by Mitchell Plitnick

In his speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Steven Salaita, who was “de-hired” quite suddenly after the university’s chancellor faced strong pressure from major donors objecting to Salaita’s tweets about Israel’s massive military campaign in Gaza, issued this warning: “As the Center for Constitutional Rights and [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

In his speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Steven Salaita, who was “de-hired” quite suddenly after the university’s chancellor faced strong pressure from major donors objecting to Salaita’s tweets about Israel’s massive military campaign in Gaza, issued this warning: “As the Center for Constitutional Rights and other groups have been tracking, this is part of a nationwide, concerted effort by wealthy and well-organized groups to attack pro-Palestinian students and faculty and silence their speech. This risks creating a Palestinian exception to the First Amendment and to academic freedom.”

At Ohio University, the disturbing reality of the different treatment accorded to pro-Israel, as opposed to pro-Palestinian views supports Salaita’s statement. Of course, the treatment of Salaita is, itself, rock-solid evidence of this point. That is especially true since the university’s chancellor, Phyllis Wise, has backed off her initial claim that Salaita’s de-hire was caused not by his views but by the allegedly “uncivil” way he expressed them. She has since admitted that she faced pressure from influential figures around the university, i.e. major donors.

But a report today in Ha’aretz on an incident at Ohio University offers an even clearer view. The president of the student senate at OU, Megan Marzec, used the opportunity of taking the ALS Ice-bucket challenge to make a statement about Gaza. She wore a shirt that urged divestment from Israel, stated that the blood in her bucket (which was, of course, fake) represented the Palestinians that Israel had “murdered and displaced,” and dumped the bucket over her head.

The response from the organized Jewish community on the OU campus was swift and quite typical. Ha’aretz quotes the leader of a pro-Israel campus group, Becky Sebo: “Her video has kind of torn the campus apart. My initial response was complete shock. We’ve never had any BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement on our campus, have always had a very open, welcoming community.” Now, she said, “Jewish students in particular are feeling very singled out by the video. Many Jewish students are feeling concerned about their safety and how other students will respond to these accusations against Israel.”

This hyper-sensitivity represents a complete reversal of reality, among other things. There is not a single report of Jewish students being harassed, much less assaulted, as a result of Marzec’s video. But Marzec herself has drawn death threats and hate mail. So much so that Homeland Security has gotten involved on campus. Of course, the pro-Israel groups, no doubt quite sincerely, condemned and called for an end to such acts. But let us ask the question: who has legitimate reason to fear for their safety?

There are also other dimensions to this story. Consider the words of Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism. “The students who want to present a non-biased pro-Israel view have their work cut out for them because there are going to be a lot of efforts to delegitimize their point of view. I anticipate we’ll see more anti-Israel activities than ever before.”

Just read those words, and the thinking is revealed. “A non-biased pro-Israel view.” That is an obvious oxymoron. If the view is pro-Israel, or if it is pro-Palestinian, it is, by definition, biased. What Segal implies here is that any unbiased view would be pro-Israel and any other conclusion can only come about as the result of bias.

And then there’s this whole argument about “de-legitimizing,” whether it is about Israel or of points of view. The working definition of this “de-legitimization” seems to be centered around any argument against Israeli policies, against Zionism, or against any kind of support for the Palestinians. The point of debate, of argument, is to establish that your view has more merit than the opposing one. That should be encouraged (as, indeed, Jewish tradition does), not feared. And certainly, it must not be stamped down.

The shallow arguments get even better. The Director of the OU’s Hillel (a national Jewish student organization), Rabbi Danielle Leshaw, demonstrated just how far the so-called “pro-Israel community” has departed from Jewish traditions and more universal values of open discussion and debating difficult issues.

“Your video marginalizes and isolates students,” Leshaw wrote in an open letter to Marzec published in The Post. “It makes Jewish parents want to bring their kids back home to the safety of the Jewish suburbs …. you need to step down, and give somebody else the chance to lead our Ohio University student population. Somebody that won’t polarize, or divide, or marginalize, or ‘other,’ or cause hysteria, or make students feel unsafe.”

Leshaw, it must be noted, is far from a conservative voice, and she is, herself, no stranger to criticizing pro-Israel programs. She also strongly disagrees with Marzec’s view of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her call for Marzec to resign as student senate president is “Not because of your politics, but because of your lack of awareness, compassion, and mostly, because of your lack of vision.”

Let’s unpack Rabbi Leshaw’s thinking. Just how does Marzec’s video “marginalize and isolate students?” She presents a political statement, at a time when the Israeli military was acting in so brutal a manner that even their American colleagues, who are themselves quite familiar with killing civilians, were shocked. One wonders: If someone had done the exact same video during Russia’s aggression against Chechnya 15 years ago, would anyone have been concerned that Russian students were marginalized and isolated? Of course not, mostly because they wouldn’t have been and because everyone would have been applauding the strong statements against the massive damage being done to civilians, and rightly so.

Marzec’s video, Rabbi Leshaw says, “…makes Jewish parents want to bring their kids back home to the safety of the Jewish suburbs?” That is a familiar and tired argument, one that got badly worn out during the battles for school integration and during the civil rights movement. Just substitute “White” for Jewish, and the sentence says the very same thing. It is irrational fear of the other, something that needs to be confronted, not accommodated.

