Tag: Palestinians

The Houthi’s and Us

After almost a decade of trying to end Saudi Arabian bombing of the Houthi government in Northern Yemen, President Biden has ordered multiple American bombing attacks on Northern Yemen because of Houthi attacks on ships sending arms to Israel in support of its genocide in Gaza. You might need to read that sentence again to get all its parts.

The first point is that once again the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the Congress must authorize war before the President can launch one, has been violated. And why did Biden think it necessary to bomb Yemen? Because the Houthi attacks were interfering with our shipment of weapons to Israel in support of Israel’s vicious murder of Palestinians by bombing and starvation. “The group’s official spokesman reiterated that attacks on vessels transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait toward the Suez Canal will continue until “Gaza [receives] the food and medicine it needs.” That shouldn’t be hard to accomplish.

Even if the US Congress authorized the American bombing of Yemen, it would be bad policy for the U.S., for the Palestinians, and for Israel. “Weighing additional US responses to Houthi Red Sea attacks” America’s interest should be peace and prosperity for all in the Middle East (and all the world). Supporting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza does not serve that goal and makes the U.S. complicit in Israel’s genocide. Moreover, Europe’s relative silence and the silence of any of us to Israel’s inhuman war in Gaza (including Biden, Trump and Nikki Haley) makes them all complicit. “War in Gaza exposes European philosophy ethically bankrupt”

The march toward the aridification of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank is too unbelievably savage to spell out. Such a fate should not be wished on any people. “Unfolding genocide as ever single person in Gaza goes hungry” “Israel’s Netanyahu its Cromwell”

But this war, following a century of Zionist mistreatment of Palestinians in their homeland, is destroying Israel. “Israel is facing existential threats from inside and out-there’s one solution” Israel is committing suicide. To survive, Israel must become a secular democratic state that give equal rights and fair treatment to all who inhabit it. “One state solution for Palestine/Israel”

U.S. leadership is failing once again and is waning. The lust for war by the hawks has overpowered American self-interest once again. War with Iran can’t be far behind. Taiwan can wait (a bit).  “Gaza and Yemen sound death knell for US led rules based global order”

From the River to the Sea

I oppose the death penalty, but on occasion have said (and perhaps written) that I am tempted to relax my opposition for those who deliberately spread lies (or bomb babies). This is my cherished right in the U.S. where we enjoy (still to some extent) our freedom to say whatever we want. I strongly oppose antisemitic statements as well as false claims that condemning acts of the Israeli government is antisemitic. But I defend the right of people to says such things (but would never invite them to my home). It is also my right to condemn their rudeness.

The demonstrations of Jewish (Israeli) and Arab (Palestinian) students condemning Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza (and increased violence against Palestinians in the West Bank) are understandably intense. To be clear, violence from demonstrators toward anyone (such as blocking access to class) is not protected by our First Amendment right to free speech and would be certainly condemned by me. But shouting death to the Palestinians or to the Jews without actual threats of violence is protected. The First Amendment is not needed to protect speech we agree with or like but speech we disagree with and/or are offended by. The benefits of such freedom in our society are huge but seem to need renewed support.

I am particularly annoyed by deliberate distortions of the meaning of chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” I share that aspiration. Indeed, everyone from the river to the sea should be free. Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, was censured by House lawmakers for saying it.

Unfortunately, disapproval and disagreement have morphed into inappropriate sanctions:

“The brother of a British-Israeli man who had been killed during Hamas’ attack on 7 October… told the BBC that he found the marches in the UK for Gaza upsetting and intimidating. Chants like ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ were, he observed, evidence of deep-rooted and growing antisemitism in British society.

“The problem is not just that many British Jews assume the UK has an antisemitism problem based on a highly dubious interpretation of the chant’s meaning. It is that establishment media organisations are echoing that misunderstanding and treating it as more newsworthy than Israel killing Palestinian babies, with the UK government’s blessing. It is just one illustration of a pattern of reporting by western media outlets skewing their news priorities in ways that reveal a racist hierarchy of concern. Jewish fears are of greater import than actual Palestinian deaths, even babies’ deaths. 

“The hypocrisy is especially hard to stomach, given a central Israeli justification for its subsequent genocidal rampage through Gaza. Israel promoted the claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 Israeli babies on 7 October – a story that was widely reported as fact, even though no evidence was ever produced for it.”  “Israel-Palestine war: Gaza slogan bigger news than murder of babies”

New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s attack on the President of MIT, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania for defending free (if repugnant) speech was particularly disgusting and alarming. The President of the U of Penn, Liz Magill, was evening forced to resign. While there may be some grey areas between shouting that all Arabs or all Jews (or Trumpeters) should die and actually threatening their lives, the attacks we have been seeing on the freedom to say nasty things is dangerous to a valued American institution. So is the increasing loss of civility (good manners). To preserve (or reestablish) the society we cherish, we need to use our freedom to speak to defend both speech and manners.

Defending Palestine

“Thousands of protesters forced the closure of Grand Central station in New York on Friday night in a large sit-in against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The demonstration, [where] made up mostly of Jewish New Yorkers,” “Protest-New York Grand Central-Israel Gaza Palestine”   Bless them.

