Outside the Beltway

Biden, Harris Push to End Gaza War

Is Sinwar’s assassination an opening?

James Joyner
41

Comments

Axios (“Biden tells Netanyahu it’s time to end Gaza war after Sinwar’s elimination“):

President Biden said after his call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that it’s time to “move on” and end the war in Gaza after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Biden has been personally pushing for months for a hostage and ceasefire deal in Gaza, and he hopes to reach a breakthrough in the stalled negotiations before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

Israeli and U.S. officials say Sinwar’s death on Wednesday creates an opportunity to resume talks on a deal to release the 101 hostages still held by Hamas and establish a ceasefire in Gaza.

Biden called Netanyahu from Air Force One on his way to Germany and congratulated the prime minister on the elimination of Sinwar by Israeli soldiers operating in southern Gaza. “The leaders agreed that there is an opportunity now to push for the release of the hostages and stressed they will work together to that end,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said. The White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed “how to use this moment to bring the hostages home and to bring the war to a close with Israel’s security assured and Hamas never again able to control Gaza.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli President Isaac Herzog that he’s planning to travel to the region in the coming days to discuss ways to push for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, the Israeli president’s office said.

The Hill (“Harris: Israeli killing of Sinwar an opportunity to end war in Gaza“):

Vice President Harris on Thursday praised Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, calling for it to be an opportunity for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza to end after more than a year of fighting in the Middle East.

“Hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated,” Harris said during remarks from Wisconsin, where she was campaigning.

“This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza, and it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” she added. “It is time for the day after to begin, without Hamas in power.”

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed Thursday that it killed Sinwar during an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.

Despite both Harris and President Biden calling Sinwar’s killing an opportunity to end the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a message that while Sinwar’s killing is an important moment, the task to end Hamas is not yet complete, CNN reported.

On the surface, eliminating the architect of the October 7 massacre opens an avenue for negotiation. Certainly, Hamas has been more than decimated and the toll exacted on the people of Gaza has been horrific.

At the same time, Harris’s vision for a settlement demonstrates why it’s unlikely to happen:

  • Israel is secure
  • the hostages are released
  • the suffering in Gaza ends
  • the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination
  • without Hamas in power

That’s a tall order!

The Netanyahu government clearly believes that Israel being secure is incompatible with Palestinian self-determination. And, given that Hamas is the chief representative of the Palestinians in Gaza, it’s highly unlikely that they’re going to agree to relinquish power. Both the Israeli government and Hamas seem to be willing to kill Palestinians indefinitely in service of their war aims.

An uprising of the people of Gaza against Hamas is the obvious way out. But that’s a massive collective action problem and thus highly unlikely to materialize.

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41 responses to “Biden, Harris Push to End Gaza War”

  1. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    Despite both Harris and President Biden calling Sinwar’s killing an opportunity to end the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a message that while Sinwar’s killing is an important moment, the task to end Hamas is not yet complete, CNN reported.

    QFE

    1
  2. drj Avatar
    drj

    An uprising of the people of Gaza against Hamas is the obvious way out.

    So that they can become an oppressed people inside of Greater Israel?

    After all:

    The Netanyahu government clearly believes that Israel being secure is incompatible with Palestinian self-determination.

    Equal rights in a multi-ethnic (i.e., non-Jewish) Israel aren”t on the table either. Just look at the West Bank.

    Funny that the Gazans should somehow rise up at great personal risk for a shit future but Netanyahu can just go on with his clearly illegal settlement policies.

    Maybe it’s helpful to see the Palestinians as actual people rather than those who should just solve Israel’s problems and STFU.

    13
  3. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    And, given that Hamas is the chief representative of the Palestinians in Gaza,

    This caught my eye. What makes Hamas ‘representative?’

    4
  4. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    Does it not seem to anyone that Palestinian ‘friends’ in the West are like the ‘friend’ who keeps urging you to get up again in a bar fight you’re clearly losing, and are going to keep on losing? Come on, man you’ve only have a broken leg, a massive concussion and a missing eye, whaddyou a pussy?