Rabbi Leshaw also says that Megan’s video makes “alumni want to pull their funding.” I wonder if she thought about that complaint before putting it in her letter. An apparently liberal woman believes that donors should have the ability to stop students from making controversial political statements? Would she have said the same about protests against the Vietnam War or for women’s rights back in the 1960s and 70s? Because surely there were those alumni who took similar offense to bra-burning demonstrations back then. No, it is only opposition to Israeli policies that merits such kowtowing, I suspect.

Rabbi Leshaw also says that Megan’s video “makes people threaten” the university and its programs, a disturbing echo of Israel’s self-serving and unsellable (outside of the US and Israel, that is) claim that all those Palestinian deaths were Hamas’ fault. Defying such bullying is why Rabbi Leshaw thinks Marzec should step down, rather than seeing it for what it is: precisely the sort of action that a student leader must take if they are to ever be leaders for social change outside the university. The same would be true if this was a pro-Israel statement. Those who support Israel’s policies or feel they must defend Israel should also not give in to any attempts to intimidate them into silence. It is not the opinion that matters, and on that point, Rabbi Leshaw claims to agree. So would she have the same objections if the issue was not Israel? Given her professed values, it seems doubtful.

Megan Marzac sees the Israeli occupation and then the shockingly brutal onslaught on Gaza. She believes that these should be opposed and future incidents prevented, and believes that the global Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement is the best way to achieve that. She lacks neither awareness nor compassion. Her statement was one of condemnation of repeated and ongoing human rights violations. That demonstrates considerable awareness and compassion, whether you agree with her views or not.

Is it Marzac’s lack of vision then? Well, it is fair to say that her identification as student senate president gives the impression that she was doing this with some sort of sanction from the senate, which apparently was not the case. That’s an error, but such a mistake is hardly grounds for her removal, especially since she subsequently made it clear that this was her own action.

In any case, the notion that strong support for the Palestinians and even harsh criticism of Israel is somehow threatening to Jews has to be challenged. It is a false accusation, but more importantly, it is one in a long list of bullying tactics that seek to silence support for the Palestinians on campus and more broadly, in the public discourse. Those tactics include attempts to legislate against boycotts of Israel (all of which have failed thus far), manipulating organizations by threatening their funding, harassing media outlets when they give space for pro-Palestinian views, and claiming victimhood when they themselves are the victimizer.

Megan Marzac did what student activists should do: she made a bold statement. The response from the allegedly pro-Israel community has been nothing short of the worst kind of bullying, even aside from the extremists who have threatened her with physical harm. Do these people believe that Israel’s case is so weak that it cannot withstand public debate? It seems so, but that is only true because they are making the wrong argument. They are working to make Israel an exception to international laws of war, and supporting Israel’s regular violation of Palestinian rights through Israel’s occupation regime (as thoroughly documented by many Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Gisha and others). These so-called pro-Israelis are trying to defend Israeli military actions that regularly kill far more civilians than combatants, leave infrastructure devastated and make already impoverished people even more desperate.

What if they tried making the honest case that what is really needed is, quite simply, equal rights for all and a homeland where Jews and Palestinians can flee to if they are facing persecution and where both peoples can express and live their national identity, in whatever political configuration? Maybe then they wouldn’t resort to bullying tactics because they’re so terrified of an honest, open discussion in the public arena.

Photo: Megan Marzec, president of Ohio University’s student senate, at a Sept. 1o meeting.

by Mitchell Plitnick

Like many of us, I’ve been very busy on social media since Israel began its military operation in Gaza. I see a lot of ignorant nonsense there, and it’s not limited to the pro-Israel side. I also see a lot of shoddy thinking and ignorance of the facts. Since [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

Like many of us, I’ve been very busy on social media since Israel began its military operation in Gaza. I see a lot of ignorant nonsense there, and it’s not limited to the pro-Israel side. I also see a lot of shoddy thinking and ignorance of the facts. Since I had to study up a lot of this for my job as the Director of the US Office of B’Tselem, I thought I might set the record straight.

“War crimes”

Various memes make the rounds in discussions of war crimes. One that I found particularly laughable was “Even the UN says Hamas is committing war crimes but they say Israel only might be.” I’ve also seen defenses of Hamas’ firing of missiles at civilian targets in Israel based on Palestinians’ right of self-defense.

Here is the long and short of it: War crimes are defined as “Serious violations of international humanitarian law constitute war crimes.” That’s going to encompass pretty much every violation that might become a public issue in any conflict.

International law recognizes that civilians are going to be hurt, killed and dispossessed in war. The obligation of combatants is to do all they can to minimize the death and destruction if they do need to operate in areas where it is likely that civilians will be hurt.

As a result, when Israel proclaims its innocence of violating these laws, no matter how suspicious we may be, enforcers of international law cannot declare that war crimes have been committed without an investigation. Reasonable people who are not international lawyers can make assumptions, but the investigation needs to happen, and it is always possible, especially when the conflict involves an area as densely populated as Gaza, that it will turn out that the state in question did its best to avoid civilian casualties. High civilian casualty numbers are not proof, but they obviously raise suspicions.

