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      in World Politics

      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.

      America Is Confused Over What It Means to Be Exceptional

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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.

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      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.

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      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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      in World Politics

      Netanyahu and Hamas Are Playing a Deadly Game

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      In March, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was unable to achieve a parliamentary majority in the Knesset after a fourth Israeli election in two years. As a result, he needed a national crisis to prevent the establishment of an alternative government by the opposition. Such a coalition would include right, centrist and left-wing parties, presenting a threat to Netanyahu’s premiership.

      The last crisis in 2020 was the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused opposition leader Benny Gantz to cave in and agree to form a national unity government with Netanyahu. Now, Netanyahu has a new national emergency with the conflict in Gaza. This has led Naftali Bennet, leader of the right-wing Yamina party, to abandon efforts to form an alternative government with Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid, the largest opposition in Israel. Yamina and Yesh Atid have attempted to combine with Gantz’s Blue and White, the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties, and the United Arab List to reach a 61-seat majority in the Knesset.

      The Future of Jerusalem Matters to Us All

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      Netanyahu may not have planned the exact scenario of the current conflict with Hamas militants in Gaza, but his policies laid the foundation for it. First, he has refused to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, Netanyahu has preferred to bolster divisions between the Palestinian factions of Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank.

      There is no chance that Netanyahu would order the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza. The prime minister wants the division amongst the Palestinians to continue. Netanyahu is content with having Qatar — which did not join the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in recognizing Israel in 2020 — prop up Hamas’ rule in Gaza.

      Evictions in Sheikh Jarrah

      Other Israeli decisions connected to East Jerusalem and its Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood have led to the multiple crises now taking place.

      The first spark that lit the flame was the decision by Israeli police to set up barricades toward the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, at the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. Since that is a place where many young Palestinians gather in the evening after breaking their fasts, it led to anger and protest — some violent. Kobi Shabtai, the novice police commissioner, falsely claimed this was a longstanding policy to prevent crowding. He later lifted the ban.

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      This was followed by clashes in East Jerusalem inside a compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. Israeli police made another major mistake of firing stun grenades into Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is inside the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. This led to outrage amongst Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and Israeli-Arab citizens in Israel.

      The second spark was due to right-wing Israeli extremists attempting to evict Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah to make way for Jewish settlers. These Palestinian families became refugees in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and were relocated to Sheikh Jarrah in 1956 after the Jordanian government, which controlled East Jerusalem at the time, built homes for them.

      An extremely unfair law permits Israelis to try to reclaim property in East Jerusalem that was held by Jews before 1948. Yet Palestinians are not allowed to do the same with property they once owned in West Jerusalem. A hearing over the legality of the eviction attempts was due to be heard by the Israeli Supreme Court on May 10. The case has since been postponed for a month at the request of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.

      With the events on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and the evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the focus is on Netanyahu. To reach a majority in the Knesset, the prime minister encouraged the newly-elected Itamar Ben-Gvir — a follower of the extreme right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane — and his Jewish Power Party to join forces with Bezalel Smotrich and his Religious Zionism, a nationalist, far-right party.

      Ben-Gvir has been accused by the Israeli police chief of supporting young, right-wing extremists who attacked Palestinians in the Old City and in Sheikh Jarrah last week. “The person who is responsible for this intifada [uprising] is Itamar Ben Gvir. It started with the Lehava protest at Damascus Gate,” Shabtai said. “It continued with provocations in Sheikh Jarrah, and now he is moving around with Lehava activists.”

      To his credit, even Netanyahu realized that the situation in Jerusalem was at risk of turning ugly. This year, just before what Israelis call the “Jerusalem Day Flag March,” marking the capture of the Old City and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Palestinians marked Laylat al-Qadr (night of decree), one of the holiest nights in Ramadan and the Islamic calendar. On May 10, thousands of young, right-wing Israelis were scheduled to march through Damascus Gate while taunting Palestinians in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. Instead, it was rerouted via the Jaffa Gate adjacent to West Jerusalem.

      Uncertainty for Hamas

      This is where Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, comes into the picture. Hamas has been losing popularity in Gaza because of the dire conditions that Palestinian face there. In May and July, Palestinians were due to vote in legislative and presidential elections, respectively. While the elections have been postponed by President Abbas, who blamed Israel for uncertainty about whether Palestinian elections could take place in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the Hamas leadership was concerned.

