INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

Strip”—an effort that the senators say is fueling a “new anti-Semitism.” They also sent a letter to Secretary of State Blinken, asking to rescind the $1 million in grants the State Department gives to “anti-Israel NGOs,” aka human rights organizations.

On the legislative front of this effort, on June 14, Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), with no other co-sponsors, introduced S. 4389 titled “The Commission of Inquiry (COI) Elimination Act,” which calls for the “abolition of certain United Nations groups.” It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. The bill—which is similar but not identical to H.R. 7223 (introduced in the House in March currently with 75 bipartisan co-sponsors) would withhold from the U.S. contribution to the UNHRC “25 percent of the amount budgeted for the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, unless the Secretary of State submits to Congress a certification that the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel has been abolished.”

On June 29, the full House Appropriations Committee marked up and adopted the FY23 State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS) bill. The language of the abovementioned bill was part of an amendment put forth by Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (RPA), which prohibits the use of funds from supporting the U.N. International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel. The amendment was adopted by voice vote.

Migration & Refugee Assistance (MRA) in the FY23 SFOPS bill stipulates that, “$5,000,000 shall be made available for refugees resettling in Israel.” This is a perennial earmark, although formerly a much larger amount, that started when large numbers of Jews were coming to Israel from the former Soviet Union. The report accompanying the bill notes that the committee recommendation clarified to include funds for refugees from the former Soviet Union, Ukraine and other Eastern European states, and other refugees resettling in Israel.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) on June 14, with no co-sponsors, introduced S. 4397, “Strengthening Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Operations (C-UAS) Partnerships Act.” Per Lankford’s press release, this is legislation is “to authorize the Secretary of Defense to bolster our work with our allies and increase training capacity in counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS) with partners like Israel who also lead in this area.” There is speculation that it may have been introduced for the purposes of being added to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It’s referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

FURTHER CONSTRAINTS ON THE IRAN NEGOTIATIONS

On May 24, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (RTN) and seven Republican cosponsors introduced S. 4290, “The Iran China Accountability Act” similar to H.R. 3465 under the same name with nearly identical text, introduced by Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) on May 21 with seven Republican co-sponsors. Both bills “impose certain requirements relating to the renegotiation or reentry into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or other agreement relating to Iran’s nuclear program, and for other purposes.” These other purposes include tracking receipt of funds from China to Iran and demanding that any agreement includes the certification of the “destruction of any and all nuclear and missile capabilities of Iran as well as all weapons infrastructure and offensive cyber activity.” It has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

With an eye toward Iran, Republicans in both the House and the Senate are leveraging the relations of the Abraham Accords for another purpose. On June 8, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and five bipartisan co-sponsors, introduced H.R. 7987, followed on June 9 by S. 4366, which was introduced by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) and three bipartisan co-sponsors, the “Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defenses Act of 2022,” aka the “DEFEND Act of 2022.“ It aims to “require the Secretary of Defense to seek cooperation with allies and partners in the Middle East to identify an architecture and develop an acquisition approach for certain countries in the Middle East to implement an integrated air and missile defense capability to protect the people, infrastructure and territory of such countries from cruise and ballistic missiles, manned and unmanned aerial systems and rocket attacks from Iran, and for other purposes.” It has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) proposed an amendment to the FY23 SFOPS bill that, “prohibits the use of funds to implement an agreement with Iran relating to the nuclear program unless such agreement has been submitted to Congress for review. The amendment also prohibits the use of funds to revoke the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.” The amendment was adopted by voice vote following the adoption of the second degree amendment by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).

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The “Israel Anti-Boycott” bill introduced by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), has garnered five new co-sponsors, bringing the total number to 59 Republican House members.

As a reminder, this bill prohibits participation by certain entities and individuals in

boycotts or requests for boycotts imposed by international governmental organizations (i.e., the U.N. and the EU). Specifically, the bill applies to covered persons the prohibition of specified actions in compliance with or in support of a boycott against a country that is friendly to the United States and that is not itself the object of a U.S. boycott. The bill also prohibits the act of furnishing information to any foreign country or international governmental organization that furthers an imposed boycott. A BIT OF POSITIVE NEWS

STAY TUNED FOR MORE As the appropriations work continues in the House and not yet started in the Senate Palestinian children take part in a four‐week summer activities program organized in 83 schools in the for FY23, money is being alGaza Strip by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the located for programs in each Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza strip, on June 27, 2022. of the budget categories for countries throughout the region. Although the Senate has yet to start, a Senate Republican Study Committee (the largest conservative caucus in Congress) has outlined their “wish” list that could prove to be extremely challenging for the process. And as with the few examples here, it is expected that many of the bills and various amendments (133 submitted by July 1, with a July 5 deadline) will contain language from legislation previously highlighted in these pages. The Washington Report will continue to track and report on both new legislation and the appropriation of the FY23 budget. ■

PHOTO BY MOHAMMED ABED/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Although the SFOPS will have more amendments when it is presented to the full House for approval, the version passed out of the Appropriations Committee included some positive notes and some surprising language.

Although not back to previous levels, some small relief is provided to UNRWA, despite legislative efforts against the organization in the SFOPS bill headed to the full House. In addition to amounts made available for UNRWA under Migration and Refugee Assistance, the committee recommends $100,000,000 under the Multilateral Assistance heading be made available to maintain the provision of food assistance to vulnerable Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in response to rising food and transport costs.

With respect to aid for the West Bank and Gaza, new language was added to the reporting requirements of the State Department Incitement report. Due 90 days after enactment of the Act, the Secretary of State shall submit a report to the appropriate congressional committees to include “efforts by the government of Israel to counter incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians and promote peace and coexistence with Palestinians.”

Despite the headwinds against the move, the committee recommended sufficient funds under embassy security, construction and maintenance to support the administration’s plan to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem and asks the State Department to outline the “extent to which such a diplomatic mission complements the broader strategy of improving relations with the Palestinian people.”

Election Watch Pro-Israel PAC Donations Flood 2022 Elections

By Delinda C. Hanley and Open Secrets

Suffice it to say, money is flooding the 2022 election cycle. There are mammoth sums flowing into American politics, much of it legalized or enabled by the Supreme Court, according to Ellen L. Weintraub, a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission (FEC). “The court has equated money with speech, struck down political spending limits and empowered corporations,” she says in a Washington Post article. “That is stunningly out of sync with public opinion,” she continues, citing a 2018 Pew Research Center poll finding that 77 percent of Americans support limits on political donations. The Supreme Court’s May decision in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate now allows donors to slip money directly into an elected official’s pocket, she opined.

In the 2020 election season, federal fundraising totaled more than $14 billion, and those were just the contributions we know about, according to Weintraub. It is probable the money pouring into future elections may eclipse those numbers.

A PAC is a Political Action Committee that raises and spends money to elect or defeat candidates. In the first six months of its existence, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)’s new PAC, delivered $6 million to 326 candidates and endorsed 120 candidates, some 37 of them Republicans who voted against certifying Biden.

Like AIPAC’s new Super PAC, the United Democracy Project can raise money without any legal limit on donation size. The United Democracy Project is pouring money into ads attacking Donna Edwards, who is running in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District. Those attack ads never mention her sup-

port for Palestinian human rights—the real reason Zionists don’t want her elected and why her AIPAC-endorsed Democratic opponent Glenn Ivey is getting the big bucks. You don’t see Ivey or Edwards on the charts in the next pages because neither is a House member—yet. The following pages list pro-Israel PAC donations given to candidates during the 2021-2022 election cycle. These numbers were released by the FEC on May 23, 2022 and compiled from reports on the Open Secrets website. The FEC updates their reports once a month and finalizes their numbers after the election. The Open Secrets report, updated on June 22, came in too late for us to re-tabulate. We’d like to thank Open Secrets for their close attention to the pro-Israel donations funding our democracy. Our interns, finance director Delinda Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report on and webmaster all pooled their talents to help me compile this Middle East Affairs. report. Visit <www.opensecrets.org> for the latest figures. ■

TOP 2022 AND CAREER RECIPIENTS OF PRO-ISRAEL PAC FUNDS Compiled Open Secrets

HOUSE: CURRENT RACES Brown, Shontel (D-OH) $892,766 Jeffries, Hakeem (D-NY) $356,600 Stevens, Haley (D-MI) $273,410 Buchanan, Vernon (R-FL) $253,254 Levin, Andy (D-MI) $204,970 Luria, Elaine (D-VA) $168,599 Gottheimer, Josh (D-NJ) $135,325 Granger, Kay (R-TX) $133,800 Hoyer, Steny (D-MD) $123,528 Kim, Andy (D-NJ) $111,792 Slotkin, Elissa (D-MI) $115,695 Malinowski, Tom (D-NJ) $108,168 Schneider, Brad (D-IL) $89,46 House: Career Brown, Shontel (D-OH) $1,970,435 Cheny, Liz (R-WY) $1,530,433 Schneider, Brad (D-IL) $1,021,695 Zeldin, Lee (R-NY) $937,744 Jeffries, Hakeem (D-NY) $887,051 Luria, Elaine (D-VA) $802,889 Gottheimer, Josh (D-NJ) $793,188 Schakowsky, Jan (D-IL) $720,205 Stevens, Haley (D-MI) $636,008 Sherman, Brad (D-CA) $630,190 Buchanan, Vernon (R-FL) $516,508 Levin, Andy (D-MI) $492,280 Slotkin, Elissa (D-MI) $473,549 Kim, Andy (D-NJ) $453,541 SENATE: CURRENT RACES Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $583,343 Lankford, James (R-OK) $251,677 Rubio, Marco (R-FL) $248,177 Scott, Tim (R-SC) $206,560 Hassan, Maggie (D-NH) $213,817 Warnock, Raphael (D-GA) $195,667 Wyden, Ron (D-OR) $165,825 Masto, Catherine Cortez (D-NV) $163,454 Moran, Jerry (R-KS) $157,362 Boozman, John (R-AR) $144,212 Kelly, Mark (D-AZ) $130,829 Blumenthal, Richard (D-CT) $129,501 Crapo, Mike (R-ID) $120,470 Duckworth, Tammy (D-IL) $99,435 Senate: Career Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $2,346,003 Wyden, Ron (D-OR) $1,418,052 Menendez, Robert (D-NJ) $1,412,175 Rubio, Marco (R-FL) $1,143,089 Warnock, Raphael (D-GA) $835,993 Ossoff, Jon (D-GA) $758,402 Duckworth, Tammy (D-IL) $742,311 Hassan, Maggie (D-NH) $710,936 Brown, Sherrod (D-OH) $662,424 Scott, Tim (R-SC) $661,086 Lankford, James (R-OK) $613,554 Murray, Patty (D-WA) $600,606

