Foreign Affairs: Trump’s Plan for Palestine Looks a Lot Like Apartheid

The apartheid government ultimately created only four ostensibly independent Bantustans (Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei, and Transkei) and six supposedly self-governing territories. Foreign governments for the most part dismissed the puppet states for what they were; South Africa was the only country in the world to officially recognize the Bantustans, and the major decisions regarding their affairs were made exclusively in Pretoria. [...]

During these years, I learned, to my dismay, that no country in the world (with the exception of South Africa) contributed more to the economy of the Bantustans than Israel. Israelis built factories, neighborhoods, a hospital, and even a soccer stadium and an alligator farm in these South African puppet states. Israel went so far as to allow one of them, Bophuthatswana, to maintain a diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv, and its leader, Lucas Mangope--shunned by the entire world for advancing and legitimizing apartheid by cooperating with the South African regime--was a frequent guest in Israel. [...]

The details of the proposal, and the rhetoric used by both Trump and Netanyahu, made it clear that this was not a deal but rather the implementation of Netanyahu's long-standing plan to further entrench Israel's control of the West Bank by giving its residents disconnected enclaves of territory without granting them real freedom or basic political rights. That was precisely the goal of the old South African government's Bantustan policy, too.

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The Atlantic: The End of Netanyahu’s Unchecked Reign

Then, something odd happened: Avigdor Lieberman, who had been Netanyahu’s right-hand man in the 1990s and later served under him as foreign minister and then defense minister, refused to join the right-wing coalition with his small party unless a bill was passed aimed at military conscription of ultra-Orthodox men. This was an act of political theater—the bill would not have changed very much—but to everyone’s surprise, Lieberman held out until Netanyahu’s mandate to form a government expired. Legally, the president of Israel would then have had to task another member of Knesset with forming a government, essentially barring Netanyahu from the role. To prevent this, Netanyahu pushed the Knesset to dissolve itself and call for a second national election in less than six months.[...]

In the elections to the 11th Knesset in 1984, the Alignment (based around Labor) received 44 seats to the Likud’s 41. Neither bloc had a majority. The country was deadlocked, with no coalition in sight. The president at the time, Chaim Herzog, intervened, twisting arms and cajoling both parties to form a joint government. The two parties even agreed to a rotation in the prime minister’s post: Shimon Peres of Labor was prime minister for the first two years, and Yitzhak Shamir of the Likud led the country for another two (and then beyond). The government could agree on nothing in terms of negotiations with Israel’s Arab neighbors, producing a “national paralysis government” in foreign affairs, but it was one of Israel’s most successful governments in terms of domestic policy. Inflation, which hit an astounding 445 percent in 1984, was brought down to 16.4 percent by 1988. Israel also withdrew from most of Lebanon’s territory, downscaling a bloody intervention. [...]

Most Israeli policy would not change with a different prime minister. The basic attitudes of Lieberman, Likud, and Blue and White on Iran, on Hezbollah, on Hamas, on world relations, and even on the prospects of achieving peace with the Palestinians, are all more or less in consensus. A Gantz government would at least hope for a different outcome with the Palestinians and would take a slightly different approach to managing the protracted interim—a small but meaningful difference. But in terms of actionable policy, continuity would be the rule. [...]

In the days leading up to the elections, Amos Harel and Chaim Levinson of Haaretz reported that Netanyahu was actually prepared to launch a major escalation in the Gaza Strip, necessitating the postponement of the election, all without properly consulting the security chiefs. Only after their adamant objections and the intervention of the attorney general, who demanded a proper process for such a decision, was the plan set aside. The cautious Netanyahu of old, who held national security above any other considerations, is simply gone.  

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Politico: How Trump’s ‘weaponized’ use of foreign aid is backfiring

President Donald Trump has so closely linked U.S. humanitarian assistance to his attempt to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro — even placing goods along the country’s border as an incentive for Venezuelans to revolt — that some groups are citing security concerns and asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid sent to Venezuela, three aid officials told POLITICO. [...]

