Behind aid-cut to Palestinian Authority, more than meets the eye

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

On the surface, reports over the weekend that Congress has blocked $200 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) indicate that long-standing threats from U.S. politicians over the PA’s United Nations bid have come to fruition.  But there’s much more than meets the eye on this issue.

First, Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now throws cold water on the piece that first ran in the Independent (UK) and reported that the frozen funds were to have been “dispersed in the US fiscal year that ends today [October 1].”  Not so, says Friedman, an expert on Congress’ involvement with Israel/Palestine:

U.S. direct assistance to the PA for FY2011, which amounted to $200 million, is already out the door. Congress can’t do anything to block funding that has already been spent, although some members of Congress are threatening to cut off this funding in 2012 to punish the Palestinian Authority for going to the UN.

If this aid continues to be frozen, it will certainly harm Palestinians on the ground, as the freeze targets “food aid, health care, and support for efforts to build a functioning state.”  But the Congressional aid freeze “leaves security aid intact,” as Bradley Burston pointed out in Ha’aretz.  This is the most important fact about the reported aid freeze.

Although Friedman also reports that Congress is currently “blocking $150 million in funding for security assistance to the PA,” it’s likely that funding will be restored.  Security aid to the PA is the biggest reason why the West Bank has not flared up in revolt against the occupation yet.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that, which is why he has been lobbying Congress to keep that aid flowing.

+972 Magazine’s Joseph Dana writes:

By withholding money from PA, the US, presumably with the full knowledge of their Israeli partners, is playing with fire. A severely bankrupt PA unable to pay 100,000 employees could spark outright rebellion against the Palestinian leadership. Growing Palestinian discontent with the PA leadership, easily detected on the streets of Ramallah, could transform into West Bank civil disobedience directed at the PA and, ultimately, the Israeli occupation. But this is not going to happen…

The American move to withhold a small portion of aid shows that no matter the Palestinian efforts to prepare for statehood they are still solely dependent on international aid and the good grace of the Israeli occupation. It is in Israel’s interest to maintain a strong PA which will control growing discontent among Palestinians and stop efforts for widespread civil disobedience. When and if, Israel decides that the PA is no longer operating according to its interests, the money will stop coming.

Congressional objections to continued funding to the PA may translate into actions that harm the Palestinian people.  But what it won’t do is damage Israeli-PA cooperation on security–cooperation that ensures the PA’s survival and the continuity of an cost-free occupation.  The recently reported aid-freeze does not damage the existing status quo.

Sidelined: U.S. fails for the second time in Quartet discussions on ‘Jewish state’

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

While the Diplomatic Quartet scrambled to avert action on Palestine at the Security Council, the Obama administration was reportedly busy lobbying to commit the Quartet to affirming Israel’s Jewish character.  That the Quartet statement’s purpose was not achieved and that the Obama administration’s efforts failed further highlights the death of the Oslo era and the decreasing relevance of the U.S. in a fast changing Middle East.

The weak Quartet statement only proposed a timeline for more negotiations, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) didn’t find anything in the statement that might coax them to talk with an Israeli government continuing to colonize Palestinian land.  The UN bid by the PA further sidelines a Quartet whose envoy is strongly biased against the Palestinians.

And the Obama administration’s failure to turn the Quartet into even more of a biased mediator marks the second time they have failed to do so; Daniel Levy first reported for Foreign Policy that the U.S. tried to get the Quartet to state that Israel was the “homeland of the Jewish people” for the first time in July. (See this excellent piece in Mondoweiss—originally in the Journal of Palestine Studies—explaining why Palestinians can’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.) The U.S. failure to get the Quartet to agree to sign on to Israel’s new condition that the Palestinians become Zionists surely marks a new, and low, era for U.S.-brokered negotiations.

Jonathan Cook correctly writes in the National that the whole Palestinian bid for statehood represents a death knell for the U.S. role in Israel/Palestine:

If Mahmoud Abbas, the long-suffering head of the Palestinian Authority, has  achieved anything for his people at the UN, it is not imminent statehood but the  fatal discrediting of the US as arbiter of a Middle East peace. US President  Barack Obama’s promised veto on a Palestinian state declares the demise not only  of the Oslo process but also of the US role as an honest broker.

The Palestinian statehood bid is fast making the U.S., who has spent decades as Israel’s lawyer, irrelevant. No one is crying over the loss.

Israel’s remaining friends rally around flag outside of UN

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

PHOTO: ALEX KANE

 

Israel may be increasingly isolated globally, but you wouldn’t know it from the scene in New York today.  A right-wing crowd of thousands rallied earlier today at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza against the ongoing Durban III conference and the Palestinian Authority bid for United Nations recognition of statehood.

