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      Benjamin Netanyahu’s Nine Political Lives

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      When Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister for the second time in March 2009, it was not long after Israel had conducted three weeks of sustained air attacks on the enclave of Gaza. More than 1,100 Palestinians died in that campaign. About a dozen Israelis also perished, four from friendly fire, the rest from rockets coming from Gaza.

      Operation Cast Lead, as it was called, was supposed to eliminate the offensive capabilities of Hamas, a Palestinian faction with political and military wings that had taken over Gaza the year before. The Israeli operation also featured a ground offensive with thousands of troops and tanks. There was nothing surgical about the strikes or the intervention. At least half of the Palestinian casualties were estimated to be civilians. The UN-sponsored Goldstone report identified “actions amounting to war crimes” committed by both sides.

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      From the start, the conflict pitted David against Goliath, with their Biblical roles reversed. Israel deployed overwhelming force on top of the economic blockade it had imposed on Gaza after Hamas took over. It was the Israeli Goliath that declared a unilateral ceasefire in January 2009 from what it considered a position of strength. Although the Palestinian David didn’t come close to knocking out the Israeli giant, Hamas did manage to survive the onslaught. It has remained in control of Gaza ever since.

      Acting With Impunity

      Operation Cast Lead took place during the lame-duck period before Barack Obama took over from George W. Bush. The Bush administration followed several decades of US foreign policy by supporting Israel during the conflict, as did Congress. The Obama administration did not substantially deviate from this consensus, but it did attempt modestly to level the playing field by criticizing Israel’s aggressive settlement policy and providing a bit more assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

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      Netanyahu, when he took over in 2009, understood that Israel could act largely with impunity in Gaza. Because of its militant and fundamentalist orientation, Hamas didn’t generate a lot of warm fuzzy feelings in the West, or even in some quarters of the Palestinian community for that matter. So, Israel felt confident enough to ignore the UN inquiry and shrug off the Obama’s administration’s mild criticisms. Meanwhile, it continued to outsource its policing of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (portrayed in graphic detail in the Israeli TV show “Fauda”).

      In November 2012, Israel launched another attack against Hamas and Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense, that ended with a ceasefire brokered largely by Egypt. This time, however, Netanyahu was attuned to the political advantages of attacking his nemesis. The prime minister had already called for early elections, which would take place in January 2013. The week-long bombardment of Hamas — on top of the exchange that freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011 — made it relatively easy for Netanyahu to win the election and form a new government.

      The 2012 ceasefire didn’t last. Both sides continued sporadic attacks, and Israel maintained its economic blockade of Gaza. A reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah led to a unity government for the Palestinians in June 2014, which Netanyahu saw as a threat to his divide-and-conquer tactics.

      All of this served as a backdrop to a more sustained third round between Israel and Hamas that took place over the summer of 2014. It was another lopsided conflict that left more than 2,200 Gazans and 73 Israelis dead. Another UN report detailed potential war crimes on both sides. And Netanyahu’s Likud scored another political victory in national elections the following March, after the prime minister vowed that he would prevent a Palestinian state if he won.

      Political Survivor

      Bibi is a political survivor. He is now Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. He has weathered social protests, a raft of corruption charges and the persistent condemnation of international authorities for policies that trample the rights of Palestinians and military actions that have killed scores of civilians.

      One major reason for his political longevity is the collapse of the Israeli left. The Labor Party has seen a catastrophic drop in its vote totals, and it now has only one more seat in the Knesset than the other left-wing party, Meretz (together the two parties have 13 seats, less than half of what Likud alone controls). To stave off the centrist parties, Netanyahu has at one point or another counted on the political support of actors further to his right, like the Religious Zionist Party and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu.

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      But it’s really been Hamas that has saved Bibi’s skin time and again. In 2009, Hamas served as a justification for steering the country into an even more hard-right direction. In 2012, the Israeli government killed Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari, which precipitated the rocket attacks from Gaza that in turn served as the pretext for Operation Pillar of Defense. This year, Netanyahu could count on Hamas again to launch rocket attacks in response to Israel’s eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, itself part of a much wider effort to displace Palestinians in favor of Jewish settlers, as well as a police raid on al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan prayers.

      The Palestinian Authority protested both actions. So did the Arab world, the international community and demonstrators throughout the United States. But it was Hamas and its perennial quest to become the face of Palestinian resistance that once again has served as the anvil for Bibi’s hammer. In the 1980s, Israeli hard-liners helped create the organization to divide and weaken the Palestinian movement.

      Hamas has been a gift to hard-liners ever since. And, once again, Palestinians have suffered the most from this confrontation. In the current conflict, the death toll in Gaza has risen above 200, half of them women and children. Around a dozen Israelis have died in the rocket fire from Gaza. The only winner: Benjamin Netanyahu.

      What’s Next for Netanyahu?

      Netanyahu has managed to sell himself as indispensable to the Israeli right, which has been ascendant ever since he appeared on the political scene in the 1990s. His alliance with Trump produced nearly everything Israel’s right wing has wanted from the United States. The Trump administration gave the okay to Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. It supported without reservation the Jewish settlement of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It removed funding and recognition from Palestinian entities.

      As he promised in 2015, Netanyahu has moved the goalposts in Israel’s struggle with Palestinians to such a degree that the two-state solution has practically disappeared from the political agenda. With Israel blockading Gaza and whittling away at Palestinian territory in the West Bank, Palestinians have less and less of a state to stand in. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas for as long as Netanyahu has been prime minister, has been incapable of stopping Bibi.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Abbas and his Fatah party have lost so much support among Palestinians that they had to postpone elections this year to avoid outright repudiation at the polls. Only Hamas, with a fanaticism equal to Netanyahu’s, has put up any significant resistance.

      Netanyahu is seven years younger than Joe Biden and three years younger than Donald Trump. He has no intention of retiring to an olive farm any time soon. He is staying in power not simply because he likes the perquisites of the office like Trump or because he has some vision of “building back better” like Biden. Bibi dreams of annexing as much of the West Bank as he can, defeating Hamas militarily and politically, and reducing the Palestinian community to nothing more than a source of cheap labor for Israeli farms and factories. Nearly everything he has done geopolitically has been toward that end, like negotiating diplomatic recognition deals with Arab states (UAE, Morocco) and humoring Jared Kushner’s “deal of the century” of buying Palestinian sovereign aspirations with the Gulf’s largesse.