On Hamas’ side, this is true as well, but Hamas makes no secret of its use of weapons which, by their very nature, cannot be used in a manner that can discriminate between civilian and military targets. So, while the UN or other bodies would still investigate and make a case before taking any action, Hamas is committing war crimes. It’s not unfair to say so.

In this case, however, Israel has declared that the homes of leading Hamas activists (and those of other factions) are legitimate targets. They have, in fact, willfully bombed such houses during these engagements as a result. Unlike the 2002 assassination of Salah Shehade, where Israel claimed (falsely, many say) to have believed Shehade to be alone in the building they bombed, Israel has made no such claims this time around. Therefore, it is also not unfair to say that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, even before an investigation.

If not for Iron Dome, there would have been many more Israeli casualties

This statement seems to make sense, but the numbers don’t back it up. A study done through July 14, when rocket fire into Israel was at its most intense, showed that the number of rockets being fired from Gaza was fewer than in Operation Cast Lead and the frequency of hits was about the same.

I’m all for Iron Dome. Any defensive system whose purpose is to protect civilians is something I consider an absolute positive, and I only wish more countries would invest in such systems, endeavoring to protect, rather than avenge, their civilians. The concern that iron Dome would make Israel even more reckless and grant it even more impunity does not seem to be borne out by its actions in the current onslaught. Those actions, brutal as they are, are no worse than what Israel did in 2008 and 2012 to Gaza or what it did in 2006 to Lebanon. So, yeah, please let’s see more Iron Domes in the world.

By the same token, however, it doesn’t seem like Iron Dome is actually protecting Israeli civilians nearly as much as the rockets’ lack of any sort of targeting ability.

Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people

Opponents of Israeli policies in the United States and in Israel itself have an uphill battle against an entrenched propagandistic view of the entire conflict. We do ourselves no favors by using bombastic, easily assailable language in making our arguments.

Genocide has a specific meaning in international law. It does not mean large scale killing. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide provides that definition:

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of thr group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

There is no evidence that this is what Israel is trying to do. Indeed, the best evidence that Israel is not doing this is the simple fact that the Palestinian population, in both the West Bank and Gaza, continues to grow, despite the occupation and all its concomitant hardships.

Would Israel like to find a way to get rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank and cut off Gaza? Sure, but that is not genocide, it is ethnic cleansing, and frankly, that’s bad enough. Israel has done that very gradually over the years, confiscating more and more land, forcing Palestinians into ever smaller enclaves and turning Gaza into one big open air prison.

Making claims that are contradicted by the facts, especially the weighty accusation of genocide, is irresponsible and self-defeating; it plays right into Israel’s propaganda hands.

Hamas is exercising legitimate self-defense

It is absolutely true that an occupied people has the right to resist its occupiers. It is also true that the unusual nature of Israel’s occupation makes it very difficult for guerrilla groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and others to take any violent action that would conform to international legal standards. As international legal expert Noura Erekat puts it: “Hamas has crude weapons technology that lacks any targeting capability. As such, Hamas rocket attacks ipso facto violate the principle of distinction because all of its attacks are indiscriminate. This is not contested.”

It is also true that Israel itself does not differentiate between attacks on its civilians and its soldiers. It views them as equally illegitimate and labels it all “terrorism,” even though legally, Israeli soldiers are combatants while on duty. Take, for example, the killing of IDF soldier Natanel Moshiashvili in 2012. The IDF statement about his death plainly states: “The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians or IDF soldiers, and will operate against anyone who uses terror against the State of Israel.”

Nonetheless, the fact that Palestinians are mostly unable to strike exclusively at Israeli military targets does not mean that it is suddenly legal to use indiscriminate weapons or to target civilians. These are war crimes, and any credible investigation must investigate both sides while also taking into account the massive differences in capabilities and power of the two. Israel must also be scrutinized more closely because it has a far greater ability to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants than Hamas.

Hamas is using human shields

Saying something over and over again doesn’t make it true, but it does make a whole lot of people believe it. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu willfully and repeatedly lied to the Israeli public and the world about Hamas’ complicity in the kidnap and murder of the three young Israeli settlers, which sparked this latest round. He kept saying he had proof that he never produced, and now the Israeli police are admitting what everyone who was actually paying attention at the time knew: this was an independent act of violence.

It’s the same with the human shield argument. Like genocide, the term “human shield” has a legal definition. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “… the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.” Again, as Erekat wrote: “International human rights organizations that have investigated these claims have determined that they are not true.” Erekat correctly cites reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which focused on past engagements. There is also doubt being cast by journalists in Gaza today.

In fact, no evidence has ever been presented to support the accusation apart from the high number of civilian casualties and Israel’s word. On the other hand, Israel’s own High Court had to demand that Israel stop using human shields. That happened in 2005, but the practice continued.

