Idiot of the Week? Doo-Doo Ron Ron DeSantis sweeps up the award again. He is to politics what Pauly Shore is to acting. He's destroyed a college. THE NEW REPUBLIC's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling reports:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s multimillion-dollar overhaul of the New College of Florida is rapidly turning into a disaster.
On Wednesday, the college reported reported that its numbers were in dramatic decline. In its last year of operation, the school has more than doubled its normal loss of first-year students between fall semesters, according to an announcement by the college’s provost.
That marks the lowest retention rate of first-year students in the college’s history, reported the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
New College, a school that was proudly unconventional until the far-right governor chose to give it a conservative revamp, saw 27 percent of its student body drop out.
He's ruined the university -- just like C.I. said would happen. I'd like to see what she said should happen next: Parents and students sue Doo-Doo for devaluing the university after they had paid for tuition.
He's an idiot. He shouldn't be allowed to stock merchandise at a Dollar Store, let alone be the governor of any state. Doo-Doo is an idiot.
Gene Collier (PITTSUBRG POST-GAZETTE) offers another reason Doo-Doo won Idiot of the Week:
What with the planet accelerating its seemingly inalterable descent into madness, the relatively obscure legal settlement of a years-long argument in madness-prone Florida this week didn’t get the notice it might have.
Based on the terms of the agreement, it looks like the governor, the flailing presidential pretender Ron DeSantis, along with his flunkies in the Florida Department of Health, have been lying about COVID statistics since at least June of 2021.
Owning their own lies
Now they’re required to effectively own their lies, and fork over $152,250 in legal fees to the Florida Center for Government Accountability and former state representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, who filed suit two years ago.
“The Department lied about the existence of these public records in court and did everything to restrict information and downplay the threat of COVID even while the Delta variant ripped through Florida — a decision that cost many lives,” said Rep. Smith in a statement.
Prior to the ignition of the Delta variant that summer, Florida’s health department routinely furnished the public with detailed information on a daily basis. But with the number of cases multiplying across the state and the governor declaring “Florida’s open for business!” the Department changed the way it was reporting data to the Centers for Disease Control.
The new method made it appear the virus was instead declining just as DeSantis was running for a second term for governor and keeping no secrets about his White House ambitions.
Doo-Doo thought he could get away with lying. Oops. He was wrong. Idiot.
Doo-Doo is dropping. POLITICO notes:
The last time Ron DeSantis held a public event in New Hampshire, he was solidly in second place in the first GOP primary state.
Seven weeks later, the Florida governor has slipped, Nikki Haley is rising and Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy are both within striking distance in the race to become the primary alternative to Donald Trump.
He blew it. His chances are gone. He's just too embarrassed to drop out but even an idiot like Doo-Doo must grasp that he's not getting the GOP presidential nomination. Even he has to grasp that.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Thousands of Iranians and Iraqis took to the streets of their respective capitals, Tehran and Baghdad on Firday, in a powerful display of support for the Palestinian people.
Demonstrators rallied, waving flags and banners that conveyed their condemnation of the US and Israel.
[. . .]
This outpouring of solidarity was not confined to Iran and Iraq alone. Similar rallies were organized in various cities across Iraq and Jordan, with additional demonstrations anticipated in countries such as Pakistan,Syria, and Lebanon later in the day.
Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has condemned the bloody onslaught launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, calling on the international community to act swiftly to put an end to the atrocities committed by the regime in the besieged territory.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Ayatollah Sistani’s office described the ongoing situation in Gaza as a catastrophe taking place before the eyes of the entire world.
The statement said almost no place in Gaza is currently safe for the people after five days of bombardment which has left behind massive destruction and killed and injured some 6,000 people.
It said the occupying regime’s imposition of a total blockade on Gaza which has cut food, water and medicine supplies to the coastal territory shows that the regime is seeking to compensate its losses in recent confrontation with Palestinian fighters by wreaking vengeance on the people of Gaza.
