World

Pentagon proclaims failure as America’s 'forever wars' yield 75,000% increase in terror attacks

America’s Global War on Terror has seen its share of stalemates, disasters, and outright defeats. During 20-plus years of armed interventions, the United States has watched its efforts implode in spectacular fashion, from Iraq in 2014 to Afghanistan in 2021. The greatest failure of its “Forever Wars,” however, may not be in the Middle East, but in Africa.

“Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated,” President George W. Bush told the American people in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, noting specifically that such militants had designs on “vast regions” of Africa.

To shore up that front, the U.S. began a decades-long effort to provide copious amounts of security assistance, train many thousands of African military officers, set up dozens of outposts, dispatch its own commandos on all manner of missions, create proxy forces, launch drone strikes, and even engage in direct ground combat with militants in Africa. Most Americans, including members of Congress, are unaware of the extent of these operations. As a result, few realize how dramatically America’s shadow war there has failed.

The raw numbers alone speak to the depths of the disaster. As the United States was beginning its Forever Wars in 2002 and 2003, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in Africa. This year, militant Islamist groups on that continent have, according to the Pentagon, already conducted 6,756 attacks. In other words, since the United States ramped up its counterterrorism operations in Africa, terrorism has spiked 75,000%.

Let that sink in for a moment.

75,000%.

A Conflict that Will Live in Infamy

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq opened to military successes in 2001 and 2003 that quickly devolved into sputtering occupations. In both countries, Washington’s plans hinged on its ability to create national armies that could assist and eventually take over the fight against enemy forces. Both U.S.-created militaries would, in the end, crumble. In Afghanistan, a two-decade-long war ended in 2021 with the rout of an American-built, -funded, -trained, and -armed military as the Taliban recaptured the country. In Iraq, the Islamic State nearly triumphed over a U.S.-created Iraqi army in 2014, forcing Washington to reenter the conflict. U.S. troops remain embattled in Iraq and neighboring Syria to this very day.

In Africa, the U.S. launched a parallel campaign in the early 2000s, supporting and training African troops from Mali in the west to Somalia in the east and creating proxy forces that would fight alongside American commandos. To carry out its missions, the U.S. military set up a network of outposts across the northern tier of the continent, including significant drone bases – from Camp Lemonnier and its satellite outpost Chabelley Airfield in the sun-bleached nation of Djibouti to Air Base 201 in Agadez, Niger — and tiny facilities with small contingents of American special operations troops in nations ranging from Libya and Niger to the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

For almost a decade, Washington’s war in Africa stayed largely under wraps. Then came a decision that sent Libya and the vast Sahel region into a tailspin from which they have never recovered.

“We came, we saw, he died,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked after a U.S.-led NATO air campaign helped overthrow Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the longtime Libyan dictator, in 2011. President Barack Obama hailed the intervention as a success, but Libya slipped into near-failed-state status. Obama would later admit that “failing to plan for the day after” Qaddafi’s defeat was the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

As the Libyan leader fell, Tuareg fighters in his service looted his regime’s weapons caches, returned to their native Mali, and began to take over the northern part of that nation. Anger in Mali’s armed forces over the government’s ineffective response resulted in a 2012 military coup. It was led by Amadou Sanogo, an officer who learned English in Texas and underwent infantry-officer basic training in Georgia, military-intelligence instruction in Arizona, and was mentored by U.S. Marines in Virginia.

Having overthrown Mali’s democratic government, Sanogo and his junta proved hapless in battling terrorists. With the country in turmoil, those Tuareg fighters declared an independent state, only to be muscled aside by heavily armed Islamists who instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, causing a humanitarian crisis. A joint Franco-American-African mission prevented Mali’s complete collapse but pushed the militants into areas near the borders of both Burkina Faso and Niger.

Since then, those nations of the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have evolved, splintered, and reconstituted themselves. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on motorcycles — two to a bike, wearing sunglasses and turbans, and armed with Kalashnikovs — regularly roar into villages to impose zakat (an Islamic tax); steal animals; and terrorize, assault, and kill civilians. Such relentless attacks have destabilized Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger and are now affecting their southern neighbors along the Gulf of Guinea. Violence in Togo and Benin has, for example, jumped 633% and 718% over the last year, according to the Pentagon.

U.S.-trained militaries in the region have been unable to stop the onslaught and civilians have suffered horrifically. During 2002 and 2003, terrorists caused just 23 casualties in Africa. This year, according to the Pentagon, terrorist attacks in the Sahel region alone have resulted in 9,818 deaths — a 42,500% increase.

At the same time, during their counterterrorism campaigns, America’s military partners in the region have committed gross atrocities of their own, including extrajudicial killings. In 2020, for example, a top political leader in Burkina Faso admitted that his country’s security forces were carrying out targeted executions. “We’re doing this, but we’re not shouting it from the rooftops,” he told me, noting that such murders were good for military morale.

American-mentored military personnel in that region have had only one type of demonstrable “success”: overthrowing governments the United States trained them to protect. At least 15 officers who benefited from such assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. The list includes officers from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, and 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023). At least five leaders of a July coup in Niger, for example, received American assistance, according to a U.S. official. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as that country’s governors.

Military coups of that sort have even super-charged atrocities while undermining American aims, yet the United States continues to provide such regimes with counterterrorism support. Take Colonel Assimi Goïta, who worked with U.S. Special Operations forces, participated in U.S. training exercises, and attended the Joint Special Operations University in Florida before overthrowing Mali’s government in 2020. Goïta then took the job of vice president in a transitional government officially charged with returning the country to civilian rule, only to seize power again in 2021.

That same year, his junta reportedly authorized the deployment of the Russia-linked Wagner mercenary forces to fight Islamist militants after close to two decades of failed Western-backed counterterrorism efforts. Since then, Wagner — a paramilitary group founded by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former hot-dog vendor turned warlord — has been implicated in hundreds of human rights abuses alongside the longtime U.S.-backed Malian military, including a 2022 massacre that killed 500 civilians.

Despite all of this, American military aid for Mali has never ended. While Goïta’s 2020 and 2021 coups triggered prohibitions on some forms of U.S. security assistance, American tax dollars have continued to fund his forces. According to the State Department, the U.S. provided more than $16 million in security aid to Mali in 2020 and almost $5 million in 2021. As of July, the department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism was waiting on congressional approval to transfer an additional $2 million to Mali. (The State Department did not reply to TomDispatch’s request for an update on the status of that funding.)

The Two-Decade Stalemate

On the opposite side of the continent, in Somalia, stagnation and stalemate have been the watchwords for U.S. military efforts.

“Terrorists associated with Al Qaeda and indigenous terrorist groups have been and continue to be a presence in this region,” a senior Pentagon official claimed in 2002. “These terrorists will, of course, threaten U.S. personnel and facilities.” But when pressed about an actual spreading threat, the official admitted that even the most extreme Islamists “really have not engaged in acts of terrorism outside Somalia.” Despite that, U.S. Special Operations forces were dispatched there in 2002, followed by military aid, advisers, trainers, and private contractors.

More than 20 years later, U.S. troops are still conducting counterterrorism operations in Somalia, primarily against the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab. To this end, Washington has provided billions of dollars in counterterrorism assistance, according to a recent report by the Costs of War Project. Americans have also conducted more than 280 air strikes and commando raids there, while the CIA and special operators built up local proxy forces to conduct low-profile military operations.

Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the U.S. has launched 31 declared airstrikes in Somalia, six times the number carried out during President Obama’s first term, though far fewer than the record high set by President Trump, whose administration launched 208 attacks from 2017 to 2021.

America’s long-running, undeclared war in Somalia has become a key driver of violence in that country, according to the Costs of War Project. “The U.S. is not simply contributing to conflict in Somalia, but has, rather, become integral to the inevitable continuation of conflict in Somalia,” reported Ẹniọlá Ànúolúwapọ Ṣóyẹmí, a lecturer in political philosophy and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. “U.S. counterterrorism policies are,” she wrote, “ensuring that the conflict continues in perpetuity.”

The Epicenter of International Terrorism

“Supporting the development of professional and capable militaries contributes to increasing security and stability in Africa,” said General William Ward, the first chief of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) — the umbrella organization overseeing U.S. military efforts on the continent — in 2010, before he was demoted for profligate travel and spending. His predictions of “increasing security and stability” have, of course, never come to pass.

While the 75,000% increase in terror attacks and 42,500% increase in fatalities over the last two decades are nothing less than astounding, the most recent increases are no less devastating. “A 50-percent spike in fatalities tied to militant Islamist groups in the Sahel and Somalia over the past year has eclipsed the previous high in 2015,” according to a July report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution. “Africa has experienced a nearly four-fold increase in reported violent events linked to militant Islamist groups over the past decade… Almost half of that growth happened in the last 3 years.”

Twenty-two years ago, George W. Bush announced the beginning of a Global War on Terror. “The Taliban must act, and act immediately,” he insisted. “They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.” Today, of course, the Taliban reigns supreme in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda was never “stopped and defeated,” and other terror groups have spread across Africa (and elsewhere). The only way “to defeat terrorism,” Bush asserted, was to “eliminate it and destroy it where it grows.” Yet it has grown, and spread, and a plethora of new militant groups have emerged.

Bush warned that terrorists had designs on “vast regions” of Africa but was “confident of the victories to come,” assuring Americans that “we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.” In country after country on that continent, the U.S. has, indeed, faltered and its failures have been paid for by ordinary Africans killed, wounded, and displaced by the terror groups that Bush pledged to “defeat.” Earlier this year, General Michael Langley, the current AFRICOM commander, offered what may be the ultimate verdict on America’s Forever Wars on that continent. “Africa,” he declared, “is now the epicenter of international terrorism.”

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Israeli military attacks several hospitals in northern Gaza

Israeli forces on Friday launched attacks on several hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including the territory's largest medical facility, where thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from Israel's relentless bombing campaign.

"Israel is now launching a war on Gaza City hospitals," Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, director of Gaza's main hospital, al-Shifa, toldReuters.

The World Health Organization confirmed Friday that hospitals in northern Gaza are "coming under bombardment."

Citing Gaza health officials, The Associated Pressreported early Friday that Israeli airstrikes hit the courtyard and obstetrics department of al-Shifa Hospital, where doctors have been forced to treat patients without anesthesia due to a lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of bombing victims.

At least one person was reportedly killed and several were wounded in Friday's attack.

Video footage posted online by Reuters shows the moment the entrance of al-Shifa was struck, sparking panic among those huddled under makeshift shelters. The incident is captured at around the 31:50 mark.

