. The motto of the center is “RESPECT.” Self-respect and respect for our own resources are essential to liberation from mental colonization, he said. Next is respecting others, and beyond that, respecting animal and plant life. The sum total is a sustainable community.

sition—and with no formal diplomatic experience—Al-Sabah says she’s here to shake up Kuwait’s presence in the U.S.

To honor her historic appointment, the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations hosted a reception on July 26 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, DC.

Ida Audeh

Among the many and varied activities of the institute is the collection of ancestral knowledge about agriculture; Qumsiyeh sees such efforts as a top priority. Thanks to a small U.S. government grant, they launched an education program to teach children how to reduce waste and plastic use. They are raising funds to expand and renovate the center, and they welcome volunteers. Check out the institute’s activities at <palestinenature.org>.—

DIPLOMATIC DOINGS

Introducing Kuwait’s First Female Ambassador to the U.S.

Shaikha Al-Zain Al-Sabah’s appointment as Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S. holds more weight than a traditional diplomat assignment. The first woman to hold the po-

Al-Sabah held an array of positions, predominantly focused on diversity in the media and business, prior to her appointment on March 12. She worked for ABC News’ “World News Tonight” after graduating college and later worked on films. Using this experience, she founded the National Creative Industries Group, which partnered with Netflix to launch the first creative incubator for the Middle East and North Africa. She believes this background will allow her to undertake the ambassador role with a perspective that career diplomats may overlook, approaching partnerships through a creative lens. In fact, she said that she is “not necessarily diplomatic” in her pursuits.

Al-Sabah’s appointment comes at a critical time, when the U.S. is perceived as pivoting away from the Middle East, and as Gulf countries have made diversifying their economic and diplomatic partnerships a priority. To navigate the future, Al-Sabah has three main priorities: people, the planet and profit. “We as nations need to work together to lay down

Shaikha Al ‐ Zain Al ‐ Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S., speaks at an event in Washington, DC on July 26, 2023.

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

the global strategies, principles, policies and behaviors that must come into play to give these priorities a fighting chance,” she said.

Prior to Al-Sabah’s remarks, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East at the Department of Defense, Dana Stroul, touched on the importance of the Kuwait-U.S. alliance. “This is a decades-long security partnership. We have fought together and bled together, and everyday we’re working across all of our services, all of our components, to deepen that security partnership,” she said. Kuwait currently hosts the fourth largest presence of U.S. troops outside the country and serves as a regional leader of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

Al-Sabah echoed Stroul’s sentiments, highlighting how she wants to “turn our shared pain points into sweet spots” and look at new spaces for collaboration and partnership, while maintaining momentum on present initiatives. Al-Sabah said she wants to keep “the wheels turning on the bilateral and multilateral fronts, constantly moving from sharing to coordination to collective action.”

Perhaps the most important issue is environmental cooperation. “As Kuwait diligently works to diversify our economy away from oil and gas, we’re working to also act as a responsible hydrocarbon producer,” Al-Sabah said. “Driving the sustainability of our own operations by ensuring the least GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and leveraging our unique platform to invest in developing new energy and new businesses and new technology” is a priority, she said.

Kuwait also has a young demographic, with the youth making up 72 percent of the population. The ambassador views this as a strategic advantage for Kuwait. As the former undersecretary of state for youth affairs, Al-Sabah has thorough experience in the field and is specifically focused on connecting the youth digitally with a recently announced Google Cloud alliance, the first of its kind in the Middle East, she explained.

Jenny Jacoby

Pakistan’s Washington, DC Embassy Hosts Mango Festival

While politics is always a hot topic at Pakistani gatherings, discussions about mangos and sumptuous barbeque were preeminent at the Mango Festival hosted by Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington, DC on July 20.

Addressing guests, which included Pakistani-Americans, journalists, scholars, diplomats and U.S. lawmakers, Ambassador Masood Khan emphasized the special 75-year relationship between the

United States and Pakistan. He described education, security, trade, investment and climate-related issues as strengths of the bilateral relationship.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “Through trade and economic investments in Pakistan, the two countries have become closer partners and brought peace to our nations.”

The mango, Pakistan’s national fruit and the country’s second-largest fruit crop after citrus, was the centerpiece of the reception.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S. Masood Khan speaks at the embassy’s Mango Festi‐val in Washington, DC on July 20, 2023.

STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Mangos from Pakistan are a popular fruit in the United States.

STAFF

PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI

Last year, Pakistani mango production was an estimated 1.84 million tons, with exports of over 125,000 tons, valued at $72 million. However, along with other crops, its growth suffered due to devastating floods.

Elaine Pasquini

BOOK TALKS

The Causes of U.S. Militarism in The Middle East

To promote his new book, Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East, Steven Simon, former senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs on the National Security Council, sat down with Barbara Slavin at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC on July 19. The pair discussed the past 40 years of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and why most of its military actions are regarded as mistakes.

The modern U.S. approach to the region was greatly impacted by the militarization surrounding the Vietnam War and the Carter Doctrine, which called for military force to protect U.S. interests in the Gulf. “The U.S military had been essentially restructured and reformatted in the wake of the Vietnam conflict,” Simon said. “There was an interest in using force.”

Following the failed attempt in 1980 to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran during Operation Eagle Claw, the Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC) was created and became what Simon refers to as “a very efficient killing machine.” The implementation of this unit introduced a type of response to incidents in the Middle East centered on force rather than diplomacy. “One of the things about having a great tool is that there’s a temptation to use it,” Simon said. JSOC has since been deployed on many difficult and controversial operations across the region.

This mindset was evident in the 1982 U.S. involvement in Lebanon, as it tried to stabilize the growing conflict involving Israel, and again with the targeted bombing of Libya under Muammar Qaddafi’s rule in 1986. Slavin explained that U.S. F-111s attacked Libya following the death of an

American serviceman at a disco in West Berlin. The U.S. tied the attack back to a group allegedly aligned with Qaddafi.

Simon said this bombing was a way for the U.S. to test uncharted territory. “Statesponsored terrorism was just sort of getting underway and the administration was searching for some kind of policy that would respond to this threat,” he said. “The happy medium seemed to be a surgical strike with the aim of killing him [Qaddafi].”

