Palestine protests have become a daily fact of life in the United States. Democratic voters overwhelmingly support a ceasefire. Biden’s reelection effort currently seems like an uphill battle, in no small part due to his support for Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.
The president’s campaign manager recently visited Michigan, where he met with leaders across the state. That invitation was declined by Dearborn’s mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who represents one of the largest Arab-American populations in the United States.
“We chose to decline because I don’t think this is the moment that calls for electoral politics,” Hammoud told PBS. “Palestinian lives should not be measured in polls. For us, this is a moment for our concerns to be heard, listened to, and for us to draft a new course together in terms of changing the direction of what’s happening overseas. Those are conversations that need to be had with senior policy staff, with Cabinet members, not with campaign staff. When you send campaign staff as the first delegation to this community to meet with us for the first time, that sends a message that this is purely a political problem that you see.”
Two anonymous Biden advisers admitted to Politico that the administration’s Israel position has hurt the president’s campaign and that they’re desperately looking for alternative paths to victory in Michigan.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) might not be House Speaker anymore, but she’s still one of the leading voices for the Democratic party. Her take on this disaster? Concern for Palestinians might just be a plot cooked up by foreign adversaries of the United States government.
“For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message,” the California congresswoman told CNN recently. “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.”
When pressed on the issue, Pelosi suggested that some ceasefire protesters are probably “Russian plants” and that the FBI should investigate them.
“Nancy Pelosi wants the FBI to investigate groups calling for a ceasefire, for being ‘connected to Russia’,” wrote The Intercept’s Prem Thakker on Twitter. “Groups calling for a ceasefire include: Arizona and Texas Democratic parties –80% of Democrats –60% of Americans –thousands of Black pastors –Doctors Without Borders –UAW.”
Shortly after her CNN comments, a video from October went viral in which Pelosi tells Palestine activists outside her home to “go back to China” where their “headquarters is.”
If Putin is operating out of China, this web is more tangled than we could have possibly realized.
Back in reality, the destruction of Gaza continues and every fresh horror is shrugged off or justified by the Biden administration. Here’s a particularly frustrating exchange between the AP’s Matt Lee and State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Israel’s recent raid on a hospital:
Lee: What – do you have any comment on that? Is this something that you think is problematic or is it something that you look at with envy, like this is some kind of great “Mission: Impossible” mission that we wish that we could also do?
Miller: So I’d say that we strongly urge caution whenever operations have the potential to impact civilians and civilian installations. That of course includes hospitals. We do recognize the very real security challenges Israel faces, and its legitimate right to defend its people and its territory from terrorism. Israel, of course, has the right to carry out operations to bring terrorists to justice, but those operations need to be conducted in full compliance with international humanitarian law.
Lee: Well, the – do those operations include going into hospitals and murdering people in their beds regardless of whether they’re —that they are suspected or even known terrorists? Is that okay with you guys?
Miller: So there was a lot in the premise of that question. Obviously, they – we did – do know that they went into —
Lee: Well, you don’t think that they went in —
Miller: We – well, hold on.
Lee: — and killed people who are completely innocent, do you?
Miller: We – so let me say that this —
Lee: Because if you did think that, then you would be condemning it, right?
Miller: We certainly would, but I would say that Israel has said that these were Hamas operatives. They have said that one of them was carrying a gun at the time of the operation. So I’m not able to speak to the facts of the operation. You’d have to pass some kind of legal judgement – know all of the facts of the operation. But as a general matter, they do have the right to carry out operations to bring terrorists to justice, but they need to be conducted in full
Lee: Including in hospitals?
Miller: So we want them to conduct their operations in compliance with international humanitarian law. We would generally say that we don’t want them to carry out operations in hospitals, but under international humanitarian law, hospitals do lose some of their protections if they are being used to – for the planning of terrorist operations, for the execution of terrorist operations.
Lee: The actual hospital – the actual hospital building does. But I mean, going in disguised as women and doctors and whatever is something different, and then going in and picking out people in particular rooms and particular beds and killing them seems to be something different.
Miller: So again, not able to offer an assessment without knowing all these facts. I said some of the facts that have been presented by Israel are that one of them was carrying a gun and that they were planning to carry out or to launch terrorist operations. So you would have to look at all of those facts to make a specific assessment about this operation. But in general, we do want to see hospitals protected. It is important that no civilians were harmed in this operation, but – and as I said, we want – we do believe Israel has —
Lee: So how do you know – how do you know that?
Miller: There have been no reports of civilians who have been harmed in this operation.
At another recent press conference, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Michigan voters becoming disenchanted with Biden over his Gaza policy.