    Should Imperial Japan have kept fighting? Would people who cared about them urged them to? Should the South have kept up an endless war even after it was doomed? Would anyone who actually GAF about southerners told them to keep at it?

    They’re down to a rubble field in Gaza and a rapidly-gentrifying suburb in the WB. Do the Palestinians have to be Carthage to satisfy the romantic notions of Westerners? Yep, they’re all dead, but hey, they had gumption. Now, rest in peace.

    This is not a comic book movie, this is war, and all the Palestinians are ever going to do, is die. Yay?

    7
  5. drj Avatar
    drj

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Should Imperial Japan have kept fighting?

    This isn’t about whether Japan should have kept fighting, but about whether Japan would have kept fighting if surrender meant either genocide or permanent apartheid status in their own country.

    There’s got to be a carrot somewhere.

    But rather than acknowledging how people actually behave, you came up with a silly straw man. Did Japan/Germany disappear after WW2?

    12
  6. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @drj:
    Parts of Germany did.
    East Prussia, Silesia and the Sudetenland were effectively erased.

    It was not uncommonly thought in Germany that “unconditional surrender” was code for the ending of Germany.
    If the Morgenthau Plan had been implemented (partition and “pastoralization”) the consequences would have likely been mass famine.
    Germany was rather fortunate that the US and USSR began falling out almost immediately.

    7
  7. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @drj:
    If the option for the people of Gaza in September 2023 was between life in a self-governing Gaza, or Gaza reduced to ruin and death subsequent to a rather pointless atrocity, the first choice might have seemed preferable to some, at least.

    Just as it might be more sensible to try to work towards a route to the rebuilding of Gaza, and its return to self-government, rather than trying to carry on “resistance” in a rubble-heap.

    7
  8. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Michael Reynolds: That Netenyahu supported it to be a stalking horse enemy/pseudo government?

    1
  9. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @drj:

    genocide or permanent apartheid status in their own country.
    There’s got to be a carrot somewhere.

    As @JohnSF: points out, the Germans had every reason to suspect the Soviets would enslave them if not exterminate them.

    1) For the tenth time, people intent on genocide do not pause the genocide to offer polio shots. 2% death rate after a year is not genocide, it’s war.

    2) Permanent apartheid? Nothing is permanent. Live to fight another day, rather than dying today. Were the Japanese civilians on Okinawa smart to throw their babies off cliffs and blow themselves up with grenades? You know what the ones who surrendered are doing now? Bouncing their great, great grandchildren on their knees.

    3) The carrot is they live, they love, they have kids, they work, they eat, and drink and laugh. Would you suggest the population of North Korea commit suicide rather than submit? That’s being rather free with other people’s lives, isn’t it? Has anyone asked the people of Gaza if they want to die?

    4
  10. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @just nutha:
    So Hamas represents the Israelis not the Gazans.

  11. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    @Michael Reynolds:

    This caught my eye. What makes Hamas ‘representative?’

    Aside from having been elected (granted, a long time ago) to that role, they’re functionally serving it at the negotiating table. Even if some other body were somehow tabbed to negotiate on the behalf of the people of Gaza, Hamas ultimately has to comply with the terms of any agreement. If the extermination of Hamas is the end state, they’re not apt to agree to that in any meaningful way.

    5
  12. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Michael Reynolds: The Gazans don’t need a representative, they need to surrender. Or has that goalpost been moved again?

    2
  13. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Bibi won’t end the fighting until he’s sure he won’t be prosecuted, or until he dies.

    6
  14. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @just nutha:
    A surrender usually requires a representative of the surrendering party.
    So around we go.

