Yves here. The “dog bites man” mention of Thomas Friedman, although amusing, results in a headline that does not hone in on an important and revealing chapter in the sorry process of Israel’s systematic undermining of the dignity and quality of life of Palestinians. Author James Zogby participated in US efforts to build up businesses in Gaza so as to create a viable economy. Israel thwarted them at every turn. And then some in the US officialdom decided to back the Israel intransigence.
By Dr. James J. Zogby, the author of Arab Voices (2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. Originally published at Common Dreams
Last week, the New York Times carried a lengthy Tom Friedman article, “What Is Happening to Our World.” In it, Friedman makes the claim that Hamas could have turned Gaza into Dubai if only they had made the right choices in 2005. I hold no brief for Hamas. Their suicidal policies have brought terrible pain to Palestinians, but Friedman’s argument, which I’ve heard others make, is so fanciful and ahistorical that it must be rebutted.
The reasons for the Palestinian Territories’ lack of development go back 10 years before the fateful elections of 2005 that brought Hamas to power. I know because I was there and watched this disaster unfolding in real time. While Palestinians were not without fault, it is cruel to blame them for Israeli policies that deliberately strangled the Palestinian economy and the failure of the US to take effective measures to counter them.
From 1993 to 1996, I co-chaired a project, Builders for Peace, launched by Vice President Gore to promote U.S. investment in the Occupied Territories. In that capacity, I chaired the session on the Palestinian economy at the 1994 Casablanca Economic Summit and traveled to the region with Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. And on several occasions, I led delegations of U.S. business leaders to the West Bank and Gaza to promote business partnerships that would spur economic development.
We were motivated by a World Bank study that observed that the Palestinian private sector in the territories could be the engine for growth if they could secure investment and had the opportunity to freely engage in trade with the outside world. We knew, as Vice President Gore noted, that expanding economic opportunities wouldn’t bring peace, but that without these opportunities achieving peace would be impossible.
Our initial delegation visits gave us hope. Prominent US businesses were impressed with the Palestinian businessmen they met, and some deals were struck. In the months that followed, it became clear that the Israelis were unwilling to allow Palestinians or their US partners to import raw materials or export finished products without Israeli control or an Israeli middleman. As a result, the deals we had lined up collapsed.
The problem ran deeper. One day I received a call from an official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There was a shipment of 50,000 flower bulbs the U.S. had tried to get into Gaza. The bulbs sat awaiting Israeli clearance for so long that they rotted. Israel didn’t want competition for its own flower exports. The Agriculture Department had enough funds for another shipment of bulbs but didn’t want to risk the expenditure if the result would be the same.
In frustration, in 1995, I wrote a lengthy memo to President Clinton. I also testified with a number of my colleagues from BfP before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee detailing the Israeli impediments to investment and economic growth in Palestinian lands.
In my letter and testimony, I noted that the situation—less than two years after Oslo—had become dire. Israel’s closure of Palestinian lands and imposition of internal checkpoints across the West Bank following Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of Muslims in the mosque in Hebron had taken a toll in Palestinian support for peace. Settlements were growing, as was Palestinian unemployment. In the West Bank unemployment was over one-third of the workforce, while in Gaza it had reached a staggering 62%.
Specifically citing Gaza, I noted:
Despite promises from the international community, not a single job-creating infrastructure project has begun. Open sewage remains a serious health hazard. Instead of real progress, Palestinians got observers, studies, pledges, and unfulfilled promises, and blame.
Young Palestinians want nothing more than to have a job, live a meaningful life, raise a family and see them prosper. Their anger is the product of despair—born of fear and frustration that they have no future. If peace is to survive, we must attack this crisis with all the resources and capabilities we have to show Palestinians that the promise of peace can be realized.
Our asks were straightforward: that the Palestinian private sector be able to secure investments; that Israel be pressured to allow Palestinian businesses to import and export with the outside world; and that international donor funds be directed to job-creating projects. One of my BfP Jewish colleagues noted that the onus was on the US and Israel, not the Palestinians, to make these happen.
While President Clinton and the Senators expressed support, our recommendation that Israel be pressured to let go of the reins and allow Palestinians to breathe and grow was rejected by the administration’s “peace team.” They argued that any pressure on Israel would impede their negotiating efforts.