“The President has met with Americans with varying — varying opinions about the conflict that we’re seeing, sadly, in — in Israel and Hamas,” she said. “Officials at the White House have had numerous conversations and in regular contact with Muslim and Arab…leaders in Michigan..and look, the President is going to continue — continues to believe that Israel has a right to defend themself. They have a right to defend itself, as long as they continue — they — it is done in accordance of humanitarian — international humanitarian law. So, we will continue to have those conversations with them.”
Maybe not the most compelling campaign message of all-time.
Jamaal Bowman and J Street
In last week’s newsletter I wrote about J Street finally endorsing a ceasefire.
It took the organization 100 days and more than 25,000 dead Palestinians to do so. Even within the context of the group’s stated goals it’s impossible to see what their logic was or what was gained from waiting so long.
J Street didn’t just refrain from immediately backing an end to the violence. It threatened to pull endorsements from lawmakers who failed to back a pro-Israel resolution.
Now the liberal, pro-Israel organization has pulled an endorsement. They will no longer be backing Rep. Jamaal Bowman because (D-NY) they believe that the language used by the congressman to describe the brutal killing of over 25,000 Palestinians has become too inflammatory.
In December J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami said they’d stick by Bowman, despite any disagreements, but once again the organization has changed its tune.
“When the rhetoric, the framing and the approach go too far, that’s where we are going to hold our line,” Ben-Ami told The Forward last week. “And that’s when we felt that Bowman crossed the line here.”
According to Jewish Insider J Street’s final straw was a recent Westchester County event where which Bowman appeared alongside author Norman Finkelstein.
Bowman has actually since apologized for praising Finkelstein’s analysis during the event.
J Street’s move comes at a particularly inopportune time for the House’s progressive flank. In addition to facing the usual right-wing smears and attacks, The Squad (and extended Squad) is about to be up against over $100 million in AIPAC money.
You might recall that Bowman was criticized by activists in 2021 for visiting Israel as part of an J Street delegation. Many DSA members even pushed for him to be expelled from the organization, over the trip and his vote in favor of Iron Dome funding.
“Bowman’s actions are not abstract,” said the Las Vegas chapter in a statement at the time. “By directly supporting Israeli apartheid and endorsing Zionism, Bowman condones the continued Israeli settlement of Palestinian land, as well as the forced displacement, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”
Bowman took some political heat on behalf of J Street and now they’re abandoning him at a time he could definitely them. There’s been some criticism from other progressive organizations.
Jews For Racial & Economic Justice political director Alicia Singham Goodwin told the Forward that it was disappointing to see J Street “retreat from this fight, rather than stand up to AIPAC.”
“Unfortunately, this is yet another in a series of poor decisions that J Street has made in recent months, and one they’ll certainly regret,” she added.
Once again, I must wonder what the future of a group like J Street is. They are hated by AIPAC for backing Democrats who criticize Israel, but they’re also disliked by the left for attempting to offer a gentler variation of apartheid. Their behavior in recent weeks has undoubtedly also hurt them among liberals and progressives, who are beginning to sympathize with Palestinians more and more.
In reading the Bowman news, I was reminded of an interview I did with college students at Tufts University a couple years ago. The students’s campus BDS campaign had faced pushback because it targeted the school’s J Street chapter among other organizations.
“I think the reason the discourse has shifted is that liberal Zionists, even if they’re anti-occupation and the framework they use to talk about the issue might sound more humane than anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic rhetoric, they’re still not acknowledging the fundamental cause of Palestinian resistance,” one of the students told me. “It’s not just the occupation, it’s also the colonization of historic Palestine going back even before 1948.”
Odds & Ends
???? Somerville has become the first Massachusetts city to pass a resolution in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. Then Cambridge became the second.
???????? ‘Biden cuts off life-saving aid to Palestinians based on Israeli allegations against UNRWA’
???? ‘Chicago City Council set to vote on ceasefire resolution despite multiple efforts to postpone’
Chicago Sun Times: ‘Chicago City Council passes Gaza cease-fire resolution as Johnson casts tie-breaking vote’
???????? ‘SEIU Rank and File say union has further to go to support Palestinian liberation’
???? ‘Stop the suppression of Palestine advocacy across Big Ten Universities’
???????? Al Jazeera: ‘Defies Logic: The makings of Joe Biden’s ‘blank cheque’ to Israel’
???????? Counterpunch: Freezing Aid to Gaza: Israel’s International War against the UNRWA
???? ‘Bhavini Patel courts out-of-state donors with Hindu nationalist ties and pro-Israel agendas’
???????? The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) executive council adopted a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
✉️ Part of an open letter from JVP-Indiana in response to the University of Indiana targeting Palestine speech and voices:
Jewish Voice for Peace Indiana writes with grave concern about two recent actions taken by the Indiana University administration: the irregular and arbitrary sanctions imposed upon tenured political science faculty member Abdulkader Sinno and the cancellation of the exhibit of Samia Halaby’s artwork at the Eskenazi Museum of Art. The details of each incident have been spelled out in several other sources, including this IU faculty letter regarding the administration’s trampling of academic freedom and shared governance in its sanctioning of Professor Sinno, and this petition demanding an end to the IU administration’s censorship of Samia Halaby’s exhibit.