Simon also spends a great deal of time in the book unraveling what went wrong with the U.S. dual containment policy toward Iraq and Iran. Ego was at the crux of this policy, he believes. “Once you think you have unlimited strength and you can handle any costs, then you say we can actually try to weaken Iran and Iraq simultaneously,” Simon said. Former President Bill Clinton’s desire to “exploit” U.S. power following the collapse of the Soviet Union was critical to this logic. The U.S. sought a strategy of Iraq and Iran balancing each other because Washington believed it could hold both of them back itself, “because we [had] this kind of inordinate power. But we didn’t, actually,” Simon said. The heavily criticized policy failed to have an equal impact on both countries, ultimately facilitating “the empowerment of Iran” and making Iraq

weaker, he noted. This outcome hampered U.S. policy for the first two decades of the 21st century.

The other key element of the modern U.S. relationship with the Middle East has been the focus on the security of Saudi Arabia and Israel. These objectives were achieved by the 1990s, Simon argued, and the U.S. could have pulled out of the region, however the first Bush administration introduced a new focus for the U.S.: Iraq. “George H.W. Bush injected this third objective into U.S. calculations by embarking on a 30-year war with, and in, Iraq that one could argue was not central to U.S strategic objectives or national interest,” Simon said.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now largely completed, the U.S. has yet again another option to leave the military mindset behind and approach the Middle East in a new way, Simon said.

Jenny Jacoby

Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East is available from Middle East Books and More.

SEBASTIAN GOLLNOW/PICTURE ALLIANCE

Celebrating Zeina Azzam’s Some Things Never Leave You By Ida Audeh

PEOPLE FILLED the Alexandria Athenaeum in Virginia on a Saturday morning in early August to attend the launch of Zeina Azzam’s poetry collection, Some Things Never Leave You (Tiger Bark Press, New York).

Zeina was introduced by three people who set just the right tone for her reading from her new book, with short statements that were personal and familiar. Her son Mark spoke first, introducing himself as “Zeina’s son and book salesman,” and he noted that she was busier in retirement than she had been when she was fully employed, referring no doubt to the fact that ever since being named poet laureate of Alexandria, she has been busy promoting poetry in city and state-wide events.

Daughter Lena voiced what probably every member of the audience could attest to: that when Zeina is summoned, “she shows up, and she does so very meaningfully. She brings every fiber of her being to everything she does, and has, predictably, done so with this beautiful book.”

Close friend and event cohost Mimi Kirk briefly outlined the trajectory of Zeina’s career, highlighting the work and projects through which she met many of the those in the audience: her

work as outreach coordinator at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies; her work as mentor to aspiring young poets in Gaza; the commission of a poem (“You Birth the Seeds”) that was later set as a choral piece by renowned composer Melissa Dunphy; the nomination of two of her poems for the Pushcart Prize, the most respected award in American letters; and since spring 2022 her induction as Alexandria’s Poet Laureate.

To listen to Zeina Azzam read her work is to be reminded of the wisdom of the ancient Arabs, who gave poets an elevated status in society and who appreciated that poetry was meant to be recited aloud. The British poet David Whyte describes poetry as “language against which you have no defenses,” and the elegant verses of Zeina Azzam lay the reader bare to the heartache and deep sorrow as well as the quiet pleasures inherent in living in a mixed bag of a world.

She read a handful of poems from the book before taking questions from the appreciative audience; here I offer a sample of the poems that left me defenseless, made me pause to catch my breath.

The poems in this collection are grouped in three parts. In part I, “Reclaiming the Oasis,” poems describe navigating life in the country to which Zeina’s family emigrated when she was a 10 year old, drawing on the memories, scents and heritage that nur-

Ida Audeh, a contributing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, cohosted the book launch.

Zeina Azzam stands with a copy of her book. The cover art as well as the scarf she wears were created by Palestinian American artist Samar Hussaini, whose works incorporate motifs from Palestinian embroidery.

PHOTO COURTESY CONNOR STRAUSS

tured, shaped and enriched her perspective. Adjusting to life in upstate New York was not easy; she says in “Ode to Sadness”:

We were all those figs that didn’t fit on that out-of-place tree, that couldn’t thrive in the geography of diaspora and cold.

The second poem, from which the section’s title is taken, makes a stronger claim to the heritage carried to her new home, which says in part:

I want to reclaim the noble oasis with its luminous offerings, this nurturer of language and community, the geographer of our Orient.

Implicitly rejecting the concept that the United States acts as a melting pot for immigrants, she asserts her right to maintain her culture and the riches it offers, to carry it proudly and unapologetically, and these themes surface in poems throughout the book.

She returns to the theme of language in other poems. Language and poetry are central to Arab identity, and Arab students memorize prodigious amounts of poetry and can recite them in contests with intricate rules. In one delightful poem in this section (but by no means the only one), “Khayr,” Zeina ponders the many ways in which that simple word, meaning “goodness,” enters into even the most commonplace expressions, forcing her to conclude that “There is no getting around goodness.” There is something profoundly generous in that worldview.

The poems in the next part, “The Reach of Injustice,” are darker and deal with conflict and its consequences—war in Iraq, the consequences of the 1948 war in Palestine that made her parents refugees, first in Syria and Lebanon before emigrating to the United States and settling in New York. In “A Refugee Grows Old,” she describes her mother in her final years:

Where in one scenario she would have lived in the same place until great grandchildren played around the lemon tree that defined her family’s house in scent and space. Where in the real scenario she fled for her life with a husband and baby, in her pocket a key that rusted over the years.

Zeina describes the sad trip she made with her brother to bury her mother’s ashes in Palestine and having to watch a hostile Israeli soldier x-ray and swab the box with her remains:

You will never know who our mother was.

My brother and I would have told you that we were carrying what was left of her because you wouldn’t let her living body come back...

Our Palestinian mother finally exercised her right of return.

Zeina described the poems in the third part, “Hugging the Tree,” as “poems about wondrous things.” And they are just that, poems that capture the magic in the scent of jasmine, the taste of a spice mix and a newborn taking his first breath. After reading “Nine Spice Mix,” you will never use spices robotically in obedience to a recipe. Who would have thought that spices would be amenable to poetic treatment? Zeina shows us that a common mixture of spices used in many Palestinian dishes is really a well-orchestrated symphony. It begins with a tango and then the pace picks up as more actors take their place:

Queen of spices cardamom, host of the party, gives a nod to flavors in hiding: lemony, sweet, warm, fragrant, nutty, pungent, hot.

