Warnock goes to bat for Israel again

The UNHRC and Raphael Warnock

After allegations that Russia committed war crimes in Bucha, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield tweeted, “There will be accountability and justice for this brutality.” That accountability was an immediate push for Russia to be kicked off the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

You’ll recall that the Trump administration quit the UNHRC over alleged hypocrisy and a political agenda. “If the Human Rights Council is going to attack countries that uphold human rights and shield countries that abuse human rights, then America should not provide it with any credibility,” said then-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. In other words, the council had passed a number of resolutions targeting Israel for human rights abuses.

Last October the Biden administration returned to the council, but made it clear they agreed with Trump on the question of Israel. “The Council provides a forum where we can have open discussions about ways we and our partners can improve,” said Secretary of State Blinken. “At the same time, it also suffers from serious flaws, including disproportionate attention on Israel and the membership of several states with egregious human rights records. Together, we must push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded.”

The UNHRC was not actually founded on the basis of maintaining a double standard on atrocities, but I digress. The U.S. government’s criticisms of the council have increased in recent months because it is investigating Israel’s 2021 attack on Gaza that killed as many as 192 Palestinian civilians. About one-third of those killed were children. Here’s testimony from Alaa Abu Hattab, whose wife, children, sister, nieces, and nephews were all killed in the bombing:

I left my house on foot at about 1:30AM to go to some of the local shops that were open late during the run-up to Eid to buy toys and snacks for the kids for the Eid festival and to buy some food, as we were hungry. When I regained consciousness, I saw rescue workers looking for bodies under the rubble and recovering body parts. The attack had shredded the bodies. Other parts remained under the rubble because they could not find them.”

There were no militants in or near my house and no rockets or rocket launchers there. I still don’t know why they bombed my house and killed my wife and children and my sister and her children.

Should the United Nations investigate attacks like these? Biden says no, as does most of congress. In fact, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle want the President to deliver more than rhetoric on the issue. Last month a bipartisan group of 68 Senators sent Blinken a letter calling on the administration to use its position on the council to stop the Gaza investigation and the “discriminatory and unwarranted treatment of Israel.” The effort was led by Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Robert Portman (OH-R). Here’s the other signatures, many of them Democrats:

Senators Chuck Schumer, Patrick Leahy, Jim Risch, Susan Collins, Gary Peters, Jacky Rosen, Chris Coons, John Boozman, Jerry Moran, Cory Booker, Ben Sasse, Ron Wyden, Chuck Grassley, Daniel Sullivan, Kevin Cramer, Lisa Murkowski, Marsha Blackburn, Bill Cassidy, Debbie Stabenow, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Maggie Hassan, Shelley Moore Capito, Joni Ernst, John Cornyn, Tim Scott, Sheldon Whitehouse, Dianne Feinstein, Joe Manchin, Bill Hagerty, Marco Rubio, Kirsten Sinema, Richard Blumenthal, Jon Tester, Mike Braun, Rick Scott, John Hoeven, Deb Fischer, Mike Rounds, Roger Marshall, John Kennedy, Mike Lee, Alex Padilla, Steven Daines, Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker, Tammy Duckworth, Catherine Cortez Masto, Patty Murray, Michael Bennet, Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, John Thune, John Hickenlooper, Mark Kelly, Todd Young, Maria Cantwell, Jeanne Shaheen, Roy Blunt, Pat Toomey, Tommy Tuberville, Josh Hawley, Bob Casey, Amy Klobuchar, Raphael Warnock, Mike Crapo and Kristen Gillibrand.

A notable name on this list is Raphael Warnock. During the Georgia runoffs a video of Reverend Warnock giving a sermon in 2018 emerged. In the video he criticizes Israel’s recent killing of unarmed protestors. “It’s been a tough week,” he tells his church. “The (Trump) administration opened up the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Standing there..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.’”

Warnock’s GOP opponent, then-Senator Kelly Loeffler, predictably attacked Warnock over these revelations, implementing all the standard smears. Democrats often respond with some mealy-mouthed “both sides” stuff when put in these situations, but Warnock immediately doubled down in the opposite direction. He penned an editorial titled “I Stand With Israel” in the Jewish Insider, the contents of which are probably self-explanatory. It singled out the BDS movement for specific animus, claiming that it has “antisemitic underpinnings.”

That wasn’t enough though. “I condemned BDS, its refusal to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist,” said Warnock the following month. “And I support President Obama’s memorandum of understanding, it’s the largest such commitment made in history ($3.8 billion a year in military aid for 10 years in 2016.) Inasmuch as Israel is… the most important ally in that part of the world, that memo is something I would support. Our aid and support to Israel is something I would advance as a member of the Senate. And there’s no question that Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon. We cannot allow that to happen.”

The Reverend’s efforts did not go unnoticed. They were enough to generate an endorsement from Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), a lobbying group that sports a board member who has called for a genocide against Palestinians. The organization specifically cited Warnock’s opposition to BDS when announcing the endorsement. “Thank you to my friends at DMFI,” he tweeted. “I’m proud to receive your endorsement and I’m grateful for the work you do to support our party’s values. Echoing Dr. King, as senator I’ll stand for Israel’s security & will work to strengthen the alliance between our nations.”

If there were any hopes that Warnock would return to his concerns about Palestinian human rights after being elected, they were quickly dashed. After arriving in the Senate he became a sponsor of the Israel Relations Normalization Act, which was one of AIPAC’s legislative priorities. The bill was recently folded into the omnibus spending package. Here’s Josh Ruebner breaking it down at the site last year:

While the bill pays perfunctory lip-service to the establishment of a Palestinian state and grasps at straws to argue that normalization of ties between Israel and Arab governments will magically facilitate that outcome, the intent of the bill is the opposite: to build on the Trump administration’s cynical business deals with Arab governments to further their interests at the expense of the Palestinian people.

