Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - June/July 2021 - Vol. XL No. 4 by American Educational Trust

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SPOTLIGHT ON “END U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAELI APARTHEID?” CONFERENCE

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TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982

Volume XL, No. 4

On Middle East Affairs

June/July 2021

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

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

14 17

Palestinians Unite to Resist Israel’s Occupation and Bombs—Five Views—Gary M. Burge, Ph.D., Ramzy Baroud, Mohammed Omer, Sara Roy, Gideon Levy

Palestinian Citizens of Israel in Danger—Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Pollard, Occupation and Ethnic Cleansing: Where Zionism Has Led—Allan C. Brownfeld

22 24 33

Israel Perpetuates Settler Colonialism—John Gee

Black and White on Palestine and Israel—Ian Williams

Is Religion Behind the Turmoil in the Middle East? —Rev. Alex Awad

SPECIAL REPORTS

Jewish National Fund of Canada Distances Itself From Parent Organization in Israel When Charitable Tax Status Threatened—Candice Bodnaruk

The Cease-Fire in Gaza Was an Opportunity for Egypt—Dr. Mohammad Salami

Another Turning Point in U.S.-Iranian Relations —Walter L. Hixson

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Continues to Draw Congressional Attention—Shirl McArthur

Turkey Trims Its Sails—Jonathan Gorvett

TALKS FROM THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE: END U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAELI APARTHEID?

37 41

44 48 52

Introduction to Israeli Apartheid—Susan Abulhawa

From an Israel-Centric to a Rights-Based Approach —Zaha Hassan The Israel Lobby: What Everyone Needs to Know —Walter L. Hixson

A Lawmaker Who Stood Up for Justice —Brian Baird

J Street and the Limitations of Liberal Zionism —Philip Weiss

Resisting Israel’s Lobby on Campus and in the Community—Robin D.G. Kelley

ON THE COVER: A young girl holds a painted sign of the Palestinian flag at one of the hundreds of protests around the world against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Demonstrators met at Courthouse Square in Dayton, Ohio on May 17, 2021 to rally and march against Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza and Israeli apartheid.

(PHOTO BY STEPHEN ZENNER/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKETVIA GETTY IMAGES)

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(A Supplement to the Washington report on Middle East affairs available by subscription at $15 per year. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-888-881-5861.)

Other Voices

Compiled by Janet McMahon

A Week and a Century Like No Other, Rami G. Khouri, english.alaraby.co.uk The Palestinian Body Is Whole Once Again, Mahmoud Muna, http://mondoweiss.net What if Israelis Attacked the Basilica of St. Peter on Easter? That’s How Muslims Feel About Assault on Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com

OV-1

OV-2

OV-4

Jerusalem Violence Puts Biden On Back Foot Regarding Human Rights in Foreign Policy, Paul R. Pillar, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-5 It’s Not American “Aid” to Israel. It’s Tribute., John V. Whitbeck, www.counterpunch.org OV-6 Why American Politicians Cannot Say the Words “Israeli Apartheid”, Mariam Barghouti, www.aljazeera.com

OV-7

NYT Coverage of Happy Boars of Haifa Is Just Another Way To Ignore Settlers’ Crimes, Alice Rothchild, http://mondoweiss.net

OV-8

Why Are Israeli Jews Amazed Arabs Enlisted to Help at Mount Meron?, Amira Hass, Haaretz

OV-10

Biden’s Drone Wars, Brian Terrell, www.commondreams.org

OV-11

John Bolton Should Stop Promoting Battles “Which He Is Not to Fight,” Dan McKnight, www.responsiblestatecraft.org

OV-12

Hawks Seek Revival With New Group, Jim Lobe, www.responsiblestatecraft.org

OV-13

Saudi Arabia’s Diplomatic Volte-face, Sajjad Safaei, Le Monde diplomatique

OV-14

Beirut Bakery Grows Own Wheat to Combat Rising Food Insecurity, Maghie Ghali, www.aljazeera.com

OV-15

DEPARTMENTS 5 Publishers’ Page 6 letters to the editor 58 WagiNg PeaCe:

Palestinians Discuss the Ongoing Nakba

62 diPloMatiC doiNgs:

Northern Cyprus President

Calls for Two Independent

States on Divided Island 64 Middle east books revieW

70 the World looks at the Middle east —CarTOONS

72 other PeoPle’s Mail

74 2021 aet Choir oF aNgels 23 iNdeX to

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American Educational Trust

The latest round of deadly violence began amid Israeli attempts to forcefully dispossess families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan. Amid a swelling movement to resist this latest chapter of the ongoing Nakba, Israeli forces raided alAqsa Mosque on one of the holiest days of Ramadan. Hamas responded by firing rockets. Only then did the international media take interest in what was happening on the ground. Once again, Palestinian resistance to Israeli settler colonialism was framed as a “conflict” between two sides, or as a “terrorist assault” from Gaza. The outbreak of the latest all-out war diverted attention from the ongoing injustice in Jerusalem. The world finally paid attention to the besieged people of Gaza, many of whom were made refugees in previous Israeli wars. Tragically, it seems only violence makes the world notice Palestinians (see pp. 8-13).

PHOTO COURTESY REP. RASHIDA TLAIB’S INSTAGRAM

Another Assault on Gaza

This spring Muftia Tlaib, Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s 92-year-old grandmother, enjoyed receiving a framed copy of herself on the cover of the October 2019 Washington Report. In 2019, Rep. Tlaib declined an Israeli offer to let her visit her grandmother on the condition that she promise not to engage in political activities. Muftia Tlaib lives in the West Bank village of Beit ur-al-Fauqa.

While there is much to fume over, there may also be reasons to hope. In an amazing scene, a group of politicians took to the House floor—amid an Israel-Gaza war—to condemn Israeli apartheid and demand conditions on U.S. aid to the country. Legislators launched initiatives in both the Senate and the House to halt the proposed sale of $735 million in new arms to Israel. The first Palestinian-American woman in Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), publically confronted President Joe Biden about his support for Israel on the tarmac of Detroit’s airport. The New York Times ran a front-page story on the dozens of innocent Palestinian children killed. Comedian John Oliver explained Israeli apartheid to his millions of devoted viewers. Hundreds of thousands of protesters filled streets across the globe to show solidarity with the Palestinian people. Amid the violence, the Palestinian people displayed historic unity. Palestinian citiJUNE/JULY 2021

Netanyahu Out?

As we go to press, reports are that right-wing settlement champion Naftali Bennett will serve as the next prime minister of Israel. His unlikely coalition includes the Israeli left and a Palestinian Islamist party. It’s hard to see how such a coalition will hold once their singular collective goal of ousting Binyamin Netanyahu is accomplished. In fact, there is good reason to believe that once the divisive figure of Netanyahu is out of the picture, the Israeli right, who control the majority of the Knesset, will quickly unify behind a dangerous new ultra-right-wing vision for Israel.

Reasons to Hope

A United Palestinian People

Publishers’ Page

zens of Israel rose en masse to protest their second-class citizenship, causing unsettled Israelis to respond with excessive violence (see p. 14). Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan also rose up in large numbers, with some even successfully breaching Israeli territory. From Gaza, to Jerusalem, to the West Bank, to post-’48 Israel, to the Diaspora, the Palestinian people rose up as one to demand their dignity and their rights. The world took notice. Our job is to keep the spotlight on the ongoing injustice.

Election Failure

Palestinian elections were scheduled to be held at the end of May, but were cancelled after it became apparent to President Mahmoud Abbas that he would not win. How powerful would it have been if the new Intifada culminated in elections on May 22? Instead, devoid of legitimate leadership, the Palestinian people are left to fend for themselves. Recent events have shown they are up to the task, although the need for a unified and representative government remains critical.

Conference on Israeli Apartheid

Major human rights organizations have declared apartheid is rampant both inside Israel and in the territories it occupies. The Washington Report and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) cosponsored a two-day web-based conference titled “End U.S. Support for Israeli Apartheid?” on April 17 and April 24, 2021, wrapping around the annual meeting of the Israel lobby group J Street. Distinguished speakers and listeners tuned in from around the world for a rare but necessary conversation to consider whether the U.S. should cut off aid to the apartheid state of Israel or make any such assistance conditional. In this issue, pp. 37-57, as well as upcoming issues, we edited and condensed for clarity some of these talks. For complete transcripts, including the lively Q&A, please visit <www.israelapartheidcon.org> or watch the proceedings on the Washington Report’s YouTube channel.

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Executive Editor: Managing Editor: Contributing Editor: Contributing Editor: Other Voices Editor: Middle East Books and More Director: Finance & Admin. Dir.: Art Director: Founding Publisher: Founding Exec. Editor: Board of Directors:

DELINDA C. HANLEY DALE SPRUSANSKY WALTER HIXSON JULIA PITNER JANET McMAHON NATHANIEL BAILEY CHARLES R. CARTER RALPH-UWE SCHERER ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016) RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013) HENRIETTA FANNER JANET McMAHON JANE KILLGORE

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (ISSN 87554917) is published 7 times a year, monthly except Jan./Feb., March/April, June/July and Aug./Sept. combined, at 1902 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-1707. Tel. (202) 9396050. Subscription prices (United States and possessions): one year, $29; two years, $55; three years, $75. For Canadian and Mexican subscriptions, $35 per year; for other foreign subscriptions, $70 per year. Periodicals, postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056. Published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a nonprofit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. AET’s Foreign Policy Committee has included former U.S. ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress, including the late Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright and Republican Sen. Charles Percy, both former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of AET’s Board of Directors and advisory committees receive no fees for their services. The new Board of Advisers includes: Anisa Mehdi, John Gareeb, Dr. Najat Khelil Arafat, William Lightfoot and Susan Abulhawa. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula, supported by nine successive U.S. presidents. In general, it supports Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, self-determination, and fair play. Material from the Washington Report may be reprinted without charge with attribution to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Bylined material must also be attributed to the author. This release does not apply to photographs, cartoons or reprints from other publications. Indexed by ProQuest, Gale, Ebsco Information Services, InfoTrac, LexisNexis, Public Affairs Information Service, Index to Jewish Periodicals, Ethnic News Watch, Periodica Islamica. CONTACT INFORMATION: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Editorial Office and Bookstore: 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Phone: (202) 939-6050 • (800) 368-5788 Fax: (202) 265-4574 E-mail: wrmea@wrmea.org bookstore@wrmea.org circulation@wrmea.org advertising@wrmea.org Web sites: http://www.wrmea.org http://www.middleeastbooks.com Subscriptions, sample copies and donations: P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809-1056 Phone: (888) 881-5861 • Fax: (714) 226-9733 Printed in the USA

LetterstotheEditor U.S. ASSISTS ISRAEL’S FLAGRANT ETHNIC CLEANSING

It is astounding that in the 21st century, a nation would evict one group of homeowners because they are of a particular religion and allow another religious group to take over their homes, chase out the occupants and then allow the other group to move right in. This is what Israel is doing to the nonJewish population of East Jerusalem in two different neighborhoods at this time. The purpose of this is to clear out as much of the Palestinian population so that Israel can change the demographics of the city. This is called ethnic cleansing. It has been a slow but insidious process for years in the territory that Israel has occupied since it conquered the West Bank in 1967. What Israel is doing is not only cruel, but a violation of international law. It has obligations under international law to protect the lives and the property of a conquered people. What Israel is doing is considered a crime against humanity. The U.S. government has been acquiescent in this crime by its silence, and by paying for Israel’s weapons to carry out these offenses. If the American government doesn’t care about Israel’s crimes, it should be concerned about its own collusion with violations of international law. Israel must be placed on immediate sanctions, and all funding to the Israeli regime must stop until it ceases and desists in its crimes. Richard Greve, via email

TELL CONGRESS: NO MORE AID FOR ISRAEL

The Israelis refer to the murdering of unarmed Palestinians (men, women and children alike) as “mowing the grass.” Clearly this term has horrible, genocidal connotations. Worst yet, this genocide is to a great extent funded with U.S. taxpayer funds. The U.S. has given Israel billions in taxpayer money in the last 40 years. We Americans, whether we like it or not, have blood on our hands be-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

cause of our financial sponsoring and extreme political support of the apartheid-based, genocidal nation of Israel. Wake up folks, contact your congressman and say “No more money to Israel.” William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA Recent large protests throughout the country (and the world) show that an increasing number of people are aware of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine. While a noticeable number of politicians in Washington have also begun to speak out against Israeli policies, many, including President Joe Biden, seem unwilling to stray from the decades-old proIsrael status quo. As we go to press, there are reports Israel is seeking an extra billion dollars from the U.S. to pay for its May assault on Gaza. See p. 72 for the ways you can contact elected officials and tell them what you think about U.S. assistance to Israel.

HAMAS’ ROCKETS VS. THE “GOLIATH” OF ISRAEL

What is worse, open hostility to an established state or preventing the founding of another? According to the mainstream media, Hamas’ hostility to Israel is a graver matter than Binyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to even consider the idea of “another” Palestinian state east of the Jordan River. Netanyahu and many senior Israelis consider Jordan a Palestinian state. A recent Associated Press article mentions how Hamas “seized power in 2007.” In fact, Hamas was democratically elected in 2006 after an electoral process that Canadian observers considered fair. Hamas’ attitude may be considered in light of Dov Weissglass’ 2004 remarks on Palestinian sovereignty. Weissglass, an adviser to the late Ariel Sharon during Israel’s 2005 exit from Gaza, noted, “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process…And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.” JUNE/JULY 2021

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Recent Palestinian rocket atI was amused by the quote KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS tacks on Israel have been anfrom the U.S. State Department COMING! swered by air strikes on Gaza. in 1984, saying that Iran atSend your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 If overwhelming military force tempting to eliminate the legitior e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. were capable of breaking the colmate government of Iraq was inlective Palestinian spirit, it would consistent with accepted norms. A GREAT “INTERVIEW” WITH have happened already. What we see What the U.S. has demonstrated over FATHER ABRAHAM instead is a development mentioned by and over in the region is that overMany congratulations on Rev. Alex German Rabbi Moritz Gudemann in throwing the legitimate government of a Awad’s Father Abraham “interview” in 1895. In his anti-Zionist tome, National nation always brings disaster both to the May issue—it was brilliant and inJudaism, Gudemann feared a future the U.S. and the nation it targets. spired. Such a creative and original forwhere, “Judaism with cannons and I hope Iran continues to demand that mat is so appealing. bayonets would reverse the roles of the U.S. end all sanctions as a condition This is exactly the kind of new, unique, David and Goliath to constitute a ridicuof re-entering the JCPOA, and, as fresh and captivating format that will aplous contradiction of itself.” Behnam suggests, demand a guaranpeal to the everyday Americans who often Nostradamus could not have made a tee that the next regime in Washington, know so little about Arabs and their more accurate prediction of the massive DC will not do what the last one did. Of human story, and are not reached through power imbalance between Palestinian course, the U.S. has never been faithful scholastic forums and presentations. society and the combined might of Israel to its treaty obligations. Perhaps Tehran I will share it as widely as I can in my and the United States. can find a way to trust, but verify. own sphere of influence. Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, ON Charles Dunaway, via email ■ Daisy Pratt, via email We think you will also enjoy PRAISE FOR THE ISRAEL Rev. Awad’s honest but ultiAPARTHEID CONFERENCE mately hopeful article on the The “End U.S. Support for Israeli role of religion in the IsraelApartheid” conference was fantastic. I Palestine “conflict” in this issue. couldn’t resist listening to Robin D.G. Rev. Awad also gave a masterKelley, whom I’d been in touch with years ful course on how to counter ago on Israeli training of the police, and Christian Zionism at our April before that to bust up Barbra Streisand’s conference. Be sure to check Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fundraiser out the video! that for a few minutes Stevie Wonder’s A REFRESHING TAKE ON people had agreed to! It was great to “see IRAN and hear” Janet McMahon and learn that Your recent article by Dr. M. Kelley’s book on Grace Halsell is still in Reza Behnam, “U.S.-Iran Relathe works. Her writing for the Washington tions: Crafting a New Beginning” Report makes her feel like extended was considerably more insightfamily. ful than most attempts to adLynn Zorn, via email dress this topic. Behnam begins by stating that Iran has never Deep gratitude for a phenomenally edwanted to build a bomb and has ucative annual conference. The social OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page supplenever posed a threat to the justice activist in me is refuelled and ment available only to subscribers of the WashingU.S., in spite of the propaganda reinvigorated. Man! Thomas Suárez’s ton Report on Middle East Affairs. For an additional campaign by the U.S. and Ispresentation on various definitions of $15 per year (see postcard insert for Washington rael. That is where the U.S. foranti-Semitism was powerfully well forReport subscription rates), subscribers will receive eign policy team should begin. mulated! Other Voices inside each issue of their Washington When we understand that Iran Felix Almeida, Toronto, ON Report on Middle East Affairs. is unique in the Middle East, beIf you missed the two-day April conferBack issues of both publications are available. cause of its 7,000 year history, its ence we co-hosted with the Institute for avoidance of colonial conquest, Research: Middle Eastern Policy To subscribe telephone 1 (888) 881-5861, fax and its successful democratic rev(IRmep), we encourage you to watch (714) 226-9733, e-mail circulation@wrmea. org>, olution, we can understand why complete speaker videos online at: or write to P.O. Box 91056, Long Beach, CA 90809the U.S. efforts to overthrow the <israelapartheidcon.org>. Selected 1056. Islamic Republic have failed for edited transcripts also appear in this 42 years. It’s time for a change. issue. JUNE/JULY 2021

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Five Views

People march in solidarity with the people of Palestine, to protest Israel’s attempt at ethnic cleansing, on the anniversary of the nakba, on May 15, 2021 in Rome, Italy.

This One Is On Israel By Gary M. Burge, Ph.D.

WHENEVER YOU WONDER what’s happening in the current round of conflicts, it depends on where you start the clock. The least helpful are the television media, who reduce this story to a minute or so and simply count how many rockets and missiles are exchanged between Israel and Gaza. They may tell you how Israel’s Iron Dome Defense System intercepts and destroys over 90 percent of the Gaza rockets. Then, this is followed by interviews with grieving families on both sides. Numerical facts and emotional appeal with little or no insight. The problem is that while many think this conflict is complex and incomprehensible to the average person, it really is not. But

Gary M. Burge, Ph.D., is a professor at Calvin Theological Seminary and the author of the widely read Whose land? Whose promise? What Christians are not Being told about israel and the palestinians and his theological treatment in Jesus and the land: the new testament Challenge to holy land theology. His website is https://www.garyburge.org. 8

you do have to manage a couple of basic ideas. For instance, there are two types of Palestinians: First, there are Palestinians living within Israel with full Israeli citizenship. They make up about 20 percent of the Israeli population. Second, there are Palestinians who have been living under Israeli military occupation since 1967. They live in Gaza and the West Bank. Since Israel controls everything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, it is fair to use a comprehensive population count—roughly 7 million Israeli Jews, 1.8 million Israeli Palestinians, and 4.5 million Palestinians under military occupation without citizenship freedoms. Do the math. About 55 percent of this country is Jewish and about 45 percent is Palestinian. We could start the clock when Israel began in 1948. Immediately, Israel set to work depopulating large areas of Palestinians, removing 700,000 people from their homes, making them lifelong refugees and bulldozing hundreds of their villages. Or we could start the clock in 1967, when Israel conquered the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, capturing millions of Palestinians (as well as the Golan Heights and Sinai). At once, two things were set in motion. First, Israel initiated a severe

Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs

June/July 2021

PHOTO BY SIMONA GRANATI - CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Palestinians Unite to Resist Israel’s Occupation and Bombs

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military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that has gone on for 55 years. The human rights abuses in these areas are legendary. Second, Israel consolidated its Jewish cultural and legal dominance over Palestinians within Israel. This too is legendary and today some compare this effort to the Jim Crow laws of early 20th century America. These two oppressive decisions, one military, one based on civil law, has led to two Palestinian populations that have deep grievances. It has also led to two major uprisings (1987, 2000). Israel’s creeping de-facto annexation of the West Bank by illegal settlements and its overt talk about formally assimilating this land now have inspired many leading organizations to officially call Israel a colonial enterprise or an apartheid state. Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, have both now said that Israel has crossed the line. “Apartheid” is now in open discussion in the New Yorker and The Hill but fiercely denied by Israel. However, there is a shift in the wind and Israel knows it. I prefer to start the clock at 2018. In July of that year, Israel’s parliament passed (by close vote) the Basic Law known popularly as the nation-state law. This makes explicit what we have seen all along, that Israel is a country based on race, devoted to Jewish privilege and legally able to discriminate against Palestinian self-determination. It drew enormous international criticism, but it also explains why someone like Binyamin Netanyahu can declare he has no real interest in Palestinian rights. Simply, Palestinians are secondary. Amnesty International calls it “institutionalized discrimination.” Arab/Jewish legal organizations in Israel such as Adalah now list over 65 laws that are breathtakingly discriminatory on their face. Since 2018, Israel has accelerated this overt discrimination within its borders. From destroying Palestinians’ homes (which fail to obtain building permits because they are near-impossible for non-Jews to get) to encouraging illegal settlements on Palestinian land—all activities soundly criticized around the world—this country has become a cauldron of anger. The recent COVID-19 response has been typical in that Israel boasted about its speedy vaccination of its own people but failed to mention that 4.5 million Palestinians were left out of that success story. When the explosives are ready to go, it only takes someone to light the match. Patrick Kingsley at the New York Times would start the clock and the match-strike that started everything on April 13, 2021. This was the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In Jerusalem, the al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam and on this night, its towers (minarets) call people to prayer and fasting. This is the mysterious and haunting call that fills Jerusalem daily. But on this night, Israel’s president wanted to make a speech nearby and didn’t want interruptions. Israel sent soldiers into the al-Aqsa Mosque (desecrating it) and they cut the wires to the sound system. At first, the military denied this—but a score of eyewitnesses forced the government to concede. The army then closed off the Damascus Gate plaza, which on this night is a site for Muslim families to gather and walk to al-Aqsa. Think about it. JUNE/JULY 2021

An army raid on al-Aqsa led to closures for Palestinian movement on a most holy religious night. But there is more. In the last few months, Israel has moved ahead with its plan to depopulate the region east of Jerusalem. A Palestinian village on the Mount of Olives, Silwan, is under constant threat. And a neighborhood not far away, Sheikh Jarrah on Mt. Scopus, is facing eviction orders for 13 families. By law, if a Jewish settler says that land was once Jewish before 1948, they can make a claim. By contrast, if a Palestinian says that land was Arab before 1948, the claim gets no traction. Everyone in Israel knows this. This is what happens when a country defines itself by religion and ethnicity. And in the confluence of events this month, May 9 was “Jerusalem Day,” recognizing Israel’s conquest of all Jerusalem in 1967. Thousands of Israeli zealots stream through the walled old city’s Muslim quarter shouting “death to Arabs,” and pounding on the doors of Arab homes. It is frightening. This year, the police worried about a riot and forced them to reroute around the quarter, but the fear remained. Suddenly street clashes increased, arrests and shootings accelerated, and Gaza, living under occupation and a merciless blockade for years, sent in rockets after demanding that Israeli security forces leave the al-Aqsa Mosque. The match had been struck. The exchanges are producing predictable results: for every Israeli Jew who dies, about 20 Palestinians are killed. The New York Times is now doing a first-rate job tracking the casualty numbers. But this time things are different. Israel’s domestic Palestinian citizenry and Palestinians in the global diaspora are protesting in concert with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. And news outlets and human rights groups are publicly saying things rarely heard before—the cost of building a state based on a religious ideology has led to enormous human rights violations. The forbidden “A-Word” (apartheid) is now spoken openly. As Ami Ayalon, the former director of Israeli intelligence has said, “We have to wake up. We have to change the way we understand all this, starting with the concept that the status quo is stable.” Israel’s greatest existential threat may actually not be Iran or even Gaza, it may be the sustained system of structural discrimination and oppression that is now going public.

Unity at Last: The Palestinian People Have Risen By Ramzy Baroud

FROM THE OUTSET, some clarification regarding the language used to depict the ongoing violence in occupied Palestine, and also throughout Israel. This is not a “conflict.” Neither is it a “dispute” nor “sectarian violence” nor even a war in the traditional sense. It is not a conflict, because Israel is an occupying power and the Palestinian people are an occupied nation. It is not a dispute, because freedom, justice and human rights cannot be treated as a mere political disagreement. The Palestinian people’s inalien-

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participation in any form of democratic representation, who are constantly marginalized and oppressed by their own leadership and by the relentless Israeli military occupation. They were born into a world of exile, destitution and apartheid, led to believe that they are inferior, of a lesser race. Their right to self-determination and every other right were postponed indefinitely. They grew up helplessly watching their homes being demolished, their land being robbed and their parents being humiliated. Finally, they are rising. Without prior coordination and with no political manifesto, this new Palestinian generation is now making its voice heard, sending an unmistakable, resounding message to Israel and its right-wing chauvinistic society, that the Palestinian people are not passive victims; that the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah and the rest of occupied East Jerusalem, the protracted siege on Gaza, the ongoing military occupation, the construction of illegal Jewish settlements, the racism and the apartheid, will no longer go unnoticed; though tired, poor, dispossessed, besieged and abandoned, Palestinians will continue to safeguard their own Palestinian Israelis protest Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and its air attacks on the Gaza rights, their sacred places and the Strip, in Jaffa, near the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv, on May 18, 2021. very sanctity of their own people. Yes, the ongoing violence was instigated by Israeli provocations in the show of unity. Jerusalem al-Quds, to Gaza, to the West Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East The Palestinian people have decided Bank and, even more critically, to the Jerusalem. However, the story was never to move past all the political divisions and Palestinian communities, towns and vilabout the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarthe factional squabbles. Instead, they are lages inside historic Palestine—today’s rah alone. The beleaguered neighborcoining new terminologies, centered on Israel. hood is but a microcosm of the larger resistance, liberation and international This unity matters the most and is far Palestinian struggle. solidarity. Consequently, they are chalNetanyahu may have hoped to use lenging factionalism, along with any atRamzy Baroud is a journalist and editor of Sheikh Jarrah as a way of mobilizing his tempt at making Israeli occupation and The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author right-wing constituency around him, inapartheid normal. Equally important, a of five books. His latest is These Chains tending to form an emergency governstrong Palestinian voice is now piercing Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons ment or increasing his chances of winthrough the international silence, com(Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a non-resident ning yet a fifth election. His rash behavior, pelling the world to hear a single chant for senior research fellow at the Center for initially compelled by entirely selfish reafreedom. Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at sons, has ignited a popular rebellion The leaders of this new movement are the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His among Palestinians, exposing Israel for Palestinian youth who have been denied website is www.ramzybaroud.net. more consequential than some agreement between Palestinian factions. It eclipses Fatah and Hamas and all the rest, because without a united people there can be no meaningful resistance, no vision for liberation, no struggle for justice to be won. Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could never have anticipated that a routine act of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem’s neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah could lead to a Palestinian uprising, uniting all sectors of Palestinian society in an unprecedented

PHOTO BY AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

able rights are enshrined in international and humanitarian law and the illegality of Israeli violations of human rights in Palestine is recognized by the United Nations itself. If it is a war, then it is a unilateral Israeli war, which is met with humble, but real and determined Palestinian resistance. Actually, it is a Palestinian uprising, an Intifada unprecedented in the history of the Palestinian struggle, both in its nature and outreach. For the first time in many years, we see the Palestinian people united, from

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the violent, racist and apartheid state that it is and always has been. Palestinian unity and popular resistance have proven successful in other ways, too. Never before have we seen this groundswell of support for Palestinian freedom, not only from millions of ordinary individuals across the globe, but also from celebrities—movie stars, footballers, mainstream intellectuals and political activists, even models and social media influencers. The hashtags #SaveSheikhJarrah and #FreePalestine, among numerous others, are now interlinked and have been trending on all social media platforms for weeks. Israel’s constant attempts at presenting itself as a perpetual victim of some imaginary horde of Arabs and Muslims are no longer paying dividends. The world can finally see, read and hear of Palestine’s tragic reality and the need to bring this tragedy to an immediate end. None of this would be possible were it not for the fact that all Palestinians have legitimate reasons and are speaking in unison. In their spontaneous reaction and genuine, communal solidarity, all Palestinians are united from Sheikh Jarrah and all of Jerusalem, to Gaza, Nablus, Ramallah, Al-Bireh and even Palestinian towns inside Israel—Al-Lud, Umm AlFahm, Kufr Qana and elsewhere. In Palestine’s new popular revolution, factions, geography and any political division are irrelevant. Religion is not a source of divisiveness but of spiritual and national unity. The Israeli atrocities in Gaza are continuing, with a mounting death toll. This devastation will continue for as long as the world treats the devastating siege of the impoverished, tiny Strip as if it is irrelevant. People in Gaza were dying long before the Israeli airstrikes began blowing up their homes and neighborhoods. They were dying from the lack of medicine, polluted water, the lack of electricity and the dilapidated infrastructure. We must save Sheikh Jarrah, but we must also save Gaza. And we must demand an end to the Israeli military occuJUNE/JULY 2021

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An Israeli missile pummeled through Samir Mansour’s bookstore and publishing house in Gaza City on May 18, 2021, destroying the largest collection of English literature in Gaza, as well as the place to go to find Arabic translations of international classics, as well as Mansour’s life's work. pation of Palestine and, with it, the system of racial discrimination and apartheid. International human rights groups are now precise and decisive in their depiction of this racist regime, with Human Rights Watch and Israel’s own rights group, B’Tselem, joining the call for the dismantlement of apartheid in all of Palestine. Speak up. Speak out. The Palestinians have risen. It is time to rally behind them.

The World Lets Israel Commit Another Mass Murder By Mohammed Omer

THE MAY 21 CEASEFIRE in Gaza is holding, after 11 days of Israeli attacks, and a Palestinian death toll of more than 242, including 67 children in Gaza and Jerusalem, with more than 6,300 wounded by Israeli security forces during protests or bombing, according to the U.N. Recovery of bodies is ongoing. Hamas rockets killed 12 in Israel, including two children. But this tally does not even begin to touch the scope of loss and suffering.

