NEW FROM FMEP
FMEP Legislative Round-Up September 20, 2024 (Lara Friedman)
- Bills, Resolutions; 2. Letters; 3. Hearings; 4. Israel/Palestine in 2024 Elex/Politics; 5. Selected Media & Press releases/Statements
Settlement & Annexation Report: September 23, 2022 (Kristin McCarthy)
1) Booking.com To Post Warning on Settlement Listings (Like Other “Conflict Affected” Areas); 2) Things to Watch During Jewish High Holidays; 3) Bonus Reads
Palestine in the 2024 U.S. Elections (New Occupied Thoughts episode)
In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP President Lara Friedman discusses how Palestine is one of the defining issues of the 2024 elections with Rania Batrice, and FMEP 2024 non-Resident Fellow.
U.S. Policy Through the Looking Glass (New Occupied Thoughts episode)
FMEP Non-resident Fellow Rania Batrice talks with Matt Duss (Center for International Policy) about the current state of politics on Israel and Palestine in the U.S..
GAZA
Gaza publishes identities of 34,344 Palestinians killed in war with Israel (Guardian 9/17/24)
“Gaza’s health ministry has identified 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the territory, publishing a list of names, ages, gender and ID numbers that cover more than 80% of Palestinians killed in the war so far. The remaining 7,613 people included in its death toll, which is now above 41,000, are Palestinians whose bodies have been received by hospitals and morgues, but whose identities have not yet been confirmed…The document runs to 649 pages, with the dead listed largely by age. Gaza’s population is youthful, and the register underlines the high toll of Israeli attacks on Palestinian children. More than 100 pages are filled with the names of victims under 10 years old, and the first adult names do not appear until page 215. Israeli officials question the death toll given by the authorities in Gaza, arguing that because Hamas controls the government there, Gaza’s health officials cannot provide reliable figures. However, doctors and civil servants in the territory have a credible record from past wars. After several conflicts between 2009 and 2021, United Nations investigators drew up their own lists of the dead and found they closely matched ones from Gaza…[The list] does not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but a majority of the 34,344 dead can be identified as civilians based on age and gender alone. It includes 11,355 children, 2,955 people aged 60 or older, and 6,297 women. There are also many civilian men of fighting age who have been killed.” See also At least 16 killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, Palestinian officials say (Guardian 9/16/24)
Palestinian poll finds majority of Gazans say Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack was wrong (Al Monitor 9/17/24)
“Support for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel has dropped significantly among Gazans and, for the first time, a majority of Gazans have judged the attack as wrong, according to a poll published Tuesday. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) conducted a poll in early September, asking 410 people in Gaza and 790 people in the West Bank whether they thought the Oct. 7 attack, which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis, was a positive move. With a 3.5% margin of error, 57% of Gazans surveyed said the attack was wrong and 39% said it was the right thing to do. In the West Bank, though 64% of respondents said that attack was the right move, that number dropped from 73% in June…The PCPSR found respondents’ feelings around the attack to be complicated: “More than two thirds of the Palestinians believe that the attack has put the Palestinian issue at the center of attention and eliminated years of neglect at the regional and international levels.” Palestinian support for the attack has dropped significantly in Gaza since the PCPSR conducted its first poll in December 2023, when 71% of Gazans said that Hamas was right to conduct the attack. In the West Bank in December, 82% of respondents said the attack was the right move…The poll shows that 78% of Gazans say a family member has been killed or injured in the war.”
Hunger still stalks Gaza (Ishaan Tharoor//WaPo 9/16/24)
“The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip remains catastrophic. Hunger and disease stalk the embattled territory, which has been devastated over 11 months of war. Israel continues to carry out strikes on alleged militant Hamas targets in supposed safe zones, invariably killing civilians caught in the crossfire. And relief organizations trying to help alleviate a desperate situation are still lamenting impediments to aid distribution, and security risks to their workers posed by Israeli troops and a morass of gangs that have emerged out of Gaza’s ruin.”
