Jew World Order

Editor’s Note: Below is the latest installment of The Shift, Michael Arria’s weekly newsletter taking you to the front lines in the battle over Palestine in U.S. politics. To receive The Shift every Thursday, sign up here.

Who Can Fight Back?

The mainstream media is openly embracing armed resistance these days. Sky News ran a segment that featured Ukrainians making molotov cocktails. “The styrofoam works to make the molotov cocktails sticky..to help it stick to vehicles and other targets,” the anchor explained. CNN interviewed Ukrainian parliament member Kira Rudik, who says she’s armed and ready to protect her country from the invasion. “If the Russians are pushing in from the north, how long do you think you can resist?,” she was asked. CNN also spoke to a Ukrainian store owner named Kateryna Yurko. “The two most important things a Ukrainian woman needs to know is how to make borscht and Molotovs,” she told the network.

Pointing out the hypocrisy of mainstream foreign policy coverage might seem trite and redundant to some, but come on. Imagine the hysterical reaction that would ensue if some network interviewed, oh I dunno let’s say, Palestinians preparing to fight back against Israeli oppression. Many highlighted the double standard on social media.

Omar Baddar: “I dream of the day armed Palestinian resistance to foreign invaders and occupiers in their homeland is treated by American media with the same sympathy and lionization that Ukrainian resistance is rightly portrayed.”

Abdallah Fayyad: “What Ukrainian civilians are doing is armed resistance—a completely justifiable turn to violence to defend themselves. Americans have quickly understood that. I hope they can also be as understanding when non-Europeans turn to arms as a last resort in their struggles for freedom.”

Mariam Barghouti: “Highlighting the double standards of international response to Ukrainian armed resistance compared to other non-White struggles such as Palestine is not a competition for attention. It’s highlighting how inherently racist attitudes and perceptions are to our struggles.”

Ali Abunimah after sharing a tweet about molotov cocktail making from a British journalist: “She is a BBC reporter. Everyone has a right to resist. But have you ever seen such glowing and supportive coverage of even unarmed Palestinian resistance to Western-backed Israeli occupation? They are afraid to even mention Palestine. If all this does not open your eyes …”

Let’s play out this hypothetical for a moment. I have recently been reading Somdeep Sen’s fascinating 2020 book Decolonizing Palestine. At one point Sen talks to a Gaza-based photojournalist at a hotel, something mainstream Western networks could hypothetically do. “Resistance and government are fine. But for me the main problem is that there are so many social and moral limitations on Gaza’s citizens,” she tells him. “All I want is to be free. We don’t have freedom in the Gaza strip.”

Sen follows up by asking her what she thinks about Hamas’ dual role as resistance and government. “For me the muqawama is the most important. We live under occupation and therefore we need resistance. We need a mixture..but the military wing is the most important part. There is no other way…”

Sen asks whether a balance can be maintained between the two roles.

“If you are talking about a balance, we are forced to make one. We don’t have a balance because of Israeli attacks. They have destroyed our infrastructure and prevented us from conducting proper governance. So, we are continually catching up. We are not progressing but ‘breaking even’. The only thing people have is resistance.”

If perspectives like this were included in the mainstream media, maybe the population would end up being a little more critical about the debate around something like Iron Dome funding. Last year when the House approved an additional billion in U.S. taxpayer money to Israel (on top of the $3.8 billion it already gets) the entire thing was framed as a simple matter of protecting innocent Israelis. Anyone who opposed the measure must be in favor of death and destruction was the implication. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle stood up to talk about the terror of Hamas rockets, without any attempt to contextualize the situation, point to the (much deadlier) attacks on Gaza, or suggest that maybe Palestinians have the right to be protected from violence too. Even progressives who support conditioning aid to Israel, like Jamaal Bowman and Betty McCollum, voted for the funding. AOC voted present. The final vote was 420-9.

Rashida Tlaib was one of the only Representatives to vote against the funding. “We cannot only be talking about Israelis’ need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system and our dying from what Human Rights Watch have said are war crimes,” she said in a speech on the House floor. “We should also be talking about the Palestinian need for security from Israeli attacks. We must be consistent in our commitment to human life.”

She went on to point out that Israel was an apartheid regime according to Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, two very mainstream groups. Months later Amnesty International would finally say the same thing.

A complete and total legislative rout was not enough some pro-Israel lawmakers. Tlaib’s comments prompted a fellow Democratic Rep, Florida’s Ted Deutch, to respond. Deutch is the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on the Middle East. “I cannot– cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives..to label the Jewish Democratic state of Israel an apartheid state,” he told the chamber. “I reject it…. I say to my colleague who just besmirched our ally… to falsely characterize Israel… is consistent with those who advocate for the dismantling of the one Jewish state in the world.. When there’s no place on the map for one Jewish state, that’s antisemitism.”