      Of course, Netanyahu would also like to see regime change in Iran and the neutering of Hezbollah in Lebanon, but those longer-term goals depend a great deal on factors beyond his immediate control. Trump was an ideal partner for realizing these dreams. No doubt Bibi imagined that he could continue to change enough facts on the ground during Trump’s second term to reduce Palestine to the level of Abkhazia or, better yet, the former state of Biafra. But for the voters in a few key swing states, Netanyahu nearly got what he wanted.

      Meanwhile, in the last two years alone, Israel has had four national elections, and the only constant has been Bibi. The corruption charges against him alone should have doomed his career. He faces three cases of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. In Trumpian fashion, Bibi has tried to turn the tables by asserting that the charges are an “attempted coup.” In the most recent election, Netanyahu and his allies didn’t win enough votes to form a new coalition government. Opposition leader Yair Lapid was given a chance to form an anti-Netanyahu coalition spanning the political spectrum. He was in the middle of fashioning this unwieldy coalition when the current crisis conveniently (for Netanyahu) broke out.

      Biden vs. Bibi

      Joe Biden is cut from the same cloth as Obama when it comes to US policy toward Israel. Once elected, Biden quickly restored aid to Palestinian organizations and resumed diplomatic relations with the PLO, though both efforts now run up against provisions enacted by the Trump administration.

      But in other respects, Biden has made it clear that he does not want to put additional pressure on Israel. He’s not going to reverse Trump’s moves on the Golan Heights and Jerusalem. He lacks even the lukewarm determination of Obama to push back on Israeli settlements. In the current conflagration, the most he’s willing to do is support a ceasefire but so far, he’s leaving it up to the combatants to find their own way to a settlement.

      Netanyahu might have worried that he would be dealing with “Obama part two” with Biden. Instead, he faces an American president who has no real interest in investing any political capital to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian deal. The Middle East is knocking on America’s door, and Biden is pretending to be focussing on home repairs.

      The problem for Biden is that others want to change the foreign policy consensus on Israel. Criticism of Israeli policy is becoming more commonplace in Congress, with several US politicians now willing to call the socio-ethnic division in the country by its true name: apartheid. Opposition to an over $700 million arms package to Israel was gaining ground within the Democratic Party before the Biden administration managed to persuade the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to reverse his plea to postpone the deal.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Meanwhile, protests in solidarity with Palestinians are spreading around the United States, with an astonishing 4,000 people mobilizing in Patterson, New Jersey. Even within the American Jewish community, the disgust with Netanyahu and the direction he has taken Israel has become palpable. Peter Beinart, who has been forced by Israel’s occupation and settlement policies to reevaluate his liberal Zionism, recently wrote in The New York Times in support of a Palestinian right of return as a first step in rewinding the historic injustices that Netanyahu has only aggravated.

      But, of course, Beinart is not the Israeli prime minister. Nor is he the US president or even the head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. His views, however commendable, lack any traction among the powerful in Washington and Jerusalem — for now, at least.

      Cycle of Violence

      Just before the current violence broke out, Netanyahu was facing the prospect of a broad coalition forming a new government and ousting him from his position. That coalition fell apart shortly after the conflict commenced. So, either Netanyahu will manage to woo a couple more politicians to join his camp or there will soon be yet another election. Either way, as in 2013, Netanyahu will likely solidify his hold on power thanks to his hard-line approach to Hamas.

      It’s hard not to conclude that the Israeli prime minister deliberately stoked tensions and escalated the conflict for his own political benefit. Bibi has been wagging the dog practically since he took office. After each cycle of divisive politics within Israel and fratricidal violence between Israel and Palestine, Netanyahu has emerged victorious. To break the cycle of violence that has engulfed the region in 2009, 2012, 2014 and now today, the Israeli opposition has to break Netanyahu politically once and for all.

      Given how right wing the political climate has become in Israel, defeating Netanyahu won’t immediately end settlements, lift the blockade on Gaza or usher in the right of return for Palestinians. Indeed, many Israelis are willing to support political forces even more right-wing and militant than Netanyahu. But the dozen years of Netanyahu’s reign have been a terrible era for Palestine, a second nakba, a death by a thousand cuts. Sending Bibi into retirement would create at least a chance of something new — perhaps something better.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The New Police State

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      The world Americans now live in has acquired all the trappings of a police state. But unlike police states of the past, with soldiers at every street corner, the police and their policing techniques have become invisible. Invisibility is the key to their efficacy. We mustn’t see what is ensuring our security.

      William M. Arkin, writing for Newsweek, describes it as a vast, secret underground force. “The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies,” he writes. 

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      Here is a rare instance of the independent press living up to its mission of informing the public of what is deliberately hidden from its view. Arkin highlights its historical significance: “The unprecedented shift has placed an ever greater number of soldiers, civilians, and contractors working under false identities, partly as a natural result in the growth of secret special forces but also as an intentional response to the challenges of traveling and operating in an increasingly transparent world.” In the security state, the name of the enemy is “transparency.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      False identities:

      The only meaningful and useful identities in hyperreality

      Contextual Note

      Arkin describes in lurid detail the “completely unregulated practice” of fabricating for deceitful purposes superficially credible false identities. The science and art he describes is called “signature reduction.” This means that the ability to identify real people executing a variety of illicit tasks becomes exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. The aim is to protect such people from being exposed, a practice that may be frowned upon in normal circumstances, but must be applauded when done in the name of national security. 

      The belief that national security has become the fundamental mission of nations — practically to the exclusion of all others — implies a radical change in political culture. Rather than suspecting such practices of having the power to undermine the idea of trust that any society requires to maintain its social coherence, it puts the highest value on what is both secret and unregulated, and therefore simply fake. When a culture evolves in this direction its members spontaneously stop asking questions about such things. Fakeness becomes the accepted norm. Knowing that hyperreality has been implemented to protect us from dangers we are told are lurking in the shadows, we instead feel grateful.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Those who practice this new art and science of “signature reduction” refuse to recognize even its formal designation. Doing so would amount to admitting that the Pentagon’s game is to deceive the public rather than ensure the defense of a democratic society. That would be tantamount to heresy in a democracy as well as a betrayal of the principle of hyperreality: Everything must look real but remain unreal enough to permit plausible denial.

