More than half a dozen people from across the US government
have left their jobs in public protest, saying they could no longer work
for the administration, and even more have quietly departed. Many of
the officials who resigned publicly said they would instead seek to have
an impact outside the government.
President Joe Biden has faced pressure both abroad and at home over his support for Israel eight months into the war in Gaza with
Hamas – a conflict that has cost tens of thousands of civilian lives,
displaced millions and brought extreme hunger throughout the enclave.
Although the rhetoric from the administration has become harsher – with
warnings that Israel must do more to protect civilians and allow more
aid in – the policies have remained largely unchanged.
The former officials who resigned publicly – Josh Paul,
Harrison Mann, Tariq Habash, Annelle Sheline, Hala Rharrit, Lily
Greenberg Call, Alex Smith, and Stacy Gilbert – said that they felt
their perspectives, expertise and concerns were not being heeded, and
that the administration was willingly ignoring the humanitarian toll
caused by Israel’s military campaign. They spoke of the damage they felt
US policy on the war is having on the country’s credibility and a sense
that the administration did not fully grasp that impact.
All the officials who have resigned publicly and spoke with
CNN said they have many colleagues who are still within the government
but agree with their decision to leave.
Providing support and advice to those colleagues – whether
they choose to leave or continue to dissent from within – is one of the
key reasons that they have come together collectively. Another key
reason, they said, is to increase the pressure on the administration to
change course.
“We’re thinking about how we can use our shared concern and
to continue to press together for change,” said Paul, a State Department
official who publicly resigned in protest in October, becoming the
first US official to do so.
“When you have numerous career professionals and
presidential appointees … who have resigned over this policy, it’s an
indicator that something is going wrong,” Mann told CNN.
threadreaderapp | BREAKING: New detailed report from the Times of London admits there is
no evidence for the "mass rape" hoax fabricated and spread by the NYT,
BBC, Guardian, AP and Reuters, and notes that Patten's own UN report
confirms this and reiterates her call for an actual UN investigation
some important facts to highlight from this new report. The main claim
of rape on October 7 which the NYT heavily relied on is from a deranged
fantasy "testimony" by "Sapir", including cut off breasts and severed
heads. The Times now confirms from Israeli police that she lied:
this piece by The Times is the first one I have seen in prestige Western
media that accurately states both the highly limited nature, scope and
content of Pramila Patten's UN report, which every other outlet keeps
lying about, falsely saying it "confirms Hamas mass rape", and "found
evidence of sexual violence/rape" by the evidentiary standard of an
actual full legal investigation, both of which Patten herself confirms
again are lies and falsehoods but the NYT, BBC, Reuters and AP keep
repeating to launder their own "mass rape" hoax (see and ).
The AP just did this again recently in its report exposing the two Zaka
hoaxers by constantly, over and over again, repeating these blatant lies
about Patten's UN report "confirming Hamas mass rape" and "sexual
violence/rape on October 7."
But now the Times confirms that Patten's report was not full, legal or
investigative in nature, that she explicitly does not attribute any
sexual violence/rape to Hamas, and that any case of sexual violence she
says might have happened on October 7 is based on a low evidentiary
threshold that does not meet the standard of an actual full legal
investigation, and relies entirely on Israeli information and
"eyewitnesses" like the aforementioned Sapir.
That is why she keeps calling for an actual investigation, which as the Times notes the Israeli regime keeps blocking.
I have been saying all this for months now (see ), and finally it has
penetrated a mainstream prestige Western media outlet, confirming that
all the others in the Western media and political class including the
NYT, BBC and Guardian are blatant propagandist liars.
WashingtonTimes | Ms. Gray’s termination from The Hill’s YouTube program happened
following a flood of online criticism she received over her treatment of
Yarden Gonen, sister of Israeli hostage Romi Gonen, who was kidnapped
by Hamas militants during the terrorist attack on southern Israel last
Oct. 7.
Ms. Gray, who previously served as press
secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent, apparently
rolled her eyes and cut off Ms. Yarden when she told the host that she
hoped Ms. Gray believed women who claim Hamas sexually assaulted them.
“I really hope that you, specifically, will believe women when they say that they got hurt,” she said.
Ms. Gray replied, “Alright, thanks for joining. Stick around.”