If you’re wondering how many Democrats stood up to Deutch and defended Tlaib against this smear, it was exactly zero.

Now we know that Deutch’s rant might have simply been practice for his next gig. This week he announced that he’s leaving congress to become CEO of the American Jewish Committee, a right-wing pro-Israel group that uses the vast majority of its resources to attack BDS and condemn anything resembling pro-Palestine sentiment. “I didn’t make a decision to move on from Congress, I really made a decision to move into this incredible opportunity to spend all of my time focused on the issues that I’m so passionate about — defending the global Jewish community and Israel’s rightful place in the world and defending democratic values,” says Deutch.

When he says “the global Jewish community”, he’s obviously not thinking about anti-Zionist Jews. Deutch doesn’t care about the 25% of U.S. Jews who now say Israel is an apartheid state, any more than he cares about human rights groups saying as much. He’s not interested in having any kind of discussion about what the United States’ economic support for Israel actually means for Palestinians. In Deutch’s world only certain people count and human rights are a one-way street.

Western media might not be as explicit as someone like Deutch when it comes to their bias, but some blatant examples have slipped through the cracks over the last couple weeks. CBS News’ Charlie D’Agata said that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.” One wonders how that would have sounded if he hadn’t chosen his words carefully.

A former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine told the BBC that, “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.” The network’s host responded, “I understand and respect the emotion.”

Moustafa Bayoumi had a good column targeting these sentiments in The Guardian. “But if we decide to help Ukrainians in their desperate time of need because they happen to look like ‘us’ or dress like ‘us’ or pray like ‘us,’ or if we reserve our help exclusively for them while denying the same help to others, then we have not only chosen the wrong reasons to support another human being,” he wrote. “We have also, and I’m choosing these words carefully, shown ourselves as giving up on civilization and opting for barbarism instead.”

This might also seem kind of trite but let’s revisit UNGA resolution 37/43, since the UN has been cited glowingly in recent weeks. That 1982 resolution reaffirmed that “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

Boycotts

Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions are also good now. Throughout the world there are calls to target Russia with such measures and, lo and behold, no one seems to be making the claim that the country is being “singled out” for its human rights abuses or being subjected to a “double standard.”

FIFA has kicked Russia and all its club teams out of international competition. This means the country’s national team won’t compete in World Cup qualifiers. (It’s probably worth remembering that the tournament will take place in Qatar this year… ) The Israel Football Association (IFA) is an affiliate of FIFA and it features teams that actually play in illegal settlements. In addition to the legality of the situation, this also violates FIFA’s own rules and there have been repeated calls for them to take action. Of course they have not.

Governors like Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Spencer Cox of Utah have demanded that their liquor boards remove Russian vodka from stores. Both men have also signed anti-BDS laws, making it illegal for companies to boycott Israel in their states.

The alcohol retailer Total Wine has removed Russian-sourced products from its stores. Total Wine is owned by David Trone, a Democratic congressman from Maryland who donates at least $100,000 to AIPAC every year. “We’re categorically opposed to BDS,” he said in 2020. “A company shouldn’t be coerced into boycotting Israel.”

Nick Cave says he won’t perform in Russia and that he stands with the people of Ukraine. When activists tried to pressure him to cancel a concert in Israel in 2018, he sang a much different tune, calling the BDS movement “cowardly and shameful.”

“I do not support the current government in Israel, yet do not accept that my decision to play in the country is any kind of tacit support for that government’s policies,” he wrote. He also said the boycott effort was “partly the reason I am playing Israel – not as support for any particular political entity but as a principled stand against those who wish to bully, shame and silence musicians.”

Hmm.

Odds & Ends

🇵🇸 Students at Loyola University are demanding that the school divest from Israel.

📺 Hillary Clinton went on Rachel Maddow’s show to talk about Russia. “Remember, the Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980,” she told viewers. “It didn’t end well for the Russians…but the fact is, that a very motivated, and then funded, and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.” No mention of what happened next.

🏫 The University of Washington’s Liora R. Halperin led the school’s Israel studies program, but she made the mistake of signing a letter that condemned the country’s brutal attack on Gaza. “As scholars of Jewish studies and Israel studies based in various universities, departments, and disciplines,” read the letter. “We condemn the state violence that the Israeli government and its security forces have been carrying out in Gaza; their evictions of Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah and other neighborhoods of East Jerusalem; and their suppression of civilian protests in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Jewish-Arab cities, and Palestinian towns and villages in Israel. We express profound sadness at the recurrence of intercommunal violence between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel and anger at the impunity enjoyed by most Jewish attackers.”