May was supposed to be a joyous time, the final days of Ramadan, but instead there was an overwhelming sense of human suffering and unbearable loss. Residential buildings were flattened— men, women and children underneath— the attacks were too many and there was nowhere to escape. Entire families were destroyed from the air by the Israeli occupation forces. Victims of an ancient land are gradually being erased from history by the same people who said, “Never Again” just 74 years ago. Generation after generation of Palestinian children know the smell of death, of war, just as their parents and grandparents before them—throughout the last 20, 40, 60 or 80 years of Israeli occupation and of a shrinking Palestine over the past 100 years. During the last war, U.N. figures say that 142 Palestinian families were erased (742 people in total) from Gaza. Yet, the guns continue to fire, flames spread, buildings collapse and bombs fall. Palestinians, of all ages, know too well the effects of the American-made tear gas and the results of the Americanmade F-16s and the American-made missiles they launch.

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THE NORTH ATTACKED AGAIN

It was supposed to be a celebratory time to welcome in the Eid, as families prepared new clothes and presents, and homes filled with the scent of food cooking for gatherings of family and friends. Reema Saad, pregnant with her third child, was busy preparing for the celebration with her two children and husband as the end of the month of Ramadan was coming and the three-day holiday of Eid el Fitr was to begin. She had posted a message on social media earlier in the day, saying, “Every one of us is beautiful in some way.” But before the Eid arrived, she, her children and husband were dead, killed in the most heinous way, like so many other innocents. In the northern Gaza Strip in Beit Hanoun, close to the border with Israel, three small children—Rahaf, Yazan and Rawan from the Al Masri family—are all dead. In Gaza’s main hospital, 22-year-old Mohammed Al Masri was unconscious and drenched with blood when he arrived. He didn’t have time to break his fast before an airstrike hit his neighborhood. When he regained consciousness, he learned that seven of his family members, including the three children, were killed by an Israeli bomb. Twenty people, including 9 children were killed that day, May 10, in Beit Hanoun. As Amira Hass wrote, on May 19 in a piece published in Haaretz entitled, “Gaza Lives Erased: Israel Is Wiping Out Entire Palestinian Families on Purpose,” in the first 10 days of the war, 15 families were eliminated. “Parents and children, babies, grandparents, siblings and nephews and nieces died together when Israel bombed their homes, which collapsed over them. Insofar as is known, no advance warning was given so that they could evacuate the targeted houses.”

SCENT AND MISSILES

Images of dying children hit Gaza deeply as children slept under beds, covering their eyes and ears from the noise of Is-

Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports regularly on the Gaza Strip. 12

raeli bombs falling around them, praying that the next missile would miss them. Gaza has no air-raid shelters or “Iron Dome” defense systems—only beds, tables and chairs to hide under for protection from advanced Israeli weapons. The besieged people were again bearing the brunt of an Israeli onslaught. Meanwhile, warning sirens echoed around Israel due to less sophisticated rockets fired from Gaza, mostly intercepted by Israel’s advanced defense systems. Assaults escalated, starting with Israeli police beating up people after Jewish extremists called for “Death to the Arabs” in the streets of East Jerusalem, during the most holy month of the Muslim calendar. At the same time, the Israeli government was also kicking Palestinians out of their homes and off their lands. Over 900 Palestinians were wounded after dozens of Israeli security forces stormed into the al-Aqsa Mosque. This angered Gazans, who protested the actions in Jerusalem and Israel’s military response to quash them. Hamas warned Israel to remove its security forces from the al-Aqsa Mosque compound or it would begin firing its home-made rockets into Israel. Continuing clashes led to an escalation of violence inside Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank and ultimately in Gaza.

HORROR UNFOLDS IN GAZA

Once again, local and international media were targeted. The nightly reports by journalists, whose job it is to document and inform the world of the carnage, made them a target and some paid with their lives. In 2014, an Al Arabiya crew was filming live in their studio when the building was struck by a missile. This time, Israeli airstrikes bombed the media center located in Al Shorouq Towers in Rimal, a once vibrant neighborhood, filled with shops and cafes. The building was home to local and international journalists, the AP wire and TV broadcasting studios, including the BBC and Al Jazeera, among others. This time, they were only given 15 minutes to clear staff, equipment and studios before the building was razed to the ground.

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The disproportionate force by Israel is always so apparent to any country surrounding Israel and Palestine, or others further afield. But no one in the West comments on the unfairness when Israel again uses some of the most powerful weapons in the world, including its own defense systems, against a besieged population. Heavy-handed airstrikes do not discriminate between men, women and children in their beds or on playgrounds or the elderly in their homes. Rescue teams continue to dig out bodies, including small children and women. Unlike previous assaults, Gazans retained their strong morale despite the heavy bombardment that seemed to target only civilians. It gets harder to flee anywhere when tens of thousands of people are trying to find shelter in the 16 U.N. schools in Gaza that have been repaired since the last war on Gaza. At the end of the day, 50 schools in Gaza were damaged in the airstrikes, impacting 41,897 children, according to Save the Children. Yet, the game of killing and weeping goes on. The reasons, rationale and reactions seem to be the same. Perhaps, there are not enough blue eyes amongst the victims to make the West wake up, listen and care. When will the West demand a halt to the strangulation and bombardment of Gaza’s newest generation, born inside a home that is occupied, and continues to be traumatized and terrorized by land, sea and air? The Palestinians are accused of wanting to eliminate Israel when in fact it is the Palestinians who are being pushed from the river to the sea.

A Letter to Biden on Gaza By Sara Roy DEAR PRESIDENT BIDEN, I am writing to you about Gaza, a place that I have studied and written about for the last 35 years, a place that I consider another home, filled with the kindest and most generous people you will ever meet—have you ever been there? But I JUNE/JULY 2021

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less to do so. And I can assure you, knowing her and learning from her as I did throughout my life, she would have done the same for any child under threat, Jewish or Christian or Muslim. She would have been horrified by the senseless killing of children in this terrible conflict, both Palestinian and Israeli, and she would have railed at the injustice of it all. And this is my last question for you: Why haven’t you done the same?

See Their Children Laid Out, Dare to Talk About Israeli Responsibility By Gideon Levy

The front page of Haaretz on May 27, 2021. The following day, The New York Times also published a front-page collage of the children killed in Gaza, titling it, “They were just children.”

am writing not only as a scholar of the region but as a Jew and one whose parents survived Auschwitz. I have a question for you, Mr. President: When is the death of a child acceptable? Or perhaps I should ask the question this way: When does the death of a Palestinian child become unacceptable? You have experienced the unspeakable loss of your own children so you are better placed than most to answer my questions. Last week after 87 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and over 500 wounded you stated that you had not seen a “significant overreaction” on Israel’s part to Hamas’ rocket attacks. Among the dead at that time were 18 children. I did not know any of them but I know people who do. Would you please help me explain to my friends why the death of these 18 children does not constitute an overreaction? This brings up another question I have for you, Mr. President: How many children must die in Gaza before you would consider Israel’s response excessive particularly since you have made human rights the

Dr. Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. This article was printed in CounterPunch on May 21, 2021. JUNE/JULY 2021

center of your foreign policy? I need to know so that I can explain it to my friends. As I write this, over 60 Palestinian children have been killed by the government of Israel. Is that enough to qualify? I know people inside our government who work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I need to tell you something I heard from one of them about the death of Gaza’s children. This individual implied that some of the dead were likely the children of Hamas officials so their deaths don’t really matter, that is, their deaths are acceptable. Is this the answer to my first question? Should this be the way I explain it to my friends? Please help me out here. It is tragic that after more than three decades of research and writing, I still find it necessary to argue for the humanity of Palestinians, even to you. One more thing before I end this letter if you’ll indulge me. It is about my mom. When she was imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto during the Holocaust, she risked her life hiding children who were chosen for deportation to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. The Nazis eventually found the children and sent them to their deaths. But my mom tried to save them even though she knew she was power-

ON MAY 27, I felt great pride in being a Haaretz reader—and writer—and deep shame at being Israeli. The front page of the newspaper that day should have been put on display at Israel’s air force bases, so that the pilots and their assistants and the corps and squadron commanders see it. What would 1st Lt. Gal feel—the pilot interviewed by Yedioth Ahronoth, that mouthpiece of the IDF spokesman’s office, at the end of this month’s military confrontation with Hamas? He had told the newspaper that he “felt relief” after dropping the bombs on Gaza. Would he still feel that same relief after seeing his handiwork—the photographs of the 67 dead children on the front page of Haaretz? Would the only “mild shock” felt by that bombing machine called a pilot still be the moment in which he dropped the bombs, as he recounted it—or would the sight of the photos of the dead children engender some other emotion in him that might keep him from carrying out such a despicable mission again? The pictures are shocking in their cumulative magnitude. All of the propaganda about the “most moral” and “the best going to the air force,” about “surgical airstrikes” and warning knocks on the roofs of Gaza suddenly dissipate in the face of these photos. The gleaming smile of 10-year-old Rafeef. The face mask Continued on page 27

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The Nakba Continues

Palestinian Citizens of Israel In Danger

By Jonathan Cook

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the police—urged on by Israeli government ministers—to inflict their own kind of vigilante-style “justice,” roaming the streets attacking anyone who looked “Arab.” The first death from the violence was a Palestinian father of three, Mussa Hasuna, shot in the city of Lod as he was confronted by four armed Jews. And close by in Tel Aviv, a taxi driver was dragged from his car and beaten severely after a hundreds-strong mob had smashed up a shop owned by a Palestinian citizen, with police nowhere in sight. It was these scenes, and the police violence, that soon turned the protests into clashes that the media and politicians improbably declared a “pogrom” against Jews. Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas has not translated into the ending of tensions between the Israeli police and the Jewish majority, on the one hand, and the Palestinian minority inside Israel, Arab Israelis protest against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and its air bombardment of the Gaza Strip, in Jaffa, near the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv, on May on the other. 18, 2021. Palestinians in Israel, a fifth of the population, are descended from the small number of PalesIN PALESTINIAN COMMUNITIES across Israel, youths erupted in tinians who avoided the mass expulsions of 1948, which created angry protest through much of May, incensed by scenes of Israeli Israel on the ruins of their homeland. Today, these 1.8 million Palesbrutality in Jerusalem and devastating missile strikes on Gaza that tinians mostly live in strictly segregated towns and villages, citizens only underscored their own experience of marginalization and sysin little more than name only. Their once-a-generation mass, nationtematic mistreatment inside a Jewish state. wide demonstrations against systematic discrimination by a state A new generation of Palestinian citizens of Israel—globally conthat was imposed on them have failed to elicit understanding or symnected through social media—appeared to be at a breaking point, pathy from the Jewish public. Instead, they have served only to crying out for equality, an end to their collective humiliation and the deepen the mistrust and to justify police brutality. demonization of their Palestinian identity by Jewish compatriots. Out of fear or as part of a boycott, or a mix of both, Jewish Israelis Israeli police responded swiftly and fiercely, even when most of are keeping away from Palestinian communities inside Israel whose the protests inside Palestinian communities were non-violent. Parastreets they once filled. In normal times they would come to eat Arab military border police, more usually deployed in the occupied terrifood, buy low-cost goods in the market stalls, get their cars fixed tories, were called in to bolster the regular police. cheaply, or visit local archaeological sites. That is the extent of “coThe Haaretz daily reported on May 25 a police source stating that existence” in Israel. But now even that feeble association is gone. their forces had used more stun grenades inside Israel in the preThe Palestinian minority is once again paying a heavy price for raisceding two weeks than in the previous 20 years. Tear gas and ing its voice against oppression by the Jewish majority. sponge-tipped bullets were also mainstays. Israeli police, too, are keen to be seen settling scores with the PalesBut more disturbing still, far-right Jewish gangs quickly “assisted” tinian minority. The theme of interviews in the Israeli media with police officers has been a regret that they were “too soft” and too slow to use force. One told Haaretz: “The most important thing now is to restore Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the deterrence. Otherwise, they’ll go farther during the next escalation.” Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author of As part of that deterrence policy, the police launched a mass arrest Blood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). operation—dubbed “Law and Order”—“to bring the rioters, criminals 14

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and all those involved in the disturbances to justice.” At the time of writing, there had been around 2,000 arrests, the vast majority of them Palestinian citizens. The wave of street violence from the Jewish far-right has been largely ignored. Police have also been increasing their visibility with checkpoints in so-called “mixed cities” such as Jaffa, stopping anyone who looks like a Palestinian citizen and harassing them. All of this has been rationalized by the incitement of Israeli politicians during the protests. They reinforced the impression of a permanent threat to the Jewish public from the country’s Palestinian minority. President Reuven Rivlin painted Palestinian demonstrators as a “bloodthirsty Arab mob” set on a “pogrom” against Israeli Jews. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, equated the protesters—a large section of Palestinian youth in Israel— to “terrorists.” He also argued that Palestinian protests in Israel posed a more serious security threat than Hamas rockets. This rhetoric bolstered a narrative crafted by the ultranationalist right over the past two decades: that Palestinian citizens are an internal threat—a Trojan horse operating from within but serving the interests of Palestinians outside, such as Hamas. May’s protests had strong echoes of events back in October 2000, at the start of the Second Intifada (uprising). Then, police stormed Palestinian communities inside Israel to crush protests in solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In days, police shot dead 13 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators inside Israel and seriously wounded hundreds more. The police aggression was fed and justified by a false mainstream view that the protests were an attempt to overthrow the state from within. That narrative was never seriously challenged. For years Israeli Jews boycotted Palestinian towns in retaliation. But there was a deeper, more permanent political reaction. Much of the Jewish public interpreted the October 2000 events as confirmation of their long-held suspicion that all Palestinians—including their unloved neighbors inside Israel—were the same. They could not be trusted, and they JUNE/JULY 2021

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Israeli forces detain a group of Palestinian-Israelis in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod on May 13, 2021, during clashes between Israeli far-right extremists and Palestinian-Israelis. were working together with a common goal: to drive Jews into the sea. The fruit of that belief system was, first, the election of a government led by the arch-war criminal Ariel Sharon and then the consolidation of a growing ultra-nationalist right around Netanyahu—now Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. And that belief system was also a large part of the reason why the Jewish far-right was well-prepared and so quick to turn out on the streets to “break faces” when the Palestinian minority erupted in protest this month. Legal and human rights groups have documented the almost instant proliferation of far-right social media groups that plotted and armed themselves for attacks on Palestinian citizens. Many were from the settlements or allied to them. This was no spontaneous outpouring of violence. In some cases, settlers were bused—along with their weapons—to “mixed cities” to make good on their chants of “Death to the Arabs.” More troubling still, evidence soon came to light that these violent Jewish gangs were often operating under apparent license from the police, or even working with them. They were exempted from curfews the police were enforcing on everyone else and they were filmed throwing stones at Palestinian citizens alongside police officers firing stun grenades. If that was police policy, it was most likely approved by Amir Ohana, the police minis-

ter and close political ally of Netanyahu. As armed Jewish gangs were rampaging through Palestinian areas inside Israel, he called on the Jewish public to take the law into their own hands. He referred to Jewish citizens as a “force multiplier”—the long arm of police violence. Immediately after the protests, Ohana made it a priority to further ease conditions for Israeli Jews to receive a gun license. Applications were reported to have rocketed seven-fold in days. For more than two decades, there has been a steady growth in the number of violent religious extremists living deep in the West Bank that terrorize Palestinians under occupation, invariably ignored or aided by Israeli soldiers. These extremists are committed to using violence against Palestinians wherever they live, whether in the occupied territories or inside Israel. And just as they have always found allies in the Israeli army, they appear to be now finding a similar indulgence from the police. Over the past two decades, the far-right in Israel has developed not just a political leadership, one that has been embraced by Netanyahu in his coalition governments, but a whole network of civil society organizations. Groups such as Im Tirtzu have waged a cultural war to demonize Palestinian citizens for asserting their own identity, language and narrative. Lehava has stoked fears of intermarriage between Jews and

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Palestinians, including setting up street patrols to attack Palestinians, even though such marriages are exceptionally rare. Regavim has shown a mastery of manipulating Israel’s already racist court system to get Palestinians’ homes demolished, while Honenu has worked the same courts to excuse the perpetrators of Jewish terror. None see a distinction between Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinians with citizenship inside Israel. These groups have not only popularized the demonization of all Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, but they have prepared the ground for greater indulgence of violence by Israeli Jews toward the Palestinian minority. Where once the Israeli Jewish public was happy to leave its security forces to brutalize Palestinians, now a section of the population wants to be able to put their boot on the neck, too. How this is being absorbed into, and reinforcing, popular political culture in Israel was illustrated by a shocking radio phone-in with two leading Israeli journalists in May. Asked

by the sheikh of a mosque in the city of Lod if Israeli Jews were “allowed to slaughter us,” the host Yinon Magal replied, “Yes, that’s how it will end, correct.” Magal added, “You forgot the power the Jews hold.” This divide has been deepened by the last two years of election stalemate. Both Netanyahu and his opponents have been unable to form a majority government without support from a bloc of legislators from the Palestinian parties. Israel has held four consecutive elections specifically to avert that outcome. For many Israeli Jews, Palestinian citizens are effectively holding the political system to ransom, making it impossible for Jews to rule their own Jewish state without making major concessions to a Palestinian “fifth column.” That fueled the surprise success of the openly fascist Jewish right in March’s election. And for the Palestinian minority, it is clearer than ever that there is no Jewish party—however moderate it professes to be—willing to work with the Palestinian par-

ties. The electoral dead-end illustrates the political dead-end of trying to seek either peace for Palestinians under occupation or equality for themselves inside Israel. Shortly after the ceasefire was agreed, Israel began reviving the very same policies that triggered the 11-day confrontation with Hamas. Under escort from armed police, Israeli religious fanatics returned to the occupied al-Aqsa Mosque compound they are determined to bring under full Israeli sovereignty. Israeli police again attacked Muslim worshippers there. And a postponed case, brought by the Israeli state and settlers to cleanse Palestinian families from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem, was due to return to Israel’s courts. Protesters trying to stop the expulsions from Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood continued to be attacked, too. The inciting cause of Palestinian anger hasn’t gone away. The resentment is likely to build among Palestinians until it finds release again, in protests or rockets. ■

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Israel and Judaism

Jonathan Pollard, Occupation and Ethnic Cleansing: Where Zionism Has Led

PHOTO BY MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Allan C. Brownfeld

Jonathan Pollard, an American who served 30 years in prison for giving classified U.S. documents to Israel, attends the funeral of Yehuda Guetta, in Jerusalem on May 6, 2021, after he succumbed to his wounds following a Palestinian drive-by shooting attack in the occupied West Bank. DEFENSE OF THE STATE of Israel has led the American Jewish establishment, in the name of Zionism, to defend actions and policies it opposes in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. In the U.S., for example, Jewish groups are strong proponents of separation of church and state and religious freedom. In Israel, quite to the contrary, there is a state religion and taxpayer-supported chief rabbis. Beyond this, the leaders of Israel’s state religion are often the most vocal advocates of the most extreme positions. In 1994, when Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, was expected to visit the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a former Israeli chief rabbi issued a religious ruling calling upon Jews to kill him. In July 1994, The New York Times reported: “Rabbi Shlomo Goren said he had made a formal rabbinic ruling that declared, ‘There is no doubt that Yasser Arafat deserves death according to Israeli and international law...It is therefore a commandment

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. JUNE/JULY 2021

to kill Arafat, and there is no need to wait to bring him to trial.’” Consider the case of Jonathan Pollard and the way many Jewish leaders embraced him and accused those who prosecuted him for espionage with the usual charge of “anti-Semitism.” Indeed, Pollard is an example of where Zionism can lead. Pollard, who as a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, admitted to and was found guilty of spying for Israel. He served 30 years in prison and not only has no regrets for his actions but urges other American Jews to follow in his footsteps. Now a resident of Israel, which he considers his real “home,” Pollard was interviewed by the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom on March 25, 2021. He said, “The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews we will always have dual loyalty.” Pollard said Jews were deluding themselves if they thought of America as their home. He suggested that he would counsel a young Jewish American working in an American security agency to spy for Israel, as he did. “I would tell them,” Pollard said, “that not doing anything is unac-

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ceptable. So simply going home (to Israel) is not acceptable...You have to make a decision whether your concern for Israel and loyalty to your fellow Jews is more important than your life.” Pollard was paroled from his life sentence in 2015 and arrived in Israel last year. He was met at the airport by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He arrived on a private plane provided by the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who once said that he regretted having served in the U.S. Army rather than the Israeli military. Jonathan Pollard grew up in a family committed to Zionism. He recalls that at his synagogue “there were two flags: a U.S. and an Israeli one. That’s how I was raised.” He was told that Israel was the “homeland” of all Jews and that he was “in exile” in America. In his extensive espionage for Israel, his actions seemed consistent with the Zionist philosophy he had learned. While many Jewish Americans were harshly critical of Pollard, the Jewish establishment was not. In the 1990s, a wide range of Jewish leaders urged the president “to demonstrate your commitment to

justice by commuting Jonathan Pollard’s sentence to the time...already served.” Rabbi Avraham Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, NY wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Pollard “remains incarcerated because of the improprieties, prejudice, downright anti-Israelism and elements of anti-Semitism...now he has become a political prisoner.”

OPPOSING RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

In another instance of promoting Israeli interests in violation of traditional Jewish values, the organized Jewish community opposed efforts to recognize the Armenian genocide. Now that President Biden has officially recognized the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire as a genocide, it is instructive to review Jewish efforts to prevent this recognition over the years. As Hitler planned his invasion of Poland in 1939, he was aware of the slaughter of the Armenians and noted that the world looked away. He believed that the world would look away from the Holocaust he (Advertisement)

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planned as well. As Armenians sought the world’s recognition for what happened in 1915, Israel stood in the way, together with American Jewish groups which followed Israel’s lead. In April 2001, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said, “We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. It was a tragedy what the Armenians went through, but not a genocide.” When there was an effort to recognize the Armenian genocide in 2007, it was vigorously opposed in the Congress by Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. In a House committee meeting on Oct. 10, 2007, 7 of 8 Jewish representatives on the committee said they could not in good conscience deny a genocide when they were often forced to repudiate Holocaust denial. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said his lifetime of Jewish advocacy left him no choice: “Genocide denial is not just the last step of a genocide, it is the first step of the next genocide.” According to the April 28, 2021 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “In the months prior to

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the vote, there had been a full-court press against advancing the resolution. Turkish officials flew to Washington, DC to make their case, often at private events hosted by Jewish groups. That same year, the AntiDefamation League (ADL) made national headlines when it fired one of its Boston officials who openly criticized the organization for not naming the Armenian genocide as such.” According to historians Rifat Bali and Marc David Baer, “The single most important factor in successfully concluding the process of normalization between Israel and Turkey was Armenian genocide denial.” In his 1939 speech, prior to the invasion of Poland, Hitler declared, “...our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy...with orders...to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language...Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” This reference is now inscribed on one of the walls of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

DEFENDING APARTHEID

Defending Israel’s occupation, its history of ethnic cleansing, and its continued violation of international law—all of which contradict Judaism’s moral and ethical values—is something establishment Jewish organizations continue to do, although it is becoming more difficult as more Jewish voices are heard in opposition. As far back as 1961, Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African prime minister, visited Israel. He recognized the similarities between the two countries and said, “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” In April, Human Rights Watch released a report declaring that the Israeli government is committing the crime of apartheid. It is the first official use of the term by the group, which documents abuses across 100 countries. The 213-page report, titled “A Threshold Crossed,” cites Israel’s JUNE/JULY 2021

“intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians,” and alleges decades of persecution that cannot be justified by Israel’s security needs or the stalled peace process. Human Rights Watch found that the Israeli government systematically discriminated against non-Jews in all areas under its control—including the nearly 2 million Arab citizens within the state’s 1948 borders—but that an additional layer of severe human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza amounts to the crime of apartheid. The report contends that Israeli officials are using military rule to ensure a Jewish majority across the combined land of Israel and the West Bank. Eric Goldstein, acting director for Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, said the group’s report is intended to show that Israel’s abuses against Palestinians were not isolated incidents. “For years, the international community—and many Israelis—have the tendency to think of the cases we document as the unfortunate symptoms of a lack of peace. But the peace process has unfortunately gone nowhere and the abuses have become more entrenched.” The report comes at a time of renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians. In April, a Jewish mob attacked Arab residents of Jerusalem shouting “Death to Arabs.” Israeli human rights groups called it a “Jewish pogrom.” The recent Israeli election saw openly Jewish racists, followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, elected to the Knesset. In an earlier Israeli society, Kahane’s Kach party was made illegal. Now its successor is welcomed and embraced by Netanyahu. Kahane and his current followers embrace a Jewish version of the Nazi Nuremberg laws, making marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews illegal. Discussing these developments in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Gideon Levy writes, “Make no mistake: these attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem are the harbingers of Israeli neo-Nazism. Intimidating marches, beatings, arson, looting and calls for death are exactly what neo-Nazism looks like.” Israel and its American friends did what

they always do in response to criticism of Israel, dismiss it as “anti-Semitism.” Former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, speaking about critics as anti-Semites, said, “Well, it’s true, we always use it. When from Europe someone is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust.” When people criticize Israel in the U.S., she said, “they’re anti-Semites...It’s very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic and to bring up the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jewish people and that is to justify everything we do to the Palestinians.” Professor Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School has this advice for those who refer to the Human Rights Watch report as “anti-Semitic.” He declares: “As a proud Jewish American with cousins who were born and live in Israel, I sadly associate myself with this Human Rights Watch conclusion. If you’re tempted to call Human Rights Watch anti-Semitic, first read its devastating report—-and then reconsider.” In 1922, young Jewish zealots killed an Arab boy. This brought a cry of rage from Ahad Ha’am: “Jews and blood—are there two greater opposites than these? Is this the goal for which our ancestors longed and for which they suffered all those tribulations? Is this the dream of the return to Zion...that we should come to Zion to pollute its soil with the spilling of innocent blood?” Now, almost 100 years after those words were written, the contradiction between Jewish values and the use of Israeli power is becoming a reality recognized by more and more Jews. In her book, The Fate of the Jews, Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht noted that, “In Israel, Jews have created a mutant, a nonJewish Jew. Jews have become the kind of people their mothers warned them about. Applying my mother’s measurement—‘A Jew doesn’t do this’—it appears that Israel is no place for a Jew...Judaism as an ideal is infinite. Judaism as a state is finite. Judaism survived centuries of persecution without a state; it must now learn how to survive despite a state.” This, it is becoming ever more widely understood, is where Zionism has led. ■

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Canada Calling

Jewish National Fund of Canada Distances Itself From Parent Organization in Israel When Charitable Tax Status Threatened By Candice Bodnaruk

PHOTO BY SMITH COLLECTION/GADO/GETTY IMAGES

nounce publicly that it was policy. GENERATIONS of Jewish chil“We are maintaining our dren around the world have demand for JNF Canada to lose its dropped pennies into the Jewish charitable status because it reNational Fund’s iconic blue collecmains affiliated with an organization boxes. Those tax-exempt tion that participates in the colofunds bought and managed land nization of the West Bank which for Jews only, planted trees to reincludes the displacement of place Palestinian villages, and quiPalestinians and Bedouin,” he etly acquired territory for illegal said. Jewish settlements in the occupied There are many people who West Bank. worked with IJV on its campaign, However, years of work by including Dr. Ismail Zayid, who groups who support Palestinian lived in one of the villages derights and justice is slowly beginstroyed in 1967 and later turned ning to pay off. In April, the Jewish into Canada Park. National Fund of Canada anBalsam pointed out that 600 nounced it was distancing itself people signed IJV’s parliamentary from JNF-Keren Kayemeth LeYispetition opposing the JNF’s charirael, its affiliate in Israel. JNF table status and that their comCanada will no longer reference plaint was covered by CBC naKKL in its name and is now an entional news. Their reputation tirely different entity. The decision among Canadians and progrescame after the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) informed JNF A collection tin with text reading “Redeem the Land of Israel, sive Jews was threatened by reCanada it could no longer legally Contribute to the Jewish National Fund,” in a photo taken Sept. ports that the JNF was going to openly work in the occupied terriassociate with the JNF in Israel be- 20, 2017. tory. He explained that it’s not just cause of the organization’s insisthat JNF Canada is not allowed to work in disputed territory, they tence on building in the West Bank, in violation of international law. also can’t have their funds intermingled with those of JNF-KKL in In a recent letter to the JNF Canada leadership, both the president Israel. and CEO made a point of stating that any policies of JNF Kayemeth Balsam said that the JNF had strong relationships with high-level LeYisrael are not necessarily supported by or should be attributed politicians such as former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen to JNF Canada. Harper and former Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who served Corey Balsam, national coordinator of Independent Jewish under Harper. Both men have JNF projects named after them. Voices Canada (IJV), says JNF Canada’s announcement is a “Canadians should be confident that organizations that are espartial victory. He explained that the timing of JNF Canada’s desentially subsidized by the government through our taxes are doing cision is related to the JNF-KKL announcement that they will be work that is charitable and that is not contributing to harm in the openly working in the Occupied Territories. He added that JNFworld,” Balsam said, noting that the JNF decision affects all CanaKKL was in fact already working there, but they just did not andian taxpayers. “There was probably a lot of reluctancy to go after Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the them,” Balsam added, but he hopes the decision leads to greater past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS accountability by the Canada Revenue Agency. Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started Balsam said it is important that Canadians are aware of these with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg. issues, speak out and push for more transparency. 20

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The New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) is taking a strong stand for Palestine rights and advocating for sanctions against Israel. The party has a history of advocating for the rights of labor, people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. At their most recent convention in April, a majority of party members voted to end all trade with illegal Israeli settlements and end all arms trade with Israel until it respects Palestinian human rights. Party members also called for Canada to bring sanctions against Israel. The resolution was only debated for four minutes before it passed with 80 percent of members supporting it. “This vote is a major win for party activists, including Palestinian and Jewish members, who have organized for years to take action to support Palestinian human rights,” Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) said in a press release. Bianca Mugyenyi, director of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI), said the resolution will open up space within the party for politicians who are supportive of Palestinian rights to have their voices heard. “Canada is one of the most anti-Palestinian countries in the world,” Mugyenyi said. Mugyenyi pointed out that the Trudeau government has sided with Israel on almost every matter of importance including voting against more than 50 U.N. resolutions upholding Palestinian rights that are supported by almost every other nation. In addition, Canada recently expanded its free trade agreement with Israel (CIFTA), despite Israel’s occupation and apartheid. “In this way, Canada has contributed to Palestinian dispossession in many ways for decades,” Mugyenyi said. She said that too often the NDP has sided with the policies of the federal government but this pro-Palestinian resolution from the party may help break this pattern. JUNE/JULY 2021

PHOTO COURTESY RUSSELL LAVIS

CANADA’S NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY PASSES RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF PALESTINIAN RIGHTS

Canadian ultra-marathoner Russell Lavis is running to raise money to purchase oxygen equipment for Gaza hospitals.