The attacks on Gaza City's hospitals came as Israeli troops and tanks encircled the northern part of the Palestinian territory.

Israel claims that Hamas militants are operating in and under al-Shifa and has ordered Gaza health officials to evacuate the hospital—something they say is impossible, given the sheer number of patients and lack of a safe alternative.

"Where are we going to evacuate them?" Abu Selmeyah, the hospital's director, asked in an interview with Al Jazeera. He called Israel's claim that a Hamas command center is located at the hospital "utter lies."

The strikes on Gaza medical facilities came hours after Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed grave concerns about the safety of the thousands of civilians sheltering at al-Shifa—"including people on life support, those who lost limbs in air strikes, and burn victims"—as Israeli forces close in.

"Videos from inside al-Shifa's compound, verified by HRW, show hundreds of people in a courtyard next to the ER, including sheltering civilians, medics tending to patients, emergency workers collecting dead bodies, and journalists. Satellite imagery shows many tents there," the group continued. "Civilians who remain in place after an evacuation warning—including those who can’t leave, fear moving, or don’t want to be displaced—don’t lose their protections as civilians under the laws of war."

AP reported that in the wake of Friday's attacks, thousands of people "fled from around Gaza City's main hospital," joining "a growing exodus of people toward the south amid intensified fighting."

A surgeon on the ground in Gaza City wrote on social media that "Shifa hospital has collapsed."

"Wounded and staff leaving in droves," he continued. "Missile attacks this morning on outpatient dept. which housed internally displaced."

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces opened fire on the intensive care unit of al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, killing at least one person and wounding dozens—including children.

William Schomburg, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross sub-delegation in Gaza, said in a statement that "the destruction affecting hospitals in Gaza is becoming unbearable and needs to stop."

"The lives of thousands of civilians, patients, and medical staff are at risk," he added.

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'Growing loss of confidence' among diplomats as State Dept. officials rip Israel policy in leaked memo

A month has passed since Hamas' November 7 terrorist attack on Israel. More than 1400 Israelis, according to the Associated Press, were killed in that attack. And thousands of people have died during Israeli forces' anti-Hamas operation in Gaza.

President Joe Biden, following the November 7 attack, was quick to express his solidarity with Israel. But according to Politico's Nahal Toosi, some U.S. State Department officials have been critical of Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas War — and believe he should be more willing to publicly criticize the Israeli government.

"The message suggests a growing loss of confidence among U.S. diplomats in President Joe Biden's approach to the Middle East crisis," Toosi explains in a report published by Politico on November 6. "It reflects the sentiments of many U.S. diplomats, especially at mid-level and lower ranks, according to conversations with several department staffers as well as other reports. If such internal disagreements intensify, it could make it harder for the Biden administration to craft policy toward the region."

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The reporter adds, "The memo has two key requests: that the U.S. support a ceasefire, and that it balance its private and public messaging toward Israel, including airing criticisms of Israeli military tactics and treatment of Palestinians that the U.S. generally prefers to keep private."

The memo, according to Toosi, reads, "We must publicly criticize Israel's violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets. When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity."

Toosi reports that the memo "was authored by two mid-level staffers who have worked in the Middle East." The staffers, according to Toosi, argue that Israel has a "legitimate right and obligation" hold Hamas accountable for the October 7 massacre but argues that "the extent of human lives lost thus far" in Gaza "is unacceptable."

READ MORE: Tuberville concocts massive falsehood about who’s responsible for Wars in Ukraine and Israel

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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An interview with the author of 'The New Hate' and 'The Politics of Fear'

Since Oct. 7, and the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, reports of antisemitic threats and attacks have soared across Europe and the United States, where most of the world’s Jews live outside Israel. In France, there have been 719 antisemitic acts and 389 arrests since then, according toUSA Today. In Germany, there have been 202 antisemitic acts every week during that time, a 240 percent increase.

The Anti-Defamation League said that it has recorded more than 310 antisemitic acts in the United States between Oct. 7 and Oct. 23. “Of those,” USA Today reported, “190 were directly linked to the war between Israel and Hamas, the group said. Overall, acts of harassment, vandalism and assault in the US are up by 388 percent over last year.”

Islamophobia appears to be rising in tandem. Palestine Legal, an advocacy defending the constitutional rights of “people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom,” has been tracking the trend. In an Oct. 24 Twitter thread, the group reported that “across the US, people advocating for Palestinian rights are facing a wave of McCarthyite backlash targeting their livelihoods and careers. In the last two weeks, Palestine Legal has responded to over 260 such incidents.”

“We have spoken to people being fired from their jobs for sharing social media posts or signing statements that support Palestinian human rights,” the thread went on. “We have written to universities, including Harvard, demanding that they protect students being severely doxxed and harassed by anti-Palestinian vigilante groups … We’ve spoken to professors who are being questioned, whose classes are being canceled and are being locked out of their emails for supporting Palestinian rights or who have faced calls for removal.”

To put this in perspective, I talked to Arthur Goldwag, author of The New Hate: Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right. Published in 2012, that book predicted what the Republicans would become after Barack Obama’s presidency. I think it also captured what US politics became after terrorists flew jetliners in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Arthur (who is a subscriber to this humble newsletter!) is also author of The Politics of Fear: The Peculiar Persistence of American Paranoia, a followup to The New Hate. It’s due out early next year. I started our interview by asking whether today’s backlash against Arabs and Muslims is as bad as the one that terrorized them after Sept. 11.

AG: I would have said no if I hadn't read recently Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America, which was revelatory. Back then, I was in a bubble in lefty Brooklyn and had a corporate job; I wasn't online 24/7 and we didn't have cable TV. I didn't experience the insane cognitive dissonance directly and since I'm not Muslim, I didn't experience the backlash either. But it was there.

Television pundits were insisting on America's fundamental innocence and vulnerability. Some claimed that women had forsworn feminism for George Bush's and first responders' rugged manliness. Meanwhile, the police were spying on American Muslims and rounding up immigrants, and the government was torturing people overseas.

I'm still in Brooklyn and the circles I move in are very Palestinian solidarity-minded. I don’t know anyone who isn't upset at the carnage in Israel, but they are upset about the bombing in Gaza too.

I'm horrified but not baffled by it. There’s a lot of history. I think more of that context is getting acknowledged in the news now than then – there are more reporters and commentators providing it in the mainstream media. But people are shocked and angry, too.

Most here don't know the first thing about Israel and Palestine. Some are taking advantage of the horror to erase the Palestinian side of the story. As the death toll in Gaza rises, I suspect the mood might shift. I get the hysteria and the anger – I even sympathize with some of it.

But the right to defend and the act of revenge are different things. Civilization depends on the first. It’s threatened by the second.

JS: I suspect a lot of non-Jewish Americans who have no relations with American Jews don't fully appreciate the dangers presented by American antisemitism. Drawing from your forthcoming book, can you explain why this deeply-rooted force has no visible end? Case in point this.

AG: I would start by saying that what innocent Jews in Israel just experienced is not something that can happen to Jewish people in the United States. The historical analogy for what happened there on October 7 is not pogroms or the Holocaust, which were enacted against powerless Jewish minorities, often by the state itself or with the state's approval. A better but still inexact analogy would be the anti-colonial violence in Algeria or India, or the ethnic violence in Rwanda or Serbia.

Jews make up a little over 2 percent of the US population. We really are a minority, although we are far from powerless. We have been targets for antisemitic hatred. Some of it was Christian successionism (the Jews killed Jesus and Christians now have the covenantal relationship with God); some of it is cultural (Jews are greedy and vulgar and should be prevented from joining nice clubs); some of it is racial (Jews are a lesser race themselves and they weaponize minorities to attack host countries).

Around the time of the Russian Revolution, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged document created in Russia at the turn of the last century that purported to prove that Jews had a long-term plan to destroy Christendom and replace it with a Davidic superstate, began circulating all over the world. Henry Ford was its biggest promoter here; Adolf Hitler was a big promoter in Europe. Hamas, as I remember, explicitly cites it in its charter and it remains enormously influential in the Middle East.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style antisemitism is built on the foundation of anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic documents that preceded it – in fact it plagiarizes some of them directly. But it forms a full-blown philosophy and theory of history for the people who believe it.

Ford had a big political following. In the 1930s, as the threat of a European war loomed again, isolationist America First congressmen read the Protocols into the Congressional Record. After World War II and the Holocaust, only extreme white supremacists continued to read it, but it has been revived on the conspiracist right, and by Maga as well, which doesn't refer to it directly, but has adopted a lot of its tropes.

Then there is the threat to Jews in cities – Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who are bearded and fringed and hatted and otherwise immediately identifiable. There are numerous cases of random violence directed against them, many of them not by white supremacists but by African Americans, some of them members of religious groups like the Nation of Islam that regard Jews as Satanic; some just resentful of another urban minority that enjoys a modicum of white privilege.

And then there is anti-Zionism, which groups like the Anti-Defamation League conflate with antisemitism, but that isn't necessarily antisemitic at all. Some anti-Zionists have made some really ghastly comments over the past several weeks about how there are no innocent Jews and how Hamas is a legitimate liberation movement that expose them as Jew haters, which can be incredibly painful for their Jewish sympathizers and allies.

I'm not immune to that pain, but I'm not worried about being targeted by Hamas over here. It could happen. Al Qaeda targeted New York City and Washington, after all. I'm more worried about being killed by a gun nut than I used to be, because there are mass shootings every day, and some of them are directed against minorities – Hispanics, Blacks, and, yes, Jews.

But what scares me the most aren't the inflammatory words of cosplaying college radicals; it's the pronouncements from Putin- and Viktor Orban-friendly Republicans about Jewish billionaire George Soros and his plot to destroy world finance; and evangelicals who are all about the Judeo-Christian tradition, but really just want Israel to build a new Temple so the End Times can get rolling. Now that we have a Christianist speaker of the House, I'm starting to worry that Jews may become a target of the government as well as of the many varieties of antisemitism.

JS: How much is racism actually influencing Israel's response to Oct. 7? It certainly did in America's response to Sept 11. Are there parallels?

AG: Yes, but with big differences from what we have here. The US is colorblind in theory and law but not in practice – white backlash accounts for a lot of the energy and appeal of the revanchist right.

But while Israel claims to respect religious freedom, it was conceived and is governed explicitly as an ethnostate, the Jewish homeland. Blood – who your mother's mother was – has a lot of bearing on not just your socioeconomic status but your legal identity and rights.