The situation reflects broader fears that Trump’s unusually politicized approach to handing out U.S. aid worldwide is backfiring, tarnishing America’s brand and possibly risking the lives of people from Latin America to the Palestinian territories. [...]

“This whole idea that in Venezuela aid was going to be part of a political change process — it’s rare to see it that overt,” said Joel Charny of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has not yet received U.S. funding for work inside Venezuela. “It’s just not a good way to do aid. If you’re really concerned about the welfare of the people of Venezuela you find the ways that are available to get the maximum amount of assistance to those people.”

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Reuters: Kushner's economic plan for Mideast peace faces broad Arab rejection

The lack of a political solution, which Washington has said would be unveiled later, prompted rejection not only from Palestinians but also in Arab countries with which Israel would seek normal relations.

From Sudan to Kuwait, commentators and ordinary citizens denounced Kushner’s proposals in strikingly similar terms: “colossal waste of time,” “non-starter,” “dead on arrival.”

Egyptian liberal and leftist parties slammed the workshop as an attempt to “consecrate and legitimize” occupation of Arab land and said in a joint statement that any Arab participation would be “beyond the limits of normalization” with Israel. [...]

Thousands of people marched through the Moroccan capital Rabat on Sunday to express their solidarity with the Palestinians and their opposition to the Kushner plan. [...]

Arab analysts believe Kushner’s economic plan is an attempt to buy off opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land with a multi-billion dollar bribe to pay off the neighboring hosts of millions of Palestinian refugees to integrate them.

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Al Jazeera: Kushner's diplomatic tour ends quietly in Belgium

Mike Stephens, a researcher at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera: "The Palestinians are effectively broke, but that's probably one of the reasons why they won't negotiate. They won't negotiate under this sort of duress. They see it as being strong-armed into accepting an agreement that's not in their interests."

Rejection by the Palestinians makes it very difficult for King Abdullah II of Jordan and, to a lesser extent, other Arab leaders, to support Kushner's plans. [...]

Kotef added that the deal, which looks unlikely to grant Palestinians any of their key demands, could also win support among the Israeli centre and some of the left. [...]

"It's not like the Arab states are that invested in the Palestinian cause now," he said. On the other hand, Stephens pointed out that the global Muslim community will not thank any leader who legitimises Israel's control of Jerusalem.

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Associated Press: During Ramadan, late-night gyms boom in the Gaza Strip

The Ramadan routine, with high-calorie fast-breaking “iftar” buffets, sugary staples and hours of sedentary screen time, is a headache for fitness trainers. A growing group of middle-class men in Gaza are preoccupied with the prospect of gaining weight.

A main culprit is the Ramadan dessert known as “qatayef” — fried pancakes stuffed with sweet cheese or nuts, soaked in homemade sugar syrup. A sliver of cheese qatayef contains some 350 calories. Fitness trainers acknowledge that it’s hard to resist after a day of deprivation. [...]

Some 120 gyms, two-thirds of which are professionally equipped, are scattered throughout the territory, according to Tareq Abu el-Jedyan of the Palestinian Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation. It’s a significant spike from Gaza’s pre-2000 gym count: a mere 10. [...]

The gym, which primarily caters to workers in banks, telecom companies and aid agencies who have the cash to spend, serves as a rare respite from the misery of life in the enclave, where unemployment surpasses 50%, tap water is undrinkable and electricity cuts are routine. The frequent cycles of bloody clashes with Israel have compounded daily struggles.

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Haaretz: Netanyahu May Have Won, but Israel's Political Landscape Has Fundamentally Changed

So now we are back to two big parties, just without Labor. With its 35 seats, Kahol Lavan has received more votes than any other centrist party in Israeli history. Even Kadima, the only centrist party to ever hold power, never won more than 29. [...]

Why did Likud succeed in coming back from the double whammy of direct elections and the Kadima “big bang” while Labor has been all but obliterated? There are several factors. In Sharon, and now Netanyahu, Likud had strong, persuasive and experienced leaders who were also brilliant campaigners. Of the seven men and one woman who led Labor in the corresponding period, most lacked these skills. There were two who rivaled Sharon and Netanyahu’s stature — Peres and Barak — but they also failed to overcome the failure of Labor’s key policy: A historic compromise with the Palestinians, which had only resulted in more bloodshed during a second intifada and clashes with Gaza. [...]