In any case, even the presence of human shields does not absolve or mitigate Israel’s responsibility to minimize civilian casualties. Again quoting Erekat: “Even assuming that Israel’s claims were plausible, humanitarian law obligates Israel to avoid civilian casualties…In the over three weeks of its military operation, Israel has demolished 3,175 homes, at least a dozen with families inside; destroyed five hospitals and six clinics; partially damaged sixty-four mosques and two churches; partially to completely destroyed eight government ministries; injured 4,620; and killed over 700 Palestinians. At plain sight, these numbers indicate Israel’s egregious violations of humanitarian law, ones that amount to war crimes.”

Finally, one last point and one more citation of Noura Erekat. The claim that Israel is merely acting in self-defense fails on a number of counts. As I and others have been saying from the beginning, the Netanyahu government willfully and cynically used the murders of three Israelis as an excuse to provoke Hamas with mass arrests and widespread activities that included the deaths of nine Palestinian civilians before this operation started. That removes the self-defense argument from the start. But more than that, the Gaza Strip, despite it being emptied of settlements and soldiers, remains under Israeli control, and is thus occupied territory, contrary to Israel’s claims. Please check out Erekat’s excellent write-up of what this means for the right of self-defense. And please note, she never denies that Israel has a right to protect its own civilians, but that is not the same thing.

Photo: International and Palestinian volunteers accompanied Civil Defense and other rescue crews, as well as family members, into Shujaya, a neighborhood by the separation barrier in the east of Gaza City, in an attempt to locate survivors of overnight and ongoing shelling by the Israeli army on July 20. Credit: Joe Catron

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by Mitchell Plitnick

On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with the talks to open up to him, anonymously, about what happened.

Barnea says that the version the U.S. officials present “… is fundamentally different to (sic) the one presented by Israeli officials.” The implication from Barnea, and the way most will read the U.S. revelations, is that Israel was the main party at fault. But a more sober and critical reading of what these officials say paints a different picture than the ones that the Israeli government, Barnea, or most of the initial reactions do.

In fact, what comes out is that Israel was not the primary culprit here. As has long been the case, the main reason for the failure of talks was — and is — the United States.

Combining amazing ignorance not only of the Palestinians but also of Israel and its politics, with a hint of anti-Semitism and a contemptuous attitude toward the Palestinians, tossing in some willful blindness to the realities on the ground and in the offices of politicians, the United States initiated a process that put the final nail in the two-state solution as it has been understood for years. Some, myself included, might consider that a good thing, as it enables the re-thinking of all the options, including other ways to conceive of two states (which I favor), as well as one state ideas. But the way this event has evolved has strengthened hard-liners in Israel, made the U.S. Congress even more myopic in its blind support for Israel and made it less likely that there will ever be a negotiated, rather than a violent, resolution to this conflict. In any case, this latest episode has likely kicked any resolution even farther into the future than it already was.

The U.S. failure goes well beyond the usual absurdity of the global superpower pretending to act as an honest broker in a conflict that involves an ally whose relationship with the U.S. is routinely described as “unshakeable” and is a regional superpower involved in a forty-seven year occupation of a completely powerless people. The U.S. culpability for this failure comes through in almost every response the anonymous diplomats make to Barnea’s questions. An examination of those responses and their implications is warranted.

The very first statement, in response to Barnea asking if the talks were doomed from the outset, would be shocking in its implication of incompetence if this wasn’t par for the U.S. course for the past twenty years. One of the anonymous diplomats says: “We didn’t realize Netanyahu was using the announcements of tenders for settlement construction as a way to ensure the survival of his own government. We didn’t realize continuing construction allowed ministers in his government to very effectively sabotage the success of the talks.”

How could they not realize this? Not for the last time in this article, one thinks they must be lying about their ignorance, but then, if they were going to lie, why would they make themselves look so stupid? You’d be hard-pressed to find a thoughtful analysis of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies that doesn’t touch on this issue. Certainly one cannot read the Israeli press, across the political spectrum, and be unaware that settlement expansion was a key demand from much of Netanyahu’s coalition, including his own party. The idea that the U.S. negotiating team had such a paucity of knowledge, much less understanding, of their ally renders any U.S. involvement moot at best and destructive at worst, given its role as superpower patron and ostensible broker of negotiations. In the best of circumstances, a mediator cannot have a positive effect if she is this ignorant of either party to a dispute, let alone one they are so close to.

It gets better. The diplomats go on to say: “Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that (settlement expansion) is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.” One is tempted to think the diplomat is lying here. It isn’t possible that they could have been unaware of the many statements made by Israeli leaders from Likud, HaBayit HaYehudi and other parties about annexing pieces of land. It is equally hard to believe that the U.S. has been deaf for years to the many cases brought up by oppositional Israeli groups regarding land appropriation.

Many of those groups, such as Peace Now and the human rights group, B’Tselem have a presence in Washington and regularly meet with State Department officials, as I can attest from first-hand experience. There has been no shortage of Israelis telling the U.S. that this was about land expropriation, whether through reports from the peace camp or pronouncements from the right-wing. But then one stops and again, has to ask, if they were lying, why would they make up a lie that shows the U.S. to be this incompetent and ignorant?

When asked why they pushed for these talks, one of the diplomats said, “Kerry thought of the future — he believed, and still does, that if the two sides can’t reach an accord, Israel is going to be in a lot worse shape than it is today.”