Facing attacks by fellow Democrats and a censure motion from a Republican congressman from her home state of Michigan, Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday accused her critics of intentionally misportraying her as a Hamas sympathizer due to her condemnation of Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.)—whose third-biggest campaign contributor during the 2022 election cycle was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—on Wednesday introduced a motion to censure Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, for what he called "her antisemitism and disgraceful response to the attacks on our ally, Israel."
On Sunday, Tlaib issued a statement mourning the "Palestinian and Israeli lives lost," while asserting that the path to a peaceful future must include lifting Israel's blockade of Gaza, ending its illegal occupation of Palestine, "and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance."
Tlaib's statement also asserted that the "heartbreaking cycle of violence" would continue until the United States stopped giving "billions in unconditional funding" to support Israel's apartheid government.
The Pollard affair took Washington and Tel Aviv by surprise. Wolf Blitzer, Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, in a book published just several weeks before Pollard’s arrest, wrote that there is no real fear in the US government that American Jews are leaking information to the Mossad, the Israeli equivalent of the CIA. “Experienced US intelligence officials readily acknowledge that the degree of cooperation between the CIA and the Mossad is already so close that the two organizations do not really have to spy on each other. Despite infractions on both sides,” Blitzer explained, “US and Israeli intelligence organizations have maintained a discreet arrangement since the 1950s, banning covert operations against each other.” [1]
Another reading of this record, though, shows that Pollard’s activities fit a pattern of Israeli espionage efforts. As John Davitt, a 30-year veteran of the Justice Department who resigned in 1980, told the New York Times: “When the Pollard case broke, the general media and public perception was that this was the first time this had ever happened. No, that’s not true at all. The Israeli intelligence service, when I was in the Justice Department, was the second most active in the United States, to the Soviets.” [2]
In 1978, two Congressional committees studied Washington’s posture toward the activities of “friendly” intelligence services in the United States. Both found that the FBI did not aggressively search out illegal activities, as it did in the case of “hostile” intelligence services, but only reacted to specific complaints; that information developed by the FBI rarely reached Justice Department prosecutors; and that both the CIA and the State Department discouraged penalties against “friendly” services or their agents, in part out of concern for American personnel abroad. [3]
What accounts for the willingness of the US government to prosecute and to make a public issue of Israel’s espionage activities? Probably it represents a combination of two factors: One is the Reagan administration’s campaign to whip up public support for measures against “security risks”; the other is the differences within the US national security establishment, especially the military services, over Israel’s role in US Middle East policy. Pollard is only the second American citizen ever to be formally accused of passing classified information to the Israeli government. Prior to Israel’s creation in 1948, a Zionist underground existed in the US for the purpose of smuggling war materials to Palestine, in violation of the Truman administration’s embargo on such shipments. Although FBI investigations resulted in several convictions, all but one of those convicted escaped going to prison. [4]
It was out of this underground that the Israeli intelligence network in the United States originated. Operations were supervised by a four-member board, consisting of an American citizen, two Israeli diplomats and an Israeli troubleshooter who traveled frequently between the two countries. The FBI reportedly learned of at least 12 incidents in which American citizens passed classified information to the Israelis, but there were no prosecutions. [5]
Besides those probed by the FBI, there were certainly others, including high government officials, who were also helpful to the new Jewish state. On October 29, 1948, Secretary of State George Marshall telegrammed Washington from a United Nations meeting in Paris to complain that the Israelis knew what President Truman’s instructions had been on a key vote “almost as soon as [the Americans] had received the relevant telegram.” Israeli delegate Abba Eban attributed his delegation’s information to an “unimpeachable source.” These sources apparently never came to the FBI’s attention. [6]
A billboard truck drove through the streets surrounding Harvard’s campus Wednesday and Thursday, digitally displaying the names and faces of students allegedly affiliated with student groups that signed onto a controversial statement on Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Amid continued national backlash and doxxing attacks, at least nine of the original 34 co-signing Harvard student groups as of Thursday evening withdrew their signatures from the statement — originally penned by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee — that called Israel “entirely responsible” for the violence. In a later statement, the PSC wrote that it “staunchly opposes” violence against all civilians.