      Deep secrecy of this type has numerous advantages. By obscuring our perception of a phenomenon we know exists, the public stops believing in its existence, even after reading an exposé in Newsweek. “No one knows the program’s total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture,” Arkin writes. “Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability.”

      Signature reduction means that the risk of being caught out for violating fundamental laws and ethical codes is also reduced. The practice should draw our attention to one of the most effective strategies of the new security state. It is the trend that consists of privatizing what were formerly government functions, a key to invisibility. The signature reduction program “engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations.” The military fully understands the principle. When soldiers are replaced by mercenaries, people stop noticing that a war is still going on. 

      For the past five years, the Democrats have successively persuaded the respectable media that Russia’s meddling in US elections should be considered the most heinous crime of the century and the greatest threat to democracy. Newsweek’s article tells us that the massively funded “undercover force” of indeterminate size that has managed the question of reduced signature may “even engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media.”

      Is the Pentagon imitating the Russians or were the Russians imitating the US? What propaganda outfit or commercial entity today would not seek to “engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media”? That happens to be the only way anyone with a modicum of ambition can hope to get ahead, either individually or collectively? The culture of hyperreality rewards deception and manipulation. It also undermines social identity.

      We have entered an age in which disguise trumps — and possibly abolishes — reality. Newsweek tells us “a major task of signature reduction is keeping all of the organizations and people, even the automobiles and aircraft involved in the clandestine operations, masked.” Speaking of masks, some may begin speculating that there may be a connection between “signature reduction” and the COVID-induced campaign to persuade everyone to live in society behind a mask. In an age marked by the growing trend to define one’s image through cosmetic surgery, life itself becomes a struggle to define the mask behind which one will live and interact with others.

      Historical Note

      At the beginning of his article, William Arkin points to the phenomenon’s significance in recent history: “The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade.” He calls it “an unprecedented shift.” But the movement of what amounts to not just signature reduction, but signature erasure began much earlier than a decade ago.

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      The 20th-century consumer society produced generations of Americans who, in the first instance, sought to base their identity not on who they were, but what they could buy and display. This was the era early in the century of what economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen described as “conspicuous consumption.” As the consumer society began to create new distinctions of status, the question of every individual having the right to create a personal “signature” began to become associated less with social relations and more with the kind of job one had, which in turn was linked to what one conspicuously consumed. This spawned a culture of consumerist prosperity that encouraged the development of what the late anthropologist David Graeber called the trend toward “bullshit jobs.”

      Graeber saw most of the jobs in the past half century as unjustified for any reason other than supporting the consumer society’s ideology and avoiding the “mortal danger” represented by people with too much free time to think about things and eventually act on them. Graeber defined five categories of bullshit jobs: flunkies, who serve essentially as foils to their superiors; goons, who deceive others for the sake of their employer’s immediate interests (maximum profit); duct tapers, who intervene to provide a temporary fix to problems rather than solving them; box tickers, who validate processes; and taskmasters, who manage and create a sense of usefulness for the others.

      The work described as “signature reduction” in Newsweek’s article consists of manipulating information and official documents to hide the real identity of people engaged in what would normally be considered illegal and antisocial activities. Are these also bullshit jobs? This description could be justified in a literal sense. They produce something resembling social excrement. They are designed for one purpose: to make the fake look real and the real look fake. The bull in the pasture chomps on, chews and digests the fresh green grass only in the end result to excretes in an unrecognizable form. The grass’ signature has been singularly and definitely reduced.

      The consumer society’s greatest achievement has been the reign of hyperreality. Hiding an invisibly growing police state is just one of its features. As a retired military officer cited in the article observed, “modern life is not as transparent as most of us think.”

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      What Is the “Great Reset”?

      by

      Who wouldn’t reveal what is kept out of sight by those who do not have our best interests at heart? Although it is not only the far right that claims to be in the know about sinister plots, they certainly provide a steady stream of such revelations.

      Amongst recent ones, the “great replacement” stands out as an attempt to capture the imagination of the public. According to this ethno-nationalist theory, the “indigenous European—e.g., white—population is being replaced by non-European immigrants.” Yet since the second half of 2020, “the great reset” (TGR) conspiracy theory has been making rounds on the internet too.

      World Economic Forum

      In 2020, the need for a reset was presented by Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in terms of reimagining capitalism in a post-pandemic world. As per the WEF, there is an “urgent need for global stakeholders to cooperate in simultaneously managing the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. To improve the state of the world, the World Economic Forum is starting The Great Reset initiative.”

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      The World Economic Forum brings together high-profile figures from politics and business every year in Davos. So, with the WEF pushing the initiative, it is no surprise that it has become a gift for conspiracy theorists. “Globalists” have been accused of using — or even orchestrating — the COVID-19 pandemic to rebuild and take control of the world economy, with a liberal-cosmopolitan elite executing the next step in a quest to overcome resistance.

      In an article for The Intercept about TGR, Naomi Klein, a Canadian-American writer and activist, talks about the difficulties to critically engage with the WEF project from a progressive perspective. She also points out that the initiative does provide “a coronavirus-themed rebranding of all the things Davos does anyway.” In her typical style, Klein summarizes the plan as encompassing “some good stuff that won’t happen and some bad stuff that certainly will and, frankly, nothing out of the ordinary in our era of ‘green’ billionaires readying rockets for Mars.”

      So, while there is ample space for criticism, far-right groups have been working on turning TGR into an umbrella for their political agenda. Globally, readers might have encountered such attempts. In November 2020, a video of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a UN meeting began circulating. In the clip, Trudeau says that the pandemic provided an opportunity for a “reset.” After the video went viral, he stated that thinking about such a reset in terms of a conspiracy theory arises from people “looking for reasons for things that are happening to them … we’re seeing a lot of people fall prey to disinformation.”