The demonstration was organized by a group called the Jerusalem Institute of Justice.  But by far the largest contingent of participants came from the evangelical Christian community.  The Eagles’ Wings, an evangelical Christian group, brought droves of Christian Zionists out to wave the Israeli flag, hold signs to insist that Israel will “stay on the map” and cheer against the division of Jerusalem.

“It’s important for the Christian community to stand up for Israel,” twenty-year old Rutgers University student Hannah Johnson told me.  “We’re from the same roots, we both hold a lot of the same ideals and beliefs, and their God’s chosen people, so we choose to stand with them.”

The rally took aim at the Durban III conference, which marks ten years since the first UN conference against racism in Durban, South Africa.  Many hard-line supporters of Israel have advocated against the Durban conferences because of what they see as an unfair focus on Israel.

“The whole Durban conference…is appalling to us, and we don’t want our children to be taught [anti-Zionism] and we don’t want it spread in the United States via the UN,” said Sheree Krause, a Christian Zionist from Virginia, as her and her son passed out free Israeli flags.

It wasn’t only Christian evangelicals that came out to the rally, though.  Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI), a pro-settler organization whose executive director spoke at a memorial event for the far-right extremist Meir Kahane last year, was also present.  One member of Americans for a Safe Israel carried a sign that read “Jews Want Peace, Arabs Want Pieces.”

“The whole land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people,” said Helen Freedman, the executive director of AFSI.

“The unilateral declaration of independence is very, very dangerous, because what it does is signal to the Arabs that they now have a state…There’s no legitimacy to their claim for a state, but the population will get the message that they do have entitlement and the whole situation will really spiral out of control.”

And of course, the Israeli government’s point man on outreach to Christian Zionists–Likud Party member Danny Danon–was there.  Danon recently appeared with Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry at a press conference where Perry blasted President Obama’s record on Israel.

At the rally, Danon told Obama to loud cheers to “wake up” and focus on the threat of Iran.

The rally came just after President Obama finished up his remarks at the UN General Assembly for which he was praised by Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman. 

Despite that praise, though, the rally served as a reminder that Obama will spend a good portion of his re-election campaign defending his record on Israel, especially against the likes of Perry.  But no matter how deferential Obama is to Israeli wishes, winning over the crowd at a rally like this isn’t going to happen.

September uprising? Hopes, prospects and obstacles for Palestinian popular struggle

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

The Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations (UN) was on the mind of the Tamimi family. Tea flowed and the coals on top of the nargileh pipe smoked on a warm Ramadan night last month in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh as a snapshot emerged of the divisions across Palestine regarding the bid for recognition at the UN.

“The UN move is a mistake,” one woman remarked, worrying aloud about some US officials’ threats to cut funding for the Palestinian Authority (PA). Her husband works for the PA’s security forces, and any further strain on the PA budget could prove detrimental to their livelihood.

Bashir Tamimi, though, was unequivocal in his support for the PA strategy of asking for UN membership at the upcoming General Assembly session in September, although he too wondered about the future. Tamimi is a member of the popular committee in Nabi Saleh that organizes weekly demonstrations against the nearby settlement of Halamish.

“It will be a long month. It’s difficult to understand what will happen,” he said, dragging on a cigarette as a Real Madrid vs. Barcelona soccer game crackled over the radio. “As leaders of the popular committees and popular resistance, we will demonstrate all over the country in order to support this decision of our leaders in order to make pressure on the world.”

The lines of thought expressed in the village about the Palestinian leadership’s decision to apply for some kind of membership at the United Nations are only two of many. There remains uncertainty about what exactly the Palestinian Authority is looking to attain this month, and what might come next. Perhaps the biggest question is what the reaction on the ground will be.

And so as debate over the UN strategy among the Palestinian disapora, those in refugee camps and Palestinians living under occupation continues, Palestinian activists are preparing the ground for a renewed wave of popular nonviolent resistance to Israel. Still, there is little consensus in occupied Palestine and around the world about the UN bid’s effect on the Palestinian struggle.

Palestinians “appear to be greeting the entire UN episode with considerable skepticism, a result of growing frustration with the leadership and of concrete questions regarding the impact of the move,” reads a recently released report by the International Crisis Group. “Ironically, [many Palestinians would be] hostile to a decision to drop the bid, viewing it as yet more evidence of the leadership’s powerlessness and vulnerability to outside pressure.”

Negative sentiment is even more pronounced in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas leadership has criticized the UN bid and young bloggers have spoken out against what they see as an undemocratic and potentially rights-damaging move by an unrepresentative leadership.