Although Ms. Gray attempted to steer the
interview towards Israel’s response in Gaza, Ms. Yarden kept saying she
did not want to discuss the politics in the region and preferred instead
to highlight the hostage crisis and her sister’s plight.
“I am here to talk about my sister. Please help
me spread her story. Help me make people understand what she is going
through as a woman in 2024,” she said.
Ms. Gray said at one point during the
interview, “I really do hope that Netanyahu agrees and Israel agrees to a
cease-fire or deal that could bring all the hostages home, including
your sister.” She added, “And I’m sure many people watching are praying
for her safety.”
Ms. Gray received a wave of criticism from
social media users online, who called her antisemitic for her behavior
towards Ms. Yarden.
“The way Brianna Joy Gray sneers and rolls her
eyes at Israeli pain paints a picture of dehumanization,” said the
Anti-Defamation League’s Carly Pildis.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, New York Democrat said,
“The family member of an Israeli hostage pleads with Briahna Joy Gray to
believe Jewish women who have been abducted, tortured, and raped by
Hamas.”
He said, “I have as much sympathy for Briahna Joy Gray as she has for the hostages. None.”
WSJ | When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said in an interview. “He’s not the same person.”
The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader. Some who have worked with him, however, including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.
For much of his career, Biden enjoyed a reputation on Capitol Hill for being a master negotiator of legislative deals, known for his detailed knowledge of issues and insights into the other side’s motivations and needs—and for hitting his stride when the pressure was on. Over the past year, though, with Republicans in control of the House, that reputation has diminished.
reuters | The State Department submitted the 46-page unclassified report earlier this month to Congress as required under a new National Security Memorandum that Biden issued in early February. Among other conclusions, the report said that in the period after Oct. 7 Israel “did not fully cooperate” with U.S. and other efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.
But it said this did not amount to a breach of a U.S law that blocks the provision of arms to countries that restrict U.S. humanitarian aid.
Gilbert, who worked for the State Department for over 20 years, said she notified her office the day the State Department report was released that she would resign. Her last day was Tuesday.
U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters on Thursday that he would not comment on personnel issues but that the department welcomes diverse points of view.
He said the administration stood by the report and continued to press the government of Israel to avoid harming civilians and urgently expand humanitarian access to Gaza.
"We are not an administration that twists the facts, and allegations that we have are unfounded," Patel said.
The Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Gilbert's accusations.
Gilbert’s bureau was one of the four that contributed to a classified initial options memo, reported exclusively
by Reuters in late April, that informed U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken Israel might be violating international humanitarian law.
Gilbert
said the State Department removed subject matter experts from working
on the report to Congress when the document was a rough draft about 10
days before it was due. She said the report was then edited by more
senior officials.
In
contrast to the published version, the last draft she saw stated that
Israel was blocking humanitarian assistance, Gilbert said.
Officials who resigned prior to Gilbert include Arabic language spokesperson Hala Rharrit and Annelle Sheline of the human rights bureau.
More
than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and land war
in Gaza. Israel launched its offensive after Hamas fighters crossed from
Gaza into southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year, killed 1,200 people and
abducted more than 250, according to Israeli tallies.
counterpunch | The specter of death in Gaza is difficult, if not impossible, to
grasp. At a distance, our understanding of the situation often relies on
somber statistics, especially in the establishment media. The official
count, consistently cited by mainstream outlets, comes in at around 35,000 deaths.
In May, the New York Times and other outlets jumped on a report from
the United Nations, which had apparently revised Gaza’s death count.
But the U.N. did not, in fact, halve its total of women and children who
had died, as the Jerusalem Postclaimed. It simply altered its classification system in terms of those estimated to have died and those it could definitively confirm to
be deceased. The totals, however, remained the same. Nonetheless, even
those numbers, based on information provided by Gaza’s Ministry of
Health, end up blurring the cruel reality on the ground. U.N. officials
also fear that at least 10,000 more Gazans lie buried under the rubble in that 25-mile strip of land.
But death figures can also impart meaning, as the long-time
consumer-rights activist Ralph Nader recently pointed out. He happens
to believe that
Israel could have killed at least 200,000 Palestinians in Gaza, a
mind-boggling figure, but worth examining. So, I called on him to
elaborate.