And then there is the fact that huge numbers of displaced Palestinians live in places that are either occupied by the Israeli military or under endless siege. Israel's policy over the decades has been one of divide and conquer, pitting Palestinians against each other while Jewish facts on the ground are established on the West Bank.

At the same time Israeli Palestinians are receiving the benefits of a lot of social welfare and educational outreach. Hamas and Fatah are physically and philosophically divided. By design, there is neither a physical place nor a credible organization for an economically viable and politically sustainable independent state of Palestine.

At the same time – and as we just witnessed – many Palestinians hate Jews with a genocidal zeal. So yes, structural hatreds account for a lot. But if Jews are a tiny minority in the US and elsewhere, in Israel they are the state. So a lot of the analogies with the US break down.

JS: Do liberals have an "antisemitism crisis" or is this an instance of illiberals reaching for the margins to smear everyone to their left?

AG: The litmus test of antisemitism is whether someone ascribes negative behaviors, beliefs and characteristics of some Jews or Jewish-identified movements and causes as immutable attributes of an entire people.

Not to victim-blame, but because the state of Israel and its advocates so often claim to be speaking and acting on behalf of the entire Jewish people (remember when Donald Trump called Benjamin Netanyahu "your prime minister" in a speech to Republican Jews in Las Vegas?), some of Zionism's defenders sometimes open themselves up to it.

So is the antisemitism of the left as disgusting as the antisemitism of the right? Of course. Is it as dangerous? I would say yes, but not because I think "the left" as a whole is out to defame or harm Jews, but because leftists who do Jew-bait hurt the left. As you know, I see evidence of antisemitism in the pro-Russia right and left, too, and the anti-Ukraine right and left. But as an American, I still regard Christian nationalism and Trump's authoritarian populism as clearer and more present dangers.

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The Mexico invasion Republicans fantasize about would create even more chaos: historian

President Ronald Reagan famously commented, "Latinos are Republicans; they just don't know it yet." Many MAGA Republicans of 2023, in contrast, have called for military action against Mexico in response to violence by drug cartels — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

In a guest essay/op-ed published by the New York Times on November 1, author and Yale University history professor Greg Grandin observes that calling for military attacks on Mexico has become increasingly popular with MAGA Republicans — despite Mexico's willingness to work with the U.S. to combat the spread of fentanyl.

"The Mexican government is, in fact, cooperating with the United States to limit the export of the drug (fentanyl), recently passing legislation limiting the import of chemicals required for its production and stepping up prosecution of fentanyl producers," Grandin explains. "And even some of the cartels have reportedly spread the message to their foot soldiers, telling them to stop producing the drug or face the consequences. Still, in a show of Trumpian excess, Mexico is depicted as the root of all our problems. Bombing Sinaloa in 2024 is what building a border wall was in 2016: political theatrics."

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Grandin goes on to stress that military action against Mexico would create and aggravate problems — not solve them.

"For now, calls to bomb Mexico are mostly primary-season bluster," the author/historian writes. "But if a Republican were to win the White House in 2024, he or she would be under pressure to make good on the promise to launch military strikes on Mexico."

Grandin continues, "Those efforts are not just bound to fail; they also could even make matters worse…. Further militarizing Mexico's drug war would lead to more corruption, more deaths, more refugees desperate to cross the border. And those displaced, if Republicans had their way and Mexican cartels were classified as terrorist organizations, would have a better shot at claiming asylum, since they would be fleeing a formally designated war zone.

READ MORE: 'Be realistic': Conservative slams Republicans calling for military action against Mexico

Read Greg Grandin's full New York Times essay/op-ed at this link (subscription required).

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George Will calls out 'shape-shifting' J.D. Vance and MAGA isolationists over foreign policy hypocrisy

President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were facing major foreign policy challenges before Saturday, October 7, including Ukraine's war with Russia. But things became even more complicated when Hamas launched a deadly terrorist assault against Israel that day.

Thousands of people have since been killed in the Israel-Hamas War, which foreign policy and political science experts fear could turn into a broader regional conflict if the Lebanon-based Hezbollah declares war against Israel. Biden has been lobbying Congress for military aid to both Ukraine and Israel, but some MAGA Republicans have called for the U.S. to abandon Ukraine — including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri).

In a scathing Washington Post opinion column published on November 1, Never Trump conservative George Will slams MAGA Republicans for having "isolationist" tendencies during what he describes as "the most dangerous U.S. moment since World War II — more menacing than the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis."

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"Explaining his support for U.S. aid to Israel but not Ukraine, Sen. J.D. Vance, the shape-shifting Ohio Republican, wrote: 'Israel has an achievable objective. Ukraine does not,'" the 82-year-old Will writes. "Actually, their objectives are identical: national survival while living in proximity to enemies whose objective is national annihilation."

The conservative columnist continues, "Vance's categorical conclusion, that Ukraine's survival is unachievable, makes him a momentous symptom of Donald Trump's transformation of the Republican Party. If Trump becomes, for the third consecutive time, the party's presidential candidate, one of our two major parties will be more isolationist than either party was during the 1930s high tide of 'America First' isolationism."

Will delves into U.S. history, noting that Vance reflects a "long-lingering" isolationism within the Republican Party and arguing that in 1941, the "cure for 1930s isolationism was Pearl Harbor."

"Populists call the war in Ukraine a 'forever war,'" Will writes. "It is 20 months old. Twenty months into World War 2 in Europe — May 1941 — Hitler was triumphant from Norway to North Africa, and Victory in Europe Day was four years distant. World War 2 was not forever; it was worth winning."

READ MORE: Tuberville concocts massive falsehood about who’s responsible for Wars in Ukraine and Israel

Read George Will's full Washington Post column at this link (subscription required).

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Mitch McConnell’s Ukraine policy puts him 'on a collision course' with House Speaker Johnson: report

Many MAGA Republicans have been vehemently critical of the Biden Administration's Ukraine policy, claiming that military aide to Ukraine has come at the expense of security along the U.S./Mexico border. Other Republicans have called for Biden officials to focus on Israel rather than Ukraine.

Democrats have countered that one doesn't automatically rule out the other — that the U.S. can aid Ukraine and Israel militarily and still have ample security along its southern border.

One Republican who favors military aide to Ukraine is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). In an article published on October 30, Politico's Burgess Everett describes the conflict between McConnell and MAGA Republicans who oppose helping Ukraine during its conflict with Russia and President Vladimir Putin.

"McConnell is at odds with new Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, who wants to split off Israel aid from Ukraine funding rather than pass a sweeping national security package," Everett reports. "And the Senate GOP leader faces brewing discontent within his own conference, which is buzzing over whether to stick with McConnell or side with conservatives who want a strategy change on Ukraine."

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Everett continues, "McConnell's public and private lobbying efforts to greenlight tens of billions of dollars in Ukraine assistance is a sharp deviation from his usual more reserved, consensus-building approach. He's going to significant lengths to win over reluctant GOP senators and is on a collision course with the new speaker."

A Republican senator, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Politico, "I don't think there's much appetite" for the security package McConnell has in mind."

However, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-South Dakota) favors military aid to Ukraine, although with less spending than McConnell.

Thune told Politico, "He came through the Cold War era and is a profound believer that this is a moment in history that the United States needs to assert leadership — and that if we don't, there are going to be some pretty grave consequences…. We have a number of our members who are not for Ukraine funding. I think there's a big majority that understands what's at stake here."

READ MORE: The week Kevin McCarthy caved to Republican Party Putinists

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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'Abandonment of morals': Analysis reveals how GOP candidates are 'rationalizing bigotry and cruelty'

In late October, Israeli defense forces launched a ground offensive as part of their anti-Hamas operation in Gaza. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have expressed their solidarity with Israel but are careful to address the humanitarian crisis that non-Hamas Gaza residents are facing.

Some of Biden and Blinken's GOP critics, meanwhile, are claiming that their support for Ukraine is hampering military aid to Israel — a claim the Biden Administration finds ridiculous. The U.S., Biden officials maintain, needs to support Ukraine and Israel.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on November 1, journalist Will Saletan calls out Republican candidates who are expressing "bigotry" against non-Hamas Palestinians in Gaza and emphasizes that military support for Israel and "humanitarian aid to Gaza" are not mutually exclusive.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

"I'm Jewish," Saletan writes. "I believe in Israel, and I'm aghast at what Hamas did to so many innocent people on October 7. I strongly support the use of force against the killers. But as thousands of innocent people die in Gaza — not as targets, but as victims of relentless bombardment in a war they didn't choose — I can't accept the bigotry, zealotry and callousness these candidates are espousing."

The Bulwark journalist adds, "They aren't standing up against ruthless religious violence. They're promoting it."

The Republicans Saletan calls out include former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, all of whom, he laments, are opposing humanitarian aid to Gaza. Pence said there should be "no aid delivered to Gaza until all hostages are free."

Saletan laments, "This is how you rationalize depriving innocent people of food and medicine."

READ MORE: Hamas sympathizers wage all-out 'cyberwarfare' against Israel: report

The Bulwark writer also slams former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and others who are calling for Israel to abandon all "restraint" in its anti-Hamas offensive.

"What the Republican candidates are advocating, in sum, is an abandonment of morals," Saletan warns. "They're rationalizing bigotry and cruelty — withholding humanitarian aid, barring child refugees, bombing Gaza without limits — and they're grounding America's loyalty to Israel in Jewish and Christian scripture. This isn't the way to build an alliance against terrorism. It's the way to feed a religious war."

READ MORE: 'Cease fire now!' Blinken testimony repeatedly interrupted by protesters against military aid to Israel

Read Will Saletan's full article for The Bulwark at this link.

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Scholar details a Biden goal: Restrain Israel 'through the bear hug'

I’m publishing this very, very long interview with Hussein Ibish, because he does such a good job of explaining in plain English what’s happening in the war between Israel and Hamas with Gaza in between.

More than anyone else I have encountered, Hussein starts with a practical premise – that most people most of the time really don’t know what’s going on. They have a feeling, which is good, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far. So he pulls up a chair to begin class.

Hussein is a senior scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute He’s also a columnist for The National, an English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, and a contributor to Bloomberg and others.

JS: There's a growing debate in America about the president's handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Some say he's not doing enough to stop the Israelis from killing Palestinians as they try to end Hamas' rule. In doing so, he's siding with Jews more than Arabs/Muslims. Your thoughts?