The skepticism that exists, though, is not stopping West Bank popular committee leaders from preparing to seize the spotlight the UN bid will give Palestine.

“I don’t think the people here will be quiet,” said Mousa Abu Marya, a soft-spoken popular committee coordinator in the village of Beit Ommar.

His village, located near Hebron and surrounded by six settlements, has been a target of the Israeli military in recent weeks. “Maybe in September, many demonstrations will happen. But not only because of September, but because of the situation. [After], the Israelis will cut the money [to the PA]. The people will have no salaries and no good food…They will do something.”

Abu Marya, Tamimi and a host of other popular committee organizers are busy trying to turn their “maybes” into definite answers. They are planning to take action in the form of rallies and demonstrations against the occupation. The fate of their plans, while depending mostly on their ability to mobilize large numbers of Palestinians to challenge the occupation, will also be determined by the response of Israel and the US, the PA and the newly empowered Arab public in surrounding countries. The big question mark is whether a fragmented Palestinian polity can catch the winds of the Arab uprisings and put intense pressure on Israel’s occupation regime. It’s a high-stakes moment for the Palestinian popular struggle.

Going to the UN “is a positive step,” said Hassan Mousa, spokesman for the Nil’in village popular committee. “We expect Palestinians to continue their struggle through a comprehensive strategy…It needs struggle on the ground and diplomatic and political struggle at the United Nations. So both struggles come together.”

In July, the Palestine Popular Resistance Conference was held in three villages: Beit Ommar, Nil’in and Budrus. The conference was dedicated to the protests Palestinians continue to hold in villages affected by the separation barrier and settlements. It ended with the drafting of a statement that laid out the coalition of West Bank activists’ position on the PA going to the UN.

“Next September is the immense popular battle for the recognition of the State of Palestine,” the statement read. “The committees commit themselves to initiate to work in order to develop intensive action and mobilize people to expand the struggle for recognition of a Palestinian state in the Palestinian and the international arenas using an immense popular struggle program.”

The conference closed out amidst the firing of tear gas canisters by the Israeli military in response to an unarmed protest in Budrus—the usual response of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The response to the Budrus protest and other popular resistance campaigns by Israel, though, could pale in comparison if Israeli media reports pan out.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the UN move could lead to “violence and bloodshed.” But Palestinian activists, based on the crushing experience of the second intifada, say that there is no place for armed struggle anymore in resistance against Israel’s occupation.

“The nonviolent resistance is the important resistance at this time,” Abu Marya said. “The second intifada was a big mistake. It moved Palestine 100 years into the past. So now the people are starting to think about something new.”

The IDF, though, has been instructed to meet any mass demonstrations by Palestinians in September with force. Last month, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported that if Palestinian protesters cross a “red line” in approaching illegal settlements, “soldiers will be allowed to open fire at the legs of the demonstrators.” In addition, the IDF has armed settlers with tear gas and stun grenades to confront Palestinian protests with.

There have been recent previews of how the Israeli army will react to any large-scale Palestinian protests. Last May’s actions to commemorate the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe, ended in bloodshed as thousands of unarmed Palestinian refugees in neighboring countries calling for the right of return marched to the border with Israel. Over a dozen were killed and scores injured when the Israeli army opened fire on the Syria and Lebanon borders. However, recent events, like the September 9 Egyptian protest that resulted in the Israeli embassy being broken into, will also be on the mind of the Israeli military establishment.

“Everybody feels that everything in the Middle East is changeable. The people will change the situation at any time,” well-known Palestinian activist Ayed Morrar told me as we sat in an office of Fatah, the political party Abbas belongs to. “So I think the Palestinian issue after the Arab movements will be different in the future than what it was before.”

To stem the possibility of large protest actions in the West Bank, the Israeli military is working closely with PA security to respond. To prepare, the PA has reportedly purchased tear gas grenades and rubber bullets from Israel.

Although PA President Mahmoud Abbas has called for mass protests in September in support of the UN strategy, the PA has also made it clear it wants to keep them confined to major urban centers under its full control (Area A under the Oslo agreement).

Having the PA control protests in the West Bank could also put to rest Israeli worries about the regional reaction in response to their soldiers opening fire on unarmed Palestinian protesters.

The PA, it seems, is hoping that the combination of the UN bid and controlled protests are a way out of their quandary: having to both show the Palestinian public that they are doing something to end the occupation and pleasing the US and Israel by keeping control.

But while some Palestinian activists are loath to commit to actively confronting their own leadership as the occupation remains present, criticism of the PA has been heard loud and clear.