    In Germany, some leaders carried out surrender proceedings, and were then promptly arrested.
    (Or, in one case, beaten half to death with their own field-marshal’s baton by a British Brigadier in a bad mood)

    2
  15. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Kathy:
    Right now I suspect Netanyahu’s political position is more secure than it has been for a long while.
    That may change one the detailed formal investigation of October 7th gets going.

    1
  16. steve Avatar
    steve

    The polls have shown that the Israelis strongly support the war efforts meaning they are more than OK with destroying Gaza and invading Lebanon. I think Bibi’s goal is to cause so much destruction he can tell people “never again” and have a majority of people believe him. Then, regardless of the results of an investigation it will be hard to throw him out.

    The long term plan now appears to be to settle all of the West Bank and force out any Arabs. Then sequester Gaza even more tightly hoping people mostly leave. There are few intact buildings left and the infrastructure is destroyed. Concrete and steel brought in for rebuilding could be used for tunnels so it will be limited. Rebuilding will be so slow people wont have much choice. This might even work in terms of eliminating another large scale attack like 10/7 but wont eliminate external attacks and internal terror killings.

    Steve

    4
  17. drj Avatar
    drj

    @JohnSF:

    I would have expected a bit more intellectual honesty from you. Just look at your own words:

    Parts of Germany did.

    If the Morgenthau Plan had been implemented

    RE this:

    It was not uncommonly thought

    But was it commonly thought? You prudently stay away from that claim. And if it was commonly thought, what was the point of Speer ignoring Hitler’s Nero Decree? Or (more mistakenly) of Himmler believing he could negotiate with the Western Allies?

    Germans still had reasons to hope. The Palestinians don’t.

    (And I also notice that gloss over Japan, which was more or less promised that it could keep its emperor – a key element in their decision to surrender.)

    2
  18. Scott F. Avatar
    Scott F.

    At the same time, Harris’s vision for a settlement demonstrates why it’s unlikely to happen:
    …
    That’s a tall order!

    I’ll take accurately “unlikely” over deceptively simple. There isn’t any outcome – including even the most heinous “solutions” of genocide or permanent apartheid – that would not be a tall order.

    3
  19. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    An uprising of the people of Gaza against Hamas is the obvious way out. But that’s a massive collective action problem and thus highly unlikely to materialize.

    It wasn’t Hamas who flattened their homes and killed members of their family. I suspect that if the Palestinian people in Gaza were to find the weapons and the gumption to start fighting, a large number would be killing Israeli soldiers rather than Hamas.

    People tend to be strongly motivated by anger and loss. (Look at MAGA, and how the victim-culture of MAGA has taken many previous decent people and turned them to shitheads, all because Black folks were being Black at them, or whatever)

    6
  20. Lucysfootball Avatar
    Lucysfootball

    @Michael Reynolds: ) The carrot is they live, they love, they have kids, they work, they eat, and drink and laugh.
    Maybe they look at the West Bank, where some of the terrorists are Israeli “settlers”. They seem to be treated a little different than Palestinian terrorists. The police and IDF don’t seem to have the same level of interest in stopping that type of terrorism. And the conviction rate when they do occasionally arrest someone is barely a nonzero number.

    6
  21. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    @Gustopher:

    It wasn’t Hamas who flattened their homes and killed members of their family.

    It was Hamas who perpetrated the October 7 massacres, spawning the Israel response. It is Hamas that continues to hide amongst the civilian population to ensure Israeli military action kills as many civilians as possible. What percentage of Gazans understand this and place the blame accordingly, I do not know.

    4
  22. Modulo Myself Avatar
    Modulo Myself

    I just don’t see legitimate Palestinian leadership coming into power which has the same racist views of Palestinians as Israel and America. But I do think that America and Israel are dumb and deluded enough to think this might be a thing which could happen. Or might happen, if not for the Palestinians and their ineptitude.

    4
  23. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    just don’t see legitimate Palestinian leadership coming into power which has the same racist views of Palestinians as Israel and America.

    Ayup. That’s a problem alright.

