‘Outrage’ at the United Nations

In Alice in Wonderland, we hear this wondrously subversive quote from the White Queen:

“Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

            That pretty much describes the state of Israel’s outrage regarding the recent U.N. Security Council vote condemning its illegal settlements, and especially the United States’ refusal to block this vote. Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, called President Obama’s abstention (the U.S. didn’t vote for the measure; it abstained, thus withholding its customary veto which has allowed Israel to avoid the full censure of the U.N. in all past votes condemning it) a “shameful ambush.” This language, and Israeli outrage, thus qualifies as Alice-in-Wonderland thinking, or perhaps better, newspeak. Its sense is patent nonsense, not least because it turns the real situation on its head. Israel is the aggressor here, Israel is the violator of dozens of United Nations’ resolutions condemning its illegal settlements, as the last one did, as “a flagrant violation under international law.” That is, nearly 600,000 Israelis live in settlements, mostly in the West Bank (the presumptive home of a Palestinian state) and East Jerusalem (long allocated as the Palestinian portion of that putatively international city), and every one of them is illegal—an attempt, according to most observers, to literally steal Palestinian land and eventually make a Palestinian state an impossibility. Though the United States has not condemned the building of new settlements as international crimes, it has regularly objected to them as a hindrance to the peace process. Secretary of State John Kerry, in defending the U.S. refusal to veto the recent UN resolution, has said this specifically. The United States, he said recently, was actually standing up for a two-state solution when it abstained, because the settlements make a two-state solution impossible.

            To Israel, however, and to Netanyahu in particular (supported from the sidelines by President-Elect Trump in an unprecedented interference in foreign policy before he takes office on January 20), the U.S. action was a betrayal, an “ambush.” Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, called it a “misguided hit job.” And the United States Congress, continuing its shameful pandering to a foreign government, on January 5 voted 342 to 80 to ‘support Israel unwaveringly’ and to insist that the United States reject future actions at the United Nations that are similarly “one-sided and anti-Israel.” Several Congress members are going further, pushing the United States to cut the funding that the U.S. provides to the UN (about 22% of the UN budget), just as Israel has done recently. To see how absurd these statements are, consider these points about settlements.

1)    the settlements are in breach of Article 49 of the 4^th Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupier from transferring its own civilians into the territory it occupies. That is because occupations resulting from war must be temporary, not permanent—and Israel’s occupation of Palestine’s West Bank has lasted for fifty years.

2)    the settlements are also in breach of Article 55 of the Hague Regulations, according to which an occupier must safeguard occupied properties and maintain the status quo. Instead, the Israeli settlements actually undermine public order, and inflict major and usually negative changes upon the territory they occupy.

That these are violations of international law is thus clear and evident to any impartial observer. Even Israeli groups like B’Tselem have agreed with such analyses and have called on the government of Israel to suspend all new settlement programs and, at the very least, stop giving financial incentives to Israeli citizens to populate new settlements. B’Tselem has also called for the gradual dismantling of all existing settlements and the resettling of the settler population, including the nearly 200,000 living in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, to legal communities within the borders of the Israeli state. In other words, far from encouraging new settlements, as the current government (supported by the rabid Israel supporters in the U.S. Congress) is doing, this Israeli organization calls for just the opposite: the government should dismantle settlements and adhere to Israel’s obligations under international law.

            But of course, any criticism both inside and outside of Israel, is treated as betrayal, terrorism, anti-semitism, and the ambush of the “only democracy in the Middle East.” As Alon Ben Meir notes in his piece “The Settlements: Self-Entrapment of Existential Proportions,” (Huffington Post Sept. 8, 2016), though Netanyahu claims that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace and a two-state solution,

…In the same breath, he publicly and repeatedly states that the Jews have an inalienable historic right to the entire “land of Israel,” especially the West Bank. As such, Israel is not an occupying power and has the inherent right to establish settlements on any part of its historic land.

Read that again. Despite the fact that the Israelis have occupied Palestinian lands illegally since the 1967 war, and despite the fact that every rational observer regards those usurped Palestinian lands as the basis for peace via a two-state solution (where Israel would keep its lands behind the green line and the Palestinians would get the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem for their state), Netanyahu dismisses all of this by recourse to the old “land of Israel” argument. ‘It’s in the Bible.’ ‘It’s in our book.’ ‘God gave us this land (hence the historic written-by-God right to the entire “land of Israel” or Eretz Israel) and we therefore own it— regardless of the Palestinians who have lived and worked this land for generations.’ Therefore, war or no war, UN or no UN, “Israel is NOT an occupying power” and can therefore establish settlements anywhere it chooses on its God-given land. And it can push and separate and create Bantustans for Palestinians who are nothing but interlopers squatting on God’s land anyway. And finally, as has long been the position of the extreme right in Israel—like Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party, AND David Friedman, Trump’s choice to be America’s Ambassador to Israel—settlement expansion is really the tip of the spear of annexation of the entire West Bank into the longed-for Greater Israel that will do away with Palestinian statehood and Palestinians entirely.

