Biden and Netanyahu at Odds Over Gaza War
The inevitable has happened.
Several reports in recent days show tension in the two leaders’ view of the war effort.
“In Dueling Remarks, Biden and Netanyahu Spar Over Gaza’s Future,” WSJ, 12 Dec
President Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed Tuesday over who should govern Gaza after the war, in a remarkable public display of differences emerging between the two leaders over the conflict.
Speaking during a fundraiser in Washington, Biden made his toughest remarks since the war began about Netanyahu’s government. He suggested that its hard-line stance has prevented Netanyahu from accepting the Biden administration’s postwar plan to have the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza, and that it would also obstruct progress toward political, economic and security arrangements that could spawn a separate Palestinian state—an outcome the U.S. president sees as a long-term solution to the conflict.
“He’s a good friend, but I think he has to change…This government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move,” Biden said, referring to Netanyahu. He called Israel’s government the most conservative in Israel’s history, adding that some in the government oppose a two-state solution. Biden said members of the Israeli government want retribution “against all Palestinians,” not just Hamas.
Biden also warned that Israel’s approach to the war could result in a loss of support around the world. “Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world supporting it,” he said. “But they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”
[…]
Biden reiterated his own staunch support for Israel following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, which killed 1,200 people, and stressed that Israel has a right to defend itself. Hundreds were taken hostage in the attack. “The safety of the Jewish people, the literal security of Israel as an independent Jewish state is literally at stake,” Biden said.
Biden’s comments came as Netanyahu said in Israel he would block the Biden administration’s postwar plan to have the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza, the sharpest sign of Israeli pushback against the U.S. blueprint for administering the enclave after Israel’s invasion ends.
“After the great sacrifice of our civilians and our soldiers, I will not allow the entry into Gaza of those who educate for terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Palestinian Authority, which currently oversees parts of the West Bank, in a statement Tuesday.
“I will not allow Israel to repeat the mistake of Oslo,” he added, referring to the 1993 agreement that established the Palestinian Authority and which Netanyahu has long criticized.
“Israel Begins Pumping Seawater Into Hamas’s Gaza Tunnels,” WSJ, 13 Dec.
Israel’s military has begun pumping seawater into Hamas’s vast complex of tunnels in Gaza, according to U.S. officials briefed on the Israeli military’s operations, part of an intensive effort to destroy the underground infrastructure that has underpinned the group’s operations.
The move to flood the tunnels with water from the Mediterranean, which is in an early stage, is one of several techniques Israel is using to try to clear and destroy the tunnels.
A spokesperson for the Israeli defense minister declined to comment, saying the tunnel operations are classified.
Israeli officials say that Hamas’s underground system has been key to its operations on the battlefield. The tunnel system, they say, is used by Hamas to maneuver fighters across the battlefield and store the group’s rockets and munitions, and enables the group’s leaders to command and control their forces. Israel also believes some hostages are being held inside tunnels.
In reported recordings between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and released hostages and their families leaked last week, Israelis angrily told Netanyahu that they feared flooding the tunnels would kill their loved ones.
During a press conference Tuesday at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a reporter asked President Biden about Israel’s flooding of the tunnels. The president didn’t address the Israeli approach directly but rather how flooding tunnels could affect the more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas.
Biden said that assertions have been made that “there are no hostages in any of these tunnels…But I don’t know that for a fact.” The president didn’t elaborate.
“As Biden-Netanyahu gulf widens, Israeli leader vows to continue Gaza war ‘until the end,’” LAT, 14 Dec.
When President Biden touched down in Israel 10 days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet formally declared war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the two leaders shared a warm embrace.
That tight bear hug eight weeks ago is now entwined with some of the most hellish aspects of this war.
Those include the immense suffering of Palestinian civilians trapped in the Gaza Strip and the unresolved fate of dozens of hostages seized during Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 rampage in Israel — and increasing world isolation faced not only by Israel, but also by its closest ally, the United States.
By declaring unwavering support for Israel, Biden hoped to rally international backing in the face of the worst mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust — but also to maintain some U.S. influence over the course of action chosen by the embattled prime minister.
Both those efforts have faltered.
Israel is confronting some of the fiercest worldwide blowback in decades. It faces outrage over its relentless bombardment and ground attacks in Gaza, which have killed more than 18,000 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, and set off a far-reaching humanitarian crisis. Hunger and disease stalk the devastated and blockaded enclave; 4 in every 5 of its 2.3 million people are displaced, according to the United Nations.
After weeks of defending Israel to the world, Biden on Tuesday issued his sharpest rebuke yet of Netanyahu and the way he is conducting the war. Biden said that the far-right Israeli government needed to undergo major changes, and that Israel is losing what had been wide international support over “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.
Biden used the term “indiscriminate bombing” once before to refer to the massive destruction Israeli airstrikes inflicted on northern Gaza, with entire districts reduced to rubble. U.S. officials have repeatedly told the Netanyahu government that its attacks in Gaza’s south, which began late last month, had to be more surgical and less devastating. Israel has largely ignored that warning, and Biden apparently now believes the actions in the south are as dangerous as those in the north.
Speaking to a group of Jewish donors at the White House, Biden went on to recall an oft-repeated anecdote of inscribing on a photo he had taken with Netanyahu, referring to him by a nickname: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you have to say.” In this recounting, Biden added: “That remains to be the case.”
“‘High intensity’ phase of Gaza war needs to end within weeks, Sullivan tells Netanyahu,” Axios, 14 Dec.
Israel’s war in Gaza needs to “transition to the next lower intensity phase in a matter of weeks, not months,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the war cabinet in a meeting on Thursday, according to two U.S. and Israeli officials.
Why it matters: The Biden administration has backed the Israeli response to the Oct. 7 attack and says it supports Israel’s stated goal of ousting Hamas in Gaza, but the White House is under mounting international and domestic pressure to tell Israel to end the war.
- The rate of civilian deaths in Gaza is outpacing those of other conflict zones in the 21st century. Mounting casualties have been accompanied by a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the enclave.
- Biden administration officials think that moving to lower-intensity fighting will decrease civilian casualties, allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and decrease the risk for regional war.
- Biden said he wants Israel to be focused on how to save civilian lives in Gaza. “Not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful,” he told reporters during a visit to the National Institutes of Health in Washington on Thursday.
[…]
Sullivan said the Biden administration wants to move toward talking more seriously about what happens after the war, stressing that it will make it easier for the U.S. to maintain support for the military operation, Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios.