“If they decide to fight us in any way, we will never turn back. This is our official stance,” said Morrar. “[PA Prime Minister] Salam Fayyad succeeded in controlling the situation this time because after seven years of oppression, and suffering [as a result of the Israeli response to the second intifada], the people need the time to take rest. But sooner or later they will wake up and discover that their targets are not achieved yet.”

The PA has, in fact, stopped protests from reaching Israeli checkpoints. On the May 15 Nakba protest, PA security stopped demonstrators from approaching a checkpoint.

Morrar criticized the PA’s protest strategy. “It will not make pressure on the occupation to force them to feel that there are another people that need their freedom,” he said. “We must pressure the occupation, to force them to feel that this is a loser project. And all these activities, we don’t aim to kill anybody from the other side, from the Israelis. We want to initiate a nonviolent struggle in order to achieve freedom and justice.”

Besides the PA and Israel, Palestinian activists also have to worry about galvanizing a tired and frustrated Palestinian public. Some are skeptical.

“I don’t expect that huge of a reaction on the ground. It will be a little bit more than now, but not huge. I don’t expect that. We are working to push it that way to make it huge, and I wish, I hope I’m wrong,” said Younes Arar, the executive manager of the Beit Ommar-based Center for Freedom and Justice and a popular struggle activist. “People they are really, really frustrated. They are frustrated with the situation…. Somehow they give up. And that’s bad.”

In the meantime, popular struggle leaders are continuing to push to use the UN bid as an opportunity to focus the world on the Palestinian plight.

“This is a decisive stage,” said Mousa. “It is a matter of life or death…When Palestinians realize that their existence is at stake, I think they will be having the courage, the resolve to participate and join in our struggle.”

Pro-Israel lobbyists work to save Palestinian Authority funding (and why should this be a surprise?)

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss September 14.

Congressional threats to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) have grown in recent weeks as the PA leadership forges toward action at the United Nations.

But at least some Israel lobby groups are voicing opposition to any reduction in aid to the PA–not because they support the bid to attain UN recognition of Palestine but because they realize a US aid cut-off could lead to the PA collapsing, which would in turn harm Israel.

Reuters reports:

It is difficult for pro-Israel groups to publicly support maintaining aid to the Palestinians given the Palestinians’ stated determination to flout the wishes of the United States.

However, at least two groups have explicitly done so — The Israel Project, which says it has laid out an argument to members of Congress that US security aid should not be cut; and J Street, which has issued a statement defending the aid.

“We have made the case that the security cooperation, which is largely funded and supported by America, needs to continue if we want to see the progress … in reducing terrorism continue,” The Israel Project’s president, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, told Reuters, stressing her group does not lobby.

J Street said last week: “We must make clear to American politicians, particularly in Congress, that being pro-Israel does not require cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for approaching the UN

“Such a move will hurt Israel’s interests by undermining moderate Palestinian leadership and defunding productive security cooperation.”

The right-leaning Israel Project and J Street have both come out against the Palestinian move to the UN.  Their position on funding for the PA, though, is a reminder of what the PA’s actual role in the West Bank is and why US officials like Senators John McCain and John Kerry and Elliot Abrams (all quoted in the Reuters report) are becoming increasingly vocal about maintaining aid to the PA.  It also may be a harbinger of the Obama administration’s line on PA funding if a vote takes place at the UN.

The PA’s most heralded accomplishment over their decade-plus tenure was the establishment of “law and order” in the West Bank, which in part meant cracking down on political dissidents through the creation of a repressive security force.  The PA security forces, which have been accused of detention, arbitrary arrest and torture, have worked hand-in-hand with the Israeli military, the US and the EU to keep the West Bank void of resistance to the occupation.

State Department cables released by WikiLeaks clearly show this dynamic.  One recently released cable shows the PA’s efforts at containing protest against Israel’s 2008-09 assault on Gaza:

Hamas leaders called for mass demonstrations in the  West Bank and East Jerusalem starting January 2. PA security  personnel are deployed to contain violence or clashes with Israeli forces after Friday prayers. PA security contacts told ConGenOffs that the PA will allow the demonstrations but will not permit demonstrators to approach IDF positions. These contacts say they anticipate Palestinian-Israeli clashes in areas without a PA security presence, including Qalandia, Hebron’s H2 zone, and villages west of Ramallah and Bethlehem. Palestinian press report that GOI DefMin Ehud Barak ordered a general closure of the West Bank on January 2-3, and raised the IDF’s alert status.

That cable and others show why the US and Israel–bluster from right-wing politicians aside–are keen on keeping the donor tap flowing to the PA.  It wouldn’t be surprising if the Obama administration bucked Congressional calls to cut off the PA–after all, the aid benefits Israel in the end, and that consideration dictates US policy.