2022 Committee at State Office District Candidate Party Status Contributions Career time of Election

Alabama H 3 Rogers, Mike D (R-AL) R I $33,600 $213,825 AS H 4 Aderholt, Robert B (R-AL) R I $5,800 $67,098 H 2 Moore, Barry (R-AL) R I $2,900 $5,800 AG H 5 Brooks, Mo (R-AL) R C $1,950 $3,900 AS H 1 Carl, Jerry (R-AL) R I $500 $2,000 AS, NR Alaska S Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK) R I $102,085 $463,499 Arizona S Kelly, Mark (D-AZ) D I $130,829 $459,444 AS, NR H 9 Stanton, Greg (D-AZ) D I $39,000 $88,090 H 1 O’Halleran, Tom (D-AZ) D I $23,500 $77,050 AG H 7 Gallego, Ruben (D-AZ) D I $18,100 $51,168 AS, NR H 6 Schweikert, David (R-AZ) R I $8,550 $104,450 WM H 4 Gosar, Paul (R-AZ) R I $1,250 $30,475 H 3 Grijalva, Raul M (D-AZ) D I $1,000 $70,583 NR Arkansas S Boozman, John (R-AR) R I $144,212 $454,674 H 4 Westerman, Bruce (R-AR) R I $15,003 $32,606 NR H 3 Womack, Steve (R-AR) R I $6,050 $17,100 H 2 Hill, French (R-AR) R I $7,500 $25,750 FS California S Padilla, Alex (D-CA) D I $33,950 $67,900 B H 33 Lieu, Ted (D-CA) D I $43,500 $239,245 H 10 Harder, Josh (D-CA) D I $35,899 $153,572 AG H 39 Kim, Young (R-CA) R I $28,531 $122,210 H 49 Levin, Mike (D-CA) D I $41,033 $197,036 NR H 17 Khanna, Ro (D-CA) D I $22,030 $79,985 AG, AS H 45 Porter, Katie (D-CA) D I $20,000 $77,955 NR H 51 Vargas, Juan (D-CA) D I $19,100 $135,450 FS H 53 Jacobs, Sara (D-CA) D I $19,670 $60,140 AS H 31 Aguilar, Pete (D-CA) D I $17,850 $159,236 H 38 Sanchez, Linda (D-CA) D I $22,950 $151,120 WM H 13 Lee, Barbara (D-CA) D I $16,081 $75,369 B H 37 Bass, Karen (D-CA) D C $14,950 $107,917 H 48 Steel, Michelle (R-CA) R I $18,692 $65,609 H 25 Garcia, Mike (R-CA) R I $19,466 $111,085 H 19 Lofgren, Zoe (D-CA) D I $13,494 $80,773 H 15 Swalwell, Eric (D-CA) D I $12,500 $167,343 HS, I H 36 Ruiz, Raul (D-CA) D I $12,700 $112,079 H 9 McNerney, Jerry (D-CA) D N $8,450 $105,257 H 23 McCarthy, Kevin (R-CA) R I $42,741 $329,427 H 14 Speier, Jackie (D-CA) D N $6,050 $110,437 AS,I H 21 Valadao, David (R-CA) R I $6,000 $38,080 H 29 Cardenas, Tony (D-CA) D I $5,800 $101,864 H 12 Pelosi, Nancy (D-CA) D I $21,724 $588,161 H 42 Calvert, Ken (R-CA) R I $11,750 $44,250 H 35 Torres, Norma (D-CA) D I $6,100 $24,173 H 30 Sherman, Brad (D-CA) D I $32,540 $630,190 FS H 44 Barragan, Nanette (D-CA) D I $23,200 $46,410 HS H 28 Schiff, Adam (D-CA) D I $5,800 $404,531 I H 16 Costa, Jim (D-CA) D I $22,900 $255,176 AG, NR H 20 Panetta, Jimmy (D-CA) D I $6,550 $13,100 AG, AS, WM H 27 Chu, Judy (D-CA) D I $4,500 $38,100 B, WM H 4 McClintock, Tom (R-CA) R I $4,500 $16,800 B, NR H 41 Takano, Mark (D-CA) D I $10,000 $80,980 H 7 Bera, Ami (D-CA) D I $4,800 $179,504 H 18 Eshoo, Anna (D-CA) D I $4,500 $88,075 H 5 Thompson, Mike (D-CA) D I $3,242 $52,034 WM H 52 Peters, Scott (D-CA) D I $5,250 $136,933 B H 11 Desaulnier, Mark (D-CA) D I $3,000 $20,650

The Career Total column represents the total amount of pro-Israel PAC money received from Jan. 1, 1990 through May 23, 2022. S=Senate, H=House of Representatives. Party affiliation: D=Democrat, R=Republican, Ref=Reform, DFL=Democratic Farmer Labor, Ind=Independent, Lib=Libertarian, WFP=Working Families Party. Status: C=Challenger, I=Incumbent, N=Not Running, O=Open Seat (no incumbent), P=Defeated in primary election. *=Senate election year, #=House member running for Senate seat, †=Special Election. Committees (at time of election): A=Appropriations, AG=Agriculture (D=Defense subcommittee, FO=Foreign Operations subcommittee, HS=Homeland Security, NR=Natural Resources, NS=National Security subcommittee), AS=Armed Services, B=Budget, C=Commerce, FR=Foreign Relations (NE=Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs subcommittee), HS=Homeland Security, I=Intelligence, IR=International Relations, NS=National Security, WM=Ways and Means.– indicates money returned by candidate, 0 that all money received was returned.

California H 2 Huffman, Jared (D-CA) D I $3,000 $47,070 NR H 3 Garamendi, John (D-CA) D I $4,000 $100,850 AS H 47 Lowenthal, Alan (D-CA) D N $2,500 $60,246 NR H 26 Brownley, Julia (D-CA) D I $6,650 $114,906 NR H 24 Carbajal, Salud (D-CA) D I $1,200 $46,715 AG, AS Colorado S Bennet, Michael (D-CO D I $61,060 $401,360 AG H 4 Buck, Ken (R-CO) R I $24,550 $77,300 H 5 Lamborn, Doug (R-CO) R I $21,000 $232,600 AS, NR H 6 Crow, Jason (D-CO) D I $9,850 $163,727 AS, I H 2 Neguse, Joseph (D-CO) D I $13,255 $35,310 NR H 1 DeGette, Diana (D-CO) D I $4,900 $67,755 NR H 7 Perlmutter, Ed (D-CO) D N $2,000 $53,698 FS Connecticut S Blumenthal, Richard (D-CT) D I $124,101 $391,770 C, AS S Murphy, Christopher (D-CT) D I $1,500 $153,485 FR H 3 DeLauro, Rosa (D-CT) D I $30,579 $161,058 H 5 Hayes, Jahana (D-CT) D I $13,300 $30,237 AG H 2 Courtney, Joe (D-CT) D I $10,450 $40,450 AS H 1 Larson, John (D-CT) D I $5,200 $10,400 WM Delaware H at-large Rochester, Lisa Blunt (D-DE) D I $7,400 $29,550 Florida S Rubio, Marco (R-FL) R I $248,177 $1,143,089 H 16 Buchanan, Vernon (R-FL) R I $253,254 $516,508 WM H 26 Gimenez, Carlos (R-FL) R I $95,916 $261,732 HS H 22 Deutch, Ted (D-FL) D N $39,850 $811,606 H 25 Diaz-Balart, Mario (R-FL) R I $28,000 $391,649 H 21 Frankel, Lois (D-FL) D I $32,600 $259,280 H 18 Mast, Brian (R-FL) R I $35,503 $371,889 H 9 Soto, Darren (D-FL) D I $21,700 $98,015 NR H 3 Cammack, Kat (R-FL) R I $14,900 $40,800 AG, HS H 27 Salazar, Maria (R-FL) R I $50,913 $156,826 H 17 Steube, Greg (R-FL) R I $13,300 $52,350 H 6 Waltz, Michael (R-FL) R I $7,950 $69,862 AS H 23 Schultz, Debbie Wasserman (D-FL) D I $17,050 $429,516 H 10 Demings, Val (D-FL)# D C $23,334 $70,194 HS, I H 5 Lawson, Al (D-FL) D I $2,150 $27,800 AG, FS H 4 Rutherford, John (R-FL) R I $2,150 $19,300 H 15 Franklin, Scott (R-FL) R I $300 $600 Georgia S Warnock, Raphael (D-GA) D I $195,667 $835,993 S Loeffler, Kelly (R-GA) R N $1,500 $463,231 S Ossoff, Jon (D-GA) D I $1,075 $758,402 B, HS H 7 Bourdeaux, Carolyn (D-GA) D P $27,305 $131,677 H 8 Scott, Austin (R-GA) R I $14,700 $44,100 AG, AS H 11 Loudermilk, Barry (R-GA) R I $9,450 $22,300 FS H 3 Ferguson, Drew (R-GA) R I $20,400 $45,500 WM H 6 McBath, Lucy (D-GA) D I $10,800 $67,215 H 2 Bishop, Sanford (D-GA) D I $4,000 $36,702 AG H 13 Scott, David (D-GA) D I $15,400 $60,550 AG, FS H 5 Williams, Nikema Natassha (D-GA)D I $3,700 $7,400 FS H 1 Carter, Buddy (R-GA) R I $1,000 $5,500 B H 4 Johnson, Hank (D-GA) D I $1,000 $111,750 H 9 Clyde, Andrew (R-GA) R I $500 $1,000 HS Hawaii S Schatz, Brian (D-HI) D I $4,000 $187,320 C, FR Idaho S Crapo, Mike (R-ID) R I $120,470 $429,554 B H 1 Fulcher, Russ (R-ID) R I $1,000 $2,000 NR Illinois S Duckworth, Tammy (D-IL) D I $99,435 $742,311 AS, C H 10 Schneider, Brad (D-IL) D I $89,468 $1,021,695 WM H 18 LaHood, Darin (R-IL) R I $34,750 $102,527 I, WM H 9 Schakowsky, Jan (D-IL) D I $47,775 $720,205 B H 8 Krishnamoorthi, Raja (D-IL) D I $40,100 $223,810 I H 3 Newman, Marie (D-IL) D I $20,378 $147,441 H 16 Kinzinger, Adam (R-IL) R N $14,095 $193,590 H 5 Quigley, Mike (D-IL) D I $11,550 $211,536 I H 11 Foster, Bill (D-IL) D I $21,281 $473,259 H 6 Casten, Sean (D-IL) D I $80,936 $269,467 FS H 2 Kelly, Robin (D-IL) D I $15,875 $101,597 H 13 Davis, Rodney (R-IL) R I $6,000 $88,700 FS, NR H 12 Bost, Mike (R-IL) R I $8,300 $81,223

Illinois H 4 Garcia, Jesus (D-IL) D I $3,000 $19,660 FS, NR H 7 Davis, Danny K (D-IL) D I $1,000 $56,484 WM H 17 Bustos, Cheri (D-IL) D N $1,000 $324,763 AG Indiana S Young, Todd (R-IN) R I $69,902 $365,754 C, FR H 3 Banks, Jim (R-IN) R I $17,900 $48,000 AS H 2 Walorski, Jackie (R-IN) R I $2,900 $75,800 WM H 1 Mrvan, Frank Jr (D-IN) D I $3,700 $10,450 H 7 Carson, Andre (D-IN) D I $1,000 $21,553 I H 5 Spartz, Victoria (R-IN) R I $1,850 $17,900 Iowa S Grassley, Chuck (R-IA) R I $36,012 $494,424 H 3 Axne, Cindy (D-IA) D I $41,355 $181,901 AG, FS H 2 Miller-Meeks, Mariannette (R-IA) R I $9,650 $37,875 HS H 1 Hinson, Ashley (R-IA) R I $11,100 $40,005 B Kansas S Moran, Jerry (R-KS) R I $157,362 $404,999 A, C H 3 Davids, Sharice (D-KS) D I $15,300 $59,763 H 4 Estes, Ron (R-KS) R I $2,000 $4,000 WM Kentucky H 6 Barr, Andy (R-KY) R I $58,400 $265,073 H 1 Comer, James (R-KY) R I $16,400 $32,800 H 5 Rogers, Hal (R-KY) R I $6,800 $121,350 H 3 Yarmuth, John (D-KY) D N $4,500 $69,242 B Louisiana S Kennedy, John (R-LA) R I $55,500 $250,651 B H 5 Letlow, Julia (R-LA) R I $23,600 $47,200 H 2 Carter, Troy (D-LA) D I $12,500 $25,000 H 6 Graves, Garret (R-LA) R I $9,900 $53,200 NR H 1 Scalise, Steve (R-LA) R I $16,393 $334,142 H 4 Johnson, Mike (R-LA) R I $7,050 $26,000 AS Maine H 2 Golden, Jared (D-ME) D I $34,403 $160,291 AS H 1 Pingree, Chellie (D-ME) D I $3,500 $75,093 AG Maryland S Van Hollen, Chris (D-MD) D I $51,130 $328,636 B, FR H 8 Raskin, Jamie (D-MD) D I $38,155 $160,523 H 2 Ruppersberger, Dutch (D-MD) D I $16,550 $81,450 H 5 Hoyer, Steny H (D-MD) D I $123,528 $1,540,409 H 7 Mfume, Kweisi (D-MD) D I $9,250 $137,750 H 1 Harris, Andy (R-MD) R I $13,350 $77,150 Massachusetts H 5 Clark, Katherine (D-MA) D I $35,750 $152,766 H 4 Auchincloss, Jake (D-MA) D I $33,822 $128,569 FS H 6 Moulton, Seth (D-MA) D I $12,750 $81,386 AS, B H 2 McGovern, James P (D-MA) D I $3,525 $51,575 AG H 3 Trahan, Lori (D-MA) D I $6,150 $23,800 NR H 1 Neal, Richard E (D-MA) D I $2,500 $37,500 WM H 9 Keating, Bill (D-MA) D I $2,070 $4,140 AS Michigan H 9 Levin, Andy (D-MI) D I $204,970 $492,280 H 8 Slotkin, Elissa (D-MI) D I $115,695 $473,549 AS, HS H 11 Stevens, Haley (D-MI) D I $273,410 $636,008 H 3 Meijer, Peter (R-MI) R I $49,158 $116,016 HS H 5 Kildee, Dan (D-MI) D I $8,450 $36,550 B, WM H 10 McClain, Lisa (R-MI) R I $4,800 $11,595 AS H 12 Dingell, Debbie (D-MI) D I $2,040 $34,640 NR H 14 Lawrence, Brenda (D-MI) D N $2,000 $37,704 Minnesota H 4 McCollum, Betty (D-MN) D I $4,400 $64,550 NR H 2 Craig, Angie (D-MN) D I $3,000 $95,614 AG Missouri H 7 Long, Billy (R-MO) R I $12,300 $70,000 NR H 8 Smith, Jason (R-MO) R I $9,300 $20,600 B, WM H 2 Wagner, Ann (R-MO) R I $5,800 $19,279 FS H 5 Cleaver, Emanuel (D-MO) D I $2,323 $64,496 FS, HS Nebraska H 2 Bacon, Donald John (R-NE) R I $71,356 $383,477 AG, AS Nevada S Masto, Catherine Cortez (D-NV) D I $163,454 $573,073 NR S Rosen, Jacky (D-NV) D I $5,800 $226,538 AS, C, HS H 1 Titus, Dina (D-NV) D I $19,000 $73,754 HS H 3 Lee, Susie (D-NV) D I $3,500 $67,305 H 4 Horsford, Steven (D-NV) D I $2,500 $33,439 AS, B, WM New Hampshire S Hassan, Maggie (D-NH) D I $213,817 $710,936 S Shaheen, Jeanne (D-NH) D I $500 $572,075 AS, FR H 1 Pappas, Chris (D-NH) D I $38,250 $166,591 New Jersey S Menendez, Robert (D-NJ) D I $62,390 $1,412,175 B, FR H 5 Gottheimer, Josh (D-NJ) D I $135,325 $793,188 FS, HS