- Israeli official said after the meeting that the U.S. and Israel “are on the same page” about Lebanon and the need to end the war without returning to the buildup with Hezbollah forces along the northern border on Oct. 7,
- Sullivan also stressed that the U.S. is committed to protecting freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Israel agreed to the multinational maritime task force that will start operating there, according to Israeli and U.S. officials.
“US has collected intel it could use to judge Israel’s conduct of war,” POLITICO, 14 Dec.
While American officials say they are not making judgments in real-time about whether Israel is abiding by the laws of war, the U.S. has gathered intelligence that might allow it to make such assessments.
The U.S. has collected intelligence and formulated detailed assessments related to both Israel and Hamas military movements and tactics in Gaza since the war began in October, according to two people familiar with the intelligence. That has included data on targeting by both sides, the weapons they appear to be using and the potential number of people killed in their ranks.
That information has been shared with members of Congress in several briefings, including with the members of the intelligence committees, the people said. Both individuals were granted anonymity to detail a sensitive issue.
State Department officials are also collecting reports of potential Israeli violations through a system unveiled in August called the Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, or CHIRG, according to Josh Paul, who quit the department over concerns about its approach to the war. Paul said some officials within the department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs have asked State’s legal wing to “provide information about their potential international law exposure as a result of approving these sales.”
That suggests that when President Joe Biden reiterated Tuesday that Israel was using “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza — a breach of international humanitarian law — he was likely speaking about information he had. And his administration appears to have some of the data it would need to determine whether or not Israel is violating global rules of war.
“Here you have the president of the United States essentially accusing Israel of committing war crimes, while his administration refuses to conduct a thoroughgoing assessment of whether or not Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is consistent with the law of war,” said Brian Finucane, previously a State Department lawyer who now advises the International Crisis Group.
“Kamala Harris pushes White House to be more sympathetic toward Palestinians,” POLITICO, 14 Dec.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been telling colleagues in the administration that she wants the White House to show more concern publicly for the humanitarian damage in Gaza, where Israel is locked in a bloody and prolonged battle with Hamas, according to three people familiar with Harris’ comments.
President Joe Biden is among the officials Harris has urged to show more sensitivity to Palestinian civilians, these people said.
In internal conversations about the war in Gaza, Harris has argued that it is time to start making “day after” plans for how to handle the wreckage of the war once the fighting ends, one senior administration official said.
One person close to the vice president’s office said she believes the United States should be “tougher” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; she has called for being “more forceful at seeking a long-term peace and two-state solution,” this person said.
The people characterizing Harris’s role and comments from the vice president and her team were granted anonymity in order to discuss private conversations.
Harris’ private push to shape the White House message about the war reflects the extent to which Democrats — even the top two officials in the country — are struggling to walk a careful line about the Israel-Hamas war, amid a gruesome conflict that has rattled the Democratic political coalition down to the local level.
It also underscores the delicacy of the tight political partnership that Harris has developed with Biden, despite some longstanding differences in perspective on various issues. She has long been more attuned to criticism from the left than her more moderate running mate, and more determined to align herself with younger and more progressive constituencies in the Democratic Party.
The domestic politics of this have been more fraught than even I anticipated when I commented almost exactly two months ago about the image of Biden embracing Netanyahu. While the international pressure on Israel for restraint, if not a complete cessation of hostilities, has continued, I did not understand the level of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli sentiment among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
It’s hard to judge from my vantage point the degree to which Biden’s new stance is a response to that pressure or a genuine concern that Israel’s actions in Gaza have gone too far. Thus far, it does not seem to be having much of an impact on Netanyahu.
Not will it. I’m confident that Bibbi won’t separate from the position of the hard liners.
I’m also confident that several here will confuse my position with support of Hamas (which would be a grave miscaracterizarion).
There are solutions to be found here, but no one has the political or moral will to reach them. On any side.
But then again, I am a Luddite.
I’m not surprised. They’ve been ideologically groomed for many years by the college BDS movement to see Israel as ‘the problem.’ Add to that their ignorance of history, their even greater ignorance of military realities and alliances, add in the usual background anti-semitism, and the knee-jerk ‘anti-Daddy’ mentality, and now progressives are dealing with an ideological split you can add to the split between trans supporters and old-school feminists, and the split between free speech advocates and censors, and all the internecine battles for victimhood primacy within progressive organizations.
Without a unifying ideology and the discipline that imposes, and without leadership that can appeal beyond identity niches, you don’t have a movement, you just have an attitude. Absent the ruthless discipline imposed by a strong ideological party structure (see: Communism) the Left is often doomed to faction, internecine warfare and political impotence. Progressives don’t know how to fight – fighting requires flexibility and a degree of ruthlessness – they can only issue demands and condemnations.
Progressives are in effect demanding the end of the only country in the Middle East where an Arab can vote, or a gay man walk down the street, a newspaper can publish freely, or a non-Muslim can practice his religion. They want one more thug state to replace a flawed democracy. They demand Israel cease to exist because Israelis are colonizers, imperialists and assorted other buzz words, even as they live on land stolen from Indians, land they have no intention of surrendering, adding a piquant hint of hypocrisy.
Now these same fools are threatening to stay home in November or throw a vote away on a non-entity and usher in true fascism in the United States, ending American democracy. 1968 squared. They’ll elect Trump whose power rests on Evangelical Christians who would cheer enthusiastically if Israel nuked Gaza.
I dunno, James. I follow a lot of people I’d call progressive, and I’m not seeing this. I also follow a lot of people who like to call out the usual suspects that Republicans like to cite disengenuously as typical of Democrats, and I’m not seeing much of that either. Some outliers, yes, but they are clearly outliers.
I do see concern about the ratio of civilian Palestinian casualties to Hamas, and I do see concern that many of Israel’s tactics have slipped over into war crimes. I also see concern about the brutalization and expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank. But I see those concerns from a range of people, including Israelis and I think I even saw one or two Republicans.
All that said, it is time for Biden to crank up the pressure on Bibi Netanyahu, the perfect Trump clone – a corrupt narcissist who cares about nothing but staying out of jail by holding onto power.
@Cheryl Rofer:
Look at the ratio of progressives demanding Israel stop, vs. the number calling for Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages. I’d guess it’s easily 10 to 1. A lot of ‘From the River to the Sea,’ and a lot of, ‘by any means necessary,’ and a lot of nonsense about ‘indiscriminate bombing,’ and, ‘genocide.’ Not a lot of ‘why the fuck don’t Hamas lay down their arms and stop getting Gazans killed?’