Report: Minnesota Jewish group helped Israeli government monitor ‘bad Muslim,’ Rep. Ellison

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

Keith Ellison, the progressive Congressional representative for Minneapolis’ fifth district, is no darling of the Israeli government, largely because of the letter he spearheaded that called for an end to the blockade of Gaza.  Now, new details indicate that the Israeli government actively monitored Ellison’s activities with the cooperation of the Minnesota chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).

The story first emerged in the New York Times piece on FBI documents leaked to blogger Richard Silverstein that provides a peek at U.S. spying efforts on Israel.  Scott Shane reported on what Silverstein told him was in blog posts based on information provided by former FBI translator Shamai Leibowitz:

A third [blog post] describes a call between an unnamed Jewish activist in Minnesota and the Israeli Embassy about an embassy official’s meeting with Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, who was planning an official trip to Gaza.

An article published yesterday in the Minnesota-based American Jewish World reveals that the “unnamed Jewish activist” worked for the Jewish Community Relations Council and describes what the activist talked about with the Israeli consulate in Chicago.  Mordecai Specktor reports:

“I do recall that there was a lot of discussion in that conversation about Keith Ellison, and about his hostility toward Israel,” said Silverstein. “They used the fact that he had gone on a trade mission to Saudi Arabia, shortly before the conversation happened between the JCRC person and the diplomat, to testify, in their eyes, to how anti-Israel he was…”

Silverstein told the AJW that the “local Minneapolis person was… updating the [Israeli] diplomat on what they knew about Ellison’s schedule… then the JCRC person said, ‘and he’s going on a trip to Gaza with [Rep.] Brian Baird, of Washington state.’

“They were talking about how harmful this would be to Israel, and how [Ellison and Baird] were trying to hurt Israel by this kind of activity,” Silverstein recalled…

In an e-mail message to the AJW on Wednesday night, Silverstein recalled details from his April 2009 blog posts based on the wiretap materials. He wrote that Israeli officials had a “problematic” relationship with both Ellison and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum…

On April 28, 2009, Silverstein posted a message on his blog: “Earlier this month, a senior official of Israel’s D.C. embassy contacted a Minneapolis Jewish communal staffer, to inform him about a D.C. meeting between Congress member Keith Ellison and deputy chief of mission, Jeremy Issacharoff.”

Silverstein, in both his phone conversation and a subsequent e-mail, mentioned that the wiretapped conversation between the person affiliated with the JCRC and the Israeli diplomat included a discussion that compared Ellison, the first Muslim member of the U.S. House, with André Carson, D.-Ind., the second Muslim ever elected to the House. Paraphrasing the conversation, Silverstein said that the local Jewish activist and the Israeli diplomat deemed Ellison to be the “bad Muslim,” who was too independent in his views and uncontrollable; and Carson was the “promising Muslim,” who was seen as more amenable to persuasion by Israeli officials.

In an email to Specktor, the director of the Minnesota JCRC confirms that “the JCRC communicates from time to time with the Consul General’s office in Chicago… Accordingly, the JCRC’s conversations with the Consul General’s office have included discussions about members of Minnesota’s Congressional delegation, including Representative Ellison.”

While it’s no surprise the Israeli government coordinates with Israel lobby and Jewish groups, the revelations published by Specktor are a glimpse into what exactly they coordinate about.

In his blog, Silverstein writes about what he sees as the problem with this type of coordination:

If you read between the lines of [director of the Minnesota JCRC] Steve Huneg’s [e-mail] statement above, you will find a confirmation of the monitoring the local Jewish community was offering as a service to the Israeli foreign ministry on behalf of Israeli interests. One has to ask, if this type of activity is standard for the Minneapolis JCRC and presumably others across the country, where do the interests of Israel and those of the U.S. diverge? Or do they at all? Is it the role of the official representatives of the American Jewish community to consult with Israeli government officials about local Representatives who Israel (and they) feel are “bad for Israel?” Is it right to peruse Congressmember’s travel schedules to inform the Israeli government when local Representatives may be taking trips deemed harmful to Israel’s interests?

[...]

We have to understand as American Jews that there are times when American interests are different from Israeli. When Israel asks us essentially to inform on our elected officials that’s not right and not in our interests as Americans.

Warped politics: Robert Gates says Israel is “ungrateful,” but Obama will still veto Palestine UN bid

Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest column in Bloomberg shows exactly how the Israel lobby has warped the U.S. political system.  The lobby has such a stranglehold on U.S. policy towards Israel that a Secretary of Defense’s distaste for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu means nothing to the Obama administration’s polices on Israel.