Encouraged, feisty black peppercorns shimmy center stage, organizing the unique union of nine for a vivacious global salute.

Jasmine is more than just a flower whose scent gives pleasure; it has determination and will:

Imagine being fragrant jasmine growing in the middle of the city with odors and pollution all around: Imagine such resolve and clarity of purpose.

Zeina’s poems evoke the inescapable pain of being alive and celebrate the beauty in life, always demanding that the reader pay attention, look closely and acknowledge the heartache and wonder in the moment.

Some Things Never Leave You is available from Middle East Books and More and the publisher (tigerbarkpress.com); her earlier collection, the chapbook Bayna Bayna: In-Between, was released by The Poetry Box in 2021 (thepoetrybox.com). ■

Send your story ideas, responses to features and copy requests (with $5) to:

Capitol Hill Citizen 1209 National Press Building, Washington, DC 20045

Editor: Russell Mokhiber Phone: (202) 656-7660

Email: editor@capitolhillcitizen.com

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Middle East Books Review

All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.

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The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

By Antony Loewenstein, Verso, 2023, hardcover, 304 pp. MEB $29.95

Reviewed by Ida Audeh

Perhaps more than any other book published in recent years, The Palestine Laboratory demonstrates why Israel is a menace, not only to Palestinians and other Arabs whose countries it has invaded or bombed at one time or another, but really to people around the globe. Anyone who criticizes or mobilizes against their own authoritarian governments will likely have to contend with an Israeli weapon or technology designed to enhance government control over them and make dissent costly, if not impossible.

The arms industry is central to the Israeli economy, Antony Loewenstein notes: in 2021, arms sales surged to $11.3 billion; cybersecurity revenue that same year was about $8.8 billion, made from just 100 sales. Yet, the U.S. Congress rushes to grant astronomical aid packages to a country that can manage very well without them, thanks to its niche industry.

The broad contours of the story can be summarized. With massive reparations from West Germany, Israel started its arms industry. (Remember that the next time Israel cries victim.) It proceeded to market its weapons, indifferent to who was buying or how they were being used. Its client list includes countries whose atrocities against their own citizens made the

second half of the 20th century so bloody: Chile under Pinochet; the death squads of Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia; apartheid South Africa; Nicaragua under Somoza; the SAVAK in Iran under the shah; the Hutus in Rwanda; Argentina during the junta, which provided a safe haven for Europe’s Nazis after World War II. (This is a partial list.)

In June 1967, Israel occupied the land that became its Palestine laboratory. From then on, it could and did market its technology as battle tested (a key selling point)—mostly on noncombatants, which suits its customers because that is the profile of their targets, too. As Israeli colonization of the Palestinian territories became deeper, its methods of domination became more varied, and these were marketed to ethnonationalist governments looking for ways to control their own unwanted populations: asylum seekers on the U.S.Mexico border, refugees heading for Europe, the Maya in Guatemala, Muslims in Myanmar, Blacks and Indigenous people in the United States (with Israel training increasingly militarized U.S. police

forces), the Kashmiris and Muslim minority in India and many, many more.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 provided a convenient excuse for governments around the world to implement “security measures” that dovetailed nicely with the impulses of authoritarian governments, and where those governments expressed a need, Israel was available to provide a solution and rake in the money. (As Binyamin Netanyahu observed in a rare truthful moment right after the attack, it was in fact very good for Israel-U.S. relations.) After 9/11, governments went beyond simply fighting “terrorism” to a “wholesale reimagining of what societies would look like in the 21st century,” Loewenstein writes.

Surveillance was a huge part of that vision, and where else to get surveillance and facial recognition technology than Israel, which has placed Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Hebron and Gaza under surveillance around the clock. Thanks to Israeli ingenuity, assassinating opponents by drone is as easy as (and requires less deliberation than) ordering a pizza. Drones bought by the U.S. from Israel and used in Iraq and Afghanistan killed an estimated 22,000-48,000 noncombatants in a 20year period. There is no reason to believe that such high “collateral damage” is regarded as a problem or shortcoming that requires fixing, since the technology continues to be used.

It is disheartening to read about the many governments that regard Israel’s confinement and mass surveillance of Palestinians (particularly those in Gaza) as an attractive model to be implemented in their own countries against unwanted groups. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Israeli company Elbit set up surveillance towers. Since the 1990s, about 7,000 migrants have died on the border attempting to elude those towers.

Loewenstein discusses the Israeli companies, such as NSO Group which created the cell phone Pegasus spyware, and the cordial relations between high-tech companies and the Israeli government, united in the aim of suppressing proPalestinian social media content. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was re-

Ida Audeh is a contributing editor of the Washington Report.

portedly shocked by the extent of U.S. spying on the private communication of Palestinian Americans, which was then shared with Israel and could be used to target relatives under occupation; he judged it to be “one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.” And in the occupied territories, every phone conversation can be listened to for the purpose of deciding who to kill or to blackmail.

Loewenstein states that he wrote this book as a warning: authoritarian, ethnonationalist governments emboldened by Israeli technology could become the new norm. The warning takes on additional urgency when seen in conjunction with the recent push by Israel and its agents, prominent among them the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League, to rebrand criticism of Israeli policies as hate speech. This book shows why the world must never allow Israel to get a free pass.

Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative

By Jonathan G. Leslie, Oxford University Press, 2023, hardcover, 312 pp. MEB $50

Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson

Jonathan G. Leslie’s Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative underscores the power of security narratives— especially those preying on fear and uncertainty—in shaping foreign policy. When the public has limited access to knowledge about an issue, which is often the case with foreign affairs, manufactured security narratives emphasizing dire consequences and existential threats can become especially potent.

Applying these general premises to an in-depth study of contemporary Israel,

Walter L. Hixson is the author of Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He was a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.

Leslie illuminates Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s largely successful efforts to convince the Israeli public that Iran and its nuclear program pose an existential threat. Netanyahu’s security narrative is not rooted in analysis or mediated by reasoned debate, but rather is based on fear, worst-case scenarios and ahistorical linkage of Iran with the genocidal Nazi regime.

To say that Iran has dominated Israel’s foreign policy and security agenda “would be an understatement,” Leslie argues. Over the course of six chapters, as well as an introduction and conclusion, the author analyzes the construction, evolution and implications of the dominant “threat narrative.” Chapters explore the gradual empowerment of the demonizing narrative, an overview of relations between Persians and Jews throughout history and the political debates and events that propelled and ensconced the dominant narrative.