      The Far Right

      Against this background, the following briefly summarizes key aspects of TGR as they have circulated among the German-speaking far right. The cover pages of Compact, a German radical-right magazine, and the monthly of the extreme-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) have illustrated the conspiracy theory. An offshoot of the Austrian Identitarian Movement published a webpage, distributed leaflets and organized information booths called “info-zones” about TGR. These examples assert that the conspiracy attempts to put the form of globalization that existed prior to the pandemic on steroids. Rather than limiting globalization, which some claim enabled the worldwide spread of the coronavirus, even more of the same old medicine is being administered.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In an interview with the NPD monthly, Alexander Dugin, the Russian far-right ideologue, says that TGR is both the latest attempt by “globalists” and “the final battle” that is openly totalitarian and characterized by censorship, political repression and homicide. With the exaggerated help of the media, homogenous opinions allegedly rule.

      Various sources use the term Gleichschaltung, the process through which the Nazis established total control over German society, to describe what is unfolding today. Compact magazine claims we are already in 1934 (and not in 1933 when the Nazi Party took the first steps toward Gleichschaltung) as, apparently, the global, totalitarian takeover began last year. Unsurprisingly, the WEF, the European Union and politicians like German Chancellor Angela Merkel are said to be the villains of the story.

      As TGR is supposed to move the public even closer toward a global government, it not only endangers sovereignty and democracy, but also peoples and cultures. That is, conspiracy theorists claim that TGR aims to destroy existing bonds and structures through repeated lockdowns so as to provoke calls for and install a new world order. Or, as Martin Sellner puts it in a video dedicated to TGR, “here, we see one of the basic principles of universalist, globalist, totalitarian ideologues. Also, by the way, a basic principle of the Freemasonry, expressed, entirely free of conspiracy-theoretical wrong tracks: the world has to be built up.”

      Framework

      While such far-right views are hardly news, perhaps the most interesting attack is directed against transhumanism. By merging the digital with the physical world, the ruling elite, according to the Great Reset Stoppen website, enables “total surveillance.” As a result, global dictatorship becomes possible and a once rooted, cultural being is turned into a “socially isolated consumer” slave. Such a person is someone without property and privacy, and one who is not even encouraged to meet and mingle with others face to face. Hence, US tech companies are also on the list of villains.

      None of this is new, but TGR offers a framework for a wide range of far-right ideas, a rhetorical space into which diverse claims can be made. These include the “great replacement” as well as “patriotic” opposition to climate policies and Big Pharma and Big Tech. This time, those in the business of “revealing” sinister plots can even point to what is directly said by the World Economic Forum. Whether TGR will unite the far right’s stories and appeal to wider segments of the public remains to be seen.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Expect an Uneven Rebound in MENA and Central Asia

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      Projections, no matter how well-grounded in analytics, are a messy business. Three years ago, COVID-19 was unheard of and then-US President Donald Trump’s politics caused uncertainty in international relations, with democracy in retreat across the world. Despite the best-informed prognostications, predictions failed to capture cross-border variables such as immigration and civil conflict that have yet to play out in rearranging local and regional economic prospects.

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      No region is more complex in terms of confusing signals than the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Central Asia. This is the subject of the latest report by the International Monetary Fund titled, “Regional Economic Outlook: Arising from the Pandemic: Building Forward Better.”

      What is clear from a review of the data is that 2020 was an outlier in terms of trend lines earlier in the decade, skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic, erosion of oil prices, diminished domestic economic activity, reduced remittances and other factors that have yet to be brought into an orderly predictive model. Even the IMF had to recalibrate its 2020 report upward for several countries based on rising oil exports, while decreasing marks were given countries slow to vaccinate against COVID-19 and that rely on service-oriented sectors.

      Mixed Outlook

      The numbers indicate a mixed picture, ranging from Oman growing at 7.2% and the West Bank at 6.9%, to Lebanon receiving no projection and Sudan at the bottom of the range with a 1.13% real GDP growth rate. Yet, so much can impact those numbers, from Oman’s heavy debt burden to continuing turmoil in intra-Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli affairs.

      The good news is that real GDP is expected to grow by 4% in 2021, up from the projection last October of 3.2%. Much of the lift has come from two factors: a more optimistic trend line for the oil producers and the rate of vaccinations in countries that will promote business recovery.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As CNBC pointed out, Jihad Azour, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, noted that recovery will be “divergent between countries and uneven between different parts of the population.” Key variables include the extent of vaccine rollout, recovery of tourism and government policies to promote recovery and growth.

      In oil-producing countries, real GDP is projected to increase from 2.7% in 2021 to 3.8% in 2022, with a 5.8% rise in the region’s sector driven by Libya’s return to global markets. Conversely, non-oil producers saw their growth rate estimates reduced from 2.7% to 2.3%. In fact, Georgia, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, which are highly dependent on tourism, have been downgraded in light of continuing COVID-19 issues such as vaccination rollout and coverage.

      As the IMF report summary notes, “The outlook will vary significantly across countries, depending on the pandemic’s path, vaccine rollouts, underlying fragilities, exposure to tourism and contact-intensive sectors, and policy space and actions.” From Mauritania to Afghanistan, one can select data that supports or undercuts the projected growth rates. For example, in general, Central Asia countries as a group seem to be poised for stronger results than others. Meanwhile, Arab countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council face greater uncertainty, from resolving debt issues to unforeseen consequences of negotiations with Iran.

      So, how will these projects fare given a pending civil war in Afghanistan and the possible deterioration of oil prices and debt financing by countries such as Bahrain and Oman? Highlighting this latter concern, the report goes on to say that public “gross financing needs in most emerging markets in the region are expected to remain elevated in 2021-22, with downside risks in the event of tighter global financial conditions and/or if fiscal consolidation is delayed due to weaker-than-expected recovery.”

      An Opportunity

      Calling for greater regional and international cooperation to complement “strong domestic policies” focused on the need “to build forward better and accelerate the creation of more inclusive, resilient, sustainable, and green economies,” the IMF is calling on the countries to see a post-pandemic phase as an opportunity. This would involve implementing policies that promote recovery, sustain public health practices that focus on sustainable solutions, and balance “the need for debt sustainability and financial resilience.”