HI: Judged in the abstract, and removed from the actual context in which all of this is taking place, you'd have to be pretty critical of Biden's policies. But his personal views and experiences, the Democratic Party's orientation, and the broad consensus of US policies in recent decades form the backdrop for what Biden believes he can do or wants to do, personally and politically, in the US national interest. Of course he is siding with Israel. The US has always sided with Israel since 1967, and probably will, or at least for the foreseeable future. These are as much matters of domestic politics as foreign policy.

But I disagree with those who think Biden has no coherent policy goals. I would argue that he is trying to pursue an overarching aim in the US national interest: to prevent the war from spreading beyond Gaza, dragging in Hezbollah and involving a potential Israeli-Iranian war, and a conflict that also draws in the United States.

To that end, he's got two parallel policies working simultaneously.

First, there is the huge US naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean, including two aircraft carrier strike groups, the Eisenhower and the Ford, mainly designed to deter Hezbollah from getting engaged and to let all parties in Iran's network of armed militias in the Arab world know that if they are caught attacking US forces, especially if any Americans are killed, the US is more than ready, willing and able to strike back. It's also warning that the US is there to help defend Israel if need be. He's waving a bunch of sticks in front of US adversaries and those pearly Iranian groups that might be tempted, with or without prompting from Tehran, to leap into the fray and expand the conflict.

Second, he's trying to restrain Israel through the bear hug he has given it. The huge Biden administration embrace of Israel already helped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overrule defense minister Yoav Gallant from authorizing massive a preemptive strike against Hezbollah which would have insanely spread the war throughout the Middle East in a thoroughly avoidable manner and kicked off the very conflagration the Biden administration is seeking to avoid.

He was somewhat successful in persuading the Israelis to hold off on the ground incursion into the population centers of Gaza for a couple of weeks – though they have entered on the ground now – while urging them to come up with a viable post-conflict plan for either getting out or finding a sustainable governance system in Gaza, something they freely admit they have not given any consideration to concocting and which, frankly, defies the imagination.

Biden initially got the Israelis to hold off by citing the need to negotiate for hostages. He then invoked the need to build up US missile defenses around its own troop presence throughout the region to protect US forces from rocket and drone attacks by Iranian backed militia groups in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere – a threat that has emerged as a real source of danger, including to US naval forces thanks to intercepted strikes by the powerfully armed Yemeni Houthi rebels. But, eventually, Israeli troops did enter northern Gaza and I don’t think Biden ever believed he could prevent that from happening.

My sense is that the administration believes they have been successful in preventing the conflict from spreading and that if it were going to spread, particularly to involve Hezbollah, it would have already. Of course, the dangers are by no means lifted, but I think there’s a lot less anxiety now about a broader regional conflagration. That has meant a certain shift in administration attention and rhetoric. Biden and his officials are now spending more time warning Israel about not going too far, limiting the humanitarian catastrophe that is accompanying this war, especially for innocent Palestinians in Gaza, and working behind the scenes to get the Israelis to think through the end game.

Most importantly, he has been publicly urging the Israelis not to replicate the US mistake of overreacting to Sept. 11. Any sensible person familiar with history knows that when insurgent, guerrilla and terrorist groups engage in acts of spectacular overkill they are trying to provoke the more powerful entity into a wild overreaction that inflicts more damage on itself than the insurgency ever could.

Sept. 11 is a good example of this, because the invasion of Iraq was completely deranged, and it's exactly the kind of lunatic lashing out that Al Qaeda was hoping to provoke. Biden's message to the Israelis is, "don't get baited into doing anything extremely stupid," and he has specifically warned them against a "reoccupation" of the Gaza interior.

Biden is warning Israel that this is exactly what Hamas is hoping for, and he's right. Hamas is seeking to use the outrages of October 7 in a long-term bid to take over the Palestinian national movement and leave its secular rivals in Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, in the dustbin of history, or at least pushed to the margins of Palestinian politics.

The strategy is to draw Israel back into Gaza, take the initial beating while delivering as much damage to Israeli troops as possible. (Expect Hamas to have prepared some very nasty surprises for Israeli troops.) But more importantly in the weeks and months after Israel's apparent "total victory," Hamas hopes to slowly regroup amid the rubble and begin an insurgency against a prolonged on-the-ground Israeli military presence in the population centers of Gaza, slowly gaining steam and picking off Israeli troops on a routine basis.

They would then argue that while Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are sitting in Ramallah policing the occupation on behalf of Israel, and while the PLO is pointlessly making its case at the UN and in its embassies around the world, in contrast to these useless secular nationalists, Hamas is actually fighting for Palestine against heavily armed Israeli occupation troops and picking them off one by one.

The Biden administration is urging Israel to avoid providing Hamas with this scenario by simultaneously parroting Israeli talking points about no return to the status quo ante, even though no one has a plausible alternative to either of three outcomes: precisely, a return to the status quo ante of a basically Hamas-controlled Gaza, albeit smashed to pieces; a resumed prolonged Israeli occupation leading to a potent insurgency (precisely Hamas's aim); or total chaos in Gaza.

And Biden is keen to try to find a way to quickly get Saudi Arabia and Israel back into triangular negotiations with Washington on a potential three-way deal that all of them were convinced might actually occur before the 2024 election. Maybe it has to be a second term project now, but if Biden can succeed in containing the war to Gaza and also restraining Israel from the worst excesses, he might be able to salvage his complex triangular diplomacy as well. At least, this is his goal.

JS: Relatedly, there are those who say Biden has lost support among Arab/Muslim Americans, imperiling his chances of winning swing states like Michigan. Others say he's lost support of young people of color (BIPOC), who tend to sympathize with the plight of Palestinians. In your view, is Biden's position here, domestically, that unbalanced?

HI: Quite probably, because everything I said above is not fully appreciated by many people in the country, and Arabs around the world, including Arab Americans, are extremely angry with what they perceive to be an unreasonably pro-Israeli stance by the Biden administration. Again, viewed in a vacuum, that's absolutely correct.

But in its actual political, cultural and policy consensus context, it's not exactly a good policy, but it's a reasonable one consistent with American national interests as understood by the internationalists in the Democratic Party and that broadly seeks to limit the conflict and restrain Israel as well as deter Hezbollah and other third parties.

It's not as bad as a lot of people think, in other words. But it's bad enough, and those who are highly attuned to the suffering of Palestinians cannot be placated by the kind of dispassionate analysis with which I answered your first question. Biden may well lose a lot of younger votes among Arab/Muslim Americans, including in Michigan.

It looks like his opponent will be Trump, and I can't imagine them possibly voting for the orange menace either. They will probably turn to some irrelevant third party like Cornel West or some such silliness.

But is that enough for Biden to lose Michigan to Trump? I'm not so sure, not at all. And I think there will be a lot of more sober, and older, Arab and Muslim Americans who, looking at Biden versus Trump, no matter how enraged they are about Gaza, may prefer not to see a second term for The Donald, especially given everything he has threatened, including a restored "Muslim ban," among other things.

So, yes, Biden's position is that unbalanced from an Arab perspective, but does that make Trump more appealing? No. In short, I don't see any of this making Trump's reelection particularly more likely, or, I would say, less unlikely. It still strikes me as highly unlikely.

JS: How about press coverage in the US of the war? Some say Israelis are "killed," but Palestinian "die." The American press is provincial, to be sure. There's probably more coverage of the Oct. 7 massacre than of Israel's bombardments. There's lots of confusion about who's doing what to whom (eg, the story about the “hospital explosion”). What's your take?

HI: It's still the case that Americans in general, including the American press corps and television producers and so on, are much more familiar with Israel, Israelis and the pro-Israel narrative than they are with Palestine, Palestinians and any pro-Palestinian narrative.

There is also a tremendous network of pro-Israel organizations of all stripes, including non-Jewish liberal groups and various rightwing Christian groups, particularly evangelicals and others, set up to do nonstop media messaging and even propaganda on behalf of Israel.

It remains one of the most effective messaging and public diplomacy networks of a foreign country ever seen in the United States, certainly the best since Britain's in World War II, which was amazingly effective. And the Israeli government is a master at directing and manipulating US and other western media, with a few notable failures.

There's never been anything like it anywhere else in the Middle East, and is certainly not in the Arab world. There are very few voices emerging from Gaza, other than random individuals or a few respected persons, that have any traction with the US media in general.

That's not wrong, but there is a willingness to take official Israeli pronouncements more seriously than they should be, while profound skepticism is reserved for the other side of this particular conflict, especially regarding Gaza. That's unhealthy and unwarranted, because the Israeli military has a long history of talking utter crap and lying like hell to protect itself from scrutiny in the western media.

That said, there is real understanding that didn't used to be there among editors, producers and journalists in the mainstream US media that there is a Palestinian voice that deserves to be included in their reporting and pro-Palestinian analyses or narratives that, if left out entirely, will result in impoverished and incomplete coverage. They don't really want that, so there is an effort to reach out.

One problem is that there is still a tendency to view most pro-Palestinian arguments as essentially the same, because the unfamiliarity with the wide range of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian perspectives with their myriad and nuanced differences can't be detected by these American journalists, editors and producers.

The same is not at all true of Israeli voices, where differences between, say, Netanyahu and [minister of finance and leader of the Religious Zionist Party] Bezalel Smotrich are readily apparent. In practice, this means that a lot of non-pro-Hamas but pro-Palestinian perspectives end up sounding like apologias for Hamas, even when they're not. It also means that there is a tendency to say, "we've covered that perspective" when they really haven't at all, just because there was another, and quite different, pro-Palestinian viewpoint included.

Finally, it remains the case that most American reporters who are covering the Israel-Palestine area and therefore now the conflict reside or stay in Israel, and especially West Jerusalem, and very few are based in the occupied Palestinian territories, let alone Gaza.

So it's very easy to report from what amounts to an Israeli experience or Israeli point of view, and to access the Israeli government, Israeli experts and ordinary Israelis, while it's a lot more difficult to do that for Palestinians in general, and Palestinians in Gaza in particular.

So, despite everything that has changed for the better, since, say, the 1970s and 1980s, the imbalance is still pretty glaring.

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'Cease fire now!' Blinken testimony repeatedly interrupted by protesters against military aid to Israel

On Tuesday morning, October 31, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared on Capitol Hill to make the case for additional military aid to Israel and Ukraine. But Blinken's testimony, broadcast live on CNN, was interrupted by a group of protesters.

Blinken quit speaking when a protester yelled that Biden officials should "stop supporting the genocide" against "the people of Gaza."

"Cease fire now," the protester shouted. "Save the children of Gaza!"

