Middle East and North Africa

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares23 Views

    Mahmoud Khalil’s treatment should not happen in a democracy | Moustafa Bayoumi

    by

    Forced disappearance, kidnapping, political imprisonment – take your pick. These terms all describe what has happened with the Trump administration’s first arrest for thought crimes, something that should never happen in a democracy.But it has, to Mahmoud Khalil, a recently graduated master’s student from Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs. And for each minute that Khalil is held in detention, every one of us should feel like our own individual rights in this country are being shredded. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is a barefaced attempt by the Trump administration to destroy free thinking while murdering due process and free speech along the way. This is an ominous development.On the evening of Saturday 8 March, Khalil, who is a lawful permanent resident of the US (a green card holder), and his US-citizen wife, who is eight months pregnant, were returning home to their Columbia University apartment in upper Manhattan. According to reports, the couple had just unlocked the door to the building when plainclothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security pushed their way in like thugs and demanded Khalil surrender himself for arrest.The lead agent told Khalil’s lawyer, whom Khalil had immediately called, that his student visa was being revoked. But Khalil doesn’t have a student visa for the very simple reason that he is a lawful permanent resident! Apparently confused, the agent next responded that Khalil’s green card was being revoked – which, by US law, cannot be done without a lot of due process. When pressed by Khalil’s lawyer to show a warrant for arrest, the agent simply hung up on the lawyer, shoved Khalil into handcuffs, and carted him away. As of this writing, Khalil is in a detention facility in Louisiana.Let’s be clear. If you grew up in Egypt or Nicaragua or Russia, you would recognize this behavior. If you have read the work of Milan Kundera or Ariel Dorfman or Breyten Breytenbach, you will recognize this behavior. This is how the authoritarian regimes always operate, seeking to demonize their critics and neutralize their opposition by lies, exaggerations and the blunt force of state power. This despicable and dangerous conduct has now come to the land of the free and the home of the brave as official policy.The Trump administration doesn’t even bother to disguise the ideological assault that characterizes Khalil’s arrest. Khalil was an active member of Columbia University’s protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, a war that has been characterized as a genocide by Israel by experts and multiple human rights organizations around the world. Khalil also served as a negotiator between the university administration and student activists who had set up an encampment on campus.It was in that role that Khalil’s profile grew, particularly among extreme rightwing organizations supporting Israel that began sending lists of students to the Trump administration who, they said, should be deported from the US because of their views. This blatant attempt to shut down free speech picked up after Donald Trump issued two executive orders in late January that called for deporting “perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment”. (It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the Trump administration is actively canceling every form of protection for other minority populations, while appearing deeply concerned about antisemitism, as it also tacitly supports antisemitic behavior.)Khalil had already suffered so much harassment by these pro-Israel groups that the day before his arrest, he wrote to the interim president of Columbia University, telling her that he was afraid that government officials or private actors would target him or his family, urging her to provide him legal support and protection. After his arrest, the official White House account on X issued a post that said: “Shalom, Mahmoud,” using a Hebrew word that can mean goodbye. Haha. Whoever wrote the post must think this very clever. But in a court of law, the post will only buttress the argument that Trump is on a rampage to shut down any types of speech he doesn’t like.Exactly which crime has Mahmoud Khalil committed? Which activities has he engaged in to warrant arrest and deportation? The best the Department of Homeland Security can come up with are the same flimsy innuendo that we hear over and over again. Any show of concern for Palestinians is, presto, turned into “activities aligned to Hamas”.That “aligned to Hamas” is not a legal standard is hardly surprising. It comes after all from the Trump administration, which operates almost definitionally as the opposite of a legal standard. Expecting something reasonable from this administration is like eating a razor-blade sandwich and thinking you won’t come out all bloodied, which is of course why the Trump administration is repeatedly offering you such aromatic and enticing fresh bread.I expect as much from Trump, but I demand more from Columbia University, my own alma mater. After Trump withdrew some $400m of federal funding over an unproven and completely ideologically driven allegation that Columbia was a hotbed of antisemitism, the interim president didn’t bother to defend her institution. Instead, she immediately sent us Columbia affiliates an email to “assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns”. I’m educated enough to know that the word “appeasement” has a specific history. I also know that cowards run away from Palestine, even if they too will be the ones who suffer in the end.I also demand more from my local officials. This federal assault on protected speech from a New Yorker should raise huge alarms from the mayor of New York, but all we’ve heard from Eric Adams thus far is … well, what sound would crickets make if they were flying business class on Turkish Airlines? If it’s any sound at all, I imagine the jet engine hums louder than the lack of objection he’s made. His silence is matched only by Andrew Cuomo, Adams’s new competition for the next New York mayoral race. Together, they might have enough courage to lose a game of chicken to the lion in the Wizard of Oz.But mostly, I demand a whole lot more from the Democratic party. Where is Hakeem Jeffries? Where is Chuck Schumer? They seem to believe the best way to defend free speech in this country is not to speak at all. Irrelevance has never been so recognizable.Democracy has always been a fragile, improvised, teetering wall of bricks that extends high in the air. It takes a lot of people to support it, but it gives quickly when faced with pressure from the other side. The thing is, even if you’re not supporting it, you’ll still get crushed when the wall falls. Too many people seem ready to be crushed. That’s only the tiniest reason to support Mahmoud Khalil. We all need to rush to the wall and do what we can to free him from his unjust imprisonment. For him and also for us. Because, you know what? He won’t be the last.

    Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

    More stories

    • 200 Shares27 Views

      in US Politics

      Threaten campuses, shut down debate: that’s what free speech looks like under Trump | Owen Jones

      by

      For those who fear Donald Trump is a despot in the making, don’t worry: he has an answer. “I’ve stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America,” he triumphantly declared in his State of the Union address. “It’s back!” JD Vance scolded Europe in his speech at the Munich security conference last month, declaring that “free speech is in retreat” across the continent.Like all authoritarian creeds, Trumpism turns reality on its head and empties words of their meaning in an effort to sow confusion and disarray among its critics. On the same day Trump announced the revival of free speech in Congress, he posted on Truth Social that federal funding for educational institutions that allow “illegal protests” will be ceased. Notably, illegality was not defined, but the issue Trump is referring to, of course, is Palestine. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” he declared. “American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”Trump’s first target: Columbia University, which has had $400m of federal funding slashed because of what the government says is “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”. At least nine other campuses – including Harvard and the University of California – could be next. All were the sites of overwhelmingly peaceful encampments protesting over Israel’s genocidal attack against the Palestinian people. They weren’t simply opposing their government’s facilitation of this atrocity, through weapons, aid and diplomatic support, but demanding their colleges divest from companies linked to Israel.Just as Trumpism is no guarantor of free speech, nor is it a vanguard of anti-racism: it is, in fact, the opposite. The very real menace of antisemitism has been systematically conflated with any critique of crimes committed by the state of Israel. This is what is meant by “anti-Israel hate”, as Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick as new ambassador to the UN puts it, who became a rightwing icon after facing down university presidents over Israel. The president’s most powerful ally is Elon Musk, a man who in 2023 expressed his agreement with a tweet claiming Jewish communities were pushing “hatred against whites”, and recently performed Nazi salutes at a Trump rally.Trump himself declared that Jewish Americans who support the Democrats – that is, the vast majority – “hate their religion”, “hate everything about Israel” and “should be ashamed of themselves”, and menacingly said they would have a “lot” of blame if he lost the presidential election. The university protests, on the other hand, had a large Jewish presence, and hundreds of Jewish students signed a letter rejecting “the ways that these encampments have been smeared as antisemitic”.Indeed, Columbia in particular victimised its own students. The university banned Jewish Voice for Peace before the encampment began, ordered police raids which led to more than 100 students being arrested, disciplined and expelled, and targeted sympathetic academics.One was Katherine Franke, a professor who was publicly denounced by Stefanik and forced into retirement. Far from protecting Jewish students, Franke claims, this is about “radical advocates for Israel” lying about the campus protests. “This university has bent a knee and coddled bullies,” she says of Columbia’s repression of students’ free speech – and still it had its funding slashed.It gets more sinister. The Department of Homeland Security arrested one of the lead negotiators of Columbia’s encampment: Mahmoud Khalil, a US green card holder of Palestinian origin, married to a US citizen who is eight months pregnant. Unknown to his wife, he was sent more than 1,000 miles away to a notorious detention centre in Louisiana. The department’s claim: that “he led activities aligned to Hamas”, a blatant attempt to conflate Palestinian solidarity with the militant group responsible for war crimes on 7 October.Far from restoring free speech, Trump’s administration is incinerating the first amendment. When it comes to Palestine, free speech simply does not exist. Surely there is one man who will be particularly incensed by this outrage. After all, just last week he grandly proclaimed: “We have to ask ourselves the question as leaders: ‘Are we willing to defend people even if we disagree with what they say?’ If you’re not willing to do that, I don’t think you’re fit to lead Europe or the United States.” That was the vice-president, JD Vance.But the truth is, the US right never actually cared about free speech. It was simply a ruse, intended to stigmatise any attempt to rebut its bigotry against largely voiceless minorities. The Trump administration has escalated the biggest onslaught against free speech since McCarthyism: even before its assumption of power, those opposed to Israel’s genocide have faced being deplatformed, victimised and indeed targeted by institutions like Columbia.Yet it was not just the hardcore right who defamed these protests. Many self-described “liberals” and “centrists” joined in, smearing those opposed to some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century as hateful, dangerous extremists – Jewish Americans among them. In doing so, they helped legitimise the inevitable authoritarian crackdown that is now under way. Simone Zimmerman, co-founder of Jewish American campaign group IfNotNow, told me we are now seeing “the terrifying logical conclusion of smearing anyone calling for Palestinian freedom as an antisemite: a white nationalist administration carrying out its war on civil rights and free speech under the banner of ‘fighting antisemitism’. We are all endangered by this blatant assault on our democracy.”It would be deeply naive to believe this repression will end with the attacks on people expressing solidarity with Palestine. A precedent that is established can swiftly be expanded. As it is, the US media are increasingly menaced by – among other things – Trump’s libel actions, the threat of vexatious investigations and plutocrats like Jeff Bezos bending the knee to the would-be king. Free speech is being pummelled by those who claim to be its greatest advocates.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 138 Shares25 Views

      in US Politics

      Ice arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia protests, lawyer says

