Many Palestinians rely primarily on UNRWA for assistance and employment; many Israelis, on the other hand, view UNRWA as a nagging reminder that Palestinian refugees continue to exist and, worse yet, demand their rights. If UNRWA were to go away, in the view ofsome Israelis, those refugees’ rights would disappear with it.
I recently returned from a twelve day vacation in Costa Rica. This post isn’t about Costa Rica, but about a how a vacation shouldn’t be a break from reality.
It seems unfair and wrong that I took a vacation, and planned that vacation, while Israel is destroying the Palestinians of Gaza. How is it that I’m allowed to not only have a roof over my head and an access to three meals a day, but to also leave the country and visit different places in completely safety?
Perhaps vacations are what we need to keep us sane. It’s hard to return with the same energy and passion, and it’s equally important that we use any break or vacation we take to recover the energy energy we need to dive back in with more passion.
A vacation should not be a break from reality. Done correctly, it’s a time to learn. It’s also a time to read, as any vacationer would tell you. To me, that means reading more about reality, or reading non-fiction
War in 140 Characters by David Patrikarakos, is a vignette of several people who used social media to influence war. Mainly about war and conflict in 2014, the book is about Russia’s gray war (neither war nor peace) that rose to prominence that year and about Israel’s war on Gaza (also known as Operation Protective Edge).
Besides the obvious message that Patrikarakos conveyed that social media is changing war as we know it, I noticed a pattern about Israel’s incessant attacks on Gaza.
To quote one passage from the book, to sway public opinion during the 2014 war Israel concluded that to win the war of narratives it must push “three narratives to push at all cost.”
First was the rocket threat that Israeli civilians were being subjected to; second was the tunnel threat, with Hamas burrowing deep underground and across the border into Israel, again to threaten civilian lives; third, and most important, was Hamas use of human shields as a military tactic.
These sound oddly familiar to Israel’s current attack on Gaza, and indeed the same message Israel has used successfully since at least 2014 to convince the global media – legacy media rather than social media – that Israel is under a constant threat of a ruthless enemy.
All of that sounds threatening – the rocket attacks, a network of tunnels that are now famous, and the use of human shields. Israel has convinced the policy makers of the world – wrongly! – that the occupied Palestinians have no right to defend themselves. The tunnels, now infamous, are not a threat to Israel. Before October Hamas had few, if any, “human shields” to use, except for families families of Hamas commanders Israel might target. It’s possible that at this point 70 hostages taken by Hamas in October have been killed by Israeli bombing and attacks.
One final point Patrikarakos makes is that Israel won the 2014 conflict militarily but lost the narrative war. People are able to access their news on social media and the propaganda spin Israel provides legacy media is no longer convincing people of Israel’s argument it’s always under threat of attack.
When hundreds of Israeli settlers rampaged through Huwara and surrounding Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank on February 26, leaving at least one Palestinian man dead and hundreds of others injured, it was billed as “revenge” after a Palestinian gunman killed two brothers who lived nearby.
— Read on amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/15/middleeast/huwara-west-bank-settler-attack-cmd-intl/index.html
The daily summary from Ha’aretz this morning said nothing surprising. It’s so unsurprising that it’s necessary to comment on what is not news, because it isn’t anything new. That’s not Ha’aretz’ fault, they’re just sharing updates that are so clear only dense people didn’t know them already.
Twenty weeks, about 140 days, and “four and half months” after what they refer to as the start of the Israel-Hamas war Jonathan Lis and Ben Samuels reported today that Prime Minister Netanyahy has presented “the day after” plan to his war cabinet for their approval. This is, they say, the first time that Netanyahu has presented a plan for Gaza since the “war” started. This contradicts what I said earlier, but the fact remains that what Netanyahu has proposed should surprise nobody.
Writing under the title “Netanyahu Unveils Israeli’s Plan for Post-War Gaza: Full Demilitarization and Closing UNRWA” Lis and Samuels say that Israel’s military goals haven’t changed, and then slip into the same paragraph about medium-term planning that ” the postwar plan adds that Israel will maintain security control over the West Bank.”
Netanyahu’s plans – which are really should be called Israel’s plans – for Gaza are both familiar and laughable. The plan for civil affairs and public order, also known as governance, ‘will be based on professionals with managerial experience. These local officials must not be identified with states or organizations that support terror and must not receive salaries from them.’ While this sounds like it makes a lot of sense, governance is, by long-standing practice of practically every place in the world, managed by officials that identify with states or organizations and receive salary from the state. Not only that, but the state generally carries out elections, and the elected people appoint people to help minister civil affairs and public order. The only difference is, that in Gaza, any elected officials according to Netanyahu’s plan, will be voted in from the outside.