    1
  24. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Gustopher:
    @James Joyner:

    Blame isn’t necessarily a binary choice.

    That said, it’s easier to blame, and hate, the other than one’s own people.

    3
  25. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @James Joyner: It was Israel that either a) propped up Hamas or b) blockaded Gaza and created a situation so desperate that Hamas did this.

    See, it’s easy to follow paths backwards as long as you want. Even easier if you have no particular regard for or knowledge of the truth, but even then, pretty easy.

    You live in the South. You should know this. “They took mah great- great grand pappy’s rich neighbor’s slaves away” has been lightly reworded to “They have offended my Southern Pride.”

    Once you turn people into victims, it’s easy to turn them against anyone they can conceive of as the cause of that victimization. (All too often, it is “globalists”, “bankers” or just the seven Jews who rule the world*)

    I’m surprised we haven’t seen a lot more dead Israeli soldiers. Pleasantly surprised, as it as anyone showing any form of restraint might at least temper the cycle of violence slightly, but surprised.

    2
  26. dazedandconfused Avatar
    dazedandconfused

    @James Joyner:

    That suggests that Hamas can not be allowed to negotiate their own disbanding, does it not? A catch 22?

  27. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @drj:
    Yes the Germans had partial hopes, depending upon the (somewhat doubtful) good will of their enemies, which they knew varied. They had some hopes of the western allies being less vindictive. Hence the greater Wehrmacht defensive effort in the closing months to hold the Soviets.
    But Speer’s efforts would have been in vain had the Morgenthau Plan gone forward as was planned, despite grave British doubts.
    The analogy is, of course, an imperfect mapping: most historical analogies are, as actual events always vary to a greater or lesser extent.

    The Palestinian hopes are doubtful; but an attempt at a settlement has some hope.
    Continued Hamas-style resistance has none.
    Zero.

    Because in this circumstance the key thing is going to be the sticks and carrots that apply to Israel.
    The only hope Palestinians have of a resolution that comes anywhere near a minimal accommodation is by persuading at least a plurality of Israeli’s that Palestinian autonomy is compatible with their safety.
    And that granting such genuine autonomy, both in Gaza (once more) and the West Bank, is sufficiently desirable to justify the intra-Israeli political crisis that would ensue.

    At no point to date have the Palestinians seemed inclined to offer such a “carrot”.
    And their attempts at “sticks” have been simply self-defeating.
    From 1948 to date.

    In particular 7th October 2023, when the Hamas attacks, by a horrible irony, massacred their way through the kibbutzes that were one of the last strongholds of the Israeli left peace movement.

    At every turn, the “rejectionists” among the Palestinians, or in the wider Arab world (pre c.2010). or in Iran, have tended to convince a majority of Israelis, increasingly including the Labor etc opposition, that security is better sought by military dominance than by taking a chance.
    When a sizable, and empowered, faction of your antagonist/interlocutor is, you feel, with reason, bent on killing you, long term hopes tend to get sidelined in favour of short-term safety.

    An eventual vague hope of peace in the long-term is of little value if you feel you are liable to get your throat cut in the short term.
    Still less to embark on military coercion of your fellow countrymen in pursuit of a goal that appears to be a vain hope.

    5
  28. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Gustopher:

    “Israel that … propped up Hamas”

    It’s beyond doubt that the Israeli government was quite content to have a Hamas/Fatah split.
    However, I recall when there were suggestions after 2007, that the Hamas rule in Gaza should be undermined by cutting off funding, there were numerous complaints that such would be unconscionable punishment of the people of Gaza, and furthermore, that Hamas were the legitimate representatives of the people of Gaza.

    These seem to have got memory-holed of late.

    As Hamas were carrying out ongoing rocket attacks since 2007, an Israeli attempt to control the borders seems pretty much inevitable.
    Would you expect a “free movement” agreement in consequence?
    The “blockade” did not in any way compare to various war blockades of the past, which aimed at a total denial of all imports.