            So when the United Nations Security Council passes a resolution that disputes Israel’s right to do whatever it wishes with its land and the ‘squatters’ who live there, it goes berserk (along with the white supremacist toadies in the U.S. Congress), and shouts “ambush” and “hit job” and “monumental betrayal.” And it gets the President-Elect to vow that once he gets into office, the United States of America will go the distance to support Israel’s God-given right to steal all the Palestinian lands it wants or needs to cement its European-based claim to dominance in the Middle East. End of story.

            Meantime, we who can read and who know the history of this most outrageous, most openly-fascist heist of a country in modern times, can only shake our heads and wonder how long this—the real outrage: the theft of Palestine from its indigenous people—can go on. And how a world that calls itself “civilized” can allow it, can encourage it to go on.

Lawrence DiStasi

Hypocrite Nation

Listening to Jacqueline Cabasso of the Western States Legal Foundation yesterday on KPFA made me think again of the hypocrisy that rules the world of nuclear negotiations and the bombast and blather that surrounds it. For those who have been in a deep freeze, the United States and Iran, along with six other nations, have just concluded an agreement to shut down Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons. In exchange, the sanctions that have crippled Iran for years will be lifted, and $100 billion in Iranian funds frozen in western banks will be released. Seems like a good deal.

            But of course, the yahoos in the U.S. Congress, led by the raving of Israel’s Bibi Netan-Yahoo, have been howling that this is the worst agreement in the history of the world, one that will allow Iran to secretly create nuclear weapons, at the same time rewarding it with a $100 billion “windfall” (it’s Iran’s money!) to supply its “terrorist allies.” Such “bad behavior” will create mayhem in the Middle East and lead to a dangerous nuclear arms race.

            In response, the administration and Secretary of State Kerry have insisted that this will not happen, that all paths to a nuclear weapon have been closed off, and that Iran will be subject to the most intrusive IAEA inspections in history. More, its alleged “bad behavior” of supplying arms to its allies will be closely monitored, and combatted immediately by the U.S. and others, and kept under better control than ever. All of this, of course, implicitly agrees with the Israeli characterization of Iran as a “bad actor” and the importance of keeping its warlike behavior “controlled.” So though the administration defends its agreement and insists that the only alternative to its diplomacy is war, it still essentially substantiates the warning cries of its opponents in their assessment of Iran—to wit, that it is the most dangerous and warlike nation in the Middle East which must be kept, like some rabid dog, on a short leash (without even a nod to the fact that the U.S. is the biggest arms dealer in the world, lavishly supplying arms to truly "bad actors" like Israel and Saudi Arabia).

            Of course, no one mentions, either, that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has no nuclear weapons, and has always maintained that it is not trying to get one (as confirmed by a recent CIA report). Nor does anyone mention that Israel is not a signatory to the NPT, does in fact have a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons with several advanced methods of delivering them (nuclear subs, advanced rockets, etc.), and has engaged in more wars with its Arab neighbors, including devastating invasions against a helpless population in Gaza, than any other nation in the area or even the world.

            What Jacqueline Cabasso added to this story is the shameful behavior of the ‘peace-making’ United States, regarding an initiative that has been ongoing for years—the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the very Middle East under discussion. This initiative, according to Walter Pincus in a Washington Post article on June 15 of this year, “has been on the UN agenda since the 1960s,” and has been promoted in numerous UN Assembly resolutions, especially by Egypt and Iran. Indeed, Iranian President Rouhani reinforced this idea by proposing, in the General Assembly in September 2013, that Israel join the NPT immediately. Not surprisingly (after all, if it joined the NPT, its nuclear facilities at Dimona would be open for inspection for all the world to see), Israel has rejected all such proposals. What is more surprising is that the United States—always lecturing the world about limiting nuclear proliferation—has played just as prominent a role in neutering any talk of a nuclear-free Middle East.

            The most recent example of this, as noted by Cabasso, and confirmed by a Nov. 12, 2012 Reuters article, “U.S. Nixes Talks to Create Nuclear-Free Middle East,” reprinted in The Jerusalem Post (as always, Israelis are allowed access to news items that are routinely censored in the United States), was the U.S.’s 2012 cancellation of a conference to ban nuclear weapons in the Middle East that the U.S. itself had earlier sponsored. The Reuters article quoted U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland (a rabid neocon, according to Robert Parry) as to why:

“As a co-sponsor of the proposed conference ... the United States regrets to announce that the conference cannot be convened because of present conditions in the Middle East and the fact that states in the region have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions for a conference.”