All this happened in the 1990s, not 2005. In a real sense, Hamas didn’t create the mess; they inherited and preyed off of the despair that was left to them by Israel’s suffocating control and US neglect and acquiescence. Hamas handled it badly, to be sure, but the reason why Gaza didn’t become Singapore, which is what Yasser Arafat had set as his North Star, or Dubai, had less to do with Hamas’ choices and more to do with those who failed Palestinians and peace.
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I don’t know the atmosphere at the time of the Oslo Accords, but I find it very hard to believe that the U.S. government really believed it could deal with the Palestinians without Israeli interference. Did Israel inadvertently forget to give advance warning?
The convenient cynics of 2024 would sneer that those in the 1990s were being too “naive”. Trying to fix problems has long since fallen out of vogue.
Please read Scott Ritter’s Why I no longer stand with Israel, and never will again. He argues the assassination of Rabin was designed to and did make coming to an accommodation with Palestinians impossible. He was killed in 1995.
Thank you. You have helped me to know that there was a time when many Israelis really wanted to live in peace with the Palestinians.
Nice to hear from Zogby. I thought that he had been effectively de-platformed.
Back in the late ‘70’s I took an undergraduate economics seminar. The professor had done research throughout the Middle East and published books and articles about economic development. One day a student asked what might be the most impactful action the U.S. could take to encourage broad prosperity across the region. His two word response: “Jettison Israel.”
Since its founding, the promoters of the Zionist state have made the impoverishment of the Arabs their mission. Sadly, Israel has exported this mindset to America, as demonstrated by its greatest apologists, our winner-take-all scions of Private Equity and the Military-Industrial Complex.
i dont know about the export direction of such exclusionist econ philosophy…austria sure seems like a likely spawning ground, after all…if not london and glasgow,lol.
but the point is still valid.
this tidbit:”…Young Palestinians want nothing more than to have a job, live a meaningful life, raise a family and see them prosper. Their anger is the product of despair—born of fear and frustration that they have no future…..”
immediately sent me into a frenzy of “sounds kinda familiar”.
everywhere ive lived or visited in the last 35 years could have the same statement applied to it.
and the obvious remedy in all cases is the same…and during my aforementioned frenzy, i of course thought of all the barriers to entry in my own endeavors(spell check suggested “briers”,lol)
i cant legally sell an egg…or a tomato…so black market farming(!)…and when the Extension of the Wilderness Bar is complete, i’ll cook dinner for rich folks for “Tips”(prix fix, gourmet, like a trattoria or french farmhouse)
it looks to me that one of the fundamental problems in this world…near the root of all the others…is a handful of wealthy folks who cannot compete…and so bribe governments to engineer their continued success…..by various methods, from regs to legalese to complex accounting/finance to war and outright rapine.
i mean, thats what the beef is with china, no?
“wahh…they out produce us…”
Hmmmm. In our region the local council is driving away the farmer’s stands where they sold their produce straight to customers for good prices. You would see a truck with bags of potatoes or onions or pumpkins or whatever just outsied their farms. The wife and I surmised that the local supermarkets put the council up to it because they thought that they were losing sales – in return for an appropriate campaign contribution of course to those Councillors.
It was done systematically and deliberately. Something Arabs are not showing any interest. Israel does what it needs to do. The Arab diaspora has not truly invested in the palestenian cause in the recent past.
Most of the “Arab diaspora” is refugees in Europe with marginal employment. And the US has been very clever about playing Arab states off against each other. Their unity re Palestine is a very recent development.
Thanks for this post, it is important history.
Perhaps a tad flippant, but I doubt the headline needed anything after the parenthetical.
I suppose Friedman thinks that it’s the Judenrat’s fault that The Warsaw Ghetto wasn’t more prosperous.
#Hamas could have turned Gaza into Dubai if only they had made the right choices in 2005.#
You are forgetting the “if only” thing. Hamas made economic cooperation with Israel practically impossible from security and ideology standpoint.
Hopefully Gaza will have a fresh start once Hamas is gone.
So…how you explain the devastating Palestinian’s devastating and desperate situation in the occupied West Back – which is run by the Palestinian Authority in cooperation and coordination with the IDF? No Hamas
to blame there, just increasing Israeli squattlements, constant raids and imprisonments, total apartheid policies of endless checkpoint and endless harassment of the indigenous inhabitants. Certainly there’s no possible option for a “Dubai” in any remaining Palestinian land still nominally held by the PA.
https://www.meforum.org/64444/abbas-to-un-israel-has-no-right-to-exist
“Hamas made economic cooperation with Israel practically impossible from security and ideology standpoint.”