That may read like commonsense stuff, but it was apparently enough to anger a wealthy donor named Becky Benaroya. She demanded a meeting with the university and they couldn’t find a workable solution so the university ended up returning $5 million to her.

What happened to Halperin? She’ll keep her job but she was stripped of the endowed chair that she held. She sent Inside Higher Ed an email about the situation. “My colleagues and deans have been generous partners in helping replace my lost personal research funds in the near term and helping me envision how to move forward,” she explained. “I continue to feel privileged to work at UW. But in making the nearly unprecedented choice to return the endowment money—in the absence of any contractual obligation to do so—UW has dealt an immediate blow to the students who have come to rely on the resources of the program, limited our opportunities to bring innovative academic programming, and sent a broader chilling message about the potential material consequences of engaging in principled political speech.”

This blatant attack on academic freedom will not be chalked up as an example “cancel culture” by the usual suspects for obvious reasons.

🩰 Tweet from Artists for Palestine UK: “If the European and US political & cultural elite can enact a blanket cultural boycott against Russia days after its invasion of Ukraine, they can surely support the targeted, nuanced, strictly institutional cultural boycott of apartheid Israel after 74 yrs.”

🇦🇫 Experts say 59% of Afghanistan’s population is living on a starvation diet. That’s 24 million people.

💸 I thought this Twitter thread from Sana Saeed contrasting current Russia sanctions with the goals of BDS was really good.

🇷🇺 Patrick Cockburn:

So why did Putin do it? Explanations that he has gone mad or plans to rebuild the Soviet Union are propagandistic. More convincing as a reason for him taking this present extraordinary risk is hubris, which is an occupational disease among those who have been too long in power – 22 years in Putin’s case.

Such leaders trust too much in their own judgement, while their advisers come to resemble courtiers who hold their job because they know how to bend the knee and pay tribute on all occasions to the wisdom of their leader.

The arrogance and ignorance of power does not solely infect authoritarian rulers like Putin. Tony Blair never seemed to know much about Iraq from the time of the invasion in 2003 until the present day. Going by his memoirs, David Cameron has remained proudly ignorant of all things Libyan, a country he helped invade in 2011. Political leaders of all stripes visibly relish the role of warlord and the same applies to Putin.

Leaders are also conscious that success on the battlefield will do them a lot of political good back home. It was an advisor to Tsar Nicholas II who told him that “what this country needs is a short victorious war”. What they got was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 in which the overconfident Russian army and fleet were humiliatingly defeated by Japan. When news of this failure reached home, it provoked the protests and uprisings of 1905 which in turn prepared the ground for the 1917 Revolution.

🇺🇦 Chomsky was interviewed in Truthout on the situation in Ukraine. “Like it or not, the choices are now reduced to an ugly outcome that rewards rather than punishes Putin for the act of aggression — or the strong possibility of terminal war. It may feel satisfying to drive the bear into a corner from which it will lash out in desperation — as it can. Hardly wise.”

📰 The drums of war get the hawks circling. An op-ed from the Wall Street Journal editorial calls for a bigger Navy: “Storm clouds are gathering as authoritarians reach for global power, and the U.S. is going to have to decide if it wants to spend what it takes to defend itself,” it warns. “On that score it is good to see fresh focus on the need for a larger, more lethal Navy—which is more urgent and will be more costly than the public understands.”

🇮🇱 A group of House members (Don Bacon, Elaine Luria, and Scott Franklin) sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks encouraging the United States to “incorporate lessons learned” from the IDF’s tactics in Gaza. “Thank you for your exemplary service and commitment to our national security. We look forward to your response and to working with you to accelerate our incorporation of relevant insights from the IDF to improve U.S. defense capabilities,” it reads.

✈️ Haaretz ran a piece about the backlash over recent Democratic delegations to Israel.

🤠 It looks like Greg Casar has won the Democratic primary in Texas’s 35th district by over 40 points, which means he’s almost definitely heading to the House next year. We’ve covered the democratic socialist’s fallout with DSA over the question of Israel.

🇺🇳 Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke at UN Human Rights Council 49th Session, where he condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “These are the human rights abuses this Council was created to stop. If we cannot come together now, when will we come together?,” he asked. Moments later Blinken criticized the UNHRC’s probe into Israel’s human rights abuses. “We will continue to counter anti-Israel bias and the unfair and disproportionate focus on Israel on the Council,” he explained.

🇸🇴 The United States conducted a drone strike in Somalia, its first airstrike on the country since last summer.

