The Shift: So long, Ned Price

State Department spokesperson Ned Price will step down this month, taking a job to work directly for Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“For people in America and around the world, Ned Price has often been a face and voice of U.S. foreign policy,” said Blinken in a statement. “He’s performed with extraordinary professionalism and integrity. On behalf of the Department, I thank Ned for his remarkable service.”

Price has had to field a lot of questions about the Middle East over the last couple of years, and it’s often been difficult for him to express concern for Palestinians while simultaneously (but sometimes reluctantly) admitting that the Biden administration will do nothing to actually hold Israel accountable for any of its crimes. However, credit where credit’s due. He often gives long (sometimes meandering) answers that inadvertently expose the hollowness of the Biden team’s human rights rhetoric.

I’ll remember a few Price moments above all else.

First, Israel’s targeting of Palestinian human rights groups. In October 2021, the Israeli government declared that Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International – Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, The Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees were terrorist organizations. They produced no public evidence to prove this (and classified documents obtained by +972, Local Call, and The Intercept prove the accusations are nonsense), but claim they shared the relevant intelligence with the Biden administration. “We receive detailed information from the Israeli government,” said Price at the time. “We appreciated the consultation. We’re reviewing the information that they provided us.”

At a certain point the Biden administration obviously realized the claims were dubious. In fact, they probably learned this right away, but they certainly weren’t going to disagree with Israel publicly. Price was periodically asked about the situation by the AP’s Matt Lee and Al Quds Said Arikat, and he had to pretend that the U.S. government was still pouring over all the info.

This went on for ten months, and eventually, Israel felt emboldened enough to step up their hostilities. They targeted the offices of the human rights groups in an overnight raid. As usual, Price expressed some concern but wouldn’t actually condemn Israel’s actions. Lee and Arikat pressed Price on the issue, with Lee telling Price that the Biden team was seemingly in a “perpetual state of limbo” on the issue.

“We have not seen anything that has caused us to change our position,” Price admitted. Perhaps accidentally admitting (for the first time) that the U.S. government found Israel’s claims unconvincing. “So you don’t believe the Israelis’ information?” asked Lee directly.

“Intelligence information is always information that is the subject of analysis and different parties can read information differently,” answered Price “They can perceive of threats differently. Our own analysis heretofore of the information that was provided last year has not caused us to change our approach to these organizations.”

However when asked why Biden wasn’t condemning the overnight raids, he went back to the evidence. The same evidence that he admitted wasn’t compelling. “I think the fact is that our Israeli partners..took an action..to designate these organizations as so-called ‘terrorist organizations’,” said Price. “What we’ve seen publicly, what they’ve conveyed privately in recent hours, is that there’s an appropriate basis for the actions that they have taken. It will be a matter of urgency for us to review the basis for that information.”

The other Price memory that comes to mind is the State Department spokesperson on the ICC’s investigation into Israeli war crimes. In 2021 Lee asked him about it 12 times. This was the exchange:

Lee: Considering your position on the Palestinians now, so where – where do the – where should the Palestinians go to get accountability for what they claim to be problems? To Israeli courts? Where do they go?

Spokesperson Ned Price: Matt, look, we – of course the United States is always going to stand up for human rights. We’re always going to stand up —

Lee: Where do they go? Where do they go?

Price: Matt, that is why I think you have —

Lee: Where?

Price: That is why you have heard us continue to endorse and —

Lee: Ned– where?

Price: — to call for a two-state solution to this long-running conflict. A two-state solution —

Lee: Should they go to the Israeli courts? Where do they go?

Price: — because it protects Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state, but also because it will give the Palestinians —

Lee: Where do they go?

Price: — a viable state of their own and fulfill —

Lee: Where do they go?

Price: — their legitimate aspirations for dignity and self-determination.

Lee: Where do they go? Where do they go? Where do they go?

That was the Ned Price experience in a nutshell. Going in circles while trying to defend the indefensible.

Katie Porter Goes to Israel

Many people would consider Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) to be one of the more progressive House members. The former consumer protection attorney and law professor has solidified herself as a fierce advocate for equity and a staunch opponent of corporate wrongdoing. She often goes viral for decimating Republicans and/or executives during congressional hearings. She backed Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign in 2020.

Foreign policy hasn’t been one of Porter’s focuses, but now she’s running for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, so she feels compelled to take the standard crash course on the United States’ closest ally. She tells Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel that she has met with local AIPAC officials and that she read Noa Tishby’s book on Israel. Tishby is the Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism and the Delegitimization of Israel. She’s a staunch opponent of BDS and an advocate for adopting the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism. Many of supporters of that definition insist that Israel can still be criticized under its guidelines and that it isn’t meant to stifle pro-Palestine sentiment. Tishby is not one of those supporters. “The reason that IHRA unfortunately gets a pushback is..exactly because of Israel..it’s very convenient to condemn Nazis, nobody likes to walk around and call themself an antisemite, but you kind of go ‘I’m not an antisemite, I’m just an anti-Zionist,'” she recently told a congressional panel. “That is considered okay and that is one of those things that we have to make clear: anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Period. End of story. There’s no question about that.”

