Madam Vice President:

      For a thoughtful and balanced view on Israel and Palestine, I can recommend no one better than Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. He admires Joe Biden, but Prime Minister Netanyahu has run circles around him.

       You do President Biden no favors by failing to distance yourself from him on this burning issue for American Muslims, because that failure will cost you the election.

       In his October 5 column titled, “Biden Sought Peace But Facilitated War”, Kristof  writes:

“Instead of midwifing the landmark Middle East peace that he hoped for, Biden became the arms supplier for the leveling of Gaza….Biden kept the arms flowing (with the exception of at least one shipment of 2,000 pound bombs) and never imposed serious restrictions on their use. This impunity emboldened Netanyahu to ignore Biden…”

       Kristof has no illusions about Hamas, but he understands well how the extremists on both sides feed each other, and how our military sponsorship of Israel fuels the vicious cycle. 

       Madam Vice President, it is pathetic that the Biden administration has yet to acknowledge what anyone paying attention  can see is true: Israel has systematically impeded the flow of U.S. humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. And in other respects, it has shown contempt for the laws of war.

     Madam Vice President, as one with close ties to the Jewish community, do you not agree that Israel’s maintenance of its unjust order betrays the prophetic tradition? Do you have any doubt that this cannot serve Israel well? 

     No true friend of Israel would oblige such a blood-thirsty Israeli government.

     Madam Vice President, as far as Muslims in swing states are concerned, you do not have one more day to lose to distance yourself from our failed policy. You must declare that Israel has routinely violated both U.S. and International law, and we do not need to wait until after the election to freeze offensive military aid to Israel.

Sincerely,

Todd Buchanan

Two former U.S. officials on how Harris can repair Washington’s image in the Middle East.

By Hala Rharrit, a former U.S. diplomat, who served for 18 years with the U.S. State Department, before resigning in April 2024 in opposition to the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, and Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center DC.

Foreign Policy magazine, AUGUST 9, 2024, 9:29 AM View Comments (9)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a war with Iran, as he clearly laid out in his address to the U.S. Congress last month. He returned to Israel emboldened to carry out that goal, seemingly certain of U.S. support—ordering the killing of a top Hamas official on Iranian soil just seven days later.

Following Israel’s July 31 assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken quickly asserted that Washington was “not aware of or involved in” the military operation. Yet given the high level of coordination, particularly intelligence sharing, between the United States and Israel, speculation is rife that the U.S. government was involved or at least condoned the action—as Iranian officials have suggested.

This perception is particularly widespread in the Middle East, which is still reeling from the images of U.S. legislators applauding Netanyahu, a man accused of war crimes in Gaza. Merely the perception of U.S. involvement in the assassination has an escalatory effect. This is not in the interests of the United States and threatens the American people.

The assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran is not only an attempt to draw Iran and the United States into a war; it is also a sure-fire way to destroy cease-fire negotiations. Haniyeh, as the head of Hamas’s political wing based in Qatar, was one of the leading figures reportedly attempting to get concessions from Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader on the ground in Gaza.

Netanyahu rejects a two-state solution and instead seeks a perpetually inflamed Middle East enabling him to finish the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and annexation of the West Bank—and the U.S. government is letting the flames spread.

The Biden administration is well aware of the dangers Netanyahu poses. Yet instead of taking a firm line, using diplomatic leverage, such as military assistance, to rein these continuous escalations in, it continues to behave in a fearful and cowardly way—allowing an extremist foreign leader to determine whether the United States gets pulled into yet another disastrous war.

Washington is walking into this conflagration with its eyes wide open. As an 18-year veteran of the foreign service and a newcomer to the civil service, we fear that the damage to U.S. national security and diplomacy could be far worse than anything we’ve seen in recent history, including the global war on terrorism and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Experts inside the State Department have been warning the administration for months that unconditional support for Israel was both a morally bankrupt decision and one that directly contradicted U.S. interests in the region. Yet we and our colleagues were sidelined and silenced, and now the United States is on the brink of being drawn into a wider war that does not serve the interests of American people.

SINCE ISRAEL LAUNCHED ITS FULL-SCALE ASSAULT following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, commentators have asked whether senior U.S. officials have known what is happening in Gaza. The question implies that if they were watching the horrors that flooded social media, they would have to insist that Israel change its behavior or else withdraw U.S. support. Yet, as State Department spokesperson for the Middle East and North Africa region, Hala sent these images and videos to their inboxes every day: The State Department cannot claim it was unaware of what Israel, with U.S. arms, was doing to the civilian population of Gaza.

In April, in opposition to the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, Hala resigned from her latest assignment at the U.S. Consulate in Dubai. In March, Annelle resigned from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in protest of the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israeli military operations in Gaza.

