tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6667586261840850702024-03-13T11:55:44.958-04:00Headrush - Ed Webb's Dickinson BlogTechnology, pedagogy, terror.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.comBlogger1603125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-9392681101168068592024-03-13T05:31:00.001-04:002024-03-13T05:31:08.411-04:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 03/13/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.mei.edu/publications/morocco-and-algerias-regional-rivalry-about-go-overdrive'>Morocco and Algeria’s regional rivalry is about to go into overdrive | Middle East Institute</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Morocco'>Morocco</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/diplomacy'>diplomacy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/energy'>energy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Africa'>Africa</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Algeria'>Algeria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/WesternSahara'>WesternSahara</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-72193089142319002942024-03-08T04:31:00.001-05:002024-03-08T04:31:05.861-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 03/08/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://theconversation.com/lebanese-israeli-fighting-looks-set-to-scuttle-plans-for-historic-land-border-settlement-222832'>Lebanese-Israeli fighting looks set to scuttle plans for historic land border settlement</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Lebanon'>Lebanon</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Syria'>Syria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/borders'>borders</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/territory'>territory</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/law'>law</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/PLO'>PLO</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a></p><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/pakistan-iran-strike-middle-east-war.html'>https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/pakistan-iran-strike-middle-east-war.html</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/conflict'>conflict</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/MENA'>MENA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iraq'>Iraq</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Syria'>Syria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Hamas'>Hamas</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Pakistan'>Pakistan</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iran'>Iran</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Houthis'>Houthis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/ISIS'>ISIS</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/hezbollah'>hezbollah</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-13057235157846554162024-03-06T04:31:00.001-05:002024-03-06T04:31:03.259-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 03/06/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/05/noah-feldman-jews-israel-progressive-justice-theology-politics/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3cf743c%2F65e74a40c159ca50c467ca2f%2F5b649956ae7e8a6ecdac8182%2F37%2F53%2F65e74a40c159ca50c467ca2f'>Opinion | Noah Feldman: To be a Jew today, after Oct. 7 - The Washington Post</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Judaism'>Judaism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Jewishness'>Jewishness</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/generations'>generations</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/politics'>politics</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Zionism'>Zionism</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">Progressive Judaism gives expression to what it considers the biblical values of justice, equality, freedom and the like. When the Holocaust and Israel became part of this social justice theology, both had to accord with it. The Holocaust became a moral lesson of Never Again on par with the Hebrews’ slavery in Egypt. Israel became a model of aspirational redemption, a role it could play only because it was possible to imagine the Jewish state as liberal and democratic.</p></div><div><div><div><div><div></div></div><div><div><div>Advertisement</div></div></div><div><wp-ad id="slug_enterprise_2" class="chromatic-ignore" data-chromatic="ignore" style="min-height: 250px; margin: auto; display: block;" data-slot="/701/wpni.opinions" aria-hidden="true" data-renderbehavior="lazy" data-refresh="true" data-json="{"targeting":{"zeus_rendercount":"1","zeus_slot":"slug_enterprise_2.init.dsk","kpi":"ctr","pos":"enterprise_2","ctr":["zeus_enterprise_2"],"wp_ad_refresh":"0","wp_refresh":"enterprise_2_0","pwt":["enterprise_2_sub_sin_mab_0","enterprise_2_sub_sin_v_0"]}}"></wp-ad></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div>Story continues below advertisement</div></div><div><div></div></div><div><wp-ad id="slug_mob_enterprise_2" class="chromatic-ignore" data-chromatic="ignore" style="min-height: 250px; margin: auto; display: none;" data-slot="/701/wpni.opinions" aria-hidden="true" data-renderbehavior="never" data-refresh="true" data-json="{"targeting":{"zeus_rendercount":"1","zeus_slot":"slug_mob_enterprise_2.init.dsk","kpi":"ctr","pos":"mob_enterprise_2","ctr":["zeus_mob_enterprise_2"],"wp_ad_refresh":"0","wp_refresh":"mob_enterprise_2_0","pwt":["mob_enterprise_2_sub_sin_mab_0","mob_enterprise_2_sub_sin_v_0"]}}"></wp-ad></div></div></div></div><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">If Israel does not embody the values of liberal democracy, however, it cannot serve as a moral ideal for progressive Jews whose beliefs mandate universal human dignity and equality. In the starkest possible terms, a God of love and justice cannot bless or desire a state that does not seek to provide equality, dignity, or civil and political rights to many of the people living under its authority.</p></div></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Today’s Israeli Zionists sometimes think and act as though American Jewish progressives owe Israel a duty of loyalty. For Jewish progressives, however, the higher duty of loyalty is owed to divine principles of love and justice.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">Their great-grandparents, if they were Reform Jews, had the option of de-emphasizing Israel, almost to the point of ignoring Zionism. Before the state of Israel existed, they did not need to reconcile their beliefs about Judaism as a private, diasporic religion with the aspirations of Zionist Jews. Even after the state arose, it was possible for a time to treat it as separate from Jewish thought, practice and identity.</p></div><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">The young progressives do not have this luxury. They inherited a form of Judaism that already incorporated Israel into its theology. They do not know how to be Jews without engaging Israel. Yet the content of their broader theology — their beliefs about Jewish morality and tikkun ‘olam<i> </i>— make support of Israel difficult or even repugnant.</p></div></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">young progressive Jewish critics of Israel feel an unstated connection to Israel even as they resist and reject it. They feel no commitment to the existing state. But they do feel a particular need to criticize Israel because it matters to their worldview as Jews. They cannot easily ignore Israel, as early Reform Jews ignored Zionism. So they engage Israel — through the vehicle of progressive critique. The phrase “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/us/jewish-palestinian-protest-israel-gaza/index.html" target="_blank">not in our name</a>” captures the sense of personal implication in Israel’s conduct that both marks and challenges their sense of connection.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy drop-cap" dir="null">progressive Judaism will have to work out its long-term attitude toward Israel. One possibility is for progressive Jews to tack away from the focus on Israel, to engage their Jewishness in other ways — familial, spiritual and personal. This would entail real theological change.</p></div><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">But so would embracing simultaneously a God of loving social justice and a state that rejects liberal democracy.</p></div></div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/24/lebanon-economic-crisis-war-israel/?wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3cdda0a%2F65db6eb278c95115f3a68f50%2F5b649956ae7e8a6ecdac8182%2F19%2F43%2F65db6eb278c95115f3a68f50'>War with Israel would be disastrous to economically stricken Lebanon - The Washington Post</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Lebanon'>Lebanon</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/economy'>economy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/politics'>politics</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/hezbollah'>hezbollah</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/war'>war</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/military'>military</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/remittances'>remittances</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-13302251244174434852024-02-29T04:31:00.001-05:002024-02-29T04:31:06.914-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 02/29/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://newlinesmag.com/argument/making-it-work-from-the-river-to-the-sea/'>Making It Work From the River to the Sea - New Lines Magazine</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/no_tag'>no_tag</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Israelis, enjoying vastly superior power, remain maximalist, Palestinians slightly less so. Both seek national self-determination on their own terms. But the plain reality is that they cannot both have it, because — rightly or wrongly — they both seek it in the same place. For them both to be able to achieve true and lasting national self-determination, they must do so not in 2D, cartographically, but in 3D, holographically. Say hello to nonterritorial autonomy, a long-standing but little-discussed method of managing diversity within a state by granting dispersed groups self-government on the basis of identity rather than land, while also retaining a broader structure of power sharing.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Overlaying two nations on one country sounds like science fiction, but that is testament to the corrosive power of the nationalist thinking that drives the two-state solution. Partition says more about the preoccupations of the chiefly American and European politicians who cling to it than it does about the aspirations or real lives of the people who will have to live in the resulting states.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Partition has failed almost everywhere it has been attempted. Ireland is perhaps the starkest example, but we might also consider India and Pakistan in 1947, Pakistan again and Bangladesh in 1971, Korea, Vietnam, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Sudan and a fistful of others. Partition has perpetuated conflict and embedded trauma down the generations. Millions have died thanks to the idea that separating supposedly irreconcilable populations solves everything.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Christians can get on with Muslims. Muslims can get on with Jews. Jews can get on with Christians. Israel’s nationalist schemer Avigdor Lieberman may have told The New York Times in 2006 that “[e]very country where you have two languages, two religions and two races, you have conflict,” but decent folk need not go along with him. As much as the region’s history is marked by spasms of religiously inspired violence, it is also underpinned by long centuries of not just tolerance but productive coexistence.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">while we should strongly resist the fantasy of Palestine as paradise, we should also acknowledge that, at least until about a century ago, people generally lived the daily reality of sharing limited space more or less amicably.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Zionism fit into Balfour’s worldview of racial supremacy and the social ideal of what we would now call ethnic cleansing. Its exceptionalism also led, as the historian Avi Shlaim has written, to another key assumption — that Jews and Arabs occupy exclusive and antagonistic ethnic categories. Shlaim himself asserts the falsity of that assumption in his self-identification as an Arab Jew, as do other notable figures including journalist Rachel Shabi, academic Ella Shohat, author Sasson Somekh and art curator Ariella Azoulay.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">sectarian exclusivity is not a Middle Eastern ideal. It is European.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p data-beyondwords-marker="9798299e-db78-4edd-b55f-d581a3205a4a">a group of European Jewish journalists and political pundits, seeking safe havens, borrowed from evangelical Christian millenarianism to promote the novel idea that Jews were a nation and so deserved self-determination in a state of their own.</p><p data-beyondwords-marker="645e7f64-87df-4211-9cc2-e797836946c2">This was political Zionism, an ideology contrasting sharply with the spiritual longing for Zion expressed in Jewish liturgy, and it emerged in a vicious era. Civilization was understood to be an achievement of white Europeans. Its apogee, the summit of human enterprise, was the advanced ability of white people to create nation-states. They governed best, and it was the natural order for everyone else to be governed.</p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Arthur Balfour — famed for endorsing Zionism on behalf of the British government in 1917 — was able to glide effortlessly from stating that “the white and black races are not born with equal capacities” to the idea that a Zionist state in Palestine would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body [the Jews] which is alien and even hostile.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">A yearning for justice — for universal civil, political and human rights under the rule of law — is what drives the one-state solution.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p data-beyondwords-marker="e1b2c085-5238-43c6-aa41-76c48a486344">the past few years have seen a shift in Palestinian opinion away from older generations’ lingering trauma around lost land to a new focus on attaining equality of rights wherever grossly unjust conditions prevail under Israeli control.</p><p data-beyondwords-marker="f04cd862-bb2a-4a68-9a9f-d04e0e39b7b7">This has illuminated a long-standing slogan of liberation: “From the river to the sea” (with or without “Palestine will be free” appended). Some — wildly mistaken — choose to interpret the sentiment as genocidal, a call for the erasure of Jewish presence. Public prosecutors in Germany even tried (and failed) to criminalize it.</p><p data-beyondwords-marker="e78316b0-3208-44be-8840-ff29e442c21d">The phrase is not new: It has been said for 60 years or more by Palestinians and Israelis alike who oppose the reality of partition</p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Faced with such absurd cruelty, “From the river to the sea” is simply a plea to be rid of it. It seeks to sweep away the divisions, to reclaim equality. It is an uncomplicated rejection of Israel’s laws of classification and segregation and an assertion of the most basic right to dignity in one state. It highlights that partition represents calamitous political failure.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Even with land swaps and other adjustments taken into account, supporting a “solution” that hands four-fifths of the available territory to one party seems naive at best.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">as the lawyer and Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann has identified, a minimum of 200,000 Jewish Israelis would have to be displaced from the West Bank in order to ensure the territorial viability of a Palestinian state. Short of a land incursion by international forces and a yearslong deployment of peacekeeping troops, such an operation is inconceivable.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">When “safe passage” across the 30 miles separating Gaza from the West Bank was written into the Oslo II agreement, dreamers advocated all kinds of schemes for bridges, tunnels, corridors, roads and rail lines. Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak proposed an elevated highway in 1999, and 20 years later U.S. President Donald Trump imagined a tunnel. Either is achievable in terms of engineering. Neither is viable in terms of security.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Two million Israeli citizens, roughly 20% of the population, are Palestinian Arabs. Some, or many, might accept citizenship in a partitioned Israeli state, were it to be offered. But an offer is by no means certain. If — as many in Israel want — the new state decides it has no room for Arabs, are these millions to be driven across the border into Palestine, as Muslims and Hindus were driven across the newly drawn India-Pakistan border in 1947?</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Inasmuch as any state has a right to exist, Israel and Palestine are on an equal footing. We can consign them to unending battles over ownership of every pebble, or we can enable both to exist simultaneously in the same space — to coexist.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Coercion is going to be essential. In Northern Ireland in the 1990s, public weariness with fighting helped pave the way for agreement. Today, though, Palestinians and Israelis remain as determined as ever. We, the outside world, must therefore demand accountability and force a sustainable resolution</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Nathan Thrall wrote compellingly in his 2017 book “The Only Language They Understand” about how every peace proposal has failed because, ultimately, Israel has always preferred the status quo to any other outcome. Two-state solutions would also favor Israel, on land area alone. So, for the sake of peace, we must worsen the status quo for Israel — and if the U.S. continues to refuse to impose sanctions, and the Gulf kakistocrats continue to offer deals on arms and tech, that means we must erase the Green Line.