Part of Netanyahu’s plan is to permanently end UNRWA. Defunding UNRWA has long been a goal of both Israel and many of Israel’s backers in the United States. UNRWA, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Middle East was a temporary creation to deal with the 750,000 Palestinian refugees from Israel’s War of Independence, and has become the major support organization for Palestinians, rendering service from healthcare to education and beyond. Summarizing the recent and ongoing attempts to defund UNRWA, Moustafa Bayoumi wrote in The Guardian
Part of the plan of permanently dismantling UNRWA would be to make sure the Palestinians don’t exist or demand their rights.
Next, part of Netanyahu’s statement regarding his plan is that
rebuilding Gaza will only be possible once the Strip has been demilitarized and once a process of deradicalization has started. The rehabilitation plan will be carried out with funding from and under the leadership of countries of which Israel approves
I’ve mentioned before that part of Netanyahu’s grand plan, and a long-envisioned plan of Israel, is a demilitarized Palestine. It’s odd that Netanyahu sees the need to demilitarize Palestine, because he’s said several times – and current ministers in his government say the same thing – that there never be a Palestinian state. I’ve described before that in order for there to be peace both Israelis and Palestinians must disarm.
What exactly does Netanyahu means by the deradicalization of Gaza? Writing in November, 2023, professor Tom Mockaitis said the idea that more than two million Palestinians in Gaza need is deradicalization is patently absurd. What they actually needs is better economic conditions.
The second part of this point by Netanyahu is clear. ‘The rehabilitation plan will be carried out with funding from and under the leadership of countries of which Israel approves.’ The rebuilding of Gaza, to the extent it will be rebuilt someday, is only going to happen in the way Israel allows it to. The people of Gaza has no say in the development or redevelopment of Gaza.
Netanyahyu had one more point to convey to the war cabinet, or perhaps just to the world. ‘Israel utterly rejects international diktats over a final-status agreement with the Palestinians,’ and that a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by the international community ‘would grant a huge prize to terrorism, the like of which we have not seen before, and would prevent any future peace agreement.’
This is doubtless a response to President Biden’s repeated and meaningless statements in recent weeks that a conclusion to this current attack on Gaza must result in a two-state solution. Netanyahyu and Israeli ministers disagree – there should be no Palestinian state. It would be wrong to say that recognizing Palestine as a state would be a unilateral act; three-quarters of the world‘s countries consider Palestine to be a state.
The summary that Ha’aretz provided today was both obvious and worth sharing. Netanyahu has plans for Gaza and the Palestinians aren’t included in planning “the day after.”
Our representative democracy operates on the premise that we elect people to represent our interests and values in a deliberative body thousands of miles away from where we live. Our task, and individuals being represented, is to stay in touch with our representatives to ensure that they know our needs and interests so that they can be properly represented.
What happens when we send messages to our representative and they respond with a message that doesn’t respond to the issue we present to them?
I’ve mentioned before that our government continues to support the bombing of Gaza, which has largely been referred to as a genocidal act, with our tax dollars and with weapons made in the United States,
Last week I wrote to both of my Senators from Washington State with the same message:
Dear Senator,
I’m very disappointed that you voted today, February 13, to provide more than $14Billion more military aid to foreign countries, including billions to Israel.
No more military aid should be provided to Israel as it continues to attack Palestinians in Gaza and beyond. What Israel is doing to Gaza is against international law, U.S. law, any sense of morality, and is an insult to me as a human and a Jew.
I ask that you join your colleagues in calling for conditioning aid to Israel and immediately work for a permanent ceasefire.
A week later I received a reply from Senator Maria Cantwell,
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about the challenging and tragic situation in Israel and Gaza. I appreciate hearing from you about this important matter.
The shocking October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians were heinous and reprehensible and unleashed a terrible cycle of violence and recrimination. That’s why I continue to support President Biden’s vigorous efforts to facilitate the return of Israeli hostages and avoid a wider regional war.
The international community should also be doing everything it can to protect and get aid to innocent Palestinian civilians. The Biden Administration has already announced it will provide $121 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank specifically in the context of the ongoing war. The Senate also recently passed a funding package that delivers vital support to our democratic allies Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, as well as desperately-needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza and Ukraine. This funding is critical to America’s immediate and long-term national security which is why I hope the House of Representatives will quickly consider and approve the Senate-approved package.
You may also be interested to know that, in response to Senate debate surrounding the funding package, the President issued a National Security Memorandum on February 8, 2024, that lays out the standards that any country receiving U.S. weapons must adhere to. These standards include abiding by international law, facilitating the delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance, and ensuring the weapons are not being used in a way that is not consistent with best practices for reducing civilian harm.