Hamas only began to officially become a resistance group in 1987.* It should be needless to say that the problems in Palestine predated their inception. By contrast, the Likud party was started in 1973**, replete with “from the river to the sea” language openly calling for an Israel on Palestinian territories free of Palestinians. I am seeing some projection there.
I am also seeing a lot of weighting of the scales in such commentary. Israel having a problem with Hamas’ right to exist as a militarized resistance organization flies in the face of international law that accepts, even encourages, the existence of an armed resistance on occupied territories. If Abbas wants to make the point that Israel has no right to exist it is entirely within his rights to do so. It is for the occupier to explain why they elected to change the status quo ante of a majority Palestinian state without interference from foreign settler movements.
I also found it ironic the amount of ink spilled in your article about Abbas talking about the Holocaust. Why is it acceptable for Jews to define the Holocaust without regard to the effects its subsequent settler project had on Palestine? Who gave them the monopoly over a term that could just as easily be used in regard to what Israel is presently doing in Gaza and the West Bank?
This sense of entitlement to be the sole arbiter of the facts, right down to the definition of English terms, shows an arrogance that has never been in the Israeli interest and is now beginning to show its’ weaknesses. It might be an idea to reflect upon that before putting such overtly Zionist literature in front of a commentariat that may not reside within the artificial bubble that you have manufactured for yourselves.
Better propaganda, please.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Etymology
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud
Netanyahu himself said that Israelis funded Hamas in order to separate Gaza from the West Bank.
It is not that difficult to see what part of the the Israeli political and economic establishment has done over the decades partly due to merely greed and corruption, as well as partly due to genocidal religious ethnonationalism. Of course, if something is inconvenient to see, people tend not to see it.
And the Government and official policies of the Israeli’s since it’s UN created existence has been to consistently and most empathically deny any actual land or basic human rights to the the indigenous population of Palestine – which the current state of Israel increasingly occupies and very openly professes that all of the indigenous peoples of Palestine have “no right to exist” in what has become the squatted on land of a “greater Israel”, including most, if not all of the West Bank and now Gaza.
As Golda Meir so infamously declared: “There was no such thing as Palestinians”, unequivocally denying any historical Palestinian existence.
And why is it that one group of people that have been persecuted and displaced from mostly European (eastern and western) countries, should then somehow have the (western imposed) absolute right to exist on someone else’s historical land – who had nothing to do with western anti-jewish crimes – should then also have to be emphatically and eternally ‘recognize’ by the displaced and occupied peoples of Palestine?
It is, in truth, it is the western created state of Israel and it’s immigrant population who must first “recognize” the Palestinian people’s right to fully and equally exist (or co-exist) in their indigenous homeland of Palestine. Only then should they even consider whether this western colonizing project has called Israel has the a “right to exist “.
” Squattlements” ! That is a very cromulent word. Inventing cromulent new words is how we embiggen the language.
The apartment-block settlers are just subsidy settlers. I bet most of them could be lured back into Lesser Israel Proper with the same subsidy apartments there combined with no more support for their subsidy appartments in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.
The Hilltop Messianic Chiliast squattlements and squattlers are a whole ‘nother problem. If the ” Center and Left” minority in Israel could somehow seize power, including monopoly power over the IDF and all the Security and Police services, and they were ruthless enough; they could use ” stalinist methods” to encourage all the militant squattlers to move back into Lesser Israel Proper ( or even better, move back to Brooklyn or wherever. As people, at the personal quality level, they have no positive quality and offer no positive worth to offer anyone).
Perhaps detonate a few clean neutron nanobombs over a few militant squattlements to encourage the rest of them to get moving.
Well . . . a man can dream . . .
I was reading a few years ago that there was a lot of resentment about those settlements – from other Israelis. Apparently there are a lot of poor Israelis and they are infuriated how they get nothing but that these so-called settlers get new apartments with air-conditioning, swimming pools, modern services, etc. Lots of these settlers get off a plane and walk straight into this modern lifestyle while poorer Israelis are told to suck it up.