“The undercount is staggering,” said Nader, whose Lebanese parents
emigrated to the United States before he was born. “The U.S. and Israel
want a low number, so they look around. Instead of themselves estimating
— which they don’t want to do — they cling to Hamas’s [figures], and
Hamas doesn’t want a realistic number because they don’t want to be seen
as unable to protect their own people. So, they developed these
criteria: to be counted, the dead must first be certified by hospitals
and morgues [which barely exist].”
He has made it a habit to reach out to writers and editors. Like so
many others, I have a bit of a phone affair with that 90-year-old
thinker and activist. We discuss politics, baseball, and journalism’s
rapid, insidious decline. I’ve certainly heard him animated in the past,
but never more indignant than when he addresses the situation in Gaza.
“The whole thing is one death camp now. It’s easily 200,000 deaths in
Gaza,” he insisted, citing the number of bombs dropped, which have, by
some estimates, exceeded 100,000. We know that at least 45,000 missiles
and bombs had been used in Gaza within three months of the beginning of
Israel’s military campaign. As a result, as many as 175,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed by Israel. So, he seems to be on to something.
“Eventually [the real number of the dead] will come out,” he adds.
“They’ll do a census, whoever takes over. The one thing the extended
families in Gaza know is who’s been killed in their families.”
Of course, his assertion is circumstantial and he knows it, but he’s
making a point. With so much of the Gaza Strip facing imminent
starvation, nearly all hospitals out of commission, just about no
medicine left, and very little clean water or food, 35,000 deaths are
likely, in the end, to prove a drastic undercount.
nakedcapitalism | “Jury Instructions & Charges” (PDF) [Judge Juan Merchan, New York State Unified Court System]. Merchan’s instructions are 55 pages long. Apparently,
Merchan isn’t allowed to give the jury a copy (hence their request to
have them read aloud to them again). In any case, Merchan’s instructions
are not devoid of interest. Let me start with an epigraph:
“The Law
is the true embodiment. Of everything that’s excellent. It has no kind
of fault or flaw. And I, my Lords, embody the Law” –Gilbert and
Sullivan, Iolanthe
I’m reminded of G&S by this passage from the transcript. Merchan before he launches his Instructions:
I am, however, not necessarily being fair to Merchan. He
consistently uses the word “our law,” which could imply the majestic
principle that the law applies to and is for the benefit of all of us,
or should do so. On the other hand, Merchan could also be using “our
law” exactly as liberal Democrats use “our democracy.” Given lawfare,
the latter may be more likely.
Now let me move to some extracts, helpfully annotated. A technical matter, page 22:
[1] Merchan quotes from the Guide to New York Evidence, 6.10. I have to assume that with enough time, I could come up with similar boilerplate for all the instructions.
On “Accessorial Liability,” p. 25:
And:
[1] To this layperson, this notion of “unanimity” since strange (“I
don’t care who broke the vase or who hid the pieces”), though I’m sure
it comes from somewhere in the Guide. But certainly “acting in
concert” maximizes the paths to conviction (not that I would expect a
good, or at least an effective, prosecutor to do anything else).
On “Intent to Defraud,” p. 29 (as I understand it MR SUBLIMINAL Hollow laughter, the “intent to defraud” applies to the business records, and not to the “other crime”):
[1] As, for example, a candidate’s misrepresentations in an election.
Ideal for the Censorship Industrial Complex, when you think about it.
Who would have thought five Pinocchios from Glenn Kessler could end up
as a criminal offense?
[2] Underlining that “election interference” could theorized as
fraud. (If true, this principle is certainly arbitrarily applied in the
State of New York; RussiaGate, Clinton’s email server, and the
suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop could all be considered criminal.)
On “Intent to Commit or Conceal Another Crime” (this is the heart of
the matter: the theory that bootstraps 34 business records misdemeanors
into 34 felonies; the “other crime” (“object offense”) that the business
records were falsified in aid of (if falsified they were), pp. 29 et
seq.:
[1] Once again, the paths to conviction are maximized.
[1] As I showed here (early),
the “object offense” did not appear in District Attorney Bragg’s
charges, but evolved — with a great deal of puzzlement here and in the
press generally — in the course of the trial, much assisted by Merchan
in his pre-trial ruling (as I show here). To this layperson, it seems very much like the Defendant was not informed of the charges against him (SIxth Amendment: “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation“). Now, Bragg might argue that the Defendant was
informed; the “accusation” was the business records violation, and the
“other crimes” were merely icing on the cake, as it were. Perhaps “our
law” is ambiguous in that regard. If so, the matter of whether
converting misdemeanors into felonies requires “notice of accusation” may be settled in an appeal.