Now, granted, this was an interview with an Israeli reporter, but this sort of remark is still indicative of the U.S. bias. All this time the Palestinians have been living under occupation, without civil rights, seeing homes demolished, water taken, enduring settler attacks, and all the other inevitable hardships of military occupation. While one can understand the political necessity of doing this “for Israel,” the real imperative here is that millions of people under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live without the basic rights most of us in the West take for granted. If remedying that, whether Israel likes it or not, doesn’t underlie your efforts, at least behind closed doors, you will inevitably fail. When there is no credible military threat in the region — and there has not been for many years despite Netanyahu’s frequent histrionics — the incentive for Israel to reach an agreement simply can’t be as great as it is for the Palestinians.

I mentioned above that the anonymous diplomats hinted at some anti-Semitism as well as contempt for Palestinians. The contempt for Palestinians has been evident throughout the process. The United States has long ignored the very significant concessions Palestinians have made over the years, and President Barack Obama and Kerry have been no different. On top of acknowledging that Israel would have control of 78% of what had been Palestine under the British Mandate before 1948 and repeatedly recognizing Israel without any reciprocal recognition by Israel (in Oslo, Israel merely recognized the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people), one of the interviewees noted:

[The Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Mahmoud Abbas] agreed to a demilitarized state; he agreed to the border outline so 80 percent of settlers would continue living in Israeli territory; he agreed for Israel to keep security sensitive areas for five years, and then the United States would take over. He also agreed that the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and agreed that the return of Palestinians to Israel would depend on Israeli willingness. ‘Israel won’t be flooded with refugees,’ he promised. He told us: ‘Tell me if there’s another Arab leader that would have agreed to what I agreed to.’

And then there’s the attitude the U.S. officials anonymously express toward Jews: “The Jewish people are supposed to be smart; it is true that they’re also considered a stubborn nation. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation. The occupation threatens Israel’s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state.”

I see! We Jews are smart and stubborn. So Israel has acted this way because it has a Jewish-majority population and is run almost entirely by Jews and, well, we Jews just can’t help ourselves because the stubbornness of ours stomps outdoes our superior intelligence. With this sort of thinking, is it any wonder the U.S. can’t grasp the basics of Israeli or Palestinian politics let alone their intricacies?

There’s also a scary bit of ignorance evident in the statement that “The Oslo Accords were Netanyahu’s creation.” Whatever else might be said about how Netanyahu gamed the Oslo Accords, he certainly didn’t create them. Indeed, he was so vocal in his opposition to them that many still hold him partially responsible for inciting the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who did, actually, sign the Accords.

But ignorance of history is not nearly as bad as complete cluelessness about the present. Barnea asked his interlocutors about Abbas’ stance in the latter stages of the process, and they said he had named three conditions absolutely required for continuing talks: Israel must agree to the outlining of borders as the first topic of discussion within a three-month deadline; Israel must agree to establish a timeline for evacuation of whatever settlers need to be evacuated; and East Jerusalem, whatever its borders, must be the capital of Palestine. All of those are necessary pieces of a framework for talks, but Israel flatly refused all of them.

When Barnea pointed out that agreeing to any of these would have meant the collapse of the Netanyahu government, here is how the U.S. officials responded: “We couldn’t confront the two sides with the painful solutions that were required of them. The Israelis didn’t have to face the possibility of splitting Jerusalem into two capitals; they didn’t have to deal with the meaning of a full withdrawal and the end of the occupation.” So then, can someone explain just what this was all about? If the U.S. is too timid to even broach with Israel the topics of sharing Jerusalem and ending the occupation, what is there to talk about?

More to the point, writers in newspapers all around the world, including many who clearly sided with Israel, have speculated on the inevitability of Netanyahu’s government falling if he reached an agreement with the Palestinians. Indeed, since 2011, both leaders of the Labor Party, the Israeli opposition’s largest party, Shelly Yachimovich and Isaac Herzog, have openly declared that they would join Netanyahu’s government to save his premiership for the sake of a peace agreement, as has the Meretz Party. One can speculate about whether that would have sufficed to save Bibi, or discuss how uninterested Netanyahu has always seemed to be in such an option. But, apparently, the U.S. delegation was not even aware of these considerations. It never occurred to Barnea’s interlocutors to discuss what could have kept a peace deal afloat and Netanyahu in office, even though such thinking appeared in countless media pieces in Israel, the U.S. and Europe. The only reasonable conclusion is that this entire line of thought never came up in State Department planning. If so, how could these talks have possibly succeeded, without some plan to save Netanyahu if they could get him to sign on the dotted line?

All of this begins to build the case that it is Israel that is acting according to its own interests as perceived by its leaders, while the U.S. is screwing up what diplomacy can possibly take hold here through its fecklessness, ignorance and simple incompetence. In part two of this piece, I will sum up this case and explain why Obama’s “time out” will not change the situation or exonerate the United States.

by Mitchell Plitnick

There was a real diplomatic blowup in the Knesset last week, when Naftali Bennett led a walkout of the chamber by his HaBayit HaYehudi party during a speech by European Union Parliamentary President Martin Schulz. The comment Schulz made that elicited his response was this: “A Palestinian youth [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

There was a real diplomatic blowup in the Knesset last week, when Naftali Bennett led a walkout of the chamber by his HaBayit HaYehudi party during a speech by European Union Parliamentary President Martin Schulz. The comment Schulz made that elicited his response was this: “A Palestinian youth asked me why an Israeli can use 70 cubic liters of water and a Palestinian just 17. I haven’t checked the data. I’m asking you if this is correct.”