      There is great uncertainty assigning these projections without more conclusive data on the impact of the pandemic, the stress on public finance and credit available to the private sector, and overall economic recovery across borders that relies on factors such as the weather, oil demand, external political shocks and international monetary flows. The IMF report is a very helpful bellwether for setting parameters for ongoing analyses and discussions.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Media: How Debunked Stories Continue to Thrive

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      On May 6, The Daily Devil’s Dictionary dared to express surprise at the latest example of Russia-related fearmongering by the respectable corporate media. When Christopher Miller, who had recently risen to fame as acting defense secretary in the waning months of Donald Trump’s presidency, claimed to have unearthed an “act of war” attributable to Russia, the media jumped on the occasion. Miller was referring to the dormant “Havana Syndrome” dossier and accusing Russia of conducting direct-energy attacks against Americans in various places across the globe.

      Not wishing to miss the festivities, two prominent media outlets — CNN and Politico — immediately crashed the party. They quoted Miller’s warnings and mobilized their journalistic talents to promote a story capable of striking fear in anyone with an American passport. Curiously, The New York Times, always eager to accuse Russia of anything suspicious that takes place anywhere on earth, missed the scoop. It took them another week to get around to covering it, possibly because they were hard at work on another debunked story that they deemed worthy of resuscitating, concerning the reported Russian offer of bounty for killing US personnel in Afghanistan. Or possibly because they didn’t want to give credence to a Trump official.

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      The bounty story was their big scoop a year ago. In its coverage at the time, The Times claimed to reveal “a stunning intelligence assessment” intended to prove, as always, that Trump was covering up for his best friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since then, even the intelligence community and the Biden administration have walked it back, but not The New York Times. Perhaps they believe it’s the best way to defend their honor.

      On May 10, four days after the publication of our article and two days before The Times decided to raise the alarm again, Foreign Policy published an article by Cheryl Rofer with the title, “Claims of Microwave Attacks Are Scientifically Implausible.” Apparently, no one at The Times had time to consult this article before publishing their account on May 12. Even Homeland Security News Wire publicly called the thesis into question on May 11.

      Foreign Policy describes Rofer as a writer specialized in scientific and political commentary who had spent 35 years as a chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In other words, she is not a journalist dabbling in science but a scientist now active in journalism. After sifting through the testimony, Rofer came to the evidence-based conclusion that the technology the intelligence agencies speculate may be behind the “attacks” probably does not exist. In her own words: “The evidence for microwave effects of the type categorized as Havana syndrome is exceedingly weak.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Exceedingly weak:

      For some media, highly probable, on condition that the evidence cited may possibly be construed as pointing to Russia. In all other cases: not to be taken seriously.

      Contextual Note

      To be fair, Rofer offers no definitive proof that the technology does not or cannot exist. She explains why she reached her conclusion: “No proponent of the idea has outlined how the weapon would actually work. No evidence has been offered that such a weapon has been developed by any nation. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no evidence has been offered to support the existence of this mystery weapon.”

      Every journalist would be wise to follow the example of her reasoning. It doesn’t exclude the most extreme hypotheses, but points in the direction of others that are far more probable. “It’s possible,” she writes, “that the symptoms of all the sufferers of Havana syndrome share a single, as yet unknown, cause; it’s also possible that multiple real health problems have been amalgamated into a single syndrome.” This assertion contains two important truths. It reminds readers that, until there is proof of the technology at play, the cause remains “unknown.” It also points to the fact that many of the health problems we all encounter — particularly concerning perception and mental functions — may be attributable to multiple causes.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Miller based his belief in Russia’s “act of war” on a 2020 report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine commissioned by the State Department. According to Kyle Mizokami, writing in Popular Mechanics, the State Department’s assessment cited the fact that there “was significant research in Russia/USSR into the effects of pulsed radio frequencies.” There has also been significant research on witchcraft and psychedelic drugs, but that doesn’t mean Russia has weaponized witchcraft. The CIA, on the other hand, does have a history of weaponizing psychedelic drugs. The tendency to assume that research points to the existence of an operational weapon reflects the kind of tendentious reasoning psychologists call paranoia. Would this be the first time that the State Department has allowed paranoid speculation to pollute its scientific endeavors?

      In the guise of proof, the assessment offers this statement, as explained by Mizokami: “This could have resulted in the development of a portable, nonlethal, covert weapon designed to exploit something called the Frey Effect.” This sentence alone tells us we are in the presence not of science, but propaganda. The auxiliary verb “could have” gives the game away. Evoking a remote possibility to suggest a “probable” sinister outcome is standard procedure in all propaganda (and paranoia). Adding the detail of the “Frey Effect” makes it sound like serious research. Preceding it with the qualification “something called” further reveals that we are in a world of deliberate rhetorical imprecision.

      Mizokami has read Rofer’s article. He first presents the State Department’s circumstantial case and then provides an explanation of the Frey effect, noting that “there’s considerable debate over whether the Frey effect actually exists.” He concludes by aligning with Rofer’s scientific skepticism: “We may never know who’s behind the attacks, and what kind of weapon is being used.” A philosopher skilled at analyzing the logic of the English language would push it even further. We may never know whether there were “attacks,” in the sense of external aggressions. If there were no attacks, there was no weapon.

      Humankind, in the age of electronic communications, lives under a permanent barrage of microwaves, electronic signals and frequencies that may, for all we know, combine in various ways to produce diverse effects on particular people. The State Department seems to believe only Americans are targeted. That is why it suspects the Russians (and sometimes the Chinese). But other people elsewhere may be experiencing the same symptoms. Only Americans would report this to the State Department. Most scientists and logicians would want to take wider statistics into account before jumping to a conclusion.

      Historical Note

      This is pretty obviously a handy piece of fake news that establishment news outlets have now taken on a five-year-long joyride. But why? First and foremost, the story is readable and attracts eyeballs. It combines James Bond-style intrigue, next generation technology and science. It’s also fodder for Trump-haters and fits snugly into the new Cold War mentality that so much of the media now depends on to keep the public’s fear alive.

      The New York Times’ manner of stating the case offers an interesting technical explanation of why such a flaky story continues to work even after being largely discredited. Here is how it creates false perspective: “Though some Pentagon officials believe Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., is most likely behind the case of the 2-year-old, and evidence has emerged that points to Russia in other cases, the intelligence agencies have not concluded any cause or whether a foreign power is involved.” The journalists here populate two-thirds of the sentence with opinion supporting the accusation and the last third with a negatively formulated admission that doubt may exist.