Nuland added that before any agreement could be reached, the states in the region would essentially have to reach consensus about how to implement such arms control. In other words, a conference to find ways to agree would have to have all parties in agreement before such a conference could take place. This not only effectively guarantees that such a conference could never be held, but also that if one ever were held, Israel would effectively have a veto over it (consensus, i.e. Israel’s vote, would be required). The Reuters article quoted Nuland again, with its (Reuters’) conclusion as to the real reasons for canceling the conference:

“We would not support a conference in which any regional state would be subject to pressure or isolation,” Nuland said, in a clear reference to U.S. concerns that other participants might gang up on Israel.

Poor little Israel; always being “ganged up on” by those big bad Arabs.

            In reference to the same U.S.-thwarted initiative, Walter Pincus, in the Washington Post article cited above, not only regretted the U.S.’s continuing opposition, but added that, in fact, “the best way to remove the Iran nuclear threat” would be precisely this: “to create a Middle East nuclear-free zone.” This is because, Pincus points out, Israel is no longer threatened by conventional weapons, having defeated every Arab army trying to oppose it, and has by far the best-equipped and most potent military in the Middle East. So, since it need not worry about conventional weapons any longer, eliminating the threat from Iran—which it could easily do by agreeing to make the Middle East nuclear free—would seem to make eminent sense. Except for the fact that doing so would require it to give up its nuclear weapons, and thereby the nuclear hammer it now holds over the entire region. 

            So here’s what we have. The United States has now completed an agreement to forestall Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons—which Iran was not trying to get. At the same time, the U.S. has worked diligently for many years to forestall any agreement that would force its protégé, Israel, to give up its nuclear weapons. And all along, it lectures the region and the world about the danger of any nation, especially Iran, getting its hands on nuclear weapons or any type of WMD at all (remember the excuse for invading Iraq?). While at the same time upgrading its own nuclear arsenal so that America’s legion of nuke-bearing missiles are equipped with the latest gadgetry designed to electronically guide them while in flight, like the ‘smart’ missiles fired from drones.

            Hypocrite nation. Or, as my parents used to put it:

            Do as I say, not as I do.    

  Lawrence DiStasi                                                                    

The Truth of Bibi's Lie

Every time one thinks that the rabbit hole of U.S.-Israel relations has reached its nadir, something comes along to dig it even deeper. This past week’s election in Israel is the latest ‘something.’ In the weeks leading up to the elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu evidently feared that his mandate for a fourth term was in trouble, and he resorted to extraordinary expedients. First, he flew to the United States to give an impassioned speech to a cheering U.S Congress in the attempt to torpedo in advance the Obama Administration’s current attempts to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, and to raise the specter of a new war. Still not satisfied, and fearing the desertion of his right-wing supporters, Bibi began to make desperate fear-mongering statements about the Palestinian threat: on the day before the election, he said openly what he had hinted at before, that there would never be a Palestinian state so long as he remained in office. Then he raised the fear level even higher, insisting that Israeli Arabs (who are citizens of Israel) were coming out to “vote in droves,” and indeed being bused to the polls by left-wing organizations intent on destroying the Israeli state.

            Each of these statements elicited a storm of criticism, both from President Obama’s White House, and from many European leaders, several of whom indicated that if Israel under Netanyahu was foreclosing the possibility of a Palestinian state—the core of U.S. policy for resolving the “conflict” between Israel and the Palestinians for decades—then the United States (and Europe) might have to rethink their policy of defending Israel, especially with vetoes in the United Nations. Nonetheless, Bibi plunged gaily onward, and when the election results were counted on Wednesday, he emerged triumphant once again. His fear-mongering and war posturing had apparently worked just as planned. The Israeli people, or enough of them to give him the victory, responded to the ‘security crisis’ he had evoked, and backed to the hilt both his racist remarks about Palestinian voters and his open repudiation of any idea of Palestinian statehood.

            But of course, that wasn’t the end of it. For Bibi Netanyahu is nothing if not a pandering, pusillanimous, prevaricating politician. Reading the alarm in both Israeli and foreign councils about what his remarks predicted, he knew he had to “walk back” what he had said so openly. And the walking back began almost as soon as he made his victory statements. He wasn’t going back on his commitment to Palestinian statehood, he insisted. He had merely said that conditions for that statehood, at present, were “not achievable.” As he said to ABC News, “I was talking about what is achievable and what is not achievable. We have to have real negotiations with people who are committed to peace.” Ah yes. Bibi wasn’t saying anything new (which he was, and only a craven press would let him get away with such open, outrageous lying): he was just re-emphasizing what he, and Israeli politicians, have always said: we need a partner for peace. We need someone we can rely on to uphold a peace agreement. And that someone would, naturally, be some brave quisling willing to ‘recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.’