Is this just another example of Israeli hyper-sensitivity and over-reaction? In fact, it is not. At first glance, this seems like a foreign leader framing a question, one that seems to be regarding an issue that makes Israel look no worse than frequent statements about settlements and foot-dragging on the peace process. It actually touches on an issue that is at the very heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but that is too often overlooked. That issue is water.

When one mentions water in conjunction with the Middle East, there is always this “oh, yeah” reaction as people remember that this is probably the single most important issue in the region. But it is too rarely considered in political analyses. It isn’t discussed often enough in the context of the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is absolutely fundamental to Israeli policy and Palestinian dispossession.

People are usually puzzled as to why Israel risks international isolation and opprobrium in order to maintain its occupation. Is it religious zeal? Nationalistic fervor? An obsession with security considerations that Israel’s military might has transcended and that are based in military thinking that is a half-century out of date? All of these are very real factors. But somehow, water is never mentioned as more than an afterthought (and I confess, I am as much at fault as my fellows in this regard).

But anyone who has ever been to Israel and also to other countries in the region knows that Israel, although it certainly needs to be more water-conscious than most Western countries, lives a more water-rich lifestyle than any of its neighbors. Talk to older Israelis who remember things before 1967; that was a different Israel in many ways, and water was a big issue. The difference between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is even more starkly visible; the contrast between homes with lush lawns and, in some cases, swimming pools in the settlements, and the arid homes of Palestinians with water cisterns on the roofs that are not always filled on schedule and often hold less than what is required between fillings is quite striking.

Today, and for more than four decades now, many of Israel’s major cities get a huge portion of their water from the mountain aquifer in the West Bank. Other water sources in Israel are dependent on this aquifer, and a few other smaller ones in the West Bank as well (see the map here). So not only would abandoning the West Bank mean that Israel loses a major portion of its water supply, the Palestinians would actually have the ability to control the sources of some water that is drawn within Israel’s internationally recognized boundaries.

That’s why water is always a sensitive issue. It’s made more so, of course, because, while the Palestinians and Israel “share” this major water resources, consumption is not at all equal. According to the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, daily per capita water consumption among Palestinians connected to the water grid in the West Bank for domestic, urban, and industrial use is some 73 liters. In areas in the northern West Bank, consumption is much lower. In 2008, per capita daily consumption was 44 liters in the Jenin area and 37 liters in the Tubas area, according to B’Tselem’s statistics. Today it’s about 38 liter per day in Jenin, but 169 in Jericho, which is very close to Israeli usage. About 113,000 Palestinians are not connected to the water grid, however, and their daily consumption is a mere 20-50 liters.

Most Palestinian water consumption is thus considerably lower than the WHO’s and USAID’s recommended bare minimum of 100 liters per day, and considerably less than the Israeli average of about 183 liters per day. So, yes, Schulz overstated it when he said Israelis consume four times as much per capita as Palestinians. They “only” consume between 2.4 and 3.5 times as much, with the gap between the average Israeli and the worst off Palestinian being about 7.5 times as much. And, let’s remember, that this is a resource that Israel took from the Palestinians when they occupied the West Bank. Before that, under Jordanian rule, and for the most part under the British Mandate, West Bank Palestinians enjoyed full access to the water resources in their area.

The conditions described above apply only in the West Bank. In Gaza, the situation is much worse. Gaza depends almost entirely on the coastal aquifer, which is also used by Israel and Egypt. The Palestinian Water Authority pumps more than three times the aquifer’s replenishment rate per year, and even that, due to unreliable supplies of electricity, water supply is erratic on a daily basis.

Over-pumping of that aquifer is a long-term problem, one that pre-dates Israel’s occupation of the Strip in 1967, but is now reaching crisis proportions. According to WHO findings, the Strip is expected to exhaust its supply of usable drinking water in 2016. UNICEF says that at present, 90% of the water from the coastal aquifer is unfit for human consumption. The majority of Gaza’s citizens have to buy water from vendors, with some paying as much as one-third of their income on water.

The pollution of the aquifer will, of course, also have a significant effect on Israelis and Egyptians, even beyond the fact that they will have to find alternative water sources. The World Bank funded the construction of a water treatment plant to alleviate part of this problem, but although the plant has been completed, it stands idle, caught in the middle of a dispute between Israel and Hamas over Israel providing increased electricity to the Strip in order to run the plant (Gaza still depends on Israel for most of its energy needs).

One can expect that Israel will eventually address this issue. The siege has, from the beginning, been carefully managed by Israel to ensure the deprivation of Gaza’s population while avoiding the sort of massive death and illness that might create international outrage and force Israel to act. But the water issue, as it involves both Gaza and the West Bank, threatens to turn into something much greater.