Goldberg reports:

It was Robert M. Gates, the now-retired secretary of defense, who seemed most upset with Netanyahu. In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security — access to top- quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing — and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process.

Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee.

Gates has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s government before. Last year, when Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel was marred by an announcement of plans to build new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, Gates told several people that if he had been Biden, he would have returned to Washington immediately and told the prime minister to call Obama when he was serious about negotiations.

Gates’s frustration also stems from squabbling with Netanyahu over U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies. In an encounter in Israel in March, according to U.S. and Israeli sources, Netanyahu lectured Gates at length on the possible dangers posed to Israel by such sales, as well as by Turkey and other regional U.S. allies. Gates, a veteran intelligence officer, resented Netanyahu’s tone, and reminded him that the sales were organized in consultation with Israel and pro-Israel members of Congress.

Yet the U.S. relationship with the country that so displeases sectors of the U.S. establishment will not change one bit.  Instead, the Obama administration will defend Israel full tilt later this month when the Palestinian Authority goes to the United Nations to ask for recognition of a Palestinian state.

Why is this?  It’s simple:  President Obama needs to be re-elected in 2012, and needs pro-Israel money and support.  And while Gates is part of the military establishment, the larger military industry that profits from the Israeli occupation will certainly not be pushing back against Obama’s full-throated support for Israel.  The only way to describe a political system like this is warped.

Interview on the UN Palmer report on Mavi Marmara raid

New York-based writer (among other vocations) J.A. Myerson interviewed me yesterday about the just-released United Nations Palmer report on the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara.  Excerpts:

J.A. Myerson: The New York Times is reporting that it has obtained a copy of a United Nations review, which comes out tomorrow, regarding Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara, when Israel killed nine people, including an American. The primary findings of the review appear to be a) that Israel used excessive force when it boarded the flotilla but that some force was apparently justified, given the hostility that Israeli commandos encountered upon boarding, and b) That Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which the flotilla was trying to break, is justified and appropriate. Among opponents of the blockade of Gaza, of which you and I are two, it’s an accepted truism that one reason to oppose the blockade is its illegality. What is the argument that the blockade is illegal, if that is indeed what you believe, and what is your response to the UN review contesting that description?

Alex Kane: The full naval-land-air blockade that the Gaza Strip is under was instituted first following the 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories when Hamas won what were widely acknowledged to be democratic elections. One justification for the blockade that Israel cites is that Hamas is holding Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier, in captivity. Israel also contends that the blockade exists for security reasons.

But what’s clear under international law, under the Geneva Conventions, is that collective punishment is illegal, and the blockade of Gaza is illegal because it constitutes collective punishment. Israel is punishing every single person in the Gaza strip, roughly half of whom are under the age of 18, for having voted in democratic elections and for the political positions that Hamas espouses.

The blockade is also, as Yousef Munayyer of the Palestine Center pointed out last June, in violation of Part V Section II (102) of the San Remo Manual on International Law, which prohibits blockades a) that have the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential to its survival; or b) under which the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.

Numerous UN reports and bodies have deemed the blockade illegal as collective punishment. The International Committee of the Red Cross has said so, Richard Goldstone in the Goldstone Report said so, the independent Human Rights Council report on the raid on the Mavi Marmara said so, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has said so. So we can play a numbers game, in that there are far more instances of respected international bodies as well as respected human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that have deemed the blockade illegal, and now we have this one panel saying that it is legal.

The other thing is that you have to look at the makeup of the panel tasked with this investigation of the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara and the five other ships that were part of the first Freedom Flotilla. The big red flag that people should focus on is the fact that Álvaro Uribe of Colombia was one of the two supposedly independent observers on this committee. Uribe cannot plausibly be thought of as impartial on issues of human rights. He has himself been implicated in numerous human rights abuses as president of Colombia and he is also an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel. So that also calls into question the impartiality of this panel, which was the one panel of inquiry that the UN set up that Israel agreed to cooperate with.

JAM: If this panel is reputed by its commissioning body to have been impartial and the makeup of the body indicts is as being impartial, that suggests that it was commissioned in order not to be impartial, in other words that it was commissioned in order to deliver these results. How do you account for that?

AK: Yes. That’s an accurate assessment.

You have to go back to right after the flotilla incident in 2010. After this happened, when nine people ended up dead and dozens injured, Israel came under a huge amount of pressure in a variety of ways, both from states and from global civil society in the form of the BDS Movement. My reading is that, in order to deflect this pressure, and after some prodding by the Obama Administration, Israel finally agreed to cooperate with this panel. This is a first for Israel. Israel does not often cooperate with the UN, so you have to wonder what was going on behind closed doors and what was said to Israel to make it suddenly cooperate with the UN, especially about an issue as politically charged as its raid on the flotilla.