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Some visions of a single state between the river and the sea belong to the extremists, plotting ethnic cleansing to rid “us” of “them” once and for all; the power asymmetries mean that Israeli eliminationists, who promote annexation and demographic engineering to perpetuate Jewish supremacy, enjoy far more traction than their counterparts in southern Lebanon and Tehran. But a politically viable, morally acceptable one-state solution does not involve driving anyone into the sea.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Ethnic and cultural diversity is a core human good. It is moral, it benefits societies, it boosts economies, and it is worth supporting. Nonterritorial autonomy would do what the judgment in Brown v. Board of Education did: It would enable Israelis, Palestinians and the many other minorities to be integrated for the good of all whether they like it or not, protected from themselves and one another, represented by their own linked administrations, governed within a single territory. It is progressive. It takes us from zero-sum to win-win.</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-213543348354008412024-02-26T04:31:00.001-05:002024-02-26T04:31:05.630-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 02/26/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/14/united-arab-emirates-retaliatory-airstrikes-iran-00141460'>UAE restricts US ability to launch retaliatory airstrikes against Iran proxies - POLITICO</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UAE'>UAE</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/military'>military</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/houthis'>houthis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Yemen'>Yemen</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/RedSea'>RedSea</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/bases'>bases</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iran'>Iran</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Some Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, are increasingly restricting the U.S. from using military facilities on their soil to launch retaliatory airstrikes on Iranian proxies</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The U.S. has long deployed thousands of troops at facilities in the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and elsewhere in the Middle East, and the Arab countries’ role in supporting U.S. military activities has come under intensified scrutiny since the Israel-Hamas war that erupted in October.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p class="story-text__paragraph " data-content-child-index="0-3">Certain Arab countries are restricting access to basing and overflight for the assets participating in these retaliatory strikes, the official said. It’s not clear how many countries are taking this action.</p><p class="story-text__paragraph " data-content-child-index="0-4">The reason the UAE in particular is doing this, per one of the Western officials, is “they don’t want to appear like they’re against Iran and they don’t want to appear too close to the West and Israel for public opinion reasons.” The UAE has in recent years also raised concerns about increasing attacks from the Houthis in Yemen. The rebel group has previously <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/uaes-defense-ministry-destroyed-2-houthi-ballistic-missiles-wam-2022-01-24/" class=" js-tealium-tracking " target="_blank" data-tracking="mpos=&mid=&lindex=&lcol=" aria-label="
launched missiles (opens in a new window)">
launched missiles</a> into the UAE.</p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p class="story-text__paragraph " data-content-child-index="0-3">The UAE is home to Al Dhafra Air Base, which hosts dozens of U.S. aircraft involved in operations across the region, including fighter aircraft and reconnaissance drones such as MQ-9 Reapers.</p><p class="story-text__paragraph " data-content-child-index="0-4">In October, U.S. F-16 fighter jets <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-carries-out-strikes-against-iranian-targets-syria-pentagon-2023-10-27/#:~:text=The%20strikes%20took%20place%20at,the%20condition%20of%20anonymity%2C%20said." class=" js-tealium-tracking " target="_blank" data-tracking="mpos=&mid=&lindex=&lcol=" aria-label="
carried out (opens in a new window)">
carried out</a> retaliatory strikes against two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies. Although the Pentagon at the time did not disclose where the aircraft came from, Al Dhafra is one of the closest facilities in the region that typically hosts F-16s.</p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p class="story-text__paragraph " data-content-child-index="0-6">soon after the October strike, the Pentagon stopped publicly disclosing many of the aircraft types used in subsequent retaliatory operations against Iranian proxies.</p><p class="story-text__paragraph " data-content-child-index="0-7">Meanwhile, strikes on the Houthis since January have been conducted by U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets from the nearby aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is in international waters.</p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Overflight access in the region has been mired in problems in recent years because of the fighting in Yemen. The Federal Aviation Administration previously <a href="https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/KICZ_A0016-20_Advisory_NOTAM-Persian_Gulf_and_Gulf_of_Oman.pdf" class=" js-tealium-tracking " target="_blank" data-tracking="mpos=&mid=&lindex=&lcol=" aria-label="
issued a warning (opens in a new window)">
issued a warning</a> about operating aircraft over the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.</div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.axios.com/2024/02/01/saudi-arabia-oil-production'>Saudi Arabia's oil move leaves analysts scratching their heads</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/KSA'>KSA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Saudi'>Saudi</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/oil'>oil</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/energy'>energy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/economy'>economy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/OPEC'>OPEC</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-78207433379130741812024-02-07T04:31:00.001-05:002024-02-07T04:31:06.484-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 02/07/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/6/its-been-a-year-since-the-earthquake-and-syrians-feel-forgotten-once-again'>It’s been a year since the earthquake and Syrians feel forgotten once again | Turkey-Syria Earthquake | Al Jazeera</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Syria'>Syria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/conflict'>conflict</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/earthquake'>earthquake</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/earthquakes'>earthquakes</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/humanitarian'>humanitarian</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/aid'>aid</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/children'>children</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The earthquake ravaged an already suffering population. Syrians lost family members, homes, livelihoods, the little sense of stability they may have had amid the continuing war. Over the past year, the number of Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance has surged from 15.3 million to 16.7 million, the highest since the start of hostilities about 13 years ago. And yet, the greater need has not been met with adequate funding; to the contrary, contributions have dwindled.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">A staggering <a href="https://www.unicef.org/mena/media/15726/file/hno_2022_final_version_210222.pdf.pdf">90 percent</a> of households struggled to cover essential needs, leaving families to make tough decisions for their children.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">There’s almost no mental health support available for young people, despite almost 70 percent of children struggling with sadness, according to a survey by Save the Children. Around one-third of Syrian households have children showing signs of mental distress, the UN reported.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Over half of healthcare workers, including qualified mental health professionals, have left the country over the past decade.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p>Before the earthquake, the education system in Syria was already struggling. According to the UN, more than 7,000 schools had been damaged or destroyed. Some two million children were not attending school and 1.6 million were at risk of dropping out<strong>.<br>
</strong></p>
<p>The earthquake made the situation even worse, especially in northwest Syria, where 54 percent of schools were affected.</p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The UN humanitarian response plan was only 37.8 percent funded in 2023. Late last year, media reports indicated that the World Food Programme (WFP) will stop much of its main food assistance programme in the country this year due to a lack of funding.</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-28981772351267022552024-02-05T04:31:00.001-05:002024-02-05T04:31:03.580-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 02/05/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68192722'>Iran says US strikes are a 'strategic mistake'</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iran'>Iran</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iraq'>Iraq</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Syria'>Syria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/proxy'>proxy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/IRGC'>IRGC</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/militias'>militias</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UK'>UK</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/military'>military</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">Iran's foreign ministry said the strikes on Iraq and Syria "will have no result other than intensifying tensions and instability in the region".<!-- --></p></section><div><div></div></div><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">Earlier, Iraq said the US retaliatory strikes would bring "disastrous consequences" for the region.<!-- --></p></section><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">At least 16 people, including civilians, were killed as a result of the strikes, Iraqi officials said.<!-- --></p></section><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">A spokesman for Iraq's prime minister said the strikes were a "violation" of his country's sovereignty and that they would impact "the security and stability of Iraq and the region". <!-- --></p></section><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">While Syria said the US "occupation" of Syrian territory "cannot continue".</p></section></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">There have been no strikes on Iranian soil.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">Iran has denied any role in the attack on the US base, saying it was "not involved in the decision making of resistance groups".<!-- --></p></section><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry said US strikes on Iraq, Syria and Yemen "merely provide for the goals of the Zionist regime", referring to US ally Israel.</p></section></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Russia has called for an "urgent" meeting of the UN Security Council "over the threat to peace and safety created by US strikes on Syria and Iraq"</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-36992605480291587382024-01-31T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-31T04:31:03.144-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/31/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2024/jan/30/how-war-destroyed-gazas-neighbourhoods-visual-investigation'>How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation | Gaza | The Guardian</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/IDF'>IDF</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/violence'>violence</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/war'>war</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/conflict'>conflict</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/destruction'>destruction</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p class="dcr-1lpi6p1">Using satellite imagery and open-source evidence, the investigation found damage to more than 250 residential buildings, 17 schools and universities, 16 mosques, three hospitals, three cemeteries and 150 agricultural greenhouses.</p><div><gu-island name="SignInGateSelector" priority="feature" deferuntil="visible" props="{"contentType":"Interactive","sectionId":"world","tags":[{"id":"world/gaza","type":"Keyword","title":"Gaza"},{"id":"world/israel-hamas-war","type":"Keyword","title":"Israel-Gaza war"},{"id":"world/world","type":"Keyword","title":"World news"},{"id":"world/palestinian-territories","type":"Keyword","title":"Palestinian territories"},{"id":"world/middleeast","type":"Keyword","title":"Middle East and north Africa"},{"id":"world/israel","type":"Keyword","title":"Israel"},{"id":"type/interactive","type":"Type","title":"Interactive"},{"id":"tone/news","type":"Tone","title":"News"},{"id":"profile/niels-de-hoog","type":"Contributor","title":"Niels de Hoog"},{"id":"profile/ashley-kirk","type":"Contributor","title":"Ashley Kirk","twitterHandle":"ashley_j_kirk","bylineImageUrl":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/03/23/Ashley_Kirk.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=45fb3e1ab9592f9d06ab1c90555a77fb","bylineLargeImageUrl":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/03/23/Ashley_Kirk.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=0c94a0ee97406290b65b117bab0e7059"},{"id":"profile/elena-morresi","type":"Contributor","title":"Elena Morresi"},{"id":"profile/manisha-ganguly","type":"Contributor","title":"Manisha 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config="{"renderingTarget":"Web","darkModeAvailable":false}" data-island-status="hydrated"></gu-island></div><p class="dcr-1lpi6p1">Entire buildings have been levelled, fields flattened and places of worship wiped off the map in the course of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, launched after the Hamas attack on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/israel" data-link-name="in body link" data-component="auto-linked-tag">Israel</a> on 7 October.</p><p class="dcr-1lpi6p1">The destruction has not only forced 1.9 million people to leave their homes but also made it impossible for many to return. This has led some experts to describe what is happening in Gaza as “domicide”, defined as the widespread, deliberate destruction of the home to make it uninhabitable, preventing the return of displaced people. The concept is not recognised in law.</p></div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-68091830'>India navy rescues two hijacked vessels off Somalia coast in two days</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/India'>India</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Somalia'>Somalia</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/piracy'>piracy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/navy'>navy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/shipping'>shipping</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/maritime'>maritime</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/RedSea'>RedSea</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Yemen'>Yemen</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">The waters off the Somali coast were previously a hotbed for piracy, but it had all but stopped after international forces stepped up patrols.<!-- --></p></section><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">India, for example, has helped patrol the area constantly since 2008.<!-- --></p></section><section data-component="text-block" class="sc-4e574cd-0 bhtqwj"><p class="sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe">However, many of those naval forces have moved up into the Red Sea, AFP news agency reports, where the Houthi rebel group, based in Yemen, have been attacking ships. Experts now fear the gap will be exploited by pirates in the region, the news agency said. </p></section></div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-70675602433514150012024-01-30T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-30T04:31:01.623-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/30/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://jamesmdorsey.substack.com/p/unrwa-pronounced-guilty-until-proven?publication_id=246828&post_id=141146282&isFreemail=true&r=7f6yg'>UNRWA pronounced guilty until proven innocent. Palestinians pay the price.</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UNRWA'>UNRWA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UN'>UN</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/MEPP'>MEPP</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UK'>UK</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Britain'>Britain</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Canada'>Canada</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Australia'>Australia</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/diplomacy'>diplomacy</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p>The US-led response to the allegations bolsters a long-standing Israeli campaign against UNRWA that is as much an integral part of a broader policy to undermine Palestinians’ refugee status as it may be based on legitimate concerns.