Apples and oranges: liberals who oppose Israel aren’t going to pout and refuse to support Biden. And Republicans are irrelevant.
I think it’s a mistake to assume it is just the progressive wing — the garden variety liberals appear to be very divided. Progressives are nearly united against Israeli actions (very divided about what should be happening), but the liberals are pretty split.
Netanyahu has embraced Republicans going back before the Iran nuclear deal was finalized (let alone scuttled) and that has really left a lot of Democrats a lot more skeptical of supporting Israel. And then the images of the war come, with whole neighborhoods leveled, dead children and the works, and it’s too much. It certainly looks like a whole bunch of war crimes.
I don’t think the next Democratic President is going to support Israel the way Biden does. I think the support will be much more conditional, with a lot more emphasis on a two state solution.
@Michael Reynolds: You have not cited a single specific case, so I can’t see how you can calculate a ratio.
@Cheryl Rofer: @Michael Reynolds:
I’ve spent my entire life in academe, and what Michael Reynolds says about Israel-hating progressives is certainly eminently true in the university/college bubble. It would be fair to describe this hatred as irrational and rabid. I’ve never understood it, particularly when manifested by left-wing Jews.
@Michael Reynolds: It’s worth noting that the US government is not actively supporting Hamas and shipping weapons to Hamas. Our relationships with Israel and with Hamas are fundamentally different.
It makes sense that we would have more demands of the people we empower.
Also, history didn’t start on 10/7, and for anyone whose paid even modest attention to the occupied territories and the brutality of the economic blockade, the Hamas attack was an inevitable response. Israel has held the vast majority of the power, and perpetuated conditions where this would happen.
It’s not shocking or surprising. It’s been the status quo for decades — an occupied people, suffering massive hardship, lashing out on a regular basis, bound to get lucky at some point. It’s a status quo that Israel has worked hard to maintain.
The progressive wing has been talking about this forever, and the Hamas attack changed basically nothing in their worldview.
I am surprised that so many liberals are right there with the progressives.
The pro-Palestinian supporters appear to me to be very vocal but a definite minority, since most polls show widespread support for Israel among Democrats.
But I suppose one could be “surprised” by any number above zero. I admit the number is larger than expected.
But now having gotten that out of the way- I’ve long advocated we treat Israel the same way we treat England or France, i.e., a nation which is entitled to defend its own existence by almost any means, and misconduct or even abominable behavior doesn’t change that. In 1940 France was arguably a racist apartheid colonial power, but that didn’t stop us from defending its right to exist.
Meaning that whatever charges the Gazans can lay at Israel’s door (and I agree with many of them) it doesn’t strip Israel of the right to eliminate the threat of Hamas.
Now having said THAT- Treating Israel like France would also mean we demand it behave in accordance with the norms of a liberal democracy and here the criticism of the Netanyahu regime are absolutely correct. “B-but Hamas!” doesn’t excuse Bibi’s corruption and authoritarian behavior.
@Gustopher:
It’s also true that the single most powerful pro-Hamas figure is Bibi Netanyahu.
He made a specific policy of supporting them over the Palestinian Authority cynically figuring they were easier to control.
No college student waving a placard has done more damage to Israel, or has more blood on their hands, than Bibi.
@CSK:
Opposing an apartheid state doesn’t seem irrational.
I would imagine they don’t like atrocities being committed in their name. Far too many people try to associate Judaism with radical Zionism.
I know that when Michael Reynolds uses queer folk as cudgel to say that we should support bombing the shit out of Palestinian civilians, I find that offensive as hell. It pushes me further from him.
It’s been obvious from the outset that the two pre-requisites of a longer term stabilization are:
1) The crippling of Hamas’ military power, and its military/political grip on Gaza
2) The departure of Netanyahu, the curbing of the “Greater Israel” elements of Likud, and the exclusion of Mafdal (Smotrich’s party) and Otzma (Ben-Gvir’s party) from their “dog wagging” position in coalition.
It’s also clear that Netanyahu is living on borrowed time, politically, and knows it.
In the five man War Cabinet Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot and Yoav Gallant, are all known to regard Netanyahu with contempt, and to much closer to IDF Command as well. (Ron Dermer is essentially little more than Netanyahu’s mini-me).
So to try to secure his support on the Right, Netanyahu is giving the Kahanites a very long leash, if any leash at all.
In order to counter this, and reinforce the “realist” group in the War Cabinet and Knesset, Biden is having to make it clear that the US also has clear limits to what it will countenance.
OTOH, the administration must consider that until new elections, barring an open (rather than simmering) Likud split, Netanyahu may have the votes in Knesset, especially while the current “war state” is operative.
Netanyahu may be calculating that while the “war” continues, his opponents will hold off from toppling him, and that the US strategic calculus requires it to continue to deter Iran and Hezbollah.
If the US were to openly breach with the Netanyahu government at this point, it might force an Israeli realignment.
OTOH, it might enable the Right coalition to install a new War Cabinet in their image, and go full-bore for expulsion in the Strip, and massive “clearances” in the West Bank.
Leaving the IDF commanders with the choice of obeying such orders, resignation, or what would amount to a coup d’etat to force elections, which circumstances might be the one thing that could salvage the Likud vote.
All told, it’s a very delicate political position for Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan to calculate, especially when the other key player is someone as unscrupulous, and as determined on his self-preservation, as Benjanin Netanyahu.
@Michael Reynolds:
The fallout would end up killing more Israelis than the 10/7 Hamas attacks.
@Gustopher:
I’ll say this again: “apartheid” is a misapplication of the term, often employed for political reasons, and often by people inclined to view the world through the lens of American racial political history.
Israeli policy in the West Bank is objectionable on both ethical and pragmatic grounds. Mischaracterizing it seems to me to be more likely to obscure than illuminate the issue.
There are plentiful parallels in European/Middle Eastern history, from Ulster to Prussia, via Armenia and Ionia, to Bosnia, and the label of “apartheid” applies to none of them.
@Michael Reynolds: “They’ve been ideologically groomed for many years by the college BDS movement to see Israel as ‘the problem.’”
Yes, of course it’s impossible that anyone could come to an opinion that differs from MR’s on their own, or for honest reasons. They have to be “groomed.”
Maybe we should start a betting pool — how many days before Michael joins RFK Jr and Matt Taibbi and Naomi Wolf and announces that since some in the Democratic party have failed to appreciate his wonderfulness he will now become a Trump acolyte?
