Israel & Palestine: Why It Matters in Congress

Recorded February 5, 2021

Featuring: Salem Barahmeh (Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy), Zaha Hassan (Carnegie Endowment), & Shibley Telhami (Brookings/University of Maryland). Co-moderated by Khaled Elgindy (Middle East Insitute) and Lara Friedman (FMEP).

In this session we will explore the basics of the Israel-Palestine conflict, including the often distorted lens through which it is viewed and the unique role that Congress plays in shaping America’s Israel-Palestine policy.

This webinar is Part 1 of an 8-part series of webinars. Find out more information on past and upcoming webinars in this series here.

Resources shared during this webinar

Follow the panelists and moderators on Twitter:

• Salem Barahmeh – https://twitter.com/Barahmeh
• Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy / Rabet – https://twitter.com/rabetbypipd
• Zaha Hassan – https://twitter.com/zahahassan
• Shibley Telhami – https://twitter.com/ShibleyTelhami
• Khaled Elgindy – https://twitter.com/elgindy_
• Lara Friedman – https://twitter.com/LaraFriedmanDC

From Salem Barahmeh:

• “America Joins Israel’s Campaign to Smear and Silence Palestinians” 
• “Palestinians are fighting to dismantle apartheid, not just annexation”
• “Israelis, Ask Yourselves: At What Point Do Palestinian Lives Matter?”
• “Biden Can’t Free Palestine” (Foreign Policy)

From Shibley Telhami:

• “Israel is about to reveal its West Bank annexation plans. How will Congress respond?” (Brookings)
• “What do Americans think of the BDS movement, aimed at Israel?” (Brookings)
• “Changing American Public Attitudes On Israel/Palestine: Does It Matter For Politics?” (POMEPS)
• “Why the discourse about Palestinian payments to prisoners’ families is distorted and misleading” (Brookings)

From Zaha Hassan:

• “The Israel-UAE Accord is a Mere Sideshow” (Newsweek)
• “How a Proposed New Fund to Bolster the Palestinian Economy Stands to Benefit Israeli Settlers” (Carnegie Endowment)
• “Trump’s funding cuts to Palestinian refugees put lives at risk“
  (Al Jazeera)
• “From Clinton to Obama, U.S. peace deals have paved the path to apartheid” (+972 Magazine)

Other:

• Lara Friedman – “Cutting Off Payments to Palestinian Families Won’t Stop Terrorism” (The Nation)
• “The U.S., like Israel, is wielding the violence of an occupying power” (+972 Magazine)
• “Israel continues policy of forcibly transferring Palestinians” (B’Tselem)

FMEP President Lara Friedman joined a webinar hosted by Churches for Middle East Peace for a webinar series titled, “JerUSAlem: The Holy City in Crisis.” The discussion covered: the current realities on the ground in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the broader area; the geopolitical perspectives inherent to the American administration’s recognition of Jerusalem and plan to move the Embassy; and challenges to the peace process that have arisen from their decision.

You can watch the entire CMEP webinar series online here

In this edition of FMEP’s new podcast series “Occupied Thoughts” Peter Beinart discusses the current chaos in Israeli politics with renowned journalist and author Akiva Eldar, whose work on settlements and Israeli annexation policies is authoritative. Starting with a discussion of the likelihood of an indictment and/or resignation of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Akiva and Peter delve into what might happen next in the Israeli political landscape (including the potential for war), the signficance of Ambassador David Friedman’s recent remarks on settlements, and much more.

Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributor to The Atlantic and National Journal, a Senior Columnist at The Forward, and a CNN Political Commentator. You can follow Peter on Twitter @PeterBeinart.

Akiva Eldar  is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse. He was formerly a senior columnist and editorial writer for Haaretz and also served as the Hebrew daily’s US bureau chief and diplomatic correspondent. His most recent book (with Idith Zertal), Lords of the Land, which documents the history of Israeli settlement in  occupied Palestinian territories, was on the best-seller list in Israel and has been translated into English, French, German and Arabic.