</p><p>Israel hopes to undermine Palestinians’ insistence on the right to self-determination and an independent state by depriving many of them of their refugee status that dates to Israel’s creation and the 1948 and 1967 Middle East wars.</p><p>To be sure, UNWRA defines as refugees not only those Palestinians who fled the wars, but also their descendants, now in their fourth generation. In doing so, the agency has a vested interest in maintaining their status, which is not to diminish Palestinian rights.</p><p><span>“Israel has been </span><a href="Israel%20has%20been%20building%20a%20case%20against%20UNRWA%20for%20a%20long%20time.%20It%20said%20weeks%20ago%20it%20wants%20it%20phased%20out%20of%20Gaza.%20Regardless%20of%20the%20veracity%20of%20the%20charge,%20the%20decision%20to%20go%20with%20this%20news%20last%20night%20seems%20like%20an%20attempt%20to%20distract%20from%20the%20ICJ%20ruling%20on%20genocide%20in%20Gaza." rel="">building a case against UNRWA</a><span> for a long time… Regardless of the veracity of the charge, the decision to go with this news…seems like an attempt to distract from the ICJ ruling on genocide in Gaza,” said International Crisis Group Israel analyst Mairav Zeinszon.</span></p></div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-7252329632762243292024-01-27T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-27T04:31:03.372-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/27/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/derek-penslar-harvard-jewish-antisemitism-task-force-israel.html?sid=5388d0d6dd52b8417a00ab1b&email=ac1a302e7b7e6b3de14c20a3eaadd95049d919a75c7ccbf79d4a74a61edc9948&email2=6e2f354492f94463461a1401379997eb&email3=4eeb005c04c54f5f0530cd91bec856ebf6d89bb0'>Derek Penslar, Harvard Jewish studies professor controversy: This typifies what's broken in antisemitism debates.</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/universities'>universities</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/antisemitism'>antisemitism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Zionism'>Zionism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/academia'>academia</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/academic'>academic</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">There is no set of credentials that can prevent a person who is earnestly trying to do work in this space from getting sucked into the politicization and, yes, weaponization of antisemitism</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">when fact and understanding and nuance of the issue are all considered secondary, what gets sacrificed isn’t just an individual’s career or standing or time, but comprehension of the actual issue that is antisemitism.</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-13294358212530351802024-01-25T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-25T04:31:06.159-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/25/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2024/01/24/settler-violence-west-bank-eu-funds/'>EU states lose huge sums as Israeli settlers wreck Palestine aid projects</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/EU'>EU</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Europe'>Europe</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UK'>UK</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Britain'>Britain</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Germany'>Germany</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Ireland'>Ireland</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Netherlands'>Netherlands</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/settlers'>settlers</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/aid'>aid</a></p><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/News/Pages/arab-public-opinion-about-the-israeli-war-on-gaza.aspx'>Arab Public Opinion about the Israeli War on Gaza</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/poll'>poll</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/data'>data</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/polling'>polling</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Arabs'>Arabs</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/MENA'>MENA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Hamas'>Hamas</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">a sample of 8000 respondents (men and women) from 16 Arab countries</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">97% of respondents expressing psychological stress (to varying degrees) as a result of the war on Gaza. 84% expressed a sense of great psychological stress.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">54% of respondents relied on television, compared to 43% who relied on the internet</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">While 67% of respondents reported that the military operation carried out by Hamas was a legitimate resistance operation, 19% reported that it was a somewhat flawed but legitimate resistance operation, and 3% said that it was a legitimate resistance operation that involved heinous or criminal acts, while 5% said it was an illegitimate operation</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">69% of respondents expressed their solidarity with Palestinians and support for Hamas, 23% expressed solidarity with Palestinians despite opposing Hamas, and 1% expressed a lack of solidarity with the Palestinians</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">92% believe that the Palestinian question concerns all Arabs and not just the Palestinians</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">a near consensus (81%) in their belief that the US government is not serious about working to establish a Palestinian state in the 1967 occupied territories (The West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza)</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">About 77% of respondents named the United States and Israel as the biggest threat to the security and stability of the region</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">82% of respondents reported that US media coverage of the war was biased towards Israel</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">94% considered the US position negatively, with 82% considering it very bad. In the same context, 79%, 78%, and 75% of respondents viewed positions of France, the UK, and Germany negatively. Opinion was split over the positions of Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China. While (48%, 47%, 41%, 40%, respectively) considered them positively (37%, 40%, 42%, 38%, respectively)</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">this percentage is the highest recorded since polling began in 2011, rising from 76% at the end of 2022, to 92% this year</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">In Morocco, it rose from 59% in 2022 to 95%, in Egypt from 75% to 94%, in Sudan from 68% to 91%, and in Saudi Arabia from 69% to 95%, a statistically significant increase that represents a fundamental shift in the opinions of the citizens of these countries</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Arab public opinion is almost unanimous in rejecting recognition of Israel, at a rate of 89%, up from 84% in 2022, compared to only 4% who support its recognition. Of particular note is the increase in the percentage of those who rejected recognition of Israel in Saudi Arabia from 38% in the 2022 poll to 68% in this survey</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-51944066903479594882024-01-24T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-24T04:31:07.697-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/24/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/01/turkeys-parliament-ratifies-swedens-nato-membership'>Turkey’s parliament ratifies Sweden’s NATO membership - Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Turkey'>Turkey</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/NATO'>NATO</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Sweden'>Sweden</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/politics'>politics</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-37179355576907504092024-01-23T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-23T04:31:03.945-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/23/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next/2024/01/the-adl-hasnt-always-equated-anti-zionism-with-antisemitism'>https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next/2024/01/the-adl-hasnt-always-equated-anti-zionism-with-antisemitism</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Zionism'>Zionism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/antisemitism'>antisemitism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/journalism'>journalism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/media'>media</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-33741775502509073002024-01-13T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-13T04:31:04.916-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/13/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/01/houthi-attacks-idle-suez-canal-deepen-egypts-economic-woes'>Houthi attacks idle Suez Canal, deepen Egypt's economic woes - Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Suez'>Suez</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/trade'>trade</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Houthis'>Houthis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/RedSea'>RedSea</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Egypt'>Egypt</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/maritime'>maritime</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/economy'>economy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/security'>security</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-21590249256626311822024-01-09T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-09T04:31:06.950-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/09/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-gaza-ification-of-the-west-bank'>The Gaza-ification of the West Bank | The New Yorker</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/settlements'>settlements</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/settlers'>settlers</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/violence'>violence</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/warcrimes'>warcrimes</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the West Bank, where millions of Palestinians currently live, has also seen increased violence, with more than a hundred Palestinians killed in raids conducted by Israel’s military and clashes between Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli settlers—often with the support of the Army—have also kicked scores of Palestinian families off their land</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The Israeli goal of cleansing as much of Area C as possible from Palestinian communities is not a new goal. Area C is just over sixty per cent of the West Bank—basically, all of the West Bank outside of the major Palestinian population centers and towns. All of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are in Area C. The major Palestinian population centers are like holes in Swiss cheese, where the cheese itself is Area C, engulfing everything: the Jordan Valley, the South Hebron Hills, part of the northern West Bank.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The Israeli state, through its settlers, is trying to take advantage of the fact that all eyes are on Gaza and is intensifying dramatically the pressure on Palestinian communities. I would assume from the Israeli perspective this has been a success. Thirteen Palestinian communities have basically fled in horror in the three weeks since October 7th.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">all of these various mechanisms that the state has been using, are backed by Israeli courts, and backed by the Israeli legal system. This is not some random phenomena that is happening uniquely to a single unlucky community far from the eyes of the state. On the contrary, this is part of an ongoing Israeli state project of trying to push, to cleanse, as many Palestinians out of Area C, using all available state mechanisms in order to accomplish this goal</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">What has escalated in recent weeks is that you have repeated reports of masked men showing up in the middle of the night. Armed, masked men.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">if anyone is now shocked that Israeli soldiers are involved in this. You should have been shocked five years ago. You should have been shocked twenty years ago. Because the involvement of soldiers has been also documented for years, not only with testimonies but also with video footage.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Palestinians, if they try to act in self-defense, will almost always have that used as an excuse to frame them as terrorists and to use lethal force against them. It cannot be overstated how exposed the lives of Palestinians are in the West Bank under these conditions</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">When these official mechanisms fail and Palestinian communities show perseverance to stay on the land, then what you have is that other mechanism, the one that tends to make more headlines. You might catch sight of a violent settler torching a Palestinian’s field or using weapons provided to the settlers by the Army.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Who’s the state in the West Bank? It’s the Israeli state. So land that’s announced as state land is public land, and then cannot be used for the benefit of the Palestinian population. It’s used by the state for the purpose it wants to advance, which is Jewish settlement, right? And the regime issues building permits for Jewish settlements and issues demolition orders for Palestinian communities.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The uprooting of Palestinian communities all over the West Bank is not a project of the settlers, the bad ones, the good ones, or the other ones. It is a state project.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">What we’ve been seeing since October 7th, after all these years of suffering and orchestrated bureaucratic violence, are direct threats and direct actions against these communities. It happens very quickly, but it does create international friction, and that is the balance that Israel has been playing with, trying to accomplish as much displacement of Palestinians as possible while paying the minimal international price.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">This is an Israeli project that has been unfolding under left, right, and center governments. Each and every one of them have been doing exactly this since 1967. Let’s not be ahistorical.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">There is almost zero media coverage in Hebrew in Israel about this. One of the only news outlet that professionally addresses this is <em>Haaretz</em>. Almost no one else discusses it.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p class="paywall">Even right-wing governments, when they feel international pushback, would take a step back for a month or two until attention moves somewhere else.</p><p class="paywall"></p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">This is how Israel accomplished getting more than two hundred and fifty settlements and more than seven hundred and fifty thousand settlers into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">How come so many settlers thought that they could be involved in that and get away with it? That there would be no consequences? They have been enjoying this kind of impunity for decades. Not just in recent months but also under previous governments that were more internationally digestible.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Palestinians will be told openly by Israeli officials, by settlers, that their future is in Area A, not in Area C. Area A is twenty per cent of the West Bank—the large Palestinian population centers.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">you can think about this process as the Gaza-ification of the West Bank. One step at a time, Israel is pushing Palestinians in that direction. There will be a number of Palestinian Bantustans, Gaza-style, all over the West Bank. And each one of these Palestinian enclaves is already surrounded and gradually will be more surrounded by this mix of measures, whether it be Israeli infrastructure such as roads or military bases or walls or fences or settlements and so on. And if one visits any one of the large Palestinian cities like Hebron, Jenin, or Ramallah, you will see this process gradually unfolding</div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/reintroducing-conscription-in-the-gulf-from-soft-power-to-nation-building/'>(Re)introducing Conscription in the Gulf: From Soft Power to Nation-Building – Arab Reform Initiative</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UAE'>UAE</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Qatar'>Qatar</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Kuwait'>Kuwait</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/GCC'>GCC</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/military'>military</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/nationalism'>nationalism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/identity'>identity</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/security'>security</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">In the Middle East, the US invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring of 2011, and the subsequent foreign interventions in Yemen, Syria, and Libya, brought military preparedness and competence to the surface again. This led to a return of compulsory military service not only in countries that are at war and/or under the threat of military intervention but also in other countries. This was the case of certain Gulf countries including Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which historically seldom resorted to conscription.