Based on our experiences, the State Department is willfully ignoring the fundamental shifts occurring in the region as a result of unconditional U.S. support for Israel. Far too many people in the U.S. government are enabling a policy they recognize is wrong and illegal. This erroneous and dangerous decision-making is coming from the top and sending the message to all those below to fall in line or risk career consequences.

Biden, Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk seem to think the United States can pursue this policy and face few long-term consequences, when in fact irreversible damage has been done and we are now on the brink of an outbreak of violence across the region. This is what Netanyahu seeks, with the support of more American boots on the ground in the Middle East.

By continuing to fund, arm, and defend Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza and other gross human rights violations, such as the obstruction of food, clean water, and medicine into Gaza, the Biden administration has destroyed U.S. credibility and gravely increased the national security threat to the United States. U.S. complicity is putting a target on the backs of U.S. diplomats and service members for potential retaliation, while it increasingly destabilizes the Middle East and North Africa.

Indeed, Arab publics have been protesting for months. July 26 marked the 42nd consecutive week of Moroccans protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza. More than 4,000 miles away, protesters again took to the streets in Muscat, Oman, in support of Palestinians. Jordan has even more intense scenes of mass protests. This is alarming: Morocco and Jordan both have normalized relations with Israel, and until last October, public protest in Oman was exceedingly rare.

In October, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was forced to evacuate some personnel due to attacks related to the Gaza conflict. In January, three U.S. service members were killed at Tower 22 in Jordan near the Syrian border in response to U.S. support of Israel. Now, after seven months of relative calm, Iran-backed militias are again targeting U.S. troops. On July 25 and 26, militias launched rockets at U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria. On Aug. 5, rockets injured U.S. service members at a military base in Iraq.

U.S. intelligence officials have highlighted such threats for months. FBI Director Christopher Wray expressed concerns in October about possible threats to the United States, saying that groups such as al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and Hezbollah were calling for attacks. In March, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines described a “generational impact on terrorism.” As of July, terrorist groups are using Gaza as a recruitment tool, according to the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Against this backdrop, State Department officials found it increasingly impossible to try to advance other aspects of U.S. policy, such as advocating for human rights. When meeting with members of civil society from North Africa, for example, department representatives would ask about the ways their governments were cracking down on fundamental freedoms. But these individuals would instead want to talk about Gaza and what the United States was enabling there.

State officials could only offer half-hearted assurances that the U.S. government was committed to cease-fire negotiations, a fiction belied by Biden’s dogged refusal to impose consequences on Israel, despite Netanyahu repeatedly rejecting cease-fire proposals. Similarly, when the State Department would ask representatives of Arab governments about political prisoners or restrictions on journalists, they would immediately respond with some version of, “How can you criticize us? Look at what you are doing in Gaza!” The Biden administration claimed that human rights would be central to its foreign policy; instead, it has destroyed U.S. diplomats’ ability to advocate for human rights.

The State Department has acknowledged this privately. A recently leaked internal document demonstrates that senior leaders at the department are aware that U.S. policy is irrevocably damaging U.S. credibility in the Middle East. Yet even though senior State Department officials received daily reports on Gaza and conceded the damage that unconditional U.S. support for Israel was doing to the United States’ standing in the region, their response was not to push back on the policy but rather enable it.

For example, in the role of spokesperson, Hala was repeatedly pressured to go out on Arab media and promote the policy, no matter the negative ramifications for the United States. She refused, not only because she felt it was morally wrong and a violation of U.S. and international law but also because it was causing intense backlash against the United States. As the conflict worsened, Hala observed an unprecedented rise in anti-American sentiment throughout the region, something she reported back to Washington with grave alarm. Even so-called liberal Arabs were disgusted by U.S. double standards. Yet the same abysmal talking points continued to be generated, and key policymakers refused to change tack.

Now, in the aftermath of Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh on Iranian soil and the resulting sabotage of Gaza cease-fire negotiations, everything could get much worse for the region and the United States. A wider war with Hezbollah, the Houthis, and a potential direct confrontation with Iran would be catastrophic, yet it would help Netanyahu’s political survival.

WASHINGTON CAN STILL CHOOSE ANOTHER PATH FORWARD—one that rejects continuous violence, indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians, and a cycle of revenge.

To prevent further escalation and make the prospect for diplomacy and peace a reality, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris needs to seek an end to the carnage and send a clear signal that the United States will not give unconditional support to an Israeli war against Hezbollah and Iran. She must insist on diplomacy and in her current role as vice president pressure the administration to avoid regional war. There may not be anything left of Gaza to save in six months’ time, and that is what Netanyahu is betting on.