@Gustopher:
This is not necessarily the case.
Fallout deaths from air-burst use of nuclear weapons are not liable to be catastrophic. Japan was not wrecked by fallout from two nuclear weapons.
It’s not something you want, as a side-effect, but it might be something a rather crazed regime might accept.
In any case, conventional weapons could probably produce “sufficiently” massive deaths, if employed to that purpose.
Which they are not being, as of now.
For examples, see Tokyo 1945, Hamburg 1944 etc etc.
IDF announces that the shot three hostages. I’m certain they will find more dead hostages, drown in the tunnels. I’m guessing at some point one of the hostage families will take a shot at Netanyahu.
@Gustopher:
Same. Especially since everything we do is unacceptable to him if don’t do exactly as he says. With love and respect to DK, I wouldn’t feel safe in Israel.
@Chip Daniels:
This is only partially correct.
The Israeli government used Hamas as an excuse to evade any meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians; and in doing so, and via their other West Bank policies, undermined the Fatah P.A.
But Israel in general, and Netanyahu in particular (much as I may despise him) are not responsible for the ideologies or policies of Hamas.
They did not arrange their majority vote in Gaza, or their seizure of power by force.
Nor has Israel funded them.
It might have been possible for Israel to re-install PA control in Gaza by force; or to block the Qatari (and other) funds for Gaza which Hamas has used for its own ends.
I invite you to consider the likely international reaction to the implementation of either of those policies
@Chip Daniels: Very well said!
@Gustopher: I think that tarring progressives is important though. If you don’t single out the progressives as “bad liberals,” you can’t get to the neocon/neolib “appeal to the (sensible) moderates” position from the left side. Alas, there’s always been a “we’re not like those leftists” strain on the liberal side of the continuum. On the other hand, on the right, any moderation has always been “betrayal of principles,” so I don’t know which is better.
ETA:
So at 71 with emphysema playing an increasing role in my life, I shouldn’t expect these conditions to be met during my lifetime? Or that of the grandchildren I don’t have?
AETA: “…and the label of “apartheid” applies to none of them.”
Doesn’t apply, or was never used to describe? You may be blurring things here.
Reynolds is right, at least so far as noting BDS is a real thing that predates Oct. 7. There is also a small, 1% or so, Arab population in the U. S. Somewhat less than half the Jewish population. Also, about 10% of foreign students are from Arab countries. It’s to be expected they would express pro-Palestinian views. It should have been anticipated that there would be visible support for Gaza.
And how much of the reaction is not particularly driven by pro-Palestinian, antisemitism, or even anti-Likud feeling, but just human sympathy after 10,000 dead?
@Beth:
Safe is a relative term, and alphabet people get bashed everywhere. Is there any place you feel safe? I have not felt safe in most public spaces since I started openly dating other guys, but I’m black and queer — there’s no reason why I should feel so. Homophobes and racial bigots are all I’ve the place. I just suck it up and push through.
Tel Aviv does not feel safe. One, Israel is led by racist rightwing thugs whos failed policies have fueled terrorism and made Israel less secure. So that is looming in the background, along with ~25% rise in antigay hate incidents in Israel that has, predictably, accompanied the rise of the Israeli far right. Tel Aviv Pride parties having to be guarded by armed soldiers signals looming danger, not safety.
Major cities in Israel feel about as safe as those in Turkiye, and the other Mideast gay meccas — Dubai and Beirut, which has a gayborhood.
They all feel less safe than America, where gays still face bashing and trans women are being murdered at increased rates — any anyone can be mowed down by a gun nut at any time.
I’ve felt “safest” in European population centers, although the post-Soviet states are a little scary at times.
@Beth: True. But in defense of MR, any negative consequences happening to you because of who you are would have the chance of being treated as a crime–regardless of how infinitesimal that chance might be. I think that’s the “all important difference” MR is clinging to.
In the memory of youngsters and college students Israel has always and only been the regional military superpower and something of a bully. The history of plucky little Israel fending off three hostile neighbors at a time in ’67 and ’73 is, well, ancient history.
@JohnSF:
So? If I was to sit down and have dinner with a bunch of elected Nazis to boost and empower them, I’m not absolved of complicity by saying “I’m not responsible for making them Nazis or voting them in.” So what? I am responsible for my choice to enable evil.
Israel is responsible for making Netanyahu its longest-serving prime minister, and Netanyahu argued for funding and boosting Hamas — and helped do so. That was strategically stupid. Israel and Netanyahu absolutely share responsibility for the consequences of that political and moral failure.
Why? Netanyahu’s Israel has not constrained itself based on international reaction. It’s laughable, this implication Netanyahu had no option besides boosting and funding terrorism to undermine the Israeli peace movement and sideline secular/moderate Palestians ‘because international reaction.’
If Israel under Netanyahu cared about international reaction, the counterproductive settler terrorism in the West Bank — publicly opposed by even Israel’s closest allies — would have stopped years ago.
Biden is trapped into an impossible tightrope act. As @JohnSF: points out, he’s having to deal with the Israeli cabinet’s internal politics, trying to support the more moderate elements while not losing any influence he might have on Netanyahu. For domestic political reasons Biden has to staunchly support Israel while doing what he can to appear to be trying to get them to moderate. He’d face a firestorm if he put conditions on weapons supplies. He can’t even ask Netanyahu to cut him some slack or offer some support because Netanyahu wants to elect Trump in the worst way. Biden is, IMHO, doing about as well as can be done, but he may well fall off the tight wire.
@gVOR10:
Probably not as much as some think, given that both the Berniebros and the Trumpers are Israel aid skeptics. And Biden is already facing a firestorm. When you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, the best thing to do, is to do the right thing.
The American people’s #1 job right now is to keep Trump out of office, which requires Biden shore up his own base. Unconditional embrace of corrupt thug Netanyahu is hurting that goal, so Biden is shifting tactics. I suspect internal polling is setting off alarms.
@DAllenABQ:
Yup. Add in that the over-policing of Palestinians resonates (correctly or incorrectly) with folks concerned about the over-policing of minority groups in the US. Also the strong Christian Conservative support for Israel and Bibbi, and a long standing practice of accusing even mild critiques of the settlement policy as antisemitism*, and you create the conditions for counter positions.