The only issue really setting Kahol Lavan apart from the right wing is its support for the legal system, in the face of the governing coalition’s campaign to curtail the power of the Supreme Court and shield Netanyahu himself from the criminal indictments he faces. [...]

Kahol Lavan ran its campaign on being the antithesis to Netanyahu but didn’t present an alternative vision. Most of those who voted for it did so in the hope of simply seeing a change in government. That hasn’t happened and Kahol Lavan has no clear idea what to do with its 35 Knesset members.

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Haaretz: The Knesset Candidate Who Says Zionism Encourages anti-Semitism and Calls Netanyahu 'Arch-murderer'

Cassif is third on the slate of Knesset candidates in Hadash (the Hebrew acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), the successor to Israel’s Communist Party. He holds the party’s “Jewish slot,” replacing MK Dov Khenin. Cassif is likely to draw fire from opponents and be a conspicuous figure in the next Knesset, following the April 9 election. [...]

“I call it ‘creeping genocide.’ Genocide is not only a matter of taking people to gas chambers. When Yeshayahu Leibowitz used the term ‘Judeo-Nazis,’ people asked him, ‘How can you say that? Are we about to build gas chambers?’ To that, he had two things to say. First, if the whole difference between us and the Nazis boils down to the fact that we’re not building gas chambers, we’re already in trouble. And second, maybe we won’t use gas chambers, but the mentality that exists today in Israel – and he said this 40 years ago – would allow it. I’m afraid that today, after four years of such an extreme government, it possesses even greater legitimacy.

“But you know what, put aside ‘genocide’ – ethnic cleansing is taking place there. And that ethnic cleansing is also being carried out by means of killing, although mainly by way of humiliation and of making life intolerable. The trampling of human dignity. It reminds me of Primo Levi’s ‘If This Is a Man.’” [...]

Cassif voices clearly and cogently positions that challenge the public discourse in Israel, and does so with ardor and charisma. Four candidates vied for Hadash’s Jewish slot, and they all delivered speeches at the convention. The three candidates who lost to him – Efraim Davidi, Yaela Raanan and the head of the party’s Tel Aviv branch, Noa Levy – described their activity and their guiding principles. When they spoke, there was the regular buzz of an audience that’s waiting for lunch. But when Cassif took the stage, the effect was magnetic. [...]

Cassif terms himself an explicit anti-Zionist. “There are three reasons for that,” he says. “To begin with, Zionism is a colonialist movement, and as a socialist, I am against colonialism. Second, as far as I am concerned, Zionism is racist in ideology and in practice. I am not referring to the definition of race theory – even though there are also some who impute that to the Zionist movement – but to what I call Jewish supremacy. No socialist can accept that. My supreme value is equality, and I can’t abide any supremacy – Jewish or Arab. The third thing is that Zionism, like other ethno-nationalistic movements, splits the working class and all weakened groups. Instead of uniting them in a struggle for social justice, for equality, for democracy, it divides the exploited classes and the enfeebled groups, and by that means strengthens the rule of capital.”

The Guardian view on Israel’s democracy: killing with impunity, lying without consequence?

In the last nine months of 2018, according to the United Nations, Palestinians – many of them children – were killed at the rate of around one a day while taking part in protests along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza about their right to return to ancestral homes. They included medics and journalists. Most of the dead were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone, with little more than rocks in their hands and slogans on their lips. Yet Israel continued with an immoral and unlawful policy that sees soldiers of its military, which is under democratic civilian control, shoot, gas, shell and kill protesters, including those who pose no credible threat. [...]