“The resolution is also significant because it has forced a party leader (Jagmeet Singh, who for some time has been hesitant to speak out for Palestinian rights) to say there needs to be pressure put on Israel around Palestinian rights and freedom,” she said.

CANADIAN MARATHONER RUNNING FOR GAZA

Canadian ultra-marathoner Russell Lavis ran for Gaza on May 22. Toronto is still in a COVID-19 lockdown and, for that reason, Lavis’ marathon was a private event with no spectators, and only a few family members to cheer him on. It comes as no surprise that Lavis has chosen “Help Gaza Breathe” as the charity for which he will raise funds. He has already completed two previous runs for Palestine, including one 100-kilometer ultra-marathon for World Vision’s offices in the West Bank and Gaza and, in May 2020, a marathon in support of Just Peace Advocates and the Civic Coalition for Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem. Now, as part of the “Help Gaza Breathe” campaign, Lavis ran the 125kilometer ultra-marathon to raise money for an oxygen plant as well as for medical oxygen supplies for Hayfa Medical Hospital (HMH) and the surrounding medical facilities in western Gaza. The HMH treats anywhere from 8,000-12,000 pa-

tients every month, including many with COVID-19. “I hope that my run may bring attention to the needs of the Palestinians: both the needs of their struggling health care systems under COVID, and the needs of the broader Palestinian society,” said Lavis, who started running in August 2018. The “Help Gaza Breathe” campaign was launched by the Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) Foundation and the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s Social Justice Fund in 2020. The two organizations are working with the International Development and Relief Foundation (IDRF) on the project. The goal of the fundraising campaign is to raise $150,000 to fully fund the oxygen-generating equipment. So far Lavis has raised more than $15,000 for his run and CJPME has raised more than $100,000. “Many Palestinians struggle to enjoy the basic freedoms that so many Canadians take for granted...The ability to breathe— to run, exercise, go where you want—is core to our concept of freedom. I felt that an ultra-marathon for a campaign entitled ‘Help Gaza Breathe’ would be such a symbolic way of helping Palestinians, both literally and figuratively,” Lavis explained. People may donate to the campaign at <www.cjpmefoundation.org/hgb>. ■

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The Middle East in the Far East

Israel Perpetuates Settler Colonialism

Member of the Knesset and leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visits the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in Jerusalem during Israel’s “Jerusalem Day,” on May 10, 2021, the day Israel’s Supreme Court was to rule on a lower court’s decision to evict Palestinian families from their homes. SETTLER COLONIALISM has been the origin of many modern states, including the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However, there is one important difference between most modern states founded on this model and Israel. In the early stages of growth of settler colonies, such as those of North America or Australia, the newcomers’ relations with the indigenous populations loomed large in their consciousness. The process of their expropriation was drawn out and their resistance was experienced, by the settler population, as a threat, particularly in the frontier zones where the two societies met. This encouraged a high degree of solidarity among the colonists until late in the settlement process: they inhabited a land that was home to other peoples, they feared indigenous resistance and their histories were created and shaped by their experience as the colonizers.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel. 22

All societies develop and change. In some cases, such as in Kenya, or what are now Zimbabwe and Malaysia, settlers were very few compared to the indigenous population and the latter eventually achieved independence. In others, where the settler population came to constitute the great majority of the population, new independent states were founded, such as the United States, Canada and Australia. Over the generations, people who had originated as colonists came to think of themselves as indigenous and the lands on which they lived as unquestionably theirs. Their societies tend to develop like those of other countries. No longer facing “external threats,” new priorities came to the fore in their lives as institutions and societal structures emerged that were no longer constrained with the imperatives of colonialism. In particular, class conflicts within these societies could become quite acute. In the U.S., for example, while there was a frontier, class conflicts were somewhat muted, as the ability to migrate westwards offered hope of a better life to the propertyless of the east and served

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PHOTO BY LAURENT VAN DER STOCKT/GETTY IMAGES

By John Gee

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to keep East Coast wages high compared to Europe. But with the closing of the frontier, the U.S. experienced labor conflicts of an intensity greater than those usual in the Old World. A few settler societies were in a position intermediate between these kinds. People of settler origin formed a substantial minority within the total population, and normalization either as independent states of the indigenous or of an overwhelmingly dominant colonial population proved extremely difficult. In the case of South Africa, the indigenous were first excluded from power and deprived of possession of much of their land and then, under apartheid, the exclusion of the black majority from power over their country was excused by classifying them as citizens of “homelands” who had no claim on white South African territory at all, though most continued to live and work there. Israel was a historical latecomer as a settler colonial state. Had the conflict that followed the 1947 U.N. partition vote resulted in the expansion of the proposed Jewish state to the borders Israel actually attained, but with the indigenous Palestinians remaining in situ, it would have contained a clear Palestinian majority in ownership of the great majority of its easily habitable land, limiting the scope for settling new arrivals. The new state would then have had to choose between becoming a democratic state of equal citizens, regardless of nationality or religion, or installing its own version of apartheid. The only reason this did not happen at that time was because the great majority of the Palestinians, in what became Israel, were expelled. The conditions for the new state to be a democracy were established by the exclusion from its territory of the indigenous people, who could not be trusted to endorse their own dispossession. There was no need for something as damaging to the international status and self-image of Israel as a formal regime of apartheid, since the remnants of the Palestinian people living within its ’48 borders were in no position to veto anything it wished to do and there was a broad consensus among the new settler majority on their exclusion from power. JUNE/JULY2021

Limited within its 1948 borders, Israel might well, over time, have followed in the path of the U.S., Canada and Australia. By the 1960s, class conflicts within Israeli Jewish society were growing, tensions over secular/religious and Ashkenazi/oriental Jews were becoming more pronounced and individuals who were born in Palestine/Israel were moving up the leadership ladder. In 1966, the military government under which Palestinian citizens of Israel had lived was terminated—a sign that the government believed that less extreme means of control were now adequate. Little thought was given to Palestinians elsewhere, even by the intelligence services: their fate seemed to have been sealed, their feelings and wishes of no consequence. However, Israel’s borders did not remain static. The tendency toward normalization was interrupted as a result of the 1967 war and particularly by the maintenance of a regime of occupation and colonization in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that followed. Palestinian resistance has affirmed that the Palestinian people have not disappeared or assimilated into other Arab societies. The higher growth rate of the Palestinian population under Israeli rule, compared to the Israeli Jewish population, has fed fears about the “demographic question” of the latter once again becoming a minority in historic Palestine, as indeed they now are. Withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would have allowed Israel to maintain a large Jewish majority within its borders, but a full withdrawal was not contemplated. An appetite for retaining control was fed by its ideological underpinnings, which led to the establishment of settlements within the newly occupied lands. They were bound to provoke strong opposition from the Palestinians, particularly when built in close proximity to Palestinian population centers, on land taken from Palestinian owners or customary users. It is small wonder that settlements became breeding grounds for racist extremism and aggressive nationalism as the narrative increasingly hardened into “us versus them.” Distinctions have often been made between ideological settlers, driven by nation-

alist views, and non-ideological settlers, who have moved into the West Bank because of financial incentives, low cost housing and a better environment, but those distinctions don’t really count for much. Once settled into a house in the West Bank, families are unlikely to support politicians who appear to pursue policies that might prejudice their ability to stay. So, it should be no surprise that the overwhelming majority give their electoral support to the most chauvinist parties: among the settlers, political acceptability starts with the Likud and ends with supporters of the once-outlawed racist politics of Meir Kahane. As colonist numbers and influence have expanded, they have dragged the center point of Israeli politics further and further toward extreme nationalism and racism, driving Israeli society as a whole away from normalization. With all the faults of their own society before them, Americans who recognize this are still likely to say, “That’s not us.” Things will only get worse while the regime of occupation, colonization and repression continues. The road to normalization for Israel’s Jewish majority will be through a break with the dominant thinking and practices, as well as through respect for the rights and humanity of the Palestinians, which will not occur without effective Palestinian resistance, realignments within Israeli politics, and strong external pressure. ■

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WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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United Nations Report

Black and White on Palestine and Israel

By Ian Williams

ABBAS MOMANI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

rent context, it has contributed to a revolution in liberal U.S. discourse, aided to a great extent by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s hard work to put truth in the allegation in the weeks since. After all, nothing says apartheid quite so eloquently as footage of thugs from Brooklyn committing home invasions against Palestinian grandmothers in Sheikh Jarrah. While undoubtedly transformative, the apartheid designation was, after all, a much belated concession to reality. Many years ago, in the Washington Report, I discussed HRW’s tendency to pull its punches over Israel, which I ascribed to sensitivity to its donor base. Amnesty International had similar foibles—refusing to describe Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as a prisoner of conscience for many long years of his solitary confinement. The HRW report followed similar documents from the U.N. that were stifled by U.S. A young Palestinian looks at a poster of the late South African leader Nelson Mandela, during a protest against the building of a nearby Jewish settlement in the Israeli occupied pressure, not least one from the Economic West Bank on Dec. 7, 2013. Palestinians draw on the legacy of Mandela, a high-profile and Social Commission for Western Asia supporter of their cause, likening his fight against apartheid to their own struggle to end (ESCWA), whose suppression by U.N. SecIsraeli occupation. retary-General António Guterres in 2017 was a harbinger of his subsequent subservience to the U.S. and Israel. The head of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, EVEN THOSE OF US who did not allow our revulsion for former resigned in protest. President Donald Trump to view President Joseph Biden through But mostly absent from the discussion was the relevance and acrose colored glasses have been pleasantly surprised by his becuracy of the original U.N. determination back in 1975 that “Zionism havior on the U.N., on WHO, UNRWA and even on domestic isis a form of racism and racial discrimination,” which recalled that even sues. Sadly though, we were not too surprised by his tepid preearlier, in December 1973, the General Assembly condemned, inter varication over the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, nor were we even alia, “the unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism.” that shocked by his muted response to the assault on the alThe racism reference was overturned by massive diplomatic presAqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah. “All politics is local” is an axiom sure from the administration of George H.W. Bush, who, while of American politics, and no more so than on Middle East policy, buoyed internationally by the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War, was where the effect of lobbies and donors counterbalances reality on headed for domestic defeat by the pro-Israeli lobby backlash against the ground. In the past if the lobby had declared that apples soar his refusal of U.S. loan guarantees to build settlements for Soviet upwards from the tree, Congress would have agreed so but that Jews going to Israel. As pandering goes it was a flop. He managed is no longer guaranteed. to overturn the resolution, but AIPAC & Co. never forgave him or In the last few weeks, several Middle Eastern threads became Senator Bob Dole for defending Washington against the hordes of inextricably tangled. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Zionist lobbyists who descended on the Capitol. Israeli apartheid was not revolutionary in its concept. But in the curBringing the issue back home, at that time there was agreement U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of UNtold: the Real that the Congressional Black Caucus would stay silent about this Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from alliance in return for the lobby’s support on domestic issues. The Middle East Books and More). 24

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Palestinians, the State Department anCouncil decisions, about which they have visit of South African anti-apartheid revonounced the re-opening of the consulate in lectured when Iran or Iraq is the frame. lutionary Nelson Mandela to the U.S. and East Jerusalem. Biden could and should have supported the the U.N., after his release in 1990, really But consider what has changed in U.S. Security Council meeting and resolution put the fox in with the chickens. But the politics. The tidal wave set off by Black that the other members were putting forchickens stayed shtum. The object of uniLives Matter suggests that many compoward. We can be sure the implied threat of versal adulation and praise referred renents of Biden’s Democratic coalition see that led to Netanyahu’s belated acceptance peatedly and provocatively to his support uncomfortably direct parallels between arof a ceasefire in Gaza. for the Palestinians. If he had been a mere mored Israeli police and soldiers wading So, it would appear the ceasefire in Gaza Andrew Young, or Jesse Jackson, saying into demonstrators and mosques and selfinvolved some serious tightrope walking for the same things, the lobby and the media exiled Trump supporters acting like KKK Biden. He might well have implied the threat would have launched a political lynching. vigilantes in Sheikh Jarrah. In parallel, legof breaking with the thick blue line and conBut they astutely realized the usual charislative successes by the Left mean that this demning Israel but with the face-saver that acter assassination would not have was no longer AIPAC’s Democratic Party. it was not to be mentioned in public. As a dented his standing, and would, if anyBy condemning Israel, Biden “risks” warning to Netanyahu and a gesture to the thing, have popularized his views. alienating the people who It is mind-boggling to envis(Advertisement) think that Trump is still the age the mental choreography president and were last of Biden and his team, includseen storming Capitol Hill. ing his new seemingly consciThe former Israeli Ambasentious U.N. ambassador as sador to the U.N. Danny they traipsed through the Danon has been quite exminefield of the current Israelplicit. Israel should conU.S. relationship with Black centrate on these EvanLives as the back drop. Few, gelicals recognizing that if any, of them, have any illuwhile the investment by sions about Netanyahu’s good AIPAC and die-hard Israeli will or moral probity. They all supporters in the most reknow he is an amoral, vindicpugnant right-wing Repubtive, lying scumbag. But at one lican Party ever, has alientime, they would have voted to ated the liberal wing of the protect him confident that the Democrats, including its only people taking note of the Jews. betrayal of their avowed prinBiden knows which ciples would be Israel and its groups almost won the supporters. Democratic primary and However, until recently, whose support was eseven with President Barack Playgrounds for Palestine is a project to build playgrounds for our sential to his victory. With Obama facing the Trump-Bibi children. It is a minimal recognition of their right to childhood and his record of support for axis, the pro-Israeli cabal creative expression. It is an act of love. “Israel’s right to self-dearound Biden knew they were Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) is a registered 501(c)3 non-proﬁt fense,” he was not going on sound ground in domestic organization, established in 2001. We’re an all-volunteer organizato pander to BLM and propolitics. The Black Caucus tion (no paid staﬀ) that raises money throughout the year to conPalestinians, but he was would give Obama a pass and struct playgrounds and fund programs for not in a position to alienthe pro-Israeli caucus among children in Palestine. ate them. the rest of the Democrats Selling Organic, Fair Trade Palestinian olive It is a chilling thought, but would reliably “stand by Israel,” oil is PfP’s principle source of fundraising. it is possible, that the kneealbeit with a few pinches of inis year, PfP launched AIDA, a private on-the-neck technique, cense on the altar of peace label olive oil from Palestinian farmers. popularized by Israeli trainand human rights. Please come by and taste it at our table. ers of U.S. police forces, Despite the derision its leadstarted the cycle of events ers heap on the United NaWe hope you’ll love it and make it a staple in your pantry. that run from George tions, Israel knows that the For more information or to make a donation visit: Floyd’s murder, through the road to the Hague is paved https://playgroundsforpalestine.org • P.O. Box 559 • Yardley, PA 19067 protests, to Netanyahu’s with U.N. resolutions, not least reluctant ceasefire. ■ of which are the Security JUNE/JULY 2021

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Special Report

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (l) meets with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the Heliopolis Presidential Palace in Cairo, on May 26, 2021. THE WAR IN GAZA ended on May 21, in a cease-fire mediated by Egypt and others, after 11 days that left more than 240 dead in Gaza and 12 dead in Israel. The Palestinians were largely alone in facing the bombardment, as U.S. President Joe Biden and the European Union supported the right of the Israelis to “defend themselves.” Israel and Hamas have fought four times since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and Hamas won parliamentary elections in Palestine in 2006. It was during the 2012 and 2014 wars that Egypt proved to the international community that it was an indispensable mediator. Since the presidency of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt has been seeking to increase its regional role, and has engaged in several mediation activities. Cairo mediated between Israel and Hamas in the last Gaza war in 2014 and, together with Norway and Palestinian leadership, organized and hosted the meeting of international donors in response to the devastation left in its wake. Egypt has also played a large role

Mohammad Salami has a Ph.D. in International Relations. He writes as an analyst and columnist in various media outlets. His area of expertise is Middle East issues, especially Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the GCC countries. 26

in mediating the intra-Palestinian dispute between Hamas and Fatah, though the two groups remain largely divided. In this latest round of hostilities, Egypt sought an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, along with France, Jordan, Qatar and the United Nations. El-Sisi ordered the opening of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Palestinians, and a number of injured Palestinians were sent to Egyptian hospitals. The Egyptian government also sent mediation teams to Hamas and Israel intending to restore fuel to Gaza’s only power plant. Egypt additionally pledged $500 million for the reconstruction of Gaza during U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s post-cease-fire visit to the region.

MEDIATION POLICY AND U.S. SUPPORT

El-Sisi is trying to gain international support, especially from the U.S., through mediating between Hamas and Israel. El-Sisi and former President Donald Trump had friendly relations, but after Biden’s election, the new president declared that there would be “no more blank checks” for Trump’s “favorite dictator,” warning elSisi to improve his abysmal human rights record. In the first four months of his presidency, Biden didn’t even phone el-Sisi—an unprecedented snub of a traditional Middle East ally. However, ac-

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PHOTO BY ALEX BRANDON/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Cease-Fire in Gaza Was an Opportunity for Egypt By Dr. Mohammad Salami

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cording to el-Sisi’s office, just hours before Israel agreed to a cease-fire at Egypt’s suggestion, Biden phoned el-Sisi praising his efforts to establish security and stability. For el-Sisi, this was a vital “win” because he needs Biden to support Cairo in several regional issues, such as in its conflict with Ethiopia over the construction of the Ethiopian Al-Nahda Dam (Renaissance Dam) on the Nile River and the continuation of $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military funding. El-Sisi believes his mediation policy improves the odds of continued U.S. support.

EGYPT’S POSITION IS UNIQUE

Cairo is in a unique position in pursuing a mediation policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Egypt is the only Arab country that has a direct and strong diplomatic relationship with both Israel and Hamas. Moreover, Egypt is the only Arab country that shares a border with Gaza, which is hemmed in by Israel on the other three sides, including the Mediterranean Sea. The only land route for Gaza to the outside world is through Egypt, via the oftenclosed Rafah crossing. Hamas had a good relationship with former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi because of the group’s affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. After Hamas cut ties with the Brotherhood in 2017, el-Sisi saw a strategic opportunity to strengthen ties with Hamas. Ismail Haniyeh, a senior political leader of Hamas, visited Egypt in response to the strengthening of relations in 2017. International requests for Egypt to mediate the cease-fire provided Cairo with an opportunity that no other country could seize, not even Qatar, which hosts the former Hamas political leader, Khaled Mashaal, and has donated millions of dollars for infrastructure projects in Gaza. Qatar also sought a cease-fire in Gaza, but Doha could only play the card of economic support for Hamas, while Hamas had no choice but to rely on Egypt for border access. In other words, even if Qatar does serve as the “Chief Financial Officer” of this situation, it is the Egyptian leadership that retains the role of “Chief Executive Officer,” in full control of the operation as a whole. JUNE/JULY 2021

For obvious geo-political reasons, Hamas had no choice but to oblige the Egyptians.

EL-SISI’S GOALS OF MEDIATION

El-Sisi is a military man who understands the geo-political value of this pro-mediation approach better than anyone. His country is embroiled in insecurity in the Sinai Peninsula due to the activities of Islamist extremist groups, and is trying to solve some of the arms smuggling from Gaza to Egypt through closer ties with Hamas. In 2020, Egypt began building a new concrete wall along it’s border with Gaza. Geo-politically, el-Sisi is also trying to prevent Iranian and Syrian influence in Gaza by becoming more involved in the Strip and with Hamas. The pursuit of a leadership role in its regional mediation policy provides the best geo-political raison d’etre for the international community to support Egypt. ■

Israeli Responsibility Continued from page 13

worn by 9-year-old Amir. Mohammed, who would never even celebrate a single birthday. Eight-year-old Islam’s colorful sunglasses in the last picture of him, which may also have been the first. These photographs are more convincing than a thousand hollow Israeli propaganda speeches about self-defense, about Hamas’ guilt and about how there was no alternative. That’s the ultimate, singular result, before which only pilots and other brainwashed Israelis can remain unmoved and even speak of their “relief.” After the first shock came the second, only a bit less than the first: the reactions in Israel. If anyone had still doubted the extent of the denial and psychological repression in which Israeli society has been living, anyone who had doubted the seriousness of its moral sickness, the reactions to the front page proved it. This society is very sick. The debate in the media and on social media erupted like a brushfire. It was wild and instructive. Israel was avoiding the dreaded tidings like the plague. No one was talking about the dead children, about the horrifying di-

mensions of the killing and about the army that committed it. That was not the topic in the least. In an amazing acrobatic display, Israelis summoned up everything they had and more to avoid the truth, evade responsibility and carry on with their usual self-congratulation. Here’s a partial list: Haaretz is guilty because it didn’t publish photos of the two Israeli children killed. The New York Times is guilty because it wrote that only two Palestinian children were killed by Palestinian rockets. Hamas is guilty because it uses the children as human shields. Hamas is guilty because it fires rockets from population centers. The children weren’t even killed. There are photos in which they are seen getting up out of their funeral shrouds. There was only one thing that no one dared talk about: Israel’s responsibility, the guilt of the Israel Defense Forces, the pilots’ role and the part shared by every Israeli, from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on down, in moral responsibility for this killing of children. Under the auspices of its pitiful media outlets, an entire society was enlisted as one, shoulder-to-shoulder, to evade any responsibility, to deflect any blame, to accuse the entire world, to dispel any doubt and say: It is not by our hands that this blood was spilled. But the bitter truth is that it was only by our hands. There is no other way to present it. There is no other truth to put on display. One can say that this is what happens in war and even think that if it were not for Hamas, this war would not have erupted— which is very doubtful—but placing the entire blame on the victim is a new record in Israeli contemptibility. Not even a word of regret? Pain? An iota of responsibility? A hint of guilt? Compensation for the families? Not Israel. Never. The children died in airstrikes. The children are guilty. Just them. Absolutely only them. ■

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author. This article was first published in Haaretz, May 29, 2021. © Haaretz. Reprinted with permission.

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History’s Shadows

Another Turning Point in U.S.-Iranian Relations By Walter L. Hixson

PHOTO BY THOMAS KRONSTEINER/GETTY IMAGES

foreign policy in the modern Middle East. History shows that the United States has been primarily responsible for the failed state of U.S.Iranian relations. The latest blow was President Donald Trump’s senseless withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in which the Obama administration— joined by all the major countries of the world— agreed to lift onerous sanctions on Iran in return for its agreement to curb enrichment of uranium that is essential to the development of nuclear weapons. Trump thus stupidly turned a verifiable, win-win treaty into a lose-lose proposition. Iran's Governor to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Kazem Gharib Abadi, leaves the Grand Hotel American relations on the day the JCPOA Iran nuclear talks resumed, on May 7, 2021 in Vienna, Austria. The JCPOA was the with Iran got off to a good European-led initiative by which Iran agreed not to pursue a nuclear weapon in exchange for concessions. start following World War President Trump abandoned the deal and intensified sanctions against Iran. II. In 1946, the United States repulsed Soviet efforts to extend influence over Iran. From MUTUAL COMPLIANCE with the 2015 nuclear deal can restore that point forward, however, the U.S. has foolishly positioned itself hope for the deeply troubled relationship between the United States as the enemy of Iranian national aspirations. As is well known, in and Iran. Failure to honor the accord, on the other hand, would 1953 the United States collaborated with the British in covert oppropel the two nations further down a well-worn path of confrontaerations that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the legitimately tion, which has been one of the hallmarks of America’s disastrous elected prime minister and the personification of Iranian nationalHistory’s Shadows, a regular column by contributing editor Walter ism. For the next 25 years, the U.S. bolstered the reactionary L. Hixson, seeks to place various aspects of Middle East politics and regime of the Shah Reza Pahlavi, who brutally repressed the Irandiplomacy in historical perspective. Hixson is the author of archiian people while becoming the world’s largest purchaser of U.S. tects of Repression: how israel and its lobby put Racism, Violence and injustice at the Center of us Middle east policy and military equipment. israel’s armor: the israel lobby and the first generation of the Determined to access Middle East oil and to line up allies in the palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), global Cold War, the United States was oblivious to the gathering along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a storm in Iran. With national security elites (and not just President professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished Jimmy Carter) naively depicting Iran as an “island of stability,” Amerprofessor. 28

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icans were wholly unprepared when the blowback drove the Shah from power as Iranians rallied behind Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1979 revolution. The subsequent humiliation of the United States in the 444-day hostage crisis cemented the hostilities that have plagued the two nations ever since. While the United States shrewdly ushered Germany and Japan back into the global system following World War II, relations with Iran have remained hostile, much like relations with Cuba since 1960. Along the same lines, it took a full generation for the United States to forgive Vietnam for successfully fending off U.S. aggression in Indochina. Today the two nations are virtual strategic partners intent on containing China. As with the U.S. Cuban policy, which Obama also attempted to transform— prompting yet another reactionary reversal by Trump—the United States has clung to a relentlessly confrontational approach. The rigid U.S. policy simplistically reduces Iran to the status of a radical “ter-

rorist” regime foreclosing all possibilities of mutual understanding. From 1997-2005, Mohammad Khatami, an inspirational reformer, tried to take Iran down a more pragmatic, post-Khomeini path, including outreach for better relations with the United States, but neither Presidents Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush responded positively. The latter shunned Iran even after Iranians conducted candlelight vigils and other overt displays of sympathy with the United States following the September 11, 2001 attacks and provided intelligence on al-Qaeda to the U.S. Bush then added insult to injury by linking Iran with its wartime enemy Iraq and the North Korean dictatorship as part of a fictive “axis of evil.” Rather than encouraging the pragmatic reformer in Khatami, U.S. policy instead facilitated the right-wing reaction that ensued from 2005-2013 under a crass provincial politician in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran is the preeminent Shi’a Islamic nation in the world and the second largest

country in both area and population in the Middle East. A hard-nosed but mature and businesslike relationship could go a long way toward transforming the reckless and failed American policy that has prevailed in the region for decades. Apartheid Israel and its lobby will be opposed, of course, to any rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran. Israel and the lobby would prefer to see the United States at war with Iran. That belligerence must be overcome. Obama got the relationship back on track with the JCPOA and it is now up to his former vice president, Joe Biden, to see through the reassertion of compliance. As historian John Ghazvinian points out in his magisterial history of U.S.-Iranian relations (see a review of the book on page 66 of this issue), the “current state of antagonism between Iran and America is wholly unnecessary.” Forging a working relationship with Iran could be a turning point in a much-needed transformation toward a more realistic American foreign policy in the Middle East. ■

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Congress Watch

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Continues to Draw Congressional Attention

By Shirl McArthur

PHOTO COURTESY C-SPAN

Lindsey Graham (RSC), both of whom also opposed the JCPOA when it was originally signed during the Obama administration. In further opposition to returning to the JCPOA, a House letter was sent March 11 and signed by 24 representatives, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Republican, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX). It urges improvements to the JCPOA rather than resolving all issues with Iran. (McCaul did not Rep. Rashida Tlaib, on the floor of the House of Representatives on May 13, said that reading official U.S. sign the Waltz/Brown statements, one “would hardly know that Palestinians existed.” There has been no recognition of home demo- letter.) On April 6, four litions or evictions, the detaining of children or the sustained harassment of worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque. senators, led by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), signed a letter to Biden opposing “any attempt to return to the failed” PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN’S call for returning to the Joint JCPOA. Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) continues to draw conPositively, on April 13, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Chris Murphy gressional attention, with Republicans and some Democrats op(D-CT) led 27 senators in signing a letter to Biden saying that one posing a return to the agreement. Most of the action has been in of his “early pressing national security priorities should be to return the form of congressional letters to Biden or Secretary of State to the JCPOA to address the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear proAntony Blinken and, after AIPAC’s pressure, most have opposed gram.” returning to the agreement. Most of the previously described bills and resolutions concerning Of the negative letters, the most supported one, sent March 9 and the agreement have received little support. Even S. 434, the “Iran likely drafted by AIPAC, was signed by 140 representatives of both Diplomacy” bill seeking a diplomatic resolution to Iran’s nuclear proparties, led by Reps. Michael Waltz (R-FL) and Anthony Brown (Dgram, introduced in February by Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), still MD). In promoting the unrealistic position that any agreement with has only 10 cosponsors. It says that, after both Iran and the U.S. Iran must resolve all issues between the two countries, the motive return to full compliance with their commitments under the JCPOA, behind the letter was probably to scuttle any chance of an agreethe U.S. should lead international efforts to deal with other aspects ment, a position remarkably similar to that of Israeli Prime Minister of Iran’s behavior. Binyamin Netanyahu. A Senate letter adopting a similar maximalist Gaining support were the bills introduced in the House and Senate position, also strongly pushed by AIPAC, was sent March 25 and “to provide for congressional review of actions to terminate or waive signed by 43 senators, led by Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and sanctions imposed with respect to Iran.” S. 488, introduced in February by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), now has 34 cosponsors, and H.R. Shirl McArthur is a retired foreign service officer. He lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. 1699, introduced in March by McCaul, has 50 cosponsors. On April 30

