The UN in the US: Trump Bans Abbas

Should the UN’s General Assembly and Security Council be located in New York City? Both New York and the Union in which New York is a member-state have assumed the obligation of being proper hosts to people from around the world who come to the UN for its business. Even though that international organization has displayed an impotence in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli military incursion that has decimated Gaza and its residents, having an international forum in which talking can take place is not for naught. As an open speaking club of sorts, the United Nations permits adversaries and allies alike to make their views known to each other and the rest of the world. Even though the very existence of the vetoes in the Security Council styme action, that members of the UN so easily get away with violating resolutions renders the entire resolution-process de facto nugatory in real significance. So essentially, the UN building in New York City enables diplomats and heads of governments alike to speak out and with each other. It is vital, therefore, that the US take an expansive approach to issuing visa-waivers so institutional members of the UN can be as well represented as they desire to be. In this regard, the host—the United States Government—should refrain from applying its partisanship in international disputes by restricting the waivers to cover the bare essentials of personnel coming to the UN in New York from abroad.

After having suspended a program that had allowed injured Gaza children to come to the U.S. for medical treatment, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “revoked the visas of a number of Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization officials ahead of the [September, 2025] meeting of the UN General Assembly” even though the two groups had previously been represented.[1] An official at the U.S. State Department said that Palestinian President Abbas and roughly 80 other Palestinians would be denied entry into the US to attend the UN General Assembly’s upcoming session. “Abbas’ office . . . was astonished by the visa decision” and insisted that the decision “violated the U.N. ‘headquarters agreement’.”[2] Palestine had enjoyed non-member observer-state status since 2012, so restricting the non-visa waiver for Abbas especially was indeed a violation of the “UN headquarters agreement.”

That Israel declared Gaza City to be a “combat zone” on the very same day attests to the salience that the Israeli militaristic incursion into Gaza would likely have in the upcoming session, and thus to the need for the Palestinian position—that of the victims (for a genocide is not a war)—to be well-represented both for the sake of fairness itself and so any possible deals can be struck amid full discussions and negotiations “behind the scenes.” The Trump administration held a lopsided position in considering the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, in which over a thousand people died and hundreds of Israelis were taken hostage, to be too horrendous, but the Israeli attacks and perpetrated genocide and even holocaust in Gaza in which tens of thousands had already died and over a million more intentionally subjected to starvation as somehow warranted and thus deserved. In the regard, the monetary footprints of the American Israeli (and Israeli government) lobbyist political action committee in Washington can be inferred as it is probably that Netanyahu was behind the new restrictions on the Palestinian delegation.

It would be only natural for most countries of the General Assembly to object to such blatant unfairness; after all, Netanyahu rather than Abbas was wanted by the International Criminal Court. Additionally, 147 of the 193 countries (not “member states,” as the UN is an international organization, whereas the E.U. and U.S. are not) in the General Assembly already recognized Palestine as a country; a few E.U. states were even set to recognize Palestine as a country in the upcoming session, where Abbas was to take part in a high-level meeting, but Netanyahu did not approve, and even in spite of the genocide or even holocaust that his government was unleashing on Gaza’s 2 million residents, the Trump Administration remained sycophantic via the AIPAC Israeli lobby in Washington.

If indeed the real source of the visa-waiver infringement was the war criminal who at the time was still wanted by the ICC and whose militaristic actions had already violated the UN Charter many times over, the utter abject unfairness in Netanyahu being able to attend (and even speak at!) the General Assembly even as Abbas would be barred due to the “host” country, more than sufficient cause would exist for the General Assembly to hold a debate and vote during the upcoming session on whether another host-country should be found to replace New York.

Switzerland, having earned a reputation of neutrality, could better be counted on than New York, whose membership in the US now compromised that state’s ability to serve as a host. Unlike New York, Switzerland was staying out of the EU so to protect and ensure neutrality in international affairs. Such built-up or accumulated reputation can be understood as a long-term intangible asset that takes considerable effort to build but can be ruined by a single expedient decision that is in line with the immediacy of power and money. Were the General Assembly to let the US Government get away with doing Israel’s bidding even as Israel was declaring Gaza City to be a combat-zone (wherein only one side is allowed to fight), the credibility of the UN itself would be on the line. Unable even to enforce its own resolutions, the UN would be even more compromised, if that was possible. Even just in its capacity as a forum for talking, the UN would fall short if only aggressors and their enablers are able to speak. Such a decrepit institutional condition of the waning post-1945 world order could be dangerous, as power abhors a vacuum, especially in a Hobbesian state of nature wherein might makes right and maintains control of the doors. It should not be forgotten that no international police department existed as of 2025, hence the US Government could get away with putting international partisanship above neutral hospitality even when such partisanship was enabling a genocide and holocaust.

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1. Gavin Blackburn, “US Revokes Visas of Palestinian Officials Ahead of UN General Assembly, State Department Says,” Euronews.com, August 29, 2025.
2. Kanishka Singh and Ali Sawafta, “US Bars Palestinian Leader Abbas from UN as Allies Back Statehood,” Reuters.com, August 30, 2025.

The Israeli Military Kills Starving Gazans Seeking Food as Police in Massachusetts Intimidate Human-Rights Protesters

Even as the Israeli military was shooting innocent, starving people waiting for food in Gaza, Massachusetts police were overreacting to a pro-Gaza, pro-human rights protest in Cambridge, where Harvard University has most of its campus. Whereas the Israeli military (intentionally?) did not engage in crowd control around a designated food-distribution site, Cambridge and Harvard police employees overreacted and in so doing, falsely presented the visuals of an emergency and intimidated peaceful protesters. Both the Israeli military and a local and a private police department in Massachusetts can thus be criticized, and the choices of all three were to the advantage of Israel in spite of its ongoing war crime and crime against humanity in regard to the Gaza Holocaust, and to the advantage of the American defense contractors profiting from the U.S. Government sending weapons to Israel.  

On July 19, 2025, “Israeli troops opened fire” on “crowds of Palestinians seeking food at a distribution point run by an Israeli-backed US company in southern Gaza, killing at least 32 Palestinians.”[1] As if killing starving people on their way to an Israeli-approved food-distribution point being managed by an American company, in “a separate incident, at least 18 more Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strikes (sic) on Gaza City . . . near hubs operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF).”[2] Of course, the “Israeli military did not immediately react to reports of the two incidents.”[3] Especially concerning the first, even an attempted justification that the crowd was unruly would only beg the question of why the Israeli military had so badly mismanaged crowd-control, as it could certainly be anticipated, given the extent of famine in Gaza, that a crowd of starving, desperate Gazans would manifest to get food. To fail to manage an easily anticipated crowd and then shoot on the crowd reflects badly on the Israeli government rather than the starving people.

On the very same day, presumably many hours later, a “Free Palestine” small protest took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Whereas the Israeli military lapsed in managing a crowd, the Cambridge police surrounded the small group of protests on both sides. Even a city block away, Harvard’s private police employees had infiltrated Smith Hall, which is just across a street from Harvard Yard. Even though no university administration office was open on that Saturday in Smith Hall, which doubles as a student hang-out space, at least eight police employees interspersed themselves out in front, and left four or five of their cars double-parked on the street. To say that both the local and university police overreacted, given the small size of the protest and where it was taking place, is an understatement. The extent of police-presence around the small group of protesters can even be interpreted as an attempt to deny Americans their right of political protest and free speech by visible intimidation. When Black Lives Matter protests were going on several years earlier in Phoenix, Arizona, such intimidation was at the extreme of police surrounding protesters with machine guns even though the protests were all non-violent. The presumptuous “right” of police to deter by intimidation deserves to be contested in a U.S. district court, for the convenient (in terms of power-aggrandizement by police) assumption that peaceful protest will turn violent and thus should be treated as such is fallacious.

In short, there is simply too much show of military/police force evinced in these two cases—one in Gaza and the other in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The instinctual urge to bully ought to be checked by local governments, and even private universities that operate as de facto non-democratic local governments, against military and police employees, including their respective directors. Starving people being shot on the way to an approved food-distribution site and pro-human rights protestors being intimidated by an excessive show of presence by police up close and even a city-block away from the protest itself can both be taken as “red-flags.” Absolute power corrupts absolutely. No Harvard administrator would say to that university’s police unit that its presence was excessive in front of Smith Hall, and no government official in Netanyahu’s government in Israel would chastise the military for letting the crowd of starving people get out of hand, if in fact that crowd became unruly as opposed to being “sitting ducks” for Israeli troops hateful of Palestinians.

The Pro-Palestine Protest in Cambridge on July 19, 2025

Meanwhile, over at Harvard, an invasion of human-rights advocates was expected . . . 

And, just for added fun, photos of the Massachusetts Army intimidating Americans at Boston's Fireworks on July 4th

With the celebration of liberty obscured by the smoke of intimidation, I left in utter disgust as the booms of the "bombs" in the sky began. As I walked away quite determined, the first few powerful thuds I could feel through my body made the show of force on the ground seem somehow more real. A celebration of raw force by means of weapanry, or liberty from autocratic intimidation? It is no wonder that the U.S. was being so helpful to Israel. My visit to Boston was eventful and enlightening. I hear that Geneva is wonderful. 

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1. Malek Fouda, “Israeli Troops Open Fire on Palestianians en Route to Food Distribution Site, killing 32,” Euronews.com, July 19, 2025, italics added for emphasis.
2. Ibid. The grammar error aside, there were more than one strike, as the report also mentions them as “attacks.”
3. Ibid.

Exploiting the E.U.’s Vulnerability to Enable an Atrocity Abroad

On April 3, 2025, Viktor Orban, prime minister of the E.U. state of Hungary, ignored not only the arrest warrant on Ben Netanyahu, the sitting prime minister of Israel, but also the E.U. law in the Rome Statute that requires the E.U. states to act on such warrants issued by the ICC (the International Criminal Court) by arresting people wanted by the Court. The provision in the Rome Statute of the E.U. requires all state governments to arrest people who are wanted by the ICC.  Orban doubtless knew that he could exploit union’s vulnerability with impunity because, like the U.S. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the E.U. relied so much on the state governments to abide by and implement federal law and regulations. By ignoring the Rome Statute, he put the E.U. itself at risk.

The full essay is at "Exploiting the E.U.'s Vulnerability."

The UN: Israel Guilty of Reproductive Genocide

On March 13, 2025, the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report based on evidence of incessant incidents and Israeli strategic bombings to the UN Human Rights Council. “Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination,” Chris Sidoti of the Commission stated.[1] This statement is oriented to particular incidents, albeit recurrent; the report goes on to charge the Israeli government with genocidal methods targeting the ability of the Palestinian population to sexually reproduce itself. Ironically, such methods may bring to mind the methods used in Nazi Germany, including those used by Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” to wantonly kill and strategically sterilize undesirables. It need not be a truism, however, that the descendants of victims become victimizers, though I suspect that studies on intergenerational psychology attest to the phenomenon. Also ironically, culpability with an intergenerational cause is also a theme in the Hebrew Bible. Thirdly, it is ironic too that Yahweh may have the last word on the Israeli transgressions, as this too is a recurrent theme in the Hebrew Bible’s faith-rendering of the history of Israel. It would be odd indeed were Yahweh behind a sort of rendering of justice against the Nazis by having Israel inflict severe pain on Palestinians in the occupied territories. Put another way, that justice did not catch up to every Nazi aggressor does not mean that excessive, and thus unjust, harming of innocents can complete the cycle of justice. In fact, both the literal “overkill” by Israel and Russia’s war crimes in invading Ukraine—both with impunity—raise the question of whether omnipotent Yahweh gives a damn, or even whether it is actually sheer fiction.

In the Commission’s report released to the UN on June 14, 2024, whose coverage includes the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 and does not excuse Hamas for its atrocities against Israelis. Even so, the Israeli government ignored the Commission’s requests for information even on those crimes. That the UN had created the state of Israel must also be considered in assessing the refusal. The report also states that the attack by Hamas “and the subsequent Israeli military operation in Gaza must be seen in context. Those events were preceded by decades of violence, unlawful occupation and the denial by Israel of the right of Palestinians to self-determination”.[2] The “unlawful occupation” is especially relevant, as it attests that the political and military “playing field” was hardly level. The Israeli government had taken advantage of this macro advantage for decades, and the Commission’s report on the genocidal sexual and reproductive crimes against humanity following October 7, 2023 should be put in this context. In other words, those crimes were not part of an even “tit-for-tat” between two equal adversaries. Moreover, 45,000 to 55,000 killed or starved for 1250 Israelis killed on October 7, 2023 is so extremely one-sided that the slant in the underlying geo-political and military paradigm can be reckoned as being culpable, as well as the party enforcing it.

Therefore, it is vital to go beyond particular instances of the crimes. Even as the March, 2025 report includes incidents, the macro-level of genocidal sexual tactics is not ignored. Of the former, “two days of public hearings held in Geneva . . . featuring victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence and medical personnel who assisted them, as well as civil society representatives, academics, lawyers and medical experts” went into the report.[3] The report asserts that “forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault” were “standard operating procedure” of the Israeli Security Forces in Gaza.[4] Furthermore, the report maintained that “forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership.”[5] From a human standpoint, it is only natural that the anger of Gaza residents towards Israelis and Israel going forward must be such that any proximity, such as is an aspect of military occupation, is itself problematic and essentially infeasible. That such anger can be expected to be intergenerational also rendered continued occupation unfeasible. This is not to say that the residents of Gaza should be moved; a coalition of the willing globally could step in to see that no Israeli enters the territory, which, fortunately, shares a border with Egypt.

The report on the sexual and reproductive tactics also covers crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and this also renders continued occupation untenable. Specifically, the Commission reported “that Israeli forces had systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza, including Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, Al Basma centre, in December 2023.”[6] Additionally, it was no accident, according to the report, that “(t)ank shelling destroyed about 4,000 embryos at the clinic that reportedly assisted 2,000-3,000 patients a month.”[7] According to Sidoti, “certainly, their commanders knew and the commanders would have known that there were tanks operating within that vicinity and firing on buildings and fired on a healthcare facility that was clearly marked.”[8] To be sure, it is possible that the Israeli government had intel that Hamas was using the clinic as a shield. Even if this were so, the report includes other instances of tactics of reducing the number of Palestinians in Gaza, such as direct attacks on maternity wards, “combined with the use of starvation as a method of war,” that have negatively “impacted all aspects of reproduction.”[9] Imagine the reaction were such a design and intent applied by an occupying power on Israel; it would not take long at all for the Israeli government to charge such an occupier with committing Nazi atrocities on the Jews. The asymmetry itself points back to the tilted playing field.

From its collection of evidence, the Commission could detect a systemic pattern. The report “finds that the destruction amounts ‘to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”[10] The very notion of collective justice (and injustice) is based on the fallacy that there are no innocents in a population. Immediately after the Hamas attack, the president of Israel commited this fallacy and connected it with his stated determination that every resident in Gaza should suffer as a result of the Hamas attack. The reaction of governments around the world was to step back and let this fallacious reasoning be implemented on the ground in Gaza by embittered Israeli leaders and soldiers. It is as in Hobbes’ Leviathan in that a sovereign power can do whatever it wants. Yet even in Hobbes’ political theory, even though a country’s sovereign power has the last word in interpreting scripture, everyone is subject to God’s judgment.

The doctrine in Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in Zion,” is that the “time will come when fearfulness will surprise the sinners in Zion, because they will know that they are going to be cast into a devouring fire, which they must suffer forever ad ever, and which none can endure.” Edwards’ most famous (or infamous) sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is based on Deut. 32:35: “Their foot shall slide in due time.” This can be said of the Israelis who are culpable in ordering or committing genocidal acts well in excess of reciprocal harm in an eye for an eye. The Palestinians are largely if not all Muslims, so it cannot be believed that Yahweh would be in favor of the killing, starvation (e.g., blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza in 2025), deprivation of utilities (e.g., cutting off electricity), and reproductive abuse. It is not as though the deity were saying to Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu, Go and rid the Land of Israel of those people who worship other gods, as is the biblical story of Yahweh directing the Hebrews to circle Jericho seven times and kill even the women and children who worship Baal because they do not worship Yahweh. Rather, it seems that Yahweh would eventually punish Israel (i.e., collective divine justice) for having violated the Commandment against killing, especially if the magnitude is well beyond tit-for-tat.

For a God-fearing Israeli, and the rest of us, Yahweh once again punishing Israel for its transgressions is not something that any person can or should take on as if delegated by that deity to enforce divine justice. Indeed, such a horrendous assumption renders theocracies dangerous. We are all, human, all too human, and thus we don’t have the omniscience to be God’s enforcers. This is not to say that governments cannot or should not act to enforce international law, especially given the impotence of the United Nations, but absent this, there is faith that Yahweh will have the last word in holding Israel accountable here rather than only in the hereafter. Instead of willful arrogance, humility, self-restraint, and contrition are the appropriate attitudes of people of faith who have so violated divine (and international) law. It can even be said that serving rather than attacking one’s enemies unlocks the door to the kingdom of God, but even this is subject to willful intransigence out of jealousy and spite.

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1. “Rights Probe Alleges Sexual Violence Against Palestinians by Israeli Forces Used as ‘Method of War,” UN News, United Nations, March 13, 2025.
2. “Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including
East Jerusalem, and Israel,” Annual Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General, The United Nations. June 14, 2024.
3. Rights Probe Alleges Sexual Violence Against Palestinians by Israeli Forces Used as ‘Method of War,” UN News, United Nations, March 13, 2025.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.

On the Establishment of Israel: Return to Haifa

Return to Haifa (1982) is a film in which the political element of international relations is translated into personal terms on the levels of family and individual people. The establishment of Israel by the UN is depicted in the film as being accomplished not only incompetently, but in negligence of likely human suffering. In fact, the suffering of the indigenous population may have been intended, given the operative attitude towards those people as animals. That the human being can be so dehumanizing in action as well as belief ultimately makes victims of all of us, even across artificial divides. This is precisely what the film depicts, with the victims being the active characters while the real culprits remain for the most part off-camera. The viewer is left with a sense of futility that can be undone by widening one’s view to include the antagonists, who are not passive. It is not as if fate inexorably brought about the Nakba (or even the scale of the atrocities in Gaza in the next century, which, as the film was made in 1982, cannot be said to be anticipated by the filmmaker—though perhaps it could have been).

The full essay is at "Return to Haifa."

On the Establishment of Israel: Farha

The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, being in the wake of the Nazi atrocities, was arguably viewed generally then as something that the world owed to the Jewish people. Perhaps for this reason, the UN did not take adequate measures on the ground to safeguard the Palestinian residents. In retrospect, the possibility, even likelihood, that people who group-identify with (or even as) victims consciously decide to become victimizers should have been better considered. The film, Farha, made in 2021, illustrates the sheer indeterminacy, and thus arbitrariness, of human volition when it issues orders to the body to be violent against other rational beings. Channeling Kant, it can be argued that the decision to shoot a family that poses absolutely no threat impurely out of hatred based on group-identity fails even to treat other rational beings as means—to say nothing of as ends in themselves. The unadulterated deplorability in being unwilling even to use another person as a means to some selfish goal, preferring instead to kill rather than respect the otherness of another person, grounds the verdict of the culprit being less than nothing. In another film, The Brutalist (2024), Laszio, the Jewish protagonist, erroneously concludes that Jews must surely be less than nothing, given how they were treated not only in Nazi Germany, but also in Pennsylvania even after the news of the Holocaust had reached the other shore. Whether brutality or passive-aggressive prejudice is suffered, however, turning one’s victimhood into victimizing is ethically invalid, for such a callous reaction fails to treat other rational beings as ends in themselves, and may even be so severe as to fail to treat them even as means.

The full essay is at "Farha."

On the Impotency of International Law in a System of Sovereign States: The Case of Gaza

The sheer brazenness with which countries ironically recognized as being sovereign states by international law ignore international law even in regard to human rights that seeks to place boundaries on said sovereignty reflects the impotency of international law, and thus even that which recognizes national sovereignty itself. For the rest of us, continuing to believe that upcoming cases before the International Court of Justice, the UN’s court, are of consequence and thus even worth paying attention to, demonstrates abject stupidity, as if we were herd animals without learning curves. Admittedly, the stubborn, self-aggrandizing governments are ethically worse than the world’s population that lets such governments blatantly and even explicitly ignore judicial rulings of the International Court of Justice (and the European Court of Human Rights), but culpability can also be gleamed from the public’s truly pathetic irrational belief that another case against a country that has just ignored a verdict of that very court might just work in curtailing human-rights abuses and outright, even genocide-scale, aggression that outstrips even the sin of retaliation. Either I am blind or the proverbial emperor is not wearing any clothes.

As a case in point, in January, 2024, the International Court of Justice announced its preliminary ruling on Israel’s military incursion into Gaza. “The state of Israel shall . . . take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention,” the court announced.[1] The court had not reached a verdict on whether Israel was committing a genocide, and but was saying that one could be in progress and thus Israel is obliged to see that it does not, and this includes allowing more humanitarian aid to reach the Palestinians. The health ministry in Gaza had reported that thousands of women and children were among the more than 25,000 people killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, which did not “differentiate between civilians and Hamas fighters.”[2] In addition, more than a million Palestinians there had become homeless. Because only 1,200 Israelis had died in the Hamas attack in October, 2023, the scale of the harm in Gaza is beyond the scope of “an eye for an eye” and retribution or retaliation.

Because we humans have flawed judgment concerning punishment for those who harm us, John Locke of the 17^th century in Europe claimed that a major legitimating function of a government is in providing impartial judges so that vigilantes don’t have to dispense justice in their own cases. He wrote, “it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends . . . therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men.”[3] We are too violent a species to be able to be fair judges against people who have rendered us as victims. I submit that this holds for sovereign states, which are in a state of nature, Locke insisted, with each other because there is no higher human power that can restrain their lust for violence that goes beyond justice and even retaliation. This is precisely why an international court with no enforcement power, such as in the UN having its own military force with which to “remind” wayward states that they had agreed to be bound by international law. The lack of any such army is, I submit, the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wants to recognize and discuss. By the way, this is precisely why I view my non-academic short essays as a form of charity to my species in spite of itself. I don’t ask whether it deserves it—only whether my ideas can possibly help it. I suppose I am benevolent in spite of myself, for I am human, all too human.

Before the court’s preliminary decision, Israeli Prime Minister Ben Netanyahu had said that Israel’s “commitment to international law is unwavering,” and yet he added that the “charge of genocide levelled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous, and decent people should reject it.”[4] He would doubtless not be a fair judge in his own case, as he would doubtless throw that case out without letting it be heard. This is precisely why an international court is crucial, and, furthermore, that it must have a direct enforcement mechanism such that its verdicts will stick rather than be dismissed by a guilty defendant.

In its preliminary decision (not yet ruling on whether Israel was committing a genocide), “the court said Israel must restrain from the destruction of infrastructure, should support more humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza strip and prevent calls to commit genocide against the Palestinian people.”[5] In reaction to the decision, Netanyahu said, “Israel has an inherent right to defend itself.”[6] Exactly two weeks later, he announced that he had “ordered the military to prepare a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli invasion” of the city.[7] Rafah had been home to 280,000 people, but the addition of other Palestinians made homeless in other parts of Gaza increased the city’s population to 1.5 million.[8] Forcing that many people to move in a short time span could itself be considered a violation of human rights if not part of a genocide. Also, the planned invasion itself would likely violate the court’s decision, which specified that Israel must not destroy the infrastructure in Gaza any further.

As for the court’s insistence that Israel let in more humanitarian aid, Israel actually “imposed financial restrictions on the main U.N. agency providing aid in the Gaza Strip, a measure which prevented a shipment of food for 1.1 million Palestinians” in Gaza.[9] Not even on a humanitarian basis was the Israeli government willing to heed the decision of the court whose jurisdiction Israel had agreed to, and whose law Netanyahu himself had said he respects so much.

There should thus be scarcely any doubt as to whether Israel would adhere to the court’s decision on a case set to begin on February 19, 2024 “into the legality of Israel’ 57-year occupation of land sought for a Palestinian state.”[10] Rather than focusing on Israel’s war with Hamas, that case concerns “Israel’s open-ended occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.”[11] Palestinian representatives planned to “argue that the Israeli occupation is illegal because it has violated three key tenets” of international law: “the prohibition on territorial conquest by annexing large swaths of occupied land,” the “Palestinians’ right to self-determination,” and the prohibition of “a system of racial discrimination and apartheid.”[12] In reading about the upcoming case, I felt an instantaneous rush of hope that the issue that had led to the Hamas attack in 2023 might finally be definitively decided by a neutral court rather than by the warring parties themselves by sheer might and strife in lieu of weak negotiations and weak allies on both sides. I had momentarily neglected to consider Israel’s response to the court’s preliminary decision—namely in dismissing or ignoring it outright and perhaps even going even further by adding a forced exodus from Rafah before another ground invasion. If you tell another person not to sneeze in your face and yet it not only happens again, but at an even closer range, you would naturally conclude that it will happen again unless some obstacle is brought to bear on that person. My point is that an international system in which there are no viable and enforced constraints on state-actors is incompatible with there being real obstacles on the wayward states. Relying on pressure from allies or even an impromptu coalition “of the willing” is not reliable enough to count on as a counterweight to such a severe flaw in the very fabric of an international system of unfettered sovereign nation-states.

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1. Thomson Reuters, “Israel Must Take Steps to Prevent Genocide in Gaza UN Court Says in Ruling on Temporary Measures,” the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), January 26, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. John Locke, “The Second Treatise of Government: An Essay Concerning the True, Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government,” in The Selected Political Writings of John Locke, Paul Sigmund, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2005): 17-125, sec. 13, p. 22.
4. Thomson Reuters, “Israel Must Take Steps to Prevent Genocide in Gaza UN Court Says in Ruling on Temporary Measures,” the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), January 26, 2024.
5. Brad Dress, “Netanyahu Casts Off Genocide Case, Vows to Push Ahead Against Hamas,” The Hill, January 26, 2024.
6. Ibid.
7. Najib Jobain and Josef Federman, “Israel Seeks to Evacuate Palestinians Jammed into a Southern Gaza City Ahead of an Expected Invasion,” The Associated Press, February 9, 2024.
8. John Gambrell and Phil Holm, “From 200K to 1.5M People: Startling Images Show the Ongoing War’s Impact to This Small Area in Gaza,” The Associated Press, February 8, 2024.
9. Julia Frankel, “Israel Is Holding Up Food for 1.1 Million Palestinians in Gaza, the Main UN Aid Agency There Says,” The Associated Press, February 9, 2024.
10. Mike Corder and Julia Frankel, “Top U.N. Court to Hold Hearings on Legality of Israeli Occupation,” The Associated Press, February 18, 2024.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.

Israel and the United States on Palestinian Democracy

I contend that the furtherance of democracy in general and more specifically in the Middle East can be regarded as a strategic pathway toward regional peace. The philosopher Kant wrote a treatise on a global federation as a means toward achieving world peace. The founders of the United States reckoned that all the republics within that regional federation must be democratic for the Union itself to be sustained. A United States of the Middle East would also stand a better chance were it's states republics in form. It follows that especially when democratic bystanders put short-term tactical and strategic advantage above furthering or just permitting the development of a young, unstable democracy, the hypocrisy puts off rather than furthers peace. The reactions of Israel and the United States to a Palestinian achievement in 2011 are a case in point. 

The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, announced on April 27, 2011 “that they were putting aside years of bitter rivalry to create an interim unity government and hold elections within a year, a surprise move that promised to reshape the diplomatic landscape of the Middle East. The deal, brokered in secret talks by the caretaker Egyptian government, was announced at a news conference in Cairo where the two negotiators referred to each side as brothers and declared a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle for independence, hobbled in recent years by the split between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. It was the first tangible sign that the upheaval across the Arab world, especially the Egyptian revolution, was having an impact on the Palestinians . . . Israel, feeling increasingly surrounded by unfriendly forces, denounced the unity deal as dooming future peace talks since Hamas seeks [Israel's] destruction. ‘The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a televised statement. The Obama administration warned that Hamas was a terrorist organization unfit for peacemaking.”[1]

An agreement that puts aside years of bitter rivalry is in itself morally praiseworthy not only because of the heightened possibility for peace, but also because just achieving such an agreement is not easy; rather, this is the road less traveled. As reported at the time, “A desire for unity has been one goal that ordinary Palestinians in both areas have consistently said they sought. Until now it has proved elusive and leaders of the two factions have spoken of each other in vicious terms and jailed each other’s activists.”[2] Tit for tat much more conformable to human nature than putting faith in trust where none has existed.

More specifically, an agreement by rival parties in a young democracy to have common elections furthers the ideal of representative self-government. Putting an ideal before partisan advantage is also morally (and politically) laudable because such a priority is not easy given human nature (nature and nurture). 

This is not to say that the results of an election agreed to by rivals (assuming a fair and transparent one) are pleasing to interested bystanders nearby or halfway around the world who gave their own agendas. If such bystanders brandish themselves as beacons of democracy to the world and yet act on their own agendas, the charge of self-serving hypocrisy can stick. 

To be sure, both Israel and the United States had at the time a long-term interest in the furtherance of the democratic form of government, so assuming a stance of enlightened self-interest would have avoided the noxious cloud of hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the two bystanders, who still claimed to value representative democracy, held the furtherance of the form hostage to their hostility to an enemy. It can be said, in fact, that democratic governments that refuse an opportunity to permit a young and not yet stable democracy to strengthen are not themselves worthy of self-government, for they are not sufficiently mature, politically, in putting their respective partisan agendas first. 

Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed in retirement after the American Revolution that a self-governing citizenry must be educated and virtuous to sustain a viable republic. I submit that both formal education and virtue require and strengthen self-discipline, as well as foster maturity. To skip class and not study for tests, for example, flaunt self-discipline, whereas to follow the rigors of a course of study requires (and builds) self-discipline and thus maturity. The relationship between self-discipline and virtue is more widely understood. 

To the Israeli government, the sheer possibility of unity among the Palestinians translated into having a more formidable opponent in bargaining. Surely, however, more was at stake than jostling for strategic advantage. As it turned out, such a concern dominated at the expense of peace. Even the increasing dominance of Israel itself over the Palestinian Authority did not bring peace any closer.  

1. Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, “Fatah and Hamas Announce Outline of Deal,” The New York Times, April 28, 2011, p. A1.

2. Ibid.

As U.S. President, Was Obama Really Anti-Israel?

In a poll in 2011, only 22% of Jewish voters in the U.S. said they approved of President Obama’s handling of Israel. Dan Senor pointed to the erosion of Obama’s Jewish fund-raising as another sign that the president was losing Jewish support in the United States. A poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Obama in 2008, only 64% had already donated or planned to donate to his re-election campaign of 2012. While a politician would undoubtedly try to placate and mollify the unsatisfied electorate, a statesman acting in the American interest might conclude that those voters were wrong in their assessment that the president’s policy was “anti-Israel.”

In February 2008, Barak Obama had said, “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel.” In July 2009, the president reportedly told Jewish leaders at the White House that he sought to put daylight between the U.S. and the state of Israel. In the same meeting, he said that Israel needed “to engage in serious self-reflection.” These comments were hardly anti-Israel, yet they were taken as such.

In fact, when the Palestinian foreign minister was insisting in 2011 that Palestine would apply for membership in the U.N., the American administration was threatening a veto should the application go through the Security Council. According to Ethan Bronner, “The United States has said it will use its veto there because it believes that the only way to Palestinian statehood is through direct negotiations with Israel.” The Palestinians could go through the General Assembly, but they would only get a nonmember state status. That would save the U.S. criticism from the Arab world after exercising the veto.

That the Obama administration would veto a Palestinian membership in the U.N. should have been sufficient indication to American pro-Israel voters that Obama was not “anti-Israel.” In fact, the veto threat told the world that the U.S. was still firmly in Israel’s corner, which, by the way, prevented the U.S. from being able to take on an “honest broker” role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Given that Israel continued building settlements after the U.S. indicated that it did not support it, the American administration’s veto threat looked very pro-Israel. From an American perspective, the threat could even be viewed as too pro-Israel, hence Obama's desire to distinguish America's interest from that of Israel. This hardly connotes being anti-Israel.

Obama may have not gone far enough; perhaps he was generally too pro-status quo from not being willing to seriously challenge the sacred cows, including the Israeli lobby and that of Wall Street, in spite of his campaign slogan of "Real Change." After Obama's presidency, very little discussion has taken place on whether Obama as president even proposed anything that could be reckoned as real change rather than incremental reform in the interests of the powers behind the throne (i.e., large political campaign donations). 
It could be that more tough love from the U.S. toward Israel rather than a veto-threat could have pushed the peace talks ahead because the rightful points of both sides would have been given validity. Also, rather than having done nothing as Israel continued its settlements’ construction, the Obama administration could have withheld aid pending a cease in the construction, or even a final peace agreement. Israel would have had a real incentive to negotiate even though from a position of strength relative to Palestine. The millions of dollars for Israel could even have been paid to the Palestinians until such time as a peace deal was concluded.

Taking up more of an impartial position, the E.U. was considering a pledge to support Palestinian statehood at the U.N. after one year’s time, assuming the Palestinians immediately resumed direct negotiations with Israel. The E.U. would support Palestinian statehood if no peace deal were achieved. However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would hardly have agreed with her E.U. counterpart, Catherine Ashton, on such a plan. Clinton could hardly be said to have been part of an anti-Israel administration. 

Even if President Obama was regarded as anti-Israel by some American Jews, he could have used his first term to run the end-game for peace by pressuring Israel rather than acquiescing in order to get re-elected by appeasing voters already mistaken on his stance being anti-Israel. Of course, ending the game with a peace deal—difficult if not impossible when holding to the status quo—would have done more for the president’s re-election bid than trying to appease skeptical American Jewish voters by threatening a veto at the U.N. The best means of re-election can be quite ironic, while the political path of least resistance can actually be the least successful politically.

Voters who thought they saw an “anti-Israel” policy in spite of the veto threat were, I submit, wrong; they were over-sensitive to any “daylight” and too used to getting everything they wanted, policy-wise. Appeasing such voters was not in America’s interest. Given the benefit to Israel from a peace deal, the appeasement was not in Israel’s interest either. So it can justifiably be asked whether those voters accusing Obama of being anti-Israel were actually anti-Israel in terms of long term consequences. 

Sources:

Dan Senor, “Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote,” The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2011. 

Ethan Bronner, “Palestinians Resist Appeals to Halt U.N. Statehood Bid,” The New York Times, September 16, 2011. 

Jay Solomon, “Palestinians Firm on State Vote,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2011. 

Keeping the Palestinian Authority Down at the United Nations

In “defiance of retaliation threatened” by the United States and the state of Israel, the Palestinian Authority announced in November 2012 that it planned to hold a vote in the U.N. General Assembly on the Authority’s request to become an observer state. According to The Wall Street Journal, “(s)uch a designation would give the Palestinian Authority the right over its airspace and territorial waters.” The Authority could participate in General Assembly debates, sponsor resolutions, and nominate candidates for Assembly committees. The Authority would be able to accede to treaties and join specialized U.N. agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the International Criminal Court. The Authority could thus press charges against Israelis before the Court.
Because 132 states had already recognized the Authority as a sovereign state and the U.S. does not have a veto in the General Assembly, the vote was expected to be in the Authority’s favor. Rather than wade into the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian standoff, I want to investigate the nature of the responses of the Israeli government and the United States to the likely passage.
In retaliation, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in Israel, “If the Palestinians continue to advance their unilateral move they should not expect bilateral cooperation. We will not collect their taxes for them and we will not transfer their tax revenues.” Had the Palestinian Authority had held a similar position concerning unilateral moves, the Israeli government would doubtless not have held off in its unilateral moves, such as building a wall. Perhaps taxation should be added to the rights of observer states. The hypocrisy alone would justify that, not to mention the threat being made.
I suspect the control over airspace and the membership at the ICC were of particular concern to Israel. Security concerns were a given. Given Israeli influence over the American Congress, I suspect that the Israeli officials would also bristle at Palestinian demands being enforced by an over-arching authority to which Israel was at least in theory subject. That is to say, being held accountable.
Also in anticipatory retaliation, the American Congress “threatened to cut off $500 million in security and economic aid” to the Authority. Here, the American Government having been accustomed to the comfort of its veto on the Security Council no doubt left officials feeling a sudden and as though terrifying loss of control. Hence, as though impulsively, the Congress acted out in a manipulatory fashion to circumvent being in the minority on a vote.

Furthermore, the American threat suggests that the Israeli government might have disproportionate influence in the halls of Congress and in the White House, even given the state’s ally status. The duopoly of two major parties in American politics may be complicit here. The result may be that Israeli interests come before even American interests in American foreign policy.
Concerning both the state of Israel and the fifty United States, it is the tenor of such blatant threats and manipulation that is particularly striking in this story. Might it be that the reactions, particularly if knee-jerk, are in essence cultural—meaning that manipulation and threats have come to be a common feature of human interaction in those states. Rather than being to criticize Israeli or American policy, my point is that the reactions themselves can be indicative of a certain cultural decadence concerning the way certain people “deal with” not getting their way. Beyond the sheer childishness in “taking one’s marbles” if one does not get to make the rules of the game is the sordidness of the mentality that threatens and manipulates as a matter of course. I suppose the real question is how—or even whether—such a value system can be changed. At the very least, one is inclined by the fitting moral disapprobation to see to it that that particular psychology does not get its way, or is at least frustrated in the pursuit of its particular tactics. Making them transparent can be a first step to a better world, at least as among persons.

Source:

Joe Lauria, “Palestinians Set U.N. Vote, Defying Retaliatory Threats by U.S., Israel,” The Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2012.

President Trump as a “Neutral Guy” in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: On the Conflict of Interest

In the absence of an international arbitrator with teeth, the nations of the world must at times have recourse to others in service to the resolution of disputes—even longstanding ones. This, I submit, is a major drawback to a world of sovereign nation-states, for rare is one that can genuinely serve as an honest broker, hence with credibility to the disputants rather than just one side.  Conflicts of interest all thus allowed, and even ignored as if they had no bearing. In the context of the longstanding Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the United States has been plagued with having to surmount the conflict between the interest of being an ally of Israel and a neutral peacemaking with credible standing as such to both sides. 

In recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by announcing that the American embassy would be moved to that historic city, U.S. President Trump explicitly took sides in the broader dispute, such that the Palestinians in reaction were “no longer on speaking terms with the president.”[1] Two years earlier, in the midst of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump had said, “Let me be sort of a neutral guy [in that conflict].”[2] Sitting with the Israeli prime minister in the Oval Office in early March, 2018, the American president insisted that he would still be an active participant in proffering a peace proposal. Yet without credibility as a neutral guy to the Palestinians, President Trump risked having his eventual proposal being viewed as merely an extension of the Israeli interests.

President Trump found himself in a conflict of interest—that of being Israel’s strongest ally and a neutral peacemaker with credibility on both sides. Taking a stand firmly in favor of Israel could not simply be dismissed as if taking such a decision could have no bearing on the assumption of neutrality ignores the conflict of interest itself. Such conflicts are never missed by the party on the losing end. An ally of one disputant simply cannot also be a “neutral guy.” In such a case, another nation-state must be found to inhabit the neutral role, yet such a nation-state may be difficult to find, given the networks of alliances that proliferate in a nation-state system of international relations. That a neutral party would have to be powerful enough in the world for the neutrality to be effectively leveraged—i.e., garnering the attention of both disputants rather than dismissed—decreases the likelihood that such a neutral party could be found. The E.U., for instance, typically sided with the Palestinians over Israel—perhaps with a motive to counterbalance the influence of the U.S.

Perhaps absent a global neutral arbitrator powerful enough to implement a peace settlement, an ally of one disputant could together with an ally of the other disputant act as a neutral pivot around which negotiations could proceed. The U.S. would not be able to make a proposal that is objectionable to the E.U. on peace in Israel. Yet this presumes that the Americans and Europeans could work together as a united mediator credible to both the Palestinians and Israelis. The basic problem, I submit, is that the world puts too much on nation-states as the sole or at least hegemonic actors on the global stage.

For more on conflicts of interest, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest.

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[1] Peter Baker and David Halbfinger, “Trump’s Hopes ofBeing the ‘Neutral Guy’ in the Mideast Seem Long Gone,” The New York Times, March 5, 2018.

[2] Ibid.

Did Obama Press Israel to Compromise for Peace?

Seeing to “capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world,” U.S. President Obama delivered a foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011 in which, according to the New York Times, he sought “to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” by “setting out a new starting point for negotiations.” In particular, he suggested that the Israelis go back to the 1967 borders, adjusted somewhat to account for settlements on the West Bank. Meeting with Obama on the following day, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We can’t go back” to the 1967 borders, according to MSNBC.com. This put the U.S. at odds with one of its foremost allies. Considering the amount of financial and military aid involved, Netanyahu could have been accused of biting the hand that was feeding Israel. Yet due to lobbying no doubt, the Obama administration did not fully play its hand in pressuring the ally.

Before the president’s speech, according to the New York Times, Netanyahu “held an angry phone conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton” to demand that the president’s references to 1967 borders be cut. White House officials said that nothing was changed from Israeli pressure. In spite of the billions in aid to Israel from the U.S., the Israeli government had ignored the president’s request that settlements be halted—only to reject the 1967 borders proposal.  Given the position of Israel in the Middle East and its financial support from the U.S., the Israeli government’s rejection of the American proposals is perplexing. In fact, the refusals, as well as the pressure, could be taken as presumptuous, given Israel’s intransience in negotiating with the Palestinians.

So why, one might ask, didn’t the American president freeze aid to Israel? Although Jews in the U.S. are only about 2% of the total population, as donors to political candidates and the Democratic Party, the Jewish influence is disproportionate. Congress would hardly support real pressure on Israel, so realistically the president’s hand was probably tied.

In fact, I would not be surprised if Netanyahu had threatened Obama that if he kept the 1967 border proposal in his speech, he would lose Florida in 2012. It would be unfortunate if Americans who happen to be Jewish would put another country before their own in voting for president. In fact, I submit that it is in the Jewish interest, whether in Florida or Israel, that additional pressure be applied to Israel so a comprehensive peace deal may be achieved. Indeed, the reaction to the speech in the E.U. was that finally the U.S. Government was standing up to Israel.  A spokesperson for E.U. foreign policy minister Catherine Ashton said she "warmly welcomes President Obama's confirmation that the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with the mutually agreed swaps, with secured and recognized borders on both sides," according to Zawya.com. Perhaps the E.U. and U.S. could combine forces to pressure Israel to comrpromise.

However, was making a proposal not to Israel’s liking standing up to the Israelis? I contend that the most intractable problem in the Middle East requires more than words. Accordingly, President Obama should find the will to put money behind his words. Specifically, he should give the Israeli government a deadline for a peace deal, after which American aid would be frozen. If Congress’s approval is necessary, the president should make the recommendation, agreeing to take the heat. 

Coming off his victory over Osama Bin Laden, Obama has some political capital to burn, and he should not be afraid of retaliation from Americans who happen to be Jewish—whom I would think would be against occupation wherever it is going on, given the history of Jewish suffering under occupation. Surely Jewish Americans realize that two wrongs do not make a right, and, moreover, that Israel’s future will not be secured until it compromises with those whom it is occupying. Borne of occupied resistance, the United States itself ought to be for the occupied rather than the occupiers, and Jewish Americans are part of the United States, are they not?

In any case, the way to win a presidential election is to keep one’s eyes on the prize rather than deferring in order not to offend particular interest groups. Paradoxically, if winning re-election is the predominant factor in every major presidential decision, the likelihood of a win is diminished accordingly because there are inevitably costs borne more by some than others as a leader puts his money where his mouth is in order to achieve any truly worthwhile accomplishment. Relatedly, a benefit of a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy is that in the former representatives have a period of time insulating them from the immediate passions of the people so they can go out on a limb to bring home the bacon that might involve a bit of discomfort.

Sources:

Mark Lander and Steven Lee Myers, “Obama sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal,” The New York Times, May 20, 2011.

MSNBC.com, “’We Can’t Go Back’: Israeli PM Rejects 1967 Border Proposal,” May 20, 2011.

Zawya.com, "EU 'Welcomes' Obama Call to Respect Pre-1967 Borders," May 20, 2011.