Israel makes headlines in Georgia runoff

Bangs and Whimpers

The historian tirelessly pours over material, pulling out the ironies and mapping the metaphors. “Reads like a novel” is the kind of complimentary blurb that it makes its way onto the cover of nonfiction bestsellers.

Assuming the planet still exists in 50 years, that generation’s Rick Perlstein won’t have to do much legwork when they turn to the Trump era. It’s all there already. When the President was informed that Biden had been declared winner, he was golfing. As his motorcade of black SUVs and police cruisers drove back to The White House, throngs of people rushed onto DC’s sidewalks to celebrate the news and flip off his car. A meme began making its rounds across social media: TRUMP JUST GOT THE FULL 2020 EXPERIENCE. HE CAUGHT COVID, LOST HIS JOB, AND WILL BE EVICTED FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.

Trump had been making spurious claims about the election being stolen for days, but his team had to move fast after it was officially called. His personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani rushed to a news conference, which was meant to have been booked at a Four Seasons hotel. It was accidentally booked at a place called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. This was the lede from a Philadelphia Inquirer article on the mix up: 

What began five years ago with the made-for-TV announcement of Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions from the escalator of his ritzy Manhattan high-rise ended Saturday with his aging lawyer shouting conspiracy theories and vowing lawsuits in a Northeast Philadelphia parking lot, near a sex shop and a crematorium.

How could any future historian possibly improve on that?

So far this week, David Bossie (the adviser leading Trump’s failed legal challenges) was diagnosed with COVID, Fox News (!) cut away from a Kayleigh McEnany press conference after she began making baseless claims of voter fraud, and GOP officials in Georgia dismissed the President’s allegations as “nonsense.” None of this stopped Secretary of State Pompeo from heavily implying that the Trump people are literally trying to stage a coup.

Most Republican lawmakers are staying quiet. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” a senior GOP official told The Washington Post. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”

At the time I’m typing this, Biden leads the popular vote by 4.6 million and is up by 256,000 votes in the five states where Trump has filed lawsuits. “Biden won PA by more than Trump did in 2016. (Michigan by much more.) He won Nevada by more than Clinton did in 2016,” tweeted The Appeal’s Daniel Nichanian. “He’s on track to be the first Democrat to win Georgia and Arizona since 1990s. He won the national popular vote by more than any Republican has since 1980s. GOP can’t even concede *this* election.”

Something called the “Official Election Defense Fund” has been set up, but if you donate less than $8,000 the money is simply funneled to the RNC. Trump has also apparently told people that he wants to start a digital media company to take down Fox News and will run for president again in 2024.

How’s it going inside The White House at the moment? “Top Trump loyalists are trying to cling to power by firing critics, rehiring other loyalists, instructing federal government employees that the election isn’t over yet, and threatening appointees that their future work prospects could get crushed if they try to abandon ship now,” reports Axios.

Again, historians will presumably find it difficult to add much here. It already reads like fiction.

Georgia Runoff

The focus might currently be on Trump’s attempts at a judicial coup, but eyes are also turning to Georgia’s upcoming Senate runoffs. Last week, a 2019 letter signed by Democratic challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock was resurfaced by the Jewish Insider. The letter, which was published on the National Council of Churches website, compared West Bank conditions to those of apartheid South Africa.

Now a 2018 sermon made by Warnock is making the rounds. Here’s the relevant part of that sermon:

It’s been a tough week. The administration opened up the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Standing there [were] the president’s family and a few mealy-mouthed evangelical preachers who are responsible for the mess that we found ourselves in, both there and here — misquoting and misinterpreting the Scripture, talking about peace. Meanwhile, young Palestinian sisters and brothers, who are struggling for their very lives, struggling for water and struggling for their human dignity, stood up in a non-violent protest, saying, ‘If we’re going to die, we’re going to die struggling.’

This is good, truthful stuff and certainly not the kind of thing you ever hear members of the Senate saying. However, you can probably already guess what happens next in this story. It’s a tale as old as time.

Senator Kelly Loeffler, the GOP incumbent, is now claiming that Warnock “has a long history of anti-Israel extremism.” This is the same Kelly Koeffler who has appeared on Jack Posobeic’s show, despite his connections to white supremacists. She’s also a supporter of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who is heading to the House in January.