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PHOTO COURTESY NASR NAWAJAA/ B’TSELEM

duced H.R. 2445 “to 19, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) prohibit assistance to with 10 cosponsors, introduced S. the West Bank and 1205 to prohibit the use of funds to Gaza that directly rejoin the JCPOA “unless the benefits the Palestinpresident commits to submitting ian Authority.” any successor agreement to the In a rare congresSenate for its advice and consent sional response to the as a treaty,” rather than as an interescalating violence in national agreement. H.R. 1479, inGaza, Jerusalem and troduced in March by Rep. Andy the West Bank and the Barr (R-KY), with a provision simiwanton civilian death, lar to S. 1205, now has six cosponon May 13, the floor of sors. The non-binding H.Res. 214, ex- Israeli forces arrested five Palestinian children picking flowers in the West the House of Representatives called a pressing the sense of the House Bank on March 10. “special order hour.” It “that Iran must cease enriching was organized by Rep. Mark Pocan (Duranium to 20 percent purity and abandon funds are not used by the government of WI), former co-chair of the Congressional its pursuit of a nuclear weapon,” introduced Israel to support the military detention of Progressive Caucus, who said, “Today, in March by Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), now Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, my colleagues and I stood up because no has 11 cosponsors. appropriation and destruction of Palestinone should suffer the loss of life, liberty, The previously described Iran sanctions ian property, and forcible transfer of civilor dignity that the Palestinian people have bills have made little progress, but two new ians in the West Bank, or further annexasuffered. If you are neutral in situations of ones were introduced. The one gaining the tion of Palestinian land in violation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the most support is H.R. 2718, introduced April international law.” It has 24 cosponsors. oppression. 21 by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), “to impose The bill is supported by over 70 human He was joined by Reps. Ilhan Omar (Dadditional sanctions with respect to Iran and rights organizations, but Israel’s members MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressmodify other existing sanctions with respect of Congress are outraged that anyone ley (D-MA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Dto Iran.” It has 109 cosponsors, all Repubshould think to condition or possibly limit NY), Cori Bush (D-MO), who called for licans. Also, on March 19, Rep. Joe Wilson U.S. aid to Israel. In fact, back in March, a recognition of Palestinian rights, cessation (R-SC) and two cosponsors introduced key AIPAC lobbying agenda item was to of the violence, and the conditioning of U.S. H.R. 2117 “to require the president to make strongly support continuing U.S. aid to military aid to Israel. Rep. Betty McCollum a determination with respect to the applicaIsrael at current levels and oppose any conof Minnesota rose to criticize the assault tion of sanctions with respect to” certain ditions. The result of AIPAC’s pressure was on Gaza, as did Reps. André Carson of InIranian officials. the April 22 letter to House Appropriations diana, Chuy Garcia of Illinois and Joaquin On March 19, Rep. Gregory Steube (RCommittee leaders signed by 330 RepreCastro of Texas. FL) and two cosponsors introduced H.R. sentatives, led by Reps. Ted Deutch (D-FL) 2113 “to impose sanctions with respect to and McCaul, saying that “reducing funding ANOTHER BILL INTRODUCED TO Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada” (an Iranianor adding conditions on security assistance REPEAL AUTHORIZATIONS FOR backed militia operating in Iraq). would be detrimental to Israel’s ability to USE OF MILITARY FORCE defend itself.” MCCOLLUM INTRODUCES THE For the past few congresses, Israel’s On March 18, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) “PALESTINIAN CHILDREN AND staunch congressional supporters have inand seven cosponsors introduced H.R. FAMILIES” BILL troduced measures targeting Palestinian 2014 “to repeal certain outdated authorizaeducational materials, and this Congress tions for the use of military force” (AUMF). Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) introduced is no exception. On April 5, Rep. Brad The bill would repeal the AUMFs of 1957 bills in previous congresses “Promoting Sherman (D-CA) with four cosponsors in(a cold war relic), 1991 (the Gulf War), and Human Rights for Palestinian Children troduced H.R. 2374, the “Peace and Toler2002 (Iraq). Also, the two bills introduced in Living Under Israeli Military Occupation.” ance in Palestinian Education” bill. It would January by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), H.R. For the 117th Congress she went further. “require the Secretary of State to submit 255 and H.R. 256, to repeal the AUMFs On April 15, she introduced H.R. 2590, the annual reports reviewing the educational against al-Qaeda of 2001 and against Iraq “Palestinian Children and Families” bill, “to material used by the Palestinian Authority.” of 2002, continue to gain support. H.R. 255 promote and protect the human rights of On April 12, Rep. Marjorie Taylor has 58 cosponsors and H.R. 256 has 134 Palestinians living under Israeli military ocGreene (R-GA) and six cosponsors introcosponsors. cupation and to ensure that U.S. taxpayer

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S.J. Res. 10, introduced in March by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), to repeal the AUMFs of 1991 and 2002 now has 16 cosponsors. H.J. Res. 29, “to amend the War Powers Resolution, introduced in March by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), now has 19 cosponsors. As DeFazio said in a press release, this legislation “clarifies under the Constitution that any president must seek congressional authorization prior to sending U.S. forces into hostilities, and sets out strict parameters for any future AUMF that Congress might consider.” On March 19, Sherman introduced H.R. 2108 “to prohibit the use of federal funds in contravention of the War Powers Resolution.” It has 32 cosponsors. The previously described H.R. 1457, introduced in March by Rep. James Himes (D-CT), would simply prohibit funds “for the U.S. Armed Forces to be obligated or expended for introduction of U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities,” now has four cosponsors.

HOUSE PASSES “NO BAN” BILL

On April 21, the House passed H.R. 1333, introduced Feb. 25 by Rep. Judy Chu (D-

CA), the “National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants” (NO BAN) bill, by a vote of 218-208. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) was the only Republican voting aye. The measure is a direct response to the Muslim ban enacted under the Trump administration. It seeks to ban immigration decisions on the basis of religion and would prevent any future president from enacting something like the Muslim ban by placing appropriate checks on the president’s authority in that area. When passed it had 159 cosponsors, all Democrats.

NEW BILLS REACT TO REPORTS THAT SAUDI ARABIA SEEKS WMD

The previously described measures, introduced following the release of the Director of National Intelligence report on the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, have gained no further support. However new anti-Saudi bills were introduced. Following press reports that Saudi Arabia has acquired ballistic missiles and nuclear infrastructure and technology from China, identical bills were introduced in the (Advertisement)

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

House and Senate “to counter Saudi Arabia’s possible pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.” On April 14, Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Ted Lieu (DCA) introduced H.R. 2506, and on April 15 Sens. Markey and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced S. 1146. Similarly, on April 15, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) with two cosponsors, introduced S. 1182 “to ensure that sales of F-35 aircraft do not compromise the qualitative military edge of the U.S. or Israel.”

LIBYA STABILIZATION BILLS MAKE LIMITED PROGRESS

The identical “Libya Stabilization” bills introduced in February in the House and Senate, “to advance a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Libya and support the people of Libya,” have made some progress. H.R. 1228, introduced by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) now has 12 cosponsors and was ordered to be reported out to the full House by the Foreign Affairs Committee. But S. 379, introduced by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), still has only three cosponsors. ■

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Christianity in the Middle East

PHOTO BY DOMINIKA ZARZYCKA/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

Is Religion Behind the Turmoil in the Middle East? By Rev. Alex Awad

Palestinian children play in the courtyard of a kindergarten run by the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Jericho, West Bank on April 1, 2019. Christian communities in Palestine run their own religious schools and are known for their quality. The children who attend these schools are always a mixture of various Christian denominations and Muslim.

“What do you say to the people who believe that religion is behind much of the turmoil in the Middle East?” I was a speaker at the April 2021 “End U.S. Support for Israeli Apartheid?” conference and this was the final question asked by an attendee. I gave a quick and short reply since my time was almost up. However, I pondered the question in the days after the conference and it occurred to me that even a thick book focused solely on this subject might fail to answer this question adequately. What I propose to do, in this short exposé, is to reflect on the negative and positive influences of religion that I experienced growing up in Palestine. I was born in Jerusalem where followers of the three major monotheistic religions have lived—and unfortunately, fought—together for centuries. There is a history of bloody religious conflicts in Jerusalem dating back thousands of years. The city was conquered

Rev. Dr. Alex Awad is a retired United Methodist Missionary. He and his wife, Brenda, served in Jerusalem and in Bethlehem for more than 25 years. Rev. Awad served as pastor of East Jerusalem Baptist Church, dean of students at Bethlehem Bible College, and director of the Shepherd Society. Awad has written two books, Through the Eyes of the Victims and Palestinian Memories. Rev. Awad is a member of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP). JUNE/JULY 2021

and destroyed more than 20 times and empire and religion were the driving forces behind many of these conquests. Two years after I was born, Jerusalem was invaded by Zionists who were partly inspired by their Jewish identity, faith and history and partly by their colonial ambitions. The invasion resulted in the first Arab-Israeli war. My father was shot and killed, and I became a refugee along with my family. Attacks on my homeland continue to be carried out by secular Zionist leaders, religious Zionist leaders, and Christian Zionist leaders. All three groups have used religion to validate the theft of Palestine. All three have used passages from the Bible to justify their crimes. The invasion of my homeland clearly illustrates how religion has been and continues to be used to create turmoil and tension between people. Zionists are not alone in using religion to achieve their political goals. The history of Christianity is littered with massacres, genocides and atrocities against Jews, Muslims and others. Muslims can also look at the history of Islam and realize that they too initiated violent wars and massacres against Jews and Christians, under the pretext of defending God and religion. Scanning through the history of the three monotheistic religions, I could not help but affirm to the abovementioned questioner, “Yes, no doubt! Religion has indeed been a big part of the problem.” However, this is not the full story and cannot

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be the stand-alone answer to the question. After we became refugees, my mother, who now had to work to feed and shelter seven children on her own, placed us in boarding schools. One of my sisters and I were placed in Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi, a school which was established in 1948 by a Muslim philanthropist by the name of Hind al Husseini. Other siblings attended Dar el Awlad, which was also established in 1948 by a Christian philanthropist, Katy Antonius, wife of the famous author George Habib Antonius, who in 1938 wrote, The Arab Awakening. Both women were inspired by their faith in God to care for orphans of the first ArabIsraeli war. My remaining siblings ended up attending Greek Orthodox, Anglican, Armenian and Lutheran schools. All these boarding schools and orphanages accepted both Muslim and Christian children and treated them with equality while providing them with quality education. These boarding schools could not have existed or survived without the support of Islamic and Christian individuals and organizations. When I was a child in boarding school, the most exciting Christmas gift that I received was a towel! It turned out that wrapped inside the towel were a few surprises, such as a little toy car, a bar of soap, a tube of toothpaste with a toothbrush, a puzzle and other small but exciting items. At that time, I had no idea where these gifts came from. When I became the principal of Hope Secondary School near Bethlehem many years later, I learned that these gifts had been assembled and sent by Mennonite farmers who lived in the U.S. and in Canada. In addition, beautiful, artistic and comfortable quilts, which were sewn and contributed by Mennonites, Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and other Christians, gave warmth and security to thousands of refugee girls and boys. As the principal of Hope Secondary School, which was established by the Mennonites, I also learned that the school depended on the aid it received from Christian organizations such as World Vision, Mennonite Central Committee, Catholic Relief Services, Bible Lands Society, Christian Aid and others. Besides that, when I was a child growing up in 34

Jerusalem, most schools and hospitals were largely funded by Christians but also by various Islamic charities. Military occupation causes poverty, and poverty causes people to seek help for their families. When I served at Bethlehem Bible College, people would come to the college and ask for food and medicine. My brother Bishara, who was the director of the college, created a special fund he used to meet emergency needs of both Muslim and Christian families. The number of those who knocked at our college’s door increased, so we eventually started the Shepherd Society.

These schools could not have survived without the support of religious organizations.

The Shepherd Society provided aid to thousands in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. All the funds we distributed to the needy came from Christian organizations around the world. They gave generously without any demands on us as an organization or any demands on the recipients. When the leaders of the college heard about the conditions of Iraqi and Syrian refugees in the Jordanian cities of Amman and Mafraq, we started sending teams of students with money and supplies to minister to the refugees there. In one of my visits to Mafraq, with one of the teams, I was astonished at the number of Christian charities that had also arrived in Mafraq to aid the refugees. Muslim charities were there too, and Messianic Jewish congregations in Israel made generous contributions to help Iraqi and Syrian refugees. The examples I use above aim at illustrating the “other” face of religion, which has concurrently played out as a theme throughout my life. One of the more violent courses that I taught at college was Christian History. I kept telling my bewildered students that what they discover through the study of Christianity does not reveal the whole story. Daily, millions of acts of kindness are carried out in the name of Christ to feed the hungry,

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heal the sick or provide an education to the underprivileged, and most of these acts do not get reported in major media outlets and do not fill chapters in history books. However, when a preacher is caught committing a heinous crime, his or her wrongdoing makes it on air and in print for all to see. With only a few exceptions, church history is a focus on the ugly acts of political and religious leaders, who acted contrary to the teachings of their respective religions. Religion is not the problem but rather the abuse of religion. Ironically, according to the Gospels, it was not the harlots, thieves and drunkards who conspired to crucify Jesus but rather it was the religious leaders who were using their status and political power to oppress the poor and cling to a procedural form of religion. There are folks today who use religion to inflict pain on others and there are folks who are inspired by their religions to ease the pain of humanity. Which of the two will triumph in having the greatest impact on humanity? The popular parable by an unknown author may help provide the answer: An old Cherokee Indian chief was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he told the young boy, “a fight between two wolves. The Dark one is evil— he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.” He continued, “The Light wolf is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. The same fight is going on inside you grandson…and inside of every other person on the face of this earth.” The grandson pondered this for a moment and then asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee smiled and simply said, “The one you feed.” The Dark Wolf of religion that is within us, will savagely inflict pain on humanity if we continue to feed it a diet of greed, racism, xenophobia, and violence. But we can choose to feed and nourish the Light Wolf of religion—which is also within us—with acts of love, mercy, truth, faith and compassion. Will religion continue to fan the flame of hate and violence in the Middle East? That depends on us! ■ JUNE/JULY 2021

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Turkey Trims Its Sails

Talking Turkey By Jonathan Gorvett

Galata Bridge remains quietly empty on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, during the three-week lockdown to stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Istanbul, Turkey on May 13, 2021. THE WAVE of “recalibration” or “re-adjustment” currently sweeping the Middle East has by no means passed Turkey by but rather Ankara has recently taken a starring role in all this reconciliation. A stark demonstration of realpolitik has indeed now been underway since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lost his close connection to the White House, with the exit of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Since then, Erdogan has had to deal with the much more hostile President Joe Biden, reinforced by Biden’s April 24 recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Turkey still denies that this took place—although Erdogan has acknowledged that “atrocities” were carried out. When Biden became the first U.S. president in history to describe those horrors as a “genocide,” it underscored for Ankara how few friends it currently has and its

Jonathan Gorvett is a free-lance writer specializing on European and Middle Eastern affairs. JUNE/JULY 2021

need to make nice with old adversaries. Of these, there are many. They range from the Israelis, whom Erdogan once described as “genocidal”—a hostility he has recently doubled down on—to the Egyptian president he once derided as a “tyrant.” Saudi Arabia, too, has also recently been offered the hand of friendship, after years of vitriol from Ankara toward Riyadh. This rose to a peak after the brutal murder of journalist and activist Jamal Khashoggi in the Kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in 2018. Yet now that winter of discontent is also being replaced by a glorious summer of reconciliation. Two phone calls, in April and May, between Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman were described as “good” by the Turkish president’s chief foreign policy adviser and spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin. He also noted Riyadh’s trial and jailing of eight Saudis for Khashoggi’s murder last year, saying, “Trials have been held…They made a decision, so we respect that decision.”

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Yet, while each radical shift in foreign policy is warmly greeted by the largely pro-government Turkish media, it does, nonetheless, have some negative consequences, particularly for those who once championed Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a force for real regional change.

SOFT POWER

In the first decade of the century, Erdogan’s pro-Islamist AKP government was not only popular with Western liberals— who saw it providing a template for majority-Muslim countries elsewhere—but also around the Middle East. Turkey enjoyed an economic boom at home, while Erdogan also hit out against Israel, and stood as a more independent, Muslim voice for the world. Ankara was also vocal in its support for the “Arab Spring.” According to a Time magazine report from back then, this popular position saw Erdogan “greeted like a rock star” on his arrival at Cairo airport, after the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. When Mubarak’s successor, former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, and his pro-Turkish Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government was subsequently overthrown too, Turkey continued to support the Egyptian opposition, with Istanbul becoming a center for Egyptian exiles. Other oppositionists from around the Arab world also gravitated to Turkey. These included, some years later, the illfated Khashoggi, who had been planning to settle in Istanbul at the time of his murder. Several opposition Arabic-language TV stations also set up in Turkey, broadcasting highly critical material back home. This infuriated the Egyptian regime in particular, which branded the MB a “terrorist” group—leading to allegations from Cairo that Turkey was harboring “terrorists.” Now, however, with Turkey changing course and attempting to reconcile with Egypt and other anti-Arab Spring regimes, 36

the fate of these opposition groups—and their long-stay Turkish visas—has been thrown into doubt. Back in March, Ayman Nour, owner of the Istanbul-based liberal Egyptian TV station El Sharq, told reporters that the Turkish authorities had asked him to “tone down” reports on Egypt. Then, in April, Moataz Matar, a popular politics host on the channel, announced he was going on “indefinite leave” as a result of this change in “tone,” while Muhammad Nasir, from the pro-Islamist Mekameleen channel, also announced a vacation—to last the entire month of Ramadan.

MODUS VIVENDI

In early May, Ankara had refrained from any more drastic steps. Indeed, for both Cairo and Ankara, converging interests elsewhere are stronger factors in play rather than opposition TV channels. “Both sides have decided to set the whole MB issue aside,” Muzaffer Senel, from the Department of Politics and International Relations at Ankara Medipol University, told the Washington Report. Libya is one major reason for this. The conflict there saw the two on opposite sides, yet when fighting reached a stalemate in 2019, after Turkish advances and Egyptian threats of intervention, a breakthrough followed with the formation of a transitional government, supported by both Cairo and Ankara. “Turkey found in Libya that it could make nice with Egypt,” Joost Hiltermann, Middle East director for the International Crisis Group, told the Washington Report, “and Egypt has since felt more relaxed about Turkey. They may not like each other, but they can live with it.” Indeed, Egypt has reciprocated Turkish efforts to establish a new relationship. This started with the release of a number of jailed MB-associated journalists in late April, followed by a two-day meeting between the two countries’ deputy foreign ministers in early May. Their bosses met for the first time since 2013.

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INTERESTS, NOT FRIENDSHIPS

At that meeting, Turkey will also advance its agenda for a reworking of Eastern Mediterranean maritime limits, with Egypt a major littoral nation—and one with large offshore natural gas fields. Cairo had previously formed links with Israel, Greece and Cyprus over exploiting these undersea resources, forming the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), which was formalized in April with its headquarters in Cairo. Turkey wishes to join this, not least because doing so would help fracture what Ankara sees as a hostile coalition against it. Ankara is also quite prepared to offer Egypt a bilateral deal on maritime limits, as it did with the Libyan Government of National Accord in 2019, that would exclude rival Greek and Cypriot claims. Indeed, this was also the carrot Turkey dangled in front of Israel in late 2020—an offer of a large slice of the Eastern Mediterranean, if the Israelis would deal directly with Ankara. That, too, would have been at the expense of the Greek Cypriots—the one group with whom Erdogan seems in no hurry to make friends. That contrasting frostiness was evident in late April, too, when a new round of informal, U.N.-sponsored talks-about-talks on the longstanding Cyprus issue collapsed in Geneva after just two days. Turkey, and its Turkish Cypriot ally, pushed for the formal division of the island, de facto divided since the Turkish invasion of 1974. The Greek Cypriots—and every other nation, along with the U.N. and European Union—remain committed to reuniting the island in a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. Given the distance between these positions, the talks were never likely to get far, with a promise to meet again in a few months’ time the best the U.N. could extract. Until Ankara has the results in from its current attempts to win friends and influence people, however, it seems unlikely that any future meeting will produce any different result. ■ JUNE/JULY 2021

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Susan Abulhawa: Introduction to Israeli Apartheid

Introduction to Israeli Apartheid By Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa is an acclaimed Palestinian-American poet and writer. She is the author of the international bestselling novel Mornings in Jenin, and her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, was translated in 19 languages before its release. Her latest novel, Against the Loveless World, is a Palestine Book Awards winner. She is also an activist, and founded Playgrounds for Palestine, an NGO upholding the right of Palestinian children to play.

South Africa had something called Pass Laws, which restricted the movements of indigenous South Africans, generally confining them to restricted Bantustans unless they had a passbook, which was given to those who served as cheap labor for the ruling white minority. Israel has a far more elaborate mechanism that restricts the movement of people and goods—hundreds of checkpoints making life hell for Palestinian individuals trying to get from one Palestinian town to another Palestinian town, and the near impossibility to enter the Dakhil, the part of Palestine stolen from us in 1948 by European Zionists. Some Palestinians are given permits, or passbooks if you will, to enter these 1948 territories as cheap labor. Often, if they overstay overnight, beyond their permit allotment, they’re imprisoned. The daily commute alone is a horror show of humiliation and abuse for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian laborers. The recent short film by Farah Nabulsi, “The Present,” which just won the BAFTA award and is nominated for an Oscar, touches briefly on one day laborer’s life. In Gaza, where two million human beings are locked up in a tiny enclave, Israel prevents students from studying at universities abroad, prevents the sick from seeking medical care outside Gaza, prevents anyone from taking a simple vacation. There are families who have not seen their children, parents or siblings in decades, even though they’re only a few miles away from one another, because Israel has made Gaza a giant prison. Apartheid South Africa instituted anti-miscegenation laws to WASHINGTON REPORT YOUTUBE CHANNEL

IT’S NICE TO BE BACK with the Washington Report and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. I’m just going to give a brief overview of apartheid and a topline comparison between South African and Israeli apartheid systems. The word “apartheid” comes from the Dutch Afrikaans language. It means separateness. It was a white supremacist ideology conceived by the descendants of Dutch colonists in South Africa. Although the concept of apartheid emerged in the early 1930s, it wasn’t formalized as a political, social and legal reality until 1948—ironically, the same year that Israel was created, formalizing Zionism, another face of white supremacy, as a political, social and legal reality in Palestine. South Africa’s Nationalist Party implemented apartheid through such things as a color bar, a hierarchal social stratification system based on race. Israel does not have a color bar, but they do have color-coded license plates and color-coded ID cards that identify one’s religion, which has been the basis of their own social, political and legal stratification of human beings living there.

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annual ConferenCe: end u.S. SuPPort for iSraeli aPartheid?

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prevent racial interOn the other marriage. Israel hand, Israel has was clever not to been actively workexplicitly pass such ing to get rid of a law, but they in efPalestinians, slowly fect made it illegal replacing us with for Jews to marry imported Jews from non-Jews. They acaround the world. complished this by There is nowhere requiring all marfor Palestinians to riages to be perbe in Palestine formed by religious where their bodies, officials, where rabspirits and dignity binical courts not are not molested in only strictly forbid some way by Israeli interreligious marsoldiers or paramiliriage, but also have tary settlers. a bloodline requireThe home demoment to determine if People demonstrate in solidarity with Palestinians, to break the silence against Israel’s ethnic litions; the daily one is Jewish cleansing, on the anniversary of the nakba, on May 15, 2021 in Rome, Italy. theft of land, of enough to even water and property; marry another Jew the uprooting, burnby the Orthodox Jewish rabbinical court. ing and cutting of fruit-bearing trees; the night raids; the sysA Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who marries a Palestintematic terrorizing of children—a matter of military policy to ian from the West Bank or Gaza cannot bring their spouse to ensure Palestinians grow up fearing Israelis; the raiding, tear live with them. In Jerusalem, Palestinians who do not have citigassing, closing, restricting and bombing of schools to igzenship but residency status in Israel likewise cannot live with norize our children through trauma. their spouses in Jerusalem. They’re frequently forced to choose Not even in their most depraved hour did white South between keeping their families whole or losing their right to live Africans bomb black South Africans with heavy war death main their own Jerusalem homes or being near their extended chines—planes, helicopters and tanks. Not in their most defamilies—their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. praved hour did they calculate the calories allowed into BanIsrael’s obsession with religious purity and the majority, tustans to keep millions of human beings on the edge of starwhich is not unlike the Nazi obsession with racial purity, is exvation. Not in their most depraved hour did they bomb and depressed in a multitude of absurd laws that constantly fret over stroy water infrastructure, places of worship, sewage treatthe so-called “demographic threat” (their fear of Palestinian bament plants, electrical grids, schools, playgrounds or hospitals bies), and in rules that delve into the minutiae of Jewish bloodin order to break and destroy whole populations. lines and so-called Jewish DNA (which refers to a genetically We use the analogy of apartheid because it fits and it has a identifiable subset of European society, called Ashkenazi historic resonance. It is understood and appropriately repudiJews, which does not apply to Jews of other regional origins). ated. But Israel is worse both qualitatively, as I’ve just said, These are just some of the similarities between apartheid and quantitatively, as Israeli apartheid has endured 30 years South Africa and apartheid Israel which are also similar to and counting, longer than apartheid in South Africa. Nazi Nuremberg and Jim Crow southern laws. I appreciate that B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights orBut there are differences. There are big and important difganization, finally applied the word “apartheid” to their society. ferences. The situation in Israel is much worse than it was in But I’d like to point out that this is not something that just crept South Africa. So said the chairman of the ANC, Baleka up on them. It is not the result of increasingly right-wing govMbete; Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu; Mandla Mandela, Nelernments. It is not because of Netanyahu or Trump. It is simson Mandela’s grandson; and many other notable South ply the condition of Israeli rule since they first conquered Africans who fought apartheid. Palestine, expelling 80 percent of the indigenous population, In South Africa, Bantustans, as horrendous as they were, putting those remaining under military rule for 18 years while were sustained with government resources to maintain a pool they steal everything they could get their hands on, and instiof cheap labor. Within these enclaves, black South Africans tuting a legal system that’s designed to keep those Palestinicould move freely amongst themselves. They could breathe a ans as inferiors. little. Rarely did either the police or the military go into their Palestinians have always spoken of this injustice. We’ve alcommunities. ways decried it since Zionism first arrived on our shores with 38

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Susan Abulhawa: Introduction to Israeli Apartheid

guns. I’m glad our Israeli counterparts have caught up. They are seven decades late, but they’ve arrived. And we’re glad for it.