* – writing that it occurs to me that there are definite parallels between progressives who take the “if you are going to accuse anything I say of being anti-Semitic then why should I care” and conservatives who take the “if you are going to accuse anything I say of being racist then why should I care” positions.
@JohnSF: I’m going to use the language Jimmy Carter uses. It’s apartheid.
Also, Bosnia is not a useful parallel, as there wasn’t decades of occupation and oppression on the scale of Gaza.
Unless you are referring to the Ottoman occupation around 1400, rather than the 1990s, and even there I would find massive differences.
North Ireland never had the blockade and occupier enforced poverty, so I think that’s a weak analogy. Were the Catholics pushed into reservations? I will admit that I just never bothered paying attention to North Ireland.
I don’t know my Prussia, Armenia and Ionia, but based on your understanding of Bosnia, I’m not sure you do either.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I may be a hopelessly optimistic old sod, but I genuinely think that if the first can be achieved, the second is also possible.
Even in my lifetime; and I hope yours also.
And may my grand-nephews/nieces inherit a better world.
Israeli opinion polls are clear: Netanyahu is done, the Mizrahi/Russian/”Security”/Kahanite solid Right is broken, Likud is going to get hammered, centre/left coalition takes power with a “Two State” policy consensus.
Netanyahu knows this, knows the pretty certain personal consequence (Bibi’s ass in jail) and is frantically trying to evade it.
Biden, Blinken and Sullivan; and Gantz, Eisenkot, Gallant, Gal-On, Lapid etc. also know this.
There is a fair chance of a negotiable position coming out of all this tragedy and horror.
And yet another reason for damning George W. Bush (in particular) and Trump (and, it, must be said, Obama) for failing to seriously address the issue from 2000 on.
Was not used, because apartheid first used in South Africa by the Afrikaaner Right in the 1920’s; implemented as a policy by the Nazi-friendly Nasionale Partei after 1948.
Doesn’t apply because apartheid was based on formalised “colour” based racial categories: “White”, “Black”, “Coloured”, “Indian” (plus-sub categories. to add to the insanity) which denied civil rights to all except “Whites”.
(And even among “Whites” implied the subordinate status of the “English” to the “Boers” in politics.)
The only similar formal system I’m aware of was the American South “separate but equal” nastiness. And even that did not go so far, AFAIK as to explicity deny non-White civil rights in law. (I might be wrong re. US laws, please correct me if so.)
European and Middle Eastern (and bear in mind, that division is rather recent and artificial) ethnic persecutions etc are not based on “visible race” as in South Africa or the American South.
Anyone who can distinguish at a glance a Scots-Irish Ulster Protestant from Catholic Irish, Prussian German from Posenian Pole, Serb from Bosniak, Ionian Greek from Marmaran Turk, Armenian from Kurd or Azerbaijani, Igbo from Yoruba, Pakistani from Indian, etc etc etc gets a big prize.
Similarly Mizrahi Israelis from Palestinians: they are virtually indistinguishable, not only genetically but culturally in many respects (food, music etc).
And Arab Israelis have full civil rights, which was never, ever, the case under the apartheid legal regime in South Africa.
The problem is the denial of civil rights to the “occupied population”; coupled with the ongoing settlement policy.
Thus, the unconscionable division is between the effective legal protection afforded to West Bank Palestinian Arabs vs Israeli Jewish settlers and the land-grabbing antics of the latter.
Which is both morally unacceptable, and utterly stupid in terms of Israeli national interest.
But apartheid it is not.
As I said, much closer to various European/Middle Eastern “ethnic” settlement projects.
Which go back a long way.
See the “English” bastide towns in “French” Aquitaine.
@Gustopher:
Get back to me about rationality after you’ve seen a middle-aged associate professor of economics in the quadrangle yelling “Fuck Israel.”
@DK:
Oh come on.
Do you seriously think the IDF could have re-imposed Fatah rule on Gaza?
Or that a cut-off of international funding to Gaza would have been sustainable with the obvious results in the Strip?
Or that Fatah could have regained effective control thereafter?
Bibi may be an arsehole in particular, and Likud a bunch in general, but their unpleasant opportunism was dependent on opportunities given to them by the arseholery of Hamas.
Obviously Netanyahu doesn’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t benefit Bibi.
Well, just maybe he can justify it to himself as benefiting Israel; but that’s just self-justification, not reality.
@Gustopher:
Frankly, much as I like Jimmy Carter, he’s wrong.
Eminent American, just as many other Americans, may be inclined to see Israel/Palestine through the distorting prism of American racial political history.
Doesn’t make them right.
Incidentally, I have a suspicion that the same is true for at least some parts of the Republican Right.
Beside the lunatic evangelical dispensationalist supportes of Zionism, I’m fairly certain (and used to to have some ref’s to support it but can’t find them on my hard drive, dammit) that an appreciable percentage of the US Right see Israel as “white”, Arabs as “coloreds”.
Both the US right and US left might try being less damn parochial, for a change.
@Michael Reynolds:
Weren’t there elections in Iraq? Yup, parliamentary elections in 2021.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Iraqi_parliamentary_election
Who is “they”? Because I don’t hear anyone significant arguing that Israel shouldn’t exist. There’s a lot of people saying Israel shouldn’t exist as an apartheid state, but I don’t think apartheid states are a necessary part of Judaism.
Even I favor Israel existing, although I think it should be moved to a Dakota, because shit ain’t working out where they are, and we have a spare Dakota.
(We should consult with Canada, and see if they would prefer to not share a border with Israel, but otherwise I’m open to letting Israel pick their favorite Dakota)
The Native American nations are basically gone. It was a pretty thorough genocide.
I would argue that a part of our national reconciliation of that is to oppose similar actions elsewhere. Should Germany be pro-genocide because they did the most memorable and best filmed one?
Have you earned their vote?
I’ve been hearing a lot of “you have to vote for the Democrats because the Republicans are worse and your top issues are screwed anyway but on priority #6 Biden is better…”
I don’t know if that’s what the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” crowd is trying to say, but it’s what people hear.
And, if people were perfectly rational thinkers, it might be persuasive, but it doesn’t outweigh spite.
Voting for the lesser of two evils makes sense when there’s an appreciable difference between the two evils. But at a certain point, it’s also just voting for evil, and you need to start supporting some party significantly less evil and trying to make them viable in the future.
If someone thinks actively supporting a genocide in Palestine makes Biden that close to Trump in Standardized Units of Evil… I won’t say that they are completely wrong. I’ll presumably vote for Old Joe, but holding my nose.