By Tuesday evening, at least four online sites had listed the personal information of students linked to clubs that had signed onto the statement, including full names, class years, past employment, social media profiles, photos, and hometowns.
As of Wednesday morning, at least two of those sites had been taken down for violating Google’s terms of service.
On Wednesday, in the face of student safety concerns, some of the statement’s harshest critics denounced acts of violence or intimidation against the members of the statement’s signatories. Harvard Executive Vice President Meredith L. Weenick ’90 also moved to criticize online intimidation and harassment in a Wednesday evening email to University affiliates following this article’s initial publication.
+ These frothing demands for collective punishment of a defenseless population traduce every pretense of the West’s devotion to rules-based warfare it has professed since the slaughter at the Somme.
+ Only Israel is allowed to act in “self-defense.” It is a term reserved for the powerful, a shield against the daily acts of violence, coercion, land theft, illegal detention and economic strangulation imposed on a captive population, whose own self-defense is termed “terrorism” and thus becomes yet another justification for inflicting more overwhelming state violence–what any rational person would call “terrorism”–on impoverished and largely defenseless people.
+ The obvious parallel to Gaza is the Tet Offensive, which was a defeat for the Vietnamese, but it was the defeat that won the war, exposing the vincibility of the US military machine. It also triggered something deep in the psyche of the American occupiers, who responded with attacks of pointless savagery. The massacres and gang rapes at My Lai were a direct response to Tet. Netanyahu has vowed that Israel’s response will be equally sadistic, which is, of course, a sign of its own weakness–moral and military–and a harbinger of its ruin.
+ All of the “security raids” and airstrikes Israel has conducted almost non-stop for the last few years have done nothing to make Israel more “secure.” Based on yesterday’s “surprise” counter-attack, they’ve done just the opposite. That’s because the raids were never about “security.” They were motivated by territorial expansion and the need to tighten Israel’s control over an occupied population– illegal incursions that would be resisted by any besieged society.
+ When the Israeli generals talk of leveling Gaza, keep in mind what that means. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, with 5,500 people squeezed into each square kilometer with no exits. More than 10 times the average population density of Israel.
+ The reports were horrific and they ignited the internet for three days: Hamas had killed and beheaded 40 babies in the village of Kfar Aza. It’s the kind of story that would make the most devout Quaker want to pick up a rocket launcher. But did it happen? Even Biden fell for (or exploited for his own purposes), the ghoulish reports: “I never really thought that I would see…have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.” The White House had to walk this claim back hours later, admitting that U.S. officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently. (He was arrested in South Africa trying to free Nelson Mandela, too.)
Four days later, the IDF, whose soldiers retook the village and recovered the bodies of its slain inhabitants, still refused to confirm the account, which originated with Israel’s i24 News, a network with close ties to the Netanyahu family. One of the primary sources for the story appears to have been a militant Israeli settler leader named David Ben Zion, who has a history of making calls for mass violence against Palestinians. There are plenty of precedents for this type of story, perhaps none more glaring than the allegation that Iraq forces had killed hundreds of Kuwaiti babies by throwing them out of their incubators leaving them to die on hospital floors, a claim used to justify the Gulf War. It didn’t take much digging to expose the heart-wrenching story as a fraud, part of a propaganda campaign run by the Hill and Knowlton PR firm and financed by the government of Kuwait.
+ All wars breed atrocities and Hamas’ attacks have certainly been no exception to that rule. There are atrocities we are meant to see and atrocities we aren’t. Atrocities which are treated as war crimes are almost invariably committed by the losing or weaker side. Thus the current spectacle at Gitmo, where the torturers are sitting in judgment of the tortured. Though many questions remain, the slaughter at the rave in the Negev is criminal by any standard. But so were the US dronings of wedding parties in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, by a military armed with the most sophisticated intelligence technology and precision weaponry. One is treated as an obscene crime, the other as a regrettable accident, though one which happened routinely.
+ Using children as “human shields” is morally offensive. Killing them anyway is depraved.