      by

      A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s student encampment movement was arrested on Saturday night by federal immigration authorities who claimed they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney.Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment, blocks from the private Ivy League university’s main campus in New York when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press.One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a state department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated last December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.The arrest comes as Donald Trump vows to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.The administration has placed particular scrutiny on Columbia, announcing Friday that it would be cutting $400m in grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the elite school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus.The authorities declined to tell Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, why he was being detained, Greer said. Khalil has since been transferred to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” Greer told the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”A spokesperson for Columbia said law enforcement agents must produce a warrant before entering university property. The spokesperson declined to say if the school had received a warrant for Khalil’s arrest.Messages seeking comment were left with the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice.Khalil had become one of the most visible faces of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia. As students erected tents on campus last spring, Khalil was picked to serve as a negotiator on behalf of students and met frequently with university administrators.When classes resumed in September, he told the Associated Press that the protests would continue: “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist.”An immigration court can revoke a green card but government departments do not have that power.Last week it was reported by Axios that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas from foreign nationals who are deemed to support Hamas or other terrorist groups, using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick out individuals.Khalil was among several investigated by a newly-created university disciplinary committee – the Office of Institutional Equity – looking into students at the institution who have expressed criticism of Israel, according to records shared with the AP.In recent weeks, the committee has sent notices to dozens of students for activities ranging from sharing social media posts in support of Palestinian people to joining “unauthorized” protests.“I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” Khalil said last week.After refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, Khalil said the university threatened to block him from graduating. But when he appealed the decision through a lawyer, they eventually backed down, Khalil said.“They just want to show Congress and rightwing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students,” Khalil said. “It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”Columbia students kick-started the tent encampment protests at their Manhattan campus last spring, with the idea catching on at dozens of campuses across the US. At Columbia and many other colleges, their academic administrations called in the relevant local police department and hundreds of students were arrested.“Targeting a student activist is an affront to the rights of Mahmoud Khalil and his family. This blatantly unconstitutional act sends a deplorable message that freedom of speech is no longer protected in America. Furthermore, Khalil and all people living in the United States are afforded due process. A green card can only be revoked by an immigration judge, showing once again that the Trump administration is willing to ignore the law in order to instill fear and further its racist agenda,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of New York Immigration, Coalition said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.“DHS must immediately release Khalil,” he said. More

    • 88 Shares91 Views

      in US Politics

      Iran’s vice-president and most prominent reformist resigns

      by

      Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s most prominent reformist, has resigned from the government, saying he had been instructed to do so by an unnamed senior official.He implied the move was endorsed by the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, although he did not name him in his resignation letter as he stepped down as vice-president for strategic affairs.His departure, a hammer blow to the still relatively new government of President Masoud Pezeshkian, follows the impeachment of the economy minister, Abdolnaser Hemmati, as Iranian conservatives go on the offensive using the continued decline in the national currency as a reason to demand a change of course.The double removals pushed the Iranian stock market into a further tailspin as Iranian businesses sensed that the political path to reopening commerce with the west was fast being shut down by conservatives that never reconciled themselves to Pezeshkian’s victory.Donald Trump’s decision to try to restore maximum economic sanctions against Tehran has undercut those Iranian reformists seeking to come to a new global agreement covering the oversight of its nuclear programme.Zarif – who resigned before, in August, only to return to government shortly after – has faced incessant criticism for his American-born children allegedly being dual Iranian-US citizens.His critics, many of them opponents of talks with the US over its nuclear programme, have claimed his appointment breaches a 2022 law that debars individuals with ties to the west from holding senior positions.The nationality of his children, dating to his period as a diplomat based in the US, was one reason why the vice-president tried to step down previously shortly after joining Pezeshkian’s administration in August 2024.Zarif, who was Iran’s top diplomat between 2013 and 2021 in the government of the moderate president Hassan Rouhani, had campaigned alongside Pezeshkian for the presidency on a near-joint ticket. Zarif has been a lightning rod for criticism of the reformist government led by those who lost the presidential election.The then-foreign minister became known on the international stage during lengthy negotiations for the 2015 nuclear accord formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The agreement led to the lifting of western sanctions in return for independent UN-led inspections to ensure Iran’s nuclear programme was purely for civilian use.The deal was torpedoed three years later when, during Trump’s first term as president, the US pulled out of the deal and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.View image in fullscreenBut, in his resignation note, Zarif implied his latest departure from government was not voluntary. It was said a high-ranking official had instructed Pezeshkian to return him to university. Pezeshkian refused, instead asking the official to directly relay the instruction to Zarif.After a meeting with the official in question, the vice-president for strategic affairs reluctantly agreed to submit his resignation.Zarif has always been seen as the most articulate exponent of Iranian foreign policy to western audiences. A career diplomat, he has repeatedly called for the foreign ministry to be given clearer authority over international relations, and not to be contradicted by the independent foreign policy led by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Earlier on Saturday, the Iranian parliament had voted by 182 votes to dismiss Hemmati, who was also previously governor of the Iranian central bank. He had been in office for only six months and 12 days, the fastest impeachment in the history of the Iranian revolution dating to 1979.Despite the presence of Pezeshkian in the parliament in a display of solidarity, Hemmati failed to fend off the vote of no confidence and was dismissed from his position. The Iranian parliament is dominated by hardliners mainly elected in 2024, and has never reconciled itself to the surprise election of Pezeshkian to the presidency later in the summer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPezeshkian, deeply aware that his government was likely to be undermined by society’s unelected officials, had continually emphasised the need for consensus – but the events of the past 48 hours suggests he failed.Explaining his resignation, Zarif did not identify the person with whom he met, saying instead: “Yesterday, I went to meet him at the invitation of the head of the judiciary. Referring to the country’s conditions, he recommended that I return to university to prevent further pressure on the government, and I immediately accepted.”The resignation brought no relief to the Iranian stock market, which plunged further in the red.Zarif expressed his resentment at his treatment. He said: “Although I faced the most ridiculous insults, slanders and threats against myself and my family in the past six months, and even within the government, I spent the most bitter 40 years of service, I persevered in the hope of serving.“I have not been and will not be one to run away from hardships and difficulties in the path of serving this land and country, and in the past 40 or so years, I have endured so many insults and slanders for the small role I have played in advancing national interests, from ending the Iran-Iraq war to finalising the nuclear file, and I have held my breath to prevent the interests of the country from being damaged by a flood of lies and distortions.”He added: “I hope that by stepping aside, the excuses for obstructing the will of the people and the success of the government will be removed.”Azar Mansouri, the head of the Reformists Front, an alliance of smaller parties, said she did not know of any way Iran’s economic problems could be lifted without ending economic sanctions, and taking the steps necessary to be removed from the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the body that oversees global transparency in financial transactions.Conservatives have pointed to the humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Trump in his recent Oval Office encounter as a warning to those in Iran who believe it is possible to negotiate with the US president.Opponents of Hemmati, led by the conservative Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, admit his dismissal is part of a wider campaign against the government, including Hemmati’s efforts to reconnect the Iranian economy to the west by removing Iran from the FATF blacklist.Abolfazl Abu Torabi, the MP for Najafabad, told an Iranian newspaper recently: “I believe that the problems of the foreign exchange market in the country will not be solved by impeaching the minister of economic affairs and finance. This is a fact. It is the government’s approach that needs to be reformed, because according to a report by the parliamentary research centre, economic growth has decreased by 1% over the past six months.” He claimed Hemmati’s attitude had led to inflationary expectations. More