New Jersey H 3 Kim, Andy (D-NJ) D I $111,792 $453,541 AS H 7 Malinowski, Tom (D-NJ) D I $108,168 $449,410 HS H 1 Norcross, Don (D-NJ) D I $23,160 $93,780 AS H 4 Smith, Chris (R-NJ) R I $15,500 $215,575 H 9 Pascrell, Bill Jr (D-NJ) D I $14,950 $133,513 WM H 10 Payne, Donald M Jr (D-NJ) D I $9,465 $50,015 HS H 12 Coleman, Bonnie Watson (D-NJ) D I $6,250 $81,245 HS H 11 Sherrill, Mikie (D-NJ) D I $5,283 $125,253 AS New Mexico H 1 Stansbury, Melanie (D-NM) D I $13,310 $26,620 NR H 2 Herrell, Yvette (R-NM) R I $3,156 $16,206 NR H 3 Fernandez, Teresa Leger (D-NM) D I $2,500 $16,498 NR New York S Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) D I $583,343 $2,346,003 I S Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-NY) D I $20 $387,911 AG, AS H 9 Jeffries, Hakeem (D-NY) D I $356,600 $887,051 B H 24 Katko, John (R-NY) R N $75,850 $328,304 HS H 5 Meeks, Gregory (D-NY) D I $63,519 $183,832 FS H 15 Torres, Ritchie (D-NY) D I $57,870 $249,398 FS, HS H 6 Meng, Grace (D-NY) D I $45,250 $170,975 H 17 Jones, Mondaire (D-NY) D I $37,827 $99,177 H 11 Malliotakis, Nicole (R-NY) R I $34,400 $138,256 H 19 Delgado, Antonio (D-NY) D N $31,868 $187,262 H 12 Maloney, Carolyn (D-NY) D I $29,663 $386,227 FS H 21 Stefanik, Elise (R-NY) R I $24,800 $208,640 AS, I H 16 Bowman, Jamaal (D-NY) D I $20,560 $49,126 H 1 Zeldin, Lee (R-NY) R C $20,400 $937,744 FS H 10 Nadler, Jerrold (D-NY) D I $19,558 $247,206 H 9 Clarke, Yvette (D-NY) D I $15,631 $63,637 HS H 20 Tonko, Paul (D-NY) D I $13,371 $55,192 NR H 7 Velazquez, Nydia (D-NY) D I $11,988 $48,830 FS, NR H 2 Garbarino, Andrew (R-NY) R I $7,000 $41,800 HS H 25 Morelle, Joseph D (D-NY) D I $6,400 $20,175 AS, B H 13 Espaillat, Adriano (D-NY) D I $5,800 $15,700 H 18 Maloney, Sean Patrick (D-NY) D I $5,800 $113,901 AG, I H 22 Tenney, Claudia (R-NY) R I $35 $76,168 North Dakota S Hoeven, John (R-ND) R I $74,627 $272,314 AG, A, NR North Carolina H 6 Manning, Kathy (D-NC) D I $49,200 $195,482 H 10 McHenry, Patrick (R-NC) R I $5,800 $135,659 FS H 2 Ross, Deborah (D-NC) D I $5,400 $149,799 H 4 Price, David (D-NC) D N $5,000 $100,835 B H 9 Bishop, Dan (R-NC) R I $2,900 $17,975 HS H 7 Rouzer, David (R-NC) R I $2,900 $6,300 AG H 12 Adams, Alma (D-NC) D I $2,000 $15,214 AG, FS H 13 Budd, Ted (R-NC) R C $1,500 $17,879 FS H 1 Butterfield, G K (D-NC) D N $1,000 $24,450 H 11 Cawthorn, Madison (R-NC) R P $500 $3,430 Ohio S Brown, Sherrod (D-OH) D I $826 $662,424 AG H 11 Brown, Shontel (D-OH) D I $892,766 $1,970,435 AG H 14 Joyce, David P (R-OH) R I $77,400 $290,149 H 16 Gonzalez, Anthony (R-OH) R N $21,600 $87,663 H 4 Jordan, Jim (R-OH) R I $6,550 $36,602 H 3 Beatty, Joyce (D-OH) D I $5,800 $24,150 FS H 10 Turner, Michael R (R-OH) R I $5,800 $14,150 AS, I H 15 Carey, Mike (R-OH) R I $4,800 $9,600 B H 9 Kaptur, Marcy (D-OH) D I $3,050 $58,650 AG H 6 Johnson, Bill (R-OH) R I $2,900 $11,550 H 13 Ryan, Tim (D-OH) D C $2,000 $51,153 H 8 Davidson, Warren (R-OH) R I $500 $4,000 FS Oklahoma S Lankford, James (R-OK) R I $251,677 $613,554 NR, HS H 4 Cole, Tom (R-OK) R I $5,800 $34,500 Oregon S Wyden, Ron (D-OR) D I $165,825 $1,418,052 NR, B S Merkley, Jeff (D-OR) D I $1,500 $238,047 FR, B H 3 Blumenauer, Earl (D-OR) D I $12,560 $79,787 WM H 4 DeFazio, Peter (D-OR) D N $11,200 $55,515 H 5 Schrader, Kurt (D-OR) D P $5,500 $27,483 H 1 Bonamici, Suzanne (D-OR) D I $4,949 $52,343 Pennsylvania H 1 Fitzpatrick, Brian (R-PA) R I $52,256 $299,127 I H 2 Boyle, Brendan (D-PA) D I $33,100 $200,900 B,WM

Pennsylvania H 14 Reschenthaler, Guy (R-PA) R I $22,200 $47,300 H 7 Wild, Susan (D-PA) D I $12,300 $113,372 E H 6 Houlahan, Chrissy (D-PA) D I $11,000 $61,369 AS H 5 Scanlon, Mary Gay (D-PA) D I $10,750 $52,112 H 8 Cartwright, Matt (D-PA) D I $7,800 $71,337 H 3 Evans, Dwight (D-PA) D I $6,250 $26,800 WM H 4 Dean, Madeleine (D-PA) D I $5,800 $38,100 FS H 10 Perry, Scott (R-PA) R I $5,800 $84,800 H 18 Doyle, Mike (D-PA) D N $1,000 $42.050 Rhode Island S Whitehouse, Sheldon (D-RI) D I $500 $351,567 B H 1 Cicilline, David (D-RI) D I $15,700 $160,050 H 2 Langevin, Jim (D-RI) D N $750 $147,466 AS, HS South Carolina S Scott, Tim (R-SC) R I $206,560 $661,086 H 2 Wilson, Joe (R-SC) R I $16,400 $164,225 AS H 6 Clyburn, James E (D-SC) D I $8,800 $101,000 H 1 Mace, Nancy (R-SC) R I $5,656 $28,141 South Dakota S Thune, John (R-SD) R I $55,162 $342,666 AG Tennessee H 7 Green, Mark (R-TN) R I $19,800 $45,425 AS H 8 Kustoff, David (R-TN) R I $14,050 $113,150 FS H 3 Fleischmann, Chuck (R-TN) R I $5,500 $11,250 H 9 Cohen, Steve (D-TN) D I $2,000 $95,130 NR Texas H 12 Granger, Kay (R-TX) R I $133,800 $544,388 H 15 Gonzalez, Vicente (D-TX) D I $42,350 $87,900 FS H 13 Jackson, Ronny (R-TX) R I $34,300 $81,200 AS H 33 Veasey, Marc (D-TX) D I $28,800 $76,150 AS H 10 McCaul, Michael (R-TX) R I $27,200 $448,629 HS H 28 Cuellar, Henry (D-TX) D I $26,900 $260,285 H 32 Allred, Colin (D-TX) D I $24,800 $210,784 H 2 Crenshaw, Dan (R-TX) R I $14,000 $112,936 H 4 Fallon, Patrick (R-TX) R I $8,544 $17,088 AS H 20 Castro, Joaquin (D-TX) D I $6,750 $27,412 I H 23 Gonzales, Tony (R-TX) R I $5,800 $31,700 H 16 Escobar, Veronica (D-TX) D I $4,900 $25,314 AS H 3 Taylor, Van (R-TX) R N $4,400 $9,300 FS H 35 Doggett, Lloyd (D-TX) D I $4,250 $49,950 B, WM H 6 Ellzey, Jake (R-TX) R I $3,900 $8,050 H 19 Arrington, Jodey (R-TX) R I $3,400 $6,800 WM H 24 Van Duyne, Beth (R-TX) R I $2,900 $38,553 H 7 Fletcher, Lizzie (D-TX) D I $2,900 $57,540 H 17 Sessions, Pete (R-TX) R I $2,900 $86,127 FS H 36 Babin, Brian (R-TX) R I $2,900 $15,300 H 18 Jackson Lee, Sheila (D-TX) D I $2,900 $30,150 B, HS H 14 Weber, Randy (R-TX) R I $2,900 $7,300 H 5 Gooden, Lance (R-TX) R I $2,900 $9,500 FS H 29 Garcia, Sylvia (D-TX) D I $2,900 $5,800 AS, FS H 26 Burgess, Michael (R-TX) R I $2,900 $6,300 B H 31 Carter, John (R-TX) R I $2,900 $11,429 H 25 Williams, Roger (R-TX) R I $2,900 $11,500 FS H 27 Cloud, Michael (R-TX) R I $2,900 $7,550 AG H 9 Green, Al (D-TX) D I $1,250 $20,500 FS, HS H 11 Pfluger, August (R-TX) R I $300 $600 HS Vermont S Leahy, Patrick (D-VT) D N $3,760 $140,136 AG, A HAt large Welch, Peter (D-VT) D C $5,150 $66,767 I Virginia H 2 Luria, Elaine (D-VA) D I $168,599 $802,889 AS, HS H 7 Spanberger, Abigail (D-VA) D I $22,075 $230,332 AG H 10 Wexton, Jennifer (D-VA) D I $13,398 $116,377 B H 8 Beyer, Don (D-VA) D I $9,600 $56,356 WM H 4 McEachin, Donald (D-VA) D I $6,000 $36,550 NR H 11 Connolly, Gerry (D-VA) D I $5,100 $131,018 Washington S Murray, Patty (D-WA) D I $52,000 $600,606 A, B H 3 Beutler, Jaime Herrera (R-WA) R I $24,600 $57,400 H 8 Schrier, Kim (D-WA) D I $16,450 $119,720 AG H 10 Strickland, Marilyn (D-WA) D I $15,380 $148,708 AS H 9 Smith, Adam (D-WA) D I $11,749 $164,133 AS H 6 Kilmer, Derek (D-WA) D I $6,800 $58,400 H 1 DelBene, Suzan (D-WA) D I $6,744 $69,638 WM H 5 Rodgers, Cathy McMorris (R-WA) R I $6,000 $99,350

Washington H 7 Jayapal, Pramila (D-WA) D I $3,400 $31,029 B, L H 2 Larsen, Rick (D-WA) D I $2,000 $59,300 AS H 4 Newhouse, Dan (R-WA) R I $1,000 $2,000 West Virginia H 2 Mooney, Alex (R-WV) R I $7,500 $82,300 FS H 3 Miller, Carol (R-WV) R I $2,900 $5,800 WM Wisconsin S Johnson, Ron (R-WI) R I $45,625 $330,264 B, C, FR S Baldwin, Tammy (D-WI) D I $750 $422,490 C H 8 Gallagher, Mike (R-WI) R I $31,700 $188,500 AS, I H 3 Kind, Ron (D-WI) D N $3,800 $62,392 WM H 1 Steil, Bryan (R-WI) R I $3,500 $50,000 FS H 2 Pocan, Mark (D-WI) D I $3,008 $29,478 H 4 Moore, Gwen (D-WI) D I $2,250 $60,550 WM Wyoming HAt large Cheney, Liz (R-WY) R I $40,612 $1,530,433 AS

2021-2022 Total House Contributions: $8,603,247 2021-2022 Total Senate Contributions: $3,542,984

2021-2022 Total No. Recipients: 335 Total No. of House Recipients (1990-2022): 5,333 Total House Contributions (1990-2022): $84,219,213 Total No. of Senate Contributions (1990-2022): $70,794,951

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peatedly subjected Gaza to indiscriminate bombardment and war crimes—needs help to defend itself from Hamas. Oh, and there is new funding for aged victims of the Nazi genocide, but none for Palestinians, including children, killed or maimed by the Israeli “defense” forces. Wait, there’s more! New millions are also being provided in support of the two-state “peace process,” which remains a cruel joke enabling Israel’s proliferation of illegal Jewish only settlements in the occupied territories.