+ Secretary of State Antony Blinken before leaving DC to meet with Netanyahu in Israel: “What separates Israel, the US and other democracies when it comes to difficult situations like this, is our respect for international law and the laws of war.” Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir, a few hours after Blinken’s ludicrous statement: “HRW has confirmed—based on verified video & witness accounts—that Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza & Lebanon. White phosphorus causes excruciating burns—causing lifelong suffering—and can set homes afire. Its use in populated areas is unlawful.”
Israel’s use of white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing a question and answer document on white phosphorus. Human Rights Watch verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10 and 11, 2023, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people who described an attack in Gaza.
White phosphorus, which can be used either for marking, signaling, and obscuring, or as a weapon to set fires that burn people and objects, has a significant incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire. The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, magnifies the risk to civilians and violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting civilians at unnecessary risk.
“Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians.”
On October 11, Human Rights Watch interviewed by phone two people from the al-Mina area in Gaza City, who described observing strikes consistent with the use of white phosphorus. One was in the street at the time, while the other was in a nearby office building. Both described ongoing airstrikes before seeing explosions in the sky followed by what they described as white lines going earthward. They estimated that the attack took place sometime between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Both said that the smell was stifling. The person who was in his office said that the smell was so strong that he went toward the window to see what was happening and then filmed the strike.
Human Rights Watch reviewed the video and verified that it was taken in Gaza City’s port and identified that the munitions used in the strike were airburst 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles. Other videos posted to social media and verified by Human Rights Watch show the same location. Dense white smoke and a garlic smell are characteristics of white phosphorus.
Human Rights Watch also reviewed two videos from October 10 from two locations near the Israel-Lebanon border. Each shows 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles being used, apparently as smokescreens, marking, or signaling.
White phosphorus ignites when exposed to atmospheric oxygen and continues to burn until it is deprived of oxygen or exhausted. Its chemical reaction can create intense heat (about 815°C/1,500°F), light, and smoke.
Upon contact, white phosphorus can burn people, thermally and chemically, down to the bone as it is highly soluble in fat and therefore in human flesh. White phosphorus fragments can exacerbate wounds even after treatment and can enter the bloodstream and cause multiple organ failure. Already dressed wounds can reignite when dressings are removed and the wounds are re-exposed to oxygen. Even relatively minor burns are often fatal. For survivors, extensive scarring tightens muscle tissue and creates physical disabilities. The trauma of the attack, the painful treatment that follows, and appearance-changing scars lead to psychological harm and social exclusion.
The use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life, Human Rights Watch said. This concern is amplified given the technique evidenced in videos of airbursting white phosphorus projectiles. Airbursting of white phosphorus projectiles spreads 116 burning felt wedges impregnated within the substance over an area between 125 and 250 meters in diameter, depending on the altitude of the burst, thereby exposing more civilians and civilian structures to potential harm than a localized ground burst.
Israeli authorities have not commented on whether or not they used white phosphorus during the ongoing fighting.
Israel’s use of white phosphorus comes amid hostilities following Hamas’ deadly attacks on October 7 and subsequent rocket attacks that have killed, as of October 12, more than 1,300 Israelis, including hundreds of civilians, and taking of scores of Israelis as hostages in violation of international humanitarian law. Heavy Israeli bombardment of Gaza in this period has killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza, including scores of civilians, and displaced more than 338,000 people. Many communities in southern Israel have also been displaced and more than 1,500 Palestinian militants reportedly died in Israel. Israeli authorities have cut electricity, water, fuel and food into Gaza, in violation of the international humanitarian law prohibition against collective punishment, exacerbating the dire humanitarian situation from over 16 years of Israeli closure.
Human Rights Watch has documented the Israeli military’s use of white phosphorus in previous conflicts in Gaza, including in 2009. Israel should ban all use of “airburst” white phosphorus munitions in populated areas without exception. There are readily available and non-lethal alternatives to white phosphorus smoke shells, including some produced by Israeli companies, which the Israeli army has used in the past as an obscurant for its forces. These alternatives have the same effect and dramatically reduce the harm to civilians.
