In October the Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, shocked the American liberal Zionist community by designating six leading Palestinian human rights as “terrorist” groups. These organizations have been around for decades and receive funding from European governments, but they have drawn the Israeli government’s ire for assisting the ICC investigation of war crimes by Israel, including by Gantz himself, who bragged of bombing Gaza back to the “stone age.”
The response to Gantz’s ban has been emphatic. European governments have said that there is no evidence for the claim. The organizations themselves have said this is a mendacious, authoritarian action. An Israeli human rights attorney told Americans for Peace Now that the designation is an “act of tyranny,” and even J Street issued a statement calling the designation “deeply repressive” and wrong and urging the Biden administration to demand its reversal.
The State Department has expressed concern about the designation but then has had nothing to say. Even as Reps. Betty McCollum, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern and others have demanded that the U.S. denounce the action.
And in the middle of this hateful scandal what happens? A bunch of Congresspeople go out to Israel and meet with Benny Gantz. Gantz publishes a few photographs of his meetings, most of them with Democrats. Like a bipartisan delegation led by Delaware Senator Chris Coons, on November 10– Gantz said they “discussed global and regional security issues, defense cooperation and opportunities to advance peace.”
And these two photos, on November 9, one jolly, one serious, of a bipartisan group that included Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senators Ben Cardin, Bob Casey and Rob Portman, and Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee. Gantz commented:
I was honored to meet with a bipartisan delegation of US Congress members led by @leaderhoyer & @senatorcardin. We discussed the region’s most pressing challenges, starting with Iran & its destabilizing influence. We also reiterated the unwavering bond between the US & Israel.
It ought to be obvious but: None of these congresspeople should be doing photo opps with a rightwing authoritarian leader who is targeting human rights groups, on a racialized basis.
Steve Cohen’s appearance is the most disturbing here. Cohen is a regular at J Street, and he should know better than to appear grinning with a man that J Street says has initiated a “deeply repressive” action targeting human rights groups, a man who bragged of bombing Gaza back to the stone age.
I reached out to both Cohen and J Street to ask whether they had any comment on the meeting; neither has responded.
It’s plain to me why these Democratic politicians are meeting a rightwing Israeli and showing up as props for his intolerant agenda. Because the Israel lobby likes US politicians to cater to Israeli leaders, and the Dems want to stay on the right side of the Democratic Majority for Israel, which can raise a lot of money to target critics of Israel. It really is that simple. That’s why Steny Hoyer is grinning in the photo. And it surely explains the Biden administration’s reluctance to do anything about Gantz’s designation. When Israel is concerned, all the U.S. pieties about human rights go out the window.
Interestingly, I could not find any social media from Cohen — or Coons, Hoyer, or Casey — publicizing their meeting with Gantz. This is surely because the rank-and-file Democrats don’t like rightwing Israeli leaders who go after human rights groups. Cohen has tweeted a photo of his meeting with Israeli president Isaac Herzog.
American puppets paying homage to their masters. What else? They have no shame, no principles, and certainly sides with a brutal occupier, who a few months ago, killed 68 Palestinian babies.
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It Is Impossible to “Shrink the Conflict” (jewishcurrents.org)
“It Is Impossible to ‘Shrink the Conflict’The Israeli government cannot significantly improve Palestinian lives without granting them basic rights. By Peter Beinart, Nov. 11/21
EXCERPT:
“ON OCTOBER 22ND, Israel’s defense ministry outlawed six prominent Palestinian human rights groups. Two days later, Israel’s housing and construction ministry announced plans to build more than 1,300 new homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The day after that, Israeli troops reportedly stood by as settlers attacked a member of Rabbis for Human Rights who was helping Palestinians gather olives—one of more than 58 attacks on Palestinians and their supporters during the October olive harvest. On October 26th, Israel’s public security minister banned a festival in an East Jerusalem church, thus signaling his intention to prohibit ‘almost all Palestinian cultural events in East Jerusalem,’ according to Haaretz. Peace Now reports that since taking office in June, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s ‘government has actively worked to promote settlements and deepen the Israeli occupation of the [occupied] territories.’
“To those familiar with Bennett’s vow to ensure a ‘reduction of friction and the shrinking of the conflict,’ these developments might be surprising. ‘Shrinking the conflict,’ a mantra Bennett borrowed from the Israeli writer Micah Goodman, has garnered a respectful hearing in the US press. Both The Atlantic and The New York Times have given Goodman space to argue that Israel can retain dominion over the West Bank yet ‘dramatically improve day-to-day life for everyone on the ground.’ When Bennett’s government began implementing some of Goodman’s ideas earlier this fall, the Times labeled it a ‘major shift‘ in Israeli policy. This week, Democratic Representative Jake Auchincloss praised Bennett’s government for ‘trying to shrink that conflict, find other ways, other channels to work with their Palestinian neighbors,’ which he called ‘a healthy first step.’