The tensions between judicial and public opinion will be tested in the cauldron of Israel’s general election. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, unexpectedly called for early elections in December in what seems a transparent bid to head off possible corruption charges. The decision by Mr Netanyahu to dissolve the Knesset came days after the state prosecutor’s office recommended that Israel’s attorney general indict Mr Netanyahu on charges of bribery, which he denies. Mr Netanyahu is not only running for a fifth term in office, he is also running for his political life. His lawyers, it is reported, are arguing that a possible indictment be delayed; on the campaign trail Mr Netanyahu casts himself as an embattled leader persecuted by a leftwing elite comprised of lawyers, journalists and human-rights do-gooders. Echoing his friend Donald Trump, Mr Netanyahu has told reporters that Israel can choose its leadership only at the ballot box and not through legal investigations, which are a “witch-hunt”. Like the US president, the message from Mr Netanyahu is that democratic norms, those unwritten rules of toleration and restraint, are for the weak, not for the strong. Yet without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances are less mainstays of democracy than a mirage.

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Al Jazeera: Why Saudi Arabia's foreign policy is failing

At the beginning of the Cold War, Riyadh took a backseat in most regional conflicts, leaving the rowdy revolutionaries of the Arab world (Egypt, Iraq and Syria) to take the lead. On Palestine, for example, the Saudis decided to keep a low profile. Although Riyadh backed the war efforts of the so-called "ring states" - the Arab countries surrounding Israel - it always refrained from getting involved in a direct military confrontation with the Zionist state. When it decided to get involved - for example by leading the 1973 oil embargo - it always did so through soft or economic power. [...]

Throughout the Cold War, Saudi Arabia also played a quiet albeit important role in the international arena, contributing to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, it joined Pakistan and the United States in their efforts to support armed groups resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, funding most of the CIA programmes to arm and train the Mujahideen. The House of Saud also helped plunge oil prices in the second half of the 1980s, bringing the oil-dependent Soviet economy to its knees. [...]

For the first time in its recent history, Saudi Arabia found itself completely exposed, with no one to fall back on but itself. To add insult to injury, the Obama administration showed little sensitivity towards Saudi concerns as it sought rapprochement with Iran, leaving Riyadh deeply worried about its security. As the feeling of insecurity in the House of Saud grew, "backseat" diplomacy gave way to a more assertive foreign policy; the tactics, however, remained more or less the same: confrontation by proxy. [...]

Not only has MBS created more enemies than he can handle, but he has also chosen the wrong allies. He has embarked on a dangerous path of normalisation with Israel, believing that it would pay back in the long run. But with this decision, he risks losing the hearts and minds of the Arab people to Turkey and Iran, both of which have positioned themselves as champions of the Palestinian cause.

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Haaretz: What Hamas and Netanyahu Have in Common

To his credit, Netanyahu has come to understand what many opportunistic right-wing politicians are not willing to admit: War is not the solution to the confrontation with Hamas. [...]

However, Netanyahu refuses to negotiate with Hamas, arguing that it is as extreme as ISIS, when in fact it is innately different from ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants.

The differences between the Hamas and ISIS are manifested in their worldview and actions. There is a profound ideological chasm between them, which leads to mutual denigration, and in some instances, to violence. [...]

Whereas Hamas grudgingly and indirectly accepted Israel’s existence in its new charter of 2017, ISIS and al-Qaeda consider such a compromise to be betrayal. [...]

In order to move beyond Netanyahu’s "no war and no negotiations" gridlock for Gaza and the Israelis living next door, we need to think critically about the underlying assumptions of Israel’s ruling right-wing parties, which reject peace negotiations, yet fail to eliminate terror.

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Haaretz: American Jews Are Funding the Far-right Dream of Greater Israel. We Have to End This - Now

Unfortunately, funding Canary Mission to silence dissent against Israeli policies is just the tip of the iceberg. A new report released by IfNotNow - "Beyond Talk: The 5 Ways the American Jewish Establishment Supports the Occupation" - shows us how, in word and deed, the entire Jewish communal apparatus defends and deepens injustice in Israel/Palestine. We should not be shocked, but we should be angry.

Jewish establishment organizations fund the dispossession of Palestinians, lobby politicians to empower Israel’s march toward full-blown apartheid, and celebrate the Israeli politicians leading that march. Many Jewish educational institutions erase and deny Palestinian narratives to keep kids ignorant of reality - and punish critical voices.[...]

