New York City Mayor Eric Adams visited Israel this week, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and had a closed-door meeting with leaders of the protest movement.
Adams identified Israel’s technology as one of the reasons for his trip. “The use of artificial intelligence, the use of security cameras — we’re going to visit tomorrow the police academy where we’re really going to get to the heart and soul of the public safety tools that are available on how to do all the detection of criminal behavior and how to just further enhance what we have in our toolkit,” he said.
We know what all that Israeli technology is used for. “The reality is that Israel’s tech industry is rooted in violence, producing technology that is infamously used to surveil, control, and kill Palestinians under Israeli military occupation,” Adalah Justice Project Executive Director Sandra Tamari told Middle East Eye. “The mayor has no business bringing back these deadly technologies to New York City.”
In the mayor’s own city, Google workers have protested in front of their office building to call attention to Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract that the Israeli government secured with Google and Amazon. The project will provide cloud services to the country’s government and military.
More than human rights organizations have launched a #NoTechforApartheid campaign, highlighting the concerns of Google and Amazon workers on this issue. “Following in the footsteps of those who fought to divest from apartheid South Africa and won, it’s our responsibility to rise up in support of Palestinian freedom,” reads the coalition’s website.
Obviously, none of these concerns were brought up by Adams, who repeatedly praised the country’s food, culture, and resolve. He met with settler leader and Binyamin Regional Council chair Yisrael Gantz, whose office says he agreed to tour the settlements on his next trip. Adams’s office denies this claim. As Mitchell Plitnick points out on Twitter, Israeli officials have a history of lying about these things. Especially lately, with the right-wing government facing so much international scrutiny.
However, Adams’s trip does effectively normalize Netanyahu’s agenda, whether he plans to tour the settlements or not. He wouldn’t criticize the Prime Minister or praise the protesters. “I listened, I didn’t weigh in,” he told reporters. “I think the people of Israel will determine their destiny. I thought it was important for me to meet both sides here because I know that when I return to the city…some of my Jewish constituents will ask me questions, and I want to be able to share what my conversations were.”
“I have many challenges in my city, and I wouldn’t want someone to come in and interfere with how I work them out,” he added.
Adams’ messaging is clear here. Israel is a democracy that’s simply going through a few things, like any other place on the globe. There’s no reason to panic or threaten anything ridiculous, like an end to U.S. military aid. We’re going to get through this.
Back in reality, a cruel system of domination continues without a hitch. Shortly after Adams smiled for the cameras alongside Netanyahu, Israel’s racist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir went on television and declared, “My right, the right of my wife and my children to travel the roads in Judea and Samaria is more important than the freedom of movement of Arabs. Sorry, Muhammad.”
This is terrible stuff, but at least he’s honest. It’s much easier to talk about the situation when we acknowledge Israel’s true objectives in the region instead of debating within the context of a fantasy world that some detail.
The Ben-Gvir outburst was blatantly racist enough to get a rebuke from Abe Foxman of all people, but the Israeli government is apparently not extreme enough to be opposed by the Democratic mayor of New York.
Israel comes up in GOP debate
How important is a Republican debate if the (four-time indicted) frontrunner does not attend? It’s hard to say, but there was at least one moment that’s germane to readers of this newsletter.
In the last issue of The Shift, I mentioned some interesting comments made by GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy. He said that the success of the Abraham Accords will enable the United States to cut military aid to Israel in 2028.
“I actually do think our relationship with Israel has advanced American interests,” he explained. “I come out on the side of that. Here’s what I want to see happen though. I want to negotiate – I’m a dealmaker, okay? I want to negotiate now Abraham Accords 2.0: get Saudi, Oman, Qatar, Indonesia in there. Get Israel on its own two feet. And I believe in standing by commitments that we’ve already made.”
“So our commitments have, I think, $38 billion in aid, military support, etc. going in through 2028,” he continued. “I want to get Israel to the place where it is negotiated back into the infrastructure of the rest of the Middle East. We should not be worried about holding one nation or one region hostage over one particular question relating to Palestine.”
This logic is at least a little hard to follow but a candidate suggesting we eventually cut aid is notable, especially when it’s a Republican. As soon as Ramaswamy made the comments it was obvious that he’d be criticized over them and that’s what happened during the debate.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley attacked Ramaswamy for lacking foreign policy experience and claimed that Israel is protecting the United States from Iran somehow. “It’s not that Israel needs America, it’s that America needs Israel,” she told the crowd.
Ramaswamy stressed the fact he loved Israel, praised their racist policies, and called for an expansion of the Abraham Accords, but he didn’t backtrack on the aid. “Our relationship with Israel would never be stronger than by the end of my first term, but it’s not a client relationship, it’s a friendship, and you know what friends do? Friends help each other stand on their own two feet,” he said. “I will lead Abraham Accords 2.0, I will partner with Israel to make sure Iran never is nuclear-armed…you know what I love about them? I love their border policies, I love their tough-on-crime policies, I love that they have a national identity and an Iron Dome to protect their homeland, so yes, I want to learn from the friends that we’re supporting.”
You have to cut through a lot of nonsense here, but there’s something intriguing about Ramaswamy’s position. He says he believes that Israel has advanced U.S. interests, but thinks the country can eventually stand on its own. In other words, sending it over $3.8 billion a year would no longer advance U.S. interests. Like everyone else on the stage, he doesn’t actually care what happens to the Palestinians. It’s realpolitik driven by the corporate prerogative of Washington.