Meanwhile, over in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, the two Arab regimes continue to spend billions of their dollars to purchase American weapons. Since 2015 the United States has administered more than $60 billion to the two Gulf states under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, including helicopters, missiles, bombs, and training and advisory services.

U.S. military intelligence support fuels the horrific Saudi-led war in Yemen. As of mid-June, that war has killed some 380,000 people and displaced millions more in Yemen. Conveniently, according to the Government Accountability Office, the State and Defense Departments “have not fully determined the extent to which U.S. military support has contributed to civilian harm in Yemen,” as required by law. (See the full GAO report on the impact of U.S. aid on Yemen civilians at https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22105988).

Other than naming a street for him outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, the United States has done little in response to the monarch-ordered assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. At least that’s more than has been done over the Israeli assassination of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, but that’s because the United States routinely ignores, even as it funds, the slaughter of Palestinians.

GWOT STILL GOING STRONG

While Russia is demonized daily for the path of destruction it has laid down in Ukraine, there is little mention these days of the venerable “Global War on Terror,” which nonetheless continues in some 85 countries across the globe to which the United States sends military aid. According to the “Costs of War” analysis at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, more than 929,000 people have been killed in the post-9/11 wars, more than 387,000 of them civilians, and some 38 million war refugees and displaced persons have been driven from their homes. The United States has spent about $8 trillion on the GWOT.

While billions are routinely doled out on the GWOT and to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other repressive regimes such as the one in Cairo, some 37 million Americans, about 11 percent of the population, continue to live below the official federal poverty line. That figure obscures the many more millions who live check-to-check on the edge of poverty even as billionaires enjoy tax shelters and lord over the American political process. A handful of super-rich donors continues to fuels the Israel lobby, which prompts Congress to send billions to the apartheid regime even as it uses the money to become ever more militaristic and repressive.

It seems we have re-ensconced the old Cold War paradigm of trumpeting Russia as the center of all evil while glossing over our own militarism, the continuous funding of repressive regimes, as well as the failure to meaningfully confront sweeping domestic problems, let alone the existential global threats of nuclear proliferation, climate change, disease control, and the wiping out of animal and plant species.

We desperately need a seismic shift in both domestic and foreign policies. It will surely come, although no one can say when, how, or at what cost the transformation will take place. But until that new day dawns, you can count on the American national security state, as Neil Young sardonically put it in the classic tune, to “Keep on rockin’ in the free world.” ■

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Special Report The Abraham Accords at Two: Who is Getting What? To What Result? By Mustafa Fetouri

SEPTEMBER 15 MARKS the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in what is seen as a breakthrough in the region. Morocco and Sudan followed suit later in 2020.

All four Arab countries are members of the League of Arab States (LAS) whose policy toward Israel has evolved over the years but kept its basic position as agreed in the LAS’ 1967 Khartoum summit, famously known as the “Three Nos;” no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. The 2002 Beirut LAS summit refined this position, leading to the adoption of the Saudiled Arab Peace Initiative, essentially offering Israel peace and recognition in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, among other demands. In this sense all four countries have broken with agreement they signed onto decades ago.

Israel rejected the Arab Peace Initiative but the new wave of normalization now seems to have buried it altogether. Each of the signatories of the Abraham Accords has its own agenda but they share one belief: that the regional dynamics have changed requiring new approaches in which enemies do not stay enemies forever. In this case, Iran has become the enemy others must confront, particularly for the UAE and Bahrain—Iran’s Gulf neighbors. Both see Tel Aviv as a natural ally against their common enemy Tehran. (L‐r) Bahrain's Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, They are supported, however Israel's then‐Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Morocco’s Foreign Minister discreetly, by their big sister Nasser Bourita and UAE’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan during the Negev Summit, hosted by Israel on contested Bedouin land, in Kibbutz Sde Boker, on March 28, 2022. Saudi Arabia, which has yet to make any public approach toward Israel. President Joe Biden’s trip to Riyadh and Tel Aviv is expected to lay the groundwork for another Abraham Accord agreement and a regional military alliance. For Sudan and Morocco, each stand to gain little other than winning Washington’s favor over issues important to Khartoum and Rabat. It has long been understood in the region that being friendly to Israel is strongly encouraged by Washington and opens doors. In fact, former President Donald Trump made it clear when he offered Rabat recognition of its sovereignty over the Western Sahara in exchange for normalization with Israel. Khartoum, consumed by public discontent and a troubled economy, welcomed any positive nod from Washington and the Accords fit the bill. For Israel the benefits of the Abraham Accords far exceeded anything the Zionist state had imagined in its 70-plus years. In a way it is even more important than the Camp David Accords signed with Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He is a recipient of the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written ex‐tensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues. He Egypt over 40 years ago. When Israel welcomed the late Anwar Sadat of Egypt to Tel Aviv has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafa in 1977, and later signed the Camp David peace treaty, it brought fetouri@hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri. the end of armed conflict with its bigger Arab neighbor with whom

PHOTO BY ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY / HANDOUT/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

it fought four wars. Everything else that came from the deal was a bonus. Making peace with Cairo left the rest of the Arab world far weaker to mount any serious war against Israel even if the political will was there. It also helped end the Arab, African and Latin American boycott of Israel, as many recognized Israel and established links with Tel Aviv.

While the Abraham Accords benefit Israel more than the other signatories, they are creating new momentum in the region and leaving the fate of Palestinians on the back burner. This fact did not deter the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken from celebrating the Accords’ first anniversary last year, on contested Bedouin land in the Naqab no less, by saying the benefits of the Accords “continue to grow.” He argued that such “relationships and growing normalization [will] make tangible improvements in the lives of Palestinians.” Two years on and the Palestinians are yet to see any benefits of this new wave of normalizations. Instead their overall situation is worse now than it was before Sept. 15, 2020. Israel continues to kill Palestinians, confiscate their land, demolish their homes and impose apartheidlike suffocating restrictions on them.

The Palestinian goal of an independent state has become even more remote. According to Israel’s Peace Now, an anti-settlement group, in May Israel’s Higher Planning Council gave its final approved for the construction of 2,791 housing units while another 1,636 received initial approval. In the previous year, another 3,000 settler units in the West Bank, an occupied area in the eyes of international law, got the OK despite objections from the U.S.

If the ultimate objective of the Accords, or any other normalizations between Israel and any Arab country, is peace in the Middle East, the Accords are not designed to do that. Unless the Palestinians’ aspiration for freedom and independence are met, peace will remain as elusive as it has ever been.

While the Accords are no more than a different version of Donald Trump’s failed “Deal of Century” in 2020—a winner-takeall for Israel which left nothing for the Palestinians—Israel stands to benefit even more from the Abraham Accords for the small concession of not “formally annexing” the West Bank.

ARAB PUBLIC REJECTS ISRAEL

With the Abraham Accords, Tel Aviv is seeking to overcome its longtime rejection by the Arab public and present itself as an ally against Iran, business partner and a technology oasis, although it’s more like a cyber security and weapons supplier.

According to a 2019-2020 survey by the Qatari Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 85 percent of Egyptians still disapprove of any diplomatic relations with Israel, even after more than 40 years since the Camp David Accords were signed. The recent case of Egyptian actor and rapper, Mohamed Ramadan, is a clear example. He faced public condemnation and contempt after he appeared in a picture with an Israeli singer two years ago. Egypt, today, has more economic and trade links to Israel but that is a government business having little impact on the minds of ordinary Egyptians. In fact, people-to-people links between Egypt and Israel are minimum and the peace between the two neighbors remains cold.

The most fertile ground for this long-term Abraham Accords project are found far from the borders with Israel, where the emotional, social and religious connections to Palestine are weakest. The UAE and Bahrain are just perfect grounds for such ideas to take root. The citizens’ attachment to Palestine is weak and their understanding of the Palestinian issue is framed by their government; if their leaders say Israel is a friend then it is a friend. They’ve never experienced war with Israel and the younger generations have lost touch with the history.

This, partly, explains the private investments by Emirati millionaires and businesses. Encouraged by their government, many businessmen have already embarked on joint ventures with their Israeli counterparts. This kind of people-to-people connection has been given another boost by the Free Trade Agreement Israel signed with the UAE on May 31, lifting almost all restrictions on bilateral trade facilitating the flow of goods, people and capital. Private businesses seek profit, regardless of whether it comes at the expense of Palestinians’ independence or Israel becoming an apartheid state.

This single-track strategy failed in Egypt decades earlier. Government business has not been embraced by either the elites or ordinary people in Cairo. The overwhelming majority of Arabs still reject Israel and believe it to be a nuclear-armed threat while their attachment to their Palestinian brothers grows by the day, thanks in part, to Israel’s own brutal treatment of Palestinians. Israel’s acceptance among the wider Arab public will not happen unless the Palestinian aspirations are achieved.

The last, and perhaps unintended, consequence of the “peace” Accords is the increased polarization and armament in the region as Israeli war technologies are the bounty now spreading across the region, further alienating Iran. ■

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Special Report To Silence Critics of Israel, The Term “AntiSemitism” Is Being Trivialized By Allan C. Brownfeld

A classic cartoon by Carlos Latuff says it all.

Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.

THERE’S A GROWING campaign to label critics of Israel as being guilty of “anti-Semitism.” Among those who have been characterized in this way are such respected organizations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as the Harvard Crimson. This tactic is not a new one and, sadly, tends to trivialize the real examples of anti-Semitism.

Some Israelis openly admit that this is precisely what they are doing. Shulamit Aloni, a former leader of the Meretz Party and former minister of education who received the Israel Prize for her “struggle to right injustices and for raising the standard of equality,” described how this works: “It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe, somebody criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When, in the United States, people are critical of Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.”

Early Israeli leaders promoted this idea even before the state was established. Abba Eban, who served as Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and United Nations from 1949 to 1959, expanded the definition of anti-Semitism. He said that “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between antiSemitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.”

In a prerecorded speech at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) annual leadership summit on May 1, 2022, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt declared, “Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.” He argued that groups calling for equal rights for Palestinians in Israel are “extremists,” and he equated liberal critics of Israel with white supremacists. Greenblatt told the ADL, “Anti-Zionism as an ideology is rooted in rage and is predicated on one concept: the negation of another people, a concept as alien to modern discourse as white supremacy. It requires willful denial of even a superficial history of Judaism and the vast history of the Jewish people. And when an idea is born out of such shocking intolerance, it leads to, well, shocking acts.” According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Greenblatt equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and said its rhetoric runs the same risk of violent outcomes. ‘That is why we are seeing this jump in anti-Semitic incidents,’ he said. He singled out groups on the Left: Jewish Voice for Peace, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Students for Justice in Palestine for what he said were anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering…”

In an editorial, in its April 29, 2022 issue, the Harvard Crimson endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, declaring BDS “a living breathing movement of great promise to liberate Palestinians.” Anticipating accusations of “antiSemitism,” the editorial made clear that it opposes bigotry of all kinds: “In the wake of accusations suggesting otherwise, we feel the need to assert that support for Palestinian liberation is not anti-Semitic. We unambiguously oppose and condemn anti-Semitism in every and all forms, including those times when it shows up on the fringes of otherwise worthwhile movements. Jewish people—like every people, including Palestinians, deserve nothing but life, peace and security.”