Preeminent Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard asks difficult questions about the role human rights lawyers play in challenging Israel’s occupation in his new book, “The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine & the Legal Battle for Human Rights.” In an in-depth discussion hosted by FMEP President Lara Friedman, Sfard reflects on many of the book’s most profound questions, including Sfard’s personal reflections on the challenges facing lawyers who want to end the occupation and bring justice to Palestinians in the interim. The event was hosted by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, the New Israel Fund, and the American University George Washington School of Law.

Watch a full recording of the event online here.

On January 7, 2018 the Israeli government issued a list of 20 organizations whose leaders, staff, and visible activists will be denied entry into Israel due to these organization’s support for peaceful activism protesting Israeli government policies. A number FMEP grantees and supported organizations have spoken out against this anti-democratic policy and its (first) set of targets – their statements are below..

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• Excerpts from columnists writing for +972 Magazine:
  • Natasha Roth: “But the formality of this step — banning outright leaders and key members of a Jewish organization — is yet further concrete evidence of what has been clear for some time: that even as the Israeli government makes crystal-clear its commitment to having as few non-Jews as possible within its borders, it is also becoming increasingly blatant about possessing criteria for the types of Jews it considers kosher.”
  • Mairav Zonszein: “The Israeli government is sending a clear message that being Jewish will not protect you from being denied entry into the Jewish State, which prelims to be a safe haven for Jews.”
• Americans for Peace Now: “Israel yesterday published a list of 20 organizations the activists of which will be prevented from entering the country in accordance with Israel’s 2017 Entry Law. Just as we condemn the Entry Law, Americans for Peace Now opposes this blacklist…” Read more…
• Breaking the Silence Executive Director Avner Gvaryahu: “The anti-democratic norms of the occupation are bleeding into Israel proper, and the latest “black-list” is an example of this dangerous process. In Israel of 2018 you cannot criticize government policy in the occupied territories without being demonized and scrutinized. If you like the list, then you support the process that Bibi is leading. It’s as simple as that. According to Netanyahu only apartheid sympathizers are patriots and exposes of truth are labeled as traitors. No matter who you are, you can and should oppose the occupation and as long as it’s nonviolent its legit in my book.” [clipped]
• Churches for Middle East Peace: “Boycott, divestment, and sanctions are expressions of free speech and forms of nonviolent protest. Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is concerned to hear that 20 organizations, including five from the United States, will be prevented from entering Israel due to their support of economic measures against the state of Israel.”
• If Not Now: “The American Jewish establishment has fueled the fear of BDS while mostly staying silent abt Israel’s deteriorating democracy, the rampant detention of Palestinian children, & the nightmare of the Occupation. BDS is not the problem, the Occupation is.”
• Jewish Voice for Peace Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson: “Israel’s decision to specifically ban JVP leaders from entry is disconcerting but not surprising, given the consistent erosion of democratic norms as well as increasing fear of the BDS movement in Israel.  JVP members are now joining Palestinians, Muslims from around the world, people of color and other activists who are often barred from entry. Our JVP members have no doubt about the justice of fighting for equality and freedom for all people in Israel/Palestine, and the legitimacy of BDS to bring that closer.  We will not be bullied by these attempts to punish us for a principled political stance that increasing numbers of Jews and all people worldwide support. As someone with considerable family in Israel, this policy will be a personal hardship. But I also believe it is an indicator of the BDS movement’s growing strength and hope that it will bring the day closer when all people in Israel/Palestine will live together in equality and freedom.”
• J Street: “With the announcement that members of twenty organizations will be banned from entering Israel because of their support for the BDS Movement, the Netanyahu government has struck another significant blow to the foundations of Israeli democracy…” Read more…
• New Israel Fund: “Our position hasn’t wavered: We don’t support the global BDS movement and we don’t agree with the organizations blacklisted by the Israeli government on many issues. But we don’t have to agree with them to know that banning the from visiting Israeli is just wrong. We know that it’s profoundly anti-democraticto discrimnate against those who advocate for nonviolent strategies just because the government doesn’t agree with their views. Banning political opposition is the policy of autocracies, not democracies. The Netanyahu government’s Entry Law, which is a travel ban that uses blacklists and litmus tests to bar visitors from entering Israel based on their beliefs, flies in the face of the democratic principles enshrined in Israel’s declaration of independence.”