Porter was part of a J Street delegation that traveled to Israel last month. She told Jewish Insider that she pushed for the group to meet with Netanyahu, which they did. “It was actually funny in that there was a moment in that conversation with the prime minister where he was talking about Likud and LGBTQ members of Likud and he was saying, ‘I bet nobody knew that,’” she says. “I raised my hand and I was like, ‘I knew! I knew!’ because I had gotten that additional briefing before I went.”

Porter says she was impressed by the Prime Minister:

“I was extremely impressed with his willingness to kind of grapple with us at some of the toughest issues that Israel’s facing, everything from judicial reform — an issue that we’re having questions and discussions about right now within the Democratic Party here in the United States — to issues about the West Bank and about settlements,” said the congresswoman.

“[We] emphasized, and I think Netanyahu emphasized back, that there’s a long-term project here, which is to have a vibrant, secure Jewish democratic state of Israel — and that in order to do that, there needs to be opportunities for the Palestinian people to have their own elected government and governance and land. How we get there is unclear right now. But we shouldn’t let the impediments to that progress prompt us to give up on the goal, given its incredible importance to Israel and to the region and to the United States.”

An interesting subplot here is how J Street factors in. The liberal Zionist group sponsored the trip, but none of their staffers met with Netanyahu. We reached out to the organization and here’s what they told us:

J Street fully supported our Congressional delegation meeting with the prime minister. We believe it’s important for members to meet with the prime minister of Israel, clearly convey their concerns and opinions about the key issues, and ask tough questions. 

The official request for the meeting was submitted procedurally by the Members themselves, and no J Street leaders or staff were present in the meeting, per the preference of the PM’s office.

So, J Street supports the politicians meeting with Netanyahu. The Prime Minister was willing to meet with the Dems but not J Street’s staff. You might remember that back in 2011 he refused to meet with J Street’s staff or any members of its delegation. Obviously, something has changed. Maybe he senses that (despite everything that’s happened in the last few months) some of the Democrats are warming up to him.

Odds & Ends

???????? This week Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) put out a long statement accusing Biden and congressional Democrats of “trying to topple the democratically elected government of Israel” and “treating Prime Minister Netanyahu like he’s a rival or even an adversary.” This is pretty funny in that it has no actual connections to reality. The administration has done absolutely nothing to impede the Israeli government’s policies beyond the occasional semi-harsh word.

???? Criticizing Israel is suddenly the new order for liberal Zionists.

⚒ Biden has the tools to deter Netanyahu, he just needs to use them

⚾ Great piece by Robert Ross on calls to boycott Israel’s World Baseball Classic team.

???? Jacob Batinga in Responsible Statecraft: “American arms exports account for nearly 40 percent of the global arms trade, and human rights restrictions on these transfers, if observed, could ensure that American weapons are not used to violate international law.”

“However, the Biden administration’s new policy omits a crucial — and often overlooked —  component of the U.S. role in the global arms trade: extensive American subsidization of Israel’s domestic arms industry.”

???????? Edo Konrad on Smotrich in +972 Magazine:

This is true not only due to the sheer genocidal sadism of his Huwara comments, or the fact that Smotrich has officially become what legal scholar Eliav Leiblich dubbed the “overlord of the West Bank.” It is also because, at a time when murderous incitement against Palestinians continues to bear its deadly fruit, such positions from American Jews are showing that there are real steps that can be taken against a government that seems libidinally invested in burning everything around it in order to reconfigure the country in its own image.

And yet, one should take pause and marvel at the strangely rare occasion in which major American organizations, from the left to the right, are uniting to condemn and question the legitimacy of a senior Israeli politician. One need not look far to find other Israeli officials who have similarly called for or retroactively justified massive violence against Palestinians. And that’s partly because unlike Smotrich — the poster child of the Jewish fundamentalist far right — many of those politicians actually come from the Israeli center and Zionist left.

???????? From WSJ: Saudi Arabia is asking the U.S. to provide security guarantees and help develop its civilian nuclear program as DC tries to develop the kingdom’s relationship with Israel.

????????  US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield: “I stay in close contact with the Israeli permanent representative in New York so that we don’t let any opportunity that we can show our support for Israel pass, and I will continue to do that until my last day.”

⃠ Lawmakers in New Hampshire are pushing an anti-BDS bill.

???????? Watch Mondoweiss Palestine News Director Yumna Patel’s new video report on Jenin’s rising resistance.

Stay safe out there,

Michael