The fact that none of the Senators even bothered to mention the Palestinian people in their media release is a more accurate gauge of the bill’s intention of furthering Israel’s goal of eliminating Palestinian rights.

Let’s return to a portion of that 2018 sermon. “We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey,” said Warnock. “And I don’t care who does it, it is wrong. It is wrong to shoot down God’s children like they don’t matter at all.”

It’s hard to believe a man of faith like Warnock no longer believes any of that. The more plausible conclusion is that, like many Democrats, he lacks the courage of his convictions and is committed to falling in line.

Dems trying to tank their own party’s deal

Speaking of DMFI, you no doubt remember that the group spent millions to defeat Nina Turner in the Ohio’s 11th district congressional primary last year. This has turned out to be a solid investment for them as Shontel Brown has joined a Democratic effort to sink any hope of a new Iran Deal. I am compelled to list the standard caveats for any discussion of this issue:

1.) There’s currently no deal because the United States pulled out of it.

2.) The United States increased its sanctions on Iran during the pandemic.

3.) The United States will not acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons.

4.) Israel attacked an Iranian enrichment site last year. Iran accelerated its enrichment of uranium because of this attack.

Anyway, Brown recently joined 17 other House Dems in raising concerns about the deal. “I have long hoped that negotiations with Iran would result in a longer and stronger agreement,” she said. “I look forward to closely reviewing any announced deal to determine whether it will make the U.S. safer, improve stability in the region, and strengthen the security of our longtime ally Israel.”

Bret Stephens’s favorite Democrat Ritchie Torres was not part of that specific effort, but the New York congressman has been launching his own personal effort to throw dirt on the deal since he showed up in Washington. This week he chatted about the alleged dangers of a deal with AIPAC.

(A quick side note here. Torres has repeatedly condemned the January 6th insurrection and any Republican who supported it. AIPAC’s new political action committee has endorsed a number of those insurrectionist Republicans, but this hasn’t stopped Torres from aligning himself with the organization. By any means necessary if the issue is Israel, I guess.)

Torres had an incredible line amid his fear-mongering: “I try to approach the issue not from the perspective of an American, but from the perspective of an Israeli.” Amazing.

Odds & Ends

? Last week Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) introduced legislation to prevent U.S. weapons from being used by other countries to commit human rights abuses. It’s a House companion bill to legislation introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (who also signed the letter calling for Gaza investigation to be stopped) earlier this year. You have to dig very deep with this one to find the caveats. The text of the bill makes it clear that does not apply to any NATO countries, Japan, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, or Israel.

? In his Substack Stephen Semler contrasts climate spending in Biden’s proposed budget ($45B) with military spending ($813B):

All told, military spending makes up more than 51% of Biden’s $1.6 trillion FY2023 spending proposal. Climate only makes less than 3%.

An underfunded climate response is a problem regardless of whether it’s accompanied by a radically overfunded military budget, but military-related emissions are a big reason why it makes the problem worse. Based on the most recently available data, the US military-industrial complex pollutes more than 171 countries.

? There’s been very little coverage of Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic’s recent report on Israel’s apartheid, which was prepared with the Ramallah-based Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Steve France writes about it on the site:

Although only 22 pages long, the report includes 130 footnotes that deftly back up the text and let readers drill down further. The narrow focus shines a searching light on the customized legal instruments and processes implemented since 1967 to deprive West Bank Palestinians of their human, civil and political rights.

The precise description of the lawfare by which Israel has, with impunity, intimidated, confused, humiliated, bullied, imprisoned, tortured and killed Palestinians since 1967 generates a compelling cumulative impact. Individual items in the litany are not in themselves news but to see them depicted in their coordinated entirety is to see how the Israeli machine of injustice does its anti-human work.

?? A criminal complaint filed last week claims that the U.S. killed 11 Libyan civilians in a 2018 airstrike. Nick Turse reporting in The Intercept:

According to legal documents shared exclusively with The Intercept and Italy’s Avvenire, most of the men killed were members of the Libyan armed forces; several had previously fought against Al Qaeda or even alongside the United States when it battled the Islamic State in the city of Sirte two years earlier.

The men were armed and heading from their homes in Ubari, a village in southwest Libya, toward the Algerian border to assist fellow community members who had been attacked by a gang with whom they were feuding over abandoned construction equipment. “The eleven victims were not members of Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization and were not combatants: they were travelling to retrieve an excavator that was the subject of a dispute with another group,” reads the complaint. “These murders, committed outside of any armed conflict and therefore qualifying as an extraterritorial law enforcement operation, are in direct contrast with Italian and international regulations on the use of lethal force.”

?? Mohammed Khatib on how U.S. charitable donations are fueling the displacement of Palestinians:

These settler organizations — the Israel Land Fund, Ateret Cohanim, Regavim, and others — are the organizations that use hundreds of millions of dollars to shape Israel’s program of Indigenous displacement. Look at Regavim, which is using U.S. charitable dollars to evict the community of Khan Ahmar. Ateret Cohanim is taking over the Petra Hotel at the Jaffa Gate. Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and founder of the Israeli Land Fund, Arieh King, targets the families of Sheikh Jarrah.

?️ In Jewish Currents Alex Kane writes about what the fossil fuel industry learned from anti-BDS laws.

? Omar Zahzah writes about Silicon Valley’s censorship of Palestine at Electronic Intifada.

? Tomorrow there will be a #DroptheADL webinar featuring Robin D.G. Kelley, Lara Kiswani, Emmaia Gelman, and Lesley Williams. You can sign up for it at the campaign’s website.

Stay safe out there,

Michael