The Gazan infants who never saw their first birthday (Ibrahim Mohammed//+972 9/18/24)
“On Sept. 16, Gaza’s Health Ministry released a 649-page document containing the personal information of 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israel’s onslaught on the enclave over the past 11 months…Over 11,300 of the identified victims are children, and 710 of them were killed before they turned 1. These are the stories of six of those infants who were stolen from the world before even seeing their first birthday, as told by their families.” See also ‘The war has stolen our future’: Gaza children begin second school year without education (Guardian 9/15/24); U.N. Says Israeli War in Gaza Has ‘Catastrophic Consequences’ for Children (NYT 9/19/24);
‘People torn to pieces’ in Israeli airstrike on Gaza displacement camp (Ruwaida Kamal Amer and Mahmoud Mushtaha//+972 9/12/24)
“In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israeli missiles rained down on a designated “humanitarian zone” in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. For months, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken shelter there upon Israel’s orders to evacuate from almost everywhere else in the Gaza Strip. But even in this supposed sanctuary, safety for Palestinians is an illusion, and the displaced remain as vulnerable as ever…Tents were set ablaze, and the bombs left deep craters in the earth. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the airstrikes killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens more. It was Israel’s fifth attack on the area since designating it a place of refuge, and Tuesday’s bombings brought the total death toll from these attacks to more than 150.” See also Israeli strikes on Khan Younis kills 40 Palestinians in tent camp massacre (New Arab 9/10/24); Six UN aid workers among 18 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school (Guardian 9/12/24);Gaza: Doctor dies in Israeli custody after being abducted from al-Shifa Hospital, officials say (Middle East Eye 9/18/24);
“Until our last breath”: Journalist Anas al-Sharif on Documenting Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Every Day for 11 Straight Months (Sharif Abdel Kouddous//Drop Site 9/11/24)
“Anas al-Sharif has become one of the most recognizable faces on television in the Arab world. For the past 11 months, the 27-year-old Al Jazeera correspondent has been reporting from the front lines of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza—now the deadliest place for journalists in modern history. By some counts, over 160 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October—a rate of one journalist killed every other day for nearly a year. Al-Sharif has personally endured threats against his life, and his home was targeted in an Israeli attack, killing his father. Al-Sharif is one of the few reporters who have remained in northern Gaza since October 7—an area from which, just a few days into the war, the Israeli government ordered 1.1 million people to evacuate and which has been the most heavily bombarded by Israel…Anas al-Sharif continues to report every day from northern Gaza. Drop Site asked him to reflect on his work in Gaza for the past 11 months. He sent a 10-minute voice note in response.” See also A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam (Meron Rapoport//+972 9/17/24)
Gripped by despair, Israel’s hostage families try to keep hope alive (WaPo 9/16/24)
“In the weeks since the bodies of the six hostages were found in Gaza — shortly after being shot at close range by their Hamas captors, Israel’s Health Ministry said — Israelis have returned to the streets for increasingly massive protests, calling on Netanyahu to secure the release of the remaining captives. But U.S.-backed cease-fire talks have faltered again, as Netanyahu insists on keeping Israeli troops along the Gaza-Egypt border and Hamas demands that more Palestinians be released from Israeli prisons…Among hostage families, the deaths of the six marked a turning point. Many who had been keeping their protests in Tel Aviv largely apolitical have now joined the more overtly anti-government demonstrations a few blocks away. The result, organizers say, has been the biggest crowds yet, measuring in the hundreds of thousands.” See also 3 Hostages Likely Killed by Israeli Strike Last Fall, I.D.F. Says (NYT 9/15/24); U.S. charges senior Hamas leaders with deaths of Americans in Israel (CBS 9/3/24); US officials believe hostage-ceasefire deal unlikely by end of Biden’s term – report (Times of Israel 9/20/24); Organizers claim largest-ever rally in Tel Aviv as calls for hostage deal intensify (Times of Israel 9/8/24); I Was a Hostage in Gaza. Netanyahu Is Prepared to Sacrifice Those Israelis Still Held Captive (Liat Atzili//Haaretz 9/12/24)
REGION/DIPLOMACY
Israel’s New Campaign of “Terrorism Warfare” Across Lebanon (Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, Sharif Abdel Kouddous//Drop Site News 9/18/24)
“For the second day in a row, electronic devices across Lebanon, including walkie talkies, exploded on Wednesday, killing 14 people and injuring over 450, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The attack came one day after thousands of pagers across the country exploded at the same time, killing eleven people—including a 9-year-old child—and wounding nearly 3,000, including many civilians and government and hospital workers. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for the attacks…The second attack appeared timed to cause total panic among the civilian population and to undermine confidence in Hezbollah’s ability to control and contain Israel’s assault. On Wednesday, multiple explosions went off at a funeral for some of those killed on Tuesday, according to the AP whose reporters witnessed the attack…At approximately 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, thousands of pagers across Lebanon sprang to life, beeping and vibrating. The message on the screen indicated an error. “The message was: Fault. Fault. And it continued to beep and heat up before the explosion of the pager,” said Ali Jezzini, a security analyst and journalist in Lebanon who has been speaking to hospital workers treating the wounded. Many victims, he said, lifted the devices to examine the pagers and as they did so, they exploded, causing injuries to their faces and hands. “It did give a code and it continued to ring and vibrate. So that’s why they had to hold it in their hands to check what’s happening. It was faulty, it was not responding, so that’s why they kept it in front of their faces and the palms of their hands, because they’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with it. That’s why most of the injuries are like that. It didn’t explode right away.” See also ‘We are isolated, tired, scared’: pager attack leaves Lebanon in shock (Guardian 9/19/24); Hezbollah chief says ‘inevitable’ response to Lebanon blasts coming (Al Monitor 9/19/24); Exclusive: Hezbollah suspicions forced Israel to expedite Lebanon pager attack (Al Monitor 9/17/24); From Taiwan to Hungary: What we know about manufacturing of Hezbollah pagers (Al Monitor 9/19/24); Israel’s Pager Attack Was a Tactical Success Without a Strategic Goal, Analysts Say (NYT 9/18/24)