There is no reasonable dispute over the facts in these cases, so we will not rehash them here.
But we must be clear: these are acts of bigotry that target and inflict harm upon Palestinians and Arabs more generally. We know that bigotry against any group or community is abhorrent. And we understand that far from protecting Jews, these acts of bigotry by the IU administration make Jews less safe—and for two reasons. First, hateful conduct targeting one group can never be confined to the initial target: such conduct normalizes hate and thus fosters more hate, leaving all of us less safe. And second, the dishonest weaponization of concerns about Jewish safety, in which these administrative actions participate, undermines the urgent struggle against antisemitism by sowing confusion about what antisemitism is. Antisemitism is hatred of Jews and/or Judaism: it is not support for Palestinian freedom and equality; not the presence of Palestinian and Arab voices, or the voices of their allies, at the university; and not criticism of the Israeli state or of its government and policies.
???????? Truthout: ‘Palestinian and Muslim Harvard Students Demand Investigation Into Harassment’
???? The Nation: ‘In the Fight Against Antisemitism, Robert Kraft Is Part of the Problem’
???????? In These Times: “‘From the River to the Sea’: Palestinians Resist Erasure”
???????? Angela Davis: South Africa standing up for Palestine has created new hope in the world
???? Rank and file members of AFSCME District Council 37 (NYC’s largest public employee union) released a letter demanding NYC Comptroller Brad Lander and the NYCERS Board of Trustees initiate the divestment of New York City Employees’ Retirement System’ (NYCERS) holdings from all Israeli securities:
We, as rank-and-file members of DC 37, call on NYCERS to divest from all Israeli bonds and holdings in industries that fund and profit off of the ongoing violence in Palestine.
We issue this call in the wake of multiple tragedies and escalated violence. In response to the tragic loss of 1,200 lives on October 7th, Israel launched a devastating campaign against the people of Gaza, resulting in unprecedented levels of death, injury, and displacement. The tightened siege and bombardment of Gaza has killed over 25,000 civilians, including 11,000 children. Nearly 8,000 people are reported missing under the rubble. Hospitals, schools, residential blocks, and refugee camps are being bombed, while water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies, and internet access have been cut off, leaving many to face mass starvation and disease. Over 1.9 million people – 85% of Gaza’s total population – have been displaced as a result of Israel’s military campaign.
New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS), New York City’s largest public pension system, is using the retirement savings of city employees to finance military aggression against civilians in Gaza.
???? Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders on the suspension of UNRWA funds: “More than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed in this war, seventy percent of whom are women and children. Today, hundreds of thousands of children face starvation and disease. Obviously, it’s not acceptable for any of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza to be involved with Hamas, and allegations against the 12 people charged must be investigated. However, we cannot allow millions to suffer because of the actions of 12 people. The U.S. and other countries must restore funding to stave off this humanitarian catastrophe.”
???????? The Guardian: ‘US government employees plan to fast for Gaza in protest against Biden policy’
???? The Lever: ‘Inside The Israel Lobby’s New $90 Million War Chest’
???????? Axios: ‘Cleveland’s lone Jewish council member calls for ceasefire in Gaza’
???????? The Nation: ‘The Anti-Defamation League: Israel’s Attack Dog in the US’
Stay safe out there,
Michael
Nancy Pelosi is nothing but a protected stooge for AIPAC. She is bought and paid for … and nothing happened to her and her husband after the alleged insider trading … no punishment or harsh consequences.
She sounds as if she is reading from scripted zionist teleprompter.
RE: “Now the liberal, pro-Israel organization has pulled an endorsement. They will no longer be backing Rep. Jamaal Bowman . . .”
■ Jamaal Bowman for Congress – https://bowmanforcongress.com/
RE: ‘Bhavini Patel courts out-of-state donors with Hindu nationalist ties and pro-Israel agendas’
■ Summer Lee for Congress – https://summerforpa.com/
They say the wildest things, with no evidence, just to help/impress the Israeli lobby, and to show that they are still devoted. Either that or she is getting senile. I will someone will ask her what she, as a mother and grandmother, thinks of over 12,000 little innocent children being slaughtered by OUR bombs. I guess as long as it is not Israeli kids, she must be fine with it.
AIPAC is an Israeli lobbying group that demands that American politicians act in the explicit interests of Israel before those of the United States. This agency/group pays politicians to promote this agenda.
On opensecrets.org, we can see who received money from AIPAC
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/american-israel-public-affairs-cmte/recipients?id=D000046963