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Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) commented that although "people feel very passionately," there needed to be "order in this hearing room."

Blinken resumed speaking — only to be interrupted by another protester. When she was being led away by security, the protester shouted, "The American people don't want to support this brutal war…. Stop funding this brutal massacre that Israel is doing on the people of Gaza. Cease fire now!"

As Blinken spoke some more, he was interrupted by another protester opposed to Israel's military operation in Gaza. The secretary of state described Israel and Gaza as "two democracies under brutal assault by actors determined to wipe their nations off the map." But he was interrupted once again by a protester shouting, "Cease fire now! Cease fire now!"

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis criticizes media coverage of Gaza hospital explosion

Watch CNN's video below or at this link.

Protestors interrupt Blinkenwww.youtube.com

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'This is not a game': Jake Tapper rips MTG for using antisemitism as a 'cudgel' to score 'political points'

CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday unloaded on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over the Republican congresswomen’s filing of a motion to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MA), accusing Greene of using antisemitism “against people for political points.”

Greene last week introduced a resolution forcing a House vote on censuring Tlaib over what Greene claimed was “an anti-American and antisemitic insurrection” at the Capitol. Tlaib earlier this month attended a rally calling for a ceasefire and end of the Israel-Hama conflict.

Describing Greene’s resolution as “written by someone who seems to have learned about the Arab-Israeli conflict maybe10 minutes before, who maybe didn’t even have access to Wikipedia,” Tapper laments that Tlaib’s participation at the ceasefire rally “is not an insurrection.”

“It might be a bunch of folks with whom you disagree, it might be a bunch of people you think are misguided, acting a way you don’t like — but this is not an insurrection,”

“Antisemitism is not a cudgel to be used against people for political points,” Tapper said. “Nor is Islamophobia or racism, or anti-gay behavior or misogyny or any other kind of bigotry.”

He added, “This s*** is not a game.”

Watch the video below, or at this link.

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Exposed: The US billionaires and corporate profiteers enabling Israel's war on Gaza

With more than 7,300 Palestinians killed so far in Israel's three-week bombardment of Gaza, a series of reports this week have exposed how U.S. weapon-makers and billionaire donors are enabling what legal scholars say could amount to genocide.

After Israel declared war in response to Hamas killing over 1,400 Israelis and taking around 200 hostages, the stocks of major American and European war profiteers soared. A Thursday report from Eyes on the Ties—the news site of LittleSis and Public Accountability Initiative—targets five U.S. firms with a record of providing weaponry to Israel.

The outlet stressed that while announcing a supplemental funding request that includes $14.3 billion for Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden last week "invoked 'patriotic American workers' who are 'building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom,' but it's the defense company CEOs who rake in tens of millions a year, and Wall Street shareholders, who are the real beneficiaries of warmongering."

The five targeted industry giants collectively recorded $196.5 billion in military-related revenue last year, Eyes on the Tiesreported. They are Boeing ($30.8 billion), General Dynamics ($30.4 billion), Lockheed Martin ($63.3 billion), Northrop Grumman ($32.4 billion), and RTX, formerly Raytheon ($39.6 billion).

"The top shareholders in these five defense companies largely consist of big asset managers, or big banks with asset management wings, that include BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Capital Group, Wellington, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Newport Trust Company, Longview Asset Management, Massachusetts Financial Services Company, Geode Capital, and Bank of America," the news outlet noted.

Eyes on the Ties also highlighted how chief executives are handsomely compensated—and the CEOs' ties to Big Pharma, the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, and foreign policy think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for Strategic and International Studies.

According to the report:

  • Boeing CEO David Calhoun took in over $64 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 193,247 shares;
  • General Dynamics CEO Phebe N. Novakovic took in over $64 million in total compensation from 202-22 and as of March held 1,616,279 shares;
  • Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet took in over $66 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 56,054 shares;
  • Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy J. Warden took in over $61 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of March held 161,231 shares; and
  • RTX CEO Gregory J. Hayes took in over $63 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 801,339 shares.

Other reporting this week has taken aim at those CEOs for their suggestions that Israel's assault on Gaza is good for business.

During Lockheed Martin's latest earnings call, Taiclet correctly predicted Biden's request last week, saying that "there continues to be the option... for supplemental requests related to support Ukraine, Israel, and potentially Taiwan."

In addition to the request for Israel—which already gets nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid—Biden asked for $4 billion to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region and $61.4 billion more for Ukraine, which is battling a Russian invasion.

"We are all witnessing significant geopolitical tensions across the globe, including the ongoing war in Ukraine and the horrific attacks in Israel," Warden said during Northrop Grumman's Thursday earnings call, according toVICE. "As we saw last week, the [Biden] administration continues to make supplemental requests for urgent needs, including those in Ukraine and Israel, to include investments in weapons systems and defense industrial base readiness."

As The Leverreported:

"The Israel situation obviously is a terrible one, frankly, and one that's just evolving as we speak," said Jason Aiken, chief financial officer and executive vice president at General Dynamics, on Wednesday. "But I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side."

He continued: "Obviously that's been a big pressure point up to now with Ukraine, one that we've been doing everything we can to support our Army customer. We've gone from 14,000 rounds per month to 20,000 very quickly. We're working ahead of schedule to accelerate that production capacity up to 85,000, even as high as 100,000 rounds per month, and I think the Israel situation is only going to put upward pressure on that demand."

Last week, roughly 100 activists gathered outside of General Dynamics' weapons plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to protest the Israeli war, holding signs with slogans like, "Genocide: Brought To You By General Dynamics."

Both The Lever and VICE also pointed out that during RTX's Tuesday call, Hayes started by "acknowledging the tragic situation playing out in Israel" before turning to "an update on our end markets."

If Congress approves Biden's request for Israel, VICE explained, "some of the money would be used to restock Israel's Iron Dome rocket defense system, which RTX manufactured." Hayes said: "I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you're going to see a benefit of this restocking. On top of what we think is going to be an increase in [U.S. Department of Defense] top line."

It's not just defense executives enabling Israel's mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. As Eyes on the Ties reported, "Lobbying groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Democratic Majority for Israel have been active in Washington, calling on lawmakers to send money and weapons to Israel."

The report names some billionaire donors to the lobbying groups, including New England Patriots and the Kraft Group CEO Robert Kraft, private equity investor Marc Rowan, venture capitalist Gary Lauder, hedge fund managers Daniel Loeb and Paul Singer, and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who is also the founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said Wednesday that Americans "know that funneling billions more dollars into arms dealers' pockets won't keep our children safe from weapons of war at home or across the world. It won't keep our loved ones safe from toxins in our air and drinking water. They know that lining the pockets of weapons manufacturers won't help families struggling to afford housing, medicine, or grocery costs. They know defense contractors won't safeguard Medicare and Social Security or shield our communities against the climate crisis."

Unlike the CEOs of firms like Lockheed Martin and RTX, "moms who can't afford childcare, young folks who can't pay off their debt, veterans who can't keep up with housing costs, and children who go to school hungry don't have million-dollar lobbying budgets," added Lee, one of the few members of Congress pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza. "So it's up to us to stand up for their needs."
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How misinformation could shape the Israel-Hamas war

I wanted to interview Nicholas Grossman regarding the role of misinformation in the war between Israel and Hamas. In particular, I hoped to ask the professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, and senior editor of Arc Digital, about misinformation that arose from American reporting on an explosion at a hospital in Gaza.

You know what? I ended up repeating a bit of misinformation!

I asked him to lay out the facts about a blast that “killed hundreds, including kids,” and he said nuh-uh (not his words). In fact, Professor Grossman said, “there never were hundreds killed by an explosion at that hospital. Media reported that the hospital was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike killing 500, but that was based on something a Hamas-controlled agency said and was never supported by evidence.”

Professor Grossman went on to say “what apparently did happen is something hit a nearby parking lot and caused a smaller explosion, most likely a rocket fired from Gaza towards Israel that fell short (ie, not an Israeli projectile). People were camping in the parking lot, and the explosion killed some of them, but far less than the originally reported number. The estimates I’ve seen range from 10 to 50.”

My point isn’t to draw attention to my error, but to highlight the pernicious influence of misinformation on everyone, even those, like me, who are at least aware of that pernicious influence, and who are taking the time to ask knowledgeable people about it in times of war.

Now imagine the pernicious influence of misinformation on people who have no such awareness, or more importantly, on governments that are invested in misinformation being taken as fact. At scale, misinformation could affect choices leaders make. As you will see in the rest of my interview, the misinformation that arose from American reporting on the “hospital explosion” could end up shaping the war.

JS: The Gaza hospital explosion story produced a lot of misinformation very quickly. Some say that was an inflection point in a potential widening of the conflict. But isn't misinformation kinda normal?

NG: Misinformation is pretty normal, especially in war. Combatants try to spin news in their favor, and sometimes lie. They have trouble seeing through the chaos — known as the “fog of war” — to know exactly what’s happening, and it’s even harder for outside observers.

But this instance wasn’t normal. While there’s often partial and false info coming out of wars, it is not normal for major media outlets, such as the Times, to publish false information. But this time, many did. Politicians in various countries treated it as fact. Protestors surrounded US embassies. The King of Jordan canceled a planned meeting with President Biden. The news media error was big enough that the Times put out a long editor’s note explaining and apologizing.

JS: What challenge does Biden face given this misinformation? Just by stating the facts as known, he risks his "honest broker" position, no?

NG: If anyone still believes the false story, even though it’s been corrected, they would likely see that the president saying that it’s false as bias towards Israel. Some who acknowledge that it’s false still say that, because while Israel didn’t bomb that hospital or kill those people, they’re bombing many targets in Gaza and killing many people.

But those crowds are probably impossible to satisfy, and Biden isn’t about to say that false stories are true in an attempt to satisfy them.

Where it creates a serious challenge is in reactions from major players. If Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and others sympathetic to Hamas’ side believe that the hospital attack happened — or even if the leaders know it’s false but a lot of their people still believe it — they could become more likely to intervene and widen the war. If Arab leaders believe it, or feel a need to placate a public that believes it, they will be less likely to support diplomacy or work with the US to manage the crisis.

JS: Hussein Ibish has said the key to ending this is to stop dehumanizing both sides, in this case Israelis and Palestinians (not Hamas), and start "rehumanizing" them. I trust Hussein means well, but revenge has a powerful pull on the human psyche. What can leaders of good faith do?