IDF hits more than 100 loaded Hezbollah launchers in series of major Lebanon strikes (Times of Israel 9/20/24)
“Israel carried out dozens of strikes on Thursday across southern Lebanon, in what Lebanese security sources said were some of the most intense bombings since Hezbollah began daily cross-border attacks on northern communities after the start of the Gaza war on October 7. The military said fighter jets had struck over 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon that were primed for immediate attacks on Israel. It said that in total, the launchers included around 1,000 launch barrels.” See also Hezbollah leader calls Israeli pager attacks a “declaration of war” (Axios 9/19/24); Israel detonates Hezbollah walkie-talkies a day after pager attack (Axios 9/18/24)
Israeli Army Assassinates Top Hezbollah Commander Ibrahim Aqil in Beirut Strike (Haaretz 9/20/24)
“The Israeli army said it assassinated top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil in an airstrike in Beirut on Friday. According to Lebanese reports, the strike targeted a building in a residential neighborhood known to be used by Hezbollah. The Lebanese Health Ministry said the attack killed 12 people and injured 66. Aqil, Hezbollah’s head of operations, is part of the group’s top leadership and considered part of the organization’s general staff. He was reportedly discharged from the hospital on Friday morning after being wounded in the attack on Hezbollah’s communications devices.” See also Who was Ibrahim Akil, top Hezbollah member killed in Israeli strike? (Al Monitor 9/20/24)
A broader Israel-Lebanon war now seems inevitable (Ishaan Tharoor//WaPo 9/20/24)
“For months, the refrain has been the same. Even as they backed Israel to the hilt, U.S. officials repeatedly stressed that they didn’t want to see a wider war explode across the Jewish state’s northern border with Lebanon. Leaders of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, a longtime Israeli antagonist, and their supporters in Iran signaled that they, too, had little desire for a full-blown conflict. And in Israel, top political and security officials in a country already in the throes of a sweeping, bloody campaign against Hamas in Gaza bickered over what to do about the threat posed by Hezbollah — recognizing, perhaps, that the Middle East’s most powerful military may be too stretched by another massive war. All the performed restraint may be melting away. The stunning series of deadly blasts in Lebanon this week ushered in a new reality. At least 37 people — including a few children — were killed and some 3,000 others injured when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across the country. The devices appeared to belong to Hezbollah operatives, though the huge organization is embedded throughout Lebanese society and incorporates vast networks of noncombatants, including medical professionals…Numerous international law experts, including a U.N. panel, accused Israel of violating international law and carrying out a form of terrorism, no matter that it was an attempt to weaken a known terrorist organization. For Hezbollah, the operation has been disastrous…Though the pager attacks represent a dramatic tactical victory for Israeli’s security establishment, it’s not clear what strategic goals it achieves.” See also Israel’s clash with Hezbollah strains U.S. effort to prevent wider war (WaPo 9/19/24); Israel didn’t tell U.S. in advance about Hezbollah pager attack, officials said (Axios 9/17/24); Biden administration distances itself from pager attack in Lebanon (JI 9/17/24); Israel’s Shin Bet foils Hezbollah plot to kill former senior security official (Al Monitor 9/17/24); Israel destroyed reported Iranian underground missile factory in Syria ground raid (Axios 9/12/24); Houthis fire missile from Yemen into central Israel, warn of more strikes (WaPo 9/15/24)
MBS: No Saudi-Israel Normalization Until Palestinians Get A State (Annelle Sheline//Responsible Statecraft 9/18/24)
“In a televised speech today, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stated that, “The [Saudi] kingdom will not stop its tireless work towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. We affirm that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that.” With this statement, the Crown Prince appeared to dash the Biden’s administration’s lingering hopes of achieving a landmark normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would have also given Riyadh a U.S. defense agreement as well as a pledge to assist in the establishment of a civilian nuclear program…MBS’ clear statement of Saudi support for the establishment of a Palestinian state demonstrates the impact of the events of the past year…The Saudi state had sought to downplay condemnations of Israel, something few other Arab governments have tried to do, which prompted questions about whether MBS was trying to maintain the possibility of normalizing relations…The far right government of Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made clear over the past year that they would not make a single concession towards the establishment of a Palestinian state…With the recent announcement by Saudi Arabia and the vote in the UN, the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s military aggression is increasingly isolating the United States.” See also Saudi crown prince says no Israel normalization without Palestinian state (Al Monitor); Defense secretary postpones trip to Israel amid U.S. concerns of war with Lebanon (Axios 9/19/24)
UN members back resolution directing Israel to leave occupied territories (Guardian 9/18/24)
“In a symbolic step exposing Israel’s continued international isolation, the UN general assembly has voted overwhelmingly to direct Israel to leave the occupied Palestinian territories within a year. The non-binding vote follows a historic advisory ruling in July by the international court of justice (ICJ) urging Israel to cease “its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as soon as possible and stop all settlement activity there immediately”. Wednesday’s resolution was passed by 124 votes to 14 with 43 abstentions, prompting applause across the general assembly chamber in New York. The UK and Australia abstained while the US voted against.”