The American Jewish community’s active participation in injustice goes far further. Unquestioning support for, and defense of, the Netanyahu government has emboldened the Israeli far-right’s war to gradually dominate all of "Greater Israel." The Israeli right knows it can do whatever it wants on either side of the Green Line without so much as a word from American Jews – or, of course, from the Trump White House.

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Al Jazeera: How do Palestinians see the Syrian war?

Throughout their long struggle against Zionism, Palestinian political factions have found support in Syria, often maintaining headquarters on its territory. Traditionally it was leftist, nationalist and Baathist movements in Palestine that were closest to Damascus, but as Hamas and Islamic Jihad came to prominence in the early 1990s and developed close relations with Iran, they also started receiving Syrian support. Syria would give Palestinian groups logistical assistance, training, and political backing to the level that no other Arab country would.[...]

This led to a crisis in relations between the Palestinian authorities and the Syrian regime which ultimately ended with the death of Arafat and the rise to power of Mahmoud Abbas. Since then, Syria has pressed for rapprochement, fearing that the Palestinian Authority could move closer to Jordan and Egypt, curbing its influence over the Palestinian issue. [...]

Hamas took a very different position. After much internal deliberation, it chose to leave Syria as a way to demonstrate its rejection of the Syrian regime's brutal crackdown on popular protests. It joined the axis of the Syrian opposition supported by Gulf states, cutting its relations with the regime and angering Iran.

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Jacobin Magazine: Hard Questions in Israel-Palestine

The fact that, after fifty years of Palestinian support efforts, the Israeli occupation is more entrenched than ever should inspire some intellectual humility among those hawking solutions to the conflict, notes Jamie Stern-Weiner in the introduction to his edited collection Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions. It is humbling as well to read through the volume, with more than seventy essays and rejoinders by more than fifty different authors, from almost every one of which something new can be learned. [...]

The reason it cannot be implemented, argues Levy, is the settlers: “The settlers have won. One needs to recognize this, however painful it may be. More than 600,000 settlers will not now or in the future be removed from their homes. Yet without such mass removal, there is no viable Palestinian state, and more important, there is no justice.”

Why no justice? To “leave a single settlement intact … would amount to rewarding those who have undermined international law and violated it so crudely.” After all, “[i]f the settlements are a violation of international law, as they are, then they should be undone, to the last one. Crimes are crimes. There is no retroactive legitimation—not for murder, not for rape, and not for land grab.” [...]

The second problem with Arieli’s proposal is that he says he designed it by taking account of the positions of both sides and then seeking a compromise between them. But he judges the Palestinian position by what Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has accepted as if this reflects actual Palestinian sentiment. However, as Diana Buttu notes, “the president rules by decree; the prime minister has never received confirmation; the parliament has not met in a decade and has not passed a single piece of legislation in eleven years; and the terms of the president, parliament, and municipal councilors expired years ago.”

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Jacobin Magazine: Why the Media Is Pro-Israel

Another academic survey of daily newspapers, this one published in 2007, finds that there are “fre­quent conflicts between the business side and the journalism side of newspaper operations” and that “advertising directors are will­ing to appease their advertisers, and are also willing to positively respond to advertisers’ requests.” The survey suggests that this problem is particularly acute at chain-owned newspapers, which are especially prone to compromising editorial integrity to either please their advertisers or keep from offending them. A similar problem exists in television, where polls of network news correspondents say that nearly one-third feel directly pressured to report certain stories and not others because of owners’ or adver­tisers’ financial concerns. [...]

The three widespread narratives about Palestine-Israel discussed throughout my book are, as I have shown, highly misleading. An accurate rendering of the story would tell of Israel violently colonizing Palestine, with vital US support, and functioning as a garrison for US-led imper­ialist capitalism. Instead news media outlets present fables in which both Israelis and Palestinians have subjected each other to comparable wrongs and are blameworthy to a similar extent for the unresolved status of Palestine. Readers are also offered disorienting accounts saying the problem is that extrem­ists are driving events in Palestine-Israel rather than moderates. Equally unhelpful are the tales the news tells about Israel’s sup­posed “right to defend itself.” [...]