The backlash was immediate. A letter from six former Crimson editors declared that the editorial “is quite simply an accelerant of anti-Semitism.” Former Harvard president Larry Summers declared that the BDS movement was “taking positions that were basically anti-Semitic and immoral.” A petition was signed by more than 60 Harvard faculty members condemning the editorial as “anti-Semitic.” Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz declared, “The megaphone of the Crimson will increase the high rate of anti-Semitism on campus. It takes no courage on campuses to oppose Israel’s existence.”

The tactic of trying to silence criticism of Israel by calling it “antiSemitic” is becoming increasingly recognized. Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Stefanie Fox notes that, “Instead of dismantling anti-Semitism by fighting white supremacy, the ADL is dangerously conflating all Jewish people with the State of Israel

and attacking groups that hold the Israeli government accountable for running an apartheid regime. We’re not backing down. The anti-Zionist left and the movement in solidarity with Palestinian liberation is growing stronger daily and we won’t stop until we’ve built a future grounded on justice and equality.”

Rabbi Brant Rosen of Congregation Tzedek Chicago notes that his congregation recently amended its core values statement to say that “we are anti-Zionist, openly acknowledging that the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation state in historic Palestine resulted in an injustice against the Palestinian people. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the fundamental injustice at the core of Zionism.”

For many years critics of Israel have falsely been called “anti-Semitic.” One of the leading practitioners of this tactic has been Norman Podhoretz, for many years editor of Commentary. In an article “J’Accuse,” published in September 1982, Podhoretz charged America’s leading journalists, newspapers and television networks with “anti-Semitism” because of their reporting of the war in Lebanon and their criticism of Israel’s conduct. Among those so accused were Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, Nicholas Von Hoffman, Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, Mary McGrory, Richard Cohen, Alfred Friendly of the Washington Post and a host of others. These individuals and their organizations were not criticized for bad reporting or poor journalistic standards. Instead, they were the subject of the charge of anti-Semitism.

A list of those who have been falsely accused of anti-Semitism because of their criticism of Israel is a long one. In 2014, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick declared that Secretary of State John Kerry is “anti-Semitic.” According to Glick, “Kerry is obsessed with Israel’s economic success…The anti-Semitic undertones of Kerry’s constant chatter about Jews and money are obvious.” Writing in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Cameron Kerry, a brother of the Secretary of State and formerly general counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce, declared that charges of “anti-Semitism” against his brother “would be ridiculous if they were not so vile.” Cameron Kerry, a convert to Judaism, recalled relatives who died in the Holocaust. The Kerrys’ paternal grandparents were Jewish.

Others who have been labeled “anti-Semitic” because of their criticism of Israeli policies include former President Jimmy Carter, journalists Andrew Sullivan, Bill Moyers and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Peter Beinart, a contributing editor to Jewish Currents and author of The Crisis of Zionism, calls the idea that such individuals are anti-Semitic “absurd.”

Despite Zionism’s claim that Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews, few Jewish Americans ever shared that view. Now, the State of Israel, in the view of increasing numbers of American Jews, has become for many a replacement for God and the Jewish moral and ethical tradition, indeed, a form of idolatry, much like the Golden Calf in the Bible.

Israel claims to speak in the name of all Jews. This is, of course extraordinary, for any state to claim to speak in the name of millions of men and women who are citizens of other countries. Beyond this, its actions toward the indigenous population of Palestine violate essential Jewish moral and ethical values. Jewish Americans believe in equal rights for people of every race, religion and nation. However, in Israel, Jews are given preferential treatment to Palestinians. In the illegally occupied territories, Palestinians are clearly a colonized people. American Jews also believe in religious freedom. Israel has a state religion, ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Reform rabbis cannot perform weddings, conduct funerals or have their conversions recognized. This is not a government which in any way represents the values of the American Jewish community.

In recent days, the number of Jewish voices, in both Israel and the U.S., protesting Israel’s mistreatment of Palestine’s indigenous population, are growing. Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Amira Hass notes that, “Zionism was a Jewish mutation.” In her piece, “Will someone finally say Israel has lost it?” she says that the messianic side of Israeli society, nurtured by decades as a violent, expansionist tool by the secular founders of Israel, has now taken over. Hass calls on the world to act against “the Jewish mutation of Israel in which all of Israel’s Jewish citizens are complicit.”

Also writing in Haaretz, B. Michael declares that, “Zionism was a naive mistake… It’s time for Jews to go back into exile. We’re really terrible at being a nation. We very quickly become as stupid, violent, greedy as most of the other nations of the world and in a short time we brought destruction on ourselves…Seventy-five years of racism and violence have thoroughly corrupted the Israeli electorate…There’s no choice but to admit Zionism was a mistake and go into exile again and refresh our values.”

Michael Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum, a prominent American advocate for Israel, now concedes that Zionism may have “failed.” He points to the indifference in Israel to the killing of prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the police attack on her funeral because mourners flew the Palestinian flag as well as the Flag March through Jerusalem in which Jewish youths chanted “Death to Arabs.” He says that this “reminded even a hard-line Zionist of the onset of fascism in Europe.” In Koplow’s view, “If waving a flag threatens Israel’s existence, then not only is Israel in far bigger danger than anyone understands, but Zionism itself has failed… Honing in on flags says far more about Israeli predilections than it does about Palestinian ones.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, Alan Dershowitz, Larry Summers and others who use the term “anti-Semitism” to try to silence critics of Israel’s inhumane and un-Jewish treatment of Palestinians, are trivializing the term. If and when real anti-Semitism appears, intemperate and injudicious voices such as these will find it difficult to gain a hearing. Israel has been accused of being an “apartheid” state by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem—not because these groups are “anti-Semitic,” but because Israel has been acting toward Palestinians in an inhumane manner which violates Jewish moral and ethical standards. In the end, history will decide and there is little doubt what that decision will be. ■

Special Report From Death to Life: Forty Years After the Sabra Shatila Massacre

By Dr. Swee Chai Ang

AS WE APPROACH the 40th anniversary of the Sabra Shatila massacre, the situation in the West Bank and Gaza and for the Palestinians living in refugee camps in countries neighboring Israel could not be more dark and grim. The constant arrests, house demolitions and killing of unarmed Palestinians in the West Bank and the regular bombing of blockaded Gaza are rarely reported in the mainstream media anymore. Funding for Palestinian refugees is also in jeopardy. The Gulf’s normalization with Israel resulted in severe funding cuts to UNRWA. Fourteen U.S. Republican senators are also trying to erase Palestinian refugees by redefining who is a refugee and conditioning aid to UNRWA (S. 2479).

The six million refugees living outside historic Palestine (now called Israel) are all but forgotten. Many of us have allowed them to fade in our consciousness. Yet every Palestinian killed—be they the recent 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, killed by Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2021; or the 2,022 killed, including 526 children, in Operation Protective Edge in 2014; the 1,400 deaths, including 300 children, in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9; or in the Great March of Return cannot be forgotten.

These deaths wrench out the hearts of their family and those who love them, leaving large gaping wounds which have not healed. There is no healing as the violence against the Palestinians is ongoing. There is no post-traumatic stress syndrome; there is only ongoing traumatic onslaughts and wounding of their bodies and souls.

Every child born in Gaza after 2008 has experienced four major military assaults with intensive bombardment, deaths and injuries. Two million Palestinians are held under blockade in Gaza since 2007 converting Gaza into a large prison whose “inmates” are bombed and not allowed to escape. This year also marks the 74th anniversary of the Nakba—and the 105th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, drafted with The children of Shatila. I looked for them on every subsequent trip to Lebanon, support of U.S. Justice but never found them. I think they must have perished, but I will always re‐visit Louis Brandeis and two their picture for inspiration when the going is tough. Their beauty and courage other Americans who were as they confront destruction and death always live in me. part of the then-nascent Zionist movement. Britain was on its ascent in colonial power, thus paving the way for the giving away of the homes of the Palestinians and wiping Palestine off the world map. SABRA AND SHATILA MASSACRE This year marks the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra Shatila massacre in 1982. Many readers of this article were not born then. Some will want to bury these events; others simply to forget. But I want to remember the Palestinians who taught me profound lessons about justice and struggle. I will honor their memories and share them with you. Forty years ago, I arrived as a volunteer surgeon with the British Christian Aid team to war-torn Lebanon, ravaged by Israel’s invasion. I was posted to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and worked in its Gaza Hospital in Sabra Shatila. Until then, I had supported Israel and never knew Palestinians existed. That invasion killed thousands and destroyed homes, livelihoods, hospitals, libraries, factories, schools and offices. It also Dr. Swee Chai Ang is founder and patron of British Charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians” updated and republished 2019 by split 14,000 Palestinian families through the deportation of their beloved husbands and sons, euphemistically called the “evacuaThe Other Press, Kuala Lumpur. She was an orthopedic surgeon in tion of the PLO” in exchange for a ceasefire. The U.S. Habib Gaza Hospital Sabra Shatila during the 1982 massacre. Peace Plan guaranteed the protection of the non-PLO civilians

PHOTO COURTESY DR. SWEE CHAI ANG

left behind. But the evacuation only paved the way for the land invasion of Lebanon in September by hundreds of Israeli tanks. A contingent of tanks proceeded to seal all the escape routes from Sabra Shatila refugee camp so that the brutal and infamous Sabra Shatila massacre could be conducted over the days of Sept. 15-18, 1982. At least 3,000 unarmed and defenseless Palestinians and their Lebanese neighbors were murdered by Israel’s ally, the Lebanese Christian militia, trained and armed by Israel. No one came to defend the helpless children, women and old people from being slaughtered. Many were tortured and women raped before being killed in those three dark days.

When the photographs of the heaps of dead bodies in the camp alleys were published, there was worldwide outrage and condemnation. But international attention was short-lived. The victims’ families and survivors were soon left alone to plod on with their lives and to relive the memory of that double tragedy of the massacre, and the preceding ten weeks of intensive land, air and sea bombardment and blockade of Beirut during the invasion, with the forced deportation of 14,000 bread-winners and leaders of their Palestinian society. The survivors were left to rebuild their shattered lives and homes, bring up their children while burying the dead in mass graves. The world moved on and they were forgotten—dead to the consciousness of the international community.

Since then, the everyday downward spiral of hopelessness and despair, made worse by the sense of being forgotten and abandoned, worsens. They just do not excite the headlines of mainstream media anymore. As someone close to the Palestinians in Lebanon I would ask—where is solidarity and where is hope for them?

Yet, when I talk to Palestinians in Lebanon directly, they rarely complain about being forgotten. Their first concern is about occupied Palestine. They live for Palestine. They know that Lebanon will make sure they cannot settle and has progressively made it more and more difficult for them to live in dignity, in Lebanon. It is like a punishment for having been expelled from Palestine into a country that had enough of them, and therefore would want to get rid of them by making life unbearable and unlivable. Their only option is to go back to Palestine, but their enshrined right of return has never been honored.

Twelve official United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) refugee camps in Lebanon were established to host the initial 110,000 persons who fled to Lebanon—some of the 750,000 refugees from Palestine expelled to make way for Israel in 1948. Since then, four generations have lived and died in those refugee camps. Children were born refugees, grew up refugees and died refugees on those little plots of Lebanese soil which make the finite, rigid borders of the official camps. The same plots for the 110,000 refugees from 1948 now have to accommodate a population grown to half a million just by natural increase, together with the influx of Palestinian refugees from Syria. Simple arithmetic will conclude that the camps’ population density has increased fivefold!

Their situation is dire—no right to work, no right to own a home, hungry, despised, a typical refugee camp squashing 100,000 persons into 1.7 square kilometers (0.657 sq miles) to live, die and be buried. Their survival as dignified human beings is at stake and must be supported and safeguarded by all of us.

I remember vividly the morning of September 18, 1982, when Ellen Siegel and I, as part of our 22-member team of international medical volunteers, were forced out of Gaza Hospital at machine-gun point, leaving behind 30 critically wounded patients, many of them children. We had struggled for three days and nights to save the many dozens of wounded brought to Gaza hospital. We discharged those who could leave the night before as we got news that our hospital would be invaded anytime, but the critically wounded on life-support could not leave. I was desperate and thought they would be killed once we left them.