NG: There’s a lot of well-meaning commentary that offers hope and a vision for the future, but doesn’t give anyone anything actionable to do now. “Rehumanizing both sides” sounds wonderful, but I don’t know how to do it in the short-term, and it doesn’t answer questions like “how can Israel avoid a repeat of the deadly Hamas attacks?”

The best American and other foreign leaders may be able to do is frequently remind Israel that thinking strategically yields better outcomes than lashing out in vengeance. That’s apparently been a focus for the Biden administration, as they’ve held up post-9/11 America as a cautionary tale, stressed that if Israel is going to overthrow Hamas they need to plan for what comes after, and pushed Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

JS: Relatedly, what is the president doing right? Wrong? Some say he's giving a free pass to Israel. Others say his left flank is going to be a problem for him. Others still are calling him a war president by proxy.

NG: It’s a really hard situation and I think he’s handled it well under the circumstances. In particular, supporting Israel in public has given him more leverage with the Israelis behind the scenes, which he’s used to delay an Israeli ground invasion, get humanitarian supplies into Gaza, and more. He’s also sent clear signals to Iran that the US does not want the war to widen, but is prepared to, which functions as deterrence.

As for something Biden did wrong? I thought his speech overdid the links between Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas, miscasting Israel as Ukraine and Russia as Hamas. The wars, the combatants, and the overall situations are too different in too many ways. Russia-Ukraine is pretty straightforward. Israel-Palestine is anything but.

On “free pass to Israel,” I’d say it’s clear that Biden is supporting Israel after the October 7 Hamas attacks, but not simply going along with whatever Israel wants. Some Americans (and others) want Biden to be more critical of Israel, to stop US military aid, to make America’s priority stopping the Israeli military, or take other steps. But “free pass” is more political hyperbole than objective analysis.

Regarding Biden’s “left flank,” it’s hard to say. For one, it’s impossible to know now what American voters will have at the front of their minds when voting in November 2024. Some criticism of Biden about Israel from the left is a genuine criticism by Biden voters, and some is by activists, commentators, podcasters, etc., who’d never vote Biden, and who guaranteed that Biden would lose in 2020 and Democrats would lose the 2022 midterms. How, or if, US policy towards today’s events in Israel and Gaza impacts the next American election — I don’t know.

And I don’t think others really know either.

“War president by proxy” is ridiculous. A lot of things happen in the world that are outside America’s control. Hamas killing 1,400 people in Israel was one of them, and Israel responding to that militarily is another. As a global leader, the US president plays a role in managing various crises. Israel and Hamas have fought many times, across many presidencies, and the US has been giving Israel aid throughout.

JS: Some who say Trump's "isolationist" tendencies are better than Biden's "internationalist" tendencies. Is this a debate or false binary?

NG: In general, it’s a false binary. There are degrees of isolationism and interventionism, and circumstances can change views. George W. Bush ran in 2000 as an anti-interventionist, and after Sept. 11 became the opposite. Specifically, it’s wrong. Trump deployed more US troops to Syria, authorized drone strikes, ordered the assassination of an Iranian general — the first foreign military commander targeted and killed by the US since World War II — and quite a bit more. Biden withdrew forces from Afghanistan and curtailed the drone program, then did a lot to help Ukraine after Russia’s invasion. It’s not cut and dry.

On Israel-Palestine, Trump wasn’t isolationist, taking various actions to shift US policy in favor of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That didn’t cause the violence we’re seeing, but it did worsen the situation in ways that made violence more likely.

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Biden approval among Democrats falls 11 points as he green-lights Israeli assault on Gaza

A Gallup survey released Thursday shows that U.S. President Joe Biden's approval rating among Democrats has fallen by 11 percentage points this month, a possible indication that his unconditional support for Israel as it carries out massacres in the Gaza Strip is angering part of his base.

In September, 86% of Democrats approved of Biden's job performance. But between October 2 and October 23, Biden's approval rating among Democrats has fallen to 75%, according to Gallup—the lowest level of his presidency.

Megan Brenan, a research consultant at Gallup, argued the survey results suggest that "Biden's immediate and decisive show of support for Israel following the October 7 attacks by Hamas appears to have turned off some in his own party."

As the death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsen by the hour, Muslim Americans are increasingly expressing outrage over the Biden administration's unwavering show of support for the Israeli government, which human rights groups and United Nations experts have accused of collective punishment and other war crimes.

"Joe Biden has single-handedly alienated almost every Arab-American and Muslim-American voter in Michigan," Democratic state Rep. Alabas Farhat toldNBC News over the weekend. Michigan is a critical battleground state that Biden won in 2020.

"The Biden administration and Democrats as a whole are going to have to do a lot of work to rebuild some level of trust with my community," added Farhat, who represents Dearborn, one of the largest Muslim- and Arab-American communities in the U.S. "It's never too late to do the right thing."

Last week, the Biden administration asked Congress to approve $14 billion in additional military assistance for Israel, despite warnings that he and other administration officials could be rendering themselves complicit in genocide.

Biden, who is running for reelection in 2024, has backed efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans under Israeli bombardment.

But he has thus far refused to call for a cease-fire and suggested he doesn't trust the Gaza Health Ministry's figures on the grisly death toll in the Palestinian territory—even though his own administration has repeatedly cited the data internally. Human rights experts say the ministry's figures have proven to be reliable.

NBC News reported Sunday that "in rolling conversations in Michigan and beyond over the past two weeks, Muslim elected officials, activists, and community leaders have coalesced around a plan to mobilize their constituents to vote next year—but also to encourage them to leave the top of the ticket blank in protest."

Survey results released last week by Data for Progress showed that two-thirds of likely U.S. voters—and 80% of Democrats—believe that "the U.S. should call for a cease-fire and deescalation of violence in Gaza" and "leverage its close diplomatic relationship with Israel to prevent further violence and civilian deaths."

But the Biden administration has responded dismissively to growing cease-fire demands from human rights groups, the United Nations, and members of his party.

"A cease-fire, right now, really only benefits Hamas," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said during a press briefing earlier this week.

Kirby later said the Biden administration has not set or discussed any red lines with Israel as it prepares to invade the Gaza Strip after weeks of near-constant bombing.
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Muslims in key swing state warn Democrats 'going to have a problem' in 2024 over Israel support

Democratic elected officials representing the sizable Muslim population in and around Detroit, Michigan are sounding the alarm over their party's chances in the Mitten State in the next presidential election.

Michigan state representative Alabas Farhat represents the city of Dearborn, where roughly half of the city's approximately 110,000 residents are of Arab descent. Farhat told the Associated Press on Thursday that national Democratic Party leaders are risking the alienation of their Muslim base in the must-win swing state, which narrowly went for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Biden in 2020 with the help of Muslim votes.

"In 2024, Democrats are going to have a problem with Arab Americans. For too long, they’ve isolated Arab American voices within the party. They’ve isolated the perspectives of Arab Americans. And on this specific issue, they’ve denied even recognizing the human rights of Palestinians," Rep. Farhat said.

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The AP reported that Michigan Democratic leaders like Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan), two Democratic members of Congress, and several statewide Democratic elected officials attended a pro-Israel rally on October 9, where some of them were seen dancing in chanting in Hebrew. However, none of them attended a rally in Dearborn the next day organized to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza being killed and displaced by Israel's offensive against Hamas.

"There is going to be an effort to not support the people who have not supported us," 22 year-old Palestinian American Adam Abusalah said. "The people that we voted for for such a long time — people that we’ve helped, we’ve donated to and we’ve worked on their campaigns."

This sentiment was echoed by former Biden advisor Ahmad Ramadan, who voiced his concern to the Michigan Democratic Party chair in the days following President Biden's doubling down on support for Israel following Hamas' October 7 terror attack.

"President Biden won with historic numbers in 2020. And I was proud to represent that, but the last two weeks have really shifted things,” Ramadan told NBC News. "I’ve also been getting calls from people saying, I have blood on my hands because I got people out to support him during that campaign."

READ MORE: 'Genuinely shocked they aired it': CNN interview cuts through pro-Israel propaganda on Gaza

Biden in particular has been the target of criticism for his perceived lack of support for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas. On Wednesday, Biden said during a press conference that he has "no notion if Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed." That statement was panned on X by Mohammed El-Kurd, the Palestine correspondent for left-aligned magazine The Nation.

"This isn’t just racist.," El-Kurd tweeted. "He’s preemptively minimizing the scale of death the Israeli regime has planned for Gaza."

According to Al Jazeera, more than 1,400 Israelis were killed and over 200 hostages were taken as a result of the October 7 attack. More than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

READ MORE: 'A textbook case of genocide': Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal decries Israel's assault on Gaza

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Biden says 'American leadership is what holds the world together' in speech urging unity

President Joe Biden asked Americans to continue to support Ukraine, add support for Israel to their plate, and reject growing antisemitism and Islamophobia, in a rare Oval Office address Thursday evening urging unity against the forces of hate.

“American leadership is what holds the world together,” President Biden declared, less than one day after returning from an active war zone abroad not controlled by U.S. Armed Forces for the second time, being the only President to ever do so.

“American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk, if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel. It’s just not worth it,” President Biden warned, appearing to send a message to far-right isolationist Republicans, the very ones who two weeks ago forced out one Speaker of the House while continuing to be unable to elect another to lead their fractured conference.

“That’s why tomorrow I’m going to send to Congress an urgent budget request to fund America’s national security needs, to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine,” the President continued. “It’s a smart investment that’s going to pay dividends for American security for generations. Help us keep American troops out of harm’s way. Help us build a world that is safer, more peaceful and more prosperous for our children and grandchildren.”

Biden’s remarks that “American leadership is what holds the world together,” were echoed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just hours earlier, when he declared his gratitude to President Biden, Congress, and “the entire American people for their powerful assistance and leadership.”

“American leadership helps rally the world behind the common cause of protecting life and rules-based international order,” President Zelenskyy said. “Ukrainians know how important unity is to defend against terror and aggression. The unity here, inside Ukraine, in partner states, including in the U.S., and around the world.”

President Biden began his 15-minute speech by telling Americans, “We’re facing an inflection point in history, one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Israel readying emergency regulations allowing arrest of journalists for factual reporting

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi confirmed Sunday that he is drafting regulations that will empower him to order police to arrest journalists for factual reporting and target anyone he believes has damaged national morale during Israel's ongoing war against Gaza.

Haaretzreports that Karhi—a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party—is preparing draft emergency regulations titled "Limiting Aid to the Enemy through Communication" which would allow him to direct police to arrest any civilian, remove them from their home, and seize their property if he believes they have disseminated information that might harm national morale or be used as "enemy propaganda."