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population for centuries in the land. The law also establishes “Jewish settlements as a national value,” and mandates state resources for the exIsrael’s Laws are pansion of illegal Used to Jewish-only colonies built on Oppress confiscated PalesYears ago I gave a tinian land. keynote talk at the The Amendfirst North American ment to the CitiBDS conference, zenship Law stipuwhich was held at lates that an Israeli the University of citizen who marries Penn. For that talk, Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian man during a protest against the prevention of Palestinian a Palestinian canI researched some farmers from ploughing their lands seized by Jewish settlers, in the village of Aqraba, east of not live as a couple of Israel’s laws and Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on January 13, 2021. in Israel with his or military orders that her spouse. A Palhave been used to oppress and break Palestinians. I’m going estinian spouse can neither gain citizenship nor residency. to begin my closing by reading a few of these laws. The first Ninety-three percent of the land, the vast majority of part are laws within Israel that apply to Israeli or Palestinian which was confiscated from Palestinian owners after 1948, citizens of Israel. can only be owned by Jewish agencies for the benefit of Section 5 in the Law of Political Parties and Section 7A Jews only. One of these agencies is the Jewish National of the Basic Law stipulates that any party platform that calls Fund, which, in its charter, forbids the sale or lease of land for full and complete equality between Jews and non-Jews to non-Jews. can be disqualified from any political post. The law demands The Specified Goods Tax and Luxury Tax Law, Article that Palestinian citizens may not challenge the state’s Zion26, authorizes lower import taxes for Jewish citizens of Isist identity. rael compared to non-Jewish citizens of Israel. The Law of Return states that every Jew has the right to The National Planning and Building Law of ‘65, through become a citizen no matter where they come from, while the various zoning laws, freezes the growth of existing Palestinindigenous non-Jewish inhabitants who were expelled in ian villages while providing for the expansion of Jewish set1948 and ‘67 are expressly barred from returning to their tlements and the creation of new ones. The law also reclashomes. sifies a large portion of established ancient Palestinian vilThe Nakba Law penalizes any institution that commemolages as “unrecognized” and therefore non-existent, which rates or publicly mourns the expulsion of the native Palestinallows the state to cut off water and electricity as well as to ian population. simply appropriate the property. The Anti-Boycott Law provides that anyone calling for Appropriations are carried out under the Requisitions the boycott of Israel or its illegal settlements can be sued by Law, which allows a competent authority to requisition the the boycott’s targets without having to prove that they susland, called a “land requisition order,” so that only he may tained damage. Then the court will decide how much com“use and exploit” the land as he sees fit. This applies to pensation is to be paid. “home requisition orders” as well, whereby another “compeThe Admission Committees Law formally allows neightent authority” who can “order the occupier of a house to borhood screening committees to prevent non-Jewish citisurrender the house to the control of a person specified in zens from living in Jewish communities that control over 81 the order for residential purposes or for any other use as percent of the territory in Israel. may be prescribed in the order.” The Nation-State Law states that “the right to exercise In the education sector within Israel, the state spends self-determination” is “unique to the Jewish people,” relegat$192 per year per non-Jewish student, compared to $1,100 ing indigenous Palestinian Christians and Muslims as subper Jewish student. jects. This law establishes Hebrew as the official language, A Mosque Law has been debated off and on to prohibit downgrading Arabic, the language spoken by the indigenous the broadcasting of the Muslim call to prayer, which has June/July 2021

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been sounding Military Order over that land since 128 gives the Israeli the dawn of Islam. military the right to Also, for the first take over any Paltime in the history estinian business of Islam and the which is not open history of Christianduring the regular ity, Palestinian business hours. Muslims and ChrisMilitary Orders tians in the West 138 and 134 forbid Bank and Gaza are Palestinians from opconsistently denied erating tractors or access to their holy other heavy farm maplaces in Jeru chinery on their land. salem, even on the Military Order 93 high holy days of gives all Palestinian Eid, Christmas and Israeli security forces beat AFP photographer Ahmed Gharabli (r) during his coverage of i n s u r a n c e b u s i Easter Sunday. In clashes between Muslim worshippers and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa nesses to the Israeli fact, since Israel Mosque compound, on May 21, 2021. insurance syndicate. took the West Bank, the Christian population has declined And Military Order 1015 requires Palestinians to get milifrom 20,000 in 1967 to less than 7,500 today. tary permission to plant and grow fruit trees. This permit expires every year. Thousands of Arbitrary Military Orders Again, this is just a sampling of Israel’s legal infrastrucPalestinians who live in the West Bank are subject to military ture, which is multi-tiered to apply to individuals based on orders which are arbitrarily issued by a military commander their religion and place of residence. and which immediately become law. Here are some examToday we’ll hear from experts who will expand our underples of these military orders, of which there are literally thoustanding of Israeli apartheid to explain why and how it has sands. endured and avoided scrutiny, while apartheid in South Military Order 1229 authorizes Israel to hold Palestinians Africa was brought to its knees. in administrative detention for up to six months without I would like to urge everyone listening to become involved charge or trial. Six-month detentions can be renewed indefiin putting an end to this monumental injustice. Israel’s 74nitely, without charge or trial. year assault on Palestinians is an affront to humanity. It conMilitary Orders 329 and 1650 effectively prevent Palestinues in part because the United States funds it. tinians from being anywhere in the West Bank without a speI’d like to point out that Betty McCollum has reintroduced a cific permit to be there, making it a criminal offense to go bill to condition aid to Israel on Israeli adherence to human from one Palestinian town to another. rights standards, in particular, that no U.S. tax dollars be Military Orders 92 and 158 give the Israeli military conused to imprison and torture Palestinian children. This is a trol of all water resources in the West Bank, which belong to minimal recognition of Palestinian humanity, though it is Palestinians in the first place. Israel then allows the Palessadly the only such bill to be introduced. I urge everyone listinians access to only a fraction of the shared water retening to call and write your representative to co-sponsor sources, while unlawful Israeli settlements receive virtually and support this bill, because it lays the groundwork upon unlimited supplies, creating a reality of green lawns and which all of us can build a little compassion and justice into swimming pools for Jewish settlers and a parched life for the U.S. political system when it comes to Palestine. Palestinians, whose access to water according to the World Beyond that, I encourage all of you to support Palestinian Health Organization does not meet the minimum requireendeavors. Read our books, watch our films, engage in our ments for basic human needs. Furthermore, that fraction of institutions, buy our products, and lobby your lawmakers. confiscated Palestinian water is sold to Palestinians at 300 For our part, Palestinians will never walk away from this percent more than what it costs Jewish settlers in the same struggle. Never. In the words of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, one of the area. early Zionist forefathers, he said, “They”—Palestinians— Military Orders 811 and 847 allow Jews to purchase land ”look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true from unwilling Palestinian sellers by using “power of attorfavor the Aztecs looked upon Mexico or any Sioux looked ney.” upon his prairie. Palestine will remain for the Palestinians Military Order 25 forbids public inspection of land transnot a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of actions. their own national existence.” ■ 40

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Zaha Hassan: From an Israel-Centric to a Rights-Based Approach

From an Israel-Centric to a Rights-Based Approach By Zaha Hassan

Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focus is on Palestine-Israel peace, the use of international legal mechanisms by political movements, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. Previously, she was the coordinator and senior legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for U.N. membership, and was a member of the Palestinian delegation to Quartet-sponsored exploratory talks between 2011 and 2012. She regularly participates in track II peace efforts and is a contributor to The Hill and Haaretz. Her commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, Salon, Al Jazeera English, CNN and others.

ment. Likewise, there’s no one-state solution that offers equal rights for all that is likely to come in the next few years. However, the rights and security of Israelis and Palestinians should not be held hostage to a diplomatic process that has gone nowhere and that is indefinitely offline. So, what went wrong with the U.S. engagement in the last 30 years of peacemaking? Mainly, what we say in the paper is, much of what has been preventing an end of occupation and a negotiated comprehensive agreement has been this warped incentive structure that the U.S. engagement in the peace process has created. To put this in context, I want to draw attention to Article 47 in the Fourth Geneva Convention. It has a basic truth for thinking about occupied people on occupied territories. It says: “Protected persons who are in occupied territories shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of this humanitarian law convention by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the occupying power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or in part of the occupied territory.” Basically, this prohibition recognizes that you can’t sign a peace agreement if your hands are shackled. That is not rocket science—it’s common sense. So, what has U.S. engagement been? The idea behind U.S. engagement for Palestinians, and why Palestinians wanted the U.S. involved, was because they believe only the WASHINGTON REPORT YOUTUBE CHANNEL

THANK YOU TO THE Washington Report and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy for inviting me today to share the new policy paper, “Breaking the Israel Palestine Status Quo.” This paper was prepared by a group of former policymakers who worked directly on the Israel-Palestine file, together with experts and various think tanks, advocacy organizations that work on IsraelPalestine peace, human rights groups and thought leaders. They came together to assess what U.S. engagement has been in the region and to re-imagine that engagement. The recommendations [of the paper] are not just to the Biden administration. They are also for our future administrations because we recognize, in the paper, that we need to be focused on the long game. We were not interested in working on short term fixes or economic peace sort of palliatives. There is no two-state solution open for the taking, at the mo-

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ANNUAL CONFERENCE: END U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAELI APARTHEID?

CHART COURTESY “BREAKING THE ISRAEL PALESTINE STATUS QUO.”

U.S. can deliver Istive body of the rael. On the flipside, Palestinians, the the Israelis wanted PLO, a terrorist orthe U.S. involved to ganization. And monopolize the methen in 1990, when diator role, in order there was talk of to elbow out others, Palestine becoming like the U.N. and a member state of the EU, and to rethe U.N., Congress move international passed a law to cut law as the basis for funds to the U.N. an agreement. should it extend As a result, the membership status peace process has to Palestine. During been one in which, final status talks over time, the U.S. under the Olso has suspended refframework in 1995, erence to rights, Congress decided and international The U.S. has traditionally provided a third of UNRWA’s budget, but the Trump administra- to legislate that law, and the para- tion cut off funds completely. Jerusalem is the meters for peace. capital of Israel and Israel has leverthe U.S. Embassy aged its participation and negotiations on the condition that must move there by 1999—the date when the Oslo talks were the U.S. back off demands around freezing settlements and scheduled to produce a comprehensive agreement. provide Israel with political cover in the U.N. and in other fora Over this same time period, the changing maps show how to prevent accountability for violations of the law. the area allotted for the Palestinians has been shrinking, too. The U.S. relationship with Palestinians has been condiFrom the promise of Oslo—the West Bank and Gaza with a tioned on not accessing mechanisms to reinforce the twoterritorial link, the 2000 Clinton proposal with adjusted parastate solution through, for example, obtaining full U.N. memmeters, to the 2020 Trump plan, rendered a Frankenstein bership or accessing the mechanisms for accountability, like monster of a territorial map. the International Criminal Court. And, finally, no democratic Under Trump in particular, the U.S. position on refugees governance if that means allowing parties who oppose the also took a turn and the U.S. started to leverage its assistance Oslo peace process and recognition of Israel to be included in to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). a Palestinian government. The U.S. had traditionally provided a third of UNRWA’s budget The result has been predictable given these conditions. but, after initially cutting it by two-thirds, the Trump administraWhile settlements were expanding during the Oslo period, tion cut it off completely leaving the organization strapped and from 1993 onward, the U.S. overused its veto power at the in trouble. U.N. Security Council preventing all but one resolution conIt is still in trouble despite the fact that the Biden administrademning Israeli land confiscations and settlement construction tion has resumed some aid to UNRWA. It has only resumed a from passing. fraction, still leaving in question whether or not this is going to be a wind down of UNRWA or whether it’s going to be just a The Role of Congress step toward rebuilding the level of aid UNRWA used to reCongress has also played a role in how warped the U.S. enceive. In fact, there is a letter recently sent by 20 Republican gagement has been on Israel-Palestine peacemaking. At members of the Senate to the secretary of state, saying that every step of the way, from the start of the U.S./PLO relationthey want aid to UNRWA conditioned and stopped. They beship in 1983 to when President Trump evicted the PLO mislieve that the numbers reflecting the descendants of refugees sion from Washington in 2018, Congress has sought to tie the is keeping the refugee issue alive rather than the fact that Ishands of the administration and put obstacles around Palestinrael refuses to allow Palestinians the right to return. ian agency, thereby undermining the PLO’s ability to negotiate. So fast forward to today, there is no two-state solution open For example, in 1983, when secret talks were just starting for the taking. Likewise, a one-state solution that offers equal between Reagan officials and the PLO, Congress was there rights is just as unlikely. Precisely at this moment, when Israel to stop it by codifying a prohibition on contacts with the PLO. is entrenching apartheid, the U.S. says it is de-prioritizing its Then in 1987, when the First Intifada started, a largely a nonengagement because it has other more important domestic violent uprising, Congress was there to label the representaand foreign policy concerns to attend to. 42

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Zaha hassan: From an israel-Centric to a rights-Based approach

Chart Courtesy “Breaking the israel Palestine status Quo.”

Essentially, the stature as a global authors of the leader. A rights reCarnegie U.S. Midspecting approach dle East Policy also happens to paper say that to do align with President so, after 30 years of Biden’s overall U.S. U.S. engagement national security that has resulted in strategy. But centerwhere we are today ing rights also inand while Palestinivolves centering the ans are weaker rights Israeli and than they have ever Palestinian leaders been in the region owe to their peowith the normalizaples. tion ongoing beThe warped intween Israel and centive structure the Arab States— mentioned earlier which this administhat has been cretration, wholeheart- Year after year the illegal settler population grows, making calls for a two state solution ated over the years edly supports even disingenuous. to maintain negotiawhile those agreetions, also impacts ments are underIsraeli governance mining Israeli-Palestinian peace and international law—is and empowers the ultra-nationalists who seek to prevent any disingenuous. The rights and security of Israelis and Palestinikind of compromise position. In the occupied territories, the ans should not be held hostage to this diplomatic process that PA and PLO relationship to their people has also been negais going nowhere. tively impacted in an attempt to conform to the image of a The “Breaking the Israel Palestine Status Quo” paper, in good peace partner to the U.S. The Palestinian leadership line with what we heard in our consultations with experts in has prioritized the peace process over strengthening national the U.S. and in Israel and Palestine, identifies four principles institutions in democratic governance. for re-imagining U.S. engagement between Palestinians and Of course, centering rights does not get to a peace agreeIsraelis. First, and most important, is centering rights in ment tomorrow. But what it does do is it changes the political human security. Second is rolling back Trump administration calculations of the parties so that over time they are encouractions and its “Peace to Prosperity Plan” in its entirety and aged to recalibrate their actions vis-à-vis each other and visreaffirming the importance of international law in peacemakà-vis their own constituencies. This produces a better chance ing. of creating the environment needed for conducive, meaningful Third is clarifying the expectations that the administration negotiations toward a durable solution. has for Israelis as well as Palestinians and back those up with The authors of the policy paper don’t think that the Biden the levers of U.S. policy. And fourth, working collaboratively administration is going to take this up and run with it. It’s still with multilateral mechanisms and the U.N. so that the rulesvery early and it still needs time to grow. This policy paper is based international order is strengthened rather than underpart of the effort to expand that discourse and to open up mined by U.S. engagement on a durable solution for Israelis space within policymaking circles because there’s been a disand Palestinians. connect between where the U.S. electorate is and where poliContrary to what many policymakers think, this does not cymakers are. mean more U.S. involvement. Rather it requires less but Year after year, Americans are saying they favor by a big smarter engagement. If the U.S. continues the policy of majority, two-thirds, a neutral U.S. policy when it comes to Isshielding Israel from accountability for its conduct, particurael-Palestine. Fifty-three percent in a Gallup poll said they larly now as more and more legal experts and human rights want to see more pressure on Israel to make peace. Now the organizations are describing Israel’s system of domination policymakers have not gotten there yet, but that’s why civil soover Palestinians as apartheid, the U.S. will have to expend ciety has to be a lot louder and more organized. Our theory of more and more of its time, resources and political capital dechange, from the start, was to engage with civil society actors fending Israel. and to empower them with policy recommendations and an This will undermine U.S. interests in the region where the approach that they could push with their elected leaders and Palestinian cause is still a principal concern of the Arab conthis administration to try to see the change that we think stituency. It will undermine the U.S. as it seeks to regain its needs to happen for U.S. policy to be a positive player. ■ June/July 2021

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The Israel Lobby: What Everyone Needs to Know By Walter L. Hixson

Walter L. Hixson, the author of numerous foreign policy books, has taught history for almost 40 years achieving the rank of distinguished professor at the University of Akron. In 2019 he introduced his book Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict in that year’s National Press Club conference. His latest book is called Architects of Repression: How Israel and its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of U.S. Middle East Policy. Since 2019, Hixson has served as the “History’s Shadows” columnist and contributing editor at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 44

dle East replete with political instability and forever wars. While the self-serving purpose of the lobby is apparent, the Israel lobby itself is sprawling and complex. It is not a single monolithic entity, but rather a multifaceted grouping of ideas, individuals and organizations united by the commitment to dispense pro-Israel propaganda and simultaneously to discredit critical analysis of the Zionist state. The largest and most well-funded Israel lobby organization of course is AIPAC. It’s not only far and away the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington; it is one of the most powerful lobbies—period. A colossus in the world of Washington politics, AIPAC is often mentioned in the same breath as the gun, pharmaceutical and retired persons’ lobbies. As M.J. Rosenberg, a man who should know having worked as an AIPAC propagandist himself for many years in the past, explains, AIPAC uses the resources of wealthy people in the American Jewish community to enforce a kind of political orthodoxy in Congress, on the White House and on the media. Its purpose is to make sure no one in a position of power deviates from the Israel line. AIPAC has long worked closely with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Both groups typically act in lockstep with the Israeli government. The lobby also encompasses wealthy individual donors, political action committees and a myriad of other Jewish and

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THE ISRAEL LOBBY IS the most powerful and the most pernicious lobby representing the interest of a foreign nation in all of American history. The little state of Israel, not the behemoths Russia or China as many Americans might imagine or have been led to believe, intrudes more directly into American domestic politics than any other nation in the world. Through these intrusions, the Israel lobby has secured massive American funding for Israel even though it is an apartheid settler colonial state, a regional aggressor, and a major violator of human rights norms. In addition, Israel and its lobby have been primarily responsible for the failure to achieve a comprehensive Middle East peace. Israel and the lobby have long propelled, in conjunction to be sure with U.S. support for reactionary but oil-rich Arab regimes, a disastrous American foreign policy in the Mid-

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Christian Zionist organizations, federations, pressure groups, media watchdogs, college campus organizations and think tanks. There are literally hundreds of such entities in existence including city, regional and statewide organizations throughout the country and in Europe as well.

Israel is a Settler Colonial State

PHOTO BY AMIR LEVY/GETTY IMAGES

In order to fully appreciate the role of the lobby, to understand why it is so large, so powerful, and so crucial to Israel, it is necessary to understand Israel’s identity as a settler colonial state. More than a trendy term, settler colonialism illuminates the essential mission of settler states, which is to displace or otherwise eliminate the indigenous population. No one framed the issue more succinctly An Israeli woman holds a sign that reads “Don´t make Apartheid Great Again” as she than the Israeli patriarch David Ben-Gurion protests against her government’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank on June 23, 2020 in who in 1937 declared in a letter to his son, Tel Aviv, Israel. “We must expel Arabs and take their place.” Thus, from the outset, more than a decade before the quired powerful international support backed by determined creation of Israel, the leaders of the Zionist settler colonial campaigns of disinformation to counter the efforts to call the movement sought to gain control of as much land as possible Zionist state to account for its aggression in Palestine. with as few indigenous Palestinians as possible remaining on The United States—the most powerful country in the world, that land. From the Nakba to the efforts to drive Palestinians the nation with the largest Jewish population in the world, the out of East Jerusalem this very day, Israel has manifested this heartland of Christian Zionism and an apartheid nation itself at fundamental core identity. In my view, Israel is thus best unthe time—was the obvious and indispensable ally whose support derstood as a congenitally aggressive settler state. or absence thereof could make or break the Zionist movement. While Israel had much in common with other settler sociAs Israel carried out its identity as a reactionary settler eties throughout history, in certain crucial respects Zionist setstate, the U.S. State Department and other countries of the tlement was and remains unique. The demonization of Jews, world and the U.N. attempted to reign in Zionist aggression which endured for centuries and reached its apogee in the which included ethnic cleansing, disdain for the plight of Nazi genocide, was of course a distinctive and driving force Palestinian refugees, borderland expansion and laying claim behind the Zionist movement. Scarred by the traumas of histo Jerusalem as the exclusive capital. A massive and perpettoric anti-Semitism, Zionist leaders such as Ben-Gurion, Menual propaganda effort thus arose for the expressed purpose of achem Begin and many others vowed never again to be the countering international pressure in the wake of the 1947 parvictims. Instead, they became the relentless and unapologetic tition of Palestine. aggressors in Palestine. Over time the lobby dramatically expanded in scope and The other distinguishing feature pertains to timing. The sophistication in concert with the unfolding of Israel’s continuZionist settler state arrived on the international scene much ous settler colonial aggression. In addition to the assault on later than the earlier settler societies. Unlike colonial North Egypt in the 1956 Suez or Sinai War, myriad attacks targeted America, Australia and other settler societies of previous cenJordan and Syria in the years leading up to the June 1967 turies, Israel and the American lobby encountered serious War, an expansive war that Israel wanted and could not be global challenges to settler colonial aggression. World War II dissuaded from launching. and the Nazi genocide had highlighted the horrors of ethnic Under the influence of the increasingly powerful Israel discrimination and mass killing spurring the creation of the lobby, the United States provided military assistance including U.N., recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and the sophisticated jet aircraft even as Israel illegally occupied and declaration of universal human rights. began to settle in the territories seized in the Six-Day War; The violent removal policies aimed at settling as many Jews even as it introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East with as few Palestinians as possible remaining on the land thus thumbing its nose at the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty; came in sharp contradiction to the post-war vision of decoloeven as it brutally repressed the Palestinian Intifada in the nization, international justice and racial equality. Israel thus re1980s and 1990s; even as it repeatedly attacked Lebanon June/July 2021

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and the Gaza Strip killing and injuring tens of thousands of innocent people; and, even as it refused to make peace. Israel’s American-backed aggression fueled the rise of Islamic militancy, heightened regional political instability; and, though it is often denied, played a prominent role in provoking the September 11th blowback attacks and the subsequent global war on terror. Today, Israeli aggression continues through blatant violations of international law in the construction of Jewish-only settlements, totaling some 700,000 people in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, as well as in military assaults on Iran and Syria and assassinations that have become routine. None of this long history of regional aggression would have been possible without American support and largesse secured by the machinations of the metastasizing Israel lobby. In order to secure funding and political support, the lobby obscured Israel’s fundamental identity as a congenitally aggressive settler state running roughshod over indigenous Palestinians. The lobby instead depicted Israel as a beleaguered innocent surrounded by fanatical Arabs who sought to drive the Zionist state into the sea. This disinformation campaign obscured Israel’s history of aggression as well as its military supremacy which had been clearly manifested in the June 1967 War and became even more pronounced thereafter. Far from the peace-loving sole democracy in the Middle East as lobby propaganda would have it, Israel has been the clear aggressor in the so-called Palestine conflict. Just as we do not blame Indigenous North Americans for the centuries of so-called Indian wars, it is wrong to blame the native residents of Palestine for the Middle East conflict. Lobby propaganda went on to promote Israel as a Cold War ally and national security asset of the United States, paving the way for the continuous flow of massive U.S. military assistance which has far exceeded that provided to any other nation. As collaboration grew, the United States itself began to mirror the practices of the smaller security state as it instituted increasingly militarized methods of policing at home as well as targeted assassination abroad. In the face of mounting criticism in recent decades, the Israel lobby has become increasingly aggressive, resorting to disinformation, lawfare, character assassination, attacks on freedom of speech and cynical efforts to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Not content to repress Palestinians, the lobby now seeks to deprive their fellow Americans of the fundamental liberty of freedom of speech.

Israel Gets What it Wants from Congress

Over the years, AIPAC and its allies have taken command of public discourse and undermined presidential authority, but the lobby has been most pronounced in its domination of the Congress. With rare and anomalous exceptions, Israel gets what it wants from the Congress including, of course, money. Beginning with the Truman administration, when the nascent lobby tapped the Congress for funding, Israel has taken hold 46

of the congressional purse string. Over the ensuing years, the increasingly powerful lobby ensured that Israel received annual allocations that eventually came to be provided through an early distribution process that was made available to Israel alone of all the nations in the world. According to the Congressional Research Service, since 1948 Israel, a small nation of less than 9 million people, has been the most heavily subsidized foreign country in American history. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, the CRS notes the United States has provided Israel $146 billion current or non-inflation adjusted dollars in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. These massive allocations have enabled Israel to become one of the most powerful military regimes in the world. Today the money continues to flow despite Israel’s ongoing aggression and blatant violations of international law. Israel currently enjoys the fruits of a 10-year $38 billion package even though it already has far and away the preeminent military power in the region and does not face any legitimate threats to its security. Like a trained circus animal, the United States thus routinely doles out a billion-dollar annual welfare checks to a foreign country located some 7,000 miles from American shores, a country that has no compelling need for the assistance. Those annual billions of dollars could of course be devoted instead to critically important domestic needs or be allocated to more deserving countries including, for example, impoverished Central American neighbors whose desperate refugees appear on American doorsteps. So how can we explain an utterly irrational policy in which the United States routinely doles out billions of dollars to a small, developed and militarized nation? One that openly represses 20 percent of its own population while illegally colonizing adjacent territory, terrorizing its neighbors in the process. Cultural affinity for Israel, including the religious motivations of Christian Zionism, plays an underlying role to be sure. But the main reason for the American largesse is because Israel and its lobby have a vice grip on Congress. In Architects of Repression, I offer a detailed history of the tactics the lobby deploys to receive congressional funding including providing or withholding campaign funds, letter-writing campaigns for and against legislation, orchestrated public demonstrations, junkets to Israel and other effective lobbying techniques. Make no mistake, members of Congress live in mortal fear of AIPAC. They are always made fully aware of AIPAC’s positions on any given matter relating to Israel. They are well trained to toe the pro-Israel line; otherwise, they know they will pay the political consequences. This deplorable situation is about more than money. Fundamentally, it is about the perversion of democracy and the abject failure of a pre-eminent American public institution, the people’s house, the United States Congress. With the exception of “the squad,” Representative Betty McCollum, Senator Bernie Sanders and a few others, the members of Congress, conservatives and liberals alike, learned to

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obey the golden rule which is this—Israel gets what it wants. No questions asked. Virtually no criticism allowed. For decades, Israel and its lobby have been stunningly successful not only in generating lopsided support for Israel but also in deterring analysis of their role in manipulating the American political process. Israel has been enabled through the persistent disinformation campaigns, the chokehold on Congress, and the timidity of the majority of American journalists, academics and publishers. Whenever an effort is made to critically analyze Israeli aggression, the lobby strikes back with disinformation and ad hominem attacks as the distinguished scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt discovered some 15 years ago. Despite their formidable power, the tide of history is turning against Israel and its lobby. At the beginning of the 21st century Palestinians launched the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to mobilize worldwide economic and moral pressure against Israel’s annexationists and apartheid policies. Despite a fierce reaction from Israel and the lobby replete with intimidation and lawfare, the grassroots movement fueled by the global public awareness and the demand for human rights and international justice is not backing down. Israel’s reactionary aggression is complicating the lobby’s work. Although nearly all Republicans as well as mainstream or centrist Democrats led by President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi maintain virtually unquestioned loyalty to Israel and the lobby, the handful of progressive elected representatives advocating justice in Palestine are holding on to their seats despite AIPAC’s venomous attacks. In 2020 AIPAC also suffered some key defeats in congressional elections as its candidates far outspent their opponents but lost anyway. A 2019 Center for American Progress poll found that 71 percent of Democrats and more than half of Americans as a whole favored conditioning U.S. aid to Israel if it continued to construct illegal settlements and followed through with plans to annex portions of the West Bank. The split between the Democratic Party elites and their base is fast reaching unsustainable proportions. In addition to confronting a loosening of their vice grip on Congress, Israel and the lobby are increasingly alienating a core constituency—American Jews. Traditionally politically progressive, more and more American Jews are acknowledging that Israel’s rejectionism has precluded a just peace. Israel and the lobby thus face a future of growing grassroots Jewish opposition combined with the eventual passing of aging Jewish megadonors personified by the recent death of the 87-year-old casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. The struggle over Palestine may well pivot on what happens in the United States rather than the Middle East itself. AIPAC fully understands the threats that it faces. It has been mobilizing its resources to fight them and is accustomed to winning. Since 2008 AIPAC has dramatically expanded its funding,

physical facilities in Washington and more than doubled its number of employees. Prior to the cancellation of its 2021 Washington conference owing to the pandemic, the AIPAC annual meeting was attracting more than 18,000 people including a majority of the members of Congress sitting alongside the members of the Israeli Knesset. Despite the clear and pernicious influence of the Israeli lobby that I have outlined today, skeptics including sadly some well-known advocates for justice in Palestine inexplicably insist on downplaying the influence of the lobby. While few people question the clout of the gun, pharmaceutical and elderly person lobbies, applying the same logic to the Israel lobby is too often derided as hyperbole, if not a conspiracy theory. Allow me to channel Robert McNamara on Vietnam in response to all those who would deny lobby influence. You are wrong. You are terribly wrong. By clinging to the pretension that a focus on the lobby is for smaller minds and conspiracy theorists, you are part of the problem rather than of the solution. You are making the lobby’s job easier and the task of promoting justice in Palestine more difficult. Please, if you do not care to study the lobby and inform yourself as to the depth and significance of its activities, the best move you can make is to hit your mute button on this subject. The stakes are high in the struggle for justice in Palestine and for understanding the power of Israel and the lobby within the United States. In addition to the financial costs to the American taxpayer, there are political, moral and national security costs. The United States has undermined its oft-proclaimed commitment to liberty and democracy through its support of Zionist repression in Palestine and through its obeisance to a lobby serving the interest of a foreign power. The United States has also badly compromised the U.N. as a forum for peacemaking and promotion of international justice. It remains possible to create a unified state or some form of negotiated political entity in which Jews, Muslims, Christians and others would be free to live, work and worship in a shared space with Jerusalem and its special places open and accessible to all. Israel is located in the Middle East. Many of its citizens are Sephardic Jews who migrated from other Middle East countries. Israel, therefore, has the potential to become a decolonized Middle Eastern nation. The dramatic changes that are required in the Middle East and Middle East politics depend to a great extent on a critical mass of Americans coming to understand that they are financing racial repression, aggression and attacks on free speech. At a minimum, the United States should make all future financial assistance and political support of Israel dependent upon a just solution in Palestine. In order to make this approach a reality, the lobby’s grip on Congress must be publicized, condemned and broken. The liberation of Palestine and of Americans from an oppressive lobby is on the agenda of humanity. ■

The tide of history is turning against Israel and its lobby.