Another important thing to note is that the mandate of the panel coming out with this report did not give the panel much power. It did not call witnesses, it did not collect documents. It was called a fact finding mission. And it seems like the panel has collected the Israeli side and the Turkish side and kind of plopped it in this report. That’s what I gather the report was. The point of it was not to be an independent investigation that was designed to get to the bottom of who was at fault, who was wrong, what should happen.

Read the full interview here.

Despite boycott law, Israeli BDS activists forge ahead: an interview with Kobi Snitz

This article originally appeared on Mondoweiss.

The anti-boycott law passed by the Israeli Knesset in July was aimed at slowing down the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel for its violations of international law.  But the Palestinian-led BDS movement, both inside and outside Israel, has showed no signs of slowing.  The most recent victory the movement is claiming is the liquidation of Agrexco, an Israeli produce exporter that has long been a target of the BDS movement because of the company’s involvement in illegal Israeli settlements.

The law has also done nothing to deter the small group of Israeli activists part of Boycott From Within, a group of Israeli citizens in solidarity with the Palestinian BDS call.  The group has continued to call on various groups and artists to not violate the BDS call.

I recently sat down with Kobi Snitz, a member of Boycott From Within and a prominent activist with Anarchists Against the Wall, after an anti-settlement demonstration in the West Bank village of Beit Ommar.  We discussed the boycott law, what it means for the internal Israeli BDS movement, the potential Israeli High Court response and more.

Alex Kane: My first question is what your general take is on the boycott law?

Kobi Snitz: I think the most significant thing is that it’s a sign of desperation on the part of the Israeli government. They’re helpless in stopping the boycott movement. All that’s left for them is to try internal repression. I think that they recognize it themselves. Ehud Barak, the Minister of Defense, spoke about the [powerful] BDS movement.

There’s nothing that they can do abroad. The myths about their hasbara prowess is just that. It’s not so. It’s a paper tiger. They have no understanding and no ability to influence public opinion abroad. Whatever’s not handed to them for free they’re unable to do in terms of their image abroad. And this case demonstrates their inability to stop a genuine movement.

AK: Ostensibly, the point of the law was to protect Israel’s image abroad, but do you think it will backfire?

KS: Of course. There was significant Israeli opposition to it, on those grounds, that it will be counterproductive, in their terms. There is some genuine liberal opposition to a law that punishes a particular opinion, but much of the internal Israeli critique is about it being counterproductive.

AK: What do you make of that critique?

KS: Well, it’s unprincipled. It implies that it would have been legitimate only if it was productive, if it did achieve the stated aims. I think on many grounds it’s illegitimate, the first of them being the attempt to punish people for their opinions. Secondly, because the boycott movement is legitimate, and attempts to stop it are illegitimate.

AK: Do you think the Israeli High Court will do anything about it, and if so, what will that mean?

KS: It’s hard to say with them. I think the Israeli Supreme Court rarely strikes down laws. They do restrain the government and the army somewhat, but not so much by striking down policies but letting the state understand, get a sense of, when they’ve gone too far. And when they are forced to make a decision, they might aim for a decision that seems to be the liberal one, seems to be taking a position against a law, but in effect keeps it in place. They could limit some meaningless parts of the law, but keep the core of it intact. Then again, they could just refuse to deal with it, as they have in many other cases. Some decisions, like the torture law and the assassination law, they just dragged on for years and years. If they don’t want to confront the government, that’s another option for the High Court, to drag it on for years.

AK: Has the boycott law affected you and others involved with the internal Israeli BDS movement?

KS: It has made people worried. No one knows how it will be applied, who will be sued. I think the most striking example of it is Gush Shalom. They called for a settlement boycott about 15 years ago, but when the law passed, they took it off their website. Their position is they cannot afford the risk of being sued over it.

AK: On the other hand, Peace Now has called for a settlement boycott.

KS: That’s right, and Gush Shalom had to admit, reluctantly maybe, that for the first time in its history, Peace Now is more radical than Gush Shalom. And I have to say, I’m not a big fan of Peace Now, but their response to this, I see nothing wrong with it, they’ve been right on, including not splitting the opposition along the lines of “settlement boycott, OK, Israel boycott, not OK.” Even Peace Now did not do that, at least not prominently that I have seen.

AK: But Boycott From Within hasn’t taken down their website.

KS: No, we haven’t. We keep going the same as we have before. We issued a statement saying we resist the law, and we will continue. Our response is less visible—we’re not exactly an Israeli group in the sense that we work inside Israel or that our main objective is to influence Israeli opinion. So, unlike Gush Shalom, unlike Peace Now—they are an Israeli group in the sense that they try to influence the Israeli public—I don’t think Boycott From Within does that. The internal response is less relevant.