    And the absence of more dead IDF troops does not appear to owe much to a matter of choice on the part of Hamas or Hezbollah

    1
  29. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @JohnSF:

    And the absence of more dead IDF troops does not appear to owe much to a matter of choice on the part of Hamas or Hezbollah

    I kind of hope that if someone were to kill 1 in 50 (or more, but let’s use the lower bound) of a group of people that I was a part of, I would be hunting those motherfuckers down. Would I? No idea, but I hope that I would.

    The fact that so few of the folks in Gaza are doing that is surprising to me.

    2
  30. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Gustopher:
    Not to me.
    You may want to review the history of popular resistance to occupation forces in Europe from, say 1700 to 1970.
    Civilians trying to “hunt the motherfuckers down” seldom ended well.
    See the attempts of Germans at resistance in 1944/45, and what happened when they did so.

    3
  31. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    So, we now have two sides: the Romantics and the Realists.

    The Romantics want to fight to the last Gazan because defiance and clenched fists and David and Goliath and basically, Hollywood. Injustice must not stand! Katniss and her bow and arrow will defeat Donald Sutherland!

    The Realists, OTOH, believe it might be a good idea for Gazans to rebuild and have lives that don’t involve climbing through rubble. This would require Gazans to reject Hamas, the terrorists who precipitated this war, which is, admittedly, a heavy lift.

    In Hollywood (and in books) the righteous ‘little guy’ always wins. Because that’s how you write a good story. I’ve written a lot of those stories. Those stories are fantasy. They are not real. The little guys do not triumph. In our own national history we (the Big Guys) triumphed over the Indian nations and the Mexicans, and we kept absolutely everything we stole by force, because that is how reality works. The reason the triumph of the Little Guy makes a great story is because in reality it is really, really rare.

    What is real? Just about every tribe or people or nation has, at one time or another, surrendered. They surrendered as a clever way of staying alive. There were quite a number of tribes and cities in central Asia who encountered the Mongols. The Mongols offered a simple binary choice: surrender or disappear from the face of the earth. The Romantics would have had all those people disappear from the face of the earth. (Maybe don’t mention this to the millions of living people who descended from those surrender monkeys.)

    Gazans, and Palestinians generally, do not face that stark choice. Despite the hysterical rhetoric of the Romantics, the Israelis are not going to kill 2 million Gazans, or the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank. (Or the ~3 million Palestinians in Jordan). What Palestinians face is being second class citizens. Living second class citizens. Living second class citizens who despite being second class citizens will enjoy broader human rights than pretty much every Arab in every Arab state where Arabs are first class citizens.

    Is this justice? Um, no. There is very little justice in history. History is much more about injustice. Soooo much injustice. The odds of justice happening in history are about like the odds of winning the lottery.

    But, if you think ‘never surrender’ is the only answer, take a good long look at your spouse and your children, and ask yourself honestly, if you’d rather see them dead, than second class citizens.

    3
  32. Lounsbury Avatar
    Lounsbury

    @Michael Reynolds: Actually what I see here is two sides
    1. The Israaeli Romantic side
    2. The Palestinian Romantic side

    With about zero actual realism amongst either.

    And so one may expect rather utterly fantastical extrapolations about Palestinian actions completely disconnected from their own choice architecture and infected with a priori assumptiosn derived from the 1970s. And Israeli the same – stuck in a negative loop, all smelling vaguely familiarly of the early Botha era.

    Could have been different if there had been a political route non-Netanya poorly disguised annexationism. But there is not.

    Living second class citizens who despite being second class citizens will enjoy broader human rights than pretty much every Arab in every Arab state where Arabs are first class citizens.