Warnock’s camp was clearly spooked by these smears and the candidate quickly composed an editorial for the Jewish Insider titled “I Stand With Israel” All the beats are in there: the country is the “greatest proponent of democracy” in the Middle East, it has “unique historical importance”, he supports a two-state solution, and (like Biden) thinks conditioning military aid is mistake. For extra measure, Warnock takes a shot at BDS. He supports the First Amendment, but strongly opposes the movement and thinks it has “antisemitic underpinnings.”

This isn’t exactly surprising stuff, but it’s depressing nonetheless.

Lame Duck

This lame duck period is not exactly…conventional. As usual, it’s impossible to know what Trump will say or do at any given moment. People in the United States have good reason to be concerned, but so do the residents of other countries. Mike “Smooth Transition to a Second Trump Administration” Pompeo is reportedly planning to hit Iran with a flood of new sanctions before Biden takes office. Trump envoy Elliott Abrams went to Israel this week, to talk them over with Netanyahu. Israeli sources told Axios’ Barak Ravid that the idea is to sink any chance of the Biden administration reentering the Iran deal. This week on the site, James North has post about how the U.S. mainstream media is dropping the ball on this issue.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration informed congress that they had approved the sale of over $23 billion in advanced weapons systems to the United Arab Emirates. “The proposed sale will make the UAE even more capable and interoperable with U.S. partners in a manner fully consistent with America’s longstanding commitment to ensuring Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge,” said Pompeo.

Odds & Ends

?? JVP Action launched a pledge demanding that the Biden administration stop funding Israeli apartheid. “Even as we celebrate all we’ve accomplished, we also pledge to keep up the fight,” said Executive Director Stefanie Fox in a statement. “The call for justice for Palestinians is bound up with the call of those fighting for a better, fairer, more sustainable world where equality and dignity are accorded to all people – no exceptions. We’ve defeated Trump – and we are ready to keep fighting.”

? Nadia B. Ahmad has a great piece on the site about the Florida Democratic Party. “While a lot of finger pointing has been happening, what has not been happening is accountability. The Establishment Democrats, who control the Florida Democrat Party and ran the Joe Biden campaign, mistakenly catered to the narrow foreign policy interests of Israel. And whereas Donald Trump pandered to his base, Establishment Democrats have all but abandoned their base: progressives and the working class.”

?? RIP Saeb Erekat. The Palestinian negotiator died at the age of 65 after losing his battle with COVID-19. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Erekat a “great fighter who had a great role in raising the banner of Palestine high and defending the rights of our people…in all international forums.”

?? While the world was focused on the U.S. elections, Israel destroyed the homes of 80 Palestinian Bedouins in the West Bank. “This a grave crime—in direct violation of international law,” tweeted Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. “If they used any US equipment it also violates US law. An entire community is now homeless and will likely experience lifelong trauma. The United States of America should not be bankrolling ethnic cleansing. Anywhere.”

?? The GOP-led Senate Appropriations Committee is proposing a $696 billion Pentagon spending bill for this fiscal year. “Two critical unemployment programs are set to expire at the end of the year, potentially leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to eviction and hunger and threatening to short-circuit an economic recovery that has already lost momentum,” reported the New York Times yesterday.

?️ Palestinian-American Iman Jodeh was elected to the Colorado State House of Representatives. She’s the first Muslim lawmaker in the history of the state.

?? Politico’s Nahal Toosi reports that the Trump administration has established a new process to declare human rights group antisemitic for criticized. The website first reported on the development last month and it received widespread condemnation from State Department staffers, lawmakers, and human rights organizers. “The decision is a compromise,” Toosi now writes. “Three people familiar with the issue confirmed it, but noted that Pompeo could still change his mind and hold off on an announcement. In recent weeks..Pompeo had been weighing whether to label Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam as being anti-Semitic because of their alleged actions toward the Israeli government. Had Pompeo named the groups, the plan was to say that the U.S. would not support the organizations and to urge other governments to also not support such groups, financially or otherwise.”

?? Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum addressed the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today. “Palestinian dreams for freedom, justice, equality, and self-determination are legitimate,” she told participants. “Every Palestinian mother and father want a life free from military occupation and systemic discrimination for their child. And, every Palestinian child’s life is precious.”

?? Pompeo is planning to become the first Secretary of State to visit an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Stay safe out there,

Michael