The UK and Its Illusive Arms Embargo (Shahd Hammouri//Al Shabaka 9/15/24)
“UK arms companies have long profited from selling weapons to Israel, with licenses issued from the British government. Since 2008, these exports have totaled an estimated $740 million, continuing even amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In protest, a Foreign Office official recently resigned over this policy of continued licensing. Following the Labour Party’s July 2024 election victory, which promised alignment with international law, some were cautiously optimistic that an arms embargo would be forthcoming. In September 2024, the British government suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel. Activists and human rights groups argue that this is far too limited. Accordingly, this policy memo details Britain’s international legal obligations and potential governmental maneuvers regarding arms sales to Israel.” See also UK suspends 30 arms export licences to Israel after review (Guardian 9/2/24); Which countries have suspended or restricted arms sales to Israel? (WaPo 9/11/24)
Germany has stopped approving war weapons exports to Israel: Report (Al Jazeera 9/19/24)
“Germany has put a hold on new exports of weapons of war to Israel while it deals with legal challenges, according to the Reuters news agency. A source close to the Ministry of Economy cited a senior government official as saying it had stopped work on approving export licences for arms to Israel due to legal and political pressure from legal cases arguing that such exports from Germany breached humanitarian law.”
Columnists resign from the Jewish Chronicle over allegations Gaza articles were fabricated (ABC News 9/16/24)
“Prominent columnists have resigned from the Jewish Chronicle newspaper over allegations that it published fabricated articles about the Israel-Hamas war. The resignations on Sunday came after the London-based newspaper removed multiple articles by a freelance journalist and apologized to readers, saying it conducted an investigation into the writer and was “not satisfied with some of his claims.” The newspaper didn’t specify which articles by the journalist, Elon Perry, were problematic. Among other claims, Perry — who described himself as a commando in the Israel Defense Forces — alleged that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar planned to smuggle himself and Israeli hostages out of Gaza through the border area with Egypt known as the Philadelphi corridor. Israeli media initially circulated the article, but later came to question its sourcing. The report has drawn speculation that it may have been part of a disinformation campaign in support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because the claims largely mirrored those made by the leader about the Philadelphi corridor earlier this month. Long-time Jewish Chronicle columnist Jonathan Freedland resigned in protest on Sunday, saying “the latest scandal brings great disgrace on the paper” and that it has “departed from the traditions that built its reputation as the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper.”’ See also Why did a British Jewish newspaper publish fake Israeli intelligence? (Ben Reiff//+972 9/11/24); Columnists resign from London Jewish Chronicle amid allegations that Gaza news was fabricated (JTA 9/16/24); Jewish Chronicle Scandal: When ‘pro-Israel’ Means Becoming a Megaphone for the Netanyahu Government (Haaretz 9/18/24); Forged Hamas documents leaked to shape public opinion, report says (Middle East Eye 9/9/24); How the Elon Perry fabrication scandal shook the Jewish Chronicle (Guardian 9/20/24)
RIVER TO THE SEA
Israeli soldiers filmed pushing bodies of Palestinians off West Bank roof (Guardian 9/20/24)
“Israeli soldiers have been filmed pushing three apparently lifeless bodies from a rooftop during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, in the latest in a series of suspected violations by Israeli forces since the start of the Israel-Hamas war that rights groups say show a pattern of excessive force toward Palestinians. The incident took place in the town of Qabatiya in the northern West Bank, where the Israeli military has been carrying out large-scale raids since late August that the Palestinian health ministry says have killed dozens of people…The Associated Press (AP) said one of its journalists had witnessed the incident. The agency could not immediately confirm the identities or whereabouts of the bodies, nor the death toll from the Israeli raid.” See also IDF ‘Investigating’ After Soldiers Filmed Throwing Palestinian Bodies Off West Bank Rooftop (Haaretz 9/20/24)