With guns pointing at us we walked along the main road of the camp. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of unarmed camp people—women, old men and children—were rounded up by militia. I remember the terror in their eyes. A desperate young mother passed me her baby—so warm and cuddly. At gunpoint she was forced to take him back. Both were killed, together with those rounded up after we were taken away. Homes were bulldozed by large military bulldozers.

Those who sought to annihilate Palestinians thought—surely this will put an end to them! We have solved the “Palestinian problem” in Lebanon, and they will never raise their heads again.

A couple of days later, I returned to visit Sabra and Shatila. There were mass graves, decaying bodies, broken homes and grieving relatives. There was despair, desolation, piercing screams and a vale of tears.

But it was not over. Among the children who made it, including many homeless orphans, the spirit of defiance was very much alive. As they lined up for me to take their photograph, they raised their hands in the victory sign saying, “We are not afraid. Let the Israelis come.” Behind them were their homes bombed and shelled to rubble, in the foreground decaying bodies yet to be identified. The air was filled with the stench of decaying human flesh. But between death and destruction were the destitute Palestinian children defiantly staking their right to be part of humanity. They were my first green shoots of life!

For Great Britain, our historical responsibility of helping to create the Palestinian tragedy during the British Palestine Mandate must be remembered and confronted. For the United States—hear the voice of the suffering Palestinians including the refugees in Lebanon crying out asking for justice and fairness! May we let their voices be heard and journey with them from death to life. ■

proved by his government in 2004 and finally adopted by the Knesset in February 2005.

The “disengagement” was an Israeli tactic that aimed at removing a few thousand illegal Jewish settlers out of Gaza—to other illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank—while redeploying the Israeli army from crowded Gaza population centers to the border areas. This was the actual start of the Gaza siege.

The above assertion was even clear to James Wolfensohn, who was appointed by the Quartet on the Middle East as the Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement. In 2010, he reached a similar conclusion: “Gaza had been effectively sealed off from the outside world since the Israeli disengagement...and the humanitarian and economic consequences for the Palestinian population were profound.”

The ultimate motive behind the “disengagement” was not Israel’s security, or even to starve Gazans as a form of collective punishment. The latter was one natural outcome of a much more sinister political plot, as communicated by Sharon’s own senior adviser at the time, Dov Weisglass. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in October 2004, Weisglass put it plainly: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.” How?

“When you freeze (the peace) process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem,” according to Weisglass. Not only was this Israel’s ultimate motive behind the disengagement and subsequent siege on Gaza but, according to the seasoned Israeli politician, it was all done “with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.” The president in question here is no other than U.S. president at the time, George W. Bush.

All of this had taken place before Palestine’s legislative elections, Hamas’ victory and the Hamas-Fatah clash. The latter merely served as a convenient justification to what had already been discussed, “ratified’’ and implemented.

For Israel, the siege has been a political ploy, which acquired additional meaning and value as time passed. In response to the accusation that Israel was starving Palestinians in Gaza, Weisglass was very quick to muster an answer: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

What was then understood as a facetious, albeit thoughtless statement, turned out to be actual Israeli policy, as indicated in a 2008 report, which was made available in 2012. Thanks to the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, the “redlines (for) food consumption in the Gaza Strip”—composed by the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories—was made public. It emerged that Israel was calculating the minimum number of calories necessary to keep Gaza’s population alive, a number that is “adjusted to culture and experience” in the Strip.

The rest is history. Gaza’s suffering is absolute. At least 98 percent of the Strip’s water is undrinkable. Hospitals lack essential supplies and life-saving medications. Movement in and out of the Strip is practically prohibited, with minor exceptions.

Still, Israel has failed miserably in achieving any of its objectives. Tel Aviv hoped that the “disengagement” would compel the international community to redefine the legal status of the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Despite Washington’s pressure, that never happened. Gaza remains part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories as defined in international law.

Even the September 2007 Israeli designation of Gaza as an “enemy entity” and a “hostile territory” changed little, except that it allowed the Israeli government to declare several devastating wars on the Strip, starting in 2008.

None of these wars have successfully served a long-term Israeli strategy. Instead, Gaza continues to fight back on a much larger scale than ever before, frustrating the calculation of Israeli leaders, as it became clear in their befuddled, disturbing language. During one of the deadliest Israeli wars on Gaza in July 2014, Israeli right-wing Knesset member, Ayelet Shaked, wrote on Facebook that the war was “not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority.” Instead, according to Shaked, who a year later became Israel’s Minister of Justice, “… is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people.”

In the final analysis, the governments of Sharon, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, Binyamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett failed to isolate Gaza from the greater Palestinian body, break the will of the Strip or ensure Israeli security at the expense of Palestinians.

Moreover, Israel has fallen victim to its own hubris. While prolonging the siege will achieve no short or long-term strategic value, lifting the siege, from Israel’s viewpoint, would be tantamount to an admission of defeat—and could empower Palestinians in the West Bank to emulate the Gaza model. This lack of certainty further accentuates the political crisis and lack of strategic vision that continued to define all Israeli governments for nearly two decades.

Inevitably, Israel’s political experiment in Gaza has backfired, and the only way out is for the Gaza siege to be completely lifted and, this time, for good.

If Palestinian refugees are removed from the list of political priorities concerning the future of a just peace in Palestine, neither justice nor peace can possibly be attained. ■

Some Wounds Never Heal

By Mohammed Omer

ON A WARM SUMMER MORNING, a young filmmaker in Gaza, Walaa Sada, 31, continues her long wait, after obtaining her family’s approval to travel alone to attend a media/film education course in the West Bank, just miles away. She has not received her exit permit from the Israeli military. She feels her life is suffocating because she cannot get a permit to travel for the hands-on training program. Without the exit permit she can only participate by computer, and she’ll miss the joy of meeting peers and other filmmakers.

According to the 2022 Human Rights Watch report, “Israeli authorities have instituted a formal ‘policy of separation’ between Gaza and the West Bank, despite international consensus that these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory form a ‘single territorial unit.’”

PHOTO BY ABED RAHIM KHATIB/NURPHOTO/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES A Palestinian man waits to cross into Egypt at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip on June 17, 2014. The Rafah border crossing is Gaza's main window to the world.

“We die a little more inside, waiting for our turn to travel,” she lamented, noting that literally there are people with severe medical cases who die waiting to be released for treatment because their permit never comes. “We die waiting for our turns to travel,” she repeated.

Besieged Gazan filmmakers rely on the mercy of a very few. Films elsewhere may get sponsorships, and filmmakers can travel to international film festivals. But Gazans trying to tell their stories are punished by an Israeli enforced media blackout.

The only good sign in Gaza is how active, energetic and lively the youth continue to be. They still prepare for opportunities to travel, achieve their dreams and return to better Palestine, despite Israel’s efforts to quash their hopes.

POWERLESSNESS AND BESIEGED

In May, Gazans marked yet another anniversary of another war. The Israeli bombardment in 2021 was just like 2008, 2012 and 2014. Assault after assault. Oppression and denial of fundamental rights, just for being Palestinians. This is all Palestinians have ever known from their occupying power.

People in Gaza wait and wait for miracles that never come. Help from the outside world, that rarely gets through. Empty promises to rebuild Gaza, as international donors seem to be giving up on the idea of rebuilding homes, businesses and infrastructure that are going to be destroyed again.

The ever-tightening closure policy for Gaza effectively prevents students, athletes, medical workers and artists from pursuing their hopes, freedom, identity and dreams.

“I received four business invitations to travel to the West Bank, to take part in food exhibitions. But all have been denied by Israel,” says 39-year-old Belal Bader-el-Din, who used to work in the coffee business and has wide connections with Italian companies that he has only met online.

“As a Palestinian, you are denied rights to work and education— you are denied an opportunity to grow as a human being,” Baderel-Din says. “They never tell you, ‘no,’” he adds. “They simply let the deadline pass, so your chance is gone. This is because we are Palestinians and live in Gaza. Our people have as much hope as [those living in] the old Warsaw Ghetto,” he says.

Restrictive policies at the Rafah border crossing, including unnecessary delays and mistreatment of travelers, have exacerbated the closure’s harm to human rights, says the Human Rights Watch report.

Egypt controls the Rafah crossing in the south, while the northern border is controlled by Israel. Eastern borders are blocked by tanks, security fences and the sea guarded by gunboats opening fire on anyone who gets too close. Even Gaza’s airspace is controlled by drones and Israeli aircraft.

Palestinian journalists, filmmakers and media crews have also had their share of unanswered requests to exit out of Gaza. The current tactics allow very few people to get out.

OLD AGONY, RENEWED PAIN

From May 10 to 21, 2021, Israeli airstrikes and shelling on the Gaza Strip killed 256 people, including 66 children. Around 2,000 Palestinians were injured during the bombing, including more than 600 children, some of whom sustained injuries resulting in longterm disabilities such as the loss of limbs or eyesight, according to the French international group, Médecins Sans Frontières.

“The trauma lives inside us,” observes Umm Abdullah, a schoolteacher whose 42 pupils all suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. “It is continuous stress disorder—we should rename it,” she asserts.

The same Médecins Sans Frontières report says that in Israel there were 13 deaths and 700 injuries as a result of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, which ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

Somehow, hope is still alive among her people, Umm Abdullah acknowledges, but not children who don’t know how to deal with their sadness and anger. In the past, UNRWA held summer schools for traumatized children—but now with funding cuts, this has become a luxury that can’t be attained.

During last year’s summer days, Gaza was bleeding. Palestinians had to put their injured and dead in cars, as ambulances could no longer reach them, and Israeli bombs were falling almost everywhere.

“I was in a car with four other victims. One of them was a neighbor’s child. She died on her father’s lap, next to me, on the way to the hospital,” says Ahmad, father of four children injured on the first day of the bombings. Ahmad was at home when his house was hit by Israel’s random bombings as his family was fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

A SEALED-OFF LAB

Gaza is home to more than 2 million people, and over 40 percent are children aged 14 or under. These children have lived their entire lives under Israel’s economic and military blockade. They have survived three major offensives by Israel and experience ongoing trauma.

For most in Gaza, another year, another anniversary was marked since the latest salvo of bombs. Residents continue to live under immediate threat. No one knows when the next heavy bombardment is going to start.

“It can happen now—any minute, and you can do nothing to prepare for it,” says Umm Abdullah. She must practice her art of comforting small, traumatized children in her classroom, all the while trying to maintain her own sanity and stability from constant Israeli threat.

“We are trapped…we live in a big open prison, guarded and sealed-off in a lab from the rest of the world who don’t seem to care, or know, because of media censorship. I am educated enough to see that weapons are being tested on us,” Umm Abdullah says. “One day I hope Washington, DC wakes up to its complicity in the pain caused by U.S.-made weapons used to crush our children, bones and spirit.” ■

The Seven Border Crossings of Gaza

By Maram Humaid

DESPITE ISRAEL’S disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it still fully controls entry and exit from Gaza by land, air and sea, as well as Gaza’s civil population registry, telecommunications networks, and many other aspects of daily life and infrastructure.

A crippling blockade began in June 2007, after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, with a series of restrictions on goods, fuel and other basic elements, as well as a tightening of travel into and out of the Gaza Strip.

The restrictions have led to Gaza being described as an “openair prison.” A 2011 United Nations report stated that the blockade was “collective punishment…in flagrant contravention of international human rights and international law,” and Israel has faced criticism from multiple countries and human rights organizations.

Now, whether you are a patient seeking medical treatment, a married couple trying to reunite, a student trying to study in the occupied West Bank or abroad, a businessman trying to import goods, or just a regular Gazan trying to leave for a trip, you need to use crossings, which can be closed at any time.

The Gaza Strip is surrounded by seven crossings that were designated for the movement of people and goods into and out of the Strip. Not all of them are still in use. After Israel imposed the blockade in 2007, all crossings were shut down except for the Rafah and Beit Hanoun crossings, which were designated for the movement of people, and the Karem Abu Salem crossing, which was designated for the transport of goods.

Israel argues that the restrictions and the closures of several of the crossings are necessary for security purposes, pointing to attacks that have previously taken place in or near crossings.

Israel controls Beit Hanoun (also known to Israelis as Erez) and Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom), while Egypt controls Rafah. This means that crossings can be closed at any time by the Israelis or the Egyptians, leaving Gazan Palestinians stranded.