In 2013, in response to a petition to Israel’s High Court of Justice regarding the use of white phosphorus in Gaza, the Israeli military stated that it would no longer use white phosphorus in populated areas except in two narrow situations that it revealed only to the justices. In the court’s ruling, Justice Edna Arbel said that the conditions would “render use of white phosphorous an extreme exception in highly particular circumstances.” Although this ruling did not represent an official change in policy, Justice Arbel called on the Israeli military to conduct a “thorough and comprehensive examination” and adopt a permanent military directive.
Attacks using air-delivered incendiary weapons in civilian areas are prohibited under Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). While the protocol contains weaker restrictions for ground-launched incendiary weapons, all types of incendiary weapons produce horrific injuries. Protocol III applies only to weapons that are “primarily designed” to set fires or cause burns, and thus some countries believe it excludes certain multipurpose munitions with incendiary effects, notably those containing white phosphorus.
Human Rights Watch and many states have long called for closing these loopholes in Protocol III. These attacks should add impetus to the calls from at least two dozen countries for the CCW Meeting of States Parties to set aside time to discuss the adequacy of Protocol III. The next meeting is scheduled for November at the United Nations in Geneva.
Palestine joined Protocol III on January 5, 2015, and Lebanon on April 5, 2017, while Israel has not ratified it.
“To avoid civilian harm, Israel should stop using white phosphorus in populated areas,” Fakih said. “Parties to the conflict should be doing everything they can to spare civilians from further suffering.”
They have lost the narrative in the US -- despite careful use of the media.
As the world watches the ongoing horror in southern Israel and in the Gaza Strip, media grapple not only with the immediate violence, but to understand why this happened and how it can stop. This is truly no other Middle East skirmish anymore. Likely the deadliest offensive against Israel on its soil, and perhaps the most audacious operation by Palestinian militants, it’s been compared both to 9/11 and to the bloody 1973 war between Israel and a coalition of Arab nations.
How could Israel—so famous for its military might and advanced intelligence capabilities—have missed the warnings of such an attack? The coordinated nature of the rocket attacks and assaults on nearby towns make clear that this was a huge operation that took time and planning; paragliding attacks require practice runs that are not easy to hide (L’Orient Today, 10/9/23), for instance. Already, Israeli media have begun looking closely at the Israeli government’s actions to understand how and why this happened—in sharp contrast to US broadsheet opinion, which has largely rallied unquestioningly behind Israeli “national unity.”
The Times of Israel (10/8/23) noted that Netanyahu was quoted telling Likud Party members in 2018 about his stance on Gaza, summarizing his quote saying “those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza”—meaning to Gaza’s Hamas-led government—as doing so maintains the “separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza,” thus dividing and conquering the Palestinians once and for all.
Gaza is sealed off, contained and highly surveilled (Middle East Institute, 4/27/22); it’s hard to believe no one in the Israeli government didn’t know something was being planned. The above ToI report quoted Assaf Pozilov, a reporter for the Israeli public broadcasting outlet Kan, saying before the attack, “The Islamic Jihad organization has started a noisy exercise very close to the border, in which they practiced launching missiles, breaking into Israel and kidnapping soldiers.”
An Israeli military veteran in the New York Post (10/9/23), hardly considered a pro-Palestine publication, blamed Israel for ignoring warnings from Egyptian intelligence about “something big.”
An editorial at Ha’aretz (10/8/23) put the blame squarely on Netanyahu, saying “he is the ultimate arbiter of Israeli foreign and security affairs.” It also pointed the finger at his right-wing policies on settlement expansion and allies with far-right extremist parties. “As expected, signs of an outbreak of hostilities began in the West Bank, where Palestinians started feeling the heavier hand of the Israeli occupier,” the editorial said, noting that “Hamas exploited the opportunity in order to launch its surprise attack.”