Leslie, a security consultant and adjunct professor at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, explains Netanyahu’s success in establishing and marketing the worst-case scenario of an Iran nuclear threat. By employing disinformation and tapping into right-wing populism, Netanyahu “crafted a narrative that portrayed Iran as an existential threat to Israel, prioritizing believability over factual accuracy and appealing to emotion over reason.”

Netanyahu’s success in entrenching the threat narrative is reflected in contemporary polls, which show that most Israelis believe their country would be justified in attacking Iran even over opposition from

the United States and other countries. By deploying Islamophobic tropes and assertions that other politicians would not protect Israeli security from the “Iranian menace,” Netanyahu has succeeded in undermining moderation and minimizing debate over the issue, thereby establishing the existential threat as the dominant security narrative.

While Leslie’s analysis focuses overwhelmingly on Israel rather than Iranian politics, he argues that the existential threat narrative is asymmetrical, meaning that Iranians do not reciprocate Israel’s demonization with a perfervid threat narrative of their own targeting Israel. That said, Leslie points out that Netanyahu’s extreme rhetoric has repeatedly worked to the political benefit of Iranian extremists, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and more recently President Ebrahim Raisi.

The Netanyahu-inspired threat narrative—aided and abetted of course by the election of Donald Trump in 2016— became fully ensconced with the undermining of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which had been successfully negotiated with Iran by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. Although Trump torpedoed the agreement, which would have contained the Iran nuclear program in return for economic incentives, Netanyahu was the real architect of the destruction of the JCPOA, as Trump followed the lead of his fellow right-wing populist.

With the destruction of the JCPOA, Leslie writes, Netanyahu “made his narrative self-fulfilling. By causing the demise of the nuclear deal, Netanyahu diminished Iran’s incentives for restraining from restarting its nuclear enrichment efforts.”

Leslie’s study underscores the essential irrationality of Israeli foreign policy as well as the towering influence of Netanyahu, who must now be accounted one of the most significant—and pernicious—figures in Israel’s political history. It remains to be seen whether the dominant threat narrative that Netanyahu is primarily responsible for constructing will lead to its logical conclusion—an Israeli-Iranian war—or whether it can be contained, and its progenitor at long last repudiated.

Weaponizing Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn

By Asa Winstanley, OR Books, 2023, paperback, 300 pp. MEB $25

Reviewed by Ida Audeh

Jeremy Corbyn’s 2015 rise as Labour Party leader inspired people around the world. He had built a notable reputation over years of union and anti-war activism, immigrant rights advocacy and understanding working people’s needs. By 2019, however, he was forced to step down as Labour leader, and the following year he was suspended from the party altogether. He was brought down by a manufactured charge of anti-Semitism, a charge for which the accusers were never required to produce a shred of evidence. How could that happen in the space of five years?

Asa Winstanley’s Weaponizing AntiSemitism chronicles the way cynical foot soldiers created the narrative of an antiSemitism “crisis” within the Labour Party and then proceeded to methodically target that party’s high-profile activists on their way to taking down a popular, wellrespected party leader. The author is a veteran activist and reporter on Labour Party and Palestinian solidarity movement issues who has published his work on Electronic Intifada (for which he also serves as associate editor), and for this book he draws on seven years of reporting on the rise of, threat to and strangulation of the Corbyn movement. It is a detailed, meticulously researched and deftly argued account.

Winstanley tells us that “during his leadership Corbyn had been the target of 34 major national media stories openly sourced by former or current officials in the UK’s intelligence and military establishment, including M15 and M16.” The corporate media consistently undermined him; the liberal Guardian was not much better. In that climate, pro-Israel activists (and some groups fraudulently promoted as Jewish community organizations when

they were simply front organizations) supported by Israel’s anti-BDS Ministry of Strategic Affairs swept in.

Winstanley explains the strategy they deployed. Pro-Israel activists harped on the theme that anti-Semitism was prevalent in the Labour Party. The Jewish Labour Movement used its position to lobby for changing the party’s convention rules and made charges of anti-Semitism a “specific disciplinary offense,” which made it possible to suspend members for the flimsiest of charges. They took aim at Corbyn’s allies—Ken Livingstone, Naz Shah, Max Shanly, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and others—and made it impossible for them to function, all the while creating a toxic environment within the rank and file.

Solidarity among the rank and file was shattered. Soon Corbyn was left with few supporters when he needed them most. Exhausted by the ongoing rancor, the party succumbed and adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

(Corbyn had resisted endorsing the whole statement because of the examples it included, which if adopted would make criticism of Israel an expression of racism.)

Once that concession was made, the party was effectively neutered. Corbyn had no chance.

Weaponizing Anti-Semitism is painful to read, as it outlines the casual savaging of people’s reputations and lives by those working to make the party safe for Israel.

The book provides a thorough account of specific episodes and incidents. Win-

stanley also provides background information needed to understand why some incidents reported as “controversy” are nothing of the sort. For instance, the episode that was used to remove Livingstone from the party, a statement he made about the Zionist movement’s relations with Nazi Germany, is a historical fact, and Winstanley explains that in detail. (Livingstone’s detractors were never publicly made to explain Israel’s support for Ukraine’s reportedly Neo-Nazi aligned Azov Brigade, a missed opportunity if ever there was one.)

The 50-page final chapter of the book recaps the turning points and strategic mistakes made by Corbyn and the Labour Party leadership that made their defeat possible. Progressive parties would do well to read this chapter carefully. One fundamental error seems to have been to tolerate accusations of anti-Semitism without demanding evidence. It is astonishing, in a way, that savvy politicians did not put a process in place to protect members from charges that were clearly politically motivated. By tolerating the accusation and accepting that there was an “issue” to be addressed, the party leadership helped prolong a toxic environment in which malfeasance thrived.

Winstanley notes that those under attack did not receive the support they needed from party leadership, and the breakdown of internal solidarity weakened the party considerably. Corbyn’s fairly passive response to an attempted coup within the party must have emboldened the opposition to try again—which they did, successfully. Had Corbyn been more aggressive, he could have exploited the story outlined in the Al Jazeera documentary “The Lobby,” which revealed the extent of Israel and the Israel lobby’s role in creating and maintaining the charge of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party. Other errors in judgment include backsliding on support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and attempting to win over groups out to get him; attempts at appeasement simply emboldened his enemies and stiffened their resolve to unseat him.