“Yet the repression continues. That’s because, for all the hype that surrounds it, ‘shrinking the conflict’ isn’t a new idea. Again and again over the past five decades, Israeli leaders have promised an enlightened, hands-off occupation that fosters prosperity among the Palestinians under their control. (cont’d)
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“On Friday, a group of Jewish settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives who were accompanied by Israeli activists. Two Israelis, including a prominent rabbi and peace activist, were injured in the incident.
“Neta Ben Porat, one of the injured activists, said she suffered injuries to her head and arm. She said the entire area is video monitored by the army, and soldiers chose not to come to their aid. The military said in a statement to Army Radio that troops ‘separated between the sides and dispersed the confrontation’ and arrested three settlers.
“Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel said in a statement Friday that ‘the state and its enforcement agencies are failing time after time to ensure the safety of farmers and activists in the harvest, and the blood spilled today is also on their hands.’
“Last month, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz called on the military to combat rising settler attacks against Palestinians and Israeli troops in the West Bank to react ‘systematically, aggressively and uncompromisingly’ to such behavior.”
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https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/rights-group-israeli-settler-violence-tool-seize-land-81162021
“Rights group: Israeli settler violence tool to seize land”An Israeli rights group says Israel has been using settler violence as a “major informal tool” to drive Palestinians from farming and pasture lands in the occupied West Bank
The Associated Press, 14 Nov. 2021
JERUSALEM — “Israel has been using settler violence as a “major informal tool” to drive Palestinians from farming and pasture lands in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rights group said Sunday.
“A report by the group B’Tselem detailed the takeover of nearly 11 square miles (30 square kilometers) of farm and pasture land in the territory by settlers over the past five years. That’s an area around half the size of the island of Manhattan.
“B’Tselem also challenged repeated claims by the government that violence against Palestinians is carried out by a violent fringe among the settlers and security forces are doing their best to stop it.
“Recent months have seen a steep increase in violence committed by Jewish settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians. Last week, a group of Israeli settlers vandalized dozens of cars in a town near Ramallah, and in September, dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a Bedouin village in the southern West Bank, leaving several injured, including a Palestinian toddler.
“B’Tselem said the military ‘does not prevent the attacks, and in some cases, soldiers even participate in them.’ It says that law enforcement does little to take action against settlers who commit violent acts against Palestinians ‘and whitewashes the few cases it is called upon to address.’
“’When the violence occurs with permission and assistance from the Israeli authorities and under its auspices, it is state violence. The settlers are not defying the state; they are doing its bidding,’ the organization said in its report.
“The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
“Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. In the decades since, it has built dozens of settlements — now home to nearly 500,000 Israelis — that most of the international community considers illegal and an obstacle to peace. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, as part of their future state. (cont’d)
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And, again and again, Palestinians have experienced despotism, land theft, and violence. Why? Because it’s impossible to treat people benevolently when you deny them basic rights. People who lack freedom will struggle for it, and there’s no gentle way to crush their yearnings. ‘Shrinking the conflict’ may ease the consciences of Israeli leaders and foreign audiences. To Palestinians, however, it offers only more of the same.
“THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT has been promising a benign occupation since the occupation began in 1967. From Israel’s birth in 1948 until 1966, it subjected most of its Palestinian-Arab citizens to military law. Palestinians needed government permission to leave their villages, which were placed under nightly curfew. But in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were put in charge of the newly conquered West Bank and Gaza Strip, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan vowed to be less intrusive. As George Washington University Professor Shira Robinson, author of Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State, explained to me, Dayan set out to create what he called a ‘liberal occupation,’ in which Israeli rule would remain ‘invisible.’ That summer he instructed Israeli officers: ‘Don’t rule them . . . let them lead their own lives.’ In March 1968, the IDF magazine Bamahaneh said Israel should ensure that a West Bank Palestinian could ‘be born in a hospital, receive his birth certificate, grow up and be educated, get married and raise his children and grandchildren—all without having to resort to an Israeli employee or civil servant, or even having to see one at all.’ The Israeli historian Omri Shafer Raviv told me that Dayan also pushed to open Israel’s labor market to Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, 60,000 of whom, Shafer Raviv estimates, were working within the Green Line by 1973.”