            Ali Abunimah in his most recent book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine, has some crucial things to say about this last idea: Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. This is because, Abunimah points out, this alleged “right” is really an insistence that Palestinians must not only give up their right to self-determination (a right that they, as the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, have greater claim to than the Israelis who are not indigenous, but rather immigrants from Europe, and indeed, colonizers of the land once belonging exclusively to Palestinians), but also their right to continue as a people at all. Here is how Abunimah somewhat ironically puts it:

            “Palestinian parents are trampling all over Israel’s right to maintain a Jewish majority by having children,” and their babies, by virtue of not being born to Jewish parents, are violating Israel’s right merely by living and breathing. Israelis themselves see the births of non-Jewish babies—whether to Palestinian citizens of the state or in the occupied territories—as an assault on their rights and on the very existence of Israel. The routine use by politicians and media of the term “demographic threat” to describe these babies attests to this phenomenon (p. 23).

So if the Palestinians, to have any chance of a ‘peace process’ leading to a state, are to give up their right to continue (reproduce) as a people, then who would inhabit such a state? If they are to agree to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, which, according to writer Joseph Massad, translates into Israel’s right “to colonize Palestinian land, occupy it, and discriminate against the non-Jewish Palestinian people,” then what kind of state, what kind of self-determination can that possibly lead to? The answer, of course, is: none at all. And that is precisely what Israel’s real policy has been for years, and what Bibi Netanyahu, in his desperation before last week’s election, actually let slip from the shadows.

            This position—official Israel’s longstanding and usually covertly-expressed opposition to ever granting the Palestinians a state of their own—has been analyzed and understood for years by most informed commentators on the so-called ‘peace process’ that U.S. negotiators have long promoted. I wrote about this recently in a blog called ‘Fake Process, Fake Peace’ (July 29, 2013), reviewing Prof. Rashid Khalidi’s brilliant analysis of the “peace brokering” done by several American administrations in his book, Brokers of Deceit. Some of what that blog included was the fact that, even in the most-heralded ‘success’ in the American effort, that of the 1978 Camp David Accords, the chief aim of Israeli leaders has always been to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state. In fact, even acknowledging that there is a Palestinian people was written out of the Camp David agreements; for in a January 22, 1978 side letter to Menachem Begin five days after the Accords were signed, President Carter agreed that,

            wherever the expressions “Palestinians” or “Palestinian people” occurred in the text, they “are being and will be construed and understood by you as ‘Palestinian Arabs.’” This was a term of art among those Israelis who denied that the Palestinians were a people. (6)

The seriousness of this denial was reinforced in a 1982 CIA memo (when Reagan was president) cited by Khalidi, which again refers to Prime Minister Menachem Begin:

“Begin asserts that the C[amp] D[avid] A[ccords] rule out the emergence of a Palestinian state. In Begin’s view, the agreements ‘guarantee that under no condition’ can a Palestinian state be created. In practice Begin effectively rules out any exercise of Palestinian self-determination except one that continues Israel’s preeminent position in the West Bank.” (19)

Most importantly, Khalidi made clear that this was the position of not only Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but “the enduring position of every Israeli government since.” So while there has been an almost endless procession of American “negotiators” diligently striving to forge a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine resulting in a secure state for each, this has all been a ruse—a way to drag out so-called peace talks endlessly, endlessly giving Palestinians and the world the illusion that a Palestinian state was right around the corner (as soon as knotty little problems like “facts on the ground” could be ironed out, or a “real partner for peace” somehow found).

            Now it can be seen how Bibi Netanyahu fits perfectly into this long and sordid sleight-of-hand. His real policy—which his fear of defeat forced him to let slip on the eve of the election—has always been the received standard policy of all Israeli politicians and the Israeli people in general. There can never be a Palestinian state, period. To the Zionist project, an independent Palestinian state sitting right next to Israel would constitute an ‘existential threat.’ The fact of Palestinians themselves, whether or not they inhabit a state, is considered an ‘existential’ threat—because ‘these people,’ these Arabs in ‘droves,’ keep having these babies which ‘violate Israel’s right to exist merely by living and breathing.’ Somehow, and this is what successive Israeli governments keep trying to buy time for with their lip-service to the ‘peace process,’ Palestinians must be forced to understand that their ‘right to exist’ does not rise to the same exalted level as the Jewish state’s ‘right to exist.’ Indeed, it does not rise to any level at all. It is, so long as the United States of America keeps supporting the rigged game called the ‘peace process,’ literally ‘nonexistent.’

            If all this were not clear before the past week’s Bibi Show, it certainly should be blindingly, revoltingly clear now.

Lawrence DiStasi