The people in charge of these outlets do not necessarily hatch conscious plots to trick the population into believing mis­leading tales about Palestine-Israel. The institutional orientation of news organizations steers them toward consistently framing issues in ways beneficial to the class to which they belong whether the topic is Palestine-Israel or any number of other subjects.

For the question of Palestine to be resolved, the Western ruling class will have to be prevented from backing Israel as a means of dominating the Middle East. Because of Western mili­tary, financial, and political support for Israel, public opinion in Western societies has a role to play in bringing a just, de-colonial peace across historic Palestine. Western states will not undertake the massive policy shifts necessary for that to happen unless mass pressure compels them to do so. Yet the structure of Western news media suggests it is unlikely to begin telling stories about Pales­tine-Israel that are less weighted in Israel’s favor, which means that this formidable barrier to building the popular sentiments necessary to stop Western imperialism will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

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Politico: Cuba on the Thames

Corbyn’s fate greatly depends on the unfolding Brexit drama, expected to climax in the coming weeks as the U.K. pushes for a deal before its scheduled exit in March 2019. But the impact of a Corbyn government, should he assume the reins of power, could be much more significant.

While the prospect of a Corbyn government would likely make post-Brexit trade relations with Europe more straightforward in the short term, predictions of a socialist London have already set alarm bells ringing in Washington, according to U.S. officials asked to draw up memos for the State Department in case of another snap election this year. [...]

Corbyn promised a Britain in which the rich would be more heavily taxed, utilities and the railways would be nationalized, the government would invest in 400,000 jobs focused on tackling climate change, and large companies would be forced to give workers stakes of up to 10 percent and pay annual dividends to staff. He signaled Labour would end British backing for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, immediately recognize a Palestinian state, and tilt firmly away from the U.S. as a key ally.[...]

In 2015, during Corbyn’s first conference, lobbyists were conspicuously thin on the ground, uncertain of how to influence the most socialist Labour leadership in modern history. This year, BP, Google, Visa, Bombardier and Fujitsu were all represented with stands at the conference floor. PwC, Hitachi, Novartis and Cisco all hosted or co-hosted fringe events, and numerous others sent lobbyists keen to fix up meetings with members of a potential government-in-waiting.

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Haaretz: Not Just Millennials: These Older U.S. Jews Are Disillusioned by Israel Too

Even World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder, a leader of mainstream Jewish organizations, a Republican (and longtime friend of U.S. President Donald Trump) took to the pages of The New York Times in August to voice his dismay in an Op-Ed entitled “Israel, This is Not Who We Are.” [...]

Lauder’s Op-Ed was the latest example of what political scientist Prof. Dov Waxman labels a fundamental change among U.S. Jews nowadays: Being pro-Israel no longer means pure unconditional support for the Israeli government. “I call it critical engagement,” he says, adding it is no longer the old model of what he calls “passive support.” [...]

He says that in the two years since his book was published, he has spent a lot of time on the road giving talks where, he estimates, some 90 percent of the audience is older American Jews. “And everywhere, I heard the same sentiments,” he says: “That people had long felt troubled by Israeli politics and actions regarding the Palestinians, but never felt able to speak out. They cowered around the sense they were alone, and felt like now a burden was being lifted because they were no longer alone and intimidated by speaking out,” says Waxman. [...]

Indeed, a recent American Jewish Committee poll seemed to suggest a major fissure between American and Israeli Jews when it comes to how they think Trump is handling U.S.-Israel relations. While 77 percent of Israeli Jews approve, only 34 percent of American Jews do.

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Haaretz: Now Israel Has a Race Law

As part of this madness, homes owned by Jews before 1948 are returned to their original owners through the Israeli legal system, dispossessing people who lived there for decades. At the same time, stolen or abandoned Palestinian property from 1948 has never been returned to its legal owners. In Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and in other places, Israeli flags multiply, together with the hundreds of Palestinians left homeless after being kicked out of their homes in shame, on the order of the egalitarian and just courts of the State of Israel. If someone has it in their heart to understand how afflicted the Israeli legal system is with moral rot, and how far it is from the fundamental principles of equality and justice, here lies the proof.