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Qatar introduced conscription in 2013, followed by the UAE in 2014. Kuwait, on the other hand, reintroduced it in 2014, having practiced conscription between 1961 and 2001. Until recently, these countries’ militaries were formed by a national officer corps, foreign - mostly Western- expert non-commissioned officers (NCOs), and foreign contract soldiers coming from different countries (Jordan, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Oman)</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">In 2018, not long after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed a blockade on Qatar, the Qatari government amended the National Service Law, introducing national service for women and extending its duration for men. While the national service remains voluntary for women over the age of 18, men are now expected to serve a year instead of three or four months. The new law gives eligible men only 60 days after they come of age to apply to the military and stipulates harsher punishment (up to three years in jail plus a fine) for those who fail to do so.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Since the beginning of the 2020s, several articles<span class="footnote_referrer"><a role="button" tabindex="0" onclick="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_5');" onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_5');"><sup id="footnote_plugin_tooltip_26914_1_5" class="footnote_plugin_tooltip_text">5</sup></a><span id="footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_26914_1_5" class="footnote_tooltip">Jean-Loup Samaan, “The Rise of the Emirati Defense Industry,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 14 May 2019 <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/79121"><span class="footnote_url_wrap">https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/79121</span></a>; Elenora Ardemagni, “The UAE’s Military Training-Focused Foreign Policy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 22 October 2020, <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/83033"><span class="footnote_url_wrap">https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/83033</span></a>; Melissa Dalton and Hijab Shah, “Evolving UAE Military and Foreign Security Cooperation: Path Toward Military Professionalism,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 12 January 2021, <a href="https://carnegie-mec.org/2021/01/12/evolving-uae-military-and-foreign-security-cooperation-path-toward-military-professionalism-pub-83549"><span class="footnote_url_wrap">https://carnegie-mec.org/2021/01/12/evolving-uae-military-and-foreign-security-cooperation-path-toward-military-professionalism-pub-83549</span></a>; Elenora Ardemagni, “ Building New Gulf States Through Conscription,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 25 April 2018, <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/76178"><span class="footnote_url_wrap">https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/76178</span></a>; Elenora Ardemagni, “Gulf Monarchies’ Militarized Nationalism,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 28 February 2019,<a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/78472"><span class="footnote_url_wrap">https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/78472</span></a>; Zoltan Barany, “Big News! Conscription in the Gulf,” Middle East Institute, 25 January 2017, <a href="https://www.mei.edu/publications/big-news-conscription-gulf"><span class="footnote_url_wrap">https://www.mei.edu/publications/big-news-conscription-gulf</span></a>; Dr. Eman Ahmed Abdel Halim, “Implementation of Military Conscription in the Gulf,” Future for Advanced Research Studies, 12 December 2016, <a href="https://futureuae.com/m/Mainpage/Item/2250/pressing-threats-implementation-of-military-conscription-in-the-gulf"><span class="footnote_url_wrap">https://futureuae.com/m/Mainpage/Item/2250/pressing-threats-implementation-of-military-conscription-in-the-gulf</span></a></span></span> were written on the economic, social, and geopolitical reasons behind Gulf countries’ shift in military recruitment strategy. The security problems originating from Iran and Yemen, the willingness to exercise soft power in the region along with the volatile energy sector, and the ruptures within the rentier state model are put forward as the main justifications behind the Gulf countries’ developing defense industries and growing their armies. In this context, compulsory military service does play an important role, be it to increase the size of the army, cause deterrence in the region or create new job opportunities and a qualified workforce out of young citizens.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">can also create intangible moral advantages, and thus have significant effects on these countries’ civil-military relations. The biggest reason for this is the symbiotic relationship that has formed over time between compulsory military service and national sentiment. In this sense, introducing conscription shows an effort to turn these societies into nations where individuals would be bound to one another by national sentiment and not the rentier state model they have so far known.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">To raise obedient and productive citizens who wore the same uniform, spoke the same language, and sang the same anthems, education became an important tool in the nation-building process.<span class="footnote_referrer"><a role="button" tabindex="0" onclick="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_11');" onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_11');"><sup id="footnote_plugin_tooltip_26914_1_11" class="footnote_plugin_tooltip_text">11</sup></a><span id="footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_26914_1_11" class="footnote_tooltip">Ayşe Gül Altınay and Tanıl Bora, “Ordu, Militarizm ve Milliyetçilik,” <em>Iletişim Yayınları,</em> (2002): 140.</span></span> In Prussia, this “new form of nationalist socialization” was provided through military establishments with the hope that, after their discharge from military service, men would remain loyal to the state and transfer their sentiment and what they “learned” to the rest of the population.<span class="footnote_referrer"><a role="button" tabindex="0" onclick="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_12');" onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_12');"><sup id="footnote_plugin_tooltip_26914_1_12" class="footnote_plugin_tooltip_text">12</sup></a></span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">mandatory military service in these countries should not be seen as a way to efficiently raise strong and competent armies. First, like their Gulf neighbors, neither Qatar, Kuwait, nor the UAE is populated enough to sustain a competent standing army. Most of their populations are made of ex-pats who are not subject to conscription laws. Second, their current system of outsourcing military needs has proven to be efficient in the long run, with all three countries continuing to invest in contracting foreign soldiers to efficiently populate their armies. Therefore, the new conscription laws should be seen as a symbolic move to strengthen nationalistic bonds and ambitions.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">paradoxically, the exact nationalistic sentiment and loyalty that the Gulf countries try to channel among their citizens can backfire if the people (including the conscripts) were to ever resent the rulers and their policies. This is rather contrary to the long-established coup-proofing strategies<span class="footnote_referrer"><a role="button" tabindex="0" onclick="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_25');" onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_26914_1('footnote_plugin_reference_26914_1_25');"><sup id="footnote_plugin_tooltip_26914_1_25" class="footnote_plugin_tooltip_text">25</sup></a><span id="footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_26914_1_25" class="footnote_tooltip">After gaining their independence, most countries in the region (or rather individual leaders) have engaged in various coup-proofing measures to keep their militaries in check. There were different types of coup-measuring strategies. For example, until 2011, Hosni Mubarak, a military man himself, tried to keep the Egyptian military at bay by giving officers and the military institution economic benefits and providing an unfair competition. In Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took a different approach and choose to ouster the military as an institution completely and empowered the police force. In Sudan and Libya, former presidents Bashar and Gaddafi took a more social approach and tried to counterbalance different groups of society, especially the tribal establishments, as a buffer against the military. In the Gulf, the ruling monarchs resorted to using foreign soldiers to keep the military away from social and political affairs as much as possible.</span></span> that Arab countries followed over the years. However, given the low numbers of citizens that will be drafted each year, the risk of such revolts taking place remains low.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">In Kuwait, UAE, and Qatar, there are legal sanctions in place against anyone who fails to enlist when they become eligible and conscientious objection is not recognized. This could cause or further the feeling of oppression and resentment and trigger protests and turmoil in these countries. However, at this stage, this risk is low but still a possibility as seen in Thailand, Israel, and Armenia</div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.arab-reform.net/project/just-transition-green-bridge/'>The Just Transition Green Bridge – Arab Reform Initiative</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/MENA'>MENA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/environment'>environment</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/climate'>climate</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/civil_society'>civil_society</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/transition'>transition</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-82184892905467754982024-01-08T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-08T04:31:08.740-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/08/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://acleddata.com/2024/01/05/qa-why-are-yemens-houthis-attacking-ships-in-the-red-sea/'>Q&A: Why Are Yemen’s Houthis Attacking Ships in the Red Sea?</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/maritime'>maritime</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/security'>security</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/ACLED'>ACLED</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/RedSea'>RedSea</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Yemen'>Yemen</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/houthis'>houthis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a></p><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://arablit.org/2023/11/25/what-do-we-do-during-genocide-a-poem-by-mohja-kahf/'>‘What Do We Do During Genocide’: A Poem by Mohja Kahf – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/poetry'>poetry</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/poem'>poem</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/war'>war</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/empire'>empire</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-25521023866788638232024-01-07T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-07T04:31:03.020-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/07/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/11/08/complicated-legacy-qatars-world-cup/?wpisrc=nl_most'>The complicated legacy of Qatar’s World Cup - The Washington Post</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Qatar'>Qatar</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/sport'>sport</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/sports'>sports</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/sportswashing'>sportswashing</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/football'>football</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/soccer'>soccer</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/FIFA'>FIFA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/labor'>labor</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/workers'>workers</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/rights'>rights</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/HRW'>HRW</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">perhaps the biggest test case for what happens when a Middle Eastern nation intent on using oil money to enhance its influence through sports emerges on the global stage.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Can sports help bring societal progress to a region that has long resisted change? Or are those countries rewarded with reputational prestige despite human rights abuses that they have little intention to address?</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“FIFA has a human rights policy that guarantees press freedom, women’s rights and nondiscrimination,” said Minky Worden, the director of global initiatives for Human Rights Watch. “What the Qatar World Cup showed is that, if you have enough money, you can absolutely ignore those requirements.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Owing to its small population of roughly 300,000 citizens, Qatar relies heavily on migrant workers. When it won the World Cup bid, it employed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-kafala-labor-rules-are-an-issue-in-persian-gulf/2020/09/17/dee277a4-f8e7-11ea-85f7-5941188a98cd_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_16" target="_blank">a labor system called kafala</a>. Under kafala, migrant workers, mostly seeking to leave impoverished conditions elsewhere, have to pay exorbitant recruitment fees and cannot change jobs without the consent of their employer. The system led to rampant abuses that included wage theft and unsafe working conditions, ultimately resulting in the deaths of thousands of workers. Qatar also bans homosexuality, which it defends on religious grounds.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">In 2016, Qatar said it would abide by the United Nations’ human rights code. In 2019, Qatar announced it would abolish kafala. In 2021, Qatar instituted a minimum wage. The Supreme Committee, Qatar’s World Cup host organization, created a workers’ welfare program for those who built World Cup infrastructure. By the sound of the first whistle last November, the country’s labor market was “radically transformed,” a FIFA spokesman said.</p></div><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">“Would any of that have happened if they hadn’t hosted the World Cup?” said Mary Harvey, chief executive at the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. “Would kafala still be in place in Qatar if they hadn’t hosted the World Cup? That may not be the question people want to ask, but it’s important. … You don’t just flip the switch with a law change and expect an implementation is going to take hold. It’s going to take a generation probably to get this put in. But it’s still big change, and it’s change that is needed.”</p></div></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Max Tuñón, head of the International Labor Organization’s Qatar office, said he has seen major improvements in working conditions for foreign laborers over the past five years.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">We work all over the world, and we rarely see change happening at this pace</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">Rothna Begum, a Human Rights Watch researcher, has worked extensively in Qatar and visited with workers. (Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar’s government allows human rights groups to work in the country.) Begum said it is “not the case” that Qatar dismantled kafala in practice.</p></div><div><p data-testid="drop-cap-letter" data-el="text" class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" dir="null">“They didn’t do it properly, anyway,” Begum said. “They didn’t take away all the elements. They reformed aspects of the kafala system, but they didn’t dismantle the kafala system. The bits that they did reform, they are implementing in such a way that kafala still exists in practice.”</p></div></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">While workers can apply to change jobs, Begum said, she has found they must first give notice to their employer. If the employer does not sign a resignation notice, the worker cannot get permission from the government — “employer permission through the back door,”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“Qatari authorities — not just Qatari authorities but FIFA — sought to weaponize a narrative of Qatar being an underdog, that they were under attack in this double-standard way that no one else has been under attack before, and it’s because they are a Middle Eastern country,” Begum said. “Rather than dealing with the fact that they just did not come through with reforms and did not protect migrant workers who really contribute to the success of the World Cup and made sure they got their wages and compensated them for it, they instead used this narrative and weaponized it. We’re seeing the Saudis and UAE are moving in that direction.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Qatar’s reforms also did not address the biggest cost of the World Cup: the migrant workers who died — in the thousands according to human rights groups, a number disputed by the Qatari government — while building stadiums and other infrastructure FIFA required after working in extreme heat on strict schedules. Human Rights Watch challenged whether Qatar could move forward with meaningful reform without compensating the families of the workers who died.