This is actually typical of colonial regimes.
While the population in the metropole might be as racist and hostile towards the oppressed native populations in the colonies, there is often growing resentment towards the settlers regarding the privileges they enjoy, e.g.
1) large, dirt-cheap estates with near-free agricultural workers — while the land-owners in the metropole, often small, are always on the brink of bankruptcy (that was a thing in Portugal);
2) dwellings funded through special housing programmes, while the citizens in the metropole cannot afford lodging (this is a thing in Israel);
3) economic privileges regarding guaranteed imports of colonial produce at guaranteed prices, reduced taxes, etc (this was a thing in Algeria); and so on.
And the settlers end up pestering the soldiers coming from the metropole, because they are not fighting successfully!
Israel should not exist, it sits on stolen Palestinian land.
Nahum Goldman in a conversation with David Ben Gurion, from the former’s book The Jewish Paradox, 1978, p. 99 (emphasis added):
So, people have not forgotten, not the Palestinians.
The point Friedman is making. Had Palestinians changed the focus from destruction of Israel to some form of cooperation, economic prosperity is all but guaranteed for all in the region.
So all those peaceful cooperating olive farmers who have tried to live side by side with settlers in the West Bank, only to see their livelihood burned to the ground, should just buck up and get with the program? Nice!
Interesting.
How about if Israel decided to use a carrot rather than conveniently presume the war option was the only suitable approach …
To expunging the Palestinians.
Your side is evil, murderous until proven it is sane.
Maybe use US aid for building…. Not F-35 that are sucking up all Lockheeds spares. To make it look useable
Gaza withdrawal wasn’t enough of a carrot for you. Prefer a larger carrot?
Israel did not withdraw from Gaza so much as turn it into an open air concentration camp, but maybe you missed the idea of carrots and sticks when used as a metaphor in negotiations.
Moving the army outside the camp makes little difference to those still inside of it randomly getting shot at from the guard towers.
I think it sums up the whole situation that Gaza after 2005, where Israelis continued to lob bombs wherever they wanted while counting how many calories they will let in, is supposed to be the leading example where Israel really tried to be super nice to Palestinians.
Decades of violence & eviction at the hands of Zionist settlers (often under the protection of the Israeli military).
Seemingly arbitrary assassinations of peaceful Palestinians going about their daily lives.
Just two examples–among many–of the ways in which Palestinians have been subjected to Zionist terrorism. I’m curious how you justify these abhorrent actions?
God’s chosen, I’m guessing.
Israel maintained control over Gaza’s borders. Also, your idea of a carrot is “stealing land in a different location” ( the WB). It isn’t a carrot if a bully stops punching you in the nose and aims for your stomach. It isn’t even a carrot of he stops punching you. Israeli defenders have this weird notion that if Israel stops being cruel in a particular way everyone is supposed to applaud their generosity.
Israel didn’t withdraw from Gaza. Israel retained control of the borders. In fact, between 2007 and 2010 Israel limited food imports into Gaza to the bare minimum to support life. Israel has always remained the occupying power under international law.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/17/israeli-military-calorie-limit-gaza
It’s funny, Zionist can’t get over events from thousands of years ago, but every Palestinian is allowed to be angry at those who just dropped bomb on his whole family for five minutes max, and then must forget the whole thing and happily take commands from the same people who killed all his relatives and stole his land.
Problem with Friedman point is that you can’t turn people into voluntary slaves, even if you keep them under your boot for few generations with the hope they evolve into it or something. But yeah, if pigs had wings and 1 + 1 equaled 3.921, the world could have been really different!
Cognitive dissonance much??!
The article shows that from the beginning, Israel had no intention for allowing Palestinians economic development, 10 years prior to Hamas coming on the scene. What stopped the Israelis to act constructively then and now they will make it happen, if Hamas is gone?
I think you will find that Netanyahu and his cronies are of the opinion that were there no Hamas it would have been necessary to invent one …
tell me you haven’t read the article without telling me you haven’t read the article
But more seriously (than my last knee-jerk comment), I would have thought that the focus of BfP mentioned in the article —
“…to promote business partnerships that would spur economic development”
based on
“We were motivated by a World Bank study that observed that the Palestinian private sector in the territories could be the engine for growth…”
— would have gotten Big Willie’s neoliberal fires a-blazing to where he would have overridden any objections the Israelis would have thrown, all in the name of free enterprise. Surprising to hear otherwise.
