Land of Canaan Foundation

U.S. will probably block any U.N. Security Council resolution condemning or suggesting legal actions against Israel.

It is hard to believe that Gulf reaction would risk their relations with the Trump administration and jeopardize their security arrangements with the U.S. for the sake of the Palestinian cause. Bom hypothesizes that, if needed, they could easily manage a response which helps demonstrate their public discontent while not touching other dimensions of the geo-political relations. He points out the case of Israeli-Egyptian relations where there is intimate security cooperation, mediation on Gaza, and open channels that are otherwise in parallel to a hostile public climate and visible public criticism when it comes to the Palestinian issue.

However, Hassan thinks that the Palestinian issue is not something that Saudi Arabia or other Gulf countries can so easily discard because of their own domestic concerns. That is why Saudi Arabia led efforts at the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to condemn annexation and actions in Jerusalem. She said that Saudi reliance on the Trump administration to back it up with Iran and on the Jamal Khashoggi matter did not prevent the king from taking such public stands against the American and Israeli plans to liquidate the Palestinian national project.

But, given that Saudi Arabia has lost much of its standing in both U.S. legislative houses and the recently reported withdrawal of two Patriot missile batteries from Saudi Arabia at a time of high tensions with Iran, has raised speculation regarding the current state of U.S.-Saudi relations. The possibility of losing U.S. military protection has caused a cautious response toward any crisis in the region where Saudis may collide with the unpredictable U.S. president and his hawks. But while the Trump administration is aware of their opposition to annexation and to his plan, the main question, according to Elgindy, is whether annexation would disrupt Arab Gulf states’ willingness to cooperate with Israel against the perceived threat from Iran.

Nevertheless, Gulf Arabs, in general, share deep sympathies with the Palestinians and their struggle for an independent state, something even Gulf absolute monarchies

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cannot ignore when approaching this sensitive matter. Despite the Arab Gulf’s warming relations with Israel and some attempt to influence Arab public opinion through film and cultural events that paint Israel in a sympathetic light, or normalize Arab-Israeli relations, Hassan is convinced the majority of Arabs and Muslims will not abandon their brothers and sisters in Palestine, who are the only thing standing in the way of extremists who seek to rebuild the Jewish Temple on the Haram al Sharif in Jerusalem.

For years, Jordan and Egypt have had peace agreements with Israel and those have yet to translate into any peace between the peoples. Likewise, in Hassan’s opinion, people in the Arab Gulf will remain supportive of Palestinian rights and their governments will continue to reflect that support. Boms concurs, but believes that there might be a difference between that “public” response, which will focus on criticism of Israel and on satisfying the “proPalestinian” voices, and the “nonpublic response” that will continue to take into account the geopolitical interests and the dialogue with the U.S. and Israel. ■

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Israel and Judaism

Israel Viewed as Alien to the Values of Most American Jews By Allan C. Brownfeld

Israeli demonstrators carry placards during a demonstration condemning the shooting of Iyad Halak, a disabled Palestinian man who was shot dead by Israeli police after they mistakenly thought he was armed with a pistol, in Jerusalem on May 30, 2020.

THE DIVIDEbetween the values of most American Jews and those embraced by the Israeli government is becoming increasingly clear.

As racial tensions grow in the American society as a result of the killing by a police officer of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and a series of killings of black men and women by the police in various parts of the country, attention is being paid to the role Israel has been playing in training American police officers and the role which American Jewish organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, are playing in promoting and financing such efforts.

A statement issued In June by the Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council declares, “In this moment, as we shine the light on police violence here in the United States, we also cannot fail to reaffirm our opposition to the actions of the Israeli police and military, which often act jointly as the agents of social control in Palestine.

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 ofIssues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.

The U.S. provides $3.8 billion of military aid for Israel each year. Additionally, many police departments from cities across the U.S. contract for military-style training from the Israeli military. It is hard to comprehend the level of dis-investment in human potential that this choice of funding allocation produces.

“The latest indiscriminate shooting by the Israeli police occurred on May 30, causing the death of Iyad Halak, age 32. Halak a young man with autism, was walking through his East Jerusalem neighborhood toward school and was killed when police accused him of carrying a weapon, which he did not have. Halak’s death is just the latest in a number of Israeli police and military shootings of Palestinians with physical or mental health disabilities.”

According to Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “Israeli military policing of Palestinians is characterized by the use of lethal force and dangerous ‘less than lethal’ munitions such as tear gas and other chemical weapons, rubber bullets and sound projectiles. Israeli military police act out of impunity from an almost blanket lack of accountability.”

A recent report from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem de

clares that, “Israel’s military law enforcement system has a whitewash mechanism...Most cases continue to be closed with no measures taken.”

When the U.S. Justice Department published a report in 2016 that documented “widespread constitutional violations, discriminatory enforcement, and a culture of retaliation” within the Baltimore Police Department, there was a general reaction of outrage. But what did not receive much attention at the time was where the Baltimore police received training in crowd control, use of force and surveillance. The training was provided by Israel’s national police, military and intelligence services.

Baltimore law enforcement officials along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Washington State as well as the Washington, DC Capitol Police all traveled to Israel for training. Since 2002, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs, and captains to train in Israel and the occupied territories.

Amnesty International and the U.S. Department of State have cited Israel’s police for carrying out extra judicial executions and other unlawful killings, using ill treatment and torture—even against children. In April 2018, the City Council of Durham, North Carolina voted unanimously to bar Durham’s participation in militarized police exchange training with Israel and other foreign countries. The initial petition, crafted by a coalition of 10 Durham organizations, states that, “The Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli Police have a long history of violence and harm against the Palestinian people, and Jews of Color.” One coalition member said, “Training with Israel makes it worse in terms of racial profiling, the use of force and crowd control.”