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">FIFA instituted its human rights policy in 2017 in response to criticism about Qatar. That policy may receive a more stringent test in coming years. Saudi Arabia, whose government has jailed and executed dissidents, submitted a bid to host the 2034 World Cup and is the favorite to host the tournament. Unlike Qatar, Saudi Arabia has not met with human rights groups.</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-48220478985305322942024-01-02T04:31:00.001-05:002024-01-02T04:31:03.493-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 01/02/2024<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/01/riad-turk-syrian-mandela-dead-93-france'>Riad Turk, the 'Syrian Mandela', dead at 93 in France - Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Syria'>Syria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/dissident'>dissident</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/activist'>activist</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-69817643519397825992023-12-15T04:31:00.001-05:002023-12-15T04:31:07.063-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 12/15/2023<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-post-wwi-migrations-that-built-yugoslavia-and-turkey-have-left-a-painful-legacy/?mc_cid=27531aa5c3&mc_eid=e8686ae5a7'>The Post-WWI Migrations That Built Yugoslavia and Turkey Have Left a Painful Legacy - New Lines Magazine</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Turkey'>Turkey</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Balkans'>Balkans</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Greece'>Greece</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Yugoslavia'>Yugoslavia</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Bulgaria'>Bulgaria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Albania'>Albania</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/history'>history</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/migration'>migration</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/nationalism'>nationalism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Kosovo'>Kosovo</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Serbia'>Serbia</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Romania'>Romania</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/minorities'>minorities</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity that characterized their territories in the Middle East and Eastern Europe no longer chimed with the new world order being organized around nation-states</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Designing measures such as the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, the League of Nations legitimized demographic engineering policies and made migration an intrinsic part of nation-building. With international encouragement, the states with Muslim minorities in the Balkans devised multipronged policies to push out the citizens they saw as undesirable. Turkey became the only destination for Balkan Muslims, even when they were not Turkish.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">in 1938 Belgrade and Ankara concluded a little-known agreement to transfer 200,000 Yugoslav citizens to Turkey. The transfer did not materialize because of the start of World War II, but the migrations did eventually take place and continued into the 1950s. For both Yugoslavia and Turkey, new states created in the aftermath of World War I, migration was an important part of nation-building.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">took as its model another such deal between Turkey and Romania in 1936 as well as the better-known Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Forced processes of homogenization are still part of the repertoire of nation-state building, and continue to shape our understanding of world order. Muslim presence in the southeastern periphery of Europe likewise continues to be viewed as problematic and even dangerous: As Piro Rexhepi observed in the book “White Enclosures,” their integration continues to be desirable for security but impossible racially.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Focus on religious identity allowed for a formal incorporation of these rather diverse populations into the Turkish national body. The asylum policy and the settlement laws defined migrants as Turks and those “affiliated with Turkish culture” to encompass all the Slav, Albanian and Greek Muslims, making Turkey a safe haven for Muslim minorities fleeing oppressive regimes.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Dispossession, expulsions and massacres of diverse Muslim populations were already a grim reality of nation-building in southeastern Europe in the 19th century, when Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria were carved out of Ottoman provinces. In fact, the conquests of Ottoman Europe after 1699 normalized expulsion and compulsory conversion of local Muslims in the lost territories</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">During the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria invaded the remaining Ottoman territories in Europe. Within several months, an estimated 1 million Muslims vanished, murdered and expelled from the regions taken over by these states. The shocking magnitude of the violence, which continued into World War I, made many Muslims wary of their future in the new nation-states and incited migration to the Ottoman Empire, itself in the midst of conflict.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">19th-century definitions of South Slavic brotherhood envisioned Slav Muslims as potentially assimilable, distinguishing between “the Turks” as the non-Slavic Ottomans and “our Turks,” that is, Slav Muslims</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">so-called reform also included the vast properties of the Islamic pious endowments. Schools, mosques and Sufi lodges lost the land and incomes that were used to operate educational, religious and community services. Some land appropriations were symbolic: The 15th-century Burmali Mosque that visually defined Skopje’s main thoroughfare was simply torn down</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">In the 1920s, Catholic missionaries working in neighboring Kosovo, a former Ottoman province inhabited by Albanian Muslim and Christian populations and similarly incorporated into Southern Serbia, sent reports of massacres, assassinations, imprisonment and forced labor in a memorandum to the League of Nations, receiving no response.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Ivo Andric, an admired novelist and Yugoslav Nobel laureate, was also one of the highest-ranking Yugoslav diplomats in the interwar period. Eager to finalize the population transfer agreement with Turkey, he advised the government in Belgrade that Turkey was not only interested in the small group of ethnic Turks in Yugoslavia but also populations akin to Turks in their “mentality.” Repeating a constant theme in almost all of Andric’s novels, Muslims were described in his diplomatic correspondence as alien to the Balkans. For Andric, they were “Turks leftover in the territories of our Kingdom.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">over 2,000 Bosnians were settled along with Greek Muslims in the town of Izmir.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Turkish officials, faced with the constant influx of migrants, pursued agreements with the Balkan states that would offset the costs of migrant settlement. The 1934 Balkan Pact included minority clauses that allowed Turkish citizens to sell their properties in their former homelands. Turkish administrators also considered requesting an estimated payment from the Balkan nation-states to match the value of the properties that Balkan Muslims were forced to leave behind.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The Turkish Republic saw population growth as beneficial for economic development and national defense in the long term, as it worked to populate its eastern and western borderlands. Moreover, many of Turkey’s early administrators, as migrants and children of migrants themselves, understood these new waves of migration from a personal perspective.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Laws barred those speaking languages other than Turkish from settling in groups and limited the “foreign” presence to no more than 10% of a municipality, though the realities of the period frequently made these laws impossible to execute. The locals took on much of the burden of helping newcomers, begrudgingly sharing public resources. At the same time, the immigrants provided necessary manpower and introduced new methods in agriculture and certain industries. While Balkan languages largely disappeared with the following generation, enduring legacies, such as Balkan cuisine and music evoking the most personal memories of exile, acquired a place in the Turkish national heritage.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Today, no official recognition of the violent policies of “unmixing” exists, and barely anyone has heard of Yugoslavia’s attempted population transfer of 1939.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the international community’s preferred solutions to “ethnic conflicts” in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo remain equally tied to principles of nationalist homogenization and demarcation. A century after the foundation of modern Turkey and the first Yugoslavia, the legacies of that era’s mass migration and state violence persist.</div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.972mag.com/israel-apartheid-jenin-gaza/'>In Jenin, Israel is unveiling the next phase of apartheid</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/WestBank'>WestBank</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/occupation'>occupation</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/violence'>violence</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/IDF'>IDF</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/apartheid'>apartheid</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">June 30, 2023</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">aerial assaults reveal a dangerous phase in the evolution of Israel’s occupation. The air strikes are reportedly the first in the West Bank in two decades, awakening the nightmares of many Palestinians who ran for cover or suffered wounds from helicopter attacks during the Second Intifada. In that time, though, <a href="https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-drones-ai/">aerial warfare</a> became the <a title="Protected by Outlook: https://972mag.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca&id=348c35a0b1&e=ad0c624a6f. Click or tap to follow the link." href="https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2F972mag.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca%26id%3D348c35a0b1%26e%3Dad0c624a6f&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cae760d983a0e43f2b2e808db78b5856b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638236493245419411%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=c9tLJtpyqOlXVzjUCk4lVwHp88qEa55D9Ym7miVZXVg%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="9">modus operandi</a> in the Gaza Strip, accelerated by Israel’s withdrawal of its settlements in 2005 and the total blockade of the territory following Hamas’ takeover.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">reconfiguration of military rule has intentionally produced a physical and psychological separation between the West Bank and Gaza, abetted by the fratricidal rivalry between Fatah and Hamas. As that distance normalized, the two territories became regarded as disconnected and incomparable. Even well-meaning advocates — in their heavy focus on settlements and annexation — often fell into the trap of forgetting Gaza outside the scope of wartime, deeming it an anomaly in the context of the “one-state reality.” But as many activists, scholars, and experts <a title="Protected by Outlook: https://972mag.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca&id=56725e05ed&e=ad0c624a6f. Click or tap to follow the link." href="https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2F972mag.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca%26id%3D56725e05ed%26e%3Dad0c624a6f&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cae760d983a0e43f2b2e808db78b5856b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638236493245419411%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=0kgfcKMtQldsaSFc9MofSGWlP8S3aB%2FVB9IABPX%2FFbg%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="10">have</a> <a title="Protected by Outlook: https://972mag.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca&id=e93057520e&e=ad0c624a6f. Click or tap to follow the link." href="https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2F972mag.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca%26id%3De93057520e%26e%3Dad0c624a6f&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cae760d983a0e43f2b2e808db78b5856b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638236493245419411%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=WzyBVCZaQdFBD%2Fio8foo2Bgi7bYtbP4Jna%2BhH15fb3g%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="11">warned</a>, the structures used to confine and suppress Gaza are not a deviation from Israel’s methodology, but a natural <a title="Protected by Outlook: https://972mag.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca&id=7a660f9305&e=ad0c624a6f. Click or tap to follow the link." href="https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2F972mag.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca%26id%3D7a660f9305%26e%3Dad0c624a6f&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cae760d983a0e43f2b2e808db78b5856b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638236493245419411%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=SaddSRi87t3zNtK7rq3G3fxLjLIXXXxGdbMZhyc%2FB%2F0%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="12">continuation</a> of it. And that was made clear over the skies of Jenin last week.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Like Gaza, Jenin has long been a center of Palestinian social life and political resistance — and as such, a target of vicious repression</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The bombardment of a populated urban area, together with the city’s collective punishment, is further justified by the demonization of Jenin as a “cesspool of terrorism” requiring constant intervention — in essence, the same doctrine of <a title="Protected by Outlook: https://972mag.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca&id=5ba2e4689d&e=ad0c624a6f. Click or tap to follow the link." href="https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2F972mag.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca%26id%3D5ba2e4689d%26e%3Dad0c624a6f&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cae760d983a0e43f2b2e808db78b5856b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638236493245731275%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YGtmQDiRcDucqc1zRo%2BzOcY8QFzot5VhsHxBvsX7Esk%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="16">“mowing the lawn”</a> that is applied in the blockaded strip a few kilometers away.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Gaza is hardly an exception to the rule of Israeli apartheid. Rather, it is the <a title="Protected by Outlook: https://972mag.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca&id=b6dc538037&e=ad0c624a6f. Click or tap to follow the link." href="https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2F972mag.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D0bd5641159488ecfed79ba6ca%26id%3Db6dc538037%26e%3Dad0c624a6f&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cae760d983a0e43f2b2e808db78b5856b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638236493245887480%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=0X9TWWf9FNr7mavJ6N64RUF1O8dTJyKgv2aeqsGUWis%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="17">ultimate bantustan</a> — the model for controlling and weakening a native population in a besieged space, using modern weapons and technology, with local rulers to handle their basic needs, at minimal cost to the settler society surrounding them</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">If the expulsion of Palestinians won’t be possible, Gazafication will be their future.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The army may feign distress over settlers committing “nationalist terrorism,” but it openly commands its soldiers to do the same, so long as it is done in uniform</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-74693105399843316802023-12-13T04:31:00.001-05:002023-12-13T04:31:06.895-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 12/13/2023<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/10/09/heat-waves-increased-temperatures-climate-change/?wpisrc=nl_most'>These are the places that could become ‘unlivable’ as the Earth warms - The Washington Post</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/climate'>climate</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/science'>science</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Yemen'>Yemen</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iran'>Iran</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/KSA'>KSA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Saudi'>Saudi</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Pakistan'>Pakistan</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">in a warming world, temperatures and humidity will, for growing stretches of every year, surpass a threshold that even young and healthy people could struggle to survive</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">In the Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah, Yemen, such oppressive conditions are expected to last a month or two — or, at the highest levels of global warming projections, would endure for most of the year</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><ul><li class="pb-xs"><span>Delhi, with 39 hours at 2 degrees of warming and 556.9 hours at 4 degrees of warming.