The new regulations will apply to the general public as well as local and foreign media professionals—and will be applicable to both truthful and inaccurate reporting.

In a Sunday morning radio interview with Galey Israel, Karhi acknowledged that the proposed regulations are aimed at shutting down broadcasts by Qatari state-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera in Israel and Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed more than 2,800 people including at least 700 children while injuring over 10,000 others since last Saturday's Hamas-led infiltration attack that left upwards of 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead, 3,200 injured, and around 200 others kidnapped.

"As far as I'm concerned, they won't be able to operate in Israel, [but] I don't know what the legal counsel will leave from the regulations I've introduced—including the confiscation of equipment and office closures," Kahri said.

According to Haaretz's Avi Bar-Eli:

It should be noted that the draft regulations, as formulated by the communications minister, fully contradict Israel's democratic values and are unlikely to be approved by the government's legal counsel.

Ironically, Karhi himself falls under the definition of offenses he published, having previously expressed contempt for Supreme Court justices, refused to state he will obey Supreme Court rulings, and, six months ago, expressed disdain for reserve soldiers who refused to volunteer.

Israeli journalist Etan Nechin wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Netanyahu's government "is acting more like Putin's."

Earlier this year, Kahri courted controversy by announcing his intent to shut down Kan, Israel's public broadcaster—which he accused of "left-wing bias"—and Army Radio. He has also introduced legislation to shutter Israel's media watchdog and stands accused of favoring pro-Netanyahu outlets.

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Hamas sympathizers wage all-out 'cyberwarfare' against Israel: report

The death toll in the Israel-Hamas War, according to USA Today, has passed 3000. But that number is likely to increase substantially as Israeli forces continue their operation against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Israel, according to Politico, is not only under attack physically, but also, technologically.

Journalists Antoaneta Roussi and Maggie Miller, in an article published by Politico on October 15, report that "hackers sympathetic to Hamas" have been waging "cyberwarfare" against Israel's government, media and infrastructure.

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"Hacking groups with links to countries including Iran and Russia have launched a series of cyberattacks and online campaigns against Israel over the past week, some that may have even occurred in the runup to the October 7 strike by Hamas," Roussi and Miller explain. "On Telegram, hacking teams claimed they compromised websites, the Israeli electric grid, a rocket alert app and the Iron Dome missile defense system. At least one Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, acknowledged hackers took down its site temporarily."

The reporters add, "It's unclear how far and deep the cyberattacks went. But the online campaigns show an effort to bolster the physical onslaught with a digital offensive, potentially looking to replicate the way Russia and sympathetic hacktivists buffeted Ukraine with cyber strikes in the first days of that war…. Liz Wu, a spokesperson for Israeli-based cybersecurity group Check Point Software, said that the company had tracked more than 40 groups conducting attacks that overwhelmed and disrupted more than 80 websites starting with the day of the Hamas onslaught."

READ MORE:'A warning': Dem leader insists Trump's Israel comments prove he’s a national security threat

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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A US counterterrorism expert explains how Israeli intelligence works

Israel is widely recognized as having highly sophisticated intelligence capabilities, both in terms of its ability to collect information about potential threats within its own country and outside of it. And so as details unfold about the full extent of Hamas’ unprecedented and surprise attack on 20 Israeli towns and several army bases on Oct. 7, 2023, the question lingers: How didIsrael fail to piece together clues about this large-scale and highly complex plot in advance?

Israeli intelligence did detect some suspicious activity on Hamas militant networks before the attack, The New York Times reported on Oct. 10, 2023. But the warning wasn’t acted upon or fully understood in its entirety – similar to what happened in the United States shortly before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Intelligence analysis is like putting a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle together from individual pieces of intelligence every day and trying to make judgments for policymakers to actually do something with those insights,” said Javed Ali, a counterterrorism and intelligence scholar who spent years working in U.S. intelligence.

We spoke with Ali to try to better understand how Israeli intelligence works and the potential gaps in the system that paved the way for the Hamas incursion.

1. What questions did you have as you watched the attacks unfold?

This took an enormous amount of deliberate and careful planning, and Hamas must have gone to great lengths to conceal the plotting from Israeli intelligence. This plotting may indeed have been hidden as the plot was being coordinated.

Because of the attack’s advanced features, I also thought that Iran almost certainly played a role in supporting the operation – although some U.S. officials have so far said they do not have intelligence evidence of that happening.

Finally, Hamas is on Israel’s doorstep. One would think Israel could better understand what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, as opposed to 1,000 miles away in Iran. How did Israel not see something this advanced right next door? Some Israeli officials have said they believed Hamas was already deterred by recent Israeli counterterrorism operations, and that the group lacked the capability to launch an attack on the scope and scale of what occurred.

2. How does Israeli intelligence work, and how is it regarded internationally?

Israel has one of the most capable and sophisticated intelligence enterprises at the international level. The current design and functioning of Israel’s intelligence system broadly mirrors that in the U.S., with respect to roles and responsibilities.

In Israel, Shin Bet is the Israeli domestic security service, so the equivalent of the FBI, which monitors threats within the country. On the foreign security side, Israel has Mossad, which is equivalent to the CIA. Third, there is an Israeli military intelligence agency, similar to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency – and there are other, smaller organizations within military intelligence that are focused on different intelligence issues.

Like most Western countries, Israel relies on a combination of different intelligence sources. This includes recruiting people to provide intelligence agencies with the sensitive information they have direct access to, which is known as human intelligence – think spies. There is what is called signals intelligence, which can be different forms of electronic communications like phone calls, emails or texts that the Israelis gain access to. Then there is imagery intelligence, which could be a satellite, for example, that captures photos of, say, militant training camps or equipment.

A fourth kind of intelligence is open source, or publicly available information that is already out there for anyone to get, such as internet chat forums. While I was winding down my work in intelligence a few years ago, there was a shift to seeing much more publicly available intelligence than other kinds of traditional intelligence.

A man with a suit stands at a podium that says 'ICT's 22nd world summit on counter-terrorism' and next to a large screen that shows headshots of people

David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad, shows a video that depicts Iranian intelligence operatives during a counterterrorism summit in September 2023.

Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images

3. How does Israel’s intelligence system differ from the US system?

Unlike the U.S., one thing that Israel doesn’t have is an overall intelligence coordinator, a single representative who knows about and oversees all of the different intelligence components.

The U.S. system has a director of national intelligence position, who runs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created in 2004. These were both recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, after it found that the U.S. approach to intelligence was too fragmented across different agencies and offices.

So, when there are tough issues that no one agency could resolve on its own, or analytic differences in intelligence, you need an independent office of experts to help work through those issues. That’s what this office does.

I spent several years working within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In one of my jobs there, I reported to the director of national intelligence.

There is no equivalent to that central office and function in Israel. In my opinion, Israel might consider down the road how a comprehensive intelligence coordinator could help avoid this challenge in the future.

Several bodies covered in white cloths are seen on the ground.

Bodies of Israelis lie on the ground following Hamas’ attack in Sderot, Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023.

Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images

4. What role does the US have in monitoring threats to Israel, if any?

The U.S. and Israel have a very strong intelligence relationship. That partnership is bilateral, meaning it is just between the two countries. It is not part of a larger international group of countries that share intelligence.

The U.S. also has a broader intelligence partnership, known as “Five Eyes,” with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, the general rule in these strong bilateral relationships is that when one side picks up intelligence about threats to the other, it should automatically get passed on.

This may be a case where the U.S. is shifting its intelligence priorities to other parts of the world, like Ukraine, Russia and China. As a result, we may not have had significant intelligence on this particular Hamas plot, and so there was nothing to pass to Israel to warn them.The Conversation

Javed Ali, Associate Professor of Practice in Counterterrorism, Domestic Terrorrism, Cybersecurity and National Security Law and Policy, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Gaza Strip: Why the history of the densely populated enclave is key to understanding the current conflict

The focus on conflict in the Middle East has again returned to the Gaza Strip, with Israel’s defense minister ordering a “complete siege” of the Palestinian enclave.

The military operation, which involves extensive bombing of residences, follows a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas militants who infiltrated Israel from Gaza and killed around 1,200 Israelis. In reprisal airstrikes, the Israel military has killed over 1,400 Gazans. And that figure could escalate in the coming days. Meanwhile, an order to cut off all food, electricity and water to Gaza will only worsen the plight of residents in what has been called the “world’s largest open-air prison.”

But how did Gaza become one of the most densely populated parts of the planet? And why is it the home to militant Palestinian action now? As a scholar of Palestinian history, I believe understanding the answers to those questions provides crucial historical context to the current violence.

A brief history of Gaza

The Gaza Strip is a narrow piece of land on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Roughly twice the size of Washington, D.C., it is wedged between Israel to its north and east and Egypt to its south.

An ancient trade and sea port, Gaza has long been part of the geographic region known as Palestine. By the early 20th century, it was mainly inhabited by Muslim and Christian Arabs who lived under Ottoman rule. When Britain took control of Palestine following World War I, intellectuals in Gaza joined the emergent Palestinian national movement.

During the 1948 war that established the state of Israel, the Israeli military bombed 29 villages in southern Palestine, leading tens of thousands of villagers to flee to the Gaza Strip, under the control of the Egyptian army that were deployed after Israel declared independence. Most of them and their descendants remain there today.

Following the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the Gaza Strip came under Israeli military occupation. The occupation has resulted in “systematic human rights violations,” according to rights group Amnesty International, including forcing people off their land, destroying homes and crushing even nonviolent forms of political dissent.

Palestinians staged two major uprisings, in 1987-1991 and in 2000-2005, hoping to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state.

Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist militant group centered in Gaza, was founded in 1988 to fight against the Israeli occupation. Hamas and other militant groups launched repeated attacks on Israeli targets in Gaza, leading to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. In 2006, Palestinian legislative elections were held. Hamas beat its secular rival, Fatah, which had been widely accused of corruption. Elections haven’t been held in Gaza since 2006, but polling from March 2023 found that 45% of Gazans would back Hamas should there be a vote, ahead of Fatah at 32%.

After a brief conflict between Hamas and Fatah militants in May 2007, Hamas took complete control of the Gaza Strip. Since then, Gaza has been under the administrative control of Hamas, even though it is still considered to be under Israeli occupation by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department and other international bodies.

Who are the Palestinians of Gaza?

The more than 2 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are part of the 14 million-strong global Palestinian community. About one third of Gaza’s inhabitants trace their family’s roots to land inside the Gaza Strip. The remaining two-thirds are refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants, many of whom hail from towns and villages surrounding Gaza.