Although some groups, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, had warned years before the outbreak of violence in Syria of the extent of destabilization that the water crisis there could cause, such warnings were not loud enough and went unheeded by all those world leaders (including the Obama administration) who are currently wringing their hands about their “inability” to take action to stop the ongoing civil war there. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a similar dynamic is currently underway, and it is complicated by the occupation, the concomitant restrictions on movement and on Palestinian access to water (while Israeli needs have not yet been impacted significantly) and by the continuing and increasingly petty bickering between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

The subject of water is therefore a touchy one for Israel on many levels. Not only is it an issue of unequal access to this most crucial of resources, but it also illustrates the difficulties of truly separating Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, when it comes to water, it will be impossible for Israel to end the occupation and maintain its current standard of living with regard to water. It will also be impossible for any Palestinian entity to survive without significant external investment in irrigation, water treatment, desalinization, and other methods of conserving and treating water. In other words, when it comes to water, it is highly unlikely that Israel and the Palestinians can separate from each other as the Oslo formulation of a two-state solution envisions.

It has often been said that in the 21^st century, water will become one of, if not the leading cause of war. That is nowhere more evident than in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The warning signs are all there now, before things spiral even farther than they already have. But water can also become the basis for a pressing need on which Israelis and Palestinians can cooperate. That can lead to a practical solution and, while that can be a single state as some advocate, it can also be a two-state vision, albeit one that is very different from the Oslo formulation. Two states existing in cooperation and mutual dependence is the key to avoiding more conflict and opening the door to healing. That, rather than the obsessive separation of the two peoples, can exist in two states and can lead to peace. Water can either be the spark for increased conflict or the key to a better future for both peoples. This is the choice facing Israelis, Palestinians and, yes, the United States.

Addendum: The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, writing in Ha’aretz, lists some very pertinent and basic facts about the use of water and the massive inequality therein between Israel and the Palestinians. She makes it quite clear that the situation is much more dire than even Schulz realizes and that Israel is going to great pains to ensure that people (including most Israelis) don’t know how bad it is. In any case, the article is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this crucial issue. It should be accessible, but if people have any trouble, please contact me through my web site and I will gladly send you a summary of the facts Hass relays.

Photo: Rooftop water cisterns in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the West Bank.

The current Israeli onslaught against Gaza contains many echoes of the assault four years ago. In one regard, however, it is clear that Israel learned some lessons from its experience with “Operation Cast Lead” and is applying it to “Operation Pillar of Defense.” Those lessons are reflected in Israel’s use of [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The current Israeli onslaught against Gaza contains many echoes of the assault four years ago. In one regard, however, it is clear that Israel learned some lessons from its experience with “Operation Cast Lead” and is applying it to “Operation Pillar of Defense.” Those lessons are reflected in Israel’s use of social media to spread its “hasbara” (Hebrew for propaganda).

The spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been tweeting for years a consistent stream of reports of thwarted terrorist attacks, pictures of sexualized female IDF soldiers, reports of the many tons of goods allowed into Gaza and almost daily reports of the million or more Israelis living under constant threat of Hamas rockets. Now, Facebook and the IDF blog have been shifted into overdrive, with some rather shocking new features.

There have been, for some time, various programs offering tourists to Israel the opportunity to play as an IDF soldier at various sites in the country. Now, there’s a new game to help urge people to promote IDF hasbara, IDF Ranks. The idea is that you go to various pages, you like them on Facebook or you tweet a page and you help the IDF get its message out. In essence, a virtual army of supporters on the internet.

Here’s how the game is described: “IDF Ranks is an interactive game, directly implemented into all of the IDF’s social platforms allowing YOU to be a virtual part of the IDF.” It’s participants are told that: “Your every action — commenting, liking, sharing and even just visiting — rewards your efforts, as well as helps spread the truth about the Israeli army all over the world.”

The light-hearted air emanating from the game stands in stark contrast to the news reports, even those from the IDF Spokesperson herself, about the fighting.

The IDF Twitter feed has been an opportunity for tough talk, such as this:

@IDFSpokesperson We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.

And it warns away journalists like this:

@IDFSpokesperson Warning to reporters in Gaza: Stay away from Hamas operatives & facilities. Hamas, a terrorist group, will use you as human shields.

One might wonder how a reporter is supposed to report from Gaza if they don’t encounter any governmental officials or facilities.

The IDF blog has a “rocket counter” to enumerate the number of rockets launched at Israel and a graphic as to where they have hit. It also has a very telling page about how the IDF avoids harm to civilians.

What is revealing about this page is that it is an almost verbatim repetition of what Israel put out during Operation Cast Lead four years ago. Indeed, it generally references practices used in that attack, including dropping leaflets, pinpoint targeting, tapping rooftops (a low level bomb dropped on a roof that would cause minimal damage and warn those inside that a real bomb was coming), and automated phone calls. As anyone with knowledge of Gaza pointed out at the time, the densely populated Strip offered nowhere for civilians to run when attacks came. Israel is of course well aware of this, which indicates that most of these methods are meant to provide deniability more than protect civilians.

But the online blitz doesn’t stop with the IDF. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a large international organization with a $100 million budget, circulated the following picture on Facebook:

Caption: An Israeli soldier wearing tefillin, which are worn by religious Jews during morning prayers, while he holds his firearm and talks with his commander.