THE RAFAH CROSSING:

The Rafah crossing is the only way to cross between Egypt and Gaza, and therefore serves as a vital link between Gaza and the rest of the Arab world, especially after Israeli forces destroyed Yasser Arafat International Airport, the only Palestinian-operated airport, in 2001.

Maram Humaid is a Palestinian journalist and storyteller from the Gaza Strip. She covers human stories, life under blockade, youths and break‐ing updates. This article, published in Al Jazeera on June 15, 2022, is reprinted with permission.

A bus carrying Palestinian Muslim pilgrims arrives at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt as they head to Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage, on June 21, 2022.

Restrictions at the crossing imposed by the Egyptian authorities are currently not as strict as they have been in the past, but limits on the number and type of people allowed to travel continue. This has forced many Palestinians in Gaza to pay expensive and unofficial “coordination fees” to the Egyptian side to be able to leave during the limited days the crossing is open.

Palestinian passengers also often complain about the behavior of Egyptian security personnel, and what they describe as frequently humiliating searches. These measures can prolong the trip between Rafah and Cairo airport by up to 72 hours in some cases.

The Rafah crossing does not allow Palestinians from the occupied West Bank to enter Gaza.

Additionally, Israel does not allow people to return to Gaza via the Beit Hanoun crossing if they have left via Rafah. This puts Palestinians in Gaza in a difficult situation—if they leave through Rafah and it then closes, they may not be able to re-enter

THE BEIT HANOUN CROSSING:

The Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing is located in the north of the Gaza Strip and is under full Israeli control. It is the only border crossing that allows Palestinians in Gaza to travel to the occupied West Bank without passing through Egypt or Jordan, and is controlled by the Israeli army.

It is notoriously difficult for Palestinians to enter and exit Gaza via Beit Hanoun—no one crosses the border without being granted permission by Israel and submitting to lengthy security checks.

Permits to cross are only given to limited categories of people, such as medical patients and their companions, trader-permit holders, and other exceptional humanitarian cases.

The permit processing times for Beit Hanoun are known to be extremely long. It has been known for people seeking medical treatment outside of Gaza to wait for up to 50 working days for a permit, regardless of when their medical appointment is.

It is also very common for Israeli authorities to not respond to permit applications, even when Palestinians in Gaza meet the travel permit criteria. Israeli rejections of permits are explained as being for security reasons, with no further explanation given.

THE KAREM ABU SALEM CROSSING:

Karem Abu Salem (known to Israelis as Kerem Shalom) crossing is located near the point where the borders between Egypt, Gaza and Israel meet, and operates occasionally as an alternative to the Rafah crossing. However, it is mainly used for the movement of trade between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

For more than a decade, the crossing has been Gaza’s main commercial crossing and the only one bordering Israel. It is also the only crossing where goods grown or produced in Gaza can be shipped

for sale outside the territory.

Karem Abu Salem was initially used for transporting humanitarian aid into Gaza for the territory’s two million residents.

However, from 2007, Israel banned the entrance of a long list of goods into Gaza, including the entry of items it defines as “dual-use.” This means items that can have a civilian purpose, but which, according to Israel, could also be used for military purposes.

ISRAEL CLOSED OTHER CROSSINGS

The Al-Muntar (known to Israelis as Karni) crossing is located in the northeastern end of Gaza, and was used for transferring goods between Gaza and Israel, and also for Israeli settlers to access settlements in Gaza before the 2005 Israeli disengagement. When Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Israel closed the crossing, and in 2011 it was permanently shut by Israel.

The al-Awdah (Sufa) crossing, located in eastern Rafah, was one of the smallest crossings in Gaza, and was formerly a transit point for construction materials. It was shut down by Israel in 2008. The al-Shujaiah crossing (also known as Nahal Ouz), was designated for the transportation of fuel, such as gas, benzene and industrial diesel fuel into Gaza via underground pipes. The crossing was closed by Israeli authorities in 2010. The al-Karara (Kissufim) crossing is located east of Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah. It was closed in 2005 after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, and is now mainly used for Israeli military action, as an entry point for tanks and military vehicles when military invasions of Gaza take place. ■

have to do with anything? Is that the most urgent thing a prime minister with only four months to go can do to signal a change in direction?

The media coddles Lapid; most media outlets will melt with satisfaction. It’s already started. Here he is, moving to a property used, until now, by security guards on Balfour Street, near the official residence. How exciting. The world will also melt with pleasure.

Finally, not Binyamin Netanyahu. But at the core, nothing will change. In Israel, one right-wing prime minister replaces another. One is labeled right-wing, the other a centrist, yet all of them are deep-right and ultranationalist. Will Lapid not worship the Israel Defense Forces and do its bidding? Was his first meeting in office not with the head of the Shin Bet, of all people? And above all, is P Lapid not a fervent, inveterate believer in Jewish supremacy, called Zionism, and in its result, called the Jewish state, which cannot be other than an apartheid state? Lapid is in favor of these. Oh yes, very much so. And so is his government.

An instructive example of the tiny-to-nonexistent differences between the government of the “evil” Netanyahu and the “good” Naftali Bennett, and certainly the Lapid government, was given the first weekend by Shimrit Meir, a one-time impressive political adviser to Bennett. In an interview with Nadav Eyal in Yedioth Ahronoth, she exposed the worrisome truth. The Bennett government had the same goals and modes of operation as its predecessor.

Meir, the “leftist” in Bennett’s bureau, recalled her and her prime minister’s achievements: how they managed to influence Washington so that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are not taken off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, only for the sake of foiling—yet again, foiling— the reaching of a nuclear accord with Iran; how the government deceived—yet again, deception—the U.S. to build thousands of homes in the settlements, then bragging about it; how they managed to put pressure on the U.S. so that it retracts its decision to reopen an American consulate in East Jerusalem. Preventing an accord with Iran, building settlements and not opening an American consulate for Palestinians as well—what could be more right-wing? Where is the difference, even a tiny one, between the aims of the Netanyahu government and the “successes” of the Bennett government?

If these are considered successes by the outgoing government, it would be better if it had failed, the worse the better. If these are also Lapid’s goals, and there is no reason to think otherwise, it would be best if he failed to achieve them as well. After all, this is a government that set out to deal with the little things, ostensibly, such as the “metro law” and it’s like declaring that it would stay away from big subjects like Iran and the settlements. This was a government that stood not just for anything but Netanyahu, but for a centrist approach, for change. We got neither.

I would really like to give Lapid some credit, to wish him well and all that jazz, and mostly, to feel that there is a chance for change. There isn’t any. ■

There’s No Hope for Change With Lapid

Continued from page 12

A oject ofr Alliances en’Middle East Childr

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Special Report The Grand Deception: Israel’s Theft of America’s Common Sense By Dr. M. Reza Behnam

FOR 74 YEARS, Israel has engineered, managed and marketed false narratives, images and vocabulary to win the ideological war in the United States. Israel has shaped a message that has made the unacceptable—its brutal occupation of Palestine and its people—acceptable to Western audiences.

The Zionist state was born and has survived by force and dupery. To manufacture legitimacy, the “only democracy in the Middle East,” as it describes itself, has constructed an ambitious state-run public relations industry.

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has relied on propaganda to maintain its hold on Palestine. Zionist tropes about an empty land, agrarian miracles in the desert and reclaiming an historic promised land have become firmly entrenched.

Those fraudulent claims include one from Israel’s fourth prime minister, Golda Meir (1969-1974), who infamously said, “It was not as if there was a people in Palestine and we came and threw

them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.” Such claims have cemented an indelible narrative in the minds of many Americans. Consequently, most have come to believe the myth that Israel is a progressive humane state; a small but brave nation defending itself against “foreign” violence and terrorism. The Israeli myth was, however, challenged in the marketplace of public opinion in 1982 and again in 2009. In 1982, Israel was shaken by the adverse reaction it received for its deadly attack on Lebanon and the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut (see p. 30). A year later, the Hasbara Project was born to push Josh Block, a former spokesperson for AIPAC who led The Israel Project from 2012 until its demise the Israeli agenda. in 2019, directed media coverage of Israel and attacks on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Hasbara (“explaining” in Hebrew) movement. established permanent structures in the United States and Israel to influence how the world, especially Americans, would think about Israel and the Middle East in the future. Israel now labels hasbara propaganda “public diplomacy.” Like the criticism received over its bombing of Lebanon, Israel came under fire in the aftermath of “Operation Cast Lead” in December 2008 and January 2009. During the military’s massive 22-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip, 1,398 Palestinians and 9 Israelis were killed. To counteract the criticism, a pro-Israel Washington-based group, The Israel Project (TIP), hired Frank Luntz, a Republican operative and political strategist, to conduct a study on how to fully integrate Israel’s narrative and views into the mainstream media. He reported his findings in a document, meant only for internal use, titled, “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary.” Luntz had previously collaborated with TIP to create a similar document in 2003. Although the 2009 study was leaked to and reported on in Newsweek magazine (July 9, 2009), there was no critical evaluation of it.

CREDIT: SCREENSHOT Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East.

The document’s significance cannot be emphasized enough. Language from the propaganda primer, with its scripted discourse for Israeli advocates, has seeped into the American psyche.

The power of rhetoric to manipulate and convince—the core of Luntz’s guidebook—is essential in understanding how a rogue nation like Israel has been able to escape justice so often and for so long.

The use of repetition, similitude and deception to advance Israel’s image are hallmarks of Luntz’s work. His “language dictionary” is a guide to how best to talk about the Zionist state. The talking points and doublespeak from the playbook can be heard repeatedly in the comments of U.S. and Israeli politicians, officials, academics and mainstream media.

The statement by TIP founder and president, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, in the preface is revealing. She writes: “On behalf of our board and team, we offer this guide to visionary leaders who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel. We want you to succeed in winning the hearts and minds of the public….May your words help bring peace and security to Israel and the Jewish people.”

Her statement raises the question of why a “democratic state” would require a media war to win over the public and why security for Israel—not for Palestinians—is the only consideration.

Also, a personal message from the author in the preface embodies the objective of the entire report. Luntz remarks, “And remember, it’s not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear.”

In the handbook, Luntz coaches Israeli supporters on how to tailor answers for different audiences, outlines what Americans want to hear, words and phrases that work and those that don’t; those to be used and those to be avoided. It provides guidance on how best to challenge statements from Palestinians and how to feign compassion for them.

To pacify the majority of Americans who want peace, he advises, in chapter eight, to always emphasize Israel’s desire for peace, even though the report makes clear the regime does not really want a two-state solution that would lead to peace.

Supporters are enjoined to sell the idea that the so-called “cycle of violence” between the two has been going on for thou-

sands of years, that both sides are equally at fault and that Palestine/Israel is beyond their understanding. In chapter 10, backers are urged to accentuate Israel’s need for security and its identification with America’s “global war on terrorism.” Americans, the study notes, will respond favorably if Israeli civilians are portrayed as the innocent victims of Palestinian terrorism. Luntz instructs Israeli advocates to paint Hamas and Hezbollah as irrational terrorist threats. He states that when Americans are told that Iran supports these groups they will be much more supportive of Israel. Therefore, when talking about them to repeatedly reference “Iran(Advertisement) backed.” Luntz stresses the importance of emphasizing positive themes like peace, mutual respect and empathy for the plight of Palestinians and their children. He writes, “It’s our job to ‘wear white hats in public’— to remind Americans that Israel is a team for whom they can feel good about cheering.” Among his “25 rules for effective communication,” number four is particularly duplicitous. To counter charges of Israeli brutality against Palestinians, Luntz recommends they say, “…there is one funPlaygrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds damental principle that all peofor our children. It is a minimal recognition of their right to childhood and creative expression. It is an act of love. ples from all parts of the globe will agree on: civilized people Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 non- do not target innocent women profit organization, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunteer organization (no paid staff) that raises money through- and children for death.” out the year to construct playgrounds and fund programs In reality, Israel violates this for children in Palestine. “fundamental principle” on a Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestin- daily basis. Deaths and inian olive oil is PfP’s principle source of juries of Palestinian women fundraising. This year, PfP launched and children at the hands of AIDA, a private label olive oil from Palestinian farmers. Please come by and Israel’s “civilized” occupation taste it at our table. forces abound. We hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry. According to Defense for For more information or to make a donation visit: Children International, Paleshttps://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 • Yardley, PA 19067 tine, from January 2000 to May 2022, a total of 2,211 Palestin-

ian children were killed as a result of Israeli military and squatter/colonizer presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The figure does not include children killed while involved in hostilities.