Weaponizing Anti-Semitism strongly suggests that the Corbyn movement did not have to end this way.

Ida Audeh is a contributing editor of the Washington Report.

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir

By Raja Shehadeh, Other Press, 2023, hardcover, 160 pp. MEB $22.99

Reviewed by Mary Neznek

NEW ARRIVALS

The Lives and Deaths of Jubrail Dabdoub: Or, How the Bethlehemites Discovered Amerka by Jacob Norris,

Stanford University Press, 2023, paperback, 290 pp.

MEB $25

This is the fantastical, yet real story of the merchants of Bethlehem, the young men who traveled to every corner of the globe in the 19th century. These men set off on the backs of donkeys with suitcases full of crosses and rosaries, to return via steamship with news of mysterious lands and strange inventions—clocks, trains and other devices that both befuddled and bewitched Bethlehemites. With newfound wealth from their foreign sales, these merchants built shimmering pink mansions that transformed Bethlehem from a rural village into Palestine’s wealthiest and most cosmopolitan town. At the center of these extraordinary occurrences lived Jubrail Dabdoub. From his childhood in rural Bethlehem to later voyages, Jubrail’s story culminates in a recorded miracle: in 1909, he was reportedly brought back from the dead. Through the story of Jubrail’s life, Jacob Norris explores the porous lines between history and fiction, the normal and the paranormal, the everyday and the extraordinary, and recovers the atmosphere of late 19th-century Bethlehem: a mood of excitement, disorientation and wonder as the town was thrust into a new era.

We Could Have Been Friends is a beautifully written account of a son’s discovery of the father who was something of an enigma during his lifetime. Going through his father’s work files decades after his murder, Raja Shehadeh comes to understand not only the legal battles his father waged but also the political positions he held as he attempted to secure the rights of Palestinian refugees and end Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The memoir begins and ends with father-son interactions, one actual and the other imagined. In the opening chapter, the son discusses with his father the 1984 Israeli map titled “Road Plan Number 50,” a blueprint for new roads that would bypass the existing transportation system that respected the contours of Palestine’s terrain. Raja is alarmed by what he perceives as a sinister development, with implications for landowners, the environment and the ability of Palestinians to

Mary Neznek, an educator, is a member of the USA Palestine Mental Health Network and works with rights advocates and mental health professionals in the occupied territory.

Tracing Homelands: Israel, Palestine and the Claims of Belonging by Linda Dittmar, Interlink Books, 2023, paperback, 240 pp. MEB $20

When author Linda Dittmar stumbles upon the ruins of an abandoned Palestinian village, she is faced with a past that sits uneasily with her Israeli childhood memories. Tracing Homelands is an intimate, beautifully written account that uncovers inconvenient truths about an embattled history that is often buried in silence. As Dittmar revisits the sites of her childhood, her intimate understanding of the 1948 war and its aftermath opens up an inquiry into the obfuscation of the Nakba that has long been holding peace hostage. Spanning six decades of history, this story of war and dispossession rests on deep attachment to a land that is claimed by both people. Here the land itself speaks its own truths: a tale told in rocks and mud, pine forests and parched summer grass, and vibrant modernity amid derelict sentinels of its past.

What Have You Left Behind? by Bushra al-Maqtari, translated by Sawad Hussain, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023, paperback, 256 pp. MEB $17.95

In 2015, Bushra al-Maqtari decided to document the suffering of civilians in the Yemeni civil war, which has killed more than 350,000 people according to the U.N. Inspired by the work of Svetlana Alexievich, she spent two years visiting different parts of the country, putting her life at risk by speaking with her compatriots, and gathered over 400 testimonies, a selection of which appear in What Have You Left Behind? Purposefully alternating between accounts from the victims of the Houthi militia and those of the Saudi-led coalition, al-Maqtari highlights the disillusionment and anguish felt by those trapped in a war outside of their own making. As difficult to read as it is to put down, this unvarnished chronicle of the conflict serves as a vital reminder of the scale of the human tragedy behind the headlines, and offers a searing condemnation of the international community’s complicity in the war’s continuation.

control essential services. Anyone paying attention could tell that “the new plans were not for the benefit of the local Palestinian population, as the law required.” His father, Aziz, points out a possibly bigger issue at play: “International law does not allow an occupier to make long-term investments in an occupied territory.” Father and son prepare a brief and send a copy to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which ultimately showed no interest in pursuing the matter. Soon the father dropped the matter as well.

One of the themes developed in this memoir is the political and legal career of Aziz, which spanned the 1940s to the 1980s. With lawyerly precision, Raja examines his father’s career as a barrister who was uprooted from Jaffa in 1948 and resettled with his family in Ramallah. Among the legal battles waged by his father, he reconstructs the lawsuit brought against a British bank to recover assets belonging to Palestinian refugees. The story is important, as it was a rare victory in securing rights for (a few) Palestinian refugees, and it helps the son get a better understanding of his father and the kind of cases he tenaciously fought.

Writing this memoir in his seventies (just a few years younger than his father when he was murdered, allegedly by a man squatting on church-owned land who Aziz helped put behind bars), Raja grew to admire his father. He learned more about his father’s interactions with the British, the Israelis and the Jordanians, including his two-month detention in a Jordanian desert prison in the late 1950s, notorious for its harsh conditions. It is clear that discovering more about his father and setting the record straight about his life is of paramount importance to Raja.

The author suggests that part of the gulf between them was rooted in their different approaches to the law. Raja was the human rights lawyer, but Aziz is presented as a political player, adamant about using political means to pressure Israel since the law was being abrogated by the occupier. “He was no longer dealing with the consequences but with the core issue,” Raja writes. “Whereas I in my human rights work was doing precisely

the opposite, dealing with the consequences of the occupation while not working on the politics of terminating it. In 1984…I was deeply convinced of the effectiveness of human rights work to resist Israel’s colonial pursuits….He tried to tell me that what was needed was political work to pressure Israel to negotiate.”

The memoir ends with a poignant exchange that occurs in the imagination of the son, who comes to understand his father in a way he couldn’t have until he went through files spanning decades of his professional engagement. The “conversation” occurs in the present, with both men roughly the same age reflecting on the dismal condition of Palestine after the Oslo Accords. And now it is the idealistic son who feels defeated while the pragmatic father points out a fundamental truth: “The only real victory is when we’ve both won.”