    This is ill-informed and vaguely racist nonsense* completely unfoudned as to the West Bank and Ghaza, but since I understand one will never drag you out of 1970 in understanding of the region…

    The choice architecture Netanyahu approach drives is negative all around – except for him fraction of course, like that of the early Botha, the short-term threat logic is the sale

    *: as notably taking just the West Bank, neither Jordanian Palestinians nor broadly residents or citizens of functioning states, Gulf, Morocco, even Egypt – are not subject to exproriations, unrestrained settler violence and expropriation, lack of stable and secure land title, lack of stable and predictable internal-to-territory travel. (etc). None of this allows either functioning government or economy to emerge and by no accident.

    Of course telling romantic tales about the occupation effects as compared to a 1970s era understanding of the Arab states is conforting as a narrative.

    1
  33. drj Avatar
    drj

    @Michael Reynolds:

    So, we now have two sides: the Romantics and the Realists.

    No, dude, we have Palestinians who can choose between 1) actively fighting Hamas (at great personal risk) to the benefit of what is at best a lesser evil; and 2) being bombed by that (at best) lesser evil.

    Not only do you fail to see that neither is an attractive option (which causes most people to remain passive, cf. Vietnam for example), but you also blame Western opponents of Israeli war crimes for the fact that Gazans are not chomping at the bit to take on Hamas.

    You’re plainly (and either stupidly or dishonestly) barking up the wrong tree here.

    1
  34. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @Lounsbury:
    AmnestyInternational on Jordan:

    The authorities escalated their crackdown on freedom of expression and association for political activists, journalists, workers, political party members, LGBTI people and others through the use of abusive and vaguely defined laws. Debt imprisonment continued, in breach of international law. Civilians continued to be tried in military courts. A new law granted Jordanian women married to non-Jordanian men the right to retain their nationality, but they remained unable to pass their nationality to their spouse and children. LGBTI people faced harassment and abuse fostered by “immorality” provisions in the Penal Code and an anti-LGBTI campaign led by some parliamentarians.

    On Saudi Arabia:

    The authorities targeted individuals for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression or association, and some were sentenced to lengthy prison terms or death following grossly unfair trials. Human rights defenders continued to be arbitrarily detained or subject to travel bans following their conditional release from prison. Courts handed down death sentences following grossly unfair trials, including in cases of individuals who were children at the time of their alleged crimes, and people were executed for a wide range of crimes. Migrants were subjected to serious human rights abuses, including killings at the border with Yemen and treatment that may amount to human trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation. Thousands of people were involuntarily returned to their home country as part of a nationwide crackdown on undocumented migrants. Women continued to face discrimination in law and practice.

    On Egypt:

    Presidential elections took place in a repressive environment, with genuine opposition candidates prevented from running and the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly severely suppressed. Authorities released 834 prisoners held for political reasons but arrested over triple that number during 2023. Thousands of actual or perceived government critics remained arbitrarily detained and/or unjustly prosecuted. Enforced disappearances and torture and other ill-treatment remained rampant. Death sentences were handed down after grossly unfair trials but the rate of executions dropped. Impunity prevailed for grave human rights violations committed in 2023 and previous years. Women and girls, religious minorities and LGBTI individuals were subjected to discrimination, violence and prosecution for exercising their human rights. Authorities failed to address economic and social rights affected by the worsening economic crisis, and to protect workers from unfair dismissals by private companies. Forced evictions from informal settlements continued, and tens of thousands of North Sinai residents were barred from returning to their homes. Refugees and asylum seekers were arbitrarily detained for irregularly entering or staying in Egypt, and forced expulsions took place.

    On Iraq:

    Iraqi authorities took no meaningful steps to bring to justice members of security forces and state-affiliated militias involved in the violent crackdown on nationwide protests in October 2019. Security forces continued to forcibly disappear men and boys, and the fate of thousands of Iraqis who were subjected to enforced disappearance in previous years remained unknown. Iraqi authorities attacked freedom of expression and prepared new laws to further curb this right. Authorities intensified their repression of LGBTI people’s rights. Protection from gender-based violence remained severely limited in central Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The majority of the 1.1 million internally displaced people in Iraq continued to live in precarious situations and unable to access basic rights.