June/July 2021

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A Lawmaker Who Stood Up for Justice By Brian Baird

Brian Baird is a former Democratic U.S. Representative for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, who served from 1999 to 2011. Baird entered politics in 1998 for the same reason he went into the field of clinical psychology: to answer the call to service. As a congressman, Baird traveled to Gaza five times, and was deeply disturbed by the destruction wrought by Israel’s relentless attacks on the besieged territory. Rep. Baird called on the U.S. State Department to investigate the death of his constituent, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old student who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003. After leaving Congress, Baird served as president of Antioch University’s Seattle campus until 2015, and continues to contribute op-eds to The Seattle Times. 48

Gaza personally. I reached out to my dear friend Keith Ellison who was a former member of Congress, now the Attorney General of Minnesota. Keith was thinking the same thing. The two of us decided that, first chance we would get, we would go to Gaza. No American elected official had been to Gaza in eight years. There were some incredibly courageous Americans working for UNRWA, Mercy Corps and other relief agencies in the field in the middle of the bombing. But we were the first Americans to go. Then John Kerry on a separate mission went in at the same time. When we got to Gaza, it was a dysphoric day. The wind was blowing. The sand was in the air, very cold, and there was a yellow hue in the sky as the sand obliterated the light. Everywhere we looked there were blown up and destroyed buildings. We visited water treatment facilities that had been destroyed. We visited sewage treatment plants that had been destroyed. We visited bread-making factories that had been destroyed. We went to al-Quds Hospital. At the top floor of al-Quds Hospital—I’m a clinical neuropsychologist by training. I work with people with disabilities and brain injuries. The top floor was this spectacularly beautiful resource for young children. It had Disney characters on the wall. There was Goofy and Minnie and Mickey Mouse. There were pits full of the plastic balls that kids can play in and all the therapeutic tools you can imagine. A wonderful facility except that it had been burned and almost completely destroyed by a white phosphorus bomb, which is contrary to international law. But white phosphorus bombs were

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I WANT TO BEGIN MY remarks by stepping back in history to the early days of the Gaza invasion which is, if you recall, Operation Cast Lead (20082009). A few days into that there was a picture of three little boys. At the time my wife had just started our family, kind of late, and we had two twin boys who were about three-and-a-half. And there was a picture of three very small Palestinian boys lying down on a rug. If you just glance at it, you might think, oh, how precious that is. Those are wonderful little boys and they’re sleeping. Except that when you look further at the picture, there was a father beside them with his head in his arms and his hands in abject grief because those three little boys were dead. They had been killed by an American-made munition dropped by an American-made aircraft, by a country that we considered an ally. When I saw that picture, I determined that I needed to go to

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Brian Baird: A Lawmaker Who Stood Up for Justice

PHOTO COURTESY OF CONGRESSMAN BAIRD’S OFFICE

dropped on a hospiyoung constituent tal or near enough of mine named to a hospital to incinRachel Corrie was erate that hospital crushed to death and that resource beneath an Amerifor the kids. can-made bulldozer Keith and I visited for the audacious the mental health act of standing in programs in Gaza front of the bullwhere they talked dozer to try to save about the trauma, a Palestinian home how it affects chilfrom destruction. dren to hear rockets They drove a bulland bombs, and dozer over her, put see tanks and see the blade down, their parents being backed up over top carted away without of her and scarcely due process concared about what stantly, and wonder- In a February 2009 trip to Gaza, a month after Israel ended its brutal 22-day assault, Rep. happened to her. ing when they are Brian Baird uncovers a yearbook in the rubble of the American International School. When I tried to going to die or their launch an investigaparents are going to be killed. tion of this and introduced a congressional resolution, we As you saw in the picture there, we also visited the Ameriwere steadily blocked initially by Israel, by our own State Decan International School. This was a marvelous institution that partment and Congress to a large degree with some notable taught an American curriculum. The kids were getting a fairly and courageous exceptions, I will say. There were some progressive education. The school had actually been criticized members of the State Department who did their best to help by Hamas because they were considered too western and too us out and I commend them. But within the Congress, instead liberal. But it was an American-based curriculum in a lovely of supporting a fellow member of Congress whose constituent school. It, too, had been destroyed, tragically taking the life of has been killed by an ally and is simply requesting an investithe watchman who had been there to try to secure it as best gation, a counter resolution was offered calling for an investihe could. But he couldn’t secure anything against 500-pound gation of Americans who died due to terrorist attacks. Everybombs. one flooded to that, but scarcely half a dozen people or so In the rubble of the American school, Keith Ellison and I signed on to the investigation of Rachel Corrie, and Israel walked around. I saw something that looked familiar in the stonewalled it. I’ll talk more about that in a moment. rubble. Sure enough I took out a book and, as life would have Lesson from the “Goldstone Report” it, that particular book I dug out was the Jackie Robinson So you might say, well, how can this happen? An instructive story. The story of the first prominent Black American baseball lesson comes from what happened to the “Goldstone Report.” player. Justice Goldstone, as many of you know, a distinguished I opened it up. It was a teacher’s edition. I knew that beSouth African Jewish individual, was commissioned to concause it had lots of sticky notes with markings. I just randomly duct an investigation of Operation Cast Lead. I read his report opened it up. There was a passage that was highlighted and twice front to back, the entire thing, and found it thoroughly the teacher’s sticky note said what about this passage consistent with what Keith and I had seen not only on one visit teaches you the meaning of prejudice. That was in the rubble to Gaza. We made multiple visits to Gaza and to the West of the American school. How fitting to connect that today to Bank. And for the record, we also visited the Israeli city of our discussion of apartheid. Sderot and other villages that had been rocketed from I especially want to compliment the brilliant Susan AbulGaza—launched rockets as well. hawa for her insightful presentation summarizing the parallels When the “Goldstone Report” came out, almost immedibetween apartheid in South Africa and what unquestionably ately there was a resolution introduced by the U.S. Congress goes on in Israel today. I say unquestionably because, if you to condemn the report. First of all, many of us said, well, let’s question it all, you get criticized as our prior speaker Walter invite Justice Goldstone to come to Congress to explain his Hixson just pointed out, as have others. report. Perhaps not surprisingly, that offer was not taken up. But finding that book in the rubble of Gaza was not the first When the vote came to the floor, I went to the floor and said time I had seen American weapons and American equipment something to the effect of the following: used against civilians. Six years prior to that a wonderful June/July 2021

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Many of my colBut it’s not just asleagues today are sumed that we all about to come to support Israel. It is this well of this assumed we will do House of Represo without question. sentatives and vote We will just take on a resolution that what we’re told at they have never face value, accept it, read, about a report and vote as we are that they have told or asked in ponever read, and lite terms without about a place that questioning it and they have never without disagreebeen. Yet most ment. If you begin to people who’ll do question, some inthat will not seek to teresting things hapask any of us who pen. You are often have been there, looked at in somehave read the re- (L-r) Cynthia and Craig Corrie and U.S. Representative Brian Baird (D-WA) next to a picture what of a condeport, have seen the of peace activist Rachel Corrie on March 19, 2003 in Washington, DC. scending and paevidence what it retronizing way. As if ally means. you just don’t understand the issue. So the counter so-called Sure enough, once the vote was called, members of Conevidence will be presented against what your question was gress came to the floor of the House. We vote with little cards about. But if you’ve really studied it, then you’re able to say, you we stick in an electronic slot. We press yes, no, or present. know, I’ve heard that argument before but the evidence here You come in and people will look up at the board which illussays something else. Having been to Gaza, having been to the trates what the content of the current vote is. You could hear West Bank, we had a perspective that most members didn’t. people say, “AIPAC wants a yes on this vote.” Why yes? BeSo then there is that kind of sense of, well, there are other cause the vote was on condemning this report that people sides to the story and perhaps there are things you are unhaven’t read. People wouldn’t necessarily say what’s in the aware of often, said in a condescending way. You’re just not report, what happened in Gaza, what is the resolution itself. informed. You’re just misguided. It will all work out. If you conThey would just nod their head once they heard AIPAC is for it tinue to press, something deeply troubling happens. If you and they would vote yes on a resolution. press hard enough on many people within the Israeli adminisThere were many, about three dozen I believe, courageous tration, you encounter something rather shocking. Disdain. members of Congress who voted no on the resolution which is Disdain not just for those of us asking the question, but disincredibly fraught with risks as an elected official in America. On dain for the United States of America itself. Disdain in several top of that, there were several others who just did not attend ways. One, look, what Israel does is no worse than what you the proceedings that day. But what does that tell you? What it did. You had launched the genocide against the tribes. We tells you is members of Congress are willing to vote on things can do what we want to do. Listen, you don’t understand. You they haven’t read simply because an advocacy group tells don’t understand the Holocaust. You don’t understand the them to vote that way even if what was done and what was neighborhood we’re in. So don’t tell us what to do. Literally the being condemned by the resolution is contrary to American valtone of voice takes the kind of tone of voice I’m using. ues and American foreign policy and domestic policy interests. The rhetoric is often harsher than that and the consistent One of the other things I found remarkable in this experimessage is, implicitly, we are happy to take your money. Lots ence was what happens when you confront members of the of it, billions of dollars a year. And we’re happy to take your Israeli government with the evidence of the atrocities that had weapons. But don’t you dare question anything we do. That is been committed in Gaza and also the abuses of human rights the underlying tone and it is disdain for America. To be honwithin the West Bank and within Israel proper against Palesest, to a portion that disdain is justified. Why is it justified? Betinian residents of Israel. What I found was fascinating. The cause the Israeli government knows and its advocates in the initial response of many pro-Israeli advocates domestically— United States know that they can control members of ConI’m going to talk about that word, “pro-Israel,” in just a second. gress. And that is something possibly worthy of disdain. But the initial response is to assume that members of ConHow do they control this? This is not pleasant to say and I’m gress must all support Israel because, after all, that’s what we sorry to say it. As an American, as a patriot, as a person who repassumed that we should do. resents his country and took an oath to defend the Constitution, I 50

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

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Brian Baird: A Lawmaker Who Stood Up for Justice

am profoundly sorry to say this. But you can categorize some of policies that Susan Abulhawa raised earlier are not consistent the things that guide decisions in Congress. They all begin with M. with our Constitution and not in our best interest. The first M is money. Anybody who says that money helps influOn that front, let me say we should never use the words ence outcomes of votes regarding Israel is immediately branded “pro-Israel” lobby. Because the actions of people who deanti-Israeli or anti-Semitic, both, or worse. That’s not true. It’s just mand unquestioning obedience to Israel, even when its polisimply reality. cies are anti-democratic, anti-human rights, inconsistent with Enormous amounts of money come into American political our interests, they are also not pro-Israel because it is not campaigns. Specific events are held where members of Congood for Israel to engage in this kind of behavior. We cannot gress are invited to express their fealty to Israel. I’ve had it call it pro-Israel to blindingly accept policies that are counterhappen. I know people who supported me and on almost productive, counter our own Constitution, and counter interevery major domestic issue we were consonant. How did they national law and respect for human rights. feel about pro-environmental protection; how did they feel Finally, there is another M which is shocking to me. It’s milabout women’s rights and women’s health? We’re consistent lenarianism. Meaning the belief that we must support Israel with that. How did we feel about education opportunities, how in order to bring about the biblical end of times at which point do we feel about mental health? virtually all the Jewish people as well as non-believing and But for having stood up and asked for an investigation into non-Jewish people will burn in hell forever. While a small sethe death/murder of my constituent at the hands of an Israeli lect group of people, the evangelical Christians in this model bulldozer driver, those same people who supported me on aland the few Jews who convert to evangelism, will suddenly most every other issue no longer supported me financially in be whisked off to heaven. my reelection campaigns because I asked for the investigation Believe it or not, a portion of the United States Congress of a constituent who had been murdered by our allies. So the bases its domestic and foreign policy around the desire to first M is money. see the end of the world occur. How ironic it is that if in our The second M is mythology. People believe almost unquescountry you say, you know what, money influences American tioning the sort of David and Goliath myth, the beleaguered Ispolitics. That is considered anathema and something you raelis being besieged by all of the Arab nations. should never say. But if you say our politics should lead to the On top of that, there is willful ignorance—if you will, a word for end of the world, that’s perfectly fine. And it is somehow used another M—an intentional myopia or intentional misunderstandto defend whatever Israel wants to do. ing of what is actually happening on the ground. I took one colLet me close with a couple of thoughts. First of all, while I am league to the region where he heard about Israeli detention of strong in my belief that we have to be critical about Israeli polyouths taken from their homes in the middle of the night, without icy, we haven’t spoken about it in this conference yet today. But legal representation, without due process. there are many other countries in the region who are also richly He heard this and he heard about the abuse of the Palestinideserving of opprobrium, disdain, criticism and investigation. ans, the confiscation and destruction of olive groves, the sharpWhile we must criticize Israel, we must also be equally ardent in shooters assassinating peaceful protesters in Gaza, the blockour criticism and review of the policies of these other nations. ■ ade, the kind of things that we’ve heard (Advertisement) about so eloquently before. He was overwhelmed with the reality that was disconsonant with the mythology he had come to believe and he just couldn’t accept it. There was almost a mental breakdown and a moment of, wait a minute, if all you’re saying is true, then my unquestioning acceptance of Israeli policy is problematic. So then there is another M. I think that’s malfeasance. If a member of Congress unquestioningly supports something a lobby asks for, and part of the calculus is the financial contribution of the lobby, A Project of that’s malfeasance. Your first and most Middle East Children’s Alliance important priority is what is consistent with the United States Constitution and what is consistent with the values of our country. I will tell you the actions of Israel and the June/July 2021

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J Street and the Limitations of Liberal Zionism By Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is an American journalist who founded and co-edits Mondoweiss with journalist Adam Horowitz. Mondoweiss is “a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective." Weiss describes himself as an anti-Zionist and rejects the label “post-Zionist.” 52

colonialism, is it geo-political strategy versus China and Russia, and then what is the role of the Israel lobby?” That [the lobby] is really my focus—it’s fairly narrow, on the tail of the elephant here. That is not the evangelical Christian lobby, which is a significant part of the Israel lobby, but the Jewish part. J Street now represents that kind of leftwing of the Israel lobby. They are strongly supportive of American support to Israel. They want to maintain a Jewish state in the Middle East. They want a two-state solution to preserve that Jewish state and they are going to lobby Congress to do so. I think that they have been fairly successful in establishing themselves as an access organization. That’s ultimately what a lobby is, it cares about access, it wants to get access in Washington. J Street, over the last 13 years of its existence, has had a pretty smooth and strong flight path toward greater and greater influence, to the point that it can claim that most of the Democratic majority in Congress was endorsed by J Street, and the White House, the occupants of the White House, [Joe] Biden and [Kamala] Harris, were also endorsed by J Street. So that type of endorsement success and presumably

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

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IT’S MY JOB TODAY TO talk about a split within the Israel lobby between the right-center AIPAC and the left-center, which is J Street. [J Street wrapped up its mid-April conference earlier in the week.] I am going to sort of lay out what is significant about this split within the Jewish community. That is really where I’m coming from here. I’m Jewish and I’m very interested in Jewish politics in the United States because I think they are so important in shaping foreign policy. Obviously I think, you know, some of that is the elephant in the room. It reminds me of the old joke about nine blind people with an elephant trying to figure out what an elephant is. I think some of that mystification and confusion exists around the Israel lobby and foreign policy. Even in our communities, you’ll have certain analysis of, “is it a military-industrial complex, imperialism that’s driving our policy in the Middle East, is it settler

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Philip Weiss: J Street and the Limitations of Liberal Zionism

donors, because money is at the heart of the Israel lobby, that The pressure from the left is, as I’ve just described, from should equate to a certain amount of access and influence on progressives in this country who are expecting a lot more of J Street’s part. I think the jury is still out on that, how much inour country in social justice issues and of course in Israel and fluence it has, but it is gaining influence. The question is what Palestine where there’s apartheid. This is a community that are its goals and will it be able to maintain those goals in the largely supports BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), active face of strong headwinds from the left, including events like non-violent measures to pressure Israel to change, that supthis conference, which focus on apartheid? ports the International Criminal Court investigation—that poI thought that it was kind of interesting that at the J Street tential prosecution of Israel and Palestine that began in Febconference there was even a certain nostalgia for the Trump ruary. And that supports findings of apartheid by B’Tselem. era. They had a whole video about all these things that hapThese are all things that the left emphasizes that J Street pened under Trump and all the things they did to mobilize can’t talk about. It can’t talk about the International Criminal against Trump. Personally, I saw enough of that guy when he Court. It can’t talk about apartheid. The only references to was in the White House. I don’t want to see him again. It’s apartheid during the whole conference were from Mahmoud painful to watch that kind of stuff. But it speaks to the fact that Abbas, the Palestinian president, and also Breaking the Siwhen Trump was in the White House, J Street could say, lence, an Israeli organization. But J Street itself just talked “We’re unified on the left. We’re trying to get Trump out. Let’s about deepening occupation and creeping annexation. That’s all pull together on this goal. We’re a social justice organizaits way of describing the apartheid process. It has to sort of tion and we’re involved with the progressive left and in the cut the left-wing discussion out, it’s too threatening to a core sort of more moderate elements of the foreign policy commuvalue of J Street, which is support for a Jewish state. nity that we just want to get Trump out.” J Street was able to The BDS campaign, the International Criminal Court prosesay, “Hey, everything you want to do in Israel, get rid of [Prime cution, and the apartheid discourse—all of these elements poMinister Binyamin] Netanyahu, we’re just trying to do that in tentially threaten, or I think do threaten, the existence of a the United States. We’re trying to get rid of our Netanyahu, Jewish state, because there is a clear understanding that IsDonald Trump.” rael’s character as a Jewish state is preventing it from grantWhether it’s Netanyahu or the right, Israel is an overwhelming anything like equal status to Palestinians. ingly right-wing country. The latest elections just go to show Now, at its conference, J Street did have a number of that; close to 80 out of 120 members of the Knesset, twovideos of extremely disturbing events in the West Bank. One thirds of the Knesset, are right-wing Jewish [parties]. There of them is this video you’re about to see from Jaloud, near had been four elections in Israel [in the past two years]. You Nablus, where you see these settlers coming down and haven’t changed that at all, J Street, that country is right-wing. throwing rocks at this Palestinian farmer. I mean, it’s just a Increasingly, elements of the progressive left in the United horrifying video. I have to turn away. I have seen this a couple States and the think tank for(Advertisement) eign policy community, that “blob” in Washington, increasingly they are getting impatient with Israel. The foreign policy establishment is saying, “We don’t care about a two-state solution, we don’t care about a JewPalestinian Medical Relief Society, a grassroots ish state even, we just want community-baseddPalestinian health organization, founded in rights for Palestinians.” 1979 by Palestinian doctors, needs your support today. So I think that J Street is Visit www.pmrs.ps to see our work in action. under pressure from the left and it’s under pressure from Visit www.friendsofpmrs.org to support our work and donate. the right. I want to describe those two pressures and Mail your U.S. Tax-Deductible check to our American Foundation: where they end up and what I think will develop from that. So I’m talking Friends of PMRS, Inc about a sort of fracture PO Box 450554 • Atlanta, GA 31145 within the Jewish community and within the Israel For more information call: (404) 441-2702 or e-mail: fabuakel@gmail.com lobby itself. June/July 2021

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of times, it’s so upsetting. The thing that is most upsetting about this is that nothing is happening. Nothing is happening to stop this. Israel has complete impunity on this behavior. J Street, to its credit, aired this video and others at its conference. Michael Sfard, a wonderful human rights attorney, aired these videos. When the left sees this and when dispassionate foreign policy observers see this video, what I think they see is apartheid. This is plainly apartheid. In as much as the soldiers are on the settlers’ side, this is an occupied territory. And yet J Street is unable to contend with this. On the other side, J Street arose in opposition to the centerright Israel lobby. J Street does represent a very important break inside the Jewish community. And I think this is something that I don’t want to diminish. The Jewish politics of this is very important. The Jewish foreign policy community and the lobby supported the Iraq war in 2003 and faced a lot of political heat for that subsequently. J Street has arisen against that strain in the foreign policy establishment that has the United States acting on behalf of Israel. J Street has taken some strong stands against that sort of trend, notably in its support for the Iran deal, which has been fantastic. I don’t know that we would have had an Iran deal in 2015, I don’t know that the momentum would exist now to restore the Iran deal were it not for a portion of the liberal Zionist community, J Street and Americans for Peace Now, saying, “yes, get back into the Iran deal.” So J Street, out of principle, has taken on the right-wing Jewish pro-Israel lobby on very important issues like the Iran deal. Even this week, J Street marked its independence by supporting Betty McCollum’s historic legislation—the Minnesota congresswoman in St. Paul—that would prohibit U.S. aid going to house demolitions and detaining Palestinian children. This is a historic moment in advancing pro-Palestinian legislation and J Street signed on it. It’s a wonderful thing that they signed on. Lots of civil society organizations across the United States signed on, on the left and the center. But within Jewish politics, J Street signed on to this bill that AIPAC, the right-wing lobby, hates. But it has only gotten 24 sponsors in the House. AIPAC meanwhile has gotten 330 congresspeople to say, “never limit U.S. aid to Israel, we must 54

keep the aid flowing.” So in this respect, I think J Street has taken a very important stance and should be celebrated for it. It’s threatening its own access game by doing so. It alienates itself from the center-Israel lobby. Ultimately, J Street is in an access game. It’s trying to get access to foreign policy leaders. It’s doing so through the old chemistry of joining up with other powerful Jewish organizations and using donor money. And it has split the lobby on this question of unfettered military aid to Israel. It said, no, there have to be some limits. At the same time though, the left discussion is outpacing J Street. So it’s balanced between trying to stay an access organization and trying to stay in good odor with the centrist Israel lobby and with the Jewish community. By doing so, it says explicitly, “we don’t want anything to do with the Phil Weiss’ of the Jewish community.” Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J Street, said this directly to me: “You’re an anti-Zionist, we don’t want you in our community.” Okay. They get to define their community how they like. But the left I think is turning increasingly toward anti-Zionism. The great thing about this conference is that you’re going to hear this type of analysis from me, parochial me inside the leftwing Jewish community. You’ll hear it from foreign policy realists. You’ll hear it from an anti-settler colonial leftwing internationalist understanding. So this is a very broad understanding that Zionism is the problem, that Jewish nationalism has not worked out. It has just created more and more ethnic cleansing and what I think will be more and more apartheid findings. That is ultimately the pressure on J Street. I think that it will ultimately, I don’t know how soon, but these things—as we’ve seen with the racial injustice demonstrations in the United States and other political movements from the left for same sex marriage in the United States—these things happen very swiftly when they happen. J Street is aware of that and is trying to position itself carefully. But I think ultimately the thought I would conclude with is that J Street is more vulnerable to the left than it is to the right because the left is developing and the left-center and the non-Jewish progressive movement is developing a strong impatience with Zionism and a clear understanding that Zionism is the problem. ■

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

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Robin D.G. Kelley: Resisting Israel’s Lobby on Campus and in the Community

Resisting Israel’s Lobby on Campus and in the Community By Robin D.G. Kelley

Robin D.G. Kelley's is the Gary B. Nash professor of American history at UCLA where he earned his master’s and doctorate degrees. He has also taught at the University of Southern California, Columbia University, NYU and Oxford University. His research has explored, among other topics, the history of social movements in the U.S., the African diaspora and Africa; black intellectuals; music and visual culture; and Surrealism and Marxism. His essays have appeared in a wide variety of professional journals as well as general publications, including the Boston Review, for which he also serves as contributing editor. Kelley has authored many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.He’s currently writing a biography of the late journalist and author Grace Halsell, who was a longtime columnist for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

anti-Semitism for merely supporting Palestinian rights. So, irrespective of new definitions of antiSemitism, we’ve been dealing with smear campaigns for years. Of course, Israel lobby groups like the Lawfare Project and the Zionist Advocacy Center have filed lawsuits and used the federal civil rights complaint process to make unfounded claims to silence campus Palestine advocacy. Also, we’ve seen the legislature being used. Twenty-one bills were introduced at the state and federal levels targeting the movement for Palestinian rights. On college campuses and elsewhere we see cyberbullying and surveillance—which has really intensified with Israelfunded smartphone apps designed to generate mass smear campaigns against activists, with maximum effect and in record time. Because time is short, there are a couple of cases you might want to look at. The use of the app, Act.IL, was used after the SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] Chapter at Tufts University was recognized with an award for its work on the End the Deadly Exchange campaign. It really exposed the links between campus police and the Israeli military. The administration attacked the SJP for getting the award and then there was this kind of Zionist attack on students on social media using this app. Then, also some of you may be familiar with the case at Florida State University where Ahmad Daraldik, a PalestinianAmerican student who grew up in the West Bank and had tweeted as a teenager about what life was like under occupaWASHINGTON REPORT YOUTUBE CHANNEL

WITH RESPECT TO resistance to the Israel lobby on campuses, there’s so much going on. I’m in no position to report on all of it, but I will suggest two things. One, always read the excellent reporting of Nora BarrowsFriedman on this. Also Palestine Legal, of which I’m a member of the board, does an excellent job of monitoring and actually fighting ongoing attacks on students and faculty who dare criticize Israel or stand up for Palestinian rights. In fact, just in 2020 alone Palestine Legal responded to 213 incidents of suppression of U.S.-based Palestine advocacy, and two-thirds of them not surprisingly involved cases of students and faculty who were falsely accused of

June/July 2021

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tion. He was atian liberation as tacked. There was a well as solidarity movement to recall with Black Lives him after he was Matter. elected the FSU stuFirst, no matter dent senate presiwhat, the term dent in June 2020. apartheid is applicaAnd there are lots ble to Israel espeof cases like this. cially when we conBut what’s really sider the U.N. definimportant is that the ition of apartheid— heightened attacks which is not of we’re seeing are recourse limited to actions to losing. South Africa alone. They’re not necesJust a reminder: sarily signs that the Apartheid did more Zionist position or than strip South the Israel lobbies Africans of voting are winning. They Israeli police arrest a Palestinian, placing a knee on his neck, during a May 26, 2021 protest and civil rights, it have not been able outside a Jerusalem District Court. Demonstrators objected to the planned eviction of several d i s p o s s e s s e d to silence SJP or dozen Palestinian residents from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. Africans from land the BDS campaign through legislative to divest university endowments from businesses operating in and military acts, razed entire communities, transferred occupied territories or even ending the exchanges with Israeli Africans to government townships, into bantustans. It devised universities. a system of racial classification and population control that When SJP held a national conference on my campus, limited the movement of Africans in towns and cities and deUCLA, a couple of years ago, it was not only violently atnied them social and economic privileges based on race. tacked by various Zionist organizations, but Kenneth Marcus, I want to suggest some of the findings of Noura Erakat in who was Trump’s appointee to the Department of Education’s her brilliant book Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Office for Civil Rights, opened an investigation into what hapPalestine which shows that, whereas the world condemned pened and in fact was demanding the list of speakers at the South Africa’s bantustan policies under the guise of granting conference and threatened to punish the students. Pal Legal some limited independence for state status, proponents of the intervened and ultimately a court ruled that the administration two-state solution celebrate the creation of the Palestinian Auhas no legal claim to that list. That was kind of a victory. thority. There’s a kind of refusal to recognize this as apartheid, Similarly, when Marcus’ outfit investigated SJP at NYU, as a bantustan policy, as the late Edward Said called it. again triggered by Israel advocates, they found no wrongdoOkay. Now one question is, you know, how are Black Lives ing. But since they couldn’t really prosecute until they find any Matter and Palestinian grassroots movements working towrongdoing, they convinced NYU’s president to issue a stategether? Are they natural allies? ment prohibiting discrimination based on the Trump executive The recognition that the subjugation of Palestinians—both order adopting the IHRA [International Holocaust Rememin the occupied territories and within the ‘48 borders of Isbrance Alliance] definition of anti-Semitism. rael—that these are kind of apartheid policies, has become inJust to be clear, the college presidents have been at the creasingly clear to African-American activists. It has been forefront of doing the bidding of the lobby. That includes black clear for a while but especially since about 2010-2011 when presidents like Melvin Oliver of Pitzer College who vetoed the you’ve had more and more African-American activists joining college council’s overwhelming decision to temporarily susdelegations to Palestine. Out of these encounters, a whole pend the study abroad program with Haifa University; and his bunch of new organizations emerged that linked Israeli neighbor here in California, the new president of Pomona Colapartheid to anti-Black racism, supporting BDS and also emlege, G. Gabrielle Starr, also African-American who essenphasizing Black-Palestinian solidarity. tially condemned the student government’s unanimous adopThe turning point of course was the Gaza-Ferguson nexus tion of a BDS resolution with regard to student government in 2014 which deepened the relationship between Palestinifunds. So usually it’s like the same kind of response. ans, especially in Saint Louis and across the country, as well There are other things we could talk about, but I’m going to as in Palestine, as they stood in solidarity with the protests skip all of that and turn to the other issue, which is the paralaround the killing of Mike Brown. Then in 2016, the Movement lels between South Africa and the movement toward Palestinfor Black Lives, which is a coalition of over a hundred organi56

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Robin D.G. Kelley: Resisting Israel’s Lobby on Campus and in the Community

zations, issued quite a forceful statement labeling Israel an apartheid state, and characterizing the ongoing war in Gaza and the West Bank as a form of genocide. The parallels of state-sanctioned violence both in Palestine and the occupied territories and the U.S. became a basis for solidarity, but it also gave way to a kind of politics of analogy. As I’ve written elsewhere, analogies can be really useful but they can also obscure more than they reveal. I think it’s important to understand this question of solidarity, especially Black, Brown and Indigenous solidarity with Palestinians. It requires that we move beyond analogies and recognize a longstanding vision of the indivisibility of justice. The basis for solidarity is not analogy, but the realization that these struggles are linked, not only to each other, but to injustice and to oppression around the world. The relationship is more entangled than analogous. Like the indivisibility of justice means, it knows no boundaries. It’s founded not on shared experiences but shared principles. That’s why, to really understand it, we need to go back and recognize that the foundation for Black-Palestinian solidarity really goes back to the 1960s and ’70s when we thought of the Palestinian Liberation Movement as a national liberation movement. It’s true that the context was resistance to racialized state-sanctioned violence, to ghetto rebellions of the U.S. in the late ’60s and early ’70s, resistance to occupation—the linking of these things. But these were armed struggles against brutal military regimes. So the convergence of Black urban rebellions and the ArabIsraeli war birthed the first significant wave of Black-Palestinian solidarity and signaled the demise of the U.S. “Black-Jewish alliance.” I should say that there are many Black-Jewish alliances. The idea that there is a singular one is a mistake. The Communist Party itself was a kind of Black-Jewish alliance that operated within it. But most importantly, that the more traditional civil rights-based Black-Jewish alliance was still founded on a notion of shared analogy. Right? Analogy of oppression, rather than shared principles of liberation. That’s why, within the left, you do get a segment of antiZionist Jews breaking with Zionist Jews, you know, on the left that have a different relationship to Black liberation struggles. That is to say, third world insurgencies and anti-imperialist movements radically reordered the political alliances between 1967 and the mid-1970s. But what was being reordered wasn’t just political alliances but really a vision of the world. The post-’67 radical insurgencies were more nationalist struggles for a modern nation-state as a path of decolonization, but they also ought to be understood as kind of world-making rather than nation-building. So behind these Black expressions of solidarity with Palestine, they have a vision of worldmaking rather than the politics of analogy or identity. So the hardest question to answer, to which I don’t really have a good answer, is, What are the lessons we can learn for today’s activists? One really important lesson of course is that as our demands as movements—especially coming out of the anti-po-

lice protests of spring 2020, the George Floyd protests, the struggle against fascism in this country—the return of Indigenous sovereignty, the abolition of police and prisons, I mean these are the kinds of demands being raised. Alongside, or central to all these, is the fight against Israel’s annexation of Palestinian lands and the ongoing occupation. And that in part requires the defunding of the Israeli apartheid military state, which of course defunding that side of the police is about withdrawing all funds [coming] from the United States. I think the other lesson is that BDS actually does work. We saw this with South Africa. Along with the labor and civil society insurgencies, it really brought down the formal apartheid state. I mean there are still problems in South Africa, but what I think is really important to remember is that South Africa responded to BDS with reforms. So you have this new constitution being implemented in 1984, which extended limited voting rights to so-called colored people, and opened up the door, but BDS didn’t stop then. In fact, it ramped up. In fact, most of the successes of the BDS movement in South Africa occurred after the adoption of reforms in 1985 where 50 companies pulled out of South Africa. Citibank pulled out. It declared that it would not make any loans to South Africa after 1985. Chase Manhattan did the same thing. So in ’86 you begin to see even more movement out. So that’s to say that even though a lot of us are rethinking the BDS movement, it’s something that should continue to be fought, even if it doesn’t appear to produce immediate results. Finally, this is not so much a lesson as much as a warning. Palestine, when it comes to some of these solidarity movements in the U.S., tends to ebb and flow. In moments of spectacular violence like Gaza in 2014 or 2009—I mean we see a kind of interest emerging and then a kind of ebb and flow. With the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the fear of the Trump administration and its relationship to Israel—all this led to a kind of increased interest. But with the Democratic regime in power, there may be a kind of ebb, which we can’t afford right now. So my concern always is that, as we fight to transform policing in this country, as we fight to end all forms of oppression, that Palestine never leaves its role as a central site of struggle and that we continue to raise our voices around this and fight, because we’re not free until Palestine is free. That is why again our struggles are not analogous, as so much linked. ■ The Washington Report and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) cosponsored a two-day web-based conference titled “End U.S. Support for Israeli Apartheid?” on April 17 and April 24, 2021. In this issue, as well as the upcoming August/September 2021 Washington Report, we have edited and condensed for clarity some of these talks. For complete transcripts, including the lively Q&A, please visit: https://www.israelapartheid con.org or watch the proceedings on the Washington Report’s YouTube channel. June/July 2021