#shipment of 50,000 flower bulbs the U.S. had tried to get into Gaza.#
https://www.hollandbulbfarms.com/fall-planting-bulbs/bulk/bulk-rainbow-mixed-tulips-1000-bulbs
$136 per thousand x 50 = $6800
Compared with billions channeled into Gaza and spent on tunnels.
Funny, I’ve been reading that Netanyahu himself favored Hamas and gave them money because it provided and excuse to keep the Palestinians down. There are plenty of Hasbara “tunnels” built underneath our current MSM narrative of the so called “peace process.” If the Israelis like to “shoot and cry,” as they put it, our US pundits advise and cry–all that genocide, so intractable. You could drown in the crocodile tears.
I don’t think ordinary Americans other than the Hagee gulled evangelicals really believe any of this. But they’d rather not think about the mess on the Mediterranean at all. It’s all a dance that takes place between our well bribed politicians and their funders. Follow the money to the truth.
Oh, no, didnt give money to Hamas. Just allowed third parties to give money to Hamas…
Escorted by Mossad agents in vehicles stuffed to the gills with cash across the border into Gaza itself. You can’t make this up.
This is Disingenuous. The author has already pointed out that this occurred a at least a decade before Hamas – originally assisted into being by the Israeli Regime – were elected.
Following the experience outlined by Dr James Zogby during the 1990’s, is it being claimed or implied here that if the money had not been spent on tunnels the Israeli Regime would have done a 180 degree turn (360 degrees in Anna Baerbeck mathematics) and permitted the development of the Palestinian economy with that money which it had not been willing to permit ten years or so earlier?
If so what concrete evidence is offered, if any, to substantiate such an implication?
I read a Friedman article on the situation last week or so. He basically stated as part of his ‘solution’, that Hamas should release all its hostages, but Israel should not release any Palestinian hostages/prisoners. With such a one-eyed stance, is it any wonder the world outside the US and its western vassals, views such western solutions with incredulity and contempt?
I saw an excerpt last night from Arouri’s last interview. He was the primary Hamas negotiator over the hostage issue that Israel assassinated in Beirut. In it he said that he had always tried to get an “all for all” settlement, in which Israel could have all the hostages in return for clearing out the Israeli prisons of Palestinian political prisoners. The reason it took so long to make the deal they ultimately ended up with was because Israel would not go for it. Israel determined who and how many to release, not Hamas.
The parents of all of those soldiers should be really pissed off that Israel is using their family members as human shields against giving up their political prisoners. Point being, were that interview more widely known the ROW could only be even more disgusted with the way that all ended up. They had a chance to get everyone released, but overtly refused to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjExuvNC2ko&t=560s
That video, for me at least, starts after the interview. People who want to watch it should scroll back to the beginning.
Zogby can see the dystopia Israel makes of Gaza, but then condemns Hamas for reacting to occupation. Perhaps “suicidal” is correct as Hamas soldiers are all ready to die for their cause, and many do die. All that happens now is that Israel goes ‘pedal to the metal” with its ethnic cleansing project, which if we can believe them, will result in a Gaza free of Palestinians. Hamas did not create this mentality as it precedes 2005 and Hamas simply exposed as a long-running project that blocked development in Gaza years ago which Zogby describes.
Zionism,if my understanding is correct, wants an Israel from the Jordan to the Mediterranean for Jews only. Ben Gurion is quoted above as saying, “They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that ?” Why indeed. Were it me, I would not.
The “new” Zionism (Greater Israel) I am hearing about is demanding the area from river to river; the Euphrates to the Nile.
It is always good to have ambitions, but it is best to not have self defeating ones. They couldn’t manage to achieve their first goal without turning the world against them, so envisioning the second one already sounds ludicrous. They seem to forget that even in a Middle East apparently devoid of democracy, 411 million Arabs still get a vote.
This is interesting to me: I hadn’t specifically heard this before. It strikes me because there seems to be a bit of ignoring the obvious from a large set of zionism defenders: that if Israel was allowed/successful in achieving their aims w/regard to “river to the sea” Israel, they would not be able to stop there
Zionism as a colonial/setter-colonial project requires expansion and thus an idealogical framework to justify that expansion. In the US, you can map the westward and international expansion along similar lines. Expansion justified as a security buffer against the indigenous population, as manifest destiney, as the Monroe Doctrine, leader of the free world, international rules based order, etc all wrapped up in American Exceptionalism.