FMEP grantee Al-Shabaka published a new report, “Surveillance of Palestinian and the Fight for Digital Rights,” exploring how modern technologies have been integrated into Israel’s surveillance of Palestinians.

An overview of the report is below, and the full report can be downloaded or read on the Al-Shabaka website.

Overview

Surveillance of Palestinians has always been an integral part of Israel’s colonial project. Before the creation of the state of Israel, squads from the Zionist paramilitary group the Haganah roamed Palestinian villages and cities, gathering information on Palestinian residents. Such surveillance over Palestinian lives continued after Israel’s 1967 occupation of the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Tools deployed included population registries, identification cards, land surveys, watchtowers, imprisonment, and torture.

While these low-tech surveillance techniques are still in use today, a plethora of new technologies, such as phone and internet monitoring and interception, CCTV, and biometric data collection, have enabled Israel to surveil the population it occupies on a massive, intrusive scale. Israel particularly uses social media to monitor what individual Palestinians say and do, as well as to gather and analyze information on attitudes among the Palestinian public more broadly.

In this policy brief, Nadim Nashif discusses this Israeli use of social media as a tool of Palestinian surveillance. ¹ He examines Israeli tactics, as well as other digital obstacles to Palestinian rights, including Facebook’s pro-Israel bias through censorship and lack of transparency, as well as the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) new cybercrime law. Nashif concludes with recommendations for how Palestinians can counter the use of social media for surveillance and protect their rights online.

Read the report online.

In this piece, Palestinian policy analysts with Al-Shabaka (an FMEP grantee) look at how Israel’s use of social media algorithms to arrest Palestinians dovetails with “predictive policing” practices that the ACLU and other U.S. civil rights groups have strongly objected to.

Read the full article on Open Democracy.

The Israeli algorithm criminalizing Palestinians for online dissent

by Nadim Nashif & Marwa Fatafta

Graffiti on the separation wall in the West Bank, Palestine. Photo by Wall in Palestine. Flickr.com (CC BY-SA 2.0) Some rights reserved.The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) arrest of West Bank human rights defender Issa Amro for a Facebook post last month is the latest in the the PA’s recent crackdown on online dissent among Palestinians. Yet it’s a tactic long used by Israel, which has been monitoring social media activity and arresting Palestinians for their speech for years – and has recently created a computer algorithm to aid in such oppression.

Since 2015, Israel has detained around 800 Palestinians because of content they wrote or shared online, mainly posts that are critical of Israel’s repressive policies or share the reality of Israeli violence against Palestinians. In the majority of these cases, those detained did not commit any attack; mere suspicion was enough for their arrest.

The poet Dareen Tatour, for instance, was arrested on October 2015 for publishing a poem about resistance to Israel’s 50-year-old military rule on her Facebook page. She spent time in jail and has been under house arrest for over a year and a half. Civil rights groups and individuals in Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), and abroad have criticized Israel’s detention of Tatour and other Palestinian internet users as violations of civil and human rights.

Israeli officials have accused social media companies of hosting and facilitating what they claim is Palestinian incitement. The government has pressured these companies, most notably Facebook, to remove such content. Yet the Israeli government is mining this content. Israeli intelligence has developed a predictive policing system – a computer algorithm – that analyzes social media posts to identify Palestinian “suspects.”