As JVP declares, “One of the most dangerous places the regimes of Trump and Netanyahu converge are in exchange programs that bring together police, ICE border patrol, and FBI from the U.S. with police, soldiers, and border agents from Israel. In these programs ‘worst practices’ are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing tactics that already exist in both countries, in doing extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention and attacks on human rights defenders.”

ANNEXATION PLANS

The plans of the Netanyahu government to move toward annexing parts of the West Bank have further alienated a vast majority of Jews. In June, more than 500 professors of Jewish Studies from around the world signed a petition against plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank. According to the petition, which was published in English, Hebrew and Arabic, the professors oppose “the continuation of the occupation and the stated intention of the current elected government of Israel to annex parts of the West Bank, thereby formally (de jure) creating apartheid conditions in Israel and Palestine.”

The petition states that, “At this still uncertain and dangerous historical inflection point, we reject annexation and apartheid, racism and hatred, occupation and discrimination. We commit ourselves to an open culture of learning, cooperation and criticism in relation to Israel and Palestine.”

Among those signing the petition are Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller of UCLA, Prof. Samuel Moyn of Yale, Prof. Chana Kronfeld of the University of California, Berkeley, Prof. Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth, and Prof. Hasia Diner of NYU.

The petition further highlights that the Israeli government has made clear that Palestinians in the West Bank, who will be annexed to Israel, will not receive citizenship and that “the most likely outcomes...will be further unequal distribution of land and water resources on behalf of illegal Israeli settlements, more state violence and fragmented Palestinian enclaves under complete Israeli control.”

Under such circumstances, annexation will “cement into place an anti-democratic system of separate and unequal law and systemic discrimination against the Palestinian population,” which the signatories say will amount to “conditions of apartheid.” Such a step, they warn, will lead to “an inevitable spike in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and polarization between minority communities.”

According to Prof. Mira Sucharov of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, Israel’s moves toward annexation signal “a dangerous trend further towards full apartheid...Israeli democracy is being further eroded.” Prof. Nitzan Lebovic of Lehigh University, one of those behind the petition, said, “we were amazed by the immediate response of many of the signatories. There were no arguments about the word ‘apartheid.’”

Two hundred and forty legal scholars from around the world, including Israel, signed a separate petition against annexation, saying it would constitute, “A flagrant violation of bedrock rules of international law and would also pose a serious threat to international stability in a volatile world.”

Many American Jews once thought Israel shared their values. Few any longer hold this view. And, many Israelis also reject their government’s disregard for traditional Jewish values. One of these is Amira Hass, who began reporting for Haaretz from the West Bank in 1991. An example of Israel’s disregard was highlighted in her 2019 article about the supply of water to 12 Palestinian villages in the West Bank. After six months of clean running water, representatives of the Israeli Civil Administration, soldiers, border police and bulldozers arrived to put an end to this basic service: “The troops dug up the pipes, cut and sawed them apart and watched the jets of water that spurted out...About 350 cubic meters of water were wasted.” This was done despite the critical scarcity of water in the region. As the Civil Administration diligently destroys water lines for many Palestinian villages, “it immediately connects illegal Jewish settlements and outposts to water and electricity and even paves the roads leading to them.”

Israel may call itself a “Jewish” State, but when it comes to its behavior toward Palestinians, it is difficult to find anything “Jewish” about it. ■

History’s Shadows

Historical “Moments” and the Hope for Change By Walter L. Hixson

GEORGE FLOYD’S horrific video-taped strangulation on May 25 lasted eight minutes and 46 seconds, but it was actually a “moment” in time.

Historians often use the term “moment” metaphorically to signal a pivotal or transformative event that alters the trajectory of history. Floyd’s “moment”—and the massive demonstrations that it and scores of other senseless police beatings and killings of African Americans have inspired—has sent the United States cascading in a positive direction toward a less racist future.

Other famous historic “moments” include the assassination of the archduke of Austria at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, which sparked the First World War, or September 11, 2001, which ignited the ill-fated American “forever war” crusades in the Middle East. Of course, another historic moment came on June 5, 1967, in the Middle East, when Israel attacked its neighbors and seized control of foreign terri

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Protesters block the street in front of the Supreme Court as it heard arguments on whether gay and transgender people are covered by a federal law barring employment discrimination on the basis of sex, Oct. 8, 2019. In a landmark 6-3 decision the Supreme Court ruled, on June 15, that federal sex discrimination protections extend to LGBT workers.

tory, including the West Bank, which it has since held and is now attempting to partition and annex in blatant violation of international law.

When will the historic moment come when a critical mass of Americans turns against Israeli apartheid, aggression, and endless lies? Is there a moment coming that will transform American foreign policy and remake the “special relationship” with

LGBTQ OFFERS HOPEFUL MODEL

Israel?

History’s Shadows, a regular column by contributing editor Walter L. Hixson, seeks to place various aspects of Middle East politics and diplomacy in historical perspective. 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.

Optimists about the prospects of ending U.S. support for Israeli repression in Palestine, often cite the historic transformation in the status of LGBTQ—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning or queer. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an historic ruling affirming LGBTQ rights.

In 1969, a crucial earlier moment in the history of “gay liberation” came with the Stonewall riots, from June 28 to July 3, in New York’s Greenwich Village, when members of the gay community fought back against—you guessed it—a long history of police violence and repression. It took another 50 years, and while all such campaigns are never complete, LBGTQ today have now achieved an unprecedented degree of liberation.

Can such a moment arrive for the people of Palestine? Can a critical mass of Americans act on the knowledge that their national security policy and their billions of dollars spent annually, go to support a brutal apartheid regime rather than freedom and justice in West Asia?

As an, historian, I know we can learn a lot about the past and