So, I was never sure what would be the next stage for Israel if they actually completed their genocide and ethnic cleansing. They would have to grab onto new “security concerns” (Iran!!!), justification for new borders, etc. If you have a good link to read about this “new zionism” I’d appreciate it if you could share
I don’t know that it is so much a “new” Zionism as it is a new idea to me that is proposed by such as Smotrich and other Israeli cabinet members who support it…
https://currentaffairs.adda247.com/greater-israel-map/
…and they are preaching it in such unlikely places as Paris, which is making countries like Jordan and Egypt call them out on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDZ15yHZUTs
So, unlikely as it sounds, it is apparently a thing in right wing Israeli circles.
Not even all Jews, only some of them. There are those self-hating types and so on, you wouldn’t want them in your precious state.
There is a group of them living as a community in New York State and they are not exactly making themselves popular with their neighbours.
This pretty much explains Israel’s position.
“Ministers in the Netanyahu government said, ‘We want to kill all the Palestinians, we don’t want anyone in Gaza to remain alive, and w e want to force an exodus on them if they don’t leave Gaza,’” recalled Magnier. “The heritage minister of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said we need to use nuclear bombs on Gaza. And the other minister said we are going to cut both electricity and food and supply to Gaza and ‘don’t lecture us about human rights.’”
Read the full article here.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240109/netanyahu-in-real-trouble-idf-cant-control-gaza—analyst-1116068469.html
The US and EU will do nothing. But, maybe give them the 155mm nuke shells, some napalm and nerve gas to speed the process up.
The question is when will Israel start on the West Bank and Lebanon?
The US, UK and the EU are in the process of or have destroyed any or all meaningful relationships in the middle East and a lot of the global south. I don’t think that they have any understanding of the long term blow-back. That is coming.
This is a single observation and no conclusions can be made from it. I can tell another story of Taybeh brewery in the West Bank which I visited once. They were founded after the Oslo accords and their beer could be found in many bars in Israel.
While there were difficulties in the 90s, and many more restrictions after the start of the second Intifada, the blockade has become permanent and much more strict after Hamas came to power.
It’s a violation of house rules to straw man or otherwise misrepresent a post. Zogby was involved for 3 years in a senior role in a US initiative to increase investment and business activity in Palestinian areas. This is not “a single observation” by which I take you, either by carelessness or bad faith, to depict his example of the flower bulbs rotting in storage as the only evidence Zogby has. He clearly has much more, otherwise he would not have been asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And he had other colleagues making similar testimony, suggesting a wealth of evidence. Otherwise one person presenting would have sufficed.
Though what follows may seem off point, I appreciate this article from Dr. James J. Zogby.
With all due respect, I think the comments are missing the crucial element—Joe Biden has publicly said he is a Zionist. Furthermore, I think Biden’s religious beliefs are even more deranged than most people realize. It is a dangerous assumption, imho, to think this can be ignored or that it is a good quality in a US president.
Reuters, ‘I am a Zionist’: How Joe Biden’s lifelong bond with Israel shapes war policy
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/i-am-zionist-how-joe-bidens-lifelong-bond-with-israel-shapes-war-policy-2023-10-21/
It is widely known that Christian Zionists far out-number Jewish Zionist and that there are more Christian Zionists than Jews who live in Israel. From the Religion Media Center, “The biggest number of Christian Zionists is in the United States—more than 30 million, according to the author and academic Tristan Sturm.”
https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/factsheets/factsheet-christian-zionism/
Though both Christian and Jewish Zionists support a Jewish homeland, the important distinction between them is the Christians associate Jews in Israel with biblical end-times and the Jewish Zionists are secular.
According to Pew Research a majority of US Jews are emotionally attached to Israel. Yet, “But on some measures, Jews’ feelings for Israel are equaled or even exceeded by those of white evangelical Protestants.” Most evangelicals are Zionists.
Furthermore from Pew, “For example, twice as many white evangelical Protestants as Jews say that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God (82% vs. 40%).” “White evangelical Protestants also are more likely than Jews to favor stronger U.S. support of Israel.”
