Doing it for Hersh

 

Desert gazelle (tzvi in Hebrew, hersh in Yiddish), via.

The killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi in a tunnel underneath Rafah last Thursday, or possibly Friday morning, a day or two before the Israeli Defense Forces found their bodies Saturday afternoon, according to the autopsy reports from Israel's ministry of health, isn't the only terrible thing—it's all terrible—but maybe made especially poignant for many of us by the presence of the Israeli-American, the youngest of these particular victims, Goldberg-Polin, 23, who we've come to know a bit, or at least his parents, Rachel and Jon, who addressed the DNC in Chicago last month with a plea for a Gaza ceasefire:

the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region: a deal that brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza. The time is now.

Hersh was my father's Yiddish name, and by extension that of my son, who was born just a month after my dad died, and named after him, in accordance with Jewish custom, so that I find myself involuntarily projecting the special qualities of my young Hersh, generous, attentive, deeply mentshlekh, on their young Hersh. It's too sad. May all their memories be a blessing.

We don't always mention the other thing, which is that so many of the victims of the October 7 massacre belong to the Israeli left, a political movement that has been mostly defunct for three or four decades, with a commitment to equity between Jews and Palestinians that the Israeli government was not often willing to match and the Palestinian resistance movements rarely took seriously (with some reason; even the nicest Jews weren't usually offering to give the stolen land back).  

Newsletter: Palestine Diplomacy

  

New  Substack post.

Gaza Update

 

Israeli journalist Noga Tarnopolsky said something that especially struck me on BBC, on the attitudes among the families of the hostages still held in Gaza, in reference to Antony Blinken's latest visit: that they trust President Joe Biden, because they're confident he's doing everything he can to bring the hostages back, and that they don't feel that way about their own prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

I'm glad to hear somebody does. I'm not myself ready to give up on Biden in this context, but it's really not easy and not getting easier. What I've supposed could be his plan, to get a Palestinian state out of this horror, still looks delusional to seasoned observers, who understand that there's less appetite in Israel for such a thing than ever, especially inside the government, now completely dominated by parties that have been absolutely opposed to it since their deadly enemies of the Israeli "center-left" signed the Oslo accords (though I wonder if the inclusion of center-left ministers in the war cabinet makes a difference to that), but also in a general population that gets its information from extraordinarily biased TV coverage; and my own idea of how it might work could be ridiculously baroque.

Starting with the observation that there is no direct action Biden can take that will save a single life in Gaza, because of the situation inside the US as well. Biden cannot threaten to cut off military aid to Israel because Congress is not going to allow it. Lobbying groups like AIPAC make sure it doesn't happen. American Jews, overwhelmingly liberals and Democrats, may not like it, but we can't do much about it; it's not our money that makes the difference. And putting qualifications on support for Israel is a new and untested position for Democrats; for traditional Democrats in Congress, likely the party majority, it's hard to imagine questioning Israel on anything. 

And, most important. Netanyahu really doesn't care: he's the first Israeli prime minister to take open sides in a US election (for his old Boston private equity colleague Mitt Romney in 2012, and for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020), because he's confident it will never threaten American support for any government he puts together. Whatever Biden does has to deal with this lack of the leverage Americans had on earlier Israeli governments.

Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself. Maybe It Should Try Doing It.

Habima Square, Tel Aviv, November 11. Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90 via Times of Israel.

Maybe this latest outrage, the IDF killing of three escaping Israeli hostages—they'd improvised a white flag and had their shirts off, I figure in the hope that would show they weren't suicide terrorists rushing the troops, and yet the troops fired—will really start making the Israeli public rethink what's being done in their names. "Israel has a right to defend itself," as the Hasbara always reminds us, but is that what it's doing? 

Then there's the other body count, of hostages killed with their captors under the collapsed buildings in the bombing raids, for which the latest number released by Hamas is 57 (of whom IDF has acknowledged 18, without, I think, releasing the names, if they have them). Israel is killing Hamas's prisoners!

And it's not obliterating Hamas, though some of those killed doubtless belonged to the organization—maybe as many as 40%, though that's only estimated by assuming that every male between the ages of 18 and 59 in the territory is a combatant, even though only a third of adults in Gaza expressed any support for Hamas in the October 6 survey.

New polling shows a hugely changed picture, though:

West of Eden: Post-Bibi

Demonstration outside the Prime Minister's Jerusalem residence in May. Photo by Ohad Zwigenberg/Haaretz.

One of the least edifying spectacles in the recent international politics news has been that produced in Jerusalem by Binyamin Netanyahu going Trump one better and really refusing to leave the prime minister's official residence on Balfour Street for weeks, though he hasn't been prime minister since 6 April. 

Not that he's sitting in the living quarters frowning, with his hands tucked into his armpits, daring them to carry him out, as Trump might be doing. Indeed, he's been receiving official visitors, including former ambassador Nikki Haley and abominable pro-Armageddon pastor John Hagee (recovered from his bout with Covid-19 last November). I guess Netanyahu is still the negotiating partner of the not-at-all-anti-Semitic Christian Zionists looking to Israel to hasten the Day of Judgment when all the unconverted Jews will be thrown into the Lake of Fire.

He's occupying his seat in the Knesset as official opposition leader, and he has managed to vacate the prime minister's office, though not apparently without some possibly illegal serious shredding:

Boots in the Mosque

Sheikh Jarrah from the air, 1931. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, via Wikipedia.

How the crisis started, as reported in The Times yesterday:

JERUSALEM — Twenty-seven days before the first rocket was fired from Gaza this week, a squad of Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brushed the Palestinian attendants aside and strode across its vast limestone courtyard. Then they cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful from four medieval minarets.

