Netanyahu easily moved U.S. policy for over a decade, due to the force of his will and the use of the powerful Israel lobby in U.S. politics, especially on the Democratic side. Today one force is gone– Netanyahu is an opposition politician to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — and the other is in disarray.
The US press is finally making room for Palestinian voices, with a stunning op-ed by Refaat Alareer in the NYT about how it feels to be pounded by missiles in Gaza. And Rula Jebreal tells MSNBC that Palestinians inside Israel experience “Trumpism on steroids.” But Israel supporters fight back, with Bari Weiss saying that killing innocent children is the price of having a state.
The Human Rights Watch report accusing Israel of apartheid has gotten far more attention than similar reports in recent years. And it’s gotten an incensed vitriolic response from the right-wing Israel lobby. While the liberal Zionist lobby has tried to argue that the report is about the occupation. HRW’s finding was far more wide-reaching than just the occupation.
There are horrifying images from Jerusalem last night of a mob of racist Jews saying the city belongs to them and Arabs should burn. The young American Jewish group “IfNotNow” labeled the mob a “pogrom,” in another assertion of moral leadership over community elders who ignore the violence.
California Rep. Ro Khanna advocates for a progressive foreign policy, but does that extend to Palestine?
Biden will have little choice but to turn up the heat on Israel for human rights violations given shift in establishment opinion in DC and mass movement to address racial inequities in U.S. And human rights group B’Tselem’s recent report that Israel is an apartheid regime will soon be echoed by a global human rights organization, according to a Carnegie Endowment panel.
“There are more members of Congress at the AIPAC conference than at any other event in the Capitol except the State of the Union address. What does that tell you– more members of Congress attend a banquet for a foreign nation! It’s a command performance and why — to a large degree because then you’re going to get some financial contributions.” — Former Congressman Brian Baird explains the politics of the Israel lobby.
A bipartisan group of Senators introduced a bill last week to advance the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab governments. The bill builds on the Trump administration’s cynical business deals with Arab governments to further their interests at the expense of the Palestinian people. It is highly doubtful the Biden administration will oppose it.
An AIPAC letter aimed at keeping Biden from returning to the Iran deal got only 43 signatures, which shows that Biden has the political capital he needs to reenter the deal. But he has shown a timidity, born of attacks by the rightwing Israel lobby, and won’t even lift sanctions for humanitarian purposes related to the pandemic, as he urged Donald Trump to do a year ago.
Nathan Thrall tells the story of the death of Milad Salama in occupied territory in 2012 to illuminate one lesson: Palestinian lives are all but disposable in the Zionist vision of settling the land. The “New York Review of Books” article contrasts Milad’s misfortune to be born in a bantustan to the good luck of Thrall’s own daughter– “a Jewish girl living a life of privilege on the other side of the wall.”