Iraq Against the World: Saddam, America and the Post-Cold War Order

By Samuel Helfont, Oxford University Press, 2023, hardcover,

As the author notes, relying on Ba’ath Party and Intelligence Service records leaves out the perspective of the Foreign Ministry, the records from which did not survive the post-2003 war.

268 pp.

MEB

$45 Reviewed by Alex Shanahan

The 2003 American invasion of Iraq is rightly considered a seminal moment for the United States, Iraq and global peace and security. However, in his deeply researched and tightly structured new book, Samuel Helfont looks at how Iraq’s response to an earlier conflict—the First Gulf War—critically reshaped the postCold War international order.

Iraq Against the World utilizes previously untranslated Saddam Hussain-era Iraqi archives from the Ba’ath Party and the Iraqi Intelligence Service, as well as other Arabic-language sources, to provide new information about how the country used political influence operations to alter politics and policies in foreign countries.

Nevertheless, the archives provide significant insight into how Iraq sought to back itself out of the corner of international isolation and condemnation. They also offer a rare look into the nature of political influence operations, which are an understudied aspect of many countries’ foreign policies and are difficult to investigate in detail without access to massive troves of internal documents. Thus, in addition to providing Middle East observers with fascinating new insights, the book also helps a general audience better understand the intrigue surrounding the ongoing interference campaigns being carried out by Russia, China, the U.S. and others.

To understand Iraqi actions from 1990 to 2003, it is necessary to see the world through the lens of the Iraqi government. To the rest of the world, Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait threatened the post-Cold War international order, the ostensible global victory of liberal democracy, the rule of international law and the obsolescence of wars of conquest. In short, the world was united against Iraq. Major powers saddled Iraq with sanctions, weapons inspections and no-fly zones through the legitimizing power of the U.N. Saddam’s Iraq tried to break this united front and stand against what it saw as the U.S.-imposed order through its influence

Alex Shanahan is an analyst specializing in the politics and foreign policies of the Levant. He obtained his M.A. in Middle East Studies from The George Washington University, and is a former intern at the Washington Report

operations, which included planting stories and paying operatives acting as concerned citizens, with the intent to divide Security Council members. The Ba’ath Party, it must be noted, did not singlehandedly create tensions between the coalition countries, but the book convincingly argues that its actions amplified existing political frictions and contributed to many publics and governments becoming disillusioned with the punishments inflicted on Iraq.

According to Helfont, Baghdad’s plan was largely successful. Whereas in the early 1990s Iraq faced a united U.N. Security Council, by the late 1990s the Council and even America’s allies were more divided about the necessity and wisdom of continuing to punish Iraq with devastating sanctions. Iraq was able to break the consensus on sanctions and turn the tables on the Americans, so that by the time of the 2003 invasion, the U.S. was almost alone in its hardline approach toward Iraq.

Thus, as Helfont sees it, Saddam’s Iraq posed the first significant challenge to the new post-Cold War liberal international order and contributed to the cracks that began to appear in it by the late 1990s and early 2000s. With the anti-Iraq coalition divided and the future of the rulesbased order uncertain, the U.S. launched its preventive war on Iraq. Acting without U.N. authorization and without the agreement of most other countries, Washington found itself at odds with the liberal international order of which it was purportedly the prime champion.

Histories of the breakdown of the postCold War order are often told through failures in the Balkans, Rwanda and Somalia. Iraq Against the World provides a useful corrective, demonstrating that the first cracks appeared regarding Iraq, and that Iraq itself actively sought to widen these schisms. The methods with which it tried to do so also offer new insights into Saddam’s foreign policy specifically, and the thinking of isolated pariah states more generally. Together, these lines of inquiry form a fresh perspective on Saddam Hussain’s Iraq and the successes and contradictions of liberal internationalism. ■

Beirut 1958: How America’s Wars in the Middle East Began by Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution Press, 2023, paperback, 144 pp. MEB $16

Bruce Riedel tells the now-forgotten story (that is, in the United States) of the first U.S. combat operation in the Middle East. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the Marines to Lebanon in the wake of a bloody coup in Iraq, a seismic event that altered the politics not only of that country but of the entire region. Eisenhower feared that the coup, along with other events that seemed mysterious back in Washington, threatened American interests in the Middle East. His action was prompted in large part by a cast of fascinating characters whose espionage and covert actions could be grist for a movie. Although Eisenhower’s intervention in Lebanon was unique, certainly in its relatively benign outcome, it does hold important lessons for today’s policymakers as they seek to deal with the always unexpected challenges in the Middle East. Riedel describes the scene as it emerged six decades ago, and he suggests that some of the lessons learned then are still valid today. A key lesson? Not to rush to judgment when surprised by the unexpected. And don’t assume the worst.

Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition by Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University Press, 2023, paperback, 138 pp. MEB

$25

What does it mean to be a Muslim philosopher, or to philosophize in Islam? In Open to Reason , Souleymane Bachir Diagne traces Muslims’ intellectual and spiritual history of examining and questioning beliefs and arguments to show how Islamic philosophy has always engaged critically with texts and ideas both inside and outside its tradition. Through a rich reading of classical and modern Muslim philosophers, Diagne explains the long history of philosophy in the Islamic world and its relevance to crucial issues of our own time. Diagne explores how Islamic thinkers have asked and answered pressing questions: Does religion need philosophy? How can religion coexist with rationalism? What does it mean to interpret a religious narrative philosophically? Diagne shows that philosophizing in Islam, in its many forms throughout the centuries, has meant a commitment to forward and open thinking. A remarkable history of philosophy in the Islamic world as well as a work of philosophy in its own right, this book contributes to the revival of a spirit of pluralism rooted in Muslim intellectual and spiritual traditions.

Kaan and Her Sisters: Poetry by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Trio House Press, 2023, paperback, 86 pp. MEB $18 Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s Kaan and Her Sisters illuminates the work of grief and survival, the sordid legacies of official historical records and the liberatory practice of intimate narration. Tuffaha writes in the liminal space between languages, personifying Arabic verbs who guide the reader through a “history hurtling into the future.” Kaan and Her Sisters centers around the Arabic teacher, Miss Sahar, whose progressive displacements from Palestine and across Arab cities unfold in epistles, refashioned songs and glimpses into the interiors of her lost home. In these disclosures, a study of time and a record of resistance to erasure emerges, and the women who keep intergenerational memory alive shine: “Our mothers miraculous, persevering. No maps are new to the ancestors.”

THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST

Leiden, Netherlands

Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Correio Do Povo, Porto Alegre, Brazil

The Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE

Other People’s Mail

Compiled by Dale Sprusansky

A TRIP REVEALED THE REALITY OF ISRAELI APARTHEID

To The Press Democrat, Aug. 1, 2023

I recently returned from a pilgrimage to Israel and Palestine. I grew up in a town with a large Jewish population. Jewish culture was part of my life, and some friends’ grandparents had prisoner number tattoos on their arms from the Nazi concentration camps. I fervently supported Israel.

Yet the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became real for me as our tour bus passed into the West Bank at Bethlehem. The graffitied “wall of separation”—with its armed guards and high wire—kept Palestinians in obvious distress. How, we asked, had Israel become the oppressor after millennia of pogroms, diasporas and the Holocaust? Our tour members agreed we were witnessing apartheid.

Israeli-issued IDs determine where Palestinians can travel and be employed. Routine checkpoints aggravate daily life. Rooftops have water tanks to ensure supply—for when Israel cuts it off without warning.

My affinity for the Jewish people remains, yet Israel is at an inflection point. With its judicial system under fire, we must place conditions on our support. Israeli President Isaac Herzog recently visited Washington. Congress and President Joe Biden have significant leverage to pressure the Israeli government to make desperately needed changes.

Caryl Englehorn, Sonoma, CA

HYPOCRISY OF ISAAC HERZOG’S SPEECH TO CONGRESS

To The Dallas Morning News, July 30, 2023

In his column about anti-Semitism, Ken-

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neth Goldberg quotes the president of Israel celebrating 75 years of “the sacred bond” between the U.S. and the world’s only Jewish nation. Goldberg goes on to acknowledge “attacks on Jewish people are on the rise globally, when criticism of Israel in Congress often crosses the line into anti-Semitism, and when Israeli democracy is on display through protests and counter protests across that country.”

Goldberg also describes groups in Texas that help “to combat and confront hatred, prejudice and indifference by educating all Texans about the Holocaust and other genocides.” Sounds good, right?

I have some questions for Goldberg and the president of Israel. Regarding Israeli democracy, what about the dismantling of the authority of the Israeli Supreme Court? What about the Israeli army’s regular attacks on Palestinians? And finally, why doesn’t Israel, of all the countries in the world, not support a homeland for the Palestinians?

It’s insanely hypocritical for Israel not to support the Palestinians’ right to a homeland when it’s the same right the Israelis had when they got their homeland 75 years ago.

Gerald Elbert Bunger, Sunnyvale, TX

ATTACK ON THE USS LIBERTY WAS NOT A MISTAKE

To Jon Hitchcock, vice president of WNYT in Albany, NY

I was aboard the USS Liberty when the ship was attacked by Israel on June 8, 1967 and serve my shipmates as historian of the USS Liberty Veterans Association.

Your station recently aired a segment “Banner raised in Troy for sailor killed in

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action,” which tells of the effort by the family of our fallen shipmate, as well as your community at large, to honor the sacrifice of our shipmate Frank Brown during the attack on our ship.

In the segment you aired, your reporters described the attack as an “accident.” I can only assume they used that descriptor out of ignorance about the attack.

The past 55-plus years we have spent investigating the attack on our ship has led us to the conclusion that the attack was a deliberate, premeditated, well-planned and almost perfectly executed attack on a lone, freshly painted, well-marked, correctly identified, non-combatant, virtually unarmed U.S. Navy ship by the most powerful military in the Middle East.

The attack on our ship is also the only attack on a U.S. Navy ship since the end of WWII not investigated by the U.S. government. The attacks on the USS Pueblo, USS Stark and USS Cole as well as the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut have all been investigated by the U.S. government. Not the attack on our ship.

For decades the U.S. government has ignored the pleadings of USS Liberty survivors and the families of our fallen shipmates to investigate the attack.

As a result, the war crimes alleged in our War Crimes Report, which we filed with the Department of the Army on June 8, 2005, have gone ignored. This despite the government’s obligation under its very own Law of War Program that demands that all allegations of violations of the laws of war be thoroughly investigated whether committed by or against the United States.

The war crimes committed during the

attack on our ship are also explained by Lieutenant Commander Walt Jacobsen in his article “A Juridical Examination of the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty,” which appeared in the Winter 1986 issue of Naval Law Review.

My purpose in writing is twofold:

First, broadcast a correction telling your viewers that your description of the attack as an “accident” was made in error and out of ignorance of the truth about the attack.

Second, use the influence accorded you by your position in the community to actively support our effort to persuade the U.S. government that the attack on our ship warrants an investigation, just as those that followed the attacks on the Pueblo, Stark and Cole and the Marine barracks.

Joe Meadors, USS Liberty survivor CONGRESSIONAL DENIALS OF ISRAELI RACISM

To the Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 20, 2023 Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations and Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem have meticulously documented racist and discriminatory policies by Israel’s far-right government against Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, and even within

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Israel itself, that collectively meet the international legal definition of apartheid.

Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) recently noted, correctly, that “Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies and that there are extreme racists driving that policy within the leadership of the current government.”

In response, our Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel) joined 40 other House members in signing a statement insisting that Israel is actually a “vibrant, progressive and pluralistic democracy,” claiming that criticisms of the Israeli government’s racist policies are designed to “delegitimize” and “demonize” Israel and are somehow antiSemitic.

We deserve a congressman who is willing to call out racism rather than deny it–at home and abroad.

Stephen Zunes, Santa Cruz, CA

FACTS SHOW WHY U.S. SHOULD CUT SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

To The Holland Sentinel, July 2, 2023

So far this summer, Israeli settlers have attacked at least three Americans visiting their relatives in villages in the West Bank, Palestine. “The villages attacked by settlers include Turmus Ayya, where many of the residents are Palestinian-Americans,” said Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), who is Jewish.

It’s time for the U.S. State Department to work proactively to promote equal human rights for all the peoples of Israel-Palestine, including Palestinians. The facts below, compiled by If Americans Knew, illustrate how the overwhelming disparity of American support for one side promotes the oppression of the other. Neither side must use U.S. tax dollars to oppress or harm the other.