      On the one hand, it was predicted that Hamas might benefit from the weakness of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. Fatah has split into three groups for the elections, with Abbas part of the main one. On the other hand, Nasser al-Qudwa’s decision to run a separate list from Fatah poses a risk to Hamas. Qudwa, a senior diplomat who was sacked by Fatah in March, is the nephew of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Qudwa represents a group led by Marwan Barghouti, a popular Fatah leader who is currently in an Israeli prison and is dubbed “Palestine’s Nelson Mandela,” while a third Fatah list is led by Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled rival of Abbas who is originally from Gaza.

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      An election for the Palestinians presents uncertainty for both Fatah and Hamas. Therefore, Hamas decided to present itself as the guardian of Jerusalem and of Al-Aqsa Mosque, hoping to take advantage of Palestinian disappointment at the postponement of elections by Abbas. Hamas leaders threatened Israel by saying unless its police forces withdrew from the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound and from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, they would fire rockets on Jerusalem. Most observers thought this was a bluff, since it was assumed that Hamas wouldn’t shoot missiles at Jerusalem out of fear they might hit Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

      It turns out that they weren’t bluffing. Ever since this round of deadly clashes began on May 10, Hamas militants have kept their word. A few nights ago, Hamas said it would fire rockets toward Tel Aviv in retaliation for IDF actions during the day. Minutes after midnight, the anti-missile alert sirens sounded and 2 million people in the greater Tel Aviv area headed into bomb shelters, including my family and neighbors.  

      By firing indiscriminately at a civilian population, Hamas is committing war crimes. Any government facing such a situation would feel compelled to respond. Of course, since the Israeli army is far more powerful than Hamas forces — and because Gaza is densely populated — there are many more Palestinian casualties than Israeli. At the weekend, Haaretz, an Israeli daily, published an article with the headline: “Israeli killed by rocket; IDF destroys media offices, kills families in Gaza.” The Israeli died on May 15 after a “barrage of rocket fire targeted Tel Aviv.” On the same day, Hamas said “it had fired dozens of rockets at central Israel in response to the killing of eight children and two women, all members of the same family, in a [strike] on the Al-Shate refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.” As the exchange of fire enters its second week, the death toll at the time of publishing stands at 212 in Gaza, including 61 children. In Israel, 10 people have died, including a 10-year-old Israeli-Arab girl.

      By evicting families and building settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, Israel is also committing war crimes. This includes Israeli attempts to displace Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah. Israel’s disproportionate use of military force to defend itself — though justifiably — against repeated rocket fire is also problematic.

      Violence on the Street

      The worst byproduct of the current situation is perhaps the inter-communal conflict in Israel that has evolved as a result of the broader crisis. This is particularly in the mixed Jewish and Arab cities of Acre, Lod, Ramla, Jaffa and other locations such as Jerusalem.

      This is tragic given the progress that has been made in recent years with Jewish-Arab cooperation and partnership inside Israel. To tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, Israeli-Arab medical personnel have taken on a central role. In football, Israeli-Arabs have played a prominent part. In politics, the Joint List, an alliance of Arab-majority parties, recommended Gantz for the role of prime minister in 2020. Now, the United Arab List led by Mansour Abbas could play a decisive role in the possible formation of an alternative Israeli government.

      All of this has been undermined in a few violent weeks. It was as if we suddenly had a throwback to the murderous intercommunal strife that occurred in 1921, 1929 and 1936 in the British Mandate of Palestine before the state of Israel was created. Fortunately, there is a strong foundation for the revival and continuation of Jewish-Arab cooperation within Israel. Young people in Standing Together, a Jewish-Arab grassroots movement, have taken to the streets in protest. Mayors of joint and neighboring municipalities have also been active in trying to heal the social wounds.

      Time for a Plan

      Israelis and Palestinians will need to find the strength as societies to deal with the current crisis and to develop paths toward internal solidarity and a cross-border resolution of the conflict. It is equally important that the international community takes an active role. World powers have played a major role in the region in modern times — from the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate of Palestine and the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution to create two states, Arab and Jewish. Now, they cannot stand aside and watch. They must play a part in defusing the current violence and creating the foundations for a more fundamental resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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      In Washington, the Biden administration, which has a lot on its plate domestically, had hoped it could ignore the Middle East conflict. That is clearly not working. US President Joe Biden has even delayed designating a new American ambassador to Israel. He has also not yet reopened a US consulate in Jerusalem to serve as an address for American communication with the Palestinians. These are two simple steps that should urgently be taken.

      In addition, the Americans can revive the role of the Middle East Quartet — which is made up of the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — in seeking to advance a resolution of the conflict. The Arab world can bring back and activate the Arab Peace Initiative. Proposed by Saudi Arabia and confirmed at the Arab League’s 2002 summit in Beirut, the plan offers Israel recognition, peace and normalized relations with the Arab world, backed by all Muslim-majority countries. In exchange, a Palestinian state would be established in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside the state of Israel, with small, mutually agreed-upon land swaps.

      When it comes to Jerusalem, it would perhaps be best to return to the original partition plan of 1947. According to the UN General Assembly’s decision, a Jewish state and an Arab state were to be established, while Jerusalem was to be an international city. While the situation today is completely different from that plan 74 years ago, the conflict around the Old City and the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif — which contains the sites considered holy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam — could be neutralized by making it an area shared by all peoples. Jerusalem would be what Jordan’s late King Hussein called “God’s city.” 

      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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      in World Politics

      White America’s Burden in the Holy Land

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      Earlier this week, an Israeli military official evoked “a worst-case scenario” conducted by three Israeli infantry brigades that would amount to crushing Gaza on the ground rather than just bombarding it. Some observers have noticed that the current worse-than-ever-before-but-not-as-bad-as-what’s-to-come scenario has miraculously permitted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to hang on to power after the March 23 election deprived him of the hope of heading a new coalition.

      The Future of Jerusalem Matters to Us All

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      Washington Post reporter Steve Hendrix notes that “the escalation of fighting brought a last-minute reprieve from what could have been the end of [Netanyahu’s] record run at the top of Israeli politics.” Hendrix quotes Gayil Talshir, a professor at Hebrew University: “The riot came just in time to prevent the change of government in Israel.” Despite this “coincidence,” Hendrix avoids suggesting what some suspect: that Netanyahu’s policies and recent actions may have been designed to provoke the current crisis.

      Rather than delve into history, reflect on the meaning or explore possible hidden motives, Hendrix prefers the approach that Western media have long preferred: presenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a combined violent chess game and political popularity contest between two obdurate parties whose leaders are unwilling to compromise. Hendrix reduces an enduring historical drama of vast geopolitical dimensions to a petty game of leaders seeking electoral advantage by appealing to their base, à la Donald Trump. He calls the new wave of violence “a boon to the leaders of both camps — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas militants — who have been struggling and scraping to salvage their political standing.” That’s the kind of narrative that appeals to The Post’s readers living in their bubble within the Beltway. History be damned; this is electoral politics.

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      The New York Times came closer to signaling Netanyahu’s implication in the current troubles. Isabel Kershner cites centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, who “blamed the prime minister for the spiraling sense of chaos.” Kershner focuses on the likelihood that Israel will at some point in the near future have a coalition government including Mansour Abbas’ Islamic Raam party, which would mark a monumental change in Israeli politics. In the end, however, Kershner appears to believe that it’s still Netanyahu who will emerge from the rubble as the leader of whatever unstable political coalition he can cobble together.

      As the violence escalates, the world wonders what US President Joe Biden intends to do. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was the first to express the administration’s take, which for the moment sounds like an endorsement of the status quo: “There is, first, a very clear and absolute distinction between a terrorist organization, Hamas, that is indiscriminately raining down rockets, in fact, targeting civilians, and Israel’s response, defending itself.” The idea that Biden’s administration might try, for once, to play the role of honest broker would seem dead in the coastal waters of Gaza.

      Blinken’s recognition of Palestinian suffering only appeared when he claimed that Israel has “an extra burden.” This, of course, implies that its main burden consists of “targeting terrorists” in response to indiscriminately launched rockets. The “extra burden” consists of trying “to prevent civilian deaths, noting that Palestinian children have been killed in Israeli strikes.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Extra burden:

      A responsibility supplementing the one Rudyard Kipling famously identified as “the white man’s burden,” which consisted of dominating “sullen peoples, Half devil and half child,” the kind of people who for their amusement launch rockets indiscriminately at white people.

      Contextual Note

      Thanks to the growing realization that Israel is firmly set on maintaining an apartheid state, for the first time in decades, US politicians have begun to wonder whether it makes any sense to continue the nation’s unconditional support of every Israeli government. Israel has continued expanding its illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in direct violation of UN resolutions and the Geneva Convention. The current troubles began with Israel’s brazen attempt to evict Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem and replace them with Jewish settlers, followed by the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

      For Blinken, the social and historical context of these events simply doesn’t exist. He wants people to believe it all started with the launching of rockets by the Palestinians. Nor do context and historical reality interest Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, who insisted that details are irrelevant when the US has vowed “‘ironclad support’ for Israel’s right to defend itself.” This is totally consistent with Biden’s promise, in a phone call this week to Netanyahu, of “unwavering support” for Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

      Blinken showed less concern for the possible war crimes now taking place than for the bad PR they might generate. “[W]henever we see civilian casualties, and particularly when we see children caught in the crossfire losing their lives, that has a powerful impact,” he said. Blinken worries about what “we see” and its  “impact” in the media. This implies that if we didn’t see it and if the impact was reduced, all would be well. Ignorance is bliss.

      Biden reinforced everyone’s expectation that there would be nothing new under the shining sun of US diplomacy when he offered this comment: “My hope is that we will see this coming to a conclusion sooner than later.” What conclusion is he thinking of? And why is an American president just hoping that something good will happen? Why isn’t he intervening to facilitate not a “conclusion” but a resolution? Some will point out that every US president’s hands are tied by a status quo that holds as its first commandment, thou shalt never criticize Israel, its leaders or its policies.

      Historical Note

      Following World War II, Western nations assumed the entire civilization’s shame at the crimes of Nazi Germany. The British used the newly created United Nations as the instrument by which the West could atone for Germany’s racist sins through the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. 

      Once that was done, the die was cast. The West, led by the British — who had assumed “responsibility” for the region of the former Ottoman Empire — decided how and at whose expense (not their own) the surviving European Jews might be rewarded. Giving them Palestine seemed like the easy way out for the Western world as a whole. The British wanted out anyway. It also had the advantage of establishing a state in the Middle East whose culture would be basically Western and European.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Neither the British, the Americans nor the French — all in various ways implicated in the new order to be established in the Middle East — imagined that Israel would evolve to become an aggressive nation increasingly focused on bullying its neighbors and claiming its own particular version of exceptionalism. French President Charles de Gaulle was the first to notice it, on the occasion of the Six-Day War in 1967. Western leaders may have naively believed that the same Arabs who allowed themselves to be bullied by the Turks for centuries would accept with docility the rule of their new masters, who claimed to be building a modern nation on socialist and egalitarian principles.

      In the first decade of Israel’s existence, the US refused to identify with the new nation’s interests, notably during the Suez Crisis in 1956 in which the Eisenhower administration countered the Franco-British alliance. It also viewed with hostility the presumed socialist ideology of Israel. At the time, the WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) elite maintained a lingering anti-Semitic bias. But as the Cold War evolved and the importance of the oil economy grew, leading to increasing tensions between the West and the Muslim world, by the 1980s, the US was on track formulating its current “unconditional,” “iron-clad” alliance with Israel.

      This gradual evolution toward a position of increasingly blind support of Israel has had a profound influence on Western media in its reporting on the enduring, increasingly unresolvable conflict between the Jewish state and its Arab inhabitants. Western news media have largely accepted the role of encouraging their audience to sympathize with white, essentially European and American Israelis who feel threatened in an alien, hostile Orient.

      Greg Philo in The Guardian shows that an analysis of Western media in its reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, for decades, reflected “a strong emphasis on Israeli perspectives.” What better illustration than yesterday’s Washington Post: “Israeli jets strike Gaza; Hamas launches rockets as Israeli ground troops stand by”?

      *[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 ICC Has Stepped on a Political Minefield in Palestine

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      The rapidly-evolving geopolitical equation in the Middle East just got another layer of complexity added to it. Earlier this month, Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced the launch of an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian Territories since 2014. The prosecutor’s decision, important no less from an international accountability perspective, may end up putting the ICC in the crosshairs of regional politics.

      The ICC, which tries individuals rather than countries, is the world’s first-ever permanent court with jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. The court’s decision has come in the wake of important developments in the Middle East. These include the US potentially rejoining the Iran nuclear deal; the much-vaunted Abraham Accords signed by Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020; the Saudi-led war in Yemen that continues with no end in sight; and Iran’s engagement in proxy warfare in the region. The ICC’s intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — one of the most complex international disputes — has added a new ingredient to an already simmering stew. 

      Palestine and Israel: A Bloody Saga

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      During its early years, the ICC — created through the Rome Statute in 1998 — largely focused on atrocity crimes in Africa. The court was criticized for what was perceived as a bias toward that continent. Recently, the ICC has greenlighted investigations into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

      But with no military force to enforce its decisions, the ICC has, over the years, meandered through terrain beset with political uncertainty. It has faced off against belligerent administrations and received relentless pushback from world leaders caught in the crosshairs of its legal processes. With 123 countries accepting jurisdiction to date, but with major powers like the US, Russia and China not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, the court has been called out as lacking wider international legitimacy.

      Yet, the ICC is trying to fix a broken international criminal justice system, albeit in a manner that does not necessarily bode well for its own future. With pronouncements such as the one in respect of the situation in Palestine, the ICC could end up stirring a hornet’s nest or, at best, catapult some fleeting global attention to the neglected Palestinian crisis.

      The US Response

      The Biden administration’s response to the ICC investigation came as a surprise to internationalists, who were hoping for some pivoting of the rules-based international order vociferously eroded by the US under former President Donald Trump. These hopes were dashed when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken unequivocally opposed the ICC’s decision to investigate the Palestinian situation. He based the US decision on two overarching principles: First, Israel is a non-party to the ICC and second, Palestine (which has accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction) is not a sovereign state and is therefore “not qualified to obtain membership as a state.”

      This line of reasoning is deeply problematic. It strikes at the very heart of the ICC’s jurisdiction, which extends to the territory and nationals of state parties to the court. By virtue of Palestine accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction in 2015, all alleged crimes committed in the Palestinian Territories by the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas — the militant Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip — theoretically fall within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Bringing Israel within its jurisdiction was the main reason behind the Palestinian Authority’s decision to make Palestine a state party to the ICC.

      Secretary Blinken’s statement calls the decision to investigate Israel unfair. It also confirms the US commitment to stand for Israel’s security. This is a veiled warning to the ICC that it will not get far with its inquiry. After all, an ICC investigation will require Israel’s cooperation and US neutrality. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outrageously calling the ICC move “pure anti-Semitism,” the fate of the investigation has been effectively sealed before it even started.  

      International Criminal Justice

      In other words, the ICC inquiry — notwithstanding all the braggadocio of international accountability — will be undermined by the deep-rooted security embrace between the US and Israel. The ICC prosecutor said the investigation in the occupied Palestinian Territories will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.” Yet, by wantonly brandishing the ICC as a political instrument — something that it is not — the US and Israel will surely launch an all-out effort to delegitimize the international criminal justice enterprise. 

      Blinken also warned that unilateral judicial actions by the ICC can “exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution.” The portrayal of the ICC as an impediment to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be a gnawing concern for the international community. 

      Will Israel now weaponize the ICC investigation to deny Palestinian statehood while claiming that the court is impeding efforts toward that end? With the edifice of international justice having been eviscerated by the Trump administration, coupled with the US and Israel now renewing their vow against the ICC, the future of criminal justice in the occupied Palestinian Territories appears bleak. The slowly churning wheel of international criminal justice, manifested by the ICC, just got another spoke thrown in it that may well end up permanently jamming it.

      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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      Fair Observer Debates the Trump-Kushner “Deal of the Century”

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      On January 31, Gary Grappo, a former diplomat and Fair Observer’s chairman of the Board, grudgingly came to the defense of the Trump administration’s “deal of the century” that many feel has abusively been referred to as a “peace plan.” Grappo begins by admitting that it is unambiguously “an Israeli plan.”  His reasoning nevertheless echoes […] More