This picture is given the following description: “This awesome photo shows the true strength of the Israeli Army! This soldier’s right hand connects him to his commander, his left to his Creator. “For it is the Lord your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.”

Might we stop to wonder how most westerners would react if this was an obviously devout Muslim holding a Koran and a rifle? And how chilling would those words feel to most Western Christians and Jews if it was describing a Muslim with a quote from the Koran, instead of an Orthodox Jew and a quote from the Torah?

All of this comes as a reaction to what Israel realizes was an absolute disaster for their standing in many US citizen and non-Israeli Jews’ eyes: Operation Cast Lead. Despite US scuttling, the Goldstone Report — commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council — severely criticized Israel (Hamas as well, though the wide disparity in the capacity to damage resulted in a spotlight on Israeli actions), and the massive devastation of the onslaught sat poorly with many.

This time around, Israeli leaders met with foreign officials beforehand and laid out plans for communicating their view. Thus far, as well, the devastation of Gaza, bad as it has been, has not yet approached the levels of Cast Lead, especially in terms of loss of life.

Yet media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a staunch right-wing supporter of extreme Israeli policies, lamented in a tweet (since deleted and retracted) “Why Is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” And the ever repugnant Alan Dershowitz, who will misrepresent the law as far as he can to defend any and all Israeli actions bemoans the “…media and international community’s failure to distinguish between the Israeli military and Hamas terrorists.”

As of now, it looks like Israel is reluctant to engage in a ground offensive this time around. The latest calculation by the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, confirms 41 civilian deaths out of 105 in Gaza at the time they issued their statement yesterday. That is a much lower total and a slightly better ratio than Cast Lead, where B’Tselem catalogued 1,390 dead in Gaza, of whom 759 were civilians. Perhaps this, as much as the greater attention to Israeli hasbara, can be attributed to the world watching these events in a way it could not before.

But it is hard to get past the gaming and the fiery rhetoric we see across social media supporting Israeli action today. It is further evidence, though, of Israel’s alienation from the liberal values that motivate much of the international community, as well as the international Jewish community. In the long term, that may help, despite the fact that political obfuscation and powerful lobbying continue to allow the bombing of a besieged population in Gaza.

The House of Representatives, the State Department, and various pro-Israel organizations in Washington have all issued statements expressing support for Israel’s recent actions in the Gaza Strip and reaffirmed Israel’s right to act in “self-defense.”

Indeed, Israel’s right to self-defense is important to remember and [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The House of Representatives, the State Department, and various pro-Israel organizations in Washington have all issued statements expressing support for Israel’s recent actions in the Gaza Strip and reaffirmed Israel’s right to act in “self-defense.”

Indeed, Israel’s right to self-defense is important to remember and every missile fired from Gaza is one-too-many. But while Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas’ aggression is reaffirmed on a daily, if not hourly basis, another incontrovertible fact gets little mention or discussion.

Over the past ten years of on-again-off-again fighting, the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths has been dramatically one-sided. According to the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, 4,858 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security services in between the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 and the beginning of operation “Cast Lead” in December 2008. During this period 1,063 Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks, resulting in approximately 4.5 Palestinian deaths for every Israeli casualty.

During Operation Cast Lead, in less than one month of fighting, 1,397 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces and nine Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks. The ratio grew to 155 Palestinian deaths for each Israeli casualty.

In the past six days of violence the ratio has remained one-sided. Reports from Gaza indicate an overall death toll reaching 100. Three Israelis have died. The current ratio of Palestinian to Israeli casualties is 33.3 to one.

Obviously the numbers don’t tell the full story of the conflict. The numbers of civilian vs. military casualties matter as do troubling reports of Hamas using civilians as human shields. And both parties in the conflict receive little assistance from regional partners in imposing a meaningful peace process.

But the numbers also tell an undeniable truth and raise an important question. Maintaining Israel’s security is coming at a vastly higher cost in Palestinian deaths. At what point does Israel’s response become disproportionate?

The 33-to-one ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths in the past week means that Israel’s most staunch defenders, both in Israel and abroad, accept the disproportionate loss of life as an acceptable, if not wholly necessary, cost.

What does the devaluation of Palestinian life mean for the future of the peace process? What does it mean for Israel’s future capability to live at peace with its neighbors? What does it say about Israel’s future as a liberal democracy if its security relies on killing a vastly disproportionate number of Palestinians in every recent conflict with Palestinian militants?

A statement from J Street, Washington’s “Pro-Israel, Pro-peace” lobby, reveals a growing awareness of the unsustainable direction of Israel’s policies.

Yesterday, while emphasizing Israel’s “right and obligation to defend itself against rocket fire”, J Street urged a halt to the violence. “Today, rockets are more numerous and powerful. Israel is more isolated in its region and more ostracized around the world.”

The statement continued:

Military action may stop the rockets for a while at a cost of hundreds or even thousands injured or dead. But military force alone is inadequate as a response to the broader strategic challenge Israel faces. Only a political resolution to the century-old conflict with the Palestinians resulting in two states living side by side can end the conflict.