</span></li><li class="pb-xs"><span>Hanoi, with 37.7 hours at 2 degrees of warming and 602.1 hours at 4 degrees.</span></li><li class="pb-xs"><span>Dammam, Saudi Arabia, with 223.6 hours at 2 degrees of warming and 804.7 hours at 4 degrees.</span></li><li class="pb-xs"><span>Dubai, with 117.7 hours at 2 degrees of warming and 783.9 hours at 4 degrees.</span></li><li class="pb-xs"><span>Bandar Abbas, Iran, with 175.5 hours at 2 degrees of warming and 958.6 at 4 degrees.</span></li></ul></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The research underscores how the most severe impacts of climate change will be felt in countries that have done the least to create i</div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://amwaj.media/article/will-saudi-uae-accession-transform-brics'>Will Saudi, UAE accession transform BRICS? | Amwaj.media</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/KSA'>KSA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Saudi'>Saudi</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UAE'>UAE</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/BRICS'>BRICS</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/energy'>energy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a></p><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct60st'>The Documentary - October 1973: The war that changed everything - BBC Sounds</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/war'>war</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/economy'>economy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Egypt'>Egypt</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Syria'>Syria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/oil'>oil</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/history'>history</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/conflict'>conflict</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/MEPP'>MEPP</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-30083789058407789372023-12-11T04:31:00.001-05:002023-12-11T04:31:10.264-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 12/11/2023<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/more-than-genocide/'>More than Genocide - Boston Review</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/genocide'>genocide</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/empire'>empire</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/colonialism'>colonialism</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/law'>law</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Mass state violence against civilians is not a glitch in the international system; it is baked into statehood itself. The natural <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/international-law-and-the-use-of-force-by-the-states-9780198251583?cc=us&lang=en&" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">right</a> of self-defense plays a foundational role in the self-conception of Western states in particular, the formation of which is inseparable from imperial expansion. Since the Spanish conquest of the Americas starting in the sixteenth century, settlers justified their reprisals against indigenous resistance as defensive “self-preservation.” If they felt their survival was imperiled, colonizers engaged in massive retaliation against “native” peoples, including noncombatants. The “doctrine of double effect” assured them that killing innocents was permissible as a side effect of carrying out a moral end, like self-defense.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">By the nineteenth century, the Christianizing mission had been augmented by a civilizing one of the “savage” natives. More recently, this colonial ideology has manifested itself in the project of “bringing democracy to the Arab world,” with Israel designated as the “the only democracy in the Middle East,” the proverbial “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/jewish-majority-israel-villa-in-the-jungle" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">villa</a> in the jungle.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Without imperial possessions and the lucrative trade in sugar and other commodities predicated on the Atlantic slave trade, European states would not have generated the surpluses necessary to pay for their military establishments and the bureaucratic apparatuses required to sustain them. And while European powers and settlers in their colonies did not set out to exterminate the peoples they conquered, they killed any who resisted, claiming that their hands were forced.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">civilian destruction tends to be greatest when security retaliation reaches the level of what I have <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=BTQTEAAAQBAJ" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">called</a> “permanent security”—extreme responses by states to security threats, enacted in the name of self-defense. Permanent security actions target entire civilian populations under the logic of ensuring that terrorists and insurgents can never again represent a threat. It is a project, in other words, that seeks to avert future threats by anticipating them today.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The historical record shows that, however terrible, violent anticolonial uprisings were invariably smashed with far greater violence than they unleashed. The violence of the “civilized” is far more effective than the violence of the “barbarians” and “savages.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Throughout the five-hundred-year history of Western empires, the security of European colonizers has trumped the security and independence of the colonized.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Jabotinsky’s famous “<a href="http://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Iron Wall</a>” argument from 1923, in which the Revisionist Zionist leader argued that Palestinian resistance was understandable, inevitable—and anticolonial. Speaking of Palestinians, Jabotinsky wrote that “they feel at least the same instinctive jealous love of Palestine, as the old Aztecs felt for ancient Mexico, and their Sioux for their rolling Prairies.” Because Palestinians could not be bought off with material promises, Jabotinsky wanted the British Mandate authorities to enable Zionist colonization until Jews, then a tiny minority of Palestine, reached a majority. “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population,” he concluded. “Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population—behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">to ensure that Palestinian militants can never again attack Israel, its armed forces are subjecting two million Palestinians to serial war <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/89489/expert-guidance-law-of-armed-conflict-in-the-israel-hamas-war/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">crimes</a> and mass expulsion</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">If Western states support this solution for Israeli permanent security—as the United States appears to be with its <a href="https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2023/11/08/biden-administration-proposes-funding-gaza-ethnic-cleansing/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">budgeting</a> of refugee support in neighboring countries under the guise of a “humanitarian” gesture—they will be continuing a venerable tradition. During, between, and after both twentieth-century world wars, large-scale population transfers and exchanges took <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24680" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">place</a> across the Eurasian continent to radically homogenize empires and nations. Millions of people fled or were expelled or transferred from Turkey, Greece, Austria, Italy, India, Palestine, Central and Eastern Europe. Progressive Europeans reasoned then that long-term peace would be secured if troublesome minorities were removed. This ideology—which the governments of Russia, China, Turkey, India, and Sri Lanka share today—maintains that indigenous and minority populations must submit to their subordination and, if they resist, face subjugation, deportation, or destruction. Antiterrorism operations that kill thousands of civilians are taken to be acceptable responses to terrorist operations that kill far fewer civilians</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Indigenous and occupied peoples, then, are placed in an impossible position. If they resist with violence, they are violently put down. If they do not, states will overlook the lower-intensity but unrelenting violence to which they are subject</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Hamas thus reasons that Palestinians have nothing to gain by conforming to a U.S.-led “rules-based international order” that has forgotten about them.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">When state parties to the UNGC negotiated in 1947 and 1948, they distinguished genocidal intent from military necessity, so that states could wage the kind of <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ukraine-genocide-debate-reveals-limits-international-law" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">wars</a> that Russia and Israel are conducting today and avoid prosecution for genocide. The high legal standard stems from the restrictive UNGC definition of genocide, which was modeled on the Holocaust and requires that a perpetrator <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">intend</a> to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such” (the <em>dolus specialis</em>) in at least one of five prescribed ways (the <em>actus reus</em>). The words “as such” are widely regarded as imposing a stringent intent requirement: an act counts as genocide only if individuals are targeted solely by virtue of their group membership—like <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-pantomime-drama-of-victims-and-villains-conceals-the-real-horrors-of-war" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Jews</a> during World War II—and not for strategic reasons like suppressing an insurgency.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Together, the United States and Russia have killed many millions of civilians in their respective imperial wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Chechnya; so have postcolonial states like Nigeria and Pakistan in fighting secessions. Genocide allegations were leveled in some of these cases in global campaigns like the one we see now, but none stuck, and they are largely forgotten in the annals of mass violence against civilian</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Adding to the difficulty of establishing genocidal intent is the uncertainty in international humanitarian law about the legality of civilians killed “incidentally” in the course of attacking legitimate military targets. While the majority of international lawyers agree that civilian deaths are acceptable so long as they are not disproportionate in relation to the military advantage sought, others <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/a-lethal-misconception-in-gaza-and-beyond-disguising-indiscriminate-attacks-as-potentially-proportionate-in-discourses-on-the-laws-of-war/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">argue</a> that bombing crowded marketplaces and hospitals regardless of military objective is necessarily indiscriminate and thus illegal.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">They go far in excusing all Israeli conduct in the name of its legitimate self-defense; the US even seems to have <a href="https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-november-9-2023/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">demurred</a> on whether the Geneva Conventions are applicable to Palestinian territories. It is thus unsurprising that they have not pressed the Israeli government to explain how cutting off water, food, and power to Gaza—a “war of starvation” as the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5919/Israel-is-Waging-an-Extensive-War-of-Starvation-against-Gaza%E2%80%99s-Civilian-Population" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">put</a> it—is a legitimate military tactic, one not covered by the <a href="https://ccrjustice.org/israel-s-unfolding-crime-genocide-palestinian-people-us-failure-prevent-and-complicity-genocide" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">UNGC</a>, which declares one genocidal predicate act to be “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” But if so-called humanitarian pauses are occurring to allow in a little, if grossly inadequate, aid, and the “total siege” is lifted after the military defeat of Hamas (should it happen), it will be difficult to argue in a legal context that Israel’s strangling of Gaza was a genocidal act.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the “Dahiya Doctrine,” which, they argue, dictates “disproportionate attacks, including against *civilian* structures and infrastructure.” This is clearly illegal.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Excessive reprisals, we should recall, are a staple of colonial warfare and state consolidation</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Since genocide is a synonym for the destruction of peoples, whether the killing and suppression of their culture is motivated by destruction “as such” or by deterrence, the experience is the same: a destructive attack on a people, and not just random civilians. But the UNGC does not reflect the victim’s perspective. It protects the perpetrators: states that seek permanent security.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Unless the conditions of permanent insecurity are confronted, permanent security aspirations and practices will haunt Palestinians and Israelis.</div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.leefang.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-information'>Inside the Pro-Israel Information War</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/UK'>UK</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Britain'>Britain</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/war'>war</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/propaganda'>propaganda</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/academia'>academia</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/AIPAC'>AIPAC</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/hasbara'>hasbara</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">a rare public glimpse of how Israel and its American allies harness Israel’s influential tech sector and tech diaspora to run cover for the Jewish state as it endures scrutiny over the humanitarian impact of its invasion of Gaza.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">reveal the degree to which, in the tech-oriented hasbara world, the lines between government, the private sector, and the nonprofit world are blurry at best. And the tactics that these wealthy individuals, advocates, and groups use -- hounding Israel critics on social media; firing pro-Palestine employees and canceling speaking engagements; smearing Palestinian journalists; and attempting to ship military-grade equipment to the IDF -- are often heavy-handed and controversial.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The final group consists of those who are "reflexively pro-Israel, kind of ‘Israel, right or wrong.’" Members of this group "are not actually very knowledgeable," so they needed to be equipped with the right facts to make them "more effective in advocating for Israel,” Fisher said.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Members of the hasbara-oriented tech world WhatsApp group have eagerly taken up the call to shape public opinion as part of a bid to win what’s been described as the “second battlefield” and “the information war.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>The group, which also includes individuals affiliated with the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has tirelessly worked to fire employees and punish activists for expressing pro-Palestinian views. It has also engaged in a </span><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4315364-arizona-state-cancels-pro-palestinian-event-featuring-tlaib/" rel="">successful</a><span> push to cancel events held by prominent Palestinian voices, including an Arizona State University talk featuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American in Congress. The group has also circulated circulated a </span><a href="https://engage.gophousemajority.com/tell-tlaib-to-resign/?utm_campaign=20231018_BD-6Z.101407_t1402084-655&ex_tid=20231018_BD-6Z.101407_t1402084-655&fbclid=IwAR1_KcwPtmSvRA0GUekeIGQpB6m4qYl4oLRTW2B8suOhmw79jy7JQXYx79Q" rel="">push poll</a><span> suggesting Rep. Tlaib should resign from Congress and provided an automatic means of thanking Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., for voting for her censure. </span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">J-Ventures has also veered into an unusual kind of philanthropy: shipments of military supplies. The group has attempted to provide tactical gear to Israel’s equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALs, known as Shayetet-13, and donated to a foundation dedicated to supporting the IDF’s undercover “Duvdevan” unit, which is known for infiltrating Palestinian populations. Many of the shipments intended for the IDF were held up at U.S. airports over customs issues.