Tag: news

Harris Needs a New Way Forward on Israel and Palestine

American politicians like to repeat that America’s and Israel’s interests align. But neither our interests nor Israel’s are served by arming Israel to the teeth, believing  that will make Israel more secure. Instead, it has allowed Israeli governments to believe they can postpone justice for the Palestinians indefinitely. Preponderant power does not check itself.

Arming Israel to the teeth has allowed Prime Minister Netanyahu to believe he can postpone his own day of reckoning with the people of Israel by provoking a war with Hezbollah. An end to his war against the Palestinians would cool things with Hezbollah, but that is not what he and his fellow nutcases in Tel Aviv want.

America needs a president who has had enough of Israel calling the shots in Washington. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has effectively silenced too many politicians, including my Congressman Joe Neguse and my Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper.

The failure of the Democratic Party to ask a Palestinian to address the national convention delegates and its viewers last month speaks volumes. I fully intend to vote for Kamala Harris, but I am ashamed of how our Democratic president and lawmakers have, on the whole, treated Palestinians as second class to Israelis.

Before October 7, I regarded Congressman Neguse as presidential material. But his unwillingness to publicly oppose our sponsorship of Israel’s war against the Palestinians, in Gaza especially but increasingly in the West Bank as well, leaves me inclined to support a Democratic challenger in 2026.

Congressman Neguse’s colleague, Jason Crow, (D-Colo.) has demonstrated a little more nerve on this issue. Crow was the author of a May 3 letter to the Biden administration arguing that indeed Israel was in violation of the Foreign Assistance act and National Security Memorandum 20, which President Biden had issued on February 8. (Neguse was among eighty-six House members to sign that letter, but I never saw mention of it on his website and he did not seem eager for his constituents to know.) The administration did delay one arms shipment, then exonerated Israel with some cynical acrobatics.

In that maneuver, as well as the decision to not provide for a Palestinian speaker at the Chicago convention, as well as in every vote to supply offensive weaponry to Israel, the hand of AIPAC has been evident.

To repeat, the staunch support which Democrats and Republicans alike have provided Israel has not made Israel more secure.The billions America spends on Israel’s “security” would be much better spent helping to relocate West Bank settlers back to Israel proper. If all of those Jewish settlements were dismantled, Israel would still retain 78 percent of historical Palestine.

Make no mistake, Israeli leaders would like to rid Gaza of Palestinians, to make way for Jewish settlements. Those who are offended by charges of genocide ought to realize that what we have witnessed in the last year is at least an attempt at ethnic cleansing.

Vice President Kamala Harris needs to make a very tough decision, given the influence of the Israel lobby. She needs to call for a freeze on offensive weapons shipments to Israel. That is the only way the Israeli government will get the message that America is finally wise to its game.

I have no illusions about Hamas. But Hamas is the logical result of the many years of neither Israel nor the United States taking the plight of the Palestinians seriously. The only way Hamas or its kind will disappear is if Democrats muster the nerve to make any and all support for Israel conditional on a political solution. In the meantime, obliging Hamas leaders by continuing the war is utter foolishness, which can only produce more Palestinians who hate Israel.

Kamala Harris needs to articulate this new way forward today. Otherwise, she may very well lose critical Muslim, Black, and youth voters in this election.

Re: “Screams Before Silence”. An Open Letter to Sheryl Sandberg and Anat Stalinsky

Dear Ms. Sandberg and Ms. Stalinsky,

I am an American Muslim convert, and I regard Hamas to be a disgrace to Islam. At the same time, it is no mystery why Hamas came to be, given the unjust order Israel has imposed on the Palestinians over several decades by virtue of its military preponderance. Such power does not balance or restrain itself; hence, Hamas.

I condemn all terrorist acts committed on October 7 by members of Hamas and other Palestinian groups, as well as Israel’s disproportionate military response over the seven months since. As you know, the majority of the 35,000 victims of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s  “mighty vengeance” have been women and children.

I watched your documentary, “Screams Before Silence” (https://www.screamsbeforesilence.com/) three times through, and while the testimonies are riveting and I have to presume much if not most of the content is credible (despite what some informed critics have alleged), I do find parts of the film problematic as I specify below.* As to whether sexual violence rose to the level of “systematic”, as you hope the viewer will conclude, I am not competent to judge. 

It is unlikely that even a consensus by qualified human rights organizations will dispel the controversy surrounding the allegations. However, we must wait to see how close those organizations come in their final reports to such a consensus.

But just as it is relevant to pose the question whether sexual violence on October 7 was systematic, it certainly appears that a disregard for civilians and aid workers in Gaza by the Israeli government has been systematic. One might say the same of Hamas, but Israel has been dropping the bombs and imposing the siege. 

I believe that Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas, which will prove to be elusive and counterproductive, is a cover for what amounts to ethnic cleansing. The government would like nothing more than to rid Gaza of Palestinians to make way for Israeli settlements. If hostages are still enduring sexual violence, ending that is not a priority of the government, despite its exploiting the allegations of October 7.

In your May 6, 2024 interview by Shany Littman of Haaretz, Ms. Stalinsky, Littman asked if you are concerned that the film could be perceived as an attempt to justify the “continued Israeli attacks on Gaza”. You responded that you could not imagine how anyone could think that was your motivation.

You later said you thought the Israeli government is “sentencing us to doom”.

 In light of these remarks, I urge you to undertake a documentary addressing the violence perpetrated against Gazans and West Bank Palestinians in the aftermath of October 7. For all the reasons you both state for producing “Screams Before Silence”, the stories of victims of this mighty vengeance must be told.

Just as you were troubled by what you perceived to be denialism of sexual violence by people outside of Israel, I am troubled by what seems to be denialism by many Israelis with respect to the war on Gaza especially. I was alarmed to hear recently that most Israelis oppose humanitarian aid to Gazans. 

At the conclusion of your film, you, Ms. Sandberg, tell Ms. Stalinsky: “Anyone who watches this film can bear witness….And we can take that pain, and take that trauma and turn it into hope, turn it into commitment, turn it into conviction that we are not going to let this happen again.”

Indeed. And in the same vein we all must face what has been going on in Gaza everyday since October 7 in retribution for the horrors suffered by Israelis on that day. Israelis especially should know how their government’s war on Gaza has impacted innocent women, children, and men alike. No two people are better qualified for that task than you.

Sincerely,

Todd Buchanan

* We should be suspect of any taped confessions, because of what is not seen. What was the motivation for the alleged Hamas prisoners to “confess” to acts of sexual violence? The viewer cannot know. And at least one of the prisoners appears to have facial indications of physical abuse, i.e., a possible “black eye”.

      In a couple of the interviews, you, Ms.Sandberg, seem to be “leading the witness” with your question about whether sexual violence on October 7 appeared to be systematic. It is clear that is the answer you want.

On this point, human behavior in highly-charged circumstances, including mass violence, cannot be explained simply in terms of the presumed intentions of the actors. We know that sexual violence is endemic in warfare. In other words, there may indeed have been patterns of sexual violence without it having been intentional by the Hamas leadership. 

      Some critics of the documentary have questioned the reliability of some of the witnesses, if not most of them, and assert that their accounts of witnessing sexual violence or its aftermath have changed over time. Critics assert that some of the alleged witnesses of sexual violence did not include such accounts in their initial public statements, though I would not infer from that, if true, that their accounts were invented afterward.