    • 100 Shares71 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump invites freed Israeli hostage to White House

      by

      Freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi has been invited to Washington to meet Donald Trump this week, his brother told Israeli media on Sunday.Sharabi, who was released from Gaza after 16 months in captivity, expects to meet Trump with other freed hostages on Tuesday, after the US president watched him describe the severe hunger and violence he endured on Israeli television.Excerpts from Sharabi’s moving interview on Israel’s Channel 12 “were shown to Trump, with English subtitles, and he was shocked once again, but also expressed great sympathy for those who survived captivity”, his brother Sharon said, according to a translation from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.Israeli advocacy groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), have posted subtitled versions of the interview online.When Sharabi and two other hostages, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami, were released on 8 February alongside after nearly 500 days in captivity, their physical condition outraged Israelis, and Trump. Sharabi was at home in Be’eri kibbutz with his British-born wife and their two teenage daughters when Hamas attacked on 7 October 2023.In the Israeli television interview , Sharabi recalled being tied up, losing consciousness and experiencing extreme hunger.“I remember not being able to fall asleep because of the pain,” he said. “The ropes are already digging into your flesh, and every movement makes you want to scream.”Sharabi’s brother said the freed hostage is flying to the US aboard a plane provided by Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-American widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and a major Trump donor.“Tomorrow morning, we’re boarding the plane with Mrs Adelson’s kind help. We’ll arrive to see Trump and explain to him up close the urgency of continuing the first stage or beginning the second stage – it doesn’t really matter,” Sharon Sharabi said, referring to the tenuous ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.During the 7 October attack, after the armed group kidnapped Sharabi from his home, they shot the family dog, locked his wife Lianne and their daughters in a safe room, and set it on fire, according to Lianne’s parents, who spoke to the BBC. Sharabi only learned that his wife and daughters had been killed that day after his release.Sharabi’s other brother, Yossi, was also taken hostage that day. He died early last year in Gaza, Israel’s military said, when the Israeli army bombed a building near where he was being held.The Trump administration continues to support Israel amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On Friday, it approved a nearly $3bn arms sale to Israel, bypassing congressional review to supply more 2,000lb bombs used in the war against Hamas.Following Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of a blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza on Sunday, the White House said it “supports” Israel’s decision.At a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Sunday, the families of Israelis still being held in Gaza urged their government to stop violating the ceasefire/hostage deal that puts the lives of their loved ones at further risk. More

    • 225 Shares84 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘I’m sitting on the side that’s launching bombs’: author Omar El Akkad on the hypocrisy of the west