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Israel would soon lose international support as its military response in Gaza kills more Palestinian civilians, noted Schwarzbad, who stressed the need to refocus attention on Israeli civilian deaths. “Try to use names and ages whenever you can,” she said. Don’t refer to statistics of the dead, use stories. “Say something like, 'Noah, age 26, was celebrating with her friends at a music festival on the holiest day of the week, Shabbat. Imagine if your daughter was at Coachella.’”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The Israel-based venture capitalist outlined three categories of people for whom outreach, rather than attacks, is the best strategy. The first group is what he dubbed “the impressionables,” who are "typically young people, they reflexively support the weak, oppose the oppressor," but "are not really knowledgeable." For this category of people, the goal is not to "convince them of anything," but to "show them that it's much more complicated than it seems." Seeding doubt, he said, would make certain audiences think twice before attending a protest. "So it's really about creating some kind of confusion,” Fisher continued, “but really, just to make it clear to them that it's really a lot more complicated."</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Fisher repeatedly noted the need to offer accurate and nuanced information to rebut critics of Israel's actions. Yet at times, he offered his own misinformation, such as his claim that "anti-Israel" human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch "didn't condemn the October 7th massacre."</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">One participant even suggested that they appeal to the university’s “woke” aversion to exposing students to uncomfortable ideas. The participant drafted a sample letter claiming that Tlaib’s appearance threatened ASU’s “commitment to a safe and inclusive environment.” The following day, ASU officially canceled the Tlaib event, citing “procedural issues.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>efforts to discredit HRW stem directly from its outspoken criticism of Israel’s record in the occupied territories and its military conduct. An HRW </span><a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/22/israel/gaza-hostilities-take-horrific-toll-children" rel="">report</a><span> released the same day as Fisher’s remarks cited the World Health Organization’s </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/child-killed-average-every-10-minutes-gaza-says-who-chief-2023-11-10/" rel="">conclusion</a><span> that the IDF had killed roughly one child in Gaza every 10 minutes since the outbreak of violence in October.</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>members of the J-Ventures group chat also internally circulated a </span><a href="https://actionnetwork.org/letters/netflix-removfe-the-antisemitic-blood-libel-film-farha" rel="">petition</a><span> for Netflix to remove the </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11555492/awards/" rel="">award-winning</a><span> Jordanian film ‘Farha,’ claiming that its portrayal of the actions of IDF soldiers during the 1948 displacement of Palestinians constituted “blood libel,” while another said the film was based “antisemitism and lies.” </span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>Last year, the Israeli government </span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/12/03/farha-netflix-nakba-palestine-israel/" rel="">revoked</a><span> funding for a theater in Jaffa for screening the film, while government figures called for other repercussions to Netflix for streaming it. </span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">One member noted that despite the controversy over a scene in the film in which Israeli soldiers execute a Palestinian family, Israeli historians have documented that “such actions have indeed happened.” The critique was rejected by other members of the group, who said the film constituted “incitement” against Jews.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">a variety of automated attempts to remove pro-Palestinian content on social media</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>Over the last two months, dozens of individuals have been fired for expressing opinions related to the war in Gaza and Israel. Most have been dismissed for expressing pro-Palestinian views, including a </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/10/philadelphia-sports-reporter-loses-job-pro-palestinian-comments" rel="">writer for PhillyVoice</a><span>, the </span><a href="https://news.artnet.com/news/artforum-editor-fired-over-pro-palestine-open-letter-2385950" rel="">editor of ArtForum</a><span>, an apprentice at German publishing giant </span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/10/26/axel-springer-fires-employee-israel/" rel="">Axel Springer</a><span>, and Michael Eisen, the editor-in-chief of eLife, a prominent science journal. Eisen’s offense was a </span><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/michael-eisen-tweet-elife-firing-science-editor-palestinians-israel-gaza/" rel="">tweet sharing</a><span> a satirical article from The Onion seen as sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. </span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>The WhatsApp chats provide a rare look at the organizing efforts behind the broad push to fire critics of Israel and suppress public events featuring critics of the Israeli government. The scope is surprisingly broad, ranging from investigating the funding sources of student organizations such as </span><a href="https://ncusar.org/modelarableague/" rel="">Model Arab League</a><span>, to monitoring an </span><a href="https://bit.ly/pali-toolkit" rel="">organizing toolkit</a><span> of a Palestine Solidarity Working Group – “They are verrrry well organized”, one member exclaimed – to working directly with high-level tech executives to fire pro-Palestinian employees.</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">"President Biden seems incapable of using the one policy tool that may actually produce a change in Israel's actions that might limit civilian deaths, which would be to condition military aid that the United States provides to Israel,” Clifton added. He partially attributed the inability of the U.S. government to rein in Israel’s war actions to the “lobbying and advocacy efforts underway.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>Lior Netzer, a business consultant based in Massachusetts, and a member of the J-Ventures WhatsApp group, requested help pressuring the University of Vermont to cancel a lecture with Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer for The Nation magazine. Netzer shared a sample script that alleged that El-Kurd had engaged in anti-Semitic speech in the past.</span><br><br><span>The effort also </span><a href="https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2023/10/25/uvm-cancels-palestinian-speaker-mohammed-el-kurd-middle-east-war/71304336007/" rel="">appeared</a><span> to be successful. Shortly after the letter-writing campaign, UVM canceled the talk, citing safety concerns. </span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The WhatsApp group maintained a special focus on elite universities and white-collar professional positions. Group members not only circulated multiple petitions to fire professors and blacklist students from working at major law firms for allegedly engaging in extremist rhetoric, but a J-Ventures spreadsheet lists specific task force teams to "get professors removed who teach falcehoods [sic] to their students." The list includes academics at Cornell University, the University of California, Davis, and NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus, among others.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span>Many of the messages in the group focused on ways in which to shape student life at Stanford University, including support for pro-Israel activists. The attempted interventions into campus life at times hinged on the absurd. Shortly after comedian Amy Schumer posted a </span><a href="https://twitter.com/BadWritingTakes/status/1717911955388719184?s=20" rel="">now-deleted</a><span> satirical cartoon lampooning pro-Palestinian protesters as supporters of rape and beheadings, Epstein, the operating partner at Bessemer Ventures Partners and member of the J-Ventures WhatsApp group, asked, “How can we get this political cartoon published in the Stanford Daily?"</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The influence extended beyond the business and tech world and into politics. The J-Ventures team includes advocates with the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC. Officials in the J-Ventures group include investor David Wagonfeld, whose biography states he is “leading AIPAC Silicon Valley;” Tartakovsky, listed as “AIPAC Political Chair;” Adam Milstein, a real estate executive and major AIPAC donor; and AIPAC-affiliated activists Drs. Kathy Fields and Garry Rayant. Kenneth Baer, a former White House advisor to President Barack Obama and communications counsel to the Anti-Defamation League, is also an active member of the group.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Other fundraising efforts from J-Ventures included an emergency fund to provide direct support for IDF units, including the naval commando unit Shayetet-13. The leaked planning document also uncovers attempts to supply the mostly female Caracal Battalion with grenade pouches and to donate M16 rifle scope mounts, “FN MAG” machine gun carrier vests, and drones to unnamed IDF units. According to the planning document, customs enforcement barriers have stranded many of the packages destined for the IDF in Montana and Colorado.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the morning after being reached for comment, Hermoni warned the WhatsApp group against cooperating with our inquiries. “Two journalists … are trying to have an anti semi[tic] portrait of our activity to support Israel and reaching out to members,” he wrote. “Please ignore them and do not cooperate.” he advised. Shortly thereafter, we were kicked out of the group</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Victory on the “media battlefield,” Hoffman concluded, “eases pressure on IDF to go quicker, to wrap up” and “goes a long way to deciding how much time Israel has to complete an operation.”</div></div></li></ul><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45313/Quick-Thoughts-Mouin-Rabbani-on-Thirty-Years-of-Oslo?mc_cid=3fa0804b39&mc_eid=421639076e'>Jadaliyya</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/opinion'>opinion</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/analysis'>analysis</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Oslo'>Oslo</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/MEPP'>MEPP</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">in exchange for a slew of Palestinian strategic concessions, Israel magnanimously agreed to negotiate the PLO’s terms of surrender.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/IL%20PS_930913_DeclarationPrinciplesnterimSelf-Government%28Oslo%20Accords%29.pdf">Declaration of Principles</a> on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, as the Oslo Accord is formally called, is only a few pages long and largely free of technical jargon, and well worth reading for those who haven’t done so. It contains not a single reference to “occupation”, “self-determination”, “statehood”, or anything of the sort. Rather, Palestinians were to exercise limited autonomy, within limited areas of the occupied territories (excluding East Jerusalem), from which Israeli forces would “redeploy” rather than withdraw</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the issues that had the greatest impact were the effective abandonment of the refugees, who constitute the majority of the Palestinian people, by the leadership; the political-institutional fragmentation of the Palestinian people; the indefinite suspension of the national agenda in exchange for economic reconstruction that was unlikely to materialize (as it stands the Palestinian economy is today but a shadow of what it was in 1993); and the transformation of the national movement into a local authority</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Things have turned out very much worse than Oslo’s bitterest critics could have imagined, particularly in the Gaza Strip and Jordan Valley</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The second enabling policy was Israel’s relentless campaign of mass violence throughout the occupied territories, and the Gaza Strip in particular, to crush the 1987-1993 uprising. It didn’t succeed, but as <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/WpNov93.1608.2036.000.093.Nov1993.32.pdf">Graham Usher</a> perceptively noted at the time, it did lay the basis for widespread Palestinian acquiescence, and quite a bit of enthusiasm, in these territories for the false promises of Oslo. </div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p>Colonization of course commenced immediately after Israel occupied and initiated the “creeping annexation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June 1967, but Oslo was nevertheless a critical turning point.</p>
<p>Although the settlement enterprise constitutes a grave breach of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (which is the primary reason Israel refused to ratify it), the Oslo Accords as a matter of design make no reference to international law. Further, the sponsor of the Oslo process, the United States, has spared no effort to ensure that international law is not applied to Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians beyond the confines of Oslo, that it is not held accountable for its actions, and that it can continue to act with unrestricted impunity. In other words, the United States ensured that Oslo was implemented beyond the purview of the norms and rules established to govern international conduct. </p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Israel’s response to the 1994 Hebron Ibrahimi Mosque massacre by a fanatic Israeli-American settler, which it instrumentalized to further entrench its control over Hebron and the mosque rather than confront the settlers, provided an early, definitive indication in this regard. It bears recalling that this response was led by Rabin, his fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres, and their military commander Ehud Barak, not Binyamin Netanyahu or Itamar Ben-Gvir.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Every time Israel engaged in a new act of colonization, such as the construction of the Har Homa settlement on Jabal Abu Ghnaim in 1997, it was tolerated on the pretext of keeping the process alive</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">If, for the sake of argument, we take claims that Oslo was supposed to conclude with Palestinian statehood seriously, ignoring reality on the ground on the pretext of preserving the diplomatic process helped ensure its failure.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">A second key Israeli policy enabled by Oslo is Palestinian fragmentation</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Israel succeeded in making Oslo’s transitional phase a <a href="https://merip.org/1996/12/palestinian-authority-israeli-rule/">permanent arrangement</a>, in the process transforming the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a local subsidiary of the Israeli state</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">if a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip seeks to pursue a claim against Israel for an act committed between 1967 and 1995, let’s say against the Israeli military for unlawful use of force in 1976 or during the 1987-1993 uprising that rendered the claimant quadriplegic, the PA is under an obligation to ensure that the claimant brings the case before a Palestinian rather than Israeli court, and that any financial judgement by that court in the claimant’s favor is paid out by the PA rather than Israel. If the claimant despite the above brings the case before an Israeli court, and an Israeli judge rules in the claimant’s favor, on account of unlawful actions by the Israeli military years before the PA even existed, the PA is required to immediately reimburse Israel the full amount of compensation awarded to the Palestinian by the Israeli court. Article XX perfectly encapsulates the thoroughly lopsided nature of Oslo, the imbalance of power it codified, Israel’s insistence upon achieving retroactive impunity, and its determination to hold its victims responsible for its crimes against them. In my view nothing better demonstrates that this is a conflict between occupier and occupied and nothing else.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the enormous economic windfall Israel derived from the Oslo Accords and its integration into the global economy. Most importantly it led the Arab League to renounce its boycott of Israel and – crucially – of companies that do business with Israel. For all its shortcomings this boycott was exponentially more effective than the current Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and for example kept major Japanese and South Korean firms out of Israel and quite a few Western ones out of the Arab world. It is often forgotten that during the 1970s and 1980s Israel was something of an international pariah, but in the wake of the 1991 Madrid Middle East diplomatic conference and thereafter Oslo was able to normalize relations with much of Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">While Oslo promised Palestinian economic development in exchange for political paralysis, growth materialized only temporarily from the desultory baseline where it stood in 1993 at the conclusion of a prolonged uprising. A sharp reversal in fact commenced in the years leading up to the 2000 eruption of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on account of Israeli policy, and this deterioration has continued at an accelerated pace ever since. What Oslo did achieve was to catapult Israel into the ranks of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which it has since 2010 been a full member. It is virtually inconceivable Israel would have acquired this status without Oslo.