A blue, red and yellow mural on a wall in which there is a window through which a young boys looks.

A freshly painted mural at the Shati camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City.

Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The Palestinians of Gaza trend young: nearly half the population is under 18. The enclave is also very poor, with a poverty rate that stands at 53%.

Despite this grim economic picture, education levels are quite high. Over 95% of Gazan children ages 6-12 are in school. The majority of Palestinian students in Gaza graduate from high school, and 57% of students at the prestigious Islamic University of Gaza are female.

But because of the circumstances of their surroundings, young Palestinians in Gaza find it difficult to live fulfilling lives. For graduates between the ages of 19 and 29, the unemployment rate stands at 70%. And a World Bank survey earlier this year found 71% of Gazans show signs of depression and high levels of PTSD.

There are several factors that contribute to these conditions. A major factor is the crippling, 16-year blockade that Israel and Egypt – with U.S. support – have imposed on Gaza.

Years of blockade

Shortly after the 2006 elections, the Bush administration tried to force Hamas from power and bring in a rival leader from the Fatah party who was considered friendlier to Israel and the U.S. Hamas preempted the coup and took full control of Gaza in May 2007. In response, Israel and Egypt – with U.S. and European support – closed the border crossings into and out of the Gaza Strip and imposed a land, air and sea blockade.

The blockade, which is still in effect, limits the import of food, fuel and construction material; limits how far Gaza’s fishermen can go out to sea; bans almost all exports; and imposes strict limitations on the movement of people into and out of Gaza. In 2023, Israel has allowed only around 50,000 people a month to exit Gaza, according to U.N. figures.

The years of closure have devastated the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. Inhabitants there don’t have enough water for drinking and sanitation. They face electricity cuts that run 12 to 18 hours each day. Without adequate water and electricity, Gaza’s fragile health care system is “on the brink of collapse,” according to the medical rights group Medical Aid for Palestine.

These restrictions hit the young and the weak of Gaza particularly hard. Israel routinely denies sick patients the permits they need to receive medical care outside of Gaza. Bright students with scholarships to study abroad often find that they are unable to leave.

U.N. experts say this blockade is illegal under international law. They argue that the blockade amounts to a collective punishment of the Palestinians of Gaza, a violation of the Hague Convention and the Geneva Conventions that form the backbone of international law.

No end to the suffering

Israel says that the blockade on Gaza is necessary to secure the safety of its population and will be lifted when Hamas renounces violence, recognizes Israel and abides by previous agreements.

But Hamas has consistently rejected this ultimatum. Instead, militant fighters stepped up the firing of homemade rockets and mortars into populated areas surrounding the Gaza Strip in 2008, seeking to pressure Israel to lift the blockade. They have sporadically attacked Israel in this way in the years since.

Three men in army clothing and armed stand by a wall.

Israeli soldiers take up a position in Gaza in 1993.

STR/AFP via Getty Images

Israel has launched four major military assaults on Gaza – in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2021 – in efforts to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities. Those wars killed 4,000 Palestinians, more than half of whom were civilians, along with 106 people in Israel.

During that time, the U.N. estimates that there has been more than $5 billion worth of damage to Gaza’s homes, agriculture, industry, electricity and water infrastructure.

Each of those wars ended in a fragile cease-fire but no real resolution to the conflict. Israel seeks to deter Hamas from launching rockets. Hamas and other militant groups say that even when they have upheld previous cease-fires, Israel has continued to attack Palestinians and has refused to lift the blockade.

Hamas has offered a long-term truce in exchange for Israel ending the blockade on Gaza. Israel has refused to accept the offer, sticking to its position that Hamas must first end violence and recognize Israel.

In the months leading up to the latest escalation, conditions in Gaza have deteriorated even further. The International Monetary Fund reported in September that Gaza’s economic outlook “remains dire.” Conditions became more dire when Israel announced on Sept. 5, 2023, that it was halting all exports from a key Gaza border crossing.

Without an end in sight to the suffering caused by the blockade, it appears that Hamas has decided to upend the status quo in a surprise attack on Israelis, including civilians. Israel’s reprisal airstrikes and its imposition of a “complete siege” on the strip have heaped even further suffering on ordinary Gazans.

It is a tragic reminder that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict.

This article was updated on Oct 12, 2023 to reflect the change in casualty figures.The Conversation

Maha Nassar, Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Navigating the complex buzzwords behind an 'ethical' bag of coffee beans

You’re shopping for a bag of coffee beans at the grocery store. After reading about the effects of climate change and how little farmers make – typically $0.40 per cup – you figure it might be time to change your usual beans and buy something more ethical. Perusing the shelves in the coffee aisle, though, you see too many choices.

First up is the red tub of Folgers “100% Colombian,” a kitchen staple – “lively with a roasted and rich finish.” On the side of the tub, you see the icon of Juan Valdez with his donkey, Conchita – a fictional mascot representing the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation.

Next might be Starbucks “Single-Origin Colombia.” One side of the green bag tells “the story” of the beans, describing “treacherous dirt roads” to “6,500 feet of elevation” that are “worth the journey every time.” The other shows a QR code and promises Starbucks is “Committed to 100% Ethical Coffee Sourcing in partnership with Conservation International.”

Then again, you’ve heard that a “better” choice would be to buy from local cafes. The bag from your local roaster introduces you to La Familia Vieira of Huila, Colombia, who have worked as coffee farmers for four generations at 1,600 meters above sea level – about a mile. But then there’s a flood of unfamiliar lingo: the 88-point anerobic-processed coffee was sourced directly from an importer who has a six-year relationship with the family, paid $3.70 per pound at farmgate, and $6.10 per pound FOB at a time when the C-market price was $1.60 per pound.

If you’re about ready to toss in the towel, you’re hardly alone. Consumers are often asked to make more responsible choices. Yet when it comes to commodity goods like coffee, the complex production chain can turn an uncomplicated habit into a complicated decision.

As a coffee enthusiast and marketing professor who researches marketplace justice, I’ve long been fascinated with how ethics and coffee consumption are intertwined. Before COVID-19, my family adopted a cat and named him Yukro, after a coffee-producing community in Ethiopia. While we were quarantining at home, I ordered Yukro-originating coffee from as many roasters as I could find to try to understand how consumers were supposed to make an informed choice.

Paradoxically, the more information I gleaned, the less I knew how to make a responsible decision. Indeed, prior research has indicated that information overload increases the paradox of choice; this is no different when factoring in ethical information. Additionally, as with a lot of consumer-facing information, it can be difficult to tell what information is relevant or credible.

Marketers attempt to simplify this overload by using buzzwords that sound good but may not get across much nuance. However, you might consider some of these terms when trying to decide between “100% Colombian” and the Vieira family.

Fair trade

As a benchmark, the coffee industry typically uses the “C-price”: the traded price on the New York Intercontinental Exchange for a pound of coffee ready for export. “Fair trade” implies the coffee is fairly traded, often with the goal of paying farmers minimum prices – and fixed premiums – above the C-price.

There are a few different fair trade certifications, such as Fairtrade America or Fair Trade Certified. Each of these has its own, voluntary certification standards linked with the associated organization. Yet obtaining certification can come at significant additional cost for farms or importers.

In contrast, some importers, or even roasters, have established relationships with specific farms, rather than buying beans at auction on the open market. These relationships potentially allow the importers to work directly with farmers over multi-year periods to improve the coffee quality and conditions. Longer-term commitment can provide farmers more certainty in times when the C-price is below their cost of production.

Yet these arrangements can be just as volatile for farmers if the importers they’ve committed to cannot find roasters interested in buying their beans – beans they could have sold at auction themselves.

100% arabica

There are several species of coffee, but approximately 70% of the world’s production comes from the arabica species, which grows well at higher altitudes. Like with wine, there are several varieties of arabica, and they tend to be a bit sweeter than other species – making arabica the ideal species for satisfying consumers.

In other words, a label like “100% arabica” is meant to signal deliciousness and prestige – though it’s about as descriptive as calling a bottle of pinot noir “100% red.”

When it comes to the environment, though, arabica isn’t necessarily a win. Many arabica varieties are susceptible to climate change-related conditions such as coffee rust – a common fungus that spreads easily and can devastate farms – or drought.

Other coffee species such as robusta or the less common eugenioides are more climate-change resistant, reducing costs of production for farmers, and are cheaper on commodity markets. However, they have a bit of a different taste profile than what folks are normally used to, which could mean lower earnings for farmers who make the switch, but could also provide new opportunities in areas where coffee was not previously farmed or to new markets of consumers’ tastes.

Single-origin

If someone labeled a peach as “American,” a consumer would rightly wonder where exactly it came from. Similarly, “single-origin” is a very broad description that could mean the coffee came from “Africa” or “Ethiopia” or “Jimma Zone” – even the zone’s specific town of “Agaro.” “Single-estate” at least gives slightly more farm-level information, though even this information may be tough to come by.

Consumers have tended to want their coffee’s journey from seed to cup to be traceable and transparent, which implies that everyone along the production chain is committed to equity – and “single-origin” appears to provide those qualities.

As a result, some coffee marketers invest quite a bit in being able to craft a narrative that emotionally resonates with consumers and makes them feel “connected” to the farm. Others have developed blockchain solutions where each step along the coffee’s journey, from bean to retail, is documented in a database that consumers can look at. Since blockchain data are immutable, the information a consumer gets from scanning a QR code on a label of a coffee bag should provide a clear chain of provenance.

Shade-grown

Shade-grown labels indicate that farms have adopted a more environmentally sustainable method, using biomatter like dead leaves as natural fertilizer for the coffee shrubs growing beneath a canopy of trees. Unlike other methods, shade-grown coffee doesn’t increase deforestation, and it protects habitats for animals like migratory birds – which is why the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, which has developed its own coffee certification program, calls it “bird-friendly.”

But as with fair trade, there are costs associated with certification, and those costs are often passed on to consumers. Farmers or importers are left justifying the cost and wondering if the specialized label can attract a large enough market to validate their decision to certify. That said, many farmers who have the ability will do shade-grown regardless, since it’s a better farming practice and saves some costs on fertilizer.

In the end, all this information – or lack thereof – is a tool for consumers to use when making their coffee choices. Like any tool, sometimes it’s helpful, and sometimes not. These labels might not make your decision any easier, and might drive you right back to your “usual” bag of beans – but at least your choice can be more nuanced.The Conversation

Spencer M. Ross, Associate Professor of Marketing, UMass Lowell

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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