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WAGING PEACE The Nakba, the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinians to facilitate the creation of Israel in 1948, was the focus of a May 10 event hosted by the Middle East Institute and Project48. Panelists detailed how the Nakba is not merely confined to the past, but a reality that continues to this day. Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi noted that it’s often incorrectly assumed that the Nakba resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. “In fact, over 300,000 Palestinians were expelled long before then,” he noted. Similarly, he noted that many falsely view the Nakba as an event of the past. “This is an ongoing event,” he said. “It’s something that happened in 1947/1948 and is still happening, as we can see today in Jerusalem.” “Today’s conflict in Sheikh Jarrah is a direct sequel of these events,” Khalidi continued. “The Palestinian people who are about to be expelled from their homes by Jewish settler organizations with the support of the Israeli state are descendants of, and in some cases themselves, refugees from Arab areas of what is now Israel who were driven from their homes in 1948.” Khalidi noted that displaced Palestinians are not permitted to return to their homes, while Jews from around the world are allowed to move to Israel and dispossess Palestinians. “Under Israeli law they [Palestinians] cannot claim their property, while Israeli Jews can make property claims in East Jerusalem,” he pointed out. Mohammed El-Kurd, a resident of Sheikh Jarrah whose family is facing imminent dispossession, provided powerful testimony to the reality of the ongoing Nakba. Settlers took over half of El-Kurd’s home more than a decade ago, and are now attempting to fully displace his family. He cautioned observers not to describe the takeover of homes in East Jerusalem as “evictions.” “‘Eviction’ does not imply that an army of settlers and an army of occupation forces lock down the entire city, 58

A protester in front of the Lincoln Memorial on May 29, 2021 demands U.S. action to stop the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem. bring down the skunk water trucks, bring down tear gas canisters and stun grenades and blow up your doors and break open your gates and throw your furniture from the second floor,” he said. “It’s a violent, violent, violent event.” El-Kurd noted that the Palestinian struggle to defend their homes takes a heavy personal and collective toll. “We are also experiencing psychological terror because these so-called ‘legal processes’ [used by settlers to seize Palestinian homes] take decades and decades and decades, and they financially drain us, they psychologically drain us, they drain us of our humanity, they also drain us of our prospects,” he said. El-Kurd, who has emerged as a leader of the ongoing resistance movement in Jerusalem, outlined his family’s long history of displacement. His grandmother was kicked out of her home in Haifa in 1948, and was again displaced in 1967 and 2009. “Had she been alive today, this would have been her fifth, or sixth, or seventh, or God knows what Nakba,” he said. “If that’s not verification that the Nakba is ongoing, I don’t know what is.” He also noted that forcing Palestinians from their homes is just one facet of the continuing Nakba: “If it’s not losing your home, it’s getting your home demolished, and if you’re not getting your home demolished, you’re getting expelled from the country, or you’re getting exiled, or you’re losing Jerusalem residency, and if you’re not losing your Jerusalem residency, you

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are being imprisoned.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) noted that, despite the ongoing Nakba, Israel still receives financial and diplomatic support from the U.S. “We must, with no hesitation, demand that our country recognize that unconditional support of Israel has enabled this erasure of Palestinian life and the denial of the rights of millions of refugees, and emboldens apartheid policies,” she said. The congresswoman also called for greater solidarity with other groups facing discrimination and dispossession. “I ask all of us to make sure that as we stand up for Palestinians today in sharing the history of the Palestinian Nakba, that we do it in connection with so many others that continue to be oppressed, or have a similar history,” she said. —Dale Sprusansky

Large Crowd Gathers for Palestine in Washington, DC

Amid chilly weather and gray skies, over a thousand protesters convened at the Lincoln Memorial on May 29 for the National March for Palestine. Headlined “Sanction Israel,” the rally was sponsored by dozens of organizations from around the United States, chief among them American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, alongside Jewish Voice for Peace, CodePink, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and myriad others. AMP’s managing director and spokesman, Josh Ruebner, told the Washington JUNE/JULY 2020 2021

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Palestinians Discuss the Ongoing Nakba

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Despite poor weather, a large crowd gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial on May 29, 2021 to participate in the National March for Palestine. “I’ve got this flag here to show solidarity between the Bosnian and Palestinian people. Just like in Bosnia, this is not a two-sided issue. This is a human rights issue. This is one-sided aggression.” As the day’s speakers held forth at the microphone in front of the memorial’s steps, organizers with bullhorns reminded protesters that the rally only had a permit for the lawn in front of the memorial. The crowd could not be contained, however. They spilled forward, past the speakers’ tent and onto the marble stairs. Palestinian flags snapped in the wind between the memorial’s Doric columns while activists took selfies with the massive, seated statue of Abraham Lincoln. All the while, chants of “Free, Free Palestine” echoed off the marble walls and down the National Mall. —Max Saltman

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Report that the march was organized roughly a week before, and focused chiefly on three goals. “First, ending all weapons deliveries to Israel. Second, holding Israel accountable for war crimes. And third, ending the U.S.-Israel free trade agreement, along with any imports of settlement goods [into the United States].” Shutting down the import of weapons to Israel, “is the number one issue,” Ruebner said, as weapons sales make the U.S. “complicit” in Israel’s belligerent actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. A large portion of those present at the rally traveled long distances to reach Washington. Palestinian-American restauranteur Zuhair Inaya, 66, drove seven hours from Raleigh, NC in a blue school bus decorated with a keffiyeh pattern. Inaya, a native of the West Bank city of Tulkarm, plastered every inch of his “Awda Bus” with Palestinian motifs. “Palestine Transportation Service” was printed on the sides, in both English and Arabic. “I started [building the bus] last October,” Inaya said, weaving in and out of traffic around the Lincoln Memorial, looking for a parking spot. Pulling out his iPhone at a red light, Inaya brought up his TikTok page, @therightofreturn, where he explains Palestinian history, shows off his bus and cooks kenafeh for an audience of roughly 4,000 followers. “My message is that we can all live together in Palestine,” said Inaya. “Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Muslims. I just want to return back to my land.” Noting that President Joe Biden often speaks of Ireland as his ancestral homeland, Inaya implored the president to see Palestine in a similar light. “I believe Joe Biden is an honest man,” Inaya said, “and I believe he will do something good for Palestine.” Other protesters found the Palestinian cause to be parallel to their own. Prominent above the dozens of Palestinian banners at the protest was a white flag with a blue shield. Its bearer, Jasmin Osojkic of Harrisburg, PA, identified it as the Bosnian flag. “I was born in Bosnia,” said Osojkic, 41, who drove two hours to attend the rally.

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Protesters at Israeli Embassy Decry Assault on Gaza

As the death toll continued to rise in Gaza after nine days of relentless bombardment by Israel, more than 1,000 human rights supporters, many wearing Palestinian keffiyeh scarves and matching face masks, protested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on May 18. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) sponsored the rally to show solidarity with the general strike and day of action being held across historic Palestine on the same day. “It is difficult to be repeatedly dehumanized, killed, lynched, beaten and silenced,” PYM member Laura Albast told the crowd. “They are counting on our defeat, on our exhaustion, to go back to our daily lives. But they forget that we are Palestinians and we have seen Palestinians from all

Protesters at the Israeli Embassy sit in the street as the names of victims killed in the Israeli bombing of Gaza are read aloud, on May 18, 2021. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

over Palestine unite, struggling together as one.” Speakers demanded the Israeli government cease its attempts to evict Palestinian residents from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where they have lived for more than 60 years. Protesters also called on the U.S. to stop providing billions in unconditional financial support to Israel every year. At the end of the protest, the names of children killed in the ongoing assault were read in front of miniature coffins covered in Palestinian flags. —Elaine Pasquini

New Poll Finds Increasing Support for Palestinians

On May 27, the Arab American Institute (AAI), the Middle East Institute and the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) convened a panel to discuss the findings of a just-released study by AAI, which indicates that public support for Israel is declining among Americans. The poll, carried out by John Zogby Strategies and EMI Research Solutions, was conducted on the day the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas was announced. For the first time, the poll found that Democrats view Palestinians more favorably than they do Israelis. The report found overall support for Palestinians at 51 percent among Democrats, and 60 percent among self-identified liberals. Among all Americans, support for Palestinians was 39 percent. On the issue of the U.S. having a balanced policy in dealing with Israel and Palestine, liberals, independents and Democrats supported striking a balance. Among Republicans, 37 percent favored supporting Israel and 34 percent believed support for both countries should be equal. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s favorable rating among Democrats was very low. Overall, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas also had very low favorables. “The tragedy of the PA is that it has become a subsidiary—a subcontractor— of Israel, and not just for the occupation,” AAI president James Zogby lamented. 60

Protesters gather in front of the White House to demand an end to U.S. support for Israel, on May 11, 2021. “Cancelling the elections [scheduled for May] is one of the real tragedies that has occurred. Palestinians need a vision and they need visionary leadership. I think the election may have provided that. [Presidential candidate] Nasser al-Kidwa has a brilliant strategy and a vision laid out. [Israeli prisoner and presidential candidate] Marwan Barghouti presents that same kind of charismatic leadership, but neither Abbas nor Hamas could tolerate that. They wanted an election that would legitimize the situation that currently exists in the West Bank and in Gaza.” On the issue of providing unrestricted financial and military aid to Israel if the country continues building illegal settlements on Palestinian land, there was strong opposition among Democrats and liberals. Republicans and conservatives showed little opposition to the free-flowing aid. “When you hear people on the progressive side of the Democratic Party speaking about these issues like restricting aid, you’re hearing them represent where the base of the Democratic Party is right now,” Zogby said. “When you hear people like Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) being a little more ambivalent in how they speak about this issue–—less decisively pro-Israel—you’re hearing them also picking up the drift of what is going on in the country.” All of the panelists agreed that President Joe Biden is out of sync with members of his party on the Israel-Palestine issue.

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However, Rania Batrice, the deputy campaign manager for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, believes the president is open to hearing different views. “You can have conversations and you can push him,” she said. Peter Beinart, a nonresident fellow at the FMEP, pinned his hopes on Vice President Kamala Harris for a possible change in the White House’s attitude toward Israel and Palestine. “While Biden has been ensconced in a very particular point of view for a long period of time, I think Kamala Harris is almost a pure test case of where the politics are because she has no long history on this,” he opined. In 2017, Harris told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that she would, “do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defense.” Lara Friedman, president of the FMEP, pointed out that Biden must deal with an Israeli government whose “policies and acts are incompatible with the post-World War II liberal world order, which this president came into office promising to strengthen and restore.” If the U.S. actually does stand with this “liberal world order, rules-based world…at some point Israel has to stop getting impunity. But to stop allowing Israel impunity is a line politically that is very difficult for a president to cross in U.S. politics,” she said. Biden needs to “focus on human rights, rather than a peace process.” —Elaine Pasquini JUNE/JULY 2021

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Members of the Yemeni Liberation Movement rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial calling for an end to the blockade of Yemen, which has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, on April 3, 2021. war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” but critics note he has yet to take concrete action. —Elaine Pasquini

Activists Stage Hunger Strike to End Yemeni Blockade

Calling on President Joe Biden to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen, members of the Yemeni Liberation Movement held a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial on April 3, as tourists descended on the National Mall to view the iconic cherry blossoms. Members of the group traveled from their base in Detroit to stage a hunger strike in front of Washington, DC’s Ellipse between March 29 and April 5. The blockade of Yemen began in 2015 with the positioning of warships at the north Yemeni port of Hodeidah, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The blockade has led to widespread starvation in the country of 29 million. Today, nearly six million Yemenis face lifethreatening food insecurity and deadly malnutrition. According to UNICEF, 400,000 Yemeni children could die of starvation this year if critical aid does not enter the country. Thirty percent of children under the age of five are suffering from severe malnutrition. The Biden administration, while declaring its intentions to increase diplomatic efforts to end the conflict, has not yet achieved that important goal. In February, the president said he would end “all American support for offensive operations in the JUNE/JULY 2021

Pinpointing Vestiges of Hope for Reeling Lebanon

Amid Lebanon’s multiple crises, the Middle East Institute (MEI) held its first “Lebanon Policy Conference” on May 26. Among the topics discussed was whether there is any hope for positive political breakthroughs in the country. MEI president Paul Salem noted that many of Lebanon’s economic and political

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issues can be traced back to the country’s entrenched and corrupt political elite. In the short term, he does not envision the country’s leaders taking serious measures toward reform. “What they need to do on the policy front is so difficult and takes real courage and will be unpopular,” Salem noted. The political class doesn’t “want to make the actual decisions that need to be made because then they will have to bear responsibility. They don’t want to investigate the [port] blast, they don’t want to investigate the central bank…they don’t want to tackle the subsidies because they don’t want to take that responsibility, they don’t want to hold elections because it’s like going to your own execution. So maybe it’s not surprising that among those options, they choose to do very little.” Salem believes elections scheduled for May 2022 are the best hope for change. However, he fears elections could be postponed if politicians sense voters are about to disrupt the status quo. “I’m afraid that the current prime minister [Hassan Diab], who is under the influence of the oligarchy—if they don’t want elections to happen, they will pressure him so that his government does not prepare for elections,” thus extending the mandate of the current parliament. Salem also doubts ongoing negotiations to create a government led by former

An anti-government protester shouts slogans as Lebanese soldiers block a highway leading to the presidential palace in Beirut, on March 27, 2021. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Prime Minister Saad Hariri will ultimately succeed. If elections do take place, the most likely and notable outcome would be “tremendous losses” for the Christian bloc aligned with President Michel Aoun and led by his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, Salem said. The Aoun-Bassil bloc is also aligned with Hezbollah in parliament. “What that means is that Hezbollah and its allies would no longer have an automatic majority, and that is a major political shift for Lebanon,” Salem noted. Despite the many negative strains running through Lebanese politics, Salem does see slivers of hope. “This imbalance between where the oligarchy is and the people are will translate [into change],” he predicted. “I think this change needs to be measured over years, maybe half a decade or a decade, not over the next 12 months,” he added. “In the last 30 years, the Lebanese public went along with the oligarchy and they really were not politically mobilized. That has all changed.” Maha Yahya, director of the Beirutbased Carnegie Middle East Center, shared Salem’s long-term hope. “What I find heartening is the energy I see across the board among civil society organizations [and] the emergence of multiple new political parties,” she said. At the same time, Yahya acknowledged that the near-term is bleak. “The country is collapsing around us…and they [the political elite] are just operating business as usual—it’s astonishing,” she said. “The collapse doesn’t seem to have a bottom, but also the system is so congested and completely bottlenecked that there doesn’t seem to be a way out.” The Lebanese people, she added, “just don’t know which way to turn anymore.” —Dale Sprusansky

DIPLOMATIC DOINGS Northern Cyprus President Calls For Two Independent States on Divided Island

The Eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus has ostensibly been divided into two countries since 1974. The internation62

Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus President Ersin Tatar (center) arrives in Geneva, Switzerland to attend a U.N.-led conference on the Cyprus dispute, on April 27, 2021. ally recognized Greek Cypriot-dominated Republic of Cyprus (ROC) is located in the south. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)–established in 1983 and recognized only by Turkey–occupies the northern part of the island. While there have been multiple attempts to formally resolve the issues between the two sides, talks have been repeatedly unsuccessful. Trying once again to broker an equitable resolution between the parties, United Nations-sponsored talks in Geneva convened in late April. The conference also included representatives from the three guarantor countries, Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom. The U.N.’s long-sought-after goal, shared by the ROC, is to unify the island under a “bizonal, bicommunal federation.” By all reports, the April talks failed to lay any discernable path forward. “The truth is that at the end of our efforts, we have not yet found enough common ground to allow for the resumption of formal negotiations,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said at a press conference. One week before the scheduled peace talks, Mark Meirowitz of the Turkish Heritage Organization interviewed Ersin Tatar, president of the TRNC, on the prospects

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

of finally resolving the issue of a divided Cyprus. Tatar explicitly rejected the formation of a federation, instead calling for the creation of “two equal sovereign states…with equal international status.” He pointed out that Turkish Cypriots have been “running ourselves for the last nearly 50 years and… when you look at the facts on the ground in Cyprus, we have two states anyway.” Tatar reviewed the island’s long history from the Ottoman reign in 1571 through the British occupation between 1878 and 1960, after which the island became independent. A Greek-backed coup in 1974 attempted to join the island to Greece, prompting Turkey to invade the northern part of the island to protect local ethnic Turks. The ROC argues this Turkish operation morphed from a mission to protect native Turkish Cypriots into a decades-long settler colonial project. It’s estimated that half of the TRNC’s population is made up of Turks who arrived after 1974. Tatar argued that Cyprus, supported by the international community, is content with the status quo. “They basically have no incentive to find a solution, share the resources…or share power with the Turkish Cypriots,” he said. The president, who is closely aligned JUNE/JULY 2021

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include issues of water preservation and climate change. However, such partnerships have been constrained, Yasseen continued, by the security situation in Iraq, among other issues. “The real difficulty,” he said, “has been in fostering the exchanges and meetings that can foster further cooperation.” Despite the difficulties of Americans and Iraqis meeting fact-to-face, Yasseen is hopeful that the sort of virtual meetings that have become common during the COVID-19 pandemic can be used to overcome the obstacles to developing business relationships. Now that Americans are able receive a visa on arrival in Iraq, Yasseen “would really like to have a direct flight from Washington, DC to Baghdad.” He added that the “business and diplomatic interests would make this commercially viable,” in addition to the “increasing number of Iraqi expatriates in the United States.” Regarding the repatriation of Iraqi archives and cultural antiquities, “This is one area where cooperation is going very smoothly,” the ambassador noted. He complimented U.S. authorities for their help in locating and recovering smuggled artifacts and helping get them back to Iraq. Turning to Iraq’s domestic developments, Yasseen discussed the national elections scheduled for October 2021. “Iraq is one of

with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, maintained that a two-state solution is in the interests of all sides. “If the Greek Cypriot state recognizes the Turkish Cypriot state and we can basically reciprocate, interact and find a resolution forward to cooperate, this would be a win-win situation for all Cypriots and also for…Turkey and Greece,” he said. “We are all in the same boat,” Tartar continued. “If we are going to have a happy Cyprus for our children, we should respect each other’s sovereignty and be reasonable, practical and realistic. If people follow these three words, maybe we will have a chance for a solution.” To bolster his vision, Tatar noted that former British foreign secretary Jack Straw said in March that a two-state solution is the only solution to end division. “The United Nations and the international community should open their eyes to the realities around Cyprus as to what’s been happening around Cyprus in the past 50 years,” he said. “Our sovereignty is the basis for our proposal and I hope that the international community will welcome our proposal.” —Elaine Pasquini

On April 13, the Atlantic Council held a discussion with Fareed Yasseen, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, in which he discussed the current state of AmericanIraqi relations as well as domestic issues within Iraq. Noting the declining U.S. military presence in Iraq, the ambassador believes his country’s forces are becoming self-sufficient. “We can contemplate…a day when they’ll be entirely capable of taking care of our security situation on their own and be a force for the stability of the region,” Yasseen said. However, the ambassador was mostly interested in discussing non-security issues, as he hopes the Iraq-U.S. relationship can evolve to focus on topics such as the economy. “We would like to see Iraq becoming a country where American companies set up joint ventures,” he remarked, especially in “critical areas” for Iraq. These JUNE/JULY 2021

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Iraqi Ambassador Hopes for Greater Economic Cooperation

the very few countries in the region that has had elections every constitutionally-mandated period for more than 15 years” and has developed expertise in electoral issues, he observed. He lamented, however, that “one of the major drawbacks of the last election—the turnout was very low.” For the government to increase participation in the next elections, Yasseen continued, it needs to convince citizens that they are credible by running them professionally and bringing in impartial observers. He hopes that changes in the electoral system and candidate selection process will result in elected officials who are more responsive to their constituents. Yasseen also discussed recent reforms undertaken by the Iraqi government, including an updated budget, devaluing the dinar, and measures to stimulate the economy as well as empower the private sector. The state “shouldn’t and can’t” find jobs for all the young people in Iraq, he argued, suggesting more focus on the private sector to reduce unemployment. The ambassador further advocated that Iraq collect more of its income from taxes on agricultural exports and less from oil. He is optimistic that efforts to open Iraq to its Arab neighbors will unlock markets for Iraqi products as well as attract foreign investments that will be “value-adding and jobcreating.” —Alex Shanahan

Fishermen carry their catch from the Najaf Sea, located in central Iraq, on May 20, 2021. Water preservation is one area where Iraq would like to see greater cooperation with the U.S., according to Ambassador Fareed Yasseen. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Middle East Books Review All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1

On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past

By Hamid Dabashi, Haymarket Books, 2020, paperback, 250 pp. MEB $19.95

Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson

Hamid Dabashi has produced an engaging autobiographical tribute to his close friend and colleague at Columbia University, the renowned theorist and Palestinian activist Edward Said, who died in September 2003 at age 67. Dabashi aptly describes the book as “At once a political and scholarly reminiscence about Said.” Comprised of a sprightly collection of memories, interviews, travelogues, short essays and more extended philosophical treatises, the book assesses Said’s political thought and activism as well as Dabashi’s own not inconsiderable intellectual contributions. Dabashi, an Iranianborn author, thinker, and Al Jazeera columnist, treasured Said as a close friend and intellectual confidante who “was always a catalyst in my thinking.” On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past will be accessible and rewarding to readers who are new to the subject as well as those already familiar with Said and his work. As Dabashi points out, Said was first and foremost a passionate, un-

Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor. 64

conditional and lifelong advocate for the liberation of his native Palestine. That cause like no other fueled Said’s “towering ability to speak truth to power.” In addition to the lifelong advocacy for his native land, Said established a reputation as a powerful intellectual with the publication of his seminal work Orientalism in 1978. In that study Said brilliantly theorized the relationship between knowledge and power in Western representations (as opposed to the realities) of the colonial world and specifically the Arab-Islamic world. Like all intellectuals, Said drew on the work of previous thinkers—especially Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault—in establishing Orientalism as an enduring critique and a foundational text on postcolonial thought. In Representations of the Intellectual (1994) and other works, Said also ruminated revealingly on the challenges of the “exilic intellectual.” Though marginalized both literally and figuratively, the exiled intellectual nonetheless must persist in the obligation to speak truth to power. As Dabashi points out, after Said’s birth in Palestine and childhood in which he re-

ceived a British education in Egypt, he moved to New York City where he “planted the defiant character of the exilic intellectual right in the middle of the most conceited public space in the very heart of an Empire.” Dabashi deeply admires Said not only for his intellectual and political contributions but also for his friend’s “intimate humanity, ordinary simplicity” as well as his “sweet, endearing, disarmingly embracing character.” Dabashi links Said with a rarefied handful of legendary intellectuals and revolutionaries notably Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Rosa Luxemburg. By contrast, Dabashi does not shy away from calling out the villains of the Said story, both opponents of Palestinian liberation and of Said personally. These include Fouad Ajami, Dinesh D’Souza, Alan Dershowitz, Thomas Friedman, and Said’s nemesis Bernard Lewis. In a closing essay, Dabashi dismisses the latter—a former Princeton professor, proponent of apartheid Israel, and a man who was hostile to both Said and his cause—as a mere “ideological functionary,” the equivalent of “a British colonial officer writing intelligence for his fellow officers on how to rule the Muslim word better.” Unlike Lewis, Said’s stature and the significance of his intellectual contributions have only grown since his death. He will remain a towering figure for “his enduring ideas of contrapuntal thinking, of secular humanism, of his magisterial critique of Orientalism as the modus operandi of knowledge and power, and of his monumental works on culture and imperialism.” But above all, Said’s devotion to Palestine has cemented a legacy as “the most significant spokesman of the Palestinian cause abroad.” Said is no longer with us, but that legacy is very much alive—and very well served by the memories and verbal artistry of Hamid Dabashi.

What Jerusalem Means to Us: Muslim Perspectives and Reflections Edited by Saliba Sarsour and Carole Monica C. Burnett, Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, 2021, paperback, 214 pp. MEB $19.95

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Reviewed by Steve France

In a just-published volume of essays, distinguished Muslims tell the world—and particularly Christians—what Jerusalem means to them: a shared holiness. They bear anguished witness to Israel’s ever deeper aggressions in occupied East Jerusalem, which includes the incomparable Old City and its historic and spiritual treasures. What also is striking, however, is how calm and confident the contributors are

in making clear that Jerusalem simply can never be defined as the exclusive possession of any political power or any individual religion, and still be Jerusalem, however hard Israel and its devoted U.S. enabler may try. “Jerusalem is a shared gift, not the sole property of one government or one people,” Jordanian scholar El Hassan bin Talal says in his forward to the book. El Hassan, the author of his own book-length study of Jerusalem, is a royal prince of the Kingdom of Jordan. As such, he belongs to the Hashemite dynasty, which descends directly from the Prophet Muhammad, and is internationally recognized as the “Custodian” of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. In this book, the prince refrains from expressly condemning Israel’s “annexation” of all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital. Nor does he call out the United States, which under former Presi-

Steve France is a DC-based activist and writer, affiliated with Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Palestine-Israel Network. JUNE/JULY 2021

dent Donald Trump endorsed the Jewish State’s claim to sole sovereignty over Jerusalem and moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (a move the Biden administration has refused to reverse). Nonetheless, What Jerusalem Means to Us is a pointed protest against Israel’s flouting of international law and contempt for the city’s multifaith, multicultural identity. It follows the publication of a companion volume of meditations, What Jerusalem Means to Us: Christian Perspectives and Reflections, published in 2018 and also available from Middle East Books. In keeping with their peaceful convictions and intentions, many contributors focus on the holy splendors and historical riches of the city, which Muslims call alQuds—the Holy. Above all, are the glories of the Haram Al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary that contains al-Aqsa Mosque and the stunning golden dome that covers an immensely significant rocky outcropping. On that rock Abraham is believed to have offered his son to God, and it was to that spot that the Prophet Muhammad was miraculously flown from Mecca by his steed to lead all the prophets in prayer and thence be taken up into heaven and instructed by Allah. Thus, writes artist, author and anthropologist Dr. Ali Qleibo, the rock is “the point of connection between heaven and earth” and was the first “Qibla,” before Mecca was made the place toward which all Muslims pray. In their different ways, the essays explain how these and other features of Jerusalem express deep and sublime spiritual truths about God’s creation and His plan for mankind’s peace, justice and eternal happiness. Scholarly contributors detail the way in which, over the centuries, Muslims and their rulers honored God, and memorialized Allah’s precepts and intentions in the physical and cultural development of Jerusalem, including respectful accommodation of Jewish and Christian residents as they cared for their equally venerated holy sites. Also recounted is the imprint of the British, who conquered the city in 1917 and laid the groundwork for Zionist Jews to conquer it

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

in their turn, all the way up to some of the latest anti-Palestinian policies. Dr. Hisham Khatib, a collector of artwork, maps and photographs, impresses on the readers that “Jerusalem to us Muslims is not only its religious significance.” It is also its historic, social and cultural value. “Wherever you go,” he says, whether in the Old City, “where almost every building has a history of its own,” or in the communities surrounding it, the indigenous inhabitants experience strong, if ineffable, attachments. This, he says, explains why, despite all the indignities and hardships they suffer under occupation, “most of Jerusalem’s residents have insisted on remaining in the city.” Many contributors share deeply personal experiences and bonds that link them to the stones and people of Jerusalem. Some stories are amusing. For example, as a child growing up in the Dheisheh refugee camp only a few miles outside the city, Prof. Azzam S. Elayan, Ph.D., was fixated on getting a chance to accompany his blind father on trips to the Holy City, but his older brother, Adnan, always got to go instead. Azzam longed to see the legendary Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. Under his brother’s spell, he also burned with a truly fanatical desire to partake of a “Jerusalem falafel sandwich with shatta, a hot sauce especially made for having with falafel.” In the boy’s belief system, the taste of that falafel was literally the taste of heaven. Now, he confides, “I cannot think of my father without thinking of Jerusalem, nor can I think of Jerusalem without thinking of my father,” a beloved personage in the Old City, where he was a master artisan, assembling and caning chairs and furnishing them with various elegant weaves. Many poignant memories and heavy losses are shared, but one that can stand for all of them is relatively impersonal. It comes from a married couple, Dr. Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Dr. Ilham Nasser. Since moving away 30 years ago, they have returned every year to visit the city, but every year they notice “there is less and less room” for them or other non-Jews. More shops have closed, more Israeli flags are planted on house roofs, walks they used to love are no longer possible, and 65

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solve our problems” won’t work. Overall, the takeaway from these diverse Muslim perspectives is that Jerusalem will always belong to the world. It lives deeply in the hearts of its Muslim children. They will never give it up. May more voices, from all three faiths—and secular voices of good will—be sounded on behalf of the Holy City.