    I’ll be generous and leave out Syria. And Libya. And Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. All reports from 2023. None from 1970.

    You Brits do have rather a record of anti-semitism. Maybe try offering some facts rather than just your trademark smugness.

    And you of course failed utterly to suggest how, in the real world, Gaza is helped by continuing defiance. What’s your solution, oh wise one? What’s your plan?

    2
  35. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    Here’s Amnesty’s summary of the MENA:

    The devastating escalation of violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict had profound ramifications across the region, and worldwide. From October, Israeli forces killed more than 21,000 Gazans, mostly civilians, many unlawfully, while Hamas deliberately killed civilians in Israel and held hostages and captives. The conflict’s deep roots lie in Israel’s forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948, the military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, Israel’s ongoing system of apartheid against Palestinians, and its 16-year illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip.

    The impacts of other long-standing conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen continued to blight the lives of millions of people, particularly those from marginalized communities, including internally displaced people, refugees and migrants, and ethnic minorities, many of whom were denied the most basic rights to food, water, adequate housing, healthcare and security. Indiscriminate attacks, destruction of infrastructure, forced displacement and abusive rule by security forces, militias and armed groups continued with impunity.

    Regional governments failed to respond adequately to the impacts of sharp cost of living rises, economic crises and natural and climate change-linked disasters, all affecting the fundamental human rights of hundreds of millions of people. People expressing their political, social and economic grievances faced punitive measures intended to silence dissent. Authorities detained, tortured and unjustly prosecuted dissidents and critics, punishing them with harsh sentences, including the death penalty, travel bans, threats and other forms of harassment. Those targeted included journalists, online commentators, human rights defenders – including campaigners for the rights of women, LGBTI people and marginalized communities – political and trade union activists. In Egypt, Iran and Jordan, security forces used unlawful, sometimes lethal, force alongside enforced disappearances and mass arbitrary arrests to suppress protests. Most perpetrators of such human rights violations enjoyed impunity for their crimes.

    Discrimination remained rife across the region on the basis of gender, race, nationality, legal status, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion and economic class. In some countries it was entrenched in law.

    Although extreme weather events like drought and intense heat brought death and destruction to parts of the region, governments failed to take the necessary action to tackle climate change and environmental degradation; several announced plans to expand fossil fuel production, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which hosted COP28.

  36. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    Oh, and here’s Pew’s summary of religious freedom in the MENA:

    The Middle East-North Africa region continued to have the highest level of government restrictions on religion out of all regions. The median score for the 20 countries (6.0) in 2017 was more than double the global median (2.8), which has been the case every year since 2007. Since 2016, there has been a small decline (0.2 points) in the Middle East’s median score, partly due to fewer reports of government hostility toward minority religious groups (down from 15 countries in 2016 to 12 in 2017).

    Sorry, is it racist to quote that?

    How about this?

    Saudi Arabia has executed 213 people so far in 2024, more than it has in any other calendar year on record, as the kingdom competes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).

    According to the London-based rights group Reprieve, which documents the death penalty worldwide, the largest recorded figure prior to this year was 196 in 2022, followed by 184 in 2019.

    “As the world’s attention fixates on horror elsewhere in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is clearing death row with a bloodbath,” Reprieve’s deputy director, Harriet McCulloch, told MEE.

    “The Kingdom smashed its own grim record for most people executed in a year in the first nine months of 2024,” she added. “With 213 executions and counting, death row prisoners are at greater risk than ever before, their families desperately awaiting news of their fate in the news.”

    The executions are taking place under the government of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the kingdom’s prime minister and de facto leader, who pledged in a 2018 interview to minimise capital punishment.

    Yet, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most prolific executioners.

    At least 1,115 executions have been carried out under Mohammed bin Salman’s rule between 21 June 2017 and 9 October 2024, a spokesperson for Reprieve told Middle East Eye.