Despite the horrors of the ongoing war, I believe that Israelis and Palestinians must continue to strive for an enduring peace that recognizes and respects the rights and dignity of both peoples. That is why I support Senator Brian Schatz’s legislation that reaffirms that the policy of the United States, going back to the time of President Harry Truman three quarters of a century ago, is to support a two-state solution.
Finally, it is incumbent on all of us to try and prevent the hostilities in the Middle East from fueling hate here in the United States. In the face of the alarming increase and growing intensity of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic incidents, we must continue to reject and condemn violence and discrimination against any person because of their ethnicity or religious beliefs. Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts on this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance.
Sincerely,
Maria Cantwell
United States Senator
This form letter from my Senator is written so well it’s hard to disagree with any of it, and just as hard to agree with any of it. I know it’s a form letter because more than one friend has received the exact reply, although I’m not sure what message they sent.
None of the reply actually addresses what I asked of the Senator. I asked specifically for her to condition aid to Israel and to call for a permanent ceasefire. If she had replied “Sorry, I won’t condition aid to Israel or call for a ceasefire” I’d know where she stands. But she didn’t indicate whether she would or wouldn’t do either or these, although it’s quite clear that she no interest in conditioning aid to Israel – much less ending the bombing of Gaza – or a permanent ceasefire.
Today I was listening to Dr. James Zogby‘s weekly “Coffee and Chat”. There’s great conversation every week about democracy and politics. One of the questions he responded to was what we should do when representatives respond with form letters that don’t address our needs. His answer was continue to message them.
It can be depressing to send messages to representatives and get no response, and just as aggravating when then respond with useless jargon that ensures they won’t take any action. But they’ll never take any action unless they continue to hear from us.
President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu just spoke to each other for this first time in a month, apparently, as Israel continues to obliterate Gaza with weapons made in and provided by the United States.
Several things became obvious after the news reported the contents of the conversation. First of all, nothing is going to change. Second, the attack on Gaza, which has created world-wide protests, and split the Democratic party, hasn’t convinced the United States that nothing nothing is going to change. The Israeli government thinks everything is going to change, and the United States is going to approve of any changes Israel suggests. The U.S. and Israeli government have convinced themselves, and convinced each other, that imposing government on the Palestinian from the outside is the correct solution. All of this means that nothing has changed and nothing is going to change – at least not from the perspective of Netanyahu and Biden.
The Associated Press reported that after “nearly four-week gap in direct communication” between Biden and Netanyahu, “fundamental differences have come into focus over a possible pathway to Palestinian statehood once the fighting in Gaza ends.” Netanyahu repeatedly rebuffed Biden’s called for Palestinian sovereignty that would result in “the oft-cited, elusive two-state solution” that President Biden believes is the “key to unlocking a durable peace in the Middle East.”
The call, the AP reports, “came one day after Netanyahu said that he has told U.S. officials in plain terms that he will not support a Palestinian state as part of any postwar plan.” This shouldn’t be news to the United States, although it appears that the Biden administration never got the memo. In September 2023, at his address at the United Nations, Netanyahu displayed a map of the “New Middle East” that didn’t show the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza.
This is not a new Netanyahu policy, or a new change in Israeli policy. Writing in 2017 about then-President Trump’s statement moving away from the two-state solution, Yousef Munayyer described that Netanyahu already envisioned a one-state solution – that in any agreement Israel would ‘retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River.’
Part of the control Israel envisions is the control of Gaza. It already occupies Gaza, and it’s 2005 withdraw of settlers and permanent military forces hasn’t changed its status as occupied under international law. Although Israel ignores this, as it ignores other parts of international law, the decision to withdraw settlers and troops has been a problem ever since for Israel, and with the current assault on Gaza it’s proposing and envisioning once again having settlers and a permanent military presence in Gaza. The United States says in one breath it’s its against these policies, and with the next gives Israel the diplomatic and military aid to make them possible.
In 1947, when the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) first proposed the idea of partitioning Palestine none of the members of the Committee knew anything about Palestine, and none cared what the Palestinians wanted. President Biden confronts the issue in the same way as the members of UNSCOP did. What Palestinians want doesn’t matter. The United States, is still operating with a racist mindset.
The New York Times reported that as part of his conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Biden, in an effort to convince Netanyahu that a two-state solution is the correct solution, “floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation that would not threaten Israel’s security.” The idea of a disarmed Palestinian, and in particular a disarmed Hamas in Gaza has been discussed before, in particular at the end of the 2014 Gaza war – Netanyahu was Prime Minster then as well. The idea of a disarmed Palestine has been promoted by Israel and the United States, but no one has asked asked the Palestinians if they want to disarm, or asked Israel, as part of a negotiated truce, to disarm.
