The Shift: The U.S. refuses to condemn Israel storming Al-Aqsa mosque

The Biden administration staunchly took Israel’s side today. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel refused to condemn Israel’s storming of Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan, then went on to condemn rocket attacks coming from Gaza and Lebanon.

And the U.S. also stepped in to block a U.N. Security Council statement to the press criticizing Israel for the raids, according to an Israeli official (speaking to an Israeli reporter). Jacob Magid reports that Israeli diplomats coordinated with the U.S.:

The UNSC held an emergency session today to discuss recent violence in Jerusalem & several members pushed for panel to issue a statement condemning Israel over police beating of Muslim worshippers at Al Aqsa on Monday night, according to a UN diplomat for a county on the panel. Some members were also pushing for the statement to include a condemnation of rocket fire at Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, per UN diplomat. Israel pushed against issuing any statement, fearing it would draw equivalency between its actions & terror groups, per senior Israeli official

The State Department was asked about “unprovoked” attacks in the last two nights by Israeli police and troops on worshipers at the mosque. Patel responded:

We are concerned by the scenes out of Jerusalem. And it is our viewpoint that it is absolutely vital that the sanctity of holy sites be preserved. We emphasize the importance of upholding the historic status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem and any unilateral action that jeopardizes the status quo to us is unacceptable. We call for restraint, coordination and calm during the holiday season.

House leaders headed out to Israel

More mixed signals. Just when Joe Biden tells Benjamin Netanyahu that he’s Persona Non Grata in Washington, the Congress is working to send a different signal.

Both House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries will visit Israel this month, and will surely suck up to Netanyahu. McCarthy is a Trump-supporter but notice his trip is potentially bipartisan. Axios’ Barak Ravid reports:

Jeffries is expected to arrive in Israel on April 22 for a three-day visit, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. His office declined to comment.

McCarthy is expected to arrive in Israel on April 30 and leave on May 2, the Israeli Foreign Ministry official visits schedule states. McCarthy’s office sent an invitation to Republican and Democratic members of the House to join him on the trip.

The universal application of the Passover story

It’s Passover, which is a tough holiday if you’re an anti-Zionist Jew. Passover is the biblical liberation story of Jews escaping slavery under the pharaoh, a story that is inculcated at the Jewish Seder to remind us that in every generation we must see ourselves as redeemed from Egypt.

Of course that Jewish liberation story has universal resonance. That’s why it’s been around for so long. That’s why Bob Marley wrote “Exodus” asking for another Moses.

But it’s hard to recite that story or hear it in this Zionist age, when leading Jewish organizations are dedicated to the persecution of Palestinians.

Here’s Democratic Majority for Israel’s rendering of the Passover — progressive except for Palestine:

It is a story of struggle and perseverance, of courage and hope, and of the power of community and collective action — principles cherished by our [Jewish] community, regardless of our religious or cultural background. At DMFI, we are guided by these same values, as we work to promote a strong, Jewish, and democratic Israel, and to advance an agenda that ensures vital American freedoms

So the organized Jewish community exalts civil freedoms in the United States, but destroys them in Palestine in its work to grant immunity for all the actions of the “Jewish state.” (This selfish contradiction is the puzzle that animates my work on this site.)

A word about violence in the Passover Seder

And by the way, the traditional Passover Haggadah includes collective punishment of the Egyptians, notably the slaying of the first-born– a genocide the Jews escape by smearing their front doors with the blood of a sacrificed lamb (so the angel of death will “pass over” their houses).

So liberation is achieved through terrible violence against young men, an approach that is, of course, anathematized for Palestinians. Even Jon Stewart (item below) calls that terrorism.

And while I’m on the subject, I’m learning how to play guitar, so I’m playing Neil Young tunes, and in “Ohio”– an iconic song of the 70s inspired by the Ohio National Guard killing four students at Kent State in May 1970 –the Canadian songwriter wrote the following:

Gotta get down to it

Soldiers are cutting us down

Should a been done long ago.

I’m the last person to support violence; that’s why I’m for BDS. But can we have a little political context now and then?

Talib Kweli supports BDS, Jon Stewart can’t go that far

Staying on my theme of musicians, the rapper Talib Kweli has a show called “People’s Party” on YouTube; and two weeks ago Kweli interviewed Jon Stewart and brought up the subject of Palestine by stating his — Kweli’s– support for BDS.

I had a situation where I’m not even the BDS dude, but I’ve done benefits for BDS and I said Free Palestine on records because it seemed like the right thing to do. I align myself with causes that make sense to me. I had a series of venues in Germany of all places cancel my shows because there was a law passed around 2019 that if you support BDS you are supporting hate speech.

A bunch of Nazis started an online campaign to say, This guy supports BDS. So one by one all of these venues– I thought, Hey, what did I do?