      by

      Omar El Akkad grew up believing in an idealized America. Born in Egypt, raised in Qatar, and transplanted as a teenager to Canada, the writer saw the west for its freedoms – a place where, unlike at home, he could check out a William S Burroughs book from the library and where the naked baby on the cover of the Nirvana album he had on repeat hadn’t been blacked out by a censor.He’d go on to build a career as a reporter with the Globe and Mail, covering the US occupation of Afghanistan, the prison at Guantánamo Bay and the Arab uprisings of 2010-2011, before moving to the US and publishing two award-winning novels – American War, an account of a future US ravaged by war and climate disaster, and What Strange Paradise, a story of a Syrian boy who survives a shipwreck off Greece.Despite El Akkad’s front-row seat to some of the worst manifestations of American power, he didn’t stop believing. But that changed with Israel’s bombardment of Gaza after the 7 October attacks. The scale of the US taxpayer-funded offensive spurred a crisis of faith El Akkad narrates in a new, non-fiction book: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.View image in fullscreenThe title stems from a tweet El Akkad published on 25 October of that year, decrying what he saw as the complicity of political and cultural power centers in the violence, whether through silence, justification or active support. After completing a draft of the book, he says his editor recommended repurposing the tweet for the title. “I’m on this mission to try and convince people that I didn’t just take a tweet and expand it out to 250 pages,” he said.The result is a searing journey through El Akkad’s own history and relationship with the so-called free world, punctuated with descriptions of horrors livestreamed from Gaza.We are still living in the cataclysm, and it’s anyone’s guess what world will emerge from it. But for El Akkad, the moral bankruptcy of western liberalism, with its addiction to material comfort at any expense, is beyond salvation. The bombardment of Gaza, he writes, “will be remembered as the moment millions of people looked at the west, the rules-based order, the shell of modern liberalism and the capitalistic thing it serves, and said: I want nothing to do with this.”The Guardian spoke with El Akkad while he toured the UK to launch the book. We covered Gaza, American indifference, Donald Trump – and why despite it all, he still has hope.NY: You write that the book is “an account of a fracture”. It really does read that way – as though your relationship to this part of the world, which had picked up some minor cracks over the years, shattered into pieces during the bombardment of Gaza. How did you manage to write through that crisis?OEA: I’ve been going to British and American schools since I was five years old. I’ve been very much attuned to this part of the world from a very young age. One of my formative childhood experiences was holding up magazines to the light to try to read past the censors’ black ink.Over the last year and a half, there’s been an element of personal complicity that renders all these relatively tiny fractures that I’d seen growing up or over the course of my life, part of a bigger break. I’m sitting on the launching side of the bombs. My taxpayer money is paying for this, and I’m watching it in almost real time. Those factors make it much more difficult to think of this as just another fissure that I can Band-Aid together with my overarching thoughts about what the west is. It’s an account of a severance: there’s been something that I’ve been anchored to for most of my life. Now I feel unanchored from it, but I don’t know what I am on the other side of that.View image in fullscreenNY: You reported on the “war on terror” for years, including in Guantánamo and Afghanistan. Why do you think it was Gaza that brought on a fracture of this magnitude?OEA: I think the short answer is threefold: immediacy, scale and cowardice, the latter being my own. In the context of being a journalist during the “war on terror” years, and covering a place like the prison at Guantánamo Bay, I was still able to impose a kind of distance between myself and my role in this part of the world, and what I was seeing. That’s to say I was able to think of it as a kind of anomaly – that underneath it, there was a bedrock of something good and something fundamental that would hold.I have personally found that impossible to do when every morning I wake up conditioned to know that if I open up my social media feed and I see a picture of a smiling Palestinian kid, it’s almost certainly because that kid has just been killed. It makes that particular form of psychological self-defense unavailable to me. And of course, there’s the scale [of the violence], which I think is pretty self-evident. All of these things are intertwined, I think, with my own cowardice in my ability to have been able to look away for so long. I can’t do that any more.NY: It seems like a lot of your most scathing critiques are reserved for the “western liberal” – the person who might express sympathy with the oppressed but doesn’t want to speak out, whether because of the cost or for other reasons of inconvenience.OEA: For me there’s been a difficult reckoning with where to direct my rage politically, in terms of the rational versus the visceral. Rationally, I know on almost any spectrum that the current administration is worse, maybe than any administration in my lifetime.But viscerally, what brought us to this moment inspires a different kind of rage, because of the chasm between the performance and the reality. You watch a presumably liberal, progressive administration send you fundraising emails talking about Donald Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, and then you watch the leaders of that same Democratic party pal around with this guy a few weeks after the election at Jimmy Carter’s funeral. You receive fundraising emails talking about the climate crisis as an existential threat to the planet, and then you see a campaign predicated on not doing very much about it at all. You see press secretaries talk about the desire for a lasting peace while funding an endless war.View image in fullscreenI think that this chasm between the performance of a particular kind of virtue and a cold, calculated reality is part and parcel of how we end up in this situation. Whatever I may think of someone like Donald Trump, that gap between the performance and the reality is, by any account, substantially smaller.NY: Trump is demolishing the federal government as we speak. Is that part of the same story you tell, of a system collapsing under the weight of its own myths?OEA: I think that one of the very few fairly reliable trajectories in American politics over the last quarter century is to take whatever was on the fringes of the Republican party 10 or 15 years ago and see whether it’s in the center today. One of the things that terrifies me about someone like Donald Trump is not the inherent extremism of every facet of his political being, but the likelihood that he will be considered tame by the standards of whatever the Republican party is becoming.Any system that at its heart is insatiable is going to lead us to a place like the one we’re in. Any system predicated on endless taking – the taking of land, the taking of resources, the taking of lives of people who get in the way – is going to take us to these kinds of places. I find myself less and less concerned with trying to moderate the speed with which we are racing towards a particular conclusion, than actually trying to change the system that leads us to that conclusion.NY: I think a lot of people, the same people you might have indicted six months ago for not speaking out, are really panicked at the moment. Can that complacent liberalism be directed into more urgent action?OEA: Yeah, absolutely. Look toward the solidarity networks that have been created at the ground level in response to both the last year and a half and to whatever the Trump administration is doing. And as cynical as I have become about the west’s institutions – be they political, academic, cultural, whatever – I’ve had the exact opposite reaction to the immense amount of courage shown at an individual and communal level. Those systems are in place. Yes, they’re fighting an uphill battle, but they exist.Any proposed solution would need the middle-of-the-road, liberal power structures – which in the United States, is overwhelmingly the Democratic party – make a firm decision one way or another on whether they want to undertake an overhaul to fight this directly, or whether they want to continue as a kind of diet version of something centrist, when the center continues moving to the right further and further every day.NY: Does that mean you have some hope?OEA: Yes! This is a very weird thing to say about a stone-cold bummer of a book but I do think of it as a profoundly hopeful book. I’m watching doctors fly into the middle of a killing field and perform surgery. I’m watching dock workers refuse to load missiles on to ships. I’m watching students at Ivy League universities who have been handed a free pass to the good life hand that pass back in the form of protest for a people who can offer them essentially nothing in the way of material reward.I wrote a book – in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Other people are out there doing the work, and I am leeching courage from them. And to me that is incredibly hopeful, because otherwise I would just be left having turned away from all of these institutions and their immense resources, and facing what? Facing nothing, essentially.This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity

      Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is out in the US on 25 February More