[2] “Promote or prevent” is the election interference part (and
nothing in this case is distinguishable from normal campaigning, to my
simple mind, and this includes business records stuff like the Clinton
campaign laundering payment for the Steele dossier through Marc Elias’s
highly reputable law firm).
[3] So some member of the alleged conspiracy must act, but not necessarily the Defendant, once again maximizing the paths to conviction.
[4] One question why the Defendant was never charged with conspiracy. This is the charge of conspiracy.
[1] This “Merchan’s Chinese Menu: One from Column A, one from Column
B… The concept of “unanimity” seems to take on strange forms in
Merchan’s court.
[2] Turley argues: Suppose there are three “unlawful means” (the
object offenses) A, B, and C. A verdict where 4 jurors voted for A, 4
for B, and 4 for C would be treated as “unanimous”; to this layperson,
an absurd result. But I think this argument can be made more pointed:
The jurors who vote for A must necessarily believe that the Defendant is not guilty beyond reasonably doubt
of offenses B and C, and so with the remaining jurors. So we could have
a verdict where 12 jurors do not believe in the Defendants guilt beyond
a reasonable doubt of any one object offense. That strikes me as a very
bad precedent and worthy of consideration on appeal. From Thomas P
Gallanis, “Reasonable Doubt and the History of the Criminal Trial,” The
University of Chicago Law Review: “Reasonable doubt was originally a
protection not for criminal defendants, but rather for the ‘souls of the
jurors’ (p 3). Reasonable doubt was “designed to make conviction
easier” by reassuring anxious jurors that they would not be damned for
voting to spill the defendant’s blood (p 4 (emphasis omitted)). Jurors
could safely convict as long as their hesitations did not rise to the
level of reasonable doubt.” So what is the state of the individual
juror’s soul when the entire jury votes to convict, but without
unamimity as to the cause of the conviction?
[3] These are the the three “unlawful means” proposed by the
Prosecution. I presume that “other” business records does not include
any of the 34 business records in the charge, so I don’t think that item
(2) is necessarily circular, or “loops back on itself,” in an infinite regress, but without clarification, it could
mean that records 1-17 would fall under the business records offense,
and records 18-34 could be redeployed as object offenses…. One wonders
what form of “unanimity” would be required to sort this, if so (but see
on “Falsification of Other Business Records” below):
On the first of the three unlawful means, “The Federal Election Campaign Act,” p. 32:
[1] Leaving aside the question of whether Federal laws should be
enforced at the state level, and leaving aside Merchan’s curious refusal
to let the defense expert on FECA testify, the obvious agenda here is
to urge that NMI’s “catch and kill scheme,” which suppressed news
stories, was not a “legitimate press function.” However, suppressing
news stories is obviously a legitimate press function, and only a child
of six would think otherwise (one thinks at once of The New York Times
suppressing James Risen’s story on warrantless surveillance until after
Bush was safely elected).
On the second, “Falsification of Other Business Records,” p. 33:
This closes out my theorizing on infinite regression in
other records, above. Too bad! I haven’t mastered the detail on these
documents, but Merchan’s specificity makes me think that this “object
offense”) is the most dangerous to the Defendant. (Of course, I don’t
believe there are object offenses, because iff the initial
counts 1-34 all pertain to the payments for Cohen that are allegedly not
for legal services, they in fact were, because to my simple mind. a
legal service is something you pay a lawyer to do, and thus there is no
primary offense to begin with.)
On the third, “Violation of Tax Laws,” p. 34:
[1] If this is the only unlawful means, I can see at least one hold-out being unwilling to jacl up 34 misdemeanors to felonies based on it.
On “The Charged Crimes,” p 27:
“Verdict Sheet,” p. 53:
[1] These are the counts in Bragg’s indictment; each of the 34 counts is a separate business records offense.