Palestinians killed by the Israeli military passed 8,000 on Oct 29. Over half were women and children. Hamas’s vicious attack on Israel Oct 7 killed 1,400 Israelis. All of those deaths should be condemned. When President Biden questioned the accuracy of the Gaza Health Ministry’s tally, many Muslims and Arab Americans were shocked and angered having previously been shocked at Biden’s blank check to Netanyahu to do whatever it takes to wipe out Hamas. “Biden Israel Palestine Muslim Americans war”   

“The United States vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council which called for a humanitarian pause in besieged Gaza. The draft resolution, proposed by Brazil, condemned the October 7 terror attacks in Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which killed over 1,400 people, and urged the release of hostages taken. It also called on all parties to comply with international law and protect civilian lives in Hamas-controlled Gaza amid a ferocious retaliation by Israeli warplanes. The international community should engineer “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting to allow for aid delivery, it said. Twelve of the council’s 15 members approved the draft on Wednesday, with the UK and Russia abstaining, and a US veto.” US vetoes Security Council call for ‘humanitarian pause’ in Israel-Hamas war | CNN

More recently the Biden White House has held meetings with its Muslim and Arab staff as well as Arab community leaders to gain a better understanding of the issues from their perspective. Biden now calls for a humanitarian pause and has cautioned Israel to minimize civilian casualties. “Biden Israel Palestine Muslim Americans’ war”

The claims of some that most Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas are simply false “What Palestinians really think about Hamas”  

The viciousness of the attacks by Hamas and Israel has sadly aroused some to challenge America’s cherished free speech tradition with the all too typical cry of antisemitism against those defending Palestinian rights. ”An Israeli American professor at Columbia University’s business school slammed his employer in a fiery speech on campus Wednesday night — ripping the university for apparently not publicly denouncing pro-Palestinian student organizations that he claimed are ‘pro-terror.’”  “Columbia professor rips university’s president over Israel Hamas war response”

But our freedom to speak is too important to our free society to be easily snuff out. Dozens of Columbia University and Bernard College faculty issued an open letter defending not only the right of its students to defend Palestinians but the substance of their letter as well.

The letter stated in part that “In our view, the student statement aims to recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years…. It is worth noting that not all of us agree with every one of the claims made in the students’ statement, but we do agree that making such claims cannot and should not be considered anti-Semitic….

“We ask Columbia University’s leadership, our faculty colleagues, Columbia alumni, potential employers of Columbia students, and all who share a commitment to the notion of a just society to join us in condemning, in the strongest of terms, the vicious targeting of our students with doxing, public shaming, surveillance by members of our community, including other students, and reprisals from employers.” “Open letter from Columbia and Barnard faculties” Amen

We all need this discussion in order to hear and understand everyone’s point of view. Peace will not come to Israel and to the West Bank and Gaza Strip until the Jews and Palestinians living there reconcile their grievance’s and adhere to just treatment of all.

A One State “Solution”

I have long been an admirer and supporter of the Oslo Accords, which set out a step-by-step roadmap for establishing peaceful relations between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza–a so called “Two State Solution.” The new HBO film, “Oslo” premiers today. Continuing the work started by my IMF colleague, Arne Petersen, I spent two years leading IMF technical assistance missions to Israel/WBGS to develop the Palestine Monetary Authority. “My travels to Jerusalem”  A growing consensus has concluded that the two-state solution is dead, and sadly I reluctantly agree. It has failed because of poor Palestinian leadership, Israeli governments (especially Benjamin Netanyahu’s) that were happy with the stalled status quo, and American governments that allowed the Israeli government to get away with it.

Israel has behaved like most other colonial powers of the last century and in many ways worse. It has populated its Occupied Territories with illegal Jewish settlements and has carved up the West Bank with walled off, exclusively Jewish highways that make normal life for the Palestinians impossible.  It is small wonder that Palestinian youth are fed up and revolting. It is either ignorance or dishonesty to blame the tensions on Hamas, the bad guys in Gaza–the Israeli prison of Palestinians between Egypt, the Mediterranean and Israel proper, and cut off from the rest of the West Bank. “How Israel lost the culture war”

But of course, Palestinians outnumber Jews in the land of Canaan despite seven decades of effort by Zionists to attract Jews from around the world to the new Israel. This threatens the Zionist dream of a democratic Jewish homeland. The starting point for a one-state or any other solution should be the insistence that Israel honor the human rights of all inhabitances of the land it controls, i.e., from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. A recent report of the Human Rights Watch concludes that Israel is an Apartheid state. Large numbers of Jews around the world are offended by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as second-class citizens. The United States has embarrassed itself and undermined its moral standing by supporting the Israeli government’s behavior.  Fareed’s Global Briefing”

One state with a constitution that protects all of its residents equally should protect Jews as well as Palestinians to live and worship as they see fit. Such rights should not depend on having Jewish governments.  More Jews live in the United States than in Israel and such an arrangement works well for them here.

I remember well being driven from Gaza to Jerusalem in 1995 by an Arab Israeli cab driver. As we chatted about the situation in the area, he volunteered that “you know, the Palestinians and Jews are cousins.” I replied that “maybe they are even brothers.” He paused and replied: “No, brothers would not treat each other this way.”  “The Economist: Two States or One?”