    • 150 Shares148 Views

      in US Politics

      Steve Witkoff: from property developer to global spotlight as Trump’s tough-talking troubleshooter

      by

      With the first phase of the ceasefire nearing its end, an American property developer has emerged as a key figure in determining whether Gaza attains a more enduring peace or slips back into war.Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s typically idiosyncratic pick as special Middle East envoy, has also found his way into the midst of talks with Russia over Ukraine’s future, sitting opposite Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, instead of the official special envoy for the region, Keith Kellogg.On both portfolios, Witkoff is technically outranked by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, but every national capital knows by now that in Trump’s world, power flows through personal connection to the president. Rubio is a former bitter rival turned loyalist, brought into the administration for expediency’s sake. Witkoff and Trump go back nearly 40 years.That is what gives the 67-year-old businessman his clout. America’s interlocutors know he is the genial emissary of a volatile leader capable of swinging from fulsome support to public vituperation in a heartbeat, depending in large part on who has Trump’s ear.Witkoff demonstrated his influence in getting the ceasefire off the ground. On 10 January, Witkoff believed a breakthrough was close, after more than seven months of meandering, inconsequential talks. That Friday evening, he called Benjamin Netanyahu’s office from Doha, where he had been meeting Arab officials, and told the prime minister’s aides that he would be flying to Israel the next day. The aides explained that it would be Saturday and Netanyahu did not do business on the Sabbath, but would gladly meet the American envoy a few hours later, once night had fallen. Witkoff was having none of it and, according to an account in Haaretz newspaper, told them “in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him”.View image in fullscreenThe Israeli leader abandoned his Sabbath observance and received Witkoff in his office, where the envoy told him to agree to the ceasefire he had been ducking for so long.“The president has been a great friend of Israel,” Witkoff told Netanyahu, according to the Wall Street Journal, “and now it’s time to be a friend back.”Netanyahu folded immediately, allowing Witkoff to return to Doha to finalise the deal. The prime minister knew the American envoy was speaking for the president, whom he dared not anger.The bond of trust between Trump and Witkoff dates back to a chance encounter and a ham and cheese sandwich in a New York deli nearly four decades ago.Witkoff was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, the son of a women’s coat manufacturer. He qualified as a lawyer, and was working on an all-night property deal in 1986 in which Trump was involved.Witkoff had gone to the deli at 3am to get food for his team and Trump was there, hungry but without any cash in his pocket.“I ordered him a ham and Swiss,” Witkoff told a court in 2023, when he was testifying on his friend’s behalf in Trump’s trial for fraud. He did not run into Trump for another eight years, but the tycoon had remembered “the sandwich incident”, and a friendship grew.Trump persuaded Witkoff to graduate from property law to become a developer. Both men moved between New York and Florida, playing prodigious amounts of golf. Witkoff was with Trump on the latter’s West Palm Beach golf course in September, when a would-be assassin was arrested armed with a sniper rifle.Witkoff has also spoken emotionally about the solace he found talking to Trump when one of his sons, Andrew, died from an opioid overdose in 2011.Their long history has instilled a fierce personal loyalty in Witkoff, and in return he is treated almost as family by the president. It is a friendship that predates Trump’s embrace of Christian nationalism and the far right, so Witkoff does not bring the same ideological baggage to his diplomacy as other acolytes. His fealty is to Trump personally, not to Maga.His mostly pleasant and polite manner also stands out in the Trump crowd. Don Peebles, another developer who knows both men well, told the Journalthat Witkoff is “not the kind of negotiator that wants to see blood on the floor before getting the deal done”.After the primary race was over last year, Trump dispatched Witkoff to make peace with his defeated Republican rivals. And Witkoff worked on the Gaza ceasefire with his Biden administration counterpart, Brett McGurk, during the transition in a rare example of bipartisan cooperation.“Brett McGurk was great for the Biden administration,” he recalled. “We worked collaboratively. We were able to convince people that a hostage release was a good thing.”He credits Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with persuading him to take on the role of Middle East envoy, a job Kushner performed informally for the first Trump administration.Kushner, another property developer, claimed the job on the basis of his business connections with the Gulf monarchies, but Witkoff, a far warmer personality than his slightly robotic predecessor, has also developed relationships lower down the social scale, particularly with the hostages’ families.“I have a lot of empathy because I lost a child,” he said. “So I talk to these families who have lost children and they want their children’s bodies back as much as the families who have children who are alive.”Witkoff’s focus on the remaining 58 hostages (of which Israeli authorities believe 34 to be already dead) aligns him with majority Israeli opinion in seeking agreement on the second phase of the ceasefire, but on a collision course with Netanyahu and the far right.The next phase will involve the release of many more Palestinians serving life sentences in Israeli prisons and the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza strip. It would be a substantial step towards a lasting peace, which is why Netanyahu is set against it. The right wing of his coalition, which opposed the ceasefire in the first place, threatens to walk out if it moves forward to a second phase without Hamas first being obliterated and the strip opened up to Jewish settlement.View image in fullscreenWitkoff has been publicly insistent that the second phase must get under way, putting the priority of securing the release of the last hostages above anything else. “I think phase two is more difficult,” he said at a conference in Miami on Thursday. But he added: “Everybody is buying into this notion that releasing hostages is just a good thing. It just is something that’s important and ought to happen.”At the conference, organised by a Riyadh-based charitable institute, Witkoff said it was his contacts among the Saudi royals who got him involved in Russian talks.He explained it was the Saudis who “engineered” the release of an American prisoner held by Moscow, through their contacts to Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund.“They felt that there could be a compelling meeting in Russia that might lead to the release of Marc Fogel,” Witkoff said. “We got off the plane, not sure it was going to happen, but it did.”Fogel’s release on 12 February gave Trump an early public relations win, and was enough of a sweetener from Vladimir Putin, to secure a phone call with the new US president the same day that began US-Russian talks about Ukraine, in the absence of Ukrainian representation.Witkoff’s role cemented his standing in Trump’s mind as someone who could get results, leading to his current status as America’s chief troubleshooter. However, enduring peace in Ukraine and the Middle East will ultimately revolve around issues of justice and national sovereignty, terms which Witkoff avoids.When he went to see the devastation in Gaza for himself at the end of January, he said he could not imagine why any Palestinian would want to stay there. The coming weeks may not just test his sway as a Trump emissary, but also the limits of the real estate approach to diplomacy. More