[2] Notice the checkboxes that Merchan does not include:
Surely the voting public has an interest in knowing which
object offense caused Trump’s misdemeanors (if any) to be converted
into felonies. An absurdly minor tax violation? The much bruited and
salacious catch-and-kill scheme? A campaign finance violation? Merchan,
apparently, has no care for the voters. I would speculate that — with
the possible assistance of the flex-net working the lawfare on this
project — having maximized the paths to conviction with capacious
definitions of unanimity, Merchan would prefer not to “show his work,”
and reveal how those definitions worked out in reality. Whether this is
grounds for appeal I don’t know, but I find it appalling. “Our law”!
“Our democracy”!
dailycaller | A jury in the deep-blue New York City borough of Manhattan convicted
former President Donald Trump on Thursday in the case brought by
Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records charged in Bragg’s indictment.
Defense attorneys cornered the prosecution’s witnesses at critical
junctures of the trial in a case that stood on shaky legal grounds from
the start, including when Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, an
admitted liar, took the stand as the prosecution’s star witness, a
choice that resulted in Cohen revealing he stole from the Trump organization and committing what the defense demonstrated was potentially another act of perjury.
The charges stemmed from $420,000 Trump paid Cohen over 12 months in
2017 for “legal services,” which prosecutors argued was actually to
reimburse Cohen for $130,000 he paid to secure a nondisclosure agreement
with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election and keep her
quiet about claims of an affair with Trump.
To indict Trump on
felony charges and circumvent the expired statute of limitations, Bragg
had to claim the records were falsified to conceal or commit another
crime — which remained unclear throughout the trial but was assumed to be either a campaign finance or election law violation.
Prosecutors
argued Trump engaged in a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election by
paying to suppress stories of former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin,
former Playboy model Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. They suggested he violated a state election law that makes it a misdemeanor for any two or more people to “conspire” to influence an election using “unlawful means.”
Trump is the first former U.S. president to be convicted at a
criminal trial. His sentencing is scheduled for July 11th, days before
the Republican National Convention set to begin on July 15. Falsifying business record charges carry a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
The jury began its deliberations on Wednesday after Judge Juan Merchan read the jury instructions, which did not require jurors to agree on what “unlawful” means Trump allegedly used to influence the election.
Bragg’s team included Matthew Colangelo,
who spent two years as a top official in the Biden Department of
Justice (DOJ). While previously working at the New York District
Attorney’s office, Colangelo also led both the investigation that
culminated in the Trump Foundation’s dissolution and the investigation
that later became Trump’s civil fraud case.
Colangelo joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as senior counsel in 2022 while Bragg was still investigating Trump.
NYTimes | For decades, most Israelis have considered Palestinian terrorism the country’s biggest security concern. But there is another threat that may be even more destabilizing for Israel’s future as a democracy: Jewish terrorism and violence, and the failure to enforce the law against it.
Our yearslong investigation reveals how violent factions within the Israeli settler movement, protected and sometimes abetted by the government, have come to pose a grave threat to Palestinians in the occupied territories and to the State of Israel itself. Piecing together new documents, videos and over 100 interviews, we found a government shaken by an internal war — burying reports it commissioned, neutering investigations it assigned and silencing whistle-blowers, some of them senior officials. It is a blunt account, told in some cases for the first time by Israeli officials, of how the occupation came to threaten the integrity of the country’s democracy.
Lawbreakers Become Lawmakers Officials told us that once fringe, sometimes criminal groups of settlers bent on pursuing a theocratic state have been allowed for decades to operate with few restraints. Since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government came to power in 2022, elements of that faction have taken power — driving the country’s policies, including in the war in Gaza.
The lawbreakers have become the law. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and the official in Netanyahu’s government with oversight over the West Bank, was arrested in 2005 by the Shin Bet domestic security service for plotting road blockages to halt the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He was released with no charges. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, had been convicted multiple times for supporting terrorist organizations and, in front of television cameras in 1995, vaguely threatened the life of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered weeks later by an Israeli student.
Settler Violence Protected, and Abetted All West Bank settlers are in theory subject to the same military law that applies to Palestinian residents. But in practice, they are treated according to the civil law of the State of Israel, which formally applies only to territory within the state’s borders. This means that Shin Bet might probe two similar acts of terrorism in the West Bank — one committed by Jewish settlers and one committed by Palestinians — and use wholly different investigative tools.
After the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, Israel controlled new territory in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. In 1979, it agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.