Predictive policing, which uses data analytics and algorithms to forecast where and when a crime might occur, is nothing new. Fifty police departments in the US already use one form of predictive policing: area mapping of so-called hotspots on which police then focus their efforts. In contrast, Israel uses predictive policing to identify likely attackers.

The algorithm-based program monitors tens of thousands of young Palestinians’ Facebook accounts. It searches for such elements as photos of Palestinians killed or jailed by Israel to identify individuals it deems suspicious. The Israeli army also monitors the activity of relatives, friends, classmates, and co-workers of recent Palestinians killed by Israel to assess their potential risk.

In the US, a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the ACLU and the NAACP, criticizes the use of algorithms because theyreinforce existing police bias and discrimination against minorities and other oft-targeted groups. Essentially, predictive policing uses past data related not to actual crimes or attacks, but to the state or police response to it. For example, when researchersapplied predictive policing algorithms to drug crime data in Oakland, California, the algorithm recommended police be deployed exclusively to neighborhoods with low-income black residents. Oakland police were already patrolling these areas heavily for drug crime. Thus, such algorithm-based systems only reinforce existing biases.

“[Predictive policing] concentrates existing law enforcement tactics, and will intensify stringent enforcement in communities of color that already face disproportionate law enforcement scrutiny,” the coalition said in a statement.

While systematically targeting Palestinians online, Israel does not punish its Jewish residents for their social media posts, though a significant number of them are racist and violent toward Arabs or Palestinians. A recent report from the Palestinian organization 7amleh reveals that in 2016 almost 60,000 Israeli internet users wrote at least one post containing either racism or hatred towards these groups, mostly on Facebook. This translated into a violent post every 46 seconds.

The difference in how the Israeli government treats Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in regard to their online speech is emblematic of how it treats them in real life.

Even government officials write such content. In the lead-up to Israel’s bombing of Gaza in 2014, Ayelet Shaked, an extreme right-wing Israeli parliamentarian, posted a Facebook message that said that Palestinian fighters’ mothers should be killed and their homes destroyed. She, nor any other Israeli Jewish internet user who publishes such language has been arrested or even called to account.

The difference in how the Israeli government treats Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in regard to their online speech is emblematic of how it treats them in real life. Israel severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through checkpoints and the massive West Bank separation wall in an attempt to control an oppressed people struggling for its freedom. Jewish Israelis, on the other hand, are permitted unfettered freedom of movement, both in Israel and most of the OPT. Israel justifies its mining of online data by boasting that doing so has decreased the number of violent attacks. The argument is similar to other authoritarian governments that justify online surveillance, internet shutdowns, the blocking of websites, and censorship.

Even if such algorithms deter attacks, imprisoning Palestinians based on a probability created by a machine is a clear violation of Palestinians’ rights. The expansion of the Israeli occupation’s oppression of the Palestinian people, now in its fiftieth year, to the cyber sphere is an alarming trend. Every and any Palestinian is now a suspect simply by exercising their freedom of expression online.

While some western analysts suggest collecting neutral data or building neutral algorithm models as a way to circumvent abuse and discrimination, such recommendations do not resonate in a context of prolonged military occupation. Israel must stop policing the internet to further silence and oppress Palestinians. The detention of Palestinian civilians based on a machine’s prediction and no evidence is yet another instance to be added to Israel’s long list of violations of Palestinian human rights.

FMEP’s President Lara Friedman joined Churches for Middle East Peace for a webinar explaining the “Israel Anti-Boycott Act,” a piece of legislation moving in the Senate (S 720) and the House of Representatives (HR 1697).

In a recent op-ed, “The Israel Anti-Boycott Act is an Act of Political Persecution” Lara explained how the bill, if passed, would impact her. She writes, “a plain-English reading of the law makes clear that the impact is far wider, seeking to silence, deter, and punish U.S. persons, like me, for exercising the basic right to free political speech in calling for and supporting policies that challenge settlements and occupation.”

You can watch the webinar below, and click here for additional resources.