But all this is not enough. This week a new record was set. Jerusalem District Court Judge Moshe Drori ruled that a Jew who was injured in a terrorist attack is entitled to additional compensation, because he is a Jew, without proof of any damage, based on the nation-state law, which states that the government will strive to protect the well-being of Jews.

The circle has been closed, completed and perfected. Now it is a real race law, according to the unavoidable interpretation of the court of the nation-state law. From now on, two types of blood exist in Israel: Jewish blood and non-Jewish blood, on the law books as well. The price of these two types of blood is also different. Jewish blood is priceless, it must be protected in every possible way. Non-Jewish blood is terrifyingly cheap, it can be shed like water. A situation that existed until now only de facto, with different standards and punishments for Jews and others, is from today by court decree.

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openDemocracy: Can the Corbynite left make peace with Zionism?

The moral and legal case for the rights of refugees, and the people that remained to suffer slow erasure and systematic subjugation, is watertight. Palestinians were victims of historic injustice as surely as were the Native Americans and Aborigines of Australia. No just solution to the conflict could exclude their claims for liberation and restitution. But their supporters may have to think a little harder about what rigid opposition to Zionism means to Jewish people, and whether efforts to keep fighting the war of 1948 are politically useful for Palestinians. [...]

Pro-Palestinian activists are often frustrated by the refusal of liberal Zionists to support their campaigns and positions when they should in theory be natural allies in a fight for universal human rights. Instead, particularly at times of war and crisis, liberals often align more closely with right-wing Zionists whose hawkish and often openly racist attitudes to Palestinians should not be possible to square with their own values. One major contributor to this state of affairs is that anti-Zionism is a red line that few Zionists, and by extension few Jews, are willing to cross no matter what horrors are perpetrated by the Israeli state, and what chauvinism takes hold among its supporters. To take an unyielding position against Zionism is to make an opponent of all Jews who cannot countenance the dissolution of a Jewish homeland, and drives progressive Jews into the orbit of the ultra-nationalist right. [...]

On a pragmatic note, the precarity of the Palestinian position supports the case for a new approach. If Palestinians are to avoid the fate of Native Americans and Aborigines, herded into isolated enclaves with only a residual, diminished identity, urgent action is required to forestall that ongoing process. Since much of the Palestinian liberation strategy is invested in efforts to build international solidarity, inspired by the example of South Africa, the imperative to expand and mobilise an effective global movement is clear. Dropping the requirement for anti-Zionism would lift a major barrier to participation in the movement for progressive Jews as well as people who sympathise with both sides, while exposing the intransigence of hardline nationalists who refuse to recognise the validity of Palestinian claims. The fantasy of reversing Zionism is not one that Palestinians have time to indulge, the better strategy is to shape its course.

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Haaretz: Why Younger Saudis Won't Fund, Facilitate or Fight for a Palestinian State

Older Saudis grew up in the 1950s and 1960s during the heyday of Arab nationalism, and its embrace of the Palestinian cause as the main driver for all events in the region. While the Saudis never fully embraced Arab nationalism, they adopted the Palestinian cause to preempt attacks based on a lack of solidarity from their arch-opponents, Arab nationalists. [...]

However, the younger generations, characterized and led by MBS and his close ally Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and primary driver of the UAE's foreign policy, display far less political equanimity; they prioritize realpolitik over political nostalgia. They long ago stopped overlooking what they consider problematic political biases within the West Bank, Gaza, and even among the Palestinian diaspora around the world. [...]

The younger Gulf generation has seen for itself the attacks launched by Palestinians against their countries on social media, including the burning of MBS’ pictures in Gaza. During the soccer World Cup, many Palestinians rushed to root for Iran against its Western opponents, while supporting Western countries against the Saudi national team. This immediate, visceral experience differentiates the younger Gulf generation from its elders.

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