The Siege of Jenin (Photos by Wahaj Bani Moufleh, text by Maya Rosen//Jewish Currents 9/12/24)
“On August 28th, the Israeli military began its largest concerted assault on the occupied West Bank since the Second Intifada, in what Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described as “an attack to prevent terror.” Accompanied by tanks and bulldozers, and backed up by airstrikes, hundreds of troops entered Palestinian cities and towns across the region, including Tulkarem, Tubas, the Al-Faraa refugee camp, and Jenin, which was a central focus of the incursion. Over the next nine days, Israeli soldiers killed 36 Palestinians in the northern West Bank, eight of them children, and injured another 145; 21 of those killed were from Jenin. Under the guise of “destroying terrorist infrastructure,” as one Israeli military official put it, Israel destroyed an estimated 70% of the city’s critical infrastructure, including water, sewage, and electricity lines, as well as commercial buildings, medical facilities, and residential areas. Wahaj Bani Moufleh, a 24-year-old photographer with the Palestinian–Israeli visual journalism collective ActiveStills, documented the Israeli invasion of Jenin and its environs…In Jenin, Moufleh described seeing “the army storming and destroying the city.” In the ten-day period before Israel withdrew troops, soldiers drove numerous Palestinian families out of their homes at gunpoint—in some cases unleashing attack dogs to expel them “to places unknown, to a fate unknown,” in the words of the writer Mariam Barghouti, who reported from Jenin during the invasion. “The people in the camp were already refugees from 1948, and now they had to evacuate again,” Moufleh said. “It was like a new Nakba.” See also Dispatch from Jenin: Resistance Swells After Israel’s Brutal Invasion (Mariam Barghouti//Drop Site 9/9/24)
After expulsion by settlers, Palestinians embrace precarious return to Zanuta (Hamdan Ballal Al-Huraini//+972 9/9/24)
“On Aug. 21, dozens of Palestinians were finally able to return to the village of Khirbet Zanuta, in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank. After years of facing constant threats from Israeli settlers, all of Zanuta’s approximately 300 residents were forced to flee their homes when settlers escalated their daily harassment and violent attacks in the wake of October 7. Zanuta was one of several Palestinian communities in Area C — the two-thirds of the West Bank controlled entirely by the Israeli army — that were displaced during the first weeks of the war. But in early August, following a legal appeal by the residents, the Israeli High Court ruled that the police had failed to protect Palestinians in Zanuta from settler violence, and ordered the authorities to facilitate their return. Despite the ruling, however, the threats of violence and dispossession in Zanuta have not disappeared. Just days after the residents’ return, a group of Israeli settlers descended on the village and harassed the community. On Sept. 9, Yinon Levy, a settler sanctioned by the United States as part his involvement in the organization Hashomer Yosh, entered the village and tried to steal a sheep belonging to the residents. The police and army stood by and failed to uphold their obligation — a haunting reminder that, even with a rare legal victory, the situation remains extremely precarious. I had accompanied the residents of Zanuta as they returned to their village a few weeks ago. The sadness and pain was visible in their eyes as they witnessed the extent of destruction the settlers had left in their absence. Almost every house had been damaged with their walls smashed, and even the school had been torn down and ruined. Yet on that day, for many of the Palestinians, the sense of loss was almost outweighed by the joy of being able to return to their land.” See also Extremist settlers rapidly seizing West Bank land (BBC)
Targeting childhood: Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank (DCI-Palestine 9/9/24)
“20 percent of the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 2000 have been killed after October 7, 2023 at a rate of one child every two days, Defense for Children International – Palestine said in a report released today. The report, “Targeting Childhood: Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank,” details and analyzes Palestinian child fatalities in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 7, 2023, and July 31, 2024. Israeli forces routinely targeted Palestinian children with live ammunition and aerial attacks, prevented ambulances and paramedics from reaching wounded children, and confiscated children’s bodies in violation of international law.”