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/10/03/more-white-evangelicals-than-american-jews-say-god-gave-israel-to-the-jewish-people/
Thirty-million American Zionists make up a sizable voting block which Trump and now Netanyahu know how to appeal to and manipulate. However, I’m convinced that Biden is a sincere, if not obsessed, religious Zionist. This fact makes it difficult to think that Biden is capable of independent judgement in the war on Gaza and, more importantly, willingly or unconsciously, he might cause an even more disastrous regional war.
If someone can provide an analysis of Hamas’ class structure and the class interests it represents and or is fighting for, I would appreciate it. Are there different factions in it? Is it essentially a bourgeois nationalist group? What are its aims with regard to a Palestinian state or society? Thank you in advance.
In your opinion, how much do the issues with commerce in Gaza relate to security concerns vs Israelis intentionally keeping Gazans down? The stories of Gazans destroying greenhouses after the Israelis left, of Gazans turning water pipes into rockets, very much strike me as problems created / perpetuated by Gazans and I believe that Israelis have a right to security that drives restrictions on the movement of goods and people that end up as detrimental to the thriving of commerce, but am also open to the idea that the Israelis intentionally block commerce out of spite and/or economic self-interest, but curious on your take as to the mix.
The greenhouse story, like Israeli claims of Hamas rapes, is false:
https://matthewzgindin.medium.com/greenhouses-in-gaza-what-happened-ba22b1ac9fdd
I do not have time to check the bona fides of the other tale.
Your underlying premise is also inaccurate. Israel as an occupier does not have a right to self defense. It in fact has duties to the people in the occupied territories, duties it is flagrantly failing to honor. Palestinians as residents in occupied territory have a right to rebel under international law. Even the rules based US presumably would also recognize such a right, since it is in our Bill of Rights (“We hold these truths to be self-evident….That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish and institute new government.”)
Sounds like the greenhouse story has nuance (rather than being a myth) in the sense that there was looting but not any real anti-Israeli destruction. To be honest, I stumbled upon your site and was under the impression that it was a site for open and sincere discussion about aspects of the conflict that Americans typically don’t hear in the mainstream media. Unfortunately, your claim that the stories of Hamas rapes is false tells me all that I need to know about your priors. Good luck.
I suggest you broaden your reading rather than hold fast with your priors.
It has been well substantiated by Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal at the Grayzone. For instance:
https://medyanews.net/israeli-evidence-of-hamas-war-crime-revealed-to-be-fake/
See here for a longer discussion: NY Times October 7 hoax exposed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXdCd8VPo4g
Not only were none of the parties crying rape able to back up their claims, some walked them back. They were made by NGOs that fundraised off them, one $50 million.
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst who was the daily briefer to three US presidents, pointed out that crying rape was the oldest trick in the book, since it is extremely prejudicial and as your reaction demonstrates, people don’t want to hear later debunkings. McGovoern and brought up other historical examples.
So it seems your are the one who has limited tolerance for views not endorsed by the MSM and reject what you profess to seek. Looks like you need to go back to your old news diet.
Of course, Tom Friedman is also the man who loves a Neoliberal world flat. It made it possible to turn God’s Chosen into oligarchs round the world. The post, above, by Alice X on Ben Gurion’s recognition that Israel was founded on stolen land is correct. The US has never been an honest broker, so the marginalization of Palestinians from their own land isn’t surprising.
Blinken is on his the latest Middle East “shuttle diplomacy”. On an interview with NBC, he declared that Israel has made much progress in its objectives. No kidding. He bemoans the suffering of Palestinian civilians, but Hamas is hiding in hospitals, mosques, churches, some more hospitals, ambulances, schools – in short, everywhere. So, too bad. Blinken also strongly supports Israel’s obligation to self defense from reaction to their crimes to begin with, and has in the last few days said he wants US billions of American families’ tax payers money for the IDF.
He feels reassured from visits and talks with regional governments’ commitment not to escalate the conflict. Though he feels the cycle of violence won’t end. Essentially, unless Israel gets assurances of peace, even, or specially from demonic Iran, the next six months will be a Tom Friedman six-month prediction, a nothing burger.. Moreover, Israel has said openly, again and again, that it opposes a two state solution. Heads must roll, beginning with Antony Blinken and Vicky Neuland-Kagan.