Harris can correct course by insisting on the application of U.S. laws consistently and fairly when it comes to arms transfers. Applying U.S. laws and regulations (which the administration is currently in violation of) would prompt a conditioning of U.S. military aid to Israel in line with the Leahy laws, the Arms Export Control Act, and the Foreign Assistance Act. Based on its repeated, systematic, documented gross human rights violations and obstruction of U.S. humanitarian assistance, Israel is no longer eligible to receive U.S. security assistance.

Harris can make clear that she would use U.S. leverage to pressure Netanyahu to accept the cease-fire agreement. This would also enable Qatar and Egypt to pressure Hamas to make concessions and accept the deal, which it had previously accepted. Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran have all stated previously that they would not attack if Israel ended the violence and allowed aid into Gaza.

By making her stance clear now and taking concrete actions to insist on the application of U.S. laws, Harris would demonstrate her commitment to upholding the view of a majority of Americans who oppose Biden’s unconditional support for Israel and oppose sending U.S. troops to defend Israel from the consequences of its aggression. Her stance could also force Netanyahu to avoid further provocations.

Such a move would undermine extremists on all sides. Unfortunately, this cannot wait until November. If she does not act now, she risks U.S. national security and the outbreak of a catastrophic war in the Middle East that the United States would inevitably get dragged into.

By taking action now, in line with U.S. laws, Harris would strengthen the Democratic Party’s base and potentially bring back uncommitted and youth voters—without whom she could very well lose the election.

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Hala Rharrit served as a diplomat for 18 years with the U.S. State Department, before resigning in April 2024 in opposition to the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. She is an expert in Middle East and North African affairs and U.S. relations with the region.Annelle Sheline is a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center DC. She previously served as a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State. Twitter: @AnnelleSheline

   Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. —Isaiah, 1:17

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” has far exceeded Israel’s right to defend itself. It cannot destroy Hamas, and will swell its ranks unless Israel can come to see the folly of the unjust order it maintains.

Since Hamas foresaw a disproportionate response by Israel, and even promised more attacks like October 7, what sense did it make to oblige Hamas?

If we valued Palestinian lives equally with Israeli lives, these considerations would have informed our policy; we would have leveraged our military aid to Israel from the start.

But in Washington, Palestinian blood is cheap. The Israel lobby has made sure of that.

As of March 1, 2024, over 30,228 Gazans had been killed since October 7, 2023, and over 71,377 wounded. Health experts warned that many thousands could perish from starvation and disease even if a cease-fire happened with no further delay.

With conditions still deteriorating, Prime Minister Netanyahu remains determined to “finish the job”. He assumes the Israel lobby can keep America in line. No temporary cease-fire can send the message Israel needs to hear: the slaughter must end now. 

Airdrops of aid will not suffice. Nor will a pier that will take weeks to complete to bring aid to starving people still under bombardment. President Biden must insist now on a permanent cease-fire to allow for the level of humanitarian assistance needed, and for a hostage-prisoner exchange. He should leverage military aid to make it happen and to sustain it.

Israelis will only know security when Palestinians know the same. Israel must retreat to the 1967 “Green Line”, by which it will still retain 78% of historic Palestine. It must begin to abandon all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and end its  war and blockade of Gaza. 

Surely, the unjust order which Israel has imposed on the Palestinians–who comprised the great majority of the original population of Palestine– would offend the prophets of old.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire–the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the end of the blockade, and an exchange of hostages for prisoners–are “ludicrous”. 

But what is really ludicrous is Israel’s assumption that it can “destroy” Hamas. 

Implausibly, Israel claimed last month that it had taken out two-thirds of Hamas’s  fighting regiments. Maybe a third, American sources say. 

On February 8, New York Times reporters Julian Barnes and Edward Wong wrote that American officials emphasize that in “war after war” the United States has learned that “counting the number of enemies killed in an insurgency or counter-terrorism operation is a fool’s game. Operations that kill militants often radicalize others, swelling the ranks of enemy organizations.”

They added: “And U.S. officials say death counts of fighters do not give any indication of whether a government has addressed the core issues driving the war.”

Would that such clear-headedness prevailed in Congress and the White House.  Instead, the administration apparently intends to veto another U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire which Algeria plans to introduce on February 20.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the resolution “may run counter” to a hostage deal, which would “bring an immediate and sustained period of calm to Gaza for at least six weeks.” Unfortunately, Netanyahu, in pursuit of  “total victory”, is not interested.

That the administration is planning to take a very unpopular position again demonstrates two things. First, our interests and Israel’s–especially as conceived by the extremists in Tel Aviv– do not align. Second, the Israel lobby is still dictating U.S. policy.