War, Apartheid, Dehumanization: Polls Reveal Bleak Parallels Between Palestinians and Israelis (Dahlia Scheindlin//Haaretz 9/18/24)
“Eighty-five percent of Israeli Jews recently agreed, in a new Israeli-Palestinian joint survey, that “the victimization of Jews is the worst compared to other people that suffered from persecution and injustice.” Among Palestinians, 83 percent agreed with the same statement, arguing that Palestinian victimization is the worst compared to all others. Polls are an imperfect instrument, but the undeniable symmetry of responses to a few questions in this latest poll, conducted between July 18-29 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah and the International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Tel Aviv University, seems to explain everything: the past, present, and likely future of the conflict. As the poll shows, feelings of victimization fuel justifications for war and violence. Eighty percent of Palestinians believe that their recent years of suffering in Gaza justify October 7, and 84 percent of Israeli Jews believe that October 7 justifies the war. Eighty-nine percent of Palestinians believe the land “very much” belongs to them and 92 percent of Israeli Jews say the land very much belongs to them…The symmetry of trends can seem surprising. Israelis and Palestinians experience vastly different realities of the occupation and this war. But the mind-set of victimhood and justifications for hostility are so similar as to represent almost a mirror image.”
New video, witnesses challenge Israel’s account of U.S. activist’s killing (WaPo 9/11/24)
“Eygi’s caution did not protect her. She was fatally shot in the head on Friday in the village of Beita, near Nablus, following brief clashes after Friday prayers. The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday it was “very likely” she had been hit “unintentionally” by one of its soldiers. “The incident took place during a violent riot,” the statement said, and the fire was aimed at “the key instigator.” But a Washington Post investigation has found that Eygi was shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in Beita, and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road — more than 200 yards away from Israeli forces. A Palestinian teenager, who witnesses say was standing about 20 yards from Eygi, was wounded by Israeli fire; the IDF would not say if he was a target. Citing an ongoing investigation, the IDF also declined to answer questions from The Post about why its forces fired toward the demonstrators so long after they had retreated, and from a distance where they posed no apparent threat.” See also Israel’s Crackdown on the West Bank Has Already Killed an American Citizen (The Nation 9/13/24); At Funeral in Turkey, Family Mourns American Activist Killed by Israeli Gunfire (NYT 9/14/24); US lawmakers warn of Israeli inaction after another American killed in West Bank (Al Monitor 9/12/24); Murray, Jayapal, Cantwell call for inquiry into UW grad’s death in West Bank (Seattle Times 9/12/24); Murray, Jayapal Call for Independent Investigation, Accountability in the Killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi (Rep. Jayapal 9/11/24); I’m an American Activist. Israeli Forces Shot Me at a Peaceful Protest in the West Bank (Daniel Santiago//Time 9/13/24)
U.S. SCENE
Biden’s arms transfers to Israel under internal investigation (WaPo 9/18/24)
“Government watchdogs with jurisdiction over the State Department and Pentagon are preparing to publish the results of multiple investigations scrutinizing the Biden administration’s provision of U.S. weapons to Israel for its military campaign in Gaza, and “several” related inquiries are either underway or planned, their offices told The Washington Post. The forthcoming inspector general reports, which are not yet public, follow complaints from within the U.S. government that the export of billions of dollars in arms to Israel has violated laws prohibiting the transfer of American military assistance to governments that have committed gross human rights violations or blocked the movement of humanitarian assistance. The Biden administration has acknowledged the likelihood that Israel has used U.S. weapons in Gaza in violation of international law, but says continued arms transfers are justified for the defense of the country.”
Harris ‘entirely supportive’ of hold on large munitions while standing by Israel’s right to self-defense (Jewish Insider 9/17/24)
“Speaking at a gathering hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated her support for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas while adding that she is “entirely supportive” of President Joe Biden’s decision in May to withhold certain large, offensive munitions from Israel as leverage. “One of the things that we have done that I am entirely supportive of is the pause that we’ve put on the 2,000-pound bombs, so there is some leverage that we have had and used,” Harris said. “But ultimately, the thing that is going to unlock everything else in that region is getting this [cease-fire] deal done.”’
‘Sidelining antiwar voices’: US Uncommitted Movement not endorsing Harris (Al Jazeera 9/19/24)
“The Uncommitted National Movement, a grassroots effort in the United States that is seeking to pressure the Democratic Party to shift its policy towards Israel amid the Gaza war, says it cannot endorse Kamala Harris for president. The group said on Thursday that Harris’s team had failed to respond to its request for a meeting with representatives and families of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip by a September 15 deadline…Our movement cannot endorse the vice president,” Abbas Alawieh, one of the Uncommitted National Movement’s leaders, said during a virtual news conference on Thursday morning. “At this time, our movement opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of antiwar organising,” Alawieh said. “And our movement is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency, given our country’s broken Electoral College system.”’
Most Americans Want to Stop Arming Israel. Politicians Don’t Care. (Jonah Valdez//Intercept 9/10/24)
“A majority of voters support ending arms transfers to Israel, and support for an arms embargo is growing. “The reality is that the public is far more in favor of stopping arms sales to Israel than opposed,” Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington D.C., told The Intercept. He pointed to a June poll from CBS that showed 61 percent of all Americans said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats and nearly 40 percent of Republicans. Poll results have been consistent for months.”