On our podcast, I recently spoke with author and professor Josh Ruebner about these increasing calls to cut aid and the argument that Israel no longer serves a strategic purpose for the United States government.
“I’m honestly not sure that Israel has ever been a strategic asset to the United States,” he told me. “I know it’s touted that way by AIPAC and by other upholders of the special relationship. But I think that there are actually very few tangible outcomes that one can point to over the last seventy-five years that justifies that assessment.”
Odds & Ends
????️ I spoke with Pervez Agwan, who is running to unseat Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX) in Texas’s district 7 primary. Fletcher is a staunch supporter of Israel and backed by AIPAC. Unlike most Democrats, Agwan is taking AIPAC on directly.
“I’m running to fundamentally shift what the Democratic party stands for,” he told me. “We should be a party of truth and justice, not lies and not corruption. Current Democratic politicians including the one I’m running against are supported by lobbying groups like AIPAC, and plenty of them are still pushing anti-Palestinian rhetoric. There’s nothing wrong with standing for the human rights of the people in Palestine and calling out settlement building. There’s nothing wrong with calling it out.”
???? Dahlia Scheindlin, Haaretz: ‘U.S. Visa Waiver Pilot Blows Up Claim That All Palestinians Are a Security Threat’:
Beyond differentiating between U.S. citizens, the pilot already creates a division between Palestinian Americans, since those who live in Gaza are not yet included at all. Israel has promised they will be, possibly on September 15 – but who really knows?
???? Michael F. Brown at The Electronic Intifada: ‘PragerU brings pro-Israel propaganda to Florida schools’:
And then there’s a PragerU video for kids on behalf of Israel, marginalizing Palestinians, reducing them to terrorists or the role of the “good Arab.”
The misrepresentations are no surprise: PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager has been to Israel over 20 times and will lead a “Stand With Israel” tour there – as well as to occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied Golan Heights – this fall.
He is on record as fearing a Palestinian-Jewish binational state. And he has asserted that “the Palestinians are among the world’s most morally unimpressive national groups” and that “lying is a Palestinian art form.”
✉️ At the Jewish Insider Marc Rod reports that “a bipartisan group of 84 lawmakers wrote to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona pressing for information on the Department of Education’s plans to resolve a backlog of investigations into campus antisemitism and improve protections for Jewish students.”
They’re calling on the department to embrace the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, i.e. stifle criticism of Israel on campus and penalize pro-Palestine students. The usual suspects on the signatures…Manning, Rosen, Lankford, Torres, Schneider, Meng, etc, but one surprise. Rep. Andre Carson (who has been better on this issue than the vast majority of congress) also signed the letter.
???????? Paul Pillar in Responsible Statecraft-‘Hardline think tank despises Iran above everything else — and that’s dangerous’:
Over the past decade, probably no issue has figured more prominently in debate about policy toward Iran than the Iranian nuclear program and the worry that the program could lead to an Iranian nuclear weapon. And no pressure group has been more active and relentless in beating a drum about the awfulness of Iran than the misleadingly named Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)…
Understanding this warped set of priorities requires a look at what FDD is all about. It began as an organization with a Hebrew name whose purpose, according to its application to the Internal Revenue Service for tax exempt status, was “to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.” The organization later adopted its current cover name, but what it is dedicated to defending are not democracies but rather the policies of the Israeli Likud party, which for most of the past few decades have been policies of the Israeli government.
A centerpiece of those policies is to promote hatred and distrust of Iran, to stoke tension with Iran, and to oppose all diplomacy with Iran. The purposes this posture has served Israeli governments — of varying shades of right-wing coloration — have included the weakening of a regional rival for influence, the undercutting of any U.S. rapprochement with Tehran, the sustaining of a bête noire on whom all troubles of the region can be blamed, and the diverting of international attention to Iran as the “real” problem of the region and away from Israel’s own behavior.
“It is important to understand what is going on in this tweet because it tells us a lot about the state of hasbara these days,” says Yousef Munayyer.
???? Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) just returned from an AIPAC-organized trip to Israel. At a recent meet and greet he was questioned about the group by IfNotNow activists. He said he would “certainly not disavow AIPAC” or reject a reelection endorsement from them. “I think AIPAC can be still a force for good,” he said.
???????? Mairav Zonszein points out that Blinken was talking about “Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, opportunity, justice, and dignity” up until recently, but has shifted to stuff about deescalation and stability. In other words, occupation. Election season is officially upon us.
Stay safe out there,
Michael
During the Cold War the US allied with a lot of governments with atrocious human rights records, some of them much bloodier than Israel’s. And Israel even armed some of those governments, like Guatemala during the 80’s. The US would claim it was crucial that we arm this or that dictator for national security reasons, and few of them made much sense. As it in our national interest to arm death squads that killed tens of thousands of peasants? By the genius logic that governs our foreign policy, yeah, sure.
So arming Israel was not out of line with the rest of our foreign policy. And in the case of Israel, you could even claim they were noble democratic underdogs if you swallowed the usual propaganda, That phrase “ national interest” is hard to define and sometimes it has little to do with the interests of ordinary Americans, though often one can persuade them to think so with enough jingoism and scare talk.