AK: So you’re going to continue to call for boycotts.

KS: We have, yeah, we’ve issued statements just as before.

AK: And what do you think it means in the larger political context of the assault on Israeli democracy, meaning the democracy that does exist for Israeli Jews?

KS: I think this is probably the most far reaching attempt at this move, because it ‘s designed to shut down organization, it’s designed to silence particular people and bankrupt them. I think this one goes the furthest out of all the previous such laws, such as the Nakba law, such as the loyalty laws, and whatever is coming up next.

Israel’s apartheid policing

This article originally appeared on the blog Waging Nonviolence.

Israeli activists are hoping for a “million strong” march for social justice next weekend in protest of the high cost-of-living there and neoliberal economic policies. And while those demonstrations will likely shut down normal life in Israeli cities, there is little chance that the Israeli police will use tear gas or Qrubber bullets on the protesters. But over the weekend, the Israeli military met a peaceful protest at the Qalandia checkpoint calling for free Palestinian access to Jerusalem with excessive force. This is no surprise.

Whatever the issue—water allocation, permits for building, income levels—there exists massive inequalities between Jews and Palestinians as a result of Israeli policies. Israel privileges the Jewish residents it governs and systematically excludes and marginalizes the Palestinians under its control.

The Israeli police’s response to the outbreak of the July 14 social justice movement across the state exposes one more separate and unequal facet of Israeli policy: how the state responds to unarmed protests. Israeli Jewish protesters angry about the cost of living do not pose as big of a threat to the Israeli establishment as those who explicitly challenge the occupation and Israel’s system of racial discrimination. That much is clear when comparing security forces’ response to the different types of protests that occur between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

“Israelis are very hospitable to nonviolent protests by Jews. So I wouldn’t say that the police were too tough on the protesters, especially when you consider what’s going on in the West Bank,” Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf said in a recent interview on Israel’s social justice movement.

The burgeoning protest movement across Israel has held a succession of massive rallies that have brought hundreds of thousands into the street. While there have been some arrests for shutting down roads, Israeli Jewish protesters, who make up the vast majority of those participating in the J14 movement, have been quickly released. Tent encampments across Israel remain untouched for the most part.

Even within Israel, there are illustrations of the Israeli government’s ethnicity and political-based policing. The tent encampment that has arguably suffered the most from police harassment has been the one in South Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park, where African asylum-seekers and Ethiopian-Israelis have joined in. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, officers in uniform, accompanied by non-identified civilians, demolished an encampment there July 24, telling the protesters, “you brought Sudanese here.” And there has been different treatment reserved for those arrestees who are veteran Israeli activists in the joint struggle against the occupation.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian unarmed struggle continues to be brutally repressed. Weekly military incursions into Palestinian villages resisting settlements or the separation barrier continue to be a common occurrence, and unarmed protests continue to face down the Israeli military’s might.

A recent reporting trip I took through both occupied Palestine and Israel demonstrated these disparities starkly.

The West Bank village of Nabi Saleh has been resisting the expropriation of a nearby spring by the Halamish settlement at great cost. Eyad Tamimi, a popular committee activist in Nabi Saleh, told me that everyone in the village has been or knows someone who has been arrested by the Israeli military. Sixty of those who have been wounded by the Israel Defense Forces during the demonstrations are children.

“The Israeli government and military thinks Nabi Saleh is a virus, and they want to crush it before it spreads,” says Bashir Tamimi, another member of the popular committee in Nabi Saleh, which organizes the weekly Friday protests.

Recently, activists in Nabi Saleh set up their own tent in the village, mirroring Israel’s protests, and carried it during a protest “to tell the Israeli protest movement that their demands for social justice must include implementing the rights of Palestinians.” It was shot at and destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces.

The day after I visited Nabi Saleh, I found myself in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Kerem. An environmental-themed tent encampment had been set up there. Israelis milled around, smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and played acoustic guitar. Jarringly, there was no indication that just a short drive away, there existed another protest movement that was being brutally repressed.

It is clear that the “virus” of Nabi Saleh that challenges the Israeli occupation will not spread to Israel’s social justice movement. There is a strong aversion in the tent protests to connect social justice to the occupation.

And so the apartheid policing that the Israeli security forces practice will continue unabated so long as Israel’s housing protesters do not challenge the marginalization of the Palestinians they live so close to. This will surely be on display on September 3, as hundreds of thousands of Israelis will march without fear of injury the day after weekly protests in the West Bank are met with the Israeli military’s excessive force.