🇮🇷 At the site Prabir Purkaystha writes about the Iran nuclear deal:

Washington was not alone in its foolishness of pulling out of an agreement like the Iran nuclear deal that sought to impose the most stringent restrictions any country had accepted on its nuclear programs. It was egged on, if not instigated, by Israel, which wanted the United States to do what it could not: remove the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons and defang its missile capabilities. As most technologies required for nuclear weapons or missiles are dual-use, these restrictions would have converted Iran to a second-class industrial power.

A set of Israeli military experts have now come out saying that asking the United States to pull out of the Iran deal was a huge blunder, and the best course for Israel now would be to work to reinstate the nuclear deal. A report published in January 2022 by Ben Armbruster in Responsible Statecraft says, “The head of Israel’s military intelligence agency, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, has said that the revival of the Iran nuclear agreement would be better for Israel than if it were to be allowed to collapse entirely.“

🤝 Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont took returned from a trip to Israel championing the state’s business ties to the country. “President Herzog said, ‘Hey, you’re just like us, sort of innovative and punching above your weight class. We have more in common than I thought about before,’” Lamont said. “I come out of the business world, where there’s nothing more important than personal relationships. You can argue these things on paper until you’re blue in the face, but a personal relationship really matters. And I like to think that was a big takeaway from the week.”

⚽ Amazing opening to this Washington Post story:

Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial and museum, is embroiled in controversy after attempting to intervene in planned sanctions against Israeli Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, owner of the Chelsea Premier League soccer team and a longtime supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a letter to U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides, Yad Vashem, together with the country’s chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau and Sheba Medical Center Director Yitshak Kreiss, asked that the United States not sanction Abramovich, a major donor to the memorial and other Jewish causes. They said that sanctioning him would cause harm to Jewish institutions that rely on him for donations, said Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan, who said that Abramovich was the museum’s second largest private donor, after the late Sheldon Adelson and his widow, Miriam.

This week Abramovich announced that he will sell the team.

🍦 Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever says it will try to work out a new arrangement for ice cream sales in Israel. The Palestinian BDS National Committee put out a statement on the announcement:

It is no coincidence that Unilever’s latest attempt to appease apartheid comes on the heels of a new groundbreaking report by Amnesty International, documenting in meticulous detail Israel’s regime of apartheid against Palestinians and calling for global efforts to dismantle it. Apartheid is universally recognized as a crime against humanity. Amnesty has specifically called on corporations to cease business with Israel that is “contributing to or benefiting from the system of apartheid.” 

Amnesty’s report, which reveals how Israel treats all Palestinians as “an inferior racial group,” has caused Israel to panic and to attempt to quash it before its release. It follows similar reports by Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, cumulatively reminding Israel, and corporations that are complicit in its system of oppression, of the fate of apartheid in South Africa. 

🍀 Some news from the Northeastern Students for Justice in Palestine, shared via a Twitter thread:

We at Northeastern University Students for Justice in Palestine are proud to announce we have successfully passed legislation in the student government for accountability of the NUPD, including ending the deadly exchange with the IDF! In 2016, NUPD, along with other local police departments, participated in ADL sponsored trainings with the IDF, where they exchange tactics and “best practices.” However, these trainings often serve to reinforce practices that oppress both Palestinians and people of color. In November, along with a broad coalition of campus organizations, we introduced legislation to calling on NUPD to release information pertaining to their spending on weapons and other equipment, along with investing in body cams and other transparency measures. In addition, our legislation explicitly bans NUPD from participating in trainings with the IDF, or any other military force. Tonight, our legislation passed with a clear mandate support from the student government! We applaud the student government association for taking these steps, and look forward to continuing to fight for justice, for those both here on our campus and abroad.

💣 Ali Abunimah on the push for war: “The current atmosphere reminds me of the terrifying period right after the 11 September 2001 attacks. At that time, if anyone asked why this happened, how it happened, what led to this point and what were the policies of the United States that could have created the conditions for it, they were immediately accused of justifying the 9/11 attacks.”

😮 I didn’t think I’d ever quote a Tom Friedman column unless I was doing it ironically, but here we are. I must confess that his Feb 21 effort is required reading. After the Senate ratified NATO expansion in 1998, Friedman called up the American diplomat and historian George Kennan (who was 94 at the time) to get his thoughts. In his recent column Friedman reproduces Kennan’s entire answer. Keep in mind that Kennan was one of the country’s fiercest and most dedicated cold warriors for many decades, which obviously informs some of his analysis here. Anyway, here’s what he told Friedman about NATO expansion:

I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. (NATO expansion) was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.

Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then (the NATO expanders) will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.

🇵🇸 Great episode of UpFront where Marc Lamont Hill interviews Palestine Legal founder Dima Khalidi and professor of Jewish history Barry Trachtenberg about the high costs of speaking up for Palestinians.

Stay safe out there,

Michael

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