      The rest of the article offers a plethora of anecdotes about who thinks what, who has met with whom and other details, all of it serving to remind readers how troubling the issue is and how concerned they need to be. It concludes with an appeal formulated by a politician: “We really need to fully understand where this is coming from, what the targeting methods are and what we can do to stop them.”

      In other words, readers can expect a host of new articles on the question, perhaps lasting another five years. It’s a serial thriller.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The US Is Complicit in the Atrocities Israel Commits

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      American media usually report on Israeli military assaults in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza as if the US is an innocent, neutral party to the conflict. In fact, a majority of Americans have told pollsters for decades that they want the United States to be neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

      But US media and politicians betray their own lack of neutrality by blaming Palestinians for nearly all the violence and framing flagrantly disproportionate, indiscriminate and, therefore, illegal Israeli attacks as a justifiable response to Palestinian actions. The classic formulation from US officials and commentators is that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” For these same officials, Palestinians do not have the right to defend themselves even as the Israelis massacre hundreds of civilians, destroy thousands of homes and seize ever more Palestinian land.

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      The disparity in casualties in Israeli assaults on Gaza speaks for itself. At the time of writing, the current Israeli bombing of Gaza has killed at least 213 people, including 61 children and 35 women. Rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas militants have killed 12 people in Israel, including two children. 

      In recent years, Gaza has seen numerous deadly conflicts. In the 2008-09 war, 1,417 Palestinians were killed while nine Israelis died. In 2014, 2,251 Palestinians (including 1,462 civilians) and 72 Israelis (one Thai and six Israeli civilians) were killed. US-built F-16s dropped at least 5,000 bombs and missiles on Gaza, and Israeli tanks and artillery fired 49,500 shells — mostly massive six-inch shells from American-made M-109 howitzers. In 2018, in response to largely peaceful “March of Return” protests at the Israel–Gaza border, Israeli soldiers killed 183 Palestinians with live ammunition and wounded over 6,100. This included 122 Palestinians who required amputations, 21 paralyzed by spinal cord injuries and nine who suffered permanent loss of vision.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As with the Saudi-led war on Yemen and other serious foreign policy problems, biased and distorted news coverage by US media leaves many Americans not knowing what to think. Many simply give up trying to sort out the rights and wrongs of what is happening and instead blame both sides. They then focus their attention closer to home, where the problems of society impact them more directly and are easier to understand and do something about.

      So, how should Americans respond to horrific images of bleeding, dying children and homes reduced to rubble in Gaza? The tragic relevance of this crisis for Americans is that, behind the fog of war, propaganda and biased media coverage, the US bears an overwhelming share of responsibility for the carnage taking place in Palestine. US policy has perpetuated the crisis and atrocities of the Israeli occupation by unconditionally supporting Israel in three ways: militarily, diplomatically and politically. 

      Militarily

      On the military front, since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, the US has provided $146 billion in foreign aid, nearly all of it military-related. It currently provides $3.8 billion per year in military aid to Israel. In addition, the United States is the largest seller of weapons to Israel. Its military arsenal now includes 362 US-built F-16 warplanes and 100 other US military aircraft, as well as a growing fleet of the new F-35s; at least 45 Apache attack helicopters; M-109 howitzers; and M270 rocket-launchers. At this very moment, Israel is using many of these US-supplied weapons in its devastating bombardment of Gaza.

      The US alliance with Israel also involves joint military exercises and joint production of Arrow missiles and other weapons systems. The American and Israeli militaries have collaborated on drone technologies tested by the Israelis in Gaza. In 2004, the United States called on Israeli forces with experience in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to give tactical training to American special operations forces as they confronted popular resistance to the hostile US military occupation of Iraq. 

      The US Army also maintains a $1.8-billion stockpile of weapons at six locations in Israel, pre-positioned for use in future US military strikes in the Middle East. During the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, even as Congress suspended some weapons deliveries to Israel, the US approved handing over stocks of 120mm mortar shells and 40mm grenade launcher ammunition from the US stockpile for Israel to use against Palestinians in Gaza.

      Diplomatically

      Diplomatically, the United States has exercised its veto in the UN Security Council 82 times —  45 of those have been to shield Israel from criticism or accountability for war crimes or human rights violations. In every single case, the US has been the lone vote against the resolution, although a few other countries have occasionally abstained. It is only the United States’ privileged position as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, and its willingness to abuse that privilege to shield its ally Israel, that gives it this unique power to stymie international efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions under international law. 

      The result of this unconditional US diplomatic shielding of Israel has been to encourage increasingly barbaric Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. With the United States blocking any accountability in the Security Council, Israel has seized ever more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, uprooted more and more Palestinians from their homes, and responded to the resistance of largely unarmed people with ever-increasing violence, detentions and restrictions on day-to-day life. 

      Politically

      On the political front, despite most Americans supporting neutrality in the conflict, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel lobbying groups have exercised an extraordinary role in bribing and intimidating US politicians to provide unconditional support for Israel. The roles of campaign contributors and lobbyists in the corrupt American political system make the United States uniquely vulnerable to this kind of influence peddling and intimidation. This is the case whether it is by monopolistic corporations and industry groups like the military-industrial complex and Big Pharma, or well-funded interest groups like the National Rifle Association, AIPAC and, in recent years, lobbyists for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

      Embed from Getty Images

      On April 22, just weeks before this latest assault on Gaza, the overwhelming majority of congresspeople, 330 out of 435, signed a letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee opposing any reduction or conditioning of US monies to Israel. The letter represented a show of force from AIPAC and a repudiation of calls from some progressives in the Democratic Party to condition or otherwise restrict aid to Israel. 

      President Joe Biden, who has a long history of supporting Israeli crimes, responded to the latest massacre by insisting on Israel’s “right to defend itself” and inanely hoping that “this will be closing down sooner than later.” His ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, also shamefully blocked a call for a ceasefire at the Security Council. 

      Congressional Action

      The silence from Biden and most of the US representatives in Congress at the massacre of civilians and mass destruction of Gaza is unconscionable. The independent voices speaking out forcefully for Palestinians, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, show us what real democracy looks like, as do the massive protests that have filled streets all over the country.