That sounds like you are blaming them for you not having made a case to vote for Biden that they can buy into.
Ultimately, people vote based on their top few issues. Telling them that those issues don’t matter doesn’t work.
I think Biden and his team is doing a poor job on getting people engaged on the other issues to the point where they can overlook Palestine enough to hold their nose and vote for Biden. Hopefully they change that.
@Gustopher:
If you seriously think the Iraqi parliamentary elections 2021 are crucial to the politics of Iraq, I have some nice ocean-front property in Nebraska you may be interested in.
You really are determined to keep this up, aren’t you?
LOL.
Michael Reynolds may tend to hyperbole (Hi Michael! 😉 ) but then he is an author.
I am seldom inclined to such, and I’ll say again: there is no way , no even remotely rationally conceivable way, that leads to a peace settlement if Hamas retains effective control of Gaza.
Or if Netanyahu regains effective power in Israel.
This whole “if it wasn’t for Netanyahu” thing is naive and simplistic. He is the face of Israeli policy since Rabin’s assassination. He is not the cause of it. All the powers in Israel, military, secret service, deep state, everyone, seems united behind the strategy of driving the Gazans into Egypt. The massive bombing campaign to “clear the tunnels” is a smoke and mirrors show towards that end.
And JohnSF, I’ve got a lot of respect for you but this insistence that the term “apartheid” can’t be expanded to include religious and ethnic oppression is silly. The term has expanded. Israel is an apartheid state. They control 2 million Palestinians to whom they grant no civil rights to. That’s apartheid.
@DK:
Safe in the Reynoldsian sense that if there isn’t an explicit call for the death of queers and a semi-allowance of us than we’re safe. Which is the Whitest White Man Nonsense ever.
I feel exceptionally safe here in Chicago, Cook County, IL. Pretty much all of IL to some degree. I learned this summer that while I may be safe as a queer person, I have to pay attention as a woman in ways I never had to think about before as a suicidal man. I made the mistake of getting on the El during the summer, drunk and high, wearing nothing but a bikini top, a short skirt and a fanny pack. The three guys that guy on and said “heeeeey White girl!” before proceeding to talk about beating a gay man with a belt were a massive wakeup call.
As a Trans woman, places like Beruit, Florida and England are basically off limits. I see DJs going to Dubai all the time and I don’t get that. My partner and I are trying to figure out a 15 year anniversary trip and I think we’ve settled on Scotland (her) and Ibiza (me). We’ve settled on Scotland as our bug out place if the Republicans win next year. I can qualify for UK citizenship.
@MarkedMan:
This is not the case.
Just look at the recent Israeli Right shrieking about the “Deep State” coordinating the protests about the Israeli governments attempts to end Supreme Court blocks on far-Right Knesset initiatives.
The IDF command, by and large, despise Netanyahu and the Kahanites.
See also the post October 7 attempts of Netanyahu et al to blame IDF command and the intel services.
It’s true that the overwhelming Israeli consensus post October 7 is to destroy Hamas.
And this includes most of those supportive of a “Two State” settlement.
The Hamas attacks, as I’ve said before, slaughtered an appreciable percentage of the Israeli socialist Peace Movement, at lot of whom, for historic reasons, lived in the Gaza border kibbutzim that were devastated on that day.
There will never, ever, from October 7 2023, be an Israeli plurality that will negotiate with Hamas.
It was unlikely before; it’s out of the question now.
If it was just a “ploy” to clear the strip, it’s a poor one.
If it was a “strategy of driving the Gazans into Egypt” I, for one, could have executed it better.
(For avoidance of doubt, I would have refused to do so.)
The “massive bombing campaign” is not even close to the scale of Allied bombardments of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Nuremberg. Even of Caen, arguably.
That does not mean that the IDF are free from all blame: IMO evidence indicates they are being possibly criminally reckless in their strikes.
But if they were intent on “clearance”, they’re going about it the wrong way, objectively.
@CSK: Might be a result of having attended an Evangelical college and attending a regional for grad school and teaching at JCs, but I’ve never been anywhere that there were anti-Israel/anti-Zionist protests. One of us has lead a sheltered–positively or negatively–life, I guess.
<@MarkedMan: >
Then the term ceases to have any objective meaning, and merely becomes a “boo” word.
It’s as foolish as saying the German policies to the French in Alsace 1870-1918 were “Jim Crow” when it was based on languages, not race.
Or that the British denial of civil rights to Catholics or Protestant Dissenters from 1660 to 1846 was “racial apartheid”.
Or the Serbian killings of Bosniak Muslims was based on “race”
It just makes a nonsense of any attempts to make contextually valid sense of the whole sorry stories of each.
@JohnSF:
Why? Cause they didn’t do it in a week? My concern is that the Israeli right is using this to purge Gaza of Palestinians. They’re not idiots. They know they can only move so fast militarily. They know that they have to, for a while at least, pretend to listen to Biden. They also know that the Egyptians would rather (and will) massacre every Palestinian that comes over that border. The IDF has pushed just about everyone out of Northern Gaza. The IDF is pushing south. The hammer to the Egyptian anvil.
One of two things is going to happen. Either, 1. The IDF/Egyptians are going to slaughter the Palestinians they have cornered into an ever smaller slice of Gaza, or 2. they are going to stop.
I think they are going to do number 1. I suspect you think they are going to do number 2. I’m also of the opinion that Northern Gaza has just become part of Israel.
Jim Crow was definitely an apartheid system. You seem to be arguing that every single bad act of humanity needs to have a specific term applied to it and nothing else. It’s like saying if the genocide doesn’t come from Nazi Auschwitz then it’s only sparkling murder.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It was quite a bit different at Tufts, Harvard, and Hampshire.
@Beth:
Because Macbeth:
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”
They would need to open the Egyptian border.
It’s quite plain Egypt will not accept that, and has indicated it might take military action to prevent it.
Israel could slaughter those penned into the south.
The consequences would be an immediate end to all trade with Europe, and the economic collapse of Israel.
My opinion, for what little it is worth, is that the IDF will attempt to “kettle” the south, hit identified targets, then permit a “filtered” return northward.
There are certainly some Kahanites who wish to “cleanse” northern Gaza.
If they do so, the equation changes: Europe will not tolerate a genocidal state as a trading partner.
It’s the one thing that would break the Germany/Israel accord that’s one of the foundations of post-1948 European politics.
And Israel is utterly dependent on trade with the EU. About 1/3 of both imports and exports are directly with EU.