Peace and violence have been imposed on Palestinians since UNSCOP decided that the two-state solution was the solution. The two-state solution, Netanyahu’s one-state solution, and the idea that Palestinians should disarm has been imposed on Palestinians. No one has asked what the Palestinians want, or whether Israel should disarm as part of permanent solution. According to the United States and Israel, Palestinians don’t matter.
One of the core elements of learning about international justice is the study of ICTY and ICTR.
ICTY, the The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was created by the United Nations in 1993 to respond to ongoing war crimes where thousands of civilians were being killed and wounded, tortured and sexually abused in detention camps, and hundreds of thousands expelled from their homes. The goal was to criminally try individuals most responsible for the murder, torture, rape, enslavement, destruction of property, and other crimes listed in the Tribunal’s Statute. By bringing perpetrators to trial, the UN page for ICTY says, ICTY aimed, “to deter future crimes and render justice to thousands of victims and their families, thus contributing to a lasting peace in the former Yugoslavia.”
Over it’s twenty-four years, until it ended in 2017, ICTY charged over 160 people, including prime ministers, head-of-army, high and mid-level political leaders, and other actors with crimes. ICTY, the UN page adds, “was the first war crimes court created by the UN and the first international war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. It was established by the Security Council in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter.” The International Justice Resource Center says that “ICTY’s jurisdiction extended to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed by individuals within the territory of the former Yugoslavia from 1991 onwards.”
Similarly, ICTR, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, was established by the United Nations in 1995 to ‘prosecute persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994.’ The genocide and and terror of the time has been commercialized and familiarized to the public with movies like Hotel Rwanda. The same page about ICTR, from the UN, adds that “the Tribunal has indicted 93 individuals whom it considered responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda in 1994. Those indicted include high-ranking military and government officials, politicians, businessmen, as well as religious, militia, and media leaders.”
World Without Genocide, citing the ICTY page, says that Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian and former Yugoslavian president, was indicted by ICTY “for genocide; complicity in genocide; deportation; murder; persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; inhumane acts/forcible transfer; extermination; imprisonment; torture; willful killing; unlawful confinement; willfully causing great suffering; unlawful deportation or transfer; extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; cruel treatment; plunder of public or private property; attacks on civilians; destruction or willful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion; [and] unlawful attacks on civilian objects.”
This week the world watched as South Africa brought a charge of genocide to the International Court of Justice against Israel, accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. With overwhelming evidence, South Africa’s legal team, backed by images and statements from Israeli officials over the last few months, argued that Israel has “shown ‘chilling’ and “incontrovertible” intent to commit genocide in Gaza, with full knowledge of how many civilians it is killing. More than 500 statements of incitement to genocide against Palestinians by Israel officials have been collected by Law for Palestine, in this continuously updated document. More Palestinians have been killed, on average, every day than in any other conflict in the 21st Century, according to research by Oxfam.
South Africa’s legal team
Returning to the charges against Milosovic, in ICTY, Israel’s government under Benjamin Netanyahu has committed nearly every act that Milosovic was charged with: genocide; complicity in genocide; deportation; murder; persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; inhumane acts/forcible transfer; extermination; imprisonment; torture; willful killing; unlawful confinement; willfully causing great suffering; unlawful deportation or transfer; extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; cruel treatment; plunder of public or private property; attacks on civilians; destruction or willful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion; [and] unlawful attacks on civilian objects.
In some ways Israel’s assault on Gaza since October, 2023, which is the focus of the genocide charges, sound strikingly similar to ICTY and ICTR. Will there be an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel? Will there be an ICTI?
One of the benefits – indeed, an expectation – of a democratic system is that we communicate with our elected officials and ask them to represent our interests. While our government continues to support the bombing of Gaza, which has largely been referred to as a genocidal act, with our tax dollars and with weapons made in the United States, one of the best things we can do is to use our voice to make it clear we don’t support these polices.
With a few amendments, and removing names, below is my most recent letter to my member in the House of Representatives.
Dear Representative ______
I’m writing to you as a constituent concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I ask that you join your colleagues in calling for immediate and sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza, both by endorsing H.Res. 935 “Calling for the same, timely and sufficient delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza strip,” and through other statements. I know you’re previously expressed concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and I appreciate your work on this matter.Let me take a moment to clarify by what I mean by sufficient humanitarian aid. The Office of the High
Commissioner Affairs (OCHA) reports that before October 7 an average of 500 trucks entered Gaza with food, water, and other essentials that comprise humanitarian aid that 500 trucks has never been
sufficient to meet the needs of the population . Since October 7, there hasn’t been a day when 150 trucks entered Gaza, and the numbers are often much closer to 100. I ask that you join HRes. 935, and clarify that sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza means about five times the truckloads currently allowed in.
With
appreciation,
Continue to use send messages to elected officials, and take action to end oppression!
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