      US policy must be reversed to reflect international law and the shifting American public opinion in favor of Palestinian rights. Every member of Congress must be pushed to sign a bill introduced by Representative Betty McCollum over Israeli actions. The bill insists that US funds to Israel are not used “to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law.” Congress must also be pressured to quickly enforce the Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy laws to stop supplying any more US weapons to Israel until it stops using them to attack and kill civilians.

      The United States has played a vital and instrumental role in the decades-long catastrophe that has engulfed the people of Palestine. American leaders and politicians must now confront their country’s and, in many cases, their own personal complicity in this conflict. They must act urgently and decisively to reverse US policy to support full human rights for all Palestinians.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Biden Changes the Russia Equation

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      The Biden administration is posing some stark choices for its European allies. It is not only challenging them to stand more firmly against the Kremlin, but is expanding America’s expectations of what democracy should be inside their own countries. President Joe Biden’s tough position on Russia, especially the sanctions announced on April 15, risks further exacerbating the split within NATO countries over how tough to be on the Kremlin. The administration also risks blowback from Central and East European (CEE) states over its strong support for liberal democratic standards that not all of them endorse.

      The Image of Russia

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      For all the contempt that many Europeans held for Donald Trump, his policies toward Russia were easier for some of them to live with. Hard-line NATO nations drew comfort from his continuation of sanctions against Moscow, sale of lethal arms to Ukraine and fierce opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Trump questioned Article 5 of the NATO charter, but Russian President Vladimir Putin never had the stomach to put Trump’s jumbled position on the issue to the test. Meanwhile, Europeans eager to accommodate Russia were encouraged by Trump’s attempts to forge a personal relationship with Putin and his enduring belief that the Kremlin could somehow become an ally.

      Trump was also a convenient president for those in CEE nations with conservative social values and an unsteady commitment to the rule of law. Trump’s attitude toward their countries was simply transactional; his interest was in what America could gain from their relationship. How they were governed held little interest for him.

      Bows and Wrist-Slaps

      Biden has changed the equation dramatically. Some might have expected him to set aside everything that Moscow did during the Trump presidency and focus on the future. Instead, Biden did the opposite. On April 15, he expelled Russian diplomats and imposed significant new sanctions for Russia’s actions during Trump’s time in office, leaving space for a whole new set of possible actions in case of further provocations from Moscow. Some observers found the measures Biden announced to be wrist-slaps.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But in many respects, the measures were significant and pointed clearly to future possibilities, ranging from new financial actions to the criminal prosecution of senior Russian regime figures. Officials also intimated that the US might already be retaliating on the cyber front.

      Biden has made the appropriate bows to potential cooperation with Moscow and offered Putin a summit in the coming months in a third country. But overall, the tone of his message to Russia has been hostile, including calling Putin a “killer.” Putin’s claim to legitimacy, at home and abroad, is built on the idea that he is a respected statesman and even something of an intellectual rather than the boss of a dictatorship backed by organized crime. (While most Russian reports on Biden’s comments translated “killer” as “ubiytsa,” the usual word for “murderer,” some media chose the imported word “killer,” which in Russian means a mob hitman.) 

      With Biden taking a more uncompromising attitude to the Kremlin, the question now is whether Western responses to Russian provocations will become much more unified and move well beyond diplomatic statements and scattered financial sanctions. Is a point approaching where US pressure — plus Russia’s threats to Ukraine, its torture of Alexei Navalny, its cyberattacks against the West and its murder of opponents abroad — might finally lead the allies to slash the scale of business deals with Moscow, choke off the flow of illicit Russian money and impose tighter restrictions on visas to the EU? Even if sanctions don’t work, they say something about the values that the country imposing them stands for.

      In CEE countries, substantial numbers of citizens still believe Russia poses little threat to their nations. But the drumbeat of provocations from Moscow, including espionage and even sabotage inside CEE countries, will have its effect. Even though Visegrad nations lack a united policy on Ukraine — mainly because of Hungary — they all backed Czechia’s expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff over the explosion of an arms depot in 2014. Will allied nations now respond to Czechia’s call for them to expel Russian diplomats from their countries, too, to show solidarity?

      Human Rights Challenge

      Meanwhile, the new US administration has thrown down a human rights challenge not only to authoritarian regimes, but to some of its CEE allies. Biden’s team has made clear that America once again cares very much about democratic rights in other countries. When directed at Russia, this message has the dual advantage of reflecting American values while also pressuring Putin, who, judging by his repression of even tiny protests, seems to genuinely believe a “color revolution” is around the corner.

      Yet the policy may well make some allies uncomfortable. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a speech on March 30, declared that in America’s view, there is no “hierarchy of rights” in a democracy. He not only vigorously and specifically defended abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, but essentially put them on the same level as freedom of speech and religion. In so doing, he lined up with forces in the EU that are pressing some CEE countries not only to strengthen basic democratic institutions, but to also adopt liberal social values. The US position creates a new opening for pro-Russian and populist politicians who have been claiming for years that the West is intent on undermining the “morals” of former members of the Soviet bloc.

      Virtuous as the US position may be, it is unclear how far the administration will go with it. Blinken, an experienced diplomat, knows that idealism often must bow to political realities. As his predecessor Mike Pompeo put it, “Our commitment to inalienable rights doesn’t mean we have the capacity to tackle all human rights violations everywhere and at all times.” Even if the administration recognizes no hierarchy of rights, it certainly has a hierarchy of interests. At the top of that hierarchy may well be the geopolitical imperative of keeping CEE nations out of Russia’s orbit.

      If the US runs into too-strong opposition over its human rights agenda, it could focus more on campaigning against corruption. That cause has wide public support. It is also effective against many anti-democratic forces, including pro-Russian actors who thrive on murky financial deals. This could de-escalate conflict over liberal social values while still encouraging activities that undermine Kremlin influence in the CEE region.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of GLOBSEC.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      America Is Confused Over What It Means to Be Exceptional

      by

      The deepening Israeli-Palestinian conflict is quickly becoming a game of identifying which acts committed by either side in the course of the most recent fighting are war crimes and which are crimes against humanity. The failure on the part of both international institutions and powerful nations to provide even a minimum of perspective that might lead toward a satisfying resolution has become manifest. In today’s geopolitical hyperreality, perspective has become a luxury that politicians are not even allowed to consider.