It is important to note that the bulk of Israel’s supporters in the United States are not Jews, but conservative evangelical Christians.  And among American Jews are many champions of the Palestinian cause. 

This months- old slaughter of Gazans is long, long past any defensive operation, especially given that Israel is an occupier. When I see ads asking if I believe Israel has a right to defend itself, I am sorely tempted to answer no.  

By now it is pretty clear that Israel intends to empty Gaza of Palestinians, paving the way for Jewish settlers. That would leave the Palestinians of the West Bank as the sole remaining obstacle to completing the century-old project to repopulate Palestine. 

I know I sound like a broken record, but power does not restrain itself; as sure as you were born, preponderant power will over-extend. It is Israel’s power advantage that best explains its steady takeover of Palestinian land. Paradoxically, its military might has not made Israel more secure, but less. The international political system, which doesn’t give a hoot about “moral clarity”, does not long tolerate unbalanced power. Thus, just as Russia is balancing against Western power, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels, and Iran are all balancing against Israel. 

The restoration of balance often occurs at tremendous costs in blood and treasure. That is why excessive power is more curse than blessing. No country can be trusted with it.

Today is February 19, Day 136 of Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” on the Palestinians. Thus far, over 29,100 Gazans have been killed, and over 69,000 wounded. It would be very generous to Israel to assume 9,000 of those killed were Hamas fighters. That would leave 20,000 innocents killed as collateral damage.

A spokesperson for the Biden administration recently said that one innocent death in Gaza is one too many. How about 20,000?

According to Cindy McCain, head of the U.N. World Food Programme, children in Gaza are now starving to death.  America’s complicity in this crime must end. The President and Congress must freeze military aid to Israel, and insist on a permanent ceasefire and the dismantling of the unjust order Israel has imposed on the Palestinians. 

If Israel really wants Hamas to go away, it must see to justice.

      

On a recent road trip, my brother read aloud a moving account of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, from the book, “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation”, by David Goldfield. 

In reference to a northern senator who had supported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forbade any assistance to an escaped slave and required law enforcement officers to cooperate in the return of any escapee, Stowe wrote: “He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a defenseless child.” 

Goldfield adds: “He had not realized that black people held the same sensibilities as whites. That they were people just like himself.”

In the final pages of the novel, this passage appears like a bright shooting star:

“And you, mothers of America,–you, who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all mankind,–by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul’s eternal good;–I beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one legal right to protect, guide, or educate the child of her bosom!” 

Stowe repeatedly invoked the Gospel to illuminate the collective crime that slavery was, and especially the complicity of Northerners. The Fugitive Slave Act had just compounded that complicity.

I noted in a previous post that I grew up believing Israel could do no wrong. The only thing I ever learned to play on the piano was the beginning of the theme song to the movie Exodus: “This land is mine, God gave this land to me.”  

Listening to that song and watching excerpts of the 1960 blockbuster, you might think anyone who would fight against Paul Newman and his courageous comrades must indeed be the enemy of God. 

In hindsight, a necessary corollary of that mindset is that Palestinians are lesser beings than Israelis. Jews comprised a small minority of the population of Palestine before Jewish immigration began in earnest early in the 20th century. For a different but very informed perspective on the founding and growth of Israel, at the expense of the majority population, I recommend Rashid Khalidi’s book, The Hundred Year’s War on Palestine. 

The rights and aspirations of Palestinians are every bit as valid as those of Israelis, and the unjust order Israel maintains, in which Americans remain complicit, would offend the prophets of old.

Pity the Palestinian mother who has the same affections toward her children as any other mother, but is essentially powerless to protect them under Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” campaign. Pity the Palestinian child who must endure the amputation of a limb without anesthesia.

As of February 28, day number 145 of that mighty vengeance, the total of confirmed Gazans killed since October 7 is 29,954. The total wounded to date is 70,325. Recently, the numbers have been considerably less than during the worst of the bombardment, but the daily average killed as of February is 207. Seventy percent are women and children. Starvation and disease could quickly send the daily average back up.

What makes these numbers and the destruction of Gaza especially horrific is that anyone who ponders the official purpose of the war–to destroy Hamas–should realize it is impossible. 

This slaughter of mostly innocent Palestinians will only enrage more of the population. Is that not elementary? 

Hamas leaders, aware they were not very popular in Gaza, foresaw such a disproportionate response. So why are we helping Israel oblige them?

The only way Israel can minimize the threat Hamas poses is to undermine it politically, by halting the slaughter of Gazans, commencing the re-settlement back to Israel proper of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and getting dead serious about a bona-fide Palestinian state. 

The current Israeli government is probably not capable of this, but we need to pull the plug on this war just the same, by freezing military assistance to Israel. 

That would probably be the quickest way to defuse things with Iran and its proxies as well.