It is very compelling that Kweli has not immersed himself in Palestine but BDS is an easy call to him. I wish more people would apply his standard for action: “It seemed like the right thing to do. I align myself with causes that makes sense to me.”

It’s a pity that Jon Stewart can’t go that far– but it’s because of the Jewish community. That is the importance of his response to Kweli: Jews are “saddled” with an idea of loyalty to an oppressive state. Here’s what Stewart says:

As a Jewish person you are saddled with the idea that you are not a citizen of America or a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of Israel, and you must back their actions. And one has nothing to do with the other, and one has nothing to do with being Jewish or not being Jewish, whatever it is that people choose on their religion or on their history and on their background, it has to do with the way that I view governments–

Stewart goes on to talk international politics and make a point that ought to be propounded constantly: Palestinians can never get a state so long as one person throws a stone, a standard no oppressed people would ever meet.

What has happened in that part of the world is tragic, and unfortunately I think the biggest problem is it’s to nobody’s benefit but the Palestinian people that it get resolved. It’s not to the benefit of the Israeli government– they use the Palestinian issue as a cudgel and they continue to build settlements and whatever they want to do. And no one is suggesting that terror attacks are OK and that’s a good thing, but if you are held to the standard that you don’t get your state until nobody tries to kill anybody else, then you’re never going to get your state… It’s not to the United States’s benefit because we have an ally in the region that is a lot more complicated for us than in other ways, because they rely on our military aid and all kinds of other things.

So if it’s not to anybody’s interest in the powers of status quo, what chance do they have? What chance? It’s not really to Hamas’s benefit, or Fatah’s benefit, because they then lose their grip on power. So the only people who always lose are the day-in, day-out Palestinian people. Because it’s to no one’s benefit to help them but them.

I’m not down with Stewart’s analysis. The current situation damages the U.S., but is keenly in the interest of the Israelis and the Israel lobby– the power politics he ignores. Joe Biden launched his attack on Netanyahu by saying the American Jewish community was against him.

The ADL’s bogus survey of antisemitism

“Semitism is not the same as Zionism,” Jon Stewart says, rejecting the ADL’s claim that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism.

Mari Cohen of Jewish Currents reports that the ADL claimed to document 70 incidents of anti-Zionism in its recent survey claiming that antisemitism was on the rise. But 53 of those incidents were a weekly gathering of the same knuckleheads in Michigan. Cohen:

“I found that of the 70 incidents the ADL says come from ‘hostile anti-Zionist groups,’ 53 of them are weekly protests from one tiny antisemitic group in Ann Arbor (where I’m from) disconnected from broader Palestine movement.”

‘New York Times’ publishes a puffball profile of Ambassador Tom Nides

One person who approved that ADL survey of antisemitism was the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides. That’s not a surprise. Nides is a dedicated Zionist. In February he said that his “biggest fear,” the thing that keeps him up at night, is that Israel has “lost the narrative” on college campuses in the United States, including among young Jews!

I reported those comments, as well as Nides’s belief that Palestinians prefer money to political rights: “The average person [in Palestine] does not wake up… and say oh where’s my two state solution.”

But The New York Times leaves all that out in this valentine of a profile of Nides as a shrewd, self-deprecating charmer. “Tom is a natural schmoozer and can make anybody feel like they’re his best friend having just met him,” said Martin S. Indyk.

The Times of course has a long history of being in the tank for Israel. Here is a great line spoken by the late scholar Ibrahim Abu-Lughod in 1988:

“I was told by one of the editors of the New York Times: ‘The New York Times does not recognize Palestine.’ I said well Palestine does not recognize the New York Times either.”

Michael Oren says U.S. demonstrators spat on soldiers (and other half-baked conservative nonsense)

I didn’t see this one coming — former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren explains why the recent demonstrations in Tel Aviv are so much more inspiring than American demonstrations against the Vietnam War, on the Jewish Broadcasting Service:

I remember the antiwar protests of the 60s and the 60s, where American youth went out and burned the American flag, and called Amerika with a K, and spit at soldiers and policemen and called them pigs. These were outpourings of love on the part of Israel citizens. they carried Israeli flags, they stood and sang Hatikvah, they kissed the soldiers and blessed the army, blessed the police. Very very different. We’ve seen now people coming out and demonstrating for democracy out of love for their country with great respect. I don’t know a country like this.

(This just adds to my file that the politician/historian is a fool when he tries to explain American political cultural events– like his false portrayal of an attack on his synagogue in 1971).

Oren also says in that interview that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is “angry” with the White House over its failure to condemn anything Israel is doing to Palestinians. His description of the progressives’ power as “significant” is accurate, I believe:

That wing of the progressives when I was in Washington was small and afraid of Barack Obama. That wing is no longer small and afraid of nobody, least of all Joe Biden.