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Palestinians, whether within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, within Israel, in its prison system, or in the diaspora, have been organizing and resisting in myriad ways. Most importantly, they have despite massive and systematic state violence and repression, and betrayal by their own leaders and Arab governments, refused to surrender – putting into practice “the power of refusal” advocated by Said. In doing so the Palestinians have retained the overwhelming support of the international community, and even in the West public opinion increasingly recognizes that Israel is a structurally racist, colonial state</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">when the succession commences Israel is likely to promote a model where different Palestinian population concentrations – Hebron-Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jericho, Nablus-Salfit-Jenin, Qalqilya-Tulkarm – are administered by a series of local chieftains</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">even this model, a regional version of the failed Village Leagues of the 1980s, may prove unpalatable to the lunatics currently running the Israeli asylum. These are forces agitating for wholesale, formal annexation and then some, and which thanks to the inexorable rightward shift of Israeli society, and international and regional support and acquiescence (not unrelated phenomena) are only gaining in strength and power.</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-9915133819146463602023-12-05T04:31:00.001-05:002023-12-05T04:31:07.102-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 12/05/2023<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-national-security-adviser-brett-mcgurk-israel-palestine_n_656936c0e4b07b937ff4287f'>How A Deeply Controversial White House Adviser Is Running The Agenda On Gaza</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/USA'>USA</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/policy'>policy</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/gwot'>gwot</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/ISIS'>ISIS</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iraq'>Iraq</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/US'>US</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-72063364237042308482023-12-03T04:31:00.001-05:002023-12-03T04:31:03.184-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 12/03/2023<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/'>‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/war'>war</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/bombing'>bombing</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/AI'>AI</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Hamas'>Hamas</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/crimes'>crimes</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/warcrimes'>warcrimes</a></p><ul class='diigo-highlights'><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span style="font-weight: 400;">another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">“mass assassination factory.”</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the increasing use of AI-based systems like Habsora allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes where a single Hamas member lives on a massive scale, even those who are junior Hamas operatives. Yet testimonies of Palestinians in Gaza suggest that since October 7, the army has also attacked many private residences where there was no known or apparent member of Hamas or any other militant group residing. Such strikes, sources confirmed to +972 and Local Call, can knowingly kill entire families in the process.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” one source, who was critical of this practice, recalled.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">there are “cases in which we shell based on a wide cellular pinpointing of where the target is, killing civilians. This is often done to save time, instead of doing a little more work to get a more accurate pinpointing,”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Over 300 families have lost 10 or more family members in Israeli bombings in the past two months — a number that is 15 times higher than the figure from what was previously Israel’s deadliest war on Gaza, in 2014</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“There is a feeling that senior officials in the army are aware of their failure on October 7, and are busy with the question of how to provide the Israeli public with an image [of victory] that will salvage their reputation.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza">said</a> IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari on Oct. 9.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We are asked to look for high-rise buildings with half a floor that can be attributed to Hamas,” said one source who took part in previous Israeli offensives in Gaza. “Sometimes it is a militant group’s spokesperson’s office, or a point where operatives meet. I understood that the floor is an excuse that allows the army to cause a lot of destruction in Gaza. That is what they told us.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.</span></p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">at least until the current war, army protocols allowed for attacking power targets only when the buildings were empty of residents at the time of the strike. However, testimonies and videos from Gaza suggest that since October 7, some of these targets have been attacked without prior notice being given to their occupants, killing entire families as a result.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span style="font-weight: 400;">As documented by Al Mezan and numerous images coming out of Gaza, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, the Palestinian Bar Association, a </span><a href="https://news.yahoo.com/un-educational-building-gaza-destroyed-144952127.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">UN building</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for an educational program for outstanding students, a building belonging to the Palestine Telecommunications Company, the Ministry of National Economy, the Ministry of Culture, roads, and dozens of high-rise buildings and homes — especially in Gaza’s northern neighborhoods.</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so,”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">for the most part, when it comes to power targets, it is clear that the target doesn’t have military value that justifies an attack that would bring down the entire empty building in the middle of a city, with the help of six planes and bombs weighing several tons</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/10/israel-dahiya-doctrine-disproportionate-strategy-military-gaza-idf/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dahiya Doctrine</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">According to the doctrine — developed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is now a Knesset member and part of the current war cabinet — in a war against guerrilla groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel must use disproportionate and overwhelming force while targeting civilian and government infrastructure in order to establish deterrence and force the civilian population to pressure the groups to end their attacks. The concept of “power targets” seems to have emanated from this same logic.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Previous operations have also shown how striking these targets is meant not only to harm Palestinian morale, but also to raise the morale inside Israel. Haaretz revealed that during Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit conducted a </span><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-03-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israeli-army-conducted-online-psy-op-against-israeli-public-during-gaza-war/00000186-f972-df90-a19e-f9fff22a0000"><span style="font-weight: 400;">psy-op against Israeli citizens</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in order to boost awareness of the IDF’s operations in Gaza and the damage they caused to Palestinians. Soldiers, who used fake social media accounts to conceal the campaign’s origin, uploaded images and clips of the army’s strikes in Gaza to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok in order to demonstrate the army’s prowess to the Israeli public.</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">since October 7, Israel has attacked high-rises with their residents still inside, or without having taken significant steps to evacuate them, leading to many civilian deaths.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">evidence from Gaza suggests that some high-rises — which we assume to have been power targets — were toppled without prior warning. +972 and Local Call located at least two cases during the current war in which entire residential high-rises were bombed and collapsed without warning, and one case in which, according to the evidence, a high-rise building collapsed on civilians who were inside.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">According to intelligence sources, Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">the Habsora system enables the army to run a “mass assassination factory,” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality.” A human eye “will go over the targets before each attack, but it need not spend a lot of time on them.” Since Israel estimates that there are approximately 30,000 Hamas members in Gaza, and they are all marked for death, the number of potential targets is enormous.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span style="font-weight: 400;">A senior military official in charge of the target bank </span><a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-767706"><span style="font-weight: 400;">told</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> the Jerusalem Post earlier this year that, thanks to the army’s AI systems, for the first time the military can generate new targets at a faster rate than it attacks. Another source said the drive to automatically generate large numbers of targets is a realization of the Dahiya Doctrine.</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Five different sources confirmed that the number of civilians who may be killed in attacks on private residences is known in advance to Israeli intelligence, and appears clearly in the target file under the category of “collateral damage.” </div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">“That is a lot of houses. Hamas members who don’t really matter for anything live in homes across Gaza. So they mark the home and bomb the house and kill everyone there.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On Oct. 22, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of the Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq in the city of Deir al-Balah. Ahmed is a close friend and colleague of mine; four years ago, we founded a Hebrew Facebook page called </span><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-02/ty-article-magazine/.premium/ahmed-wanted-israelis-to-listen-to-gazans-then-23-of-his-family-members-were-killed/0000018b-8fb6-db7e-af9b-eff7d71f0000"><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Across the Wall,”</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> with the aim of bringing Palestinian voices from Gaza to the Israeli public.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The strike on Oct. 22 collapsed blocks of concrete onto Ahmed’s entire family, killing his father, brothers, sisters, and all of their children, including babies. Only his 12-year-old niece, Malak, survived and remained in a critical condition, her body covered in burns. A few days later, Malak died.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Twenty-one members of Ahmed’s family were killed in total, buried under their home. None of them were militants. The youngest was 2 years old; the oldest, his father, was 75. Ahmed, who is currently living in the UK, is now alone out of his entire family.</span></p></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">According to former Israeli intelligence officers, in many cases in which a private residence is bombed, the goal is the “assassination of Hamas or Jihad operatives,” and such targets are attacked when the operative enters the home. Intelligence researchers know if the operative’s family members or neighbors may also die in an attack, and they know how to calculate how many of them may die. Each of the sources said that these are private homes, where in the majority of cases, no military activity is carried out.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">there is ample evidence that, in many cases, none were military or political operatives belonging to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The bombing of family homes where Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives supposedly live likely became a more concerted IDF policy during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Back then, 606 Palestinians — about </span><a href="https://www.btselem.org/download/201501_black_flag_eng.pdf"><span style="font-weight: 400;">a quarter of the civilian deaths</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> during the 51 days of fighting — were members of families whose homes were bombed. A UN </span><a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-i-gaza-conflict/report-co-i-gaza"><span style="font-weight: 400;">report</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> defined it in 2015 as both a potential war crime and “a new pattern” of action that “led to the death of entire families.”</span></div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, by Nov. 29, Israel had killed 50 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, some of them in their homes with their families</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">The intelligence officers interviewed for this article said that the way Hamas designed the tunnel network in Gaza knowingly exploits the civilian population and infrastructure above ground. These claims were also the basis of the media campaign that Israel conducted vis-a-vis the attacks and raids on Al-Shifa Hospital and the tunnels that were discovered under it.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Hamas leaders “understand that Israeli harm to civilians gives them legitimacy in fighting.”</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">while it’s hard to imagine now, the idea of dropping a one-ton bomb aimed at killing a Hamas operative yet ending up killing an entire family as “collateral damage” was not always so readily accepted by large swathes of Israeli society. In 2002, for example, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of Salah Mustafa Muhammad Shehade, then the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing. The bomb killed him, his wife Eman, his 14-year-old daughter Laila, and 14 other civilians, including 11 children. The killing caused a public uproar in both Israel and the world, and Israel was accused of committing war crimes.</div></div></li><li><div class="diigoContent"><div class="diigoContentInner">Fifteen years after insisting that the army was taking pains to minimize civilian harm, Gallant, now Defense Minister, has clearly changed his tune. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” he said after October 7.</div></div></li></ul></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-33121332613594863882023-12-01T04:31:00.001-05:002023-12-01T04:31:12.683-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 12/01/2023<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://acleddata.com/2023/11/29/infographic-violence-escalates-in-the-middle-east-in-response-to-the-israel-palestine-conflict/'>Infographic: Violence Escalates in the Middle East in Response to the Israel-Palestine Conflict</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/war'>war</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Lebanon'>Lebanon</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iran'>Iran</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/yemen'>yemen</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Iraq'>Iraq</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Syria'>Syria</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/violence'>violence</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666758626184085070.post-33241183511703250332023-11-28T04:31:00.001-05:002023-11-28T04:31:06.342-05:00International politics of the Middle East daily links 11/28/2023<ul class='diigo-linkroll'><li><p class='diigo-link'><a rel='nofollow' href='https://acleddata.com/2023/11/07/infographic-global-demonstrations-in-response-to-the-israel-palestine-conflict/'>Infographic: Global Demonstrations in Response to the Israel-Palestine Conflict</a></p><p class='diigo-tags'><a style='color:#000 !important;text-decoration:none !important;' href='https://groups.diigo.com/cloud/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>Tags</a>: <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Israel'>Israel</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/protests'>protests</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Palestine'>Palestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/Gaza'>Gaza</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/data'>data</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/ACLED'>ACLED</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/israelpalestine'>israelpalestine</a>, <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/international-politics-of-the-middle-east/bookmark/tag/demonstrations'>demonstrations</a></p></ul><br />Posted from <a href='https://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of <strong>International Politics of the Middle East</strong> <a href='https://groups.diigo.com/group/international-politics-of-the-middle-east'>group favorite links</a> are here.Ed Webbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08441286443960162471noreply@blogger.com0