Gideon Levy: "The pictures from Gaza are heartbreaking, and they ought to break everyone’s heart"
Freudian slips happen.
The following is from the American diplomat Aaron David Miller, with extensive experience in Israeli and Middle Eastern affairs, on the UK’s Channel 4 News1:
Remember, next week we'll begin World War Three, uh, Week 3 of this campaign.
This is not reassuring!
Gideon Levy’s idea sounds much better:
This bloodbath must be stopped immediately; it isn’t leading anywhere good. Massacres can be answered with massacres, but even a terrible massacre like the one perpetrated in southern Israel cannot justify whatever follows it, with no limits.2
He assesses the current political situation this way:
Killing thousands of people, maiming tens of thousands and leaving them with nothing won’t advance any Israeli interest, even if we set aside questions of law and morality. It will only breed hatred and vengeance of a kind that even Satan couldn’t invent, with Hamas or without it.
While the children of Gaza are being killed, Israelis are complaining about the army “treading water.” The prevailing Israeli sentiment seeks a ground operation and an end to Hamas. This demand is justifiable, but probably unrealistic. In any case, it cannot be one that comes at any cost, including the cost of the destruction of the Strip. [my emphasis]
This new Israel-Gaza conflict is a real reminder of how badly not only Israeli policy has failed to produce either peace or justice - and for a rightwing ethno-nationalist authoritarian like Benjamin Netanyahu neither is desired - but also raises big questions about the Biden Administration New Cold War approach to the world.
To be clear: Trump’s Middle East policies - to the extent they existed beyond persuading Saudi Arabia to give $2 billion to the private equity firm of Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner3 who also served as Presidential adviser for the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine peace process - they failed to benefit either Israeli or American interests. And they never had the slightest concern to Palestinian interests.
(Parenthetically, it may not have been the best idea to turn the US Presidency over to a bunch of soulless grifters for four years.)
Jared did at least consult with Aaron David Miller on his official task (the peace process, not doing private equity business with the Saudis). Miller says, “That he didn’t take my advice is hardly surprising.“4
[Jared] said his father-in-law wanted a big peace plan. I said fine. But be very careful. If he disrespected the issues and blatantly favored one side over the other, he could end up making the situation much worse. …
I quoted Faulkner in Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” [What are the odds that Jared ever read even a short story by William Faulkner?] …
Kushner said he was going to make it impossible for Netanyahu to say no to Trump, by making it unmistakably clear that the United States had Israel’s back. That’s fine, I replied. But if it’s all honey for Israel and only vinegar for the Palestinians, there was zero chance this would work. …
However, the last thing the United States needed was another failed peace plan.
Sadly, that’s almost certainly what we have now. It will be worse than failure, if the United States gives a green light to the Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley or the vast majority of the West Bank settlements. But even if the current Netanyahu government doesn’t act that way, the terms of this deal are so preternaturally weighted toward Israeli needs and requirements, and against Palestinian interests on statehood and Jerusalem, that the plan simply doesn’t constitute a basis for serious negotiations, let alone an agreement. [my emphasis]
But Jared got his $2 billion from the Saudis, so there’s at least that!
Still, Biden decided to proceed along the track of Jared’s Abraham Accords deal with this Saudi sugar-daddies. And that hasn’t worked out as well as the New Cold War advocates had hoped. As George Beebe and Anatol Lieven put it:
The United States faces two preeminent threats flowing from Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s response. The first is the lethal threat to Israel that would be posed by a combination of assaults by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran (especially if helped by Russia), and a renewed Intifada. The second is the danger that such a regional conflagration would drag the United States and Russia reluctantly into the fighting on opposing sides, with China giving aid to Russia.
Preventing both contingencies is critical both to America’s own security and to our commitments to Israel. And our ability to do so depends to a significant degree on help from China and Russia in restraining their partners in the region in return for Israeli restraint in Gaza.5 [my emphasis]
That whole Unipolar Moment where the US expected to dictate how the “rules-based international order” didn’t work out as well as either the neoconservatives or the humanitarian-interventionist factions hoped.6
And the defenders of the Rules-Based International Order in the world contest of Democracies vs. Autocracies (except for the autocrats like Benjamin Netanyahu who get to be on the Democracies side) are not dealing very well with the ongoing atrocity in Gaza:
[A]mid the escalating Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the EU is again falling into line behind Washington, cosigning the United States’ blank check for Israeli “self-defense.” In the aftermath of the horrifying Hamas attack on October 7, when 1,400 Israelis were killed and another two hundred taken as hostages, its solidarity with the people of Israel was to be expected. But that Western support is now turning into a rubber-stamp approval for Israel’s punitive assault on Gazans.
Over three thousand Palestinians — the overwhelming majority civilians — have already been killed in Israeli’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, prelude to a widely expected ground invasion that risks provoking a broader regional conflict. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have already been displaced since the Israeli state issued a sudden October 13 order for people to evacuate to the southern half of the coastal enclave, which, nevertheless, is also being bombarded.7 [my emphasis]
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attracted well-deserved negative attention for this notorious comment last week:
“We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” Gallant said.
While it appears that Gallant was specifically referring to Hamas fighters in that comment, the rest of the minister’s remarks called for further oppression of all people in Gaza by denying them basic human needs.
“We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza,” Gallant said. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.”8 [my emphasis]
The Biden Administration is right to worry that a government that has a goon like that as Defense Minister might implicate the US in some really ugly business. It will be very hard for Biden to avoid that impression, even among allies.
This new statement from Gallant certainly sounds ominous, which it not doubt was meant to do.
Israel: Last gasp for diplomacy before Gaza invasion? Channel 4 News YouTube channel 10/19/2023. (Accessed: 2023-19-10). To watch on YouTube; not available for Substack embedding.
Levy, Gideon (2023): The War in Gaza Must Stop Immediately. Haaretz 10/19/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-10-19/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-war-in-gaza-must-stop-immediately/0000018b-43ec-d614-abcf-ebff3ecd0000> (Accessed: 2023-19-10).
Wrobel, Sharon (2023): Jared Kushner’s Saudi-backed private equity fund clinches first investment in Israel. Times of Israel 09/09/2023. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/jared-kushners-saudi-backed-private-equity-fund-clinches-first-investment-in-israel/> (Accessed: 2023-19-10).
Miller, Aaron David (2023): What I Told Jared Kushner About His Middle East Peace Plan. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 02/07/2020. <https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/02/07/what-i-told-jared-kushner-about-his-middle-east-peace-plan-pub-81010> (Accessed: 2023-19-10).
Beebe, George & Lieven, Anatol (2023): How China and Russia can help us avoid escalation in the Middle East. Responsible Statecraft 10/19/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-russia-china-israel/> (Accessed: 2023-20-10).
Shifrinson, Joshua et. al. (2023): The Long Unipolar Moment? Debating American Dominance. Foreign Affairs 10/17/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-russia-china-israel/> (Accessed: 2023-20-10).
Stetler, Harrison (2023): Europe Is Cosigning Washington’s Blank Check for Israeli Atrocities in Gaza. Jacobin 10/196/2023. <https://jacobin.com/2023/10/european-union-israel-support-gaza-war-crimes> (Accessed: 2023-20-10).
Karanth, Sanjana (2023): Israeli Defense Minister Announces Siege On Gaza To Fight ‘Human Animals’. Huffpost 10/09/20223. <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-defense-minister-human-animals-gaza-palestine_n_6524220ae4b09f4b8d412e0a> (Accessed: 2023-20-10).