      Nothing illustrates this better than the strutting and fretting of the US on the world stage. Most observers suppose that as Israel’s staunchest ally, the US alone has the minimum of moral standing required to influence, ever so slightly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies and Israel’s behavior. The Biden administration actually has a chance to affirm its global leadership. Instead, as AP reports, “the Biden administration — determined to turn U.S. foreign policy focus away from the Middle East and Afghanistan — has shown no immediate sign of getting more deeply involved.” Can “turning away” be deemed a valid tactic in the foreign policy of the world’s mightiest nation?

      Biden Washes His Hands of the Israel-Palestine Affair

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      But the US is not only turning itself away from seeking a solution. It is also actively turning every other nation away. That is how it is using its power. Al Jazeera notes that “the US reportedly twice blocked over the last week resolutions that would have condemned Israel’s military response and called for a ceasefire.”

      On Sunday, the US had a chance to influence events at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. The New York Times gave this account of the US position: “The American ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, urged restraint on the part of both Hamas and Israel during Sunday’s Security Council meeting, which was called to try to find a way to end the violence.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Urge restraint:

      Refrain from making one’s own effort to restrain

      Contextual Note

      The United States has often been called “the most powerful nation on earth” (Barack Obama) and sometimes even “the greatest country in the history of civilization” (Mike Pompeo). When the legendary boxer Mohammad Ali insisted that he was “the greatest,” he got in the ring to prove it. On occasion, he failed. Despite his failures, boxing fans remember him as the greatest. In its role as the pinnacle of civilization and the most powerful nation ever, the US owns the ring. From Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya (to mention only a few), it repeatedly steps into the ring. It consistently fails.

      Why has no one in the mainstream media dared to point to the painful irony of a recurring situation? The presumed greatest nation in the history of civilization on earth now excels by showing little concern for the earth itself and even less for the safeguard of civilization. The irony becomes extreme when considering the case of Israel. One of the world’s smallest countries has consistently demonstrated its capacity to restrain — if not shackle — the power of the greatest nation on earth, leaving the United States on the sidelines in the role of a spectator with nothing more to do than quietly “urge restraint.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      What is behind the belief Americans continue to have that their nation is the greatest in the history of mankind? Objective observers across the globe might attribute the belief to the triumph over the past century of what is called “the American way of life.” Hollywood and TV have projected the image of a self-satisfied consumer society the rest of the world is called upon to envy. They can see that it also happens to be supported by the dictatorship of the dollar and the massive deployment of military might across the globe.

      In other words, the rest of the world recognizes that the US is an empire, just as most inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin two thousand years ago recognized the omnipresent power of the Roman Empire. Empires are not only coercive political and military forces with a skill for organizing and exploiting the economic resources of other peoples. As Shakespeare’s triumphant Henry V wittily observed in his attempt to persuade his future wife, the Dauphine Catherine, to violate her rigid French customs and kiss him, empires are also “the makers of manners.” They have the psychological power to impose what they have the habit of doing for their own pleasure as the accepted norm for anyone in the purview of their political and economic sovereignty. In that sense, the US may well be the most successful empire in the history of mankind.

      Americans and America’s media refuse to admit they function like an empire. They imagine their nation as a disinterested beacon of democracy and a purveyor of prosperity. When Americans claim their military is “a force for good,” they believe that the only reason the CIA overturns governments or that their troops “pacify” nations is to invite the downtrodden of the earth into the cornucopia of American consumerism. Even the otherwise subtle analyst, Francis Fukuyama, allowed himself to embrace that myth when he predicted the end of history in 1992, before belatedly postponing the date of that Hegelian moment.

      Historical Note

      As the US campaigns to prevent a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s worth noting a mildly surprising fact reported by Al Jazeera. Could this be the beginning of a historical about-face? Concerned by the global reaction to Israel’s annihilation of the building in Gaza that housed the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken demanded evidence of Israel’s claim that Hamas was operating in the building. In response, “Israeli military spokesman Lt Gen Jonathan Conricus told CNN on Sunday, ‘We’re in the middle of fighting. That’s in process and I’m sure in due time that information will be presented.’”

      Call this the in-due-time defense. In such debates, “due time” means the time it takes to forget the request. It is part of the science and art at which the Israelis excel, moving forward on the strength of never-ending faits accomplis. Ian McCredie has pointed out in these columns four years ago that Israel’s method is similar to the way the US expanded over the 19th century from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Consciously or unconsciously, Israel’s settlement strategy was modeled on America’s Manifest Destiny. McCredie sees another disturbing parallel with France’s Vichy regime during World War II.

      Could it be that US politicians literally believe Fukuyama’s thesis of the end of history correlating with the fall of the Soviet Union? Enthralled by the success of what is referred to as Pax Americana, are they tempted to see history frozen into a mythical ideal that appeared to triumph during the Cold War? Donald Trump became president by convincing enough Americans that he could “make America great again.” Most people saw that as an expression of nostalgia for the 1950s. Similarly, Joe Biden represents the best throwback the Democrats could propose: a candidate enamored of the good old days of American power and intent on restoring the vanished American prestige he remembered from his youth.

      Using its veto on Sunday, the US cast the sole vote at the UN Security Council quashing a resolution calling for a ceasefire while condemning Israel’s military responses as excessive. In its absolute subservience to Israel and willingness to buck the unanimity of other nations in the Security Council, perhaps the nostalgia of manifest destiny and the memory of a time when the US won wars and dominated through force are what guide US presidents today to bend before Israel’s will. Israel’s brand of exceptionalism, marked by its tendency to defy all restraint, may be the fantasy that enables Americans — now condemned to do little more than “urge restraint” — to believe in their own myth of American exceptionalism.

      Could that be the real lesson emerging from the current crisis? President Biden’s unconditional support of Israel’s right to self-defense — criticized, on the right, by Senator Tom Cotton, who calls it a “policy of weakness and appeasement,” insufficiently supportive of Israel right to unrestrained offense and, on the left, for its failure to take into account Israel’s oppression of Palestinians — demonstrates how what has become truly exceptional is the confusion about what it means to be exceptional.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More