It was the night of April 13, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was also Memorial Day in Israel, which honors those who died fighting for the country. The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out.

I found myself wondering about a detail: when you enter a mosque, you take off your shoes first, leaving them in a crowd of shoes around the entrance, or for the more fastidious putting them in a bag to carry with you. Were the cops really unlacing their high-top boots and pulling them off before pushing inside, or were they just marching in, profaning the place?

Dr. Google couldn't find any cases of Israeli police explicitly reported entering al-Aqsa with their boots on a specific occasion more recent than 16 January 2020, but they seem to have been doing it over the nights of really violent raids on the mosque last week, starting on the last Friday of Ramadan, when

Designed Failure

Uncredited installation art illustrating "Zero Tolerance", from 7 May, AP Photo/Susan Walsh.

More on Wonder Boy Jared Kushner and his fabulous immigration plan, from Politico:

Kushner has been talking up his immigration plan with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation, which detractors have derided as laughably simplistic. In the version he debuted to lawmakers on Tuesday, the slides showed circles placed next to each other representing different potential immigration reforms and flags denoting “peer nations” that have adopted merit-based immigration systems such as Canada, Australia and Japan, according to two Republicans who have viewed the presentation.

The Washington Post coverage notes who the people were who stepped in when he couldn't answer questions: Stephen Miller—

At times, Miller jumped in to assist Kushner, especially on questions about how the plan would deal with low-skilled workers. “Miller interrupted him a lot,” the individual said.

The same problems plague the Middle East peace plan, the Politico report says,

Literary Corner: Somebody Else Came Up

Via Observer.

How I Realized That Peace Between Israel and Palestinians Is a Very Important Thing

by Donald J. Trump 

When we had in Saudi Arabia, we had
one of the great conferences in history.
Many of you were there, probably all of you
were there. It was one of the most beautiful
two days, that and China, two of the most
incredible events I have ever seen.
I have never seen anything like it.

And we had, I believe,
58 Muslim countries, the leaders, the kings,
the emirs, the absolute leaders from every —
there was nobody in second place. They
were the leaders of the whole thing.

For the Record: These Goulish Things Remind Me of You

Deplorable https://t.co/EMGX6xPzva

An early look at Tuesday's front... pic.twitter.com/ZAK1Vk5ACW

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) May 15, 2018

This headline is disgusting in every conceivable way https://t.co/sgzh0k7uYI

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 15, 2018

So the headline is disgusting, but the fact that people were murdered is completely fine? Was that your take away from this whole thing Ben?

— Mohanad Elshieky (@MohanadElshieky) May 15, 2018

Daily News front page doesn't blame her for it. What's ghoulish is having such a nice party amid the carnage.

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 15, 2018

Toward the state-and-a-half solution

Still from Rona Yefman's 2006 video, "Pippi L. at Abu Dis", depicting Pippi Longstocking, strongest girl in the world, attempting to take down the Wall separating Israel from Palestine.

Has there ever been anything in history quite as overdetermined as Trump's insistence on recognizing Jerusalem as the eternal capital (he didn't say "undivided", which may be a clue that he or his writers didn't mean all that much anyway) of the Jewish state and agreement to move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv at some point in the future? There are so many competing ways of explaining why it had to happen that it might be be more useful to ask what could have stopped it.

First there's Jared Kushner, designated unofficially by the Emperor-elect as Middle East Peace Tsar way back in November 2016—

Some of what Tom's smoking

It's always even worse when you feel a certain amount of sympathy with what Friedman wants to communicate, and yearning for a world where his fantasies would have a chance of coming true.

Moustache Fleuri, via.

Shorter Tom Friedman, "President Trump. Will You Save the Jews?", New York Times, February 15 2016:

Dear Mr. President, I implore you, by all that's sacred, you must stop Prime Minister Netanyahu from allowing any more illegal Jewish settlements from being built in the Palestinian West Bank where even President Rivlin is saying that Israel's behavior is making a legal cacophony and causing Israel to be seen as an apartheid state, which of course it isn't, seen as an apartheid state I tell you, and destroying forever the chance of a two-state solution. The projected land grab is an act of moral turpitude that will undermine the moral foundations of the state! It is about right versus wrong! It could tear apart every Jewish synagogue, charitable organization, campus club, and Jewry around the world, the way Woodmont Golf Club was almost torn apart when President Obama wanted to join and the board thought he was too pro-Palestinian because of the administration's failure to veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning the settlements only fortunately the decent members prevailed! Please consider your legacy and do the right thing!

Conjectural Donald J. Trump, in response:

West of Eden: A Pax on Both Their Houses

AFSC workers pass out blankets in Gaza, 1948. Via Rabbi Brant Rosen.

On November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day! When Britons celebrate the defeat exactly 410 years ago of the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy of disaffected English Catholics to blow up the Parliament and destroy England's ancient liberties, hoping to turn that green and pleasant isle over to the tyranny of the Pope, those were the days huh), Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by two fellows of the Middle East Forum, Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky, under the title "The Quakers, No Friends of Israel".

You should have seen the version they ran at their own shop (Middle East Forum: Promoting American Interests, the wingnut-welfare home of fascist Arab-hater Daniel Pipes and his odious crew), where the headline, under the runninghead "MEF Research and Writing", ran, in red,

The Quaker War on Israel

What it's about, of course, is the participation of the Friends in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, give full civil rights to Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and respect (not necessarily implement) the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes.

Or, as Joffe and Romirowsky put it, launching into the propaganda tone right away,