@CSK: Certainly. Now, which experience is more “normative?” For my money, I have no idea.
@JohnSF:
One of us is going to be wrong. I hope the Mother seeks to see me wrong.
For what it’s worth, I’m concerned that Israel itself is on the road to a self-inflicted self-immolation. It wouldn’t particular shock me if they did something that caused the EU to walk away from them. I doubt the U.S. will, we’re too stupid.
@JohnSF:
Yes. Indeed it would be. Which is why the desirable route to ethnic cleansing is to simply pen the Gazans in smaller and smaller portions of the strip until they all “move of their own accord.” Ethnic cleansing, “sanitized for your protection.”
@JohnSF: Xerox, Kleenex and the South African apartheid state thank you for defending their trademarks.
@Beth:
I’m saying that “Jim Crow” WAS the closest analogue I know to South African apartheid.
I cannot think of anything else similar (in recent history) in terms of “racial” categorization.
As you indicate: Nazi ethnic insanity was capable of genocidal atrocity.
And there are numerous instances of ethnic, or religious, or whatever, atrocities in act or attitude.
Israeli settlers’ behavior towards the West Bank Palestinians is as culpable as any of these.
BUT: it is not apartheid because it is not based on a “race = colour” system.
It is wrong.
It is immoral.
It is stupid.
It is not apartheid.
@Gustopher:
Well, fuck them, and the horse they rode in on.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The Kahanite option is obvious.
But truly, the Israeli non-Likud establishment know what the consequences would be.
The end of the Germany-Israel alignment that has been one of the basics of European politics since 1948 (little though that may be appreciated in the US)
The destruction of the the Israeli economy.
(No, the US is not the main trade partner of Israel.)
etc etc
@CSK: “Get back to me about rationality after you’ve seen a middle-aged associate professor of economics in the quadrangle yelling “Fuck Israel.””
Well, yes, one angry person acting like an asshole certainly proves whatever political point you want to make. Clearly there are no angry people acting like assholes on whichever side you choose to take, and thus you win.
JohnSF, listen old bean, you are just plain WRONG about apartheid having a narrow. Afrikaner/National Party RSA defintion
While apartheid was coined in relation to South Africa, international treaties, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, U.N. resolutions, and many countries’ domestic laws define it as a universal legal term that applies globally.
Apartheid is also a crime against humanity, as set out both in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It consists of three primary elements:
1. An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another;
2. A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group;
3. Inhumane acts such as “forcible transfer” and “expropriation of landed property.”
Under international law, race and racial discrimination have been interpreted to mean more than skin color or genetic traits. They refer also to distinctions based on descent and national or ethnic origin, to be evaluated on the basis of the particular context and construction by local actors.
So JohnSF, old chum, please stop on your insistence this does not apply to Israel.
A legitimate argument can be made that it does.
Human Rights Watch made the case in 2021. See this link:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
@JohnSF: “I am seldom inclined to such, and I’ll say again: there is no way , no even remotely rationally conceivable way, that leads to a peace settlement if Hamas retains effective control of Gaza.”
Is there anybody anywhere who is actually arguing that Hamas should retain control? This is such a silly straw man. If you can’t make an argument in good faith, why bother making one at all?
@JohnSF:
So only Hamas has agency? Give me a break with this attempt to downplay Netanyahu’s hatred, extremism, and incompetence — which has been endorsed over and over by the Israeli electorate — with polite platitudes like “unpleasant opportunism.” Israel is not a potted plant, and the implication that Israel’s sole, single, and only option was to support, enable, and booster Hamas, to the exclusion of any other course of action, is rationalizing nonsense.
Netanyahu and his coalition decided to boost and fund Hamas for the same reasons they incited Rabin’s assasination and endorsed the illegal, amoral West Bank settler terrorism: they’re violent, hatemongering extremists. It was not mere opportunism; it was a dedicated, affirmative effort by selfish, violent righwing pigs to destroy the Israeli peace movement, sideline Palestinian moderates and sevuksrysts, and thumb wanted thumb their noses at American allies they consider gullible rubes who’ll make excuses for anything they do. And you are proving to be as gullible a mark as any of their targets.
Netanyahu is a incompetent, corrupt wannabe-Putin who has failed at everything. But we’re supposed to believed Gaza/Hamas policy was spot on? Lol hogwash. Anyone naïve enough to fall for that will fall for anything.
@wr:
Because if the IDF do not destroy Hamas, then they WILL retain control.
But also: if Israel does not enable a post-Hamas governance in Gaza, it is all for naught.
Which almost certainly requires Netanyahu to be gone .
(I say almost certainly, because if if handing Haifa to Hamas would keep Bibi’s ass out of jail, I suspect he’d at least think about it)
@JohnSF: It seems to me that you’re staking a lot on the possibility that there’s not a Bibi 2.0 in line to take over. You might want to check how the GOP is doing on that point.
ETA: “there is no way , no even remotely rationally conceivable way, that leads to a peace settlement if Hamas retains effective control of Gaza.”
And by the same token: “there is no way , no even remotely rationally conceivable way, that leads to a peace settlement if
HamasLikud retains effective control ofGazaIsrael.” Who’s gonna blink first? My bet is on neither.@The Q:
Meh.
Old chum.
Old bean.
Bollocks.
Human Rights Watch is also trying for an a-historical application of the term, for political purposes.
“Apartheid is whatever we we want it to be.”
It’s stupid, and a disgraceful distortion what apartheid actually WAS.
It’s as historically daft as insisting that French language uniformity laws were the same as “Jim Crow”
@DK:
Whew what was that. Moderates and secularists.
@JohnSF:
Making up quotes to push a strawman argument is stupid.
Jimmy Carter’s a pretty smart guy. And a better man than racist, terrorist-bolstering thug Benjamin Netanyahu could ever be.
@DK:
Israel might have acted against Hamas.
Personally, I’d have advised them to do so.
However, that would have involved either cutting off all financial support to Gaza,and letting it collapse, and then a full scale military operation to re-install Fatah/PA control.
Hmm.
I foresee problems with this policy option.
@DK:
I’m saying Carter was an American, and looking at things from an American perspective.
That’s not wrong of him, nor culpable.
Merely American parochial.
@The Q:
Who cares what they call it? Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad need to be destroyed, Netanyahu and his cronies need to be banished, the settler terrorism and expansionism needs to stop, and Israel + the Arab world need to accept a two-state solution that tweaks the 1967 borders.