    • 225 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s Gaza takeover won’t happen. But it has already changed the face of Israeli politics | Yair Wallach

      by

      When President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to Hamas last week to release all hostages by noon on 15 February, warning that otherwise “all hell [will] break loose”, the Israeli right was ecstatic. Here was a chance to finally move ahead with the complete occupation and annihilation of the Gaza Strip. The families of Israeli hostages were petrified about the prospect of the ceasefire collapsing, yet members of the ruling coalition called to kill the deal. “We have international support, give the order!” demanded the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.But the order never came. Hamas abided by the agreement and freed three hostages; Israel then released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Trump shrugged and said that it was Israel’s decision. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, who visited Israel on Sunday, signalled that the direction of travel is not towards resuming hostility. Instead, the parties must now move to “substantive” negotiations over the second phase of the ceasefire, he said, leading to peace.In the whirlwind of the last four weeks, it is difficult to make sense of Trump’s approach to the Gaza Strip. On the one hand, the president is widely credited for pushing the parties to a ceasefire agreement, raising hopes among Israelis who want to see a return of the hostages and an end to the war. On the other, Trump embraced the hard-right Israeli vision of ethnically cleansing Gaza, through a forced “relocation” of its 2.2 million Palestinian residents, establishing a US real estate development that would turn the Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.Some suspect this is merely a negotiation ploy that he hopes will pressure Arab states to take responsibility over Gaza, and to force Hamas into relinquishing control and influence. Even if this were the case, Trump’s rhetoric has already damaged international law. For the first time in many decades, the US has publicly proposed the forced displacement of millions of people as a geopolitical solution. As the genocide scholar Dirk Moses recently observed, this may mark the end of the postwar order, which defined such “transfers” of populations as war crimes that were banned by the Geneva conventions. While episodes of forced mass displacement have taken place in the second half of the 20th century, such as those in Yugoslavia or in Syria, these were never endorsed or championed by the White House.The legitimisation of ethnic cleansing could have a lasting impact in Palestine, Israel and beyond. Palestine’s history is instructive: in 1937, the Palestine Royal Commission administered by Britain proposed the forced displacement of over 200,000 Palestinians from the Galilee as part of its partition plan. Mainstream Zionist leaders had long ruled out transfers on this scale as unrealistic. But British backing for this idea gave it legitimacy. David Ben-Gurion, then the leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Palestine, wrote in his diary: “This is a possibility we did not dream of; that we could not dream of in our wildest imagination.”Ben-Gurion understood that the details of the partition plan mattered far less than the principle of forced mass displacement. In the aftermath of the second world war, “population exchanges” were explicitly or tacitly accepted by the great powers as a necessary evil. Eleven years after the royal commission, Ben-Gurion oversaw the permanent expulsion and dispossession of two-thirds of Palestinians, in the Nakba of 1948.We can already see the effect of Trump’s rhetoric on Israeli society. Since October 2023, rightwing ministers and political activists have been calling for a euphemistic “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza, and yet Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had sought to keep a safe distance from such ideas. The idea of forced displacement was broadly considered so beyond the pale that mainstream pollsters did not even pose the question in their Israeli public opinion surveys.Yet shortly after his return from Washington DC, a gleeful Netanyahu lauded Trump’s “revolutionary vision for the day after Hamas”. “We see eye-to-eye with the US administration on … all our war goals”, he told the Knesset. The political commentator and radio host Amit Segal, who has been accused of serving as Netanyahu’s mouthpiece, quoted the Psalms verse: “We were like them that dream.” The verse refers to the return of Jews to Zion; now it was being used to celebrate the looming expulsion of Palestinians from the country.Strikingly, most centrist Israeli parties welcomed the plan. The former defence minister Benny Gantz commended Trump for his “creative, original and interesting thinking”. An opinion poll found that no less than 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the plan in principle; 52% thought it was feasible. Only 3% of Israeli Jews rejected the plan as “unacceptable and immoral”.Yet even if many Israelis favourably view the fantasy plan of a depopulated Gaza, there’s no appetite for the total war that would be required to materialise that plan. Opinion polls showed that Israelis are resolutely opposed to an immediate return to hostilities. After 16 months of war, there is widespread fatigue. The malnourished condition of the hostages that returned most recently, and the reports of torture they faced, was deeply alarming. Two-thirds of Israelis believe the ceasefire agreement should be upheld, and the safe return of the hostages should take priority.We can expect further ultimatums and confusion for the foreseeable future. Even if an immediate return to war has been averted, the risk of one is greater than ever. Trump has let the genie of mass expulsion out of the bottle. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza would require carnage and atrocities even beyond the horrifying scale of the last 17 months. Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan are unlikely to survive, and the reverberations would be felt throughout the region. This is a scenario that would not only mean the likely death of the hostages, but an increasingly theocratic Jewish republic premised upon destruction and conquest. If Israel heads down this route, it will not only be destroying Palestinians in Gaza, but condemning itself to an ever escalating war.

      Yair Wallach is a reader in Israeli studies and head of the Centre for Jewish Studies at Soas University of London

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 150 Shares121 Views

      in US Politics

      Netanyahu seeks to draw Trump into future attack on Iranian nuclear sites

      by

      Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that, with Donald Trump’s support, his government will “finish the job” of neutralising the threat from Iran, amid US reports that Israel is considering airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites in the coming few months.Trump has said he would prefer to make a deal with Tehran, but also made clear that he was considering US military action if talks failed, and his administration has laid down an early maximalist demand: Iranian abandonment of its entire nuclear programme.“All options are on the table,” the US national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told Fox News on Sunday. The new administration will only talk to Iran, Waltz added, if “they want to give up their entire programme and not play games as we’ve seen Iran do in the past in prior negotiations”.Earlier this month, Trump offered the Iranian regime a stark choice.“I would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear,” he told the New York Post. “I would prefer that to bombing the hell out of it.”In politics as in business, Trump’s vaunted “art of the deal” has relied heavily on bluster and threats, but analysts question how well that will work with Tehran. They also warn that the window for a diplomatic resolution to the standoff with Tehran will get narrower with each passing month, as Iranian nuclear capabilities progress, and Netanyahu works to persuade Trump to participate in joint strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities while it is at its most vulnerable.Israel’s prime minister has tried and failed to convince successive US administrations to take part in military action against Iran, including Trump’s. During his first term in the White House, Trump declined, in line with his aim of keeping the US out of foreign wars.In 2018, however, Trump did fulfil another Netanyahu request, withdrawing the US from a three-year-old multilateral agreement that had constrained Iran’s programme in return for sanctions relief. Since then, Iran has pushed forward with nuclear development and now produces increasing amounts of 60%-enriched uranium, which means it is a small technical step away from the production of weapons-grade fissile material.Tehran insists it has no intention of making a nuclear weapon and remains a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could upend that policy if Iran’s nuclear sites came under threat.Israel and Iran launched a series of tit-for-tat attacks on each other last year, culminating in substantial Israeli airstrikes on 25 October that inflicted significant damage on Iran’s air defences.That damage, combined with Israel’s crippling campaign over the past year against Iran’s most important ally in the region, Hezbollah, has left Iran in its most militarily vulnerable state for decades.View image in fullscreenStanding alongside the new US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Sunday, Netanyahu made clear he wanted to take advantage of that vulnerability.“Over the last 16 months, Israel has dealt a mighty blow to Iran’s terror axis. Under the strong leadership of President Trump, and with your unflinching support, I have no doubt that we can and will finish the job,” he said.US intelligence agencies have been briefing reporters over the past week that they believe Israel is likely to attack Iranian nuclear sites in the first half of 2025. But the intelligence assessments also underlined Israeli reliance on US support in the form of aerial refuelling, intelligence and reconnaissance. US officials also said such strikes would, at most, set back Iran’s programme by a few months, and could trigger Tehran’s decision to take the decisive step towards making weapons-grade uranium.Whatever the misgivings in Washington, the Trump administration approved the sale earlier this month of guidance kits for bunker-busting BLU-109 bombs, likely to be essential in inflicting damage on Iran’s most deeply buried enrichment plant at Fordow.Netanyahu was the first foreign visitor to be invited to the White House after Trump’s re-election, and according to the Washington Post, the two leaders discussed “several possible levels of American backing, ranging from active military support for a kinetic strike – such as intelligence, refuelling or other assistance – to more limited political backing for a coercive ultimatum”.Raz Zimmt, a research fellow and Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said there was another clock ticking on diplomacy with Iran. Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, its remaining signatories, including the UK, France and Germany, can trigger a “snap back” of all international sanctions on Iran, but that leverage expires in October this year, giving European capitals the options of “use it or lose it”. If the mechanism is triggered, it could lead to a further escalation, Zimmt said.“I think there is a very limited diplomatic window of opportunity until August or September, to reach some kind of settlement between Iran and the US,” he said. “If there is no agreement by then … I think it will be much easier for Netanyahu to get not just a green light [from Washington] but perhaps some kind of military capabilities which will make it easier for Israel to achieve a broader and more effective impact.”Netanyahu regularly describes Trump as the “best friend” Israel ever had in the White House, a description echoed by Rubio and other administration officials, but that friendship will be put to a decisive test as Israel continues to press the case for an attack on Iran.Ariane Tabatabai, a Pentagon policy adviser in the Biden administration, said it would fuel “tension between the ‘restraint’ camp in the administration and the more traditional Republicans who are more inclined toward a more forceful approach to Iran”.“It’s not clear yet in these early days which group will have more influence in the inter-agency process and ultimately drive policy, but that’ll be a factor as well.” Tabatabai said.Trump prides himself in keeping the US out of foreign wars, but he has shown himself ready to take military action against Tehran, ordering the assassination by drone of a Revolutionary Guards commander, Qassem Suleimani, in Baghdad in January 2020.Saudi Arabia is reportedly offering to mediate to avoid a conflagration, but even if Trump wanted to hammer out a deal, argued Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, Trump’s browbeating style of negotiation could easily backfire when it came to Tehran.“The Trump style is he goes in heavy,” Vatanka said. “But Ali Khamenei has to be extremely careful how he responds to Trump so his personal image is not damaged.”“Iran has been weakened in the region – no doubt about it – but they still claim to be leading proponents of the Islamic cause who stand up to western bullying,” he added. “So what might work with certain countries in Europe or in Latin America will not necessarily work with the Iranian regime.” More