Oren says that while neither Biden nor his top aides (Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan) are part of the progressive wing, it has become so influential that the president does need to respond to it. He points out (as I have) that progressives compelled Biden to tell Israel to shut down the May 2021 slaughter of Gaza after about 10 days. “The President said, End the war, Israel ended the war.”

Oren continued that if Israel decides to invade the West Bank now, “I think that the willingness of the administration to support us will be circumscribed.”

‘The Agony of Liberal Zionism’

Here’s a very good article on the crisis of Zionism at Washington Report for Middle East Affairs: “For Jewish Americans, the Idea of Israel as a Liberal Democracy Is Rapidly Fading.” Allan C. Brownfeld summarizes all the new critics of the Israeli government inside the Jewish community.

They include Paul Berman, Martin Peretz and Leon Wieseltier, writing in The Washington Post, “We are Liberal American Zionists. We Stand with Israel’s Protesters.”

And Brownfeld cites a piece by Yakov Rabkin showing how the death of the two-state solution has precipitated the crisis.

In “The Agony of Liberal Zionism” published by the International Press Agency, Pressenza, Yakov Rabkin, professor emeritus of history at the University of Montreal assesses the growing crisis within Zionism. The author of the book What Is Modern Israel? writes: “The new government may destroy the last of the two illusions dear to liberal Zionists and instrumental in maintaining Western support for Israel.   Over half a million settlers on the territories Israel conquered in 1967 killed the prospect of a two-state solution. It has been confirmed dead and buried, even though Western governments continue to pay it lip service. The current Israeli government is casting a death blow to the second one, that of a ‘Jewish and democratic state.’ These two illusions have long been hiding the reality of Zionist supremacy over the Palestinians. Unlike the Tel Aviv protesters who decry the dangers to democracy, Palestinians have long known that Israel’s democracy is, in fact, an ethnocracy to oppress them.”

Rabkin says: “Ethnic supremacy is basic to the Zionist project.”

The Israel Policy Forum says the same thing in more euphemistic terms: “We support Israel as the state of the Jewish people.”

Israel’s administrative detention of an elderly American

The State Department today refused to comment on Israel’s confinement of Jamal Niser, a 76-year-old American, who has been in administrative detention without charges for seven months.

“We are aware of these reports… and are continuing to monitor the situation,” Patel said.

DAWN’s report on Niser says the U.S. government ought to take action against the Israelis for a violation of international law:

When Jamal got out of prison in October 2021, days before his 75th birthday, he attempted to return to the United States to be with his children, but the Israeli army denied him permission to leave the occupied territory without giving any reason. With the intervention of then-Congressman Tim Ryan of Jamal’s home state of Ohio, Israeli authorities gave the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem written assurances that they would allow him to depart for the U.S. Even with that letter in hand, however, the Israeli military denied him permission to leave a second time in October 2021. 

Less than a year later, on August 24, 2022, the Israeli military again raided Jamal’s home in the Ramallah-area city of al-Bireh in the middle of the night, this time with an embedded television news crew, breaking down the front door of his home and detaining him…

On March 30, 2023, American consular officials visited Niser in Israel’s Ofer Military Prison in the occupied West Bank, and communicated to his family that he is in need of ocular surgery that he would prefer to undergo in Ohio, where he lived for 40 years and where his family remains.

Niser’s continued detention is a violation of international human rights laws prohibiting arbitrary, indefinite imprisonment without charge, and could amount to a war crime under Article 8(2)(a)(vi) of the Rome Statute, which prohibits “[w]ilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial.” Furthermore, the Secretary of State should designate Niser as wrongfully detained under the “Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act,” demand that Israel immediately release Niser or charge him with a crime in a criminal proceeding. The President should also order sanctions against the Israeli officials responsible for his continued detention, as permitted by the law.

Israel violates agreement with U.S. on settlements in northern West Bank

The Biden administration is angered that Israel rescinded a promise made in 2005 to George Bush (in that famous exchange of letters that let Israel do almost anything east of the Green Line) that it would not build settlements in the northern West Bank.

J Street’s Debra Shushan explains why the recission of that agreement elicited “a rare display of American pique” from the Biden administration.

Passage of the repeal law, sponsored by Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chair Yuli Edelstein of Likud, angered the White House – and rightfully so. Prior to the vote’s final passage, US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides had stated, “We have been very clear [that] we oppose the bill.” While Edelstein insisted to the contrary that “the Americans don’t care that much,” the Biden Administration sharply indicated its dismay after the legislation’s passage. State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters, “The United States is extremely troubled” by the “provocative” move. The State Department undertook the rare move of summoning Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog for a “very tough” meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. It had been thirteen years since an Israeli ambassador had been thus reprimanded.