There will be blood until Palestines and Israelis accept this. In the meantime, they should not expect unconditional, no-strings-attached US and European support for their terrorist vs terrorist fight to the death. That dog won’t hunt no more.
@DK:
Agreed.
Nety’s a very fortunate fellow, insofar as I don’t have the freedoms of action I might wish for.
But I have to maintain: apartheid was a very specific political and social system.
Israels policies do not seem to be very comparable.
There are other historical comparisons that seem more applicable.
Therefore, the insistence that IT IS APARTHEID NOW ACCEPT IT! seems dubious.
I must say it never occurred to me to demand that Hamas lay down their arms. I didnt think of that with ISIS either. It would have zero effect on a religiously motivated terrorist group.
Where I live I dont hear anti-Israeli talk. I do hear concern about the number of Palestinian deaths without a real clear goal. For my part I think we pragmatically support Israel as the only stable democracy in the area. Also, they have nukes. In this particular case they were attacked and have the right to retaliate. However, my mostly unrestricted support of Israel disappeared with Netanyahu. He has interfered with our internal politics and decided to associate with the political right in the US while thumbing his nose at the left. Remember when he thought it was clever to come to the US and publicly lecture Obama? That was a big hit with the right.
Steve
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Look at the polls.
Likud is wrecked.
The smart Likudniks are trying to distance themselves from Bibi, which is precisely why he’s letting the Kahanites run their mouths off, to shore up his non-Likud support.
Netanyahu is focused on one thing above all things: keeping his sweet ass out of jail.
He’s fucked, but he’s going to to thrash away, at whatever the cost to his country, rather than accepting that gracefully.
’cause that’s who and what he is.
It’s pretty obvious with poor intelligence and dumb bombs, the IDF does not know who they are killing, hell they killed three hostages today. One does not need to be a Hamas supporter to call a spade a spade. The Israel government under Likud has been treating Palestinians pretty poorly for decades and by all appearances they don’t care about Gaza. There is absolutely nothing wrong with criticizing such conduct and imo defenders of such are doing more harm than good.
JohnSF, old chap, I was merely pointing out your narrow minded definition of apartheid is not widely held and you conflated my point by saying “who cares what they call it….” while adding other irrelevant, non germane points about the Gaza conflict.
As to “who cares what they call it”, well obviously you do, old sod, as you pedantically called out all those who applied this term to obvious Israeli racist policies.
You’re not being a good egg about all this. You’re an example of a foppy ponce that can give but not take.
@JohnSF:
Desmond Tutu disagreed with you:
@JohnSF: “Because if the IDF do not destroy Hamas, then they WILL retain control.”
And again I ask: Who is arguing against this?
@The Q:
I’m a “foppy ponce”?
Why, thank you for the compliment, young sir.
Shall we proceed to the Duc d’Enghien’s soiree? I hear he serves some wonderful punch.
On our way, may we contemplate whether or not words have definitions and meanings, and whether accuracy in their use has a utility in describing the world?
For example, a lion or an alligator may both be inclined to eat you.
Nonetheless, a lion is not an alligator, and a alligator is not a lion.
For another example, both communism and fascism are rather unpleasant totalitarian ideologies, and resultant political systems.
However, they are not identical ideologies.
Similarly, the Israeli policies in regard to the West Bank are abhorrent; but they are not apartheid.
Because they are not based on “race”.
The Nazi regime in Europe was utterly evil; but calling it “apartheid” would be quite absurd.
Or the Ottoman system of identified communities under the Porte, which might be closer in some respects to the South African system.
But again, calling it “apartheid” would be a mistake: the basis and functioning of the systems was very different.
Now, on to the ball, eh?
And by the way, I did not say “who cares what they call it….”
That was our estimable good egg @DK:
Do try to keep your interlocutors distinguished, to avoid confusion.
Also, as a lower-middle class Brit of Irish/Welsh ancestry, my invitations to ducal soirees come seldom.
Please try not to offend His Grace by screwing his pooch, eh?
@wr:
Not you, perhaps.
But lots of people are.
The problem is, eliminating Hamas is coming at a massive humanitarian cost, especially as some parts of the IDF seem to be going nuts.
It might be necessary for the US, and the wider West, to try to coerce Israel to halt the offensive if they can’t manage their targeting and proportionality better.
Then we may end up with Hamas able to re-assert control in Gaza, and the whole blood-bath is for nothing.
Once again, the only way forward to a path to peace is the elimination of Hamas as a political actor, and the end of the Netanyahu Likud/Kahanite coalition in Israel.
Which now hangs on a thread of Israel acting rationally.
@Dawn:
Desmond Tutu was a great and a good man.
As was President Carter.
(One of the most under-estimated presidents in US history, IMUHO)
He is quite correct in saying the treatment of the Palestinians on the West Bank resembles the worst actions of the Weermag.
That does not make the underlying ideology and political system “apartheid”.
It is no more so than were the (obnoxiously illiberal) policies of e.g. Imperial Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire.
Death by poison, or death by electrocution, may be equally unattractive.
They are different, nonetheless.
@JohnSF: That does not make the underlying ideology and political system “apartheid”.
While apartheid has a restricted meaning to refer to the particular racial system found in 20th century South Africa, it is also defined, as in international law, to refer to impairing equal rights due to “race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin”.
http://www.hri.org/docs/ICERD66.html#Art1
@Zachriel:
Which tends to make the whole thing just a “boo!”.
The UN is wrong, I am right.
🙂
Ethnic/racial etc discrimination has a long and sorry history.
But apartheid was a specific, structured, racial policy.
There are similar systems of racial denial of equality, most notably in “Jim Crow”, and in some imperial systems, and above all in race-slavery societies.
But to insist that national/ethnic differentiation is “apartheid” is historically incoherent.
The Ottoman Empire was based on ethnic differentiation, and was unpleasant in the extreme, but defining it as as an “apartheid” state is just rather silly.
@JohnSF: But apartheid was a specific, structured, racial policy.
We tend to be conservative in our use of terminology, often adhering closely to a term’s etymological or historical roots. However, words are ultimately defined by usage and that usage evolves over time.
Clearly, the use of the term apartheid in international law constitutes strong lexicological evidence as to this expanded usage. It is sufficiently close to the original usage, and it is not typically used to describe more historically remote periods (any more than we would describe the Mongols as fascists), so that might help assuage your linguistic sensitivities.
As always, the intended meaning can be determined be context—or by simply asking.