At the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (10/7/23), David Halperin, chief executive officer of the Israel Policy Forum, wrote that for the last year, “my colleagues and I…have joined with others in expressing concern about the nature of Israel’s far-right government.” The article—which questioned why Netanyahu’s government, famously hard-nosed on security, failed to protect the people—was reprinted in the Jerusalem Post (10/7/23).
Alon Pinkas (Ha’aretz, 10/9/23) wrote more directly: “Netanyahu should be removed as prime minister immediately—not ‘after the war,’ not after a plea bargain in his corruption trial, not after an election. Now.”
But top US editorial boards are elsewhere, failing to ask questions about intelligence failures and Netanyahu’s hand on the wheel. Instead, they urged Israelis to put aside the concerns they’ve had about democracy, which brought throngs of liberal and left-wing Israelis into the streets to denounce the Netanyahu government’s neutering of an independent judiciary—a decision that has been likened to the “sham democracy” of Hungary (Foreign Policy, 8/3/23). This summer, military reservists joined the protests, causing alarm about the country’s military readiness (AP, 7/19/23).
A Wall Street Journal editorial (10/7/23) used the Hamas offensive to downplay Netanyahu’s judicial power grab, saying, “The internal Israeli debates over its Supreme Court look trivial next to the threat to Israel’s existence.”
The Journal also discounted any criticism of the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza, saying, “Israel has been allowing 17,000 Gazans to work in Israel each day and would like to allow more.” The editorial said “the assault also underscores the continuing malevolence of Iran,” because its government “cheered on the attacks,” “provided the rockets and weapons for Hamas,” and “may have encouraged the timing as well.”
A Washington Post editorial (10/7/23) did blame the right-wing government for initiating the internal political crisis, but hoped that the political factions would soon come together. “Early signs are that Israel’s leading politicians are putting aside their differences with Mr. Netanyahu to meet the emergency,” it said. Another Post editorial (10/9/23) suggested that the US could take a lesson from Israel on the “risks of disunity,” criticizing Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul for setting off a “distracting backlash.”
They can ignore and distort reality all they want, they can circle the wagons; however, their narrative is over. It will live on in the older population that endured decades of propaganda but this is the turn of the tide for the US.
Let's note this from yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: “Palestinians and Israelis have grown accustomed to wars in the south in recent years. But the war that began in the early hours of Saturday, 7 October is nothing like the others.”
Those of the opening lines of a new piece in the London Review of Books by our next guest, the Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi, who joins us now from London. The article is headlined “’Get out of there now.” Amjad is senior editor at +972 Magazine and a policy member of Al-Shabaka. His latest piece for +972 is headlined “A psychological barrier has just been shattered in Israel-Palestine.”
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Amjad. Thank you so much for joining us. If you could explain why you think this invasion is different from the past, the 7th October one, and what psychological barrier has been broken?
AMJAD IRAQI: Thank you all for having me.
I think there’s no doubt that in many respects what we’ve been witnessing over the past couple of days is what is being described as a game changer. And there are two ways to kind of think about this. One is this kind of material and military shift that has just occurred by the fact that Hamas broke out of the Gaza Strip, a besieged enclave, both in terms of targeting the military infrastructure, but also the massacres that happened in these Israeli southern towns, that has really not only kind of broken this assumption of Gaza as this place that could maintain Palestinians and encage Hamas, but has really shaken the psychological barrier that exists in Israeli society and the Israeli establishment that the occupation is somehow sustainable, and that if they just keep enforcing the institutions of apartheid, that if they keep pounding Hamas and the Gaza Strip as often as possible, that somehow that is actually going to bring them security, that is going to bring safety, and through that, they can then continue to claim that Israel is a democracy, that Israel is a safe place for the Jewish people. And what we’ve witnessed with these atrocities that have happened is a complete shattering of that. It has broken to Israeli society that the Palestinians are not some distant problem, and that they cannot keep having the boot of their military apparatus upon them.
Unfortunately, as Michael was referring to earlier, I’m not sure how much this will have a lot of soul-searching and reflection, as right now we are seeing this complete desire to inflict total revenge on the Gaza Strip, from the political establishment to the media, all the way down. But I think that barrier that existed in the minds of Israeli society and the Israeli state that this system could work, I think, has really been broken by this assault.