Daily U.S. aid to Israel: $13.1 million; to Palestine: $0.73 million

Children killed since 2000: Israelis: 143; Palestinians: 2,430

Total killed since 2000: Israelis: 1,345; Palestinians: 10,731

Total injured since 2000: Israelis: 11,954; Palestinians: 100,508

Those killed by rockets since 2000: Israelis: 30; Palestinians: 4,000

Number of political prisoners held: by Israel: 5,000; by Palestine: 2

Homes demolished since 1967: Israel: 56,502; Palestine: 7

Number of illegal settlements on other’s land: Israel: 261; Palestine: 0

Contact your representative asking them to support the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, H.R. 3103, which prohibits U.S. tax dollars from being used to detain and torture Palestinian children, demolish and seize Palestinian homes and further annex Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

Bart Den Boer, Kairos of West Michigan

NEUTRALITY IS COMPLICITY

To The Press Democrat, July 17, 2023

The recent Israeli military onslaught in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank should concern and distress all Americans, as our annual gift to Israel of $3.8 billion subsidized it, and our government stood by and allowed it to happen.

Palestinians are tired of being excluded, oppressed in every way, living as prisoners in their own land under a brutal Israeli military occupation for 56 years. After all, Israel in 2018 made it law that it is a nation-state for Jews only. What are millions of indigenous Palestinians to do? They will never disappear but will continue to resist with their lives and protect their families and homes. Please, let’s stop calling them “militants.” The oppressors are the militants, not the oppressed. For decades, Israel has criminalized any resistance to its stranglehold on Palestinian land and its inhabitants. And it’s getting worse. Why shouldn’t Palestinians want to be free? Why shouldn’t they want to live on their own land with equality and dignity? Israel’s illegal occupation and theft of the West Bank, Gaza and Palestinian East Jerusalem is the root cause of the problem and the ongoing violence. Our neutrality is complicity—and worse.

Therese Mughannam-Walrath, Santa Rosa, CA

By Delinda Hanley

George Hanna, 94, died July 4 in Santa Ana, CA. Hanna was born in Brooklyn, NY, and served during the Korean War from 1951 to 1953. He and his wife, Mary, met in the emergency room of the Uniontown, PA hospital, where she worked as a nurse. While Hanna was in army training in 1951, Mary took a bus in her wedding dress to meet him at his base in Baltimore, MD, where they were married. After he returned from duty in 1953, the couple started a construction business in Uniontown, PA, and moved to California in 1959.

His business, Hanna Construction, is responsible for many buildings in Orange County, CA. He personally oversaw the construction of churches from Youngstown, OH to California.

Hanna served on the board of the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) since 1988, the same year he ran for the office of mayor of the city of Santa Ana. He served on the Blue Ribbon Committee to plan the future city of Santa Ana. Hanna co-founded the Arab American Republican Club of Orange County, served on the Central Committee of the Orange County Republican Party and sat on the board of the Orange County World Affairs Council.

judges knew her by her first name. Behind bars, Tetaz tutored inmates who called her “Grandma.” Her husband, Rene Tetaz, who died in 1995, worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development while she taught English in Iran, Thailand, France and Ghana. “She was always searching for a deeper engagement,” said Marja Hilfiker, who met Tetaz at church, “and she found that in protesting all the wrongs in the world.”

foundation founded by his father Nadim Choueiri that provides free care for thousands of children with special needs and from underprivileged backgrounds.

Sinéad O'Connor, 56, the acclaimed Dublin singer/songwriter best known for her 1990 smash hit “Nothing Compares 2 U” and her fearless honesty, died July 26, in London. At age 13, O’Connor ran away from her abusive alcoholic mother and ended up in a correctional school run by nuns. O’Connor, who was raised Catholic, protested child sexual abuse in the church, a decade before newspapers drew widespread attention to the scandal. When her mother died in 1985, O’Connor took a photo of Pope John Paul II off her wall and carried it around; she tore it up in an act of protest in 1992 on “Saturday Night Live.”

While all the articles published after her death included that act, most omitted her support for Palestinians. She told an Irish music magazine, “Let’s just say that, on a human level, nobody with any sanity, including myself, would have anything but sympathy for the Palestinian plight. There’s not a sane person on earth who in any way sanctions what the [expletive] Israeli authorities are doing.”

Twair

He and Mary, who died in 2012, participated in six marathons in cities from Boston to Los Angeles. Hanna is survived by his four children: Joan Borack, George, Sam and David; nine grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. —Samir

Eve Tetaz, died June 7, in Washington, DC. She was a retired English teacher and social justice advocate, who protested the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as detentions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay and the use of remotecontrolled drones by the military. Tetaz was arrested so many times that police and

Ramzi Choueiri, 51, a Lebanese chef with best-selling cookbooks and a popular TV cooking show, died in Beirut on June 18, after a heart attack. His TV show, which featured callers asking him for advice, ran from 1994 to 2010. Chef Ramzi managed to get into the Guinness World Records four times in charity events: the largest servings of hummus; tabbouleh; falafel and a chickpea-tahini mix called fatteh.

In 2003, rockets fired at the Beirut building housing Future Television, a media group owned by then-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, gutted the newsroom and studios, including the set for Choueiri’s show. The next day, Chef Ramzi did his show amid the burned debris. “Our message is one of peace,” he told Reuters in 2008, “cooking is one area where people can get along.”

In 2018, Chef Ramzi hung up his apron to devote himself entirely to Al-Kafaat, a

O’Connor began using the name Shuhada’ Sadaqat offstage after converting to Islam in 2018, and became better known for her spiritualism, activism and for speaking out about mental health struggles. She was devastated by the January 2022 suicide of her teenage son Shane.

When O'Connor received the Classic Irish Album award on March 9, 2023 for “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” she dedicated her award to “each and every member of Ireland’s refugee community....You’re very welcome in Ireland. Mashallah. I love you very much and I wish you happiness. Thank you.” ■

PHOTO BY KIERAN FROST/REDFERN

Sinéad O'Connor accepts the Classic Irish Album award.

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Best friends Niloofar Farahmand (l) and Kiana Yarahmadi (r) look under the hood of a car on Aug. 10, 2023 in Tehran, Iran. The two women are considered pioneers after starting a career as car mechanics in Iran in 2019 and documenting their journey on Instagram (mechanicar9).

PHOTO BY ARNE IMMANUEL BANSCH/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES