That shameful Austin-Blinken letter to Israel

 I saw this coming a year ago. 

As soon as Israel commenced its response to the horrors of October 7, 2023, I could see the trajectory. In the initial phase, the Biden administration was forthrightly supportive. But I knew that as soon as Israel had to zap some schools and hospitals in Gaza - because the staffs, students and patients in those building were being used as human shields by Hamas, and that's where the weapons caches and operations centers were - the tone from Washington would change. And it followed the same pattern as the US response to previous Israeli responses to Hamas attacks. "Hey, guys, you've sent a proportional message. That's about enough." "Take the win" and such.

The letter that the US Secretaries of State and defense sent to the Israeli government takes this clueless hubris a step further:

On the one hand, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the U.S. would be sending an advanced anti-missile system to Israel, along with troops to operate it, to bolster the defense against Iran. On the other hand, Biden has been pressuring Israel into a more limited response to Iran’s second ballistic-missile attack in five months, including publicly opposing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In the midst of this, Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent a joint letter to Israeli officials — promptly released publicly — chastising Israel for not ensuring enough humanitarian aid in Gaza and warning that if Israel does not meet the administration’s demands within 30 days, the U.S. could suspend aid to Israel. Conveniently, this would place the potential aid-suspension date a week after the November 5 election.

In other words, Harris can spend the closing weeks of the presidential election arguing to the pro-Hamas caucus that the administration has put Israel on notice while still claiming to supporters of Israel that no decision has been made to suspend aid.

The substance of the letter places the blame for insufficient aid getting into the hands of Gazans on Israel, claiming that Israelis are creating too many barriers to aid entering the strip. Yet Israel must vet aid going in because Hamas has historically used aid deliveries to smuggle in weapons. Also, Hamas inhibits the flow of aid within Gaza, looting delivery trucks and hoarding food and supplies for their own fighters.

The Austin-Blinken letter also criticizes various steps Israel has taken against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, even though evidence points to employees of UNRWA having participated in the October 7 attacks.

I strive to prevent cynicism from affecting my objectivity, but I think we're on safe ground assuming a connection between the neck-and-neck state of the presidential race in Michigan and the equivocation eroding its support for Israel. 

I spent two nights in Dearborn recently. My wife and I took a road trip to visit the Motown Museum in Detroit. Staff in our hotel, in restaurants, in convenience stores, were nearly to a person of Arab ethnicity. In a hookah lounge where we had an excellent dinner, our server was a young Iraqi woman and the young man tending our hookah was Egyptian. They were personable and on top of their jobs. Indeed, most Dearborn Middle Easterners we dealt with were pretty worldly. Young men and young women interacted on an equal footing and were completely comfortable around each other. 

But if any of them vote next month, I think we can be reasonably sure regarding the party they will push the button for.

And maybe even more than the hip young Arabs of Dearborn, the Democrats are concerned about the votes of the snot-nosed white post-American students at campuses such as UCLA and Columbia. 

It's all so sick. To reiterate some basics, Israel is the only Western nation in the Middle East. It provides the Jerusalem component of the Jerusalem-Athens formulation of the West's development. It is a tech hub. Arabs serve in the Knesset. It has dealt with frequent wars with neighbors since the day of the founding of its iteration as a modern nation-state in 1948. 

The Biden administration's moral preening regarding Gaza aid led to an empty gesture that cost you and me tax dollars when that stupid pier didn't pan out. And stories abound about Hamas highjacking of food-aid trucks.

Let us hope Netanyahu, Gallant et al keep their eyes on victory - in Gaza, up north in Lebanon, and in the overarching menace from Iran - and keep the Biden administration at a healthy distance. 

 

Once in a while, something goes right in this world

 This:

Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October in a raid in Gaza on Saturday that Palestinian officials said killed more than 200 people, one of the single bloodiest Israeli assaults of the eight-month-old war.

The hostage rescue operation and an intense accompanying air assault took place in central Gaza's al-Nuseirat, a densely built-up and often embattled area in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian territory's ruling Islamist group.

The Times of Israel called it 

one of the most daring, complex, high-risk yet successful operations amid the war against Hamas, rescuing four hostages alive from the terror group’s captivity in the Gaza Strip. The mission was conducted in broad daylight and in an area where Israeli forces had not previously operated.

About civilian misfortune, the IDF had this to say:

The IDF acknowledged that it killed Palestinian civilians amid the fighting, but it placed the blame on Hamas for holding hostages and fighting in a dense civilian environment.

“We know about under 100 [Palestinian] casualties. I don’t know how many of them are terrorists,” IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a briefing with journalists, reported by Reuters.

Yeah, it behooves us to cast a gimlet eye on Hamas-supplied figures:

The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.

The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the 21st century’s most destructive conflicts. In October, when the war began, it was above 60%. For the month of April, it was below 40%. Yet the shift went unnoticed for months by the U.N. and much of the media, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry has made no effort to set the record straight.

But it's not like there are a lot of unopinionated people in Gaza:

Palestinian support for Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza remains high, according to a Palestinian poll released on March 20. That support has increased since the Iran-backed terrorist group attacked Israel on October 7. The poll, published by the Ramallah-based non-profit Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, also indicates that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his faction have grown even more unpopular since the war in Gaza started.

I'll reiterate: all this agony could come to an end yet this afternoon if Hamas would do two things: release the hostages and dismantle itself. 

 

 

 

In a Mideast already brimming with malevolent players, ISIS returns to the mix

 Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute says the recent bombings at the memorial service for General Suleiman in Iran should be a bracing heads up for the West:

The Islamic State claimed the Kerman bombings as part of a new campaign dubbed, “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them,” launched in support of Palestinian Muslims. Within a 24-hour period, the Islamic State had claimed more than 30 different operations globally—from the Middle East to Africa to the Philippines—as part of this campaign, reanimating a seemingly dormant network. Few of the arguments made in the announcement itself are new. Pointing to the events in Gaza, the Islamic State called for supporters to target “Jews, Christians, and their allies” in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. 

One of the key distinctions between the Islamic State and other major jihadist groups is its focus on Iran. Unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State has actively targeted Iran and Shiites worldwide as perfidious enemies of Islam and ruthlessly condemned Sunni collaborators such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This announcement was no different, emphasizing again the danger of the Shiites and their threat to Sunni Muslims. No doubt, the Kerman bombings were aimed in part at driving a wedge of suspicion between Shiite Iran and the Sunni jihadists it backs. As it has previously, the Islamic State is seeking to exploit regional tensions and moments of instability to create opportunities to advance its own cause, still pursuing reestablishing the Caliphate.

These bombings are simply another notch in the belt of Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K). What senior U.S. officials warned of in the aftermath of the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan—IS-K’s development of external attack capabilities to match its intent—has sadly been realized. And while the Kerman bombings are shocking given the terrorist outfit’s penetration of the tightly controlled Iranian society, they are part of a concerning trend. The group now threatens states neighboring Afghanistan and has extended its reach to include Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Reports from Kyrgyzstan of a foiled terror attack in late December reveal the outward progression of the Islamic State’s threat from Afghanistan.

Western states, particularly European ones, have felt much-needed relief from the Islamic State terror threat in recent years, especially after the collapse of the founding group in Iraq and Syria. But that lull in activity seems to be ending. Most  concerning is how IS-K has transformed into its primary operational node using tradecraft developed to support terrorism attacks as far afield as Europe. Like al-Qaeda, which experienced significant counterterrorism pressure in Afghanistan and focused instead on developing a threat node based in Yemen, the Islamic State has adapted. The difference is that the Islamic State seems to be mastering a remote management of its cells, including online recruitment, guidance, and training. It’s not clear yet from Iranian statements regarding the detained individuals whether the network behind the Kerman bombings was built remotely or not.

And this is occurring as other Mideast players are weighing in - and not supportively - on US and British airstrikes on, per the US Air Force's Mideast command, "command and control nodes, munitions depots, production facilities and air defense radar systems" of the Houthis in Yemen:

Russia . . .  requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the strikes. France, the current council president, said it will take place Friday afternoon.

Rather rich in irony that Russia would be concerned about the use of force. 

Saudi Arabia is likewise voicing such a view:

Saudi Arabia is following US and British air strikes on neighbouring Yemen with "great concern", a foreign ministry statement said on Friday, urging against escalation.

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is following with great concern the military operations taking place in the Red Sea region and the air strikes on a number of sites in the Republic of Yemen," the statement said, calling for "self-restraint and avoiding escalation".

You may notice the I haven't done any posting of a follow-the-horse-race-in-granular-detail nature about stuff like how Haley and DeSantis are positioned going into Iowa. For one thing, the Very Stable Genius still looks poised to run the table on the entire primary season - a prospect with bad enough implications for Mideast policy - but also, the lay of the land in that region is likely to look even more volatile by November. The current US administration has its hands full right now, what with the mysterious way Lloyd Austin's prostate cancer has been handled, and the implications for the functionality of the chain of command. 

So the most immediate demand on US focus is not in Des Moines, but a bit further away. 

This is a pretty important piece of information about that Gaza hospital

 I doubt it will change the time-is-up message coming from Iran and Syria, but let the record show that this documentation is out there:

Israel's Defence Forces have released a slew of evidence they claim proves an overnight explosion at a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds of people was caused by a misfiring rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In an audio clip procured by Israeli military intelligence, two alleged Hamasterrorists can be heard discussing the explosion and confirming the rocket came from Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) - an independent jihadist group.

'They are saying (the rocket) belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It's from us?' one alleged Hamas member asks in the clip provided by Israel's military intelligence. 

'This is the tragic result of firing rockets from densely populated neighborhoods,' the IDF said.

And finally, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari showed a series of infrared images, satellite photos and intelligence documents he said proved the damage caused at the hospital could not possibly have come from an Israeli strike.

He explained the images showed there was no structural damage to buildings around the Al-Ahli hospital, no craters in the adjacent car park, and no debris consistent with an air strike, implying a direct hit from an Israeli missile would have caused far more destruction.

'The walls stay intact. There are no craters in the parking lot. These are the characteristics that show it was not an aerial munition that hit the parking lot,' he concluded.  

He also pointed out images of what he claimed was shrapnel on the roof of nearby buildings, suggesting the rocket fell apart in the air and sprayed its detritus across a larger area.  

Hagari said Hamas knew the hospital blast was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket but launched a 'global media campaign' to blame Israel.

The evidence was published amid a torrent of fury from Hamas, the Arab world and Israel's foes over the explosion, with Iran declaring last night that Israel's 'time is up' and Tehran-backed terror group Hezbollah calling for a 'day of rage' after Gaza's Health Ministry said some 500 people died in the blast.

Alas, in a war the momentum of which is still gathering, the incident started shaping events even before proof of the cause was disseminated. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman snubbed Antony Blinken in Riyadh, and Jordan cancelled its summit of Arab leaders, which Biden was planning to attend.

Churchill's quip about the different speeds a which lies and truth make their way around the world comes to mind here.

 

Israel's post-Netanyahu coalition

 It's been apparent for some time that Netanyahu's shelf life was dwindling. His legal troubles over corruption charges are a major factor, but one also senses that the basic need of a nation-state for fresh political energy has become more of a driver in the country's dynamics.

Due to Netanyahu's positions and accomplishments as prime minister over two stints in the job have assured him a prominent place in Israeli and world history (bolstered by his role in the 1976 Entebbe raid). He has understood that Israel is a Western nation despite where it's situated geographically. He's understood the stakes regarding the threat from Jihadists, the Assad regime in Syria and the Iranian regime and acted wisely in situations in which those stakes might be raised.

it's time, though, for fresh perspectives.

The coalition about to take power, as represented by the historically unprecedented trio of political leaders, is going to have to muster an abundance of tact, patience and willingness to communicate constantly within itself. It seems, at the outset, anyway, that, for all the diversity among the three, that it has a decent chance of proving itself stable and capable of maneuvering effectively. After all, where are the serious challenges? There are no other viable players at the moment among Israel's parties and coalitions.

These are three interesting individuals, to be sure.

Naftali Bennett was born in Haifa in 1972 to a couple from the United States that had marinated in leftist politics while at UC Berkeley, but, upon visiting Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War had a dramatic transformation of viewpoint. Bennett and his brothers were raised as Orthodox Jews. Bennett served in the Israeli military and saw combat. He's still a reservist. He married his wife, a pastry chef, and studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He moved to the US for a while and became a software entrepreneur. The pull of political involvement brought him back to Israel, joining Likud and then the Jewish Home party. He had several influential portfolios, including in the fields of education and diaspora affairs. 

His relationship with Netanyahu began to fray as he got more active:

Bennett had previously viewed Netanyahu as his mentor. He looked up to him so much that he even named his eldest son, Yoni, after Netanyahu's brother, who was killed in 1976, Reuters reported.

Their working relationship soured after a mysterious falling out in 2008 at the end of Bennett's tenure as his chief of staff, according to The Washington Post. The argument was, according to Israeli media reports, related to Netanyahu's wife, Sara.

A year later, they clashed again after Bennett criticized Netanyahu for slowing down settlement construction, the Post added.

In 2018, tensions between Netanyahu and Bennett escalated. Bennett wanted to be Defense Minister but was thwarted by Netanyahu, who then took the job for himself, Reuters reported.

Bennett announced that his party, Jewish Home, would leave Netanyahu's government. He later reneged and remained in the coalition, The Times of Israel reported.

He is a staunch opponent of a Palestinian state. While certain elements might find this outrageous at this late date, there is now a track record of many decades during which the search for some kind of way to establish one has led to naught. 

Yair Lapid brings a decidedly different perspective to the triumvirate, at least regarding religion:

Yair Lapid is a former opposition leader and television anchor who has forged a coalition alliance that will, if approved by parliament Sunday, unseat Israel's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

When Lapid founded his centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party in 2012, some dismissed him as the latest in a series of media stars seeking to transform his celebrity into political success.

But his fiercely secularist party finished second with 17 seats in March elections, Israel's fourth inconclusive national vote in less than two years.

He was mandated last month to form a government after Netanyahu failed in his own efforts to build a post-election government.

Lapid cobbled together a coalition of bitter ideological rivals, ranging from right-wing religious nationalists to conservative Muslim Arab citizens of Israel, and the Knesset will either approve or scupper his bloc on Sunday.

His improbable alliance is all the more remarkable given recent intercommunal clashes between Jewish and Arab citizens, sparked by the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

Under the coalition deal, Lapid would assume the premiership only after a two-year stint at the top by his main coalition ally, nationalist hardliner Naftali Bennett.

Despite having engineered the alliance, 57-year-old Lapid would initially serve as foreign minister.

A former news anchor known for his chiselled good looks, Lapid is the Tel Aviv-born son of the fiercely secular former justice minister Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, another journalist who left the media to enter politics.

His mother, Shulamit, is a novelist, playwright and poet.

Lapid was a newspaper columnist and has also published a dozen books. His role as a presenter on Channel 2 TV boosted his stardom.

An amateur boxer and martial artist, he once featured on lists of Israel's most desirable men.

Mansour Abbas brings a religious informing of his views, but one that top-level leadership in Israel has never seen. He's a Muslim. He preached his first sermon at age 17 in a Jerusalem mosque. He's a dentist by profession, having received his education at old, established Israel universities, demonstrating that Arab Muslims have the same opportunities in Israel as Jews. He's the head of the United Arab List and represents it in the Knesset. He advocates a two-state solution, with East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

They commence their project today. What will probably establish a set of assumptions among Israel's allies and foes alike is the coalition's early responses to external developments. The May conflict with Hamas is still fresh in everyone's memory, and Iran continues to burnish his bona fides as a world-stage bad actor, sending warships into the Atlantic, showing itself not to be in any kind of rush to revive the JCPOA, probably primarily because it's poised to elect a hardliner, Ebrahim Raisi, as president. 

It' likely that Israel's moves in the next few weeks and months will not be any kind of sharp departure from those of the Netanyahu-led government. They will just come with a fresh perspective and a lack of baggage. 

The zapping of Fakhrizadeh

 First off, it's important to state that as of this writing, we do not know who is responsible. All signs point to Israel and a green light from the US, but we must not get ahead of ourselves. In tense situations like this, it's important to deal in facts.

Who was he? Why would he be targeted?

Fakhrizadeh was a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer and headed Iran’s nuclear weapons project. He was a professor of physics at the Imam Hussein University in Tehran and was former head of Iran’s Physics Research Center (PHRC). He was the only Iranian scientist named in the IAEA’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran’s nuclear program. It said he oversaw activities “in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran’s) nuclear program.”

In other words, he was definitely on board with Iran's foreign policy and its general outlook on the world, and he was also an expert in atomic-level matters. He was a very valuable asset for the regime. 

 

Fakhrizadeh has been a target of interest for Israeli intelligence agencies for the last 15 years.

In 2018, at the unveiling of Iran’s secret nuclear archive acquired by the Mossad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned Fakhrizadeh and said: “remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.”

The files retrieved by the Mossad focused on Iran’s weapons program known as “Project Amad,” which was led by Fakhrizadeh. When Iran entered the 2015 nuclear deal, it denied that such a program existed.

In 2003, Iran was forced to shelve Project Amad, but not its nuclear ambitions. It split its program into an overt program and a covert one that continued the nuclear work under the title of scientific knowhow development, Netanyahu said at the time.

It continued this work in a series of organizations, which in 2018 were led by SPND, an organization inside Iran’s Defense Ministry led by the same person who led Project Amad – Dr. Fakhrizadeh, Netanyahu said.

Now, consider the timing of some recent events. 

In January of this year, the US took out Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike. Soleimani was, like Fakhrizadeh, an officer in the IRGC - in fact, a major general - and, since 1998, had been commander of its Quds Force. He was the prime architect of Iran's misdeeds in the Middle East.

Then came the September peace agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. These had the effect of confirming that Palestinian animosity toward Israel was no longer the centerpiece of the region's dynamics. An Israeli-Sunni Arab bloc was shaping up to form a counter-force to Iran's designs. 

Then came last weekend's clandestine meeting between Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

These events don't look unrelated. Just sayin'.

Now, there had been speculation that the incoming Biden administration would go to work trying to revive the JCPOA. That looks less likely now. 

The JCPOA was a bad "agreement" from the get-go. John Kerry and Wendy Sherman allowed themselves to be humiliated and yelled at by Iranian foreign minister Zarif at an interminable string of meetings as it was cobbled together. Much hay was made over a very narrow presumption of achievement: that Iran would not try to build a nuclear arsenal for at least ten years. It did nothing to change the Iranian regime's fundamental stance toward the West - and I'm including Israel in that formulation. Shortily after the deal was inked, on the day of Obama's State of the Union address that year, Iran stopped two US Navy patrol boats, took their crews captive and broadcast to the world photographs of the crew members on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as top IRGC officers, continue their very public characterizations of the US as Iran's enemy. Iran continued to foment trouble in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. 

So whoever executed Fakhrizadeh seems to have done the world a favor. He was the point man for Iran's determination to become a nuclear power, something that must not happen. 

 

Friday roundup

 Former national security advisor H.R. McMaster tells CBS's Scott Pelley that the Very Stable Genius has sided with the Taliban over the Afghan government. 

Andrew Sullivan on the way social media's algorithms hold your hand and make sure your confirmation biases are reaffirmed and that pesky challenging viewpoints don't clutter up your newsfeed.

Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute says that it's important for us to think deeply about just what the Constitution is:

To think about the Constitution legalistically is to see it simply as a set of rules to be applied and interpreted, ultimately by judges. This view obviously makes sense up to a point. Judges have a foremost role in constitutional interpretation, and the Constitution is, in some of its most crucial respects, a form of law. But this view is easily taken too far, and so can encourage an excessively lawyerly constitutional practice that comes down to a search for technicalities that justify various uses of power and so narrows our understanding of what political life involves.

Now, mind you, he's not advocating for any kind of loosey-goosey living-document perspective:

This kind of broader constitutionalism is an extension of, not a substitute for, an originalist approach to judicial interpretation. Reading the text as it was written is the judge’s job, but the judge is just one constitutional actor, and not in every instance the appropriate or decisive one. Our grasp of that truth has been degraded over time, and our contemporary over-emphasis of legalistic and policy-oriented constitutionalism is the result of a kind of deformation of our constitutional culture, driven in part by some peculiar notions of the functions of the judge. Understanding how that has happened should help us see that a recovery of our constitutional order will depend on more than just appointing good judges. It will depend on our recovering a richer and more complete understanding of who we are as a people, and so of what our Constitution really is.

A new project of Principles First called The Pillars can help a citizen take this broad view. The first installment provides brief summaries of the contributions of great Enlightenment figures (and my heroes) to humankind's understanding of ordered liberty: Burke, Locke, Montesquieu, Sir William Blackstone and Adame Smith. Future installments will move the reader through successive eras and the thinkers about freedom associated with each.

Kurt T. Lash at Law & Liberty says universities need to do less "contextualizing" of Thomas Jefferson and  put more focus on the thunderous documents he penned - not just the Declaration of Independence, but the Northwest Ordinance, which laid out a path for a slavery-free American future.

Maybe if self-identified conservatives spent more time pondering the above principles, American politics would be less subjected to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer, writes Kimberly Ross at ArcDigital. 

An excellent essay at The Bulwark by Matthew Stokes looks at the effect that not having to dress like a grown-up professional to work in the wake of the pandemic is having on our mindset not only about work but our approach to life in general.

David Wurmser at Fox News says that the tectonic shift underway in the Middle East is rapidly diminishing the relevance of Palestinian foot-stamping: 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. . . . dismissed the agreements signed at the White House as “a distraction” by Trump from the coronavirus pandemic and complained that the Palestinian issue was not addressed.

This is an absurd argument that fails to recognize the historic importance of the agreements signed Tuesday to advance the long-sought goal of peace between Israel and its neighbors. Certainly, much remains to be accomplished, but the agreements with the UAE and Bahrain are highly significant.

In truth, the real abandonment of the Palestinian people has come from their own leaders, who refuse to make a peace with Israel that would lead to a vast improvement in the lives of the Palestinians with new opportunities for trade, jobs and regional cooperation. 

Two years ago, Trump critics also blasted his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, claiming this would end any chances for peace. They were proven wrong by the UAE and Bahrain.

At the core of the European diplomatic slight, the American left’s dismissiveness, and the symbolic but irrelevant launching of missiles by terrorists in Gaza was the belief that the resolution of the Palestinian issue is a precondition to advance regional peace.

And yet, four peace treaties reveal quite a different pattern. President Trump understand this, which is why he pursued peace between Arab nations and Israel rather than giving Palestinians a permanent veto of all efforts to end 72 years of Arab hostility toward the Jewish state.

Importantly, a major driver of the decision by the UAE, Bahrain and hopefully more Arab nations to normalize relations with Israel is the threat the Arab World sees from Iran, which is hostile not just to Israel and the U.S. but to Sunni Muslim Arab states. It makes sense for the Arab nations to join with Israel and the U.S. as allies against the Iranian menace.

Apparently neither Hamas, which started right in with a rocket barrage aimed at Israel after the deal was signed, nor Fatah, get the message:

The Palestinian Authority will sever ties with any country that opens an embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, a top Palestinian official warned on Sunday, after Serbia and Kosovo announced that they will be doing so in the near future.

“Palestine will sever its relations with any country that will move or open its embassy to Jerusalem,” PLO Executive Committee Secretary-General Saeb Erekat tweeted on Sunday.

The US is within days of topping the 200,000 COVID-death mark. 

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump, master of self-sabotage

 Any conservative, regardless how objectionable he or she finds Donald Trump , is going to have to concede that he occasionally gets something right. The latest example is the signing of peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers for the two Arab nations came to the White House for a signing ceremony, and it was a fitting event. Certainly, it was the culmination of a lot of communication and heavy lifting among the parties actually agreeing to peace, but it happened on Trump's watch and he signed off on anything having to do with the US role in orchestrating the deals. If one doesn't acknowledge that, one is far too invested in narrative.

That said, the question must be asked, why isn't this dominating the current news cycle?

It's not too hard to figure out. The guy is his own worst enemy. He consistently poisons the well, fouls his own nest. I've long said that there's been a cycle to his presidency. One laudable move, followed by three or four embarrassing or downright rotten utterings or stunts. 

The ABC town hall was full of cringeworthy moments, but perhaps the most glaring was when he was asked why he didn't level with the American people about the severity of the coronavirus threat.  There's no question that he did so. Bob Woodward has it on tape. Well, he answered the question by saying, "I didn't downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it [which isn't even an actual word], in terms of action. My action was very strong."

That must be why a country with 4 percent of the world's population has 20 percent of its COVID cases.

Speaking of mangled language at the town hall, at one point, he said that eventually society will develop  "like a herd mentality" to fend off the virus.

At a rally in Michigan, in the course of talking about keeping the American people "calm," he said that, when London was being bombed by Germany in the early 1940s, Winston Churchill would frequently go up to a roof to give speeches. No, Mr. President, that was CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow, and they were news reports. Churchill gave speeches in Parliament, but they were bracing messages to the British people to be prepared for very hard times.

Then there was the rally in Nevada at which he made it clear he doesn't give a flying you-know-what about no stinkin' Constitution:

During a rally in Minden, Nevada, Trump predicted he would win reelection and carry Nevada, a state he lost narrowly in 2016.

“After that,” Trump said, “we’ll negotiate,” asserting that he’s “probably entitled to another four after that” based on “the way we were treated.”

The comments echo ones Trump made during a rally in Wisconsin in August, in which he stated he would win four more years and “go for another four years” because “they spied on my campaign,” likely referencing his unproven “Obamagate” theory.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer-turned prolific critic, has argued that Trump’s comments should not be disregarded as humor, instead asserting that Trump believes he should be the “ruler” or “dictator” of the U.S. and wants to “change the Constitution.”

Cohen predicted that, were Trump to win reelection, “he is going to automatically day number one start thinking how he can change the Constitution for a third term, and then a fourth term.”

This is just in the last few days. Of course, we could go back further to the revelations in Woodward's book about his man-crushes on the world's autocrats and dictators, and his contempt for the US military's generals, or Trump's ordering Attorney General Bob Barr to come up with a list of "anarchist jurisdictions" to be denied federal funds already allocated to them.

This self-sabotage may be the most compelling argument for the Very Stable Genius's fundamental unfitness to be president. He's incapable of a coherent thought process, and if there's any job in the world for which that's an imperative quality, it's his. 

Which is not to downplay the particulars enumerated above. 

The bottom line is that the sum total of it grossly outweighs good moves like yesterday's signing ceremony. It's not worth it to put the country through this other stuff. 

Three major situations going on in the Middle East / Mediterranean - one encouraging, two that are jitters-worthy

 The recent peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are laudable and fraught with possibilities for long-term regional stability and comity. 

Some aspects of the background leading up to these deals are noteworthy. One, the process of the groundwork being laid had been ongoing for some time. In each case, each party knew that trade and technology interests - and, at least as importantly, a common interest in seeing that Iran cannot establish its Tehran-to-the-Mediterranean crescent - provided the impetus for focusing on commonalities rather than differences. Two, these two Arab nations have a much different history than a lot of their neighbors. They have evolved out of a distillation of a national identity based on many ethnicities, for reasons of their locations along trade routes, participating in their development. They are smaller by comparison to, say, Iraq or Syria or Saudi Arabia. And, say what one will about strong monarchical forms of government, that element has shaped them differently that how things have evolved in countries that have earnestly tried to adopt, or at least ape, Western-style representative democracy. 

These factors make possible a considerable degree of confidence that the dynamic is shifting in the Middle East, at least to some degree, that the relative influence of various players of even fairly recent times is giving way to something new. 

A glaring obstacle to this path forward is Lebanon. Lebanon is one of the great tragedies of history. It's well-known that Beirut was, for many years, called the Paris of the Middle East. Broad boulevards, fashionable shops, a vital banking industry, a rich culture the ingredients of which included such influences as a few types of Christianity, Druze culture, the presence of both Sunni and Shiite Islam, and natural beauty gave it a global reputation as a desirable place to visit. Then came the 1975 - 1990 civil war, with its complex web of players and carnage and intrigue that would permanently impact the country's identity. 

It's now a failed state. The shell of its government is pretty much just a vehicle for Hezbollah to take the reins of power:

Lebanon, trapped in a constitutional vise evolved to ensure representation for its many sectarian communities while impeding the rise of cross-sectarian or secular parties, is hurtling toward full-scale breakdown. It is one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world, owing to entrenched patronage networks run by sectarian fiefs. The governing class plays each tribe against the other, Sunni against Shia against Christian against Druze, to enrich themselves while immiserating the nation. Woeful economic mismanagement has proceeded for many long years without respite. Combined with the arrival of the pandemic, rising unemployment has now plunged more than half the country—pushing upwards to three-quarters—into poverty.

To make matters worse, the power behind the throne in Lebanon resides with a vicious militia-cum-political party that is resistant to change and that refuses to treat Lebanese as fellow citizens. Hezbollah is the most conspicuous legacy of Syria’s long occupation of the country, and it has increasingly disfigured the proper operations of the government. Facilitated by Persian power and largesse, the Shia terrorist organization has risen to become the primus inter pares of Lebanese affairs. In concert with its domestic allies, the Party of God holds the majority in Parliament and dominates the government’s security and foreign policies.

This has global implications, and that doesn't just mean Iran. China sees a juicy opportunity to exert its influence:

If the people of Lebanon were pushed up against a wall of destitution and despair, they would lose hope, so the diabolical reasoning goes. Hopelessness would prepare them to accept anything, including a new overseer in the form of China offering a lifeline of billions of dollars in “aid” and pledging to rebuild vital infrastructure like the hammered Beirut port. This would effectively sever ailing Lebanon from its traditional Western and Arab strategic, political, and cultural moorings, taking it eastward toward Iran and China. It is no secret that Hezbollah is the designated agent entrusted with engineering such a shift, premised on compounding the misery of the already exhausted Lebanese as a quick way to oust the West permanently from the Arab Levant. Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah, even came on television several weeks ago to declare that he had secured a commitment from Beijing to “help,” if only the Lebanese would jump on this opportunity. Among other hidden benefits, China would gain a naval foothold for the first time on the Mediterranean Sea, close to Israel, and decisive economic influence in a vital gateway linking Europe through the Levant to the rest of the Middle East. Lebanon would thus become another feather in the cap of China’s expanding Belt and Road scheme with its not-so-concealed military dimension.

French president Emmanuel Macron has been to Lebanon twice since the gargantuan ammonium nitrate explosion last month, offering aid and signaling that the West is aware of the stakes. 

Europe has reason to be concerned about another situation in that region. Two NATO members, Greece and Turkey, are squaring off over gas and oil interests in the eastern Mediterranean:

The crisis has been deepening in recent months with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, leading those inside the EU opposing Turkey’s increasingly military foreign policy and saying Turkey can no longer be seen as partner in the Mediterranean. He has offered French military support to the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, including the possible sale of 18 Rafale jets.

The issue was on the agenda of a meeting of the Med7 group of southern Mediterranean leaders on the French island of Corsica on Thursday and again at an EU council meeting on 23 September that will discuss imposing severe sanctions on the already struggling Turkish banking sector over its demand for access to large swaths of the eastern Mediterranean.

Germany, the lead mediator between Turkey and Greece, is exploring an enhanced customs union between Turkey and the EU to calm the dispute, which has been exacerbated by vast hydrocarbon discoveries over the past decade in the eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey has long sought a broader customs union with the EU, and although Greece might see any such offer as a reward for bullying, Germany believes both carrots and sticks are needed to persuade Turkey to change its strategy..

But Germany is also warning Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that his current unilateral strategy is a commercial dead end, since no private gas company is going to touch cooperation with Turkey if it is trying to exploit illegal claims on gas reserves.

The stakes are getting higher. Once again, Macron is very much involved:

Macron has already increased the French naval presence in the sea, and called for withdrawal of the Turkish reconnaissance ship Oruç Reis, accompanied by Turkish naval ships. The ship is undertaking seismic surveys in Greek waters south of Cyprus. A key moment may come on 12 September, when the Turkish Navtex warning for Oruç Reis is due to end. If it is extended, the risk of a naval clash between Greece and Turkey two Natopartners either by accident or design rises.

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The fear that the conflict could spiral out of control has led to an urgent search for a neutral arbitrator and an agreed agenda for talks. An effort by Nato to start technical naval deconfliction talks was delayed after Greece objected to Nato’s involvement. The Greek foreign minister, Nikos Dendias, insisted that the talks would start only when the threats stopped. He then flew to New York to enlist the help of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

So the current situation is a mixture of hopeful signs and increasingly heated tensions. 

Western nations interested in seeing stability and a tilt toward Western alliance will have to base their participation in this confluence of events on an understanding that assumptions about regional dynamics from even fairly recently are giving way to new realities.