AMY GOODMAN: You write, Amjad, in your +972 piece that these events will allow the most extremist elements within Netanyahu’s far-right administration to carry out as much of their agenda as possible. Can you respond, in particular, to what the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of supporting a terrorist organization and inciting hatred against Palestinians — what they want to happen now, and if you think that will become the dominant actions of the Netanyahu government, the war government, as they’re calling it right now, bringing in others into the government, as well, at this point?
AMJAD IRAQI: So, it’s no secret that the Israeli government now is really primarily being led by a gang of far-right demagogues, who have been very explicit for years, even before they arrived in office, about their ambitions for the Palestinians as a whole. And we’re seeing that being put out in full force over the past few months since the government has been in place, through the enabling and almost overt support of settler pogroms against West Bank towns and villages, and what is now eventually leading to the total expulsion of numerous Palestinian hamlets and people in order to make way for even more settler outposts and to even pave the way for more assertion of what they describe as Israeli sovereignty. We’ve been seeing this really being expedited in full force.
And now for the far-right government, this massacre, as atrocious as it is, is for them a historic opportunity. It is, for them, reinforcing this idea that the only solution to what they regard as “the Gaza problem” is either the complete mass destruction of the Strip or to try to eliminate, rather than merely contain, Hamas’s political and military apparatus, and, if possible — and this is really one of the most horrific potentials — is the potential that this moment could be used to try to expel masses of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. The far-right ministers are very explicit about this ambition, and they really are trying to mobilize Israeli institutions in order to implement that process. And while we’re still in the throes of the storm, we’re already seeing that first demand on their wish list being implemented in a way that our Palestinian colleagues from Gaza were just describing.
And there’s a massive mutual interest, not just on the part of the far-right politicians, but also the Israeli military, which has been really humiliated by this massive breach of the Gaza fences by Hamas, completely subverting its intelligence or its appearance of being able to know at all times what Hamas is doing. Because of this shattering, the Israeli military also, arguably, is in line with the political establishment over what to do with this.
And time will tell where this leads, but we’re already seeing this indulgence of revenge, not just from the Israeli institutions themselves, but also the international community, including the United States, which is basically telling Israel to go ahead, and to actually justify that revenge and removing the political context, without necessarily having to excuse the massacres — which they should not — but to nonetheless realize that there is no military solution to this issue, and the real problem in the end is this wider apartheid regime that is activating even when you don’t have a war around Gaza, that is activating even on your, quote-unquote, “calm.” And this is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Amjad, we just have a minute, but if you could say — you know, everybody says, as you said, this was unprecedented that Hamas broke through this barrier. People say, you know, they’ve been planning this attack for a long time. What statement have they made since this military assault on Gaza began? And what do you know of what they’re doing with the hostages and whether they’re willing to release them in exchange for Gaza getting some basic resources?
AMJAD IRAQI: It’s quite hard to say what the endgame is entirely. In many ways, the assault also probably surprised them as much as it did the Israelis. And right now I think they’re trying to — it seems like they’re trying to figure out what kind of bargaining chips they have in order to gain certain new kinds of agreements with the Israeli authorities, with the aid potentially of Arab states to try to mediate some kind of ceasefire, that helps to meet certain Hamas demands.
And they’ve been quite explicit about some of the things that they’re seeking, which are long-standing issues that have existed even before this far-right government, including the issue of release of Palestinian prisoners, including provocations and aggressions around Jerusalem, especially around the holy sites, and also, of course, what’s been happening in the West Bank under the Israeli occupation and settler violence. So, these are kind of the big structural demands that are still at play, and it seems that Hamas is now trying to use tactically, basically, what they have right now to kind of turn the tables. But because we’re still —
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
AMJAD IRAQI: — in the eye of the storm, because we’re still seeing the mists of this, it’s very hard to know where this is leading.
AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi, we thank you so much for being with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
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