At antisemitism event, Trump says ‘the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss’ if he is defeated (JTA 9/19/24)
“He suggested that Jews would be to blame if he loses in November. He also said American Jews who vote for Democrats harm American interests, in an escalation of his standard rhetoric…Trump has for years made the claim that American Jews who mostly vote for Democrats are mentally ill, and this year, he has taken to saying that Jews who vote for Democrats need to “have their head examined.” He has also repeatedly said Israel will be destroyed if he loses the election, a prediction he repeated Thursday…Trump told both audiences Thursday night that he would “deport the foreign jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters from our midst” and restore a ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries that he instituted in 2017. The ban was opposed at the time by a broad range of Jewish groups. “I will ban refugee resettlement from terror-infested areas like the Gaza Strip,” he said. “And we will seal our border and bring back the travel ban. Remember the famous travel ban? We didn’t take people from certain areas of the world because I didn’t want to have people ripping down and burning our shopping centers and killing people. We’re not taking them from infested countries.”’ See also Fifty Shades of Antisemitism: What Trump Says About U.S. Jews, in Office and on the Campaign Trail (Alison Kaplan Sommer & Ben Samuels//Haaretz)
UC Berkeley launches one of the nation’s few Palestinian-Arab studies programs amid demand (LA Times 9/10/24)
“UC Berkeley will launch a new endowed program and chair in Palestinian and Arab studies, one of the few in the nation, as the Israel-Hamas war has fueled huge demand to better understand the history, culture and politics of the people of the region. Ussama Makdisi, a UC Berkeley history professor and leading scholar of modern Arab history for nearly three decades, was named the inaugural chair. He said the program represents a groundbreaking effort to build understanding about the Palestinian people, who are often portrayed through the lens of the conflict with Israel, yet have a long, rich ethical and ecumenical history of their own…A $3.25-million gift by anonymous donors led to the establishment of the program, which will fund research opportunities and cultural activities, along with the endowed chair named after May Ziadeh, a pioneering Palestinian-Lebanese feminist, poet and writer…In support of the initiative, UC Berkeley has pledged $500,000 to bolster the program.”
LAWFARE//REDEFINING ANTISEMITISM TO QUASH ADVOCACY FOR PALESTINIAN RIGHTS
Republican Senator Targets Only Muslim Witness at Hate Crimes Hearing (Prem Thakker//Zeteo 9/18/24)
“Lawmakers and people of varied backgrounds donning keffiyehs filed into the US Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room on Tuesday for Washington’s first official attempt to address anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hate. But the hearing did everything but, with one Republican senator explicitly contributing to it. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy yelled at the only Muslim and Arab-American witness present — saying she supports Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. “You should hide your head in a bag,” the US elected official said menacingly toward Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute and co-chair of the Hate Crimes Task Force for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “You asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country,” Berry responded when Kennedy first suggested she supports Hamas.”
New Policies Suppress Pro-Palestinian Speech (Radhika Sainath//Insider Higher Ed 9/16/24)
“In July, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Maryland applied to hold a vigil on Oct. 7. The university granted the application but, after receiving numerous complaints, made a threat assessment, found “no immediate or active threat,” then still canceled the event—and, in an extraordinary and unlawful move, banned all expressive events on campus that are not university-sponsored on that date. This may be the most egregious example of universities trying to appease pro-Israel forces by preventing protests against Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, but as students return to campus, colleges are rewriting policies that will have dire consequences on university life for years to come…Indeed, my office, Palestine Legal, is receiving a surge of reports of students being censored and punished as they return to school, often under the pretext that support for Palestinian rights (or wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, or scarves) violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by creating a hostile environment for Jews, even though Jewish students are at the center of many of the protests and wear Palestinian scarves. Often, no reason is given.” See also False Profits: Why I Am Not Teaching in the Classroom This Fall (Steven W. Thrasher on American Campus Crackdowns on Free Assembly//LitHub 9/16/24); Man Suffers Severe Burns After Self-immolation Protest Outside Israeli Consulate in Boston (Haaretz 9/17/24); A rabbi protested the war in Gaza. Her activism came at a high price. (WaPo 9/13/24); UC police seek approval for more pepper balls, sponge rounds, launchers, drones (LA Times 9/19/24)
PERSPECTIVES//LONG READS
One Issue on Which Israeli Extremists Are Mainstream (Hagai El-Ad//NYT 9/16/24)
“In the one-state reality that is Israel-Palestine, half of the population is Jewish, and half is Palestinian. While Jewish Israelis retain all their rights regardless of where they live, Israel maintains a hierarchy of subjecthoods for Palestinians, and this hierarchy is based precisely according to where they live. Palestinian citizens of Israel are second-class by law. In occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinians are “permanent residents.” In the rest of the occupied territories, they are stateless subjects. Nowhere in the entire area under Israel’s control, between the river and the sea, will one find equality between Jews and Palestinians. This kind of regime has a name: apartheid…Israeli liberals and Western diplomats tend to believe there are two paths forward: a binational, single state, or the two-state solution. But there is a third path: ethnic cleansing, by the expulsion of Palestinians. This is the path that Israel appears to be choosing. Will the United States and Israel’s other allies finally do something about it?”