Another manifestation of “civilized” conduct by Israeli forces occurred in 20182019, during what has been called “The Great March of Return”—mass demonstrations by unarmed Palestinians at the Gaza-Israel border to protest the then 15year blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel. During one-year of peaceful protests, Israeli snipers shot 6,106 Palestinians, killing 189, including 41 children. In addition, 3,098 Palestinian civilians were injured by bullet fragments, rubber-coated metal bullets or hit by tear gas canisters.

A 2019 U.N. Commission of Inquiry report found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, even though they were clearly visible.

The mainstream media consistently avoids talking about the occupation and Israel’s apartheid practices. When it does, however, it conforms to the official lexicon of the Luntz playbook, the Israeli regime and of its supporters, like TIP.

Israel’s army of occupation, for example, is referred to as “defense” or “security forces.” Zionist squatters on Palestinian land are termed “settlers.” Zionist colonies are deemed “settlements” or “neighborhoods.” Palestinian Occupied Territory is called “disputed territory.”

One of the most widely accepted distortions is the idea that there is political and military symmetry between the two sides in what has been falsely labeled a “conflict.” Palestinians resisting colonization and oppression—which is the legitimate right of the colonized under the Geneva Conventions—are deceptively labeled “terrorists.”

Israel has successfully sold Americans on the myth of Israel as a “willing negotiator” and “peacemaker,” while Palestinians are portrayed as uncompromising extremists, who have rejected every “generous offer” of peace put forth by Israel.

Under the guise of negotiations and being a willing “partner for peace,” (Oslo Accords, 1993 and Camp David, 2000) Israel has methodically carried out its plan to colonize what remains of the 22 percent of Palestinians’ ancestral homeland.

The United States and Israel have assassinated anyone who dared stand in their way. All while suffering no consequences. Israel’s leaders know they are accountable to no one.

The targeted assassination of Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022, is a recent example of the failure to censure Israel. By its tepid response, Washington has sanctioned the cover-up by the Zionist regime.

Israel is finding it increasingly difficult to keep hidden its inveterate system of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. The hasbara industry, however, remains undaunted. TIP folded in 2019 after its funding dried up, but the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) continues its hasbara mission.

Israel knows that its narrative is apocryphal and that in its present form, the state is unlawful and unjust. Hence, in an attempt to make the apocryphal real and the fraudulent legal, Israel continues its ongoing information war to normalize the abnormal in Palestine. ■

American Educational Trust, which publishes the Washington Report, documented the deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children killed between 2000-2014 on our “Remember These Children” website (www.rememberthesechildren.org). The killing of mostly Palestinian children playing soccer, eating pizza, shopping for candy, going to or from school or merely looking out their window or playing in their front yard continued but our funding to tabulate the carnage ended.

PHOTO BY MOSAB SHAWER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

In the southern Hebron hills of the West Bank, Israeli forces remove a demonstrator on July 1, 2022, from the Khirbet al‐Markez in the Masafer Yatta area. Palestinian residents of the eight villages in the area have waged a 20‐year legal battle to prevent being evicted from what Israel claims is a restricted military area "Firing Zone 918,” that they call home.

this impasse, and to get involved in the movement for true justice and peace in Israel-Palestine,” he concluded. People can sign the Together Against Apartheid pledge on IJV’s website at <www.ijvcanada.org>.

PALESTINIAN FLAG RAISING ON NAKBA DAY IN WINNIPEG

As many drivers honked in support, the Palestinian flag was raised at Winnipeg City Hall on Main Street for the first time ever on Nakba Day 2022.

Posters emblazoned with Shireen Abu Akleh’s image could be found everywhere in the gathering of about 100 people. They observed a moment of silence for the Palestinian-American journalist murdered by the Israeli military in Jenin the previous week.

At the end of the May 15 ceremony, organizers raised the Palestinian flag on a makeshift pole front of the City Hall building, after being denied permission for an official hoisting, and sang the National Anthem of Palestine.

Palestinian activist and community organizer, Rana Abdulla, wearing the key to her family’s home in Palestine around her neck, shared her family’s Nakba story with the crowd. Abdulla said it is not an easy time for Palestinians anywhere, especially since the murder of Abu Akleh.

“We felt the rage and emotion, every Palestinian felt that,” Abdulla said, adding that they were not surprised because this is what Israel does to Palestinians.

She pointed out that Abu Akleh was important because she covered stories other news outlets did not. Abdulla spoke of the need to heal Palestinian trauma, which every Palestinian experiences, wherever they are.

She described the experience of her mother and daughter who were able to return to Palestine to visit the family home together. Abdulla’s mother was only a child when she had to flee. “They searched and all the street names had disappeared, everything was given Zionist leaders’ names,” she said. When Abdulla’s mother recognized her home, she was overcome with sadness. She approached the door, and it was clear someone had unsuccessfully tried to erase the original name of the home. Her mother asked the current occupant if they could see the inside of the house that her father built. “The man’s first words were that our family never lived here,” Abdulla said, her voice cracking.

She explained how the trauma of the Nakba is experienced through generations, “as if I lived it myself,” she said, commenting that the myth that Palestinians left their homeland voluntarily perpetuates their erasure. She called Abu Akleh a courageous journalist for pointing out such lies.

“The Nakba continues,” Abdulla said, adding that the occupation and colonization of Palestine is not unique. What is unique is that the occupiers are allowed to get away with it and the world is watching it happen.

Meanwhile Leah Gazan, the New Democratic Party Member of Parliament (NDP MP) for Winnipeg City Centre, offered condolences and solidarity with the Palestinian community on the murder of Abu Akleh and said she wanted to honor Abu Akleh’s contributions, leadership and her life as a woman, because it is women who are changing the world.

“Freedom of the press is foundational for any democracy,” she said, adding that interfering with that freedom is a bash on democracy.

She also referred to the recent Amnesty International report that states Israel is practicing apartheid. It is because of such news that she believes the Palestinian community and their allies are now finally beginning to be heard.

Gazan told the crowd she will continue to speak out publicly and tell the truth about what is happening in Palestine. “We must stand firmly in peace and convictions against all forms of apartheid, including the apartheid that is taking place in Palestine,” she concluded.

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Amir Bajehkian from the Farsi Dar B.C. program.

FIRST FARSI LANGUAGE PROGRAM IN B.C. ABOUT STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY

An organization that wants to share Farsi with a new generation of speakers is looking forward to having the language approved as an option in British Columbia’s regular school curriculum starting in September 2023.

The program was started by Farsi Dar B.C., and once approved by the Ministry of Education, it will be offered to all school districts in B.C., for students grades 5-12.

“We want it to be available to all students in B.C. Wherever there is an interest, we want these courses to be offered,” said Amir Bajehkian, the president of Farsi Dar B.C. Campaign, in a recent telephone interview with the Washington Report.

The program has already been piloted in the Coquitlam School District, which is part of the tri-cities area of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, and where Bajehkian estimates there are around 10,00015,000 Farsi speakers, including students in area schools.

Currently, he said, if parents want their children to learn Farsi, they must send them to private after-school classes and the students do not receive credit. Children often rely on their grandparents to teach them Farsi and Bajehkian thinks the language can become a visible and integral part of the education system—not just an afterthought.

The Farsi-speaking population is growing throughout British Columbia. Iranians and Afghans share the same language and both are playing a role in developing the Farsi curriculum for our campaign, Bajehkian explained. They are putting down roots and wanting to pass on their language and culture to their kids.

The organization is specifically focusing on courses for schools in North and West Vancouver and hopes to have Farsi class in at least one school in September 2023.

Bajehkian, who is Iranian Canadian, explained it is invaluable for young people to be able to speak their home language and share experiences with their elders. “There shouldn’t be a generation gap where one generation cannot understand the other one. The language is essential for mental wellbeing and being able to connect to their loved ones,” Bajehkian said, adding that seeing young people who cannot speak Farsi properly is heartbreaking for him.

He said after all the traumas the Iranian and Afghan communities have experienced, one of the few things left for people is their language—it is a source of pride and it brings the community together. ■

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Special Report Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb: A Century On

By John Gee

THE MOST WELL-KNOWN archaeological discovery of the 20th century was undoubtedly that of the tomb of Tutankhamun, king of Egypt from 1333-1323 BCE—or thereabouts. He was a minor ruler who was buried in a tomb that was not originally intended for him. His premature death—he was barely more than a youth—necessitated hasty improvisation, which also involved gathering burial goods that had been intended for others. His tomb had been entered twice

by robbers in ancient times, but they appear to have stolen just a few small portable items before the breakins were discovered and the tomb was re-sealed. Its burial by debris from the later tomb of Ramesses VI led to its existence being forgotten and remaining undisturbed until, 100 years ago in November, it was rediscovered. No other complete (or near-complete) Ancient Egyptian royal tomb has ever been discovered and the news of the find created much excitement internationally. The step-by-step opening of the rooms inside the tomb, leading up to the final revelation of the king’s remains at the heart of a nest of gilded shrines and coffins, was featured prominently in the newspapers and magazines of the time. Commentaries then and since have ranged from the more sensational of “treasure” and a curse upon whoever disturbed the tomb, to the more scholarly questions about the complexities of Tutankhamun’s relationship to his predecessors on the throne, his role in the return to religious orthodoxy after the end of the ascendancy of the Aten cult (which called for the worship of only one deity, embodied in the sun disc), and the cause of his early death. In Ancient Egypt, a name was considered to be an essential part of every individual and its survival was necessary to a person’s life after death. Tutankhamun’s name was deliberately left out of lists of kings of Egypt after he died, probably because of his association by birth with the Aten cult, and many of his monuments were usurped by successors. A close up view of the Viscera Coffin of Tutankhamun during the “Tutankhamun and Little was known of him at the beginning of the 20th the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art century other than that he had existed. The discovon June 15, 2005, in Los Angeles, CA. Tutankhamun possessed four miniature coffins fashioned of gold and inlaid with colored glass and semi‐precious stones, and each stood in a separate compartment in an alabaster chest. ery of his tomb has resulted in his being the most recognized name among all the kings of Egypt over its 5,000 years of recorded history. Leading the excavation was the British archaeologist Howard Carter, who documented the entire process of clearing the tomb and meticulously recording its contents. The first step of the stairs that led down to the tomb was actually found by Hussein Rassul, a waterboy working with the excavation team, who was clearing a space to set down his water jug. He immediately informed Carter. In the previous century, many archaeological finds were taken abroad by excavators and diplomats, sold to tourists or given away John Gee is a free‐lance journalist based in Singapore and the by Egypt’s rulers, resulting in the creation of impressive Egyptolog author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel. ical collections in museums such as New York’s Metropolitan, the

PHOTO BY ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

Howard Carter and associates opening the doors of King Tutankhamun’s burial shrine in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. (Screen print from a photo‐graph, 1923.)

PHOTO CREDIT BEN CURTIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Egypt’s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass (c) supervises the removal of the linen‐wrapped mummy of King Tutankhamun from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor, November 4, 2007. The pharaoh's mummy was moved from its sarcophagus in the tomb to a nearby climate‐controlled case where experts say it will be better preserved.

This photo, taken on Aug. 4, 2019, shows the 3,200‐year‐old pink‐granite colossal statue of King Ramses II at the entrance of the the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), which is set to be completed this year, in Giza on the southwestern outskirts of the capital Cairo.

British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris and numerous others (as well as the removal and raising of obelisks in New York, London and Paris). But by the early 20th century, Egypt was becoming more protective of its ancient heritage. Nationalists looked back to the distant Pharaonic as well as the Christian and Islamic past in affirming Egypt’s distinctive identity and entitlement to control its own destiny. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb took place following the Egyptian revolution of 1919 against British rule and the establishment of formal independence in February 1922. It is hardly surprising that the Egyptian government stipulated that the contents of the tomb revealed later that year were to remain in Egypt.

Some exhibitions and commemorative events will mark the centennial anniversary of the tomb’s discovery and there will no doubt be considerable media coverage. Egypt hopes to benefit from the publicity generated; its revenue from tourism plummeted during the COVID19 pandemic and it wants not merely to see visitors returning on the pre-pandemic scale, but to increase in numbers.

Facilities have been improved and access provided to more monuments, including passages beneath the first pyramid complex, that of Djoser, at Saqqara.

The contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb will be one of the major attractions at the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).

Some 5,000 objects from the tomb have already been conserved and transferred to GEM from their previous home in the Cairo Egyptian Museum, where only a relatively small fraction could be displayed in its limited space. GEM is located on the Giza plateau, to the west of Cairo. On completion, it will be the largest archaeological museum in the world. Originally scheduled to open in 2021, it is due, at the time of writing, to open in November 2022. ■