America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present

“the idea that Jerusalem belongs to all” fades a little more. It is moving and heartening to listen to these Muslim voices tell of their love for Jerusalem and its message of universal peace and brotherhood. Rana Hajjaj, one of several younger essayists, takes a somewhat different tack, however. Born in Kuwait and raised in Lebanon, she lives in New York and works with al-Quds Bard College. Hajjaj doesn’t undercut the spiritual meaning of Jerusalem, but her eye is on contemporary realities, whether in exile or in Jerusalem. She “takes us on a journey through a life of displacement and dispossession,” as the book’s editor, Dr. Carole Monica C. Burnett, puts it in an introduction. In other words, Hajjaj recounts another maddening Palestinian life in a world that “is telling me that I do not have the right to exist.” Although one side of her Palestinian family is from Jerusalem, it took Hajjaj three decades before she saw Jerusalem for herself. Ten minutes from Ben Gurion airport, she noticed the highway was decked in barbed-wire, and electric fencing. In the city, she saw and smelled apartheid in the difference between West Jerusalem, with its daily garbage collection and street-cleaning, and East Jerusalem, where garbage is picked up once every three weeks, and so on. Looking to the future, Hajjaj says, “True leadership [on the part of the Palestinian Authority] would walk away from the Oslo Accords...halt all forms of security cooperation [and] dissolve itself,” giving Palestinians “a shot at democracy.” Endlessly “beg[ging] the international community to 66

By John Ghazvinian, Alfred A. Knopf, 2021, hardcover, 667 pp. MEB $35

Reviewed by Dale Sprusansky

“It’s complicated” is the refrain often used by the media and casual observers to eschew an honest review of the root causes of the Israel-Palestine “conflict.” When it comes to Iran, however, “it’s complicated” is rarely uttered by the same individuals. Rather, simplistic narratives are often uncritically regurgitated ad nauseam. We’ve all heard them: Iran is ruled by “radical mullahs” who possess a dangerous nuclear weapons program and regularly lead chants of “Death to America”; The ayatollahs held Americans hostage in 1979 and continue to arrest U.S. citizens to this day; Iran is the “leading state sponsor of terrorism” and its malign activities cripple the hopes of peace from Yemen to Gaza. Khomeini—or is it Khamenei?—it doesn’t matter, they’re all bad. In this midst of these simplistic and antagonistic narratives, historian John Ghazvinian’s America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present provides a necessary dose of perspective. Right from the get-go, Ghazvinian makes his intent in writing the book explicit: to show that the U.S.-Iran relationship doesn’t have to be acrimonious. To be clear, he is no naïve idealist, nor does he seek to solely pin blame for the current state of affairs on the U.S. or Iran. Rather, through his reputable scholarly work, he hopes his readers digest more than random historical facts and anecdotes and come to see how the twists and turns of history show there is no etched-in-stone rule that the U.S. and Iran must be enemies. As one would expect, Ghazvinian de-

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

votes due time to the two years most etched in the brains of leaders in Tehran and Washington: 1953 and 1979. He pinpoints the 1953 U.S.-British overthrow of the Iranian prime minister and the 1979 hostage crisis as the “original sins” of the U.S.-Iran relationship, sins both sides have allowed to fester. His book, however, seeks to place these events within the broader history of the two countries’ bilateral relationship. Doing so, Ghazvinian believes, shows the U.S. and Iran have “far more in common than either cares to admit.” In the book’s opening pages, Americans may be surprised to learn that their founding fathers admired Persia, seeing the longenduring empire as a potential model for the burgeoning United States. Even before the revolutionary era, colonial Americans were enamored with Persia. Many held favorable Biblical associations, viewing Persia as the land of the Magi and Cyrus the Great. Perhaps more importantly, Persia was seen as a bulwark against Ottoman aggression, and thus viewed favorably by American settlers who saw the Ottoman Empire as an existential threat to Christendom. In an about-face from what we’ve come to expect today, upstart colonial newspapers grew their readership by publishing articles that cheered on Persia as it endured a revolt launched by an Afghan rebel (who was suspected of being backed by the Ottomans). “The American media in the 1720s were uniformly, passionately and unapologetically pro-Iranian,” Ghazvinian notes. Throughout the later portion of the book, he details how today’s U.S. media is also one-sided, regurgitating anti-Iran talking points, even when they “[bear] absolutely no relation to reality.” Despite this early American fascination with Persia, it wasn’t until the 19th century that Persia began to take an interest in the U.S. Squeezed on all sides by insatiable British and Russian imperialistic forces, Persia reached out to the U.S., hoping the international community’s rising power would intervene to help the empire defend

Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. JUNE/JULY 2021

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its sovereignty. In yet another 180-degree turn from today, the U.S. was uninterested in being coaxed into such a foreign entanglement. While America’s isolationist response disappointed Persia, readers can see how it was this very U.S. policy that made the country endearing in the first place. Persians, Ghazvinian notes, admired the U.S. because it “minded its own business and seemed to respect the sovereignty and dignity of powerless nations.” It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the U.S. began formal relations with Persia, opening what Ghazvinian describes as an “amateurish” diplomatic mission. In fact, the U.S. didn’t end its “aloof neutrality” toward Iran until the 1940s, when it sent its first official ambassador to the country. As we know, it didn’t take long for things to go very awry. Fast-forwarding to today’s standoff, Ghazvinian does a masterful job of outlining how U.S. policy toward Iran has been deeply influenced by Israel and its lobby. He notes that in response to the prospect of Arab-Israeli peace offered by the 1991 Madrid Conference, Israel needed a “new radical ‘threat’ to position itself against” in order to guarantee continued American support. Iran “was an obvious choice.” From that point on, Ghazvinian chronicles how Israel lobby pressure led to the “dual containment” strategy, a never-ending series of sanctions that not even the oil lobby could veto, and hysteria over the Iranian nuclear program, even though Israel’s leaders believe Tehran has no interest in pursuing—let alone using—a nuclear weapon. The constant Israeli haranguing about Iran serves one purpose, Ghazvinian concludes: “To prevent a thawing of relations between Iran and the United States” so as to preserve Israel’s U.S.-supported supremacy in the region. Ghazvinian’s masterful historical account achieves his goal of offering readers a holistic understanding of the U.S.-Iran relationship. The twists and turns over the centuries—many of them ironic in light of modern realities—reveal how quickly history can change and solidify his argument that today’s forced acrimony ought to be rethought. JUNE/JULY 2021

N E W A R R I VA L S Stories from Palestine: Narratives of Resilience by Marda Dunsky, University of Notre Dame Press, 2021, 268 pp. MEB $35.00. Marda Dunsky presents a vivid overview of contemporary Palestinian society in the venues envisioned for a future Palestinian state. Through interviews with women and men from cities, towns, villages and refugee camps who are farmers, scientists, writers, cultural innovators, educators and entrepreneurs, Dunsky illuminates their resourcefulness in navigating agricultural, educational and cultural pursuits in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. The narratives weave in quantitative data and historical background from a range of primary and secondary sources that contextualize Palestinian life under occupation. More than a collection of individual stories, Stories from Palestine presents a broad, crosscut view of the tremendous human potential of this particular society. Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California’s Iranian Pop Music by Farzaneh Hemmasi, Duke University Press, 2020, 264 pp. MEB $26.95. Los Angeles, called Tehrangeles because it is home to the largest concentration of Iranians outside of Iran, is the birthplace of a distinctive form of post-revolutionary pop music. Created by professional musicians and media producers fleeing Iran’s revolutionary-era ban on “immoral“ popular music, Tehrangeles pop has been a part of daily life for Iranians at home and abroad for decades. Exploring Tehrangeles pop producers’ complex commercial and political positionings, Hemmasi shows how culture, media and the diaspora combine to respond to the political transformations of the Iranian state. The transnational Tehrangeles culture, Hemmasi contends, transgresses Iran’s geographical, legal and moral boundaries while allowing all Iranians the ability to imagine new forms of identity and belonging. Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam by Sean W. Anthony, University of California Press, 2020, 304 pp. MEB $32.95. Sean W. Anthony demonstrates how critical readings of non-Muslim and Muslim sources in tandem can breathe new life into the historical study of Muhammad and how his message transformed the world. By placing these sources within the intellectual and cultural world of late antiquity, Anthony offers a fresh assessment of the earliest sources for Muhammad’s life. He takes readers on a grand tour of the available evidence, and suggests new insights from the techniques and methods pioneered by countless scholars over the decades. The book is an authoritative introduction to the life of Muhammad as well as a compelling exploration of his time.

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Americans and Iranians who want to know how we got to where we are today and why we ought to pivot in a new direction would be well-advised to pick up this book. While the book is lengthy, the writing is clear, digestible and approachable to all readers. Ghazvinian delivers a piece of work that is as enjoyable and easy to read as it is essential to consume.

B O O K TA L K S

Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s

ple were really invested in making new things—plays, singers—come of age.” In World War I divergent groups descended on Cairo. “Europe is sort of devastated and people were coming to Cairo from there to try to make it big,” Cormack explained. “Cairo was really booming and women became much more involved in the public sphere.” There was a circuit of cabaret performers who traveled the globe—from Paris to Cairo and beyond, but the world of cabaret was not a feminist nir-

By Raphael Cormack, W. W. Norton and Company, 2021, paperback, 324 pp. MEB $28.95

Cafés, cabarets and theaters flourished in 1920s Cairo in a way not seen before or since in the ancient land of the pharaohs. In his book, Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s, author Raphael Cormack spotlights the entrepreneurial women who drove this unprecedented entertainment scene on Emad El-Din street in Cairo’s lively Ezbekiyya neighborhood. The pioneering ladies profiled in his book include the stage actress-turned-journalist, Rose Al-Youssef, whose self-named Arabic political news magazine still publishes weekly 63 years after her death. In addition, Hoda Sha’arawi, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union and a trailblazer in Egypt’s feminist movement, is featured in the tome, along with legendary songstress Umm Kulthum and her rival Mounira alMahdiyya, the first woman to lead an Egyptian theater company. On March 15, Mirette Mabrouk, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Egypt program, moderated an online discussion on the book between Cormack and journalist Maha El-Nabawi. One reason the lively nightlife and entertainment scene flourished in 1920s Cairo was a “post-1919 revolution sense of opportunity,” the author said. “In Egyptian national imagination this moment in 1919 was a great kind of cultural wellspring and in the years after it peo68

vana. “Many women were exploited,” he pointed out. Discussing the role of religion and morals in this era, Cormack noted that there is a sense that everything in the Middle East can be explained by religion. “I didn’t want to tell the story of women against religion or just put religion as this thing hanging over everything, but a lot of reactionary and conservative opinions were tied into religion,” he noted. The women “were all pushing against the idea that it was not respectable for them to be on stage.” Cormack continued, “My aim was to give another angle on the history of Egyptian feminism, and to tell the stories of Egyptian feminists who were from different backgrounds and classes.” Journalist El-Nabawi praised Cormack’s narrative of Egypt’s “gender plight through the lens of female performers.” Comparing the gender issues of today with those of the 1920s, El-Nabawi argued “gender has gotten more progressive, but I think it still has a long way to go.” Midnight in Cairo is “a great unearthing

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of these personal narratives,” El-Nabawi said. “There are many people in the contemporary landscape now who are responding directly to these women and adding a continuity to their work, which is exciting. This book…is a nice way to go beyond nostalgia and…create new contexts for understanding our contemporary landscape through this far-off past.” —Elaine Pasquini

Girl Decoded

By Rana el Kaliouby, Currency Trade, 2021, paperback, 339 pp. MEB $12.00 The National Arab American Women’s Association (NAAWA) hosted a Zoom discussion titled, “Women in Business—The Future of Technology and the Empathy Economy,” with Egyptian-American scientist and author Dr. Rana el Kaliouby on May 23. Dr. el Kaliouby is co-founder and CEO of Affectiva, a company that is humanizing artifical intelligence by analyzing human expressions and reactions. The AI start-up spun off from the MIT Media Lab. She discussed finding her voice in a scientific field that is overwhelmingly male during her trailblazing journey from Cairo to Cambridge to Boston. Her story literally began when her mother took a university computer programing class taught by her father in the ’70s. With a mother who became one of the first female computer programmers in the Middle East, Rana said she had an inspiring role model. Although her mother was a career woman, due to cultural norms, she couldn’t talk about work when she got home or travel for business without taking the whole family. Rana was determined to make other choices but those choices may have hurt her marriage. El Kaliouby was named by Forbes to its list of America’s Top 50 Women in Tech, and Fortune included her in its list of 40 under 40. Nonetheless, like many women, Dr. el Kaliouby said she was reluctant to

Elaine Pasquini is a correspondent for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine and the Nuze.ink online news service.

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take the risk to leave academia to start her own company because she was afraid to fail. She was the hardest person to convince that she could succeed. “I was my own biggest obstacle,” she said. When el Kaliouby applied for the CEO position she had been doing all along, “I felt like I had to check all the boxes.” Men have more selfconfidence as they climb up the corporate ladder than do women, who somehow secretly believe that they are an imposter. Dr. el Kaliouby called for more diversity

in the booming artificial intelligence field, and also urged companies in the Middle East and North Africa to embrace those possibilities, warning that if they don’t, they will fall behind the rest of the world. She called for women to mentor each other, noting that she learned not to take no for answer when she pitches to investors from her own mentor, Affectiva co-founder Roz Picard. If Dr. el Kaliouby was giving advice to her younger self, she would suggest she join more professional networks or organizations made up of people facing the same challenges, like raising a family in a cross cultural community. She said she wishes she had learned about NAAWA sooner. El Kaliouby’s memoir, Girl Decoded, should be on library bookshelves to inspire other young women to blaze their own trails in the tech industry. —Delinda C. Hanley

Delinda C. Hanley is the executive editor of the Washington Report. JUNE/JULY 2021

N E W A R R I VA L S Voices of the Lost: A Novel by Hoda Barakat, Yale University Press, 2021, 208 pp. MEB $13.00. This profound and disturbing novel by acclaimed Lebanese author Hoda Barakat tells the story of characters living on the periphery, battling with poverty and fighting their own demons. Set in an unnamed, war-torn country, the novel consists of six letters—all intercepted by unintended recipients, all of whom are compelled to write their own letters of confession. An undocumented immigrant writes his former lover. A woman in a hotel writes to a man from her past. An escaped torturer recounts his crimes to his mother. A former prostitute writes to her brother. A young queer man recounts to his estranged father his partner’s battle with AIDS. Finally, the mailman leaves his own note. Incisive, troubling and deeply human, this is an urgent story of lives intimately woven together in a society that is tearing itself apart. Palestine: A Socialist Introduction edited by Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean, Haymarket Books, 2020, 250 pp. MEB $18.95. Palestine: A Socialist Introduction systematically tackles a number of important aspects of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, contextualizing them in an increasingly polarized world and offering a socialist perspective on how full liberation can be won. Through an internationalist, anti-imperialist lens, this book explores the links between the struggle for freedom in the United States, Palestine and beyond. It examines both the historical and contemporary trajectory of the Palestine solidarity movement in order to glean lessons for today’s organizers. It also argues that, in order to achieve justice in Palestine, the movement has to take up the question of socialism regionally and internationally. Contributors include: Jehad Abusalim, Shireen Akram-Boshar, Omar Barghouti, Nada Elia, Toufic Haddad, Remi Kanazi, Annie Levin, Mostafa Omar, Khury Petersen-Smith and Daphna Thier. Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring Edited by Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad, NYU Press, 2020, 422 pp. MEB $35.00. Images of women protesting in the Arab Spring, from Tahrir Square to the streets of Tunisia and Syria, have become emblematic of the political upheaval sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. In Women Rising, Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad bring together a provocative group of scholars, activists, artists and more, highlighting the firsthand experiences of these remarkable women. In this relevant and timely volume, Stephan and Charrad paint a picture of women’s political resistance in 16 countries before, during and since the Arab Spring protests began in 2011. Contributors provide insight into a diverse range of perspectives across the entire movement, focusing on often-marginalized voices, including rural women, housewives, students and artists. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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Other People’s Mail

TELL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS WHAT YOU THINK PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW WASHINGTON, DC 20500 COMMENT LINE: (202) 456-1111 WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT ANY MEMBER: U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WASHINGTON, DC 20515 (202) 225-3121

Compiled by Dale Sprusansky UNDERSTANDING ROOT CAUSES

To the Enterprise-Record, May 22, 2021 Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. The terrible violence in IsraelPalestine captures our attention, our horror, our angry advocacy, our impulse to blame. We see bombing, innocent people killed, justifications of violence, calls for justice. We also hope for a stop to the suffering and destruction, which we know cannot serve any long-term remedy or peace. What lies hidden, beneath the war and the media highlights, are the root causes, the forest we cannot see. Palestine—Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank—are territories long ago acquired by force and occupied by Israel, controlled with policies that deny human rights, expropriate land illegally, control the movements of people and goods and demolish homes. This integrated policy aims at greater control of this occupied land—importing Jewish settlers but making it harder for Palestinians to stay— to expand the Jewish state of Israel. In Gaza, a 14-year blockade by Israel controls all land, air and sea borders and restricts the movement of goods and people. Many materials needed to repair infrastructure destroyed in the 2014 war cannot come in. Ninety-five percent of the water is undrinkable. The economy cannot right itself, young people are unemployed and without prospects, since they cannot leave. Israel wants security, but also to turn Palestinian land into a Jewish state. This long century-old project, a betrayal of some original hopes of both Jews and Palestinians for a shared land of peace and equality, is the hidden violence, the broken center that will not hold. Jim Anderson, Chico, CA

ISRAEL’S “RIGHT TO DEFENSE” VS. PALESTINIANS’ RIGHT TO DIGNITY

To The Plain Dealer, May 17, 2021 What will it take before the media, our congresspersons and the administration stop saying things like, “Israel has a right 72

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 2201 C ST. NW WASHINGTON, DC 20520 PHONE: (202) 647-6575 VISIT WWW.STATE.GOV TO E-MAIL

to defend itself.” Or, it’s a “war,” when Hamas’ crude rockets can’t be compared to Israel’s military might destroying Gaza. Or, omit noting that this conflict was sparked by Israelis trying to evict more Palestinian families from their East Jerusalem neighborhood. It is far past time to speak the truth. Israel is bent on absorbing as much as possible of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In hundreds of ways, they make life as difficult and dangerous as possible for Palestinians. They build Jewish-only settlements and roads, encroaching on and isolating Palestinian towns. They demolish Palestinian homes on the pretext of their lacking almost impossible to obtain building permits. They allow extremist settlers to terrorize Palestinian farmers. Palestinians pay taxes in Israel-controlled areas but get insufficient water, electricity or even garbage pickup. I was there and saw it firsthand. This is slow but steady ethnic cleansing, a violation of international law and a moral outrage. Tell our congressional representatives to stop subsidizing Israel by over $3 billion a year with no conditions to constrain settlements or protect Palestinian rights. Nina McLellan, Shaker Heights, OH

THE U.S. SUPPORTS “GOLIATH’S” APARTHEID

To The Spokesman-Review, May 22, 2021 Yesterday’s paper said Joe Biden talked to Israel’s [Binyamin] Netanyahu but “stopped short of demanding an immediate stop to the eight days of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages that have killed more than 200 people, most of them Palestinian.” Today’s paper says more than 200 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have died. Those statistics are numbers as usual for the bloodshed between these peoples. You see, an airstrike does a lot more damage than a few rockets. Biden gives forceful support for Israel to

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

ANY SENATOR: U.S. SENATE WASHINGTON, DC 20510 (202) 224-3121

defend itself from Hamas. This is an international story that Biden doesn’t understand, a David and Goliath situation, 12 to 200. If he wanted to protect civilians, what about the 200 dead and 1,400 wounded Palestinians? Biden could easily stop this from happening because he could threaten Netanyahu with cutting a billion dollars or so from Israel’s military aid which is paid for with American tax dollars and is spent mostly annihilating the Palestinian people in Gaza and destroying Palestinian homes. It seems every president we have is afraid that stopping the horrendous human rights abuses that Israel perpetrates against Palestinians will be seen as anti-Semitic. This is untrue. There are many Jewish people in Israel as well as the United States who understand the yoke of daily humiliation and violence that Palestinians are subjected to under the Israeli government’s oppressive laws and extra-legal activities. Apartheid exists in Israel. Americans should see it as such and work to stop it. Linda Greene, Spokane, WA

AMIDST CHANGING VIEWS, BIDEN REMAINS OBSTINATE ON ISRAEL

To the Portland Press Herald, May 18, 2021 It’s tragic and heartbreaking to read about the current violence in Israel-Palestine, which was started by right-wing “settlers,” backed by U.S.-based groups, who have long, violently sought to take Palestinian land and have physically attacked Palestinians, including women and children, most recently at a site sacred to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims. These attacks have long been enabled by the Israel Defense Forces, which does nothing to protect Palestinian civilians, and in recent years has fired across the Gaza border at nonviolent protesters. The U.S. should exert its political and financial muscle to cut off the $3.8 billion we send to Israel every year until Israel changes its tune. The ineffectual hopes and prayers of Joe Biden and past U.S. administrations that the violence cease, JUNE/JULY 2021

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and for the moribund two-state solution, are not enough. Biden has long been an Israel sycophant, saying he’s a Zionist and loves Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken complain about repressive regimes in China and Russia. But out of the other side of their mouths, they say, Israelis have “the right to defend themselves…,” apparently, no matter what they do. Talk about hypocrisy! But, drip, drip, drip, things are slowly changing, as witnessed by the recent Human Rights Watch report on Israeli apartheid. David Plimpton, Cape Elizabeth, ME

BIDEN ACKNOWLEDGES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, FUNDS ISRAELI CRIMES

To the Austin American-Statesman, May 24, 2021 While I am in support of an Israeli state, the continued apartheid and violence the current Israeli government perpetrates is unacceptable. Palestinians are treated like second-class citizens, refused access to basic services and forcibly removed from their homes. It wasn’t OK in America, it wasn’t OK in South Africa and it’s not OK in Israel. No matter what violent response Palestinian extremist groups may have committed, it does not give the Israeli government the right to create an apartheid system, bomb the homes of civilians and commit genocide—especially considering that these extremist groups have grown in power because the Israeli government has been creating illegal settlements in Palestinian land for years. Recently, the Biden administration made the fantastic decision to recognize the Armenian Genocide, something that previous administrations had failed to do over fears of the impact on international alliances. That trend must continue with Israel. Jaxon Coward, Austin, TX

U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL BEING DISCUSSED IS A GOOD THING

To the Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2021 Rob Eshman criticizes comedian John Oliver for the observation that Palestinian suffering outweighs Israeli suffering, and recommends that outsiders stay out of the debates. It seems like sensible advice, unless one considers that the land grab that started the recent events was endorsed JUNE/JULY 2021

by the last U.S. president, and the weapons used against Gaza are paid for by U.S. taxpayers and made in the USA. Maybe we “outsiders” ought to be more engaged in Israeli wars, not less. Michael Provence, San Diego, CA The writer is a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of California San Diego.

DON’T USE SCRIPTURE TO SUPPORT DISPOSSESSION

To The Post-Star, May 15, 2021 Throughout history, Jews have been routinely singled out and scapegoated. In similar fashion, Palestinians have been denied justice and common humane decency by Israeli and Arab governments. Because of its economic and military might, modern Israel bears a heavy responsibility for the welfare of Palestinians. I have a hope that any people who have suffered massive injustices, as Jews have, should be first in line to demand that “Never again…” shall this happen to any of God’s children. You can prove most anything from scripture. That said, if you believe that God gave you the land of Israel as a homeland, then you must (also) accept the moral demands of this same God. Speaking through the Hebrew prophets God gives a constant justice message: “Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8), or “Welcome the stranger for you were once strangers in Egypt” (Exodus 22:20). Evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem is anything but “justice and mercy.” When some in modern Israel trample on the values of their own Hebrew faith, should this not be called out as another form of anti-Semitism? Rev. John A. Ekman, Greenfield Center, NY

ISRAEL BESMIRCHES JEWISH VALUES

To the Enterprise-Record, May 25, 2021 The occupation [of Palestine] by Israel since the 1967 war and the turn to the extreme right of the Israeli government elicits agony and shame for me as an American Jew. I am sickened by our government being played by [Binyamin] Netanyahu, groveling and complimenting him on a cease fire while assuring him that the United States will keep giving the Israeli government obscene amounts of money when they clearly plan to continue to take over contested land. The two-state solution appears dead. The values of Ju-

daism have been besmirched beyond belief by the modern nation of Israel. Silona Reyman, Chico, CA

CELEBRATING EID AMID INJUSTICES

To the Austin American-Statesman, May 20, 2021 After spending Ramadan devoid of communal gatherings due to the pandemic, there was hope this year of celebrating Eid with more than wishes over Zoom calls with friends and family. But even as the vaccination had improved the odds of being able to “celebrate,” the hope lost its glimmer as we were reminded of the ongoing injustices, persecutions and the viral, graphic evidence of atrocities. The heart sinks in the pool of sorrow watching the blood-stained shoes of little girls from Kabul, or the children on stretchers surrounded by rubble in Gaza, or stories of war crimes in Yemen. We need to urge our elected officials to stop supporting nation states like Israel and Saudi Arabia, and use international forums like the United Nations to establish absolute justice. Muhammad Ahmad, Round Rock, TX

DC STATEHOOD AND PALESTINIAN FREEDOM

An open letter to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser: I understand that you issued a proclamation making April 5 the “Festival of Good Neighbors,” highlighting the “cultural bond between Morocco and Israel.” For many years, today has been the Day of the Palestinian Child. On this day, advocates remind the world of the unneighborly abuses Israel perpetrates against Palestinian children, which include restricted access to schools, imprisonment and indiscriminate bombings. There is a bill in the Congress entitled “Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act,” to address Israel’s unneighborly actions, particularly against children. Given DC’s own statehood aspirations, the Mayor should have an appreciation of and solidarity with a society which is living under a military occupation. I also ask that you take time to become more informed about these abuses. I was a Christian Peacemaker Delegate in Hebron and can attest to these injustices. There also is a short film entitled “The Present” on Netflix, which is an Academy Award nominee, that details these issues. Susan Kerin, Rockville, MD ■

WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

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AET’s 2021 Choir of Angels

the following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2021 and May 11, 2021 is making possible activities of the tax-exempt aet library endowment (federal id #52-1460362) and the american educational trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. some angels are helping us co-sponsor the annual israellobbyCon. others are donating to our “Capital Building fund,” which will help us expand and add coffee service to the Middle east Books and More bookstore. thank you all for helping us survive the turmoil caused by the pandemic. We are deeply honored by your conﬁdence and profoundly grateful for your generosity.

HUMMERS ($100 or more)

Robin Abaya, Palm Springs, CA Mai Abdul Rahman, Hyattsville, MD Diane Adkin, Camas, WA Mr. & Mrs. Sultan Aslam, Plainsboro, NJ David K. Curtiss, New Orleans, LA* Warren & Amal David, Washington, DC Kassem Elkhalil, Arlington, TX Andrew M. Findlay, Alexandria, VA Alfred R. Greve, Holmes, NY Dixiane Hallaj, Purcellville, VA Robert Keith, Salt Lake City, UT Edwin Lindgren, Overland Park, KS Jonothan Logan, New York, NY Erna Lund, Seattle, WA Charles Lutz, Richfield, MN Nidal Mahayni, Richmond, VA Tahera Mamdani, Fridley, MN Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN Mary Neznek, Washington, DC Hesham Alalusi, Hayward, CA Cindy Percak, Cinnaminson, NJ Jim Plourd, Monterey, CA Paul Richards, Salem, OR James F. Robinson III, San Angelo, TX Fred Rogers & Jenny Hartley, Northfield, MN Ambassador William Rugh, Hingham, MA Ramzy Salem, Monterey Park, CA Richard Schreitz, Alexandria, VA Carolynne Schutt, Doylestown, PA William A. Shaheen III, Od Grosse Ile, MI Ellen Siegel, Washington, DC Mushtaq Syed, Santa Clara, CA Richard Wigton, Mechanicsburg, PA Nabil Yakub, McLean, VA Mohammed Ziaullah, Montclair, CA

ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more)

Jeff Abood, Silver Lake, OH Candice Bodnaruk, Winnipeg, Canada Larry Cooper, Plymouth, MI** 74

Hertha Poje-Ammoumi, New York, NY Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Bernice Shaheen, Palm Desert, CA***

TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more)

Sylvia Anderson De Freitas, Duluth, MN Dr. & Mrs. Roger Bagshaw, Big Sur, CA

SUPPORT MIDDLE EAST BOOKSTORE/ COFFEE SHOP

Brick-and-mortar retailers are facing a challenge. Even before the pandemic, competition from Amazon forced a lot of independent bookstores to close. Thanks to your support, Middle East Books and More defied that trend! Come in and browse, shop, and eventually gather again for book talks, club meetings and film screenings in the bookstore. Of course, we always sell books—and more—online (www.MiddleEastBooks.com). We are also using this time to expand and add a coffee shop to the bookstore. Now that we’ve completed the architectural and engineering plans and selected the contractor, we’ve learned that renovations will cost more than $100,000. Please send a check to AET, 1902 18th St, NW, Washington, DC, with “bookstore” on the memo line to help make your favorite bookstore a special gathering place for our community.

Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs

Forrest & Sandi Cioppa, Moraga, CA Raymond Gordon, Venice, FL Dr. Muhammad M. Kudaimi, Munster, IN Tom & Tess McAndrew, Oro Valley, AZ Darrel Meyers, Burbank, CA Estate of Thomas Shaker, Poughkeepsie, NY**** David Williams, Golden, CO

BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more)

Asha A. Anand, Bethesda, MD Joseph Daruty, Newport Beach, CA Dr. & Mrs. Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR *, # Ghazy M. Kader, Shoreline, WA Jack Love, Fort Myers, FL Mr. & Mrs. Hani Marar, Delmar, NY Estate of Jean Elizabeth Mayer, Bethesda, MD Mary Norton, Austin, TX Richard J. Shaker, Annapolis, MD**** Dr. Imad Tabry, Fort Lauderdale, FL Donn Trautman, Evanston, IL Young Again Foundation, Leland, NC

CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more)

John & Henrietta Goelet, Washington, DC Dr. Letitia Lane-Abdallah, Greensboro, NC William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA

*In Memory of Dick and Donna Curtiss **In Memory of Diane Cooper ***In Memory of Dr. Jack G. Shaheen ****In Memory of Thomas R. Shaker #In Memory of Andrew I. Killgore

June/July 2021

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The Palestinian n people face massive cha allenges to recoverr and rebuiild in Gaza.

With your sup W pport Anera iss delivering urgent r relief and medicines, and responding to o the reconstrruction challe enges ahead. Photo: Two Palestinian men stand amid the rubble of an apartment buildin ng destroyed by Israelii bombing in Gaza City, May 2021 | Photo by Mohammed Zannoun n (@m.z.gaza)

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American Educational Trust Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009

June/July 2021 Vol. XL, No. 4

Manchester United’s football superstar Paul Pogba (l) and his teammate Amad Diallo (r) carry a Palestinian flag at the end of the English Premier League’s final home game of the season, on May 18, 2021. Their public display of support for Palestine came as Israel continued its intense bombardment of the Gaza Strip. (Photo by LAURENCE GRIFFITHS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)