The job of investigating Jewish terrorism falls to a division of Shin Bet known commonly as the Jewish Department. But it is dwarfed both in size and prestige by the Arab Department, the division charged mostly with combating Palestinian terrorism.
Jews involved in terror attacks against Arabs over the past decades have received substantial leniency, which has included reductions in prison time, anemic investigations and pardons. Most incidents of settler violence — torching vehicles, cutting down olive groves — fall under the jurisdiction of the police, who tend to ignore them. When the Jewish Department investigates more serious terrorist threats, it is often stymied from the outset, and even its successes have sometimes been undermined by judges and politicians sympathetic to the settler cause.
mondoweiss | Any Palestinian following the developments in the Israeli protest
movement against “the judicial coup” will require nerves of steel to
withstand the hypocrisy on display. The protests are estimated to be
100,000 people strong, politicians are jumping over tables in the
Knesset, and former army Chief of Staff Yair Golan is calling for a
state of “civil disobedience.” Only yesterday, Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
after he voiced opposition to the judicial reforms, and angry
protestors took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities and shut
down highways. The army has been going through its own crisis ever since
military reservists, especially those in the Air Force, joined the
protests. If that wasn’t enough, large sums of money are being
transferred out of Israeli banks for fear of the effects that the
judicial reforms might have on the Israeli economy and on the value of
the Israeli Shekel. As for gall, that was hardly in short supply in
Yuval Noah Harari’s op-ed telling Netanyahu to “stop your coup or we’ll stop the country.”
It’s as if Harari has never heard of al-Issawiyya, which continues to
be strangled by the Hebrew University where he teaches, or of oppression
and occupation, which wasn’t reason enough to warrant speaking of
halting the state.
The Israeli government is trying to use these judicial reforms to
grant itself absolute power through the passing of two central laws. The
first law aims to establish control over the Israeli Judicial Selection
Committee, hence appointing judges whose loyalties would lie with
specific politicians rather than with the law; and the second law is the
“Override Clause,” which would allow the Knesset to override any
decision of the Israeli High Court of Justice that passes by a majority
of 61 Knesset members. In other words, the government would seize
complete control over the state
without checks and balances, effectively becoming the sole governing
authority in the country given that it also controls the Knesset by
virtue of its majority within the parliamentary body.
All of this is taking place without a constitution. This means, for
instance, that the government can decide to hold elections once every
ten years instead of the standard four-year limit still in effect, and
no one can override it; or it could pass laws granting the government
total control over the media, or it could put LGBTQ people in jail. But
the true crisis will emerge when the Israeli High Court of Justice
repeals the judicial reforms and regards them as illegal — that is when
the state will enter a constitutional crisis without a solution.
Who will the Israeli security apparatus obey: the government or the
judiciary? This isn’t merely a crisis of the state; it is far more
profound, posing the question of what the state is in the first place. Former commander of the Israeli Air Force Eliezer Shkedi said as much
in an interview with Channel 12: “I have never come across a situation
where the commander of the Air Force, the chief of staff, the head of
the Mossad, or the police commissioner has to decide whether he listens
to an executive authority or to a court decision,” going on to say that
if he were the head of the Air Force he would never disobey a court
decision.
The fact that Israeli society has always echoed this hypocrisy is
nothing new, and neither is it a novel discovery that “democracy” was
never an honest description of a state that defines itself as a “state
of the Jews.” But the protests this time are greater than at any
previous point, and 35% of Israelis express fears of a “civil war,” a phrase that has made its way into daily use.
It’s precisely this level of hysteria, however, that makes it
especially infuriating — because of the power and influence of the
participants in the protests, because it’s the first time that the
struggle is over the identity of the state, and because the roots of the
crisis relate to profound political questions concerning the Zionist
project, which are normally considered off-limits.
NYTimes | The New York Times is astonishing its readers, especially
those of us who monitor its tradition of biased and dishonest reporting
about Israel/Palestine. The paper just published a long indictment
of what it actually called “Jewish terrorism” against Palestinians. The
report, which is the cover story of the widely-circulated Sunday
magazine, is titled: “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel.”
Here is the opening paragraph of the “takeaway” synopsis that ran along with the actual article:
“For decades, most Israelis have considered Palestinian terrorism the
country’s biggest security concern. But there is another threat that
may be even more destabilizing for Israel’s future as a democracy:
Jewish terrorism and violence, and the failure to enforce the law
against it.”