    In 2023, a joint report by the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) and Reprieve revealed that Riyadh’s execution rate has almost doubled since King Salman and his son, Mohammed bin Salman, came to power in 2015.

    Between 2015 and 2022, executions surged by 82 percent.

    I’m sure you and your straight, male, wealthy business pals are having no problems. But women? Gays? Non-Muslims? Dissidents? Journalists? Yeah, not so much.

    2
  37. drj Avatar
    drj

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Christ, you sound like a Rhodesia apologist from 1976: “Why won’t these stupid blacks understand that they’re better off under the enlightened leadership of Ian Smith?”

    Even assuming that this would true, this is not how actual people think and act.

    If anyone is the naive romantic, it’s you.

  38. Lounsbury Avatar
    Lounsbury

    @Michael Reynolds: Your circa 1970 understanding of the region is am invariable.
    Somewhat sas but anticipated. The red herrings of religious minorities besides being wrong o facts is amply demonstrated by alignment, my dear Xian Palestinian colleagues, and operational workers are as deeply hating Israel as the Mislims and typically opt to work, when they can get exit permission… in the Gulf. Not Israel. There are the Real world answers.

    As I have gay Palestinian friends there again the answer is they rather fear more the Settler and the Army and unrestricted violence than their own society which operationally is not the self justifying stereotype that you Americans have built up to justify and rationalise idiocies like Iraq.

    Now as a basic human right, not arch red Herring apologia, being able yo be secure on one’s home against expropriation or ethnically based attack and expropriation is fundamental.

    The fact that we can not write credit insurance on Zone B and C Palestinian installation of RE (solar panels, etc), as the data is that even with full international subsidy for risk backing, the levels of destruction by settlers and/or army of panels are insolvency generating. Nowhere else in world do we face this. The basic dignity is lacking so singing “think of the gays and minority” is a very pathetic song of distraction.

    Realism rather than romantic stories of rights.

    It does not have to be this way but like Botha, it’s the path that was chosen and unless change happens, the end state will not improve, and no matter of poorly informed WII analogies changes that.

  39. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @Lounsbury:

    Your circa 1970 understanding of the region is am invariable.

    You know, dude, I’ve defended you here on a couple of occasions. But I’m starting to think you’re just full of shit. I just data dumped a trove of very current, very reliable info from excellent sources, and all you’ve got is bluster and inarticulate insults. I think you got nuthin’. You’re just some businessman who does business with people in the region – rich people in the region. And your observations are about as relevant as when I’m sitting at Robuchon and opining that homelessness isn’t a problem cause I don’t see any, and none of the other rich assholes around me do, either.

    4
  40. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Michael Reynolds:

    You Brits do have rather a record of anti-semitism.

    That may be true, but with all due apologies to Lounsbury for my guesswork, and I may be mistaken, I think Lounsbury is almost certainly not British.

  41. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @JohnSF:
    I imagine you’re right. He pretends to have a public school (in the UK sense of the phrase) education, but trips all over his own pomposity and never really displays any actual, you know, education. Also, ‘Lounsbury’ is too eye-rolling and lacks the distinctive English self-deprecation and drollery. ‘Try hard,’ is the phrase, I believe.

    I apologize unreservedly for any slight to Britain, which I love despite the weather, which John Oliver describes as bad, “but not in any sort of interesting way.” Something about clouds so low they weigh on your soul.

    I passed through London a week ago. Rain. Heading back next week, again just for a few days, staying at the Peninsula* and basically wasting time between Nice and my wife’s work requirement to be in Nashville. A badly-timed vacation due to late changes, crossed-signals, and the need to schedule my sister to watch the dogs in Vegas.

    *I’m burning off Amex points. I will waste some money on posh hotels, but I have my limits. I don’t actually have a baseball cap with me, but may have to get one so I can stroll through the lobby with one turned around backward, while addressing all staff, as ‘Bro.’

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