The Angst and Sorrow of Jewish Currents (New Yorker 9/9/24)
“A little magazine wants to criticize Israel while holding on to Jewishness…Sarah Aziza, a Palestinian American writer who has contributed to Currents, told me, “Sometimes I feel like it’s almost a luxury to be a Palestinian in this moment, as opposed to being Jewish, because it’s easy to be clear.” At the same time, she continued, “breaking up with half your family is nothing compared to losing half of it.” Two hundred members of her extended family, she said, had been killed in Gaza.”
B’Tselem at the UNSC: For the Israeli government, the occupation and the settlements matter more than human life (B’Tselem 9/5/24)
“On Sunday, we woke up to the news that six Israeli hostages were executed by Hamas, just before soldiers reached them in a tunnel in Gaza. Another six, added to tens of thousands of people in this land who should not have died over the past year. During this week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets. They feel angry, desperate and betrayed by their government. They have understood, perhaps for the first time, that the Israeli government does not want to return the hostages in a deal, but to continue the war indefinitely. They see that the occupation and the settlements matter more than human life – and not only of Palestinians, said B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak, who addressed the UN Security Council last night (Wednesday)…Novak added “Since the criminal Hamas-led attack on October 7th, I and every Israeli I know have been living in deep anxiety. The government is cynically exploiting our collective trauma to violently advance its project of cementing Israeli control over the entire land. To do that, it is waging war on the entire Palestinian people, including committing war crimes almost daily”. Watch B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak’s address to the UNSC.”
Living the Nakba (Tareq Baconi//NYRB 9/12/24)
“Palestinians have long argued that the Nakba is not a finite event but an ongoing process of violent dispossession. Since Zionists started colonizing Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century, our social fabric as Palestinians has been torn apart, our land occupied, our archives and communal knowledge erased, our loved ones murdered, exiled, or incarcerated, and our people dispersed from their homeland. This violence is a kind of patrimony: it wedges itself into family life and forces silence within the home. Raja Shehadeh grew up knowing long absences but never the details of his father’s service to the cause; he saw only relentless work, a stern demeanor, moments of rage, and an unyielding cynicism that he could not quite place. Nor could he truly grapple with his mother’s perennial dissatisfaction. Their entire world was a product of the Nakba, and its violence persisted, unresolved, at the margins of their intimate lives. “For a long time I thought it was father’s politics that distanced me from him,” Shehadeh reflects in his latest memoir, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I. “Now I am aware that a more important reason was the politics within the family.” Is it ever possible to separate the two? As we grow up we start seeing behind our parents’ façade of normalcy. When we discover the pain they live with, we want to assuage it and sometimes to avenge it—to fight for healing. It was an inherited “public spirit” and “sense of responsibility,” Shehadeh writes, that animated his work at al-Haq: “I had the illusion,” he tells his absent father in Going Home, “that it would be possible to achieve personal justice for you through the collective struggle.” How does a little boy watching his father shave one morning come to terms with such a burden? Shehadeh is far from the only Palestinian to have grown up with this dilemma. We inherit the tragedy of losing a just fight. We want to reverse that loss, to give our parents back what is theirs and reclaim what is ours. This is how we learn to love.”
An ‘Unlawful Presence’ (David Shulman//NYRB 9/19/24)
“I think that information about the occupation and its terrors is largely available in Israel. Most of the daily crimes against Palestinians on the West Bank take place only a few miles from the homes of Israeli citizens within the pre-1967 borders of the state. Particularly vicious events are sometimes reported, in relatively subdued and peripheral ways, in Haaretz, the only respectable newspaper in the country, and also, rarely, on the evening news that everyone watches. Still, even peace-oriented, left-wing Israelis often express shock when I tell them of witnessing violent attacks by settlers and soldiers on Palestinian shepherds and peasant farmers. It is as if that kind of knowledge were pushed away from conscious awareness, or as if the knowledge itself exists somewhere in the mind but knowledge of that knowledge does not…In short, much of the population of Israel has lived through the last five decades in varying modes and intensities of denial.”