The massive article, by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, prints out
to 52 pages. It covers decades of history, and includes more than 100
interviews. Bergman has long had ties to Israel’s intelligence services,
and he includes inside sources. “This story is told in three parts. .
.,” the reporters say. “Taken together they tell the story of how a
radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli
political power.”
Howard French, the distinguished former New York Times reporter turned author, asked the obvious question on Twitter:
“Where was the daily coverage of the Times throughout all of this?”
French’s view was echoed in the paper’s comment section. “Jack” was one of the 2500 Times
readers who have already overwhelmingly endorsed the article. He wrote:
“. . . I am struck by this piece being the only one I can recall to
make consistent use of the term ‘terrorism’ to describe the actions of
Jewish Israelis. It is far more common to hear settlers who commit
violence against unarmed civilians referred to as ‘extremists’ rather
than ‘terrorists.’”
So why did the Times print this long report, which does
actually start to correct decades of its biased coverage? In time, leaks
from people on the paper’s staff may provide part of the answer. But
surely the pro-Palestine solidarity movement, along with alternative
media, can claim some of the credit. In the Internet age, it is much
harder to cover up the truth. First hand accounts from Gaza, the
occupied Palestinian West Bank, and from Israel itself, are now widely
available, and the student protesters and others have spread the word.
Add to that internal dissension at the Times itself, and so top
management there may have decided the paper had to act if its
reputation wasn’t going to be completely tarnished.
A related question: Ronen Bergman has long had well-placed sources
inside Israel’s intelligence elite. Very little of what is in this long Times
article is new; much of the reporting is about events that happened
decades ago. So why did Bergman decide — now — to report on what is
basically old news? And why did his sources, who include former Israeli
prime ministers, decide — now — to talk to the New York Times?
A valuable post
on this site in March 2023 by the eloquent Razi Nabulse offers a clue.
Nabulse probed behind the headlines to explain why Israeli Jews last
year joined the massive uprising against the effort by Benjamin
Netanyahu and his far-right wing allies to stage a “coup” against the
country’s legal system. The protesters represented the old Israeli
elite, who are losing political power to the religious far right and the
increasingly powerful settler/colonists. It is this old elite that
Bergman quoted at length in this long report. The Times may be
trying to protect this older “good” Israel from Netanyahu and his “bad”
allies, who are the greatest threat to the country’s international
standing in many decades.
It is too early to celebrate the Times‘s possible change in
direction. First we will have to see if the paper, or other mainstream
U.S. media, do any follow up. The adage used to be that “yesterday’s
newspaper wraps today’s fish,” and the online attention span can also be
short. It is possible that this story will die down in a few days, and
the Times will go back to its old distortion methods. We shall see.
washingtonmonthly | A new study
has documented a remarkable rise in Americans’ use of marijuana. Over
the last 30 years, the number of people who report using the drug in the
past month has risen fivefold from 8 million to 42 million. Through the
mid-1990s, only about one-in-six or one-in-eight of those users
consumed the drug daily or near daily, similar to alcohol’s roughly
one-in-ten. Now, more than 40 percent of marijuana users consume daily
or near daily. The increased use is important to recognize as President
Joe Biden plans to reschedule marijuana from a Class I to a Class III drug.
At the nadir of modern marijuana use, in 1992, just 0.9 million
Americans reported using marijuana daily or near daily. That number had
grown twenty-fold to 17.7 million by the most recent survey in 2022. For
the first time, more Americans report using marijuana daily or near
daily than they do drinking that often (17.7 million vs. 14.7 million).
Legalization and commercialization have produced a spectacular rise in the potency of cannabis products. Until the end of the 20th
century, the average potency of seized cannabis never exceeded 5
percent THC, its active intoxicant. Now, the labeled potency of “flower”
sold in state-licensed stores averages 20-25 percent THC. Extract-based
products like vape oils and dabs routinely exceed 60 percent. Back in
the 1990s, a person averaging two 0.5-gram joints of 4 percent THC weed
per week was consuming about 5 milligrams of THC per day on average.
Today’s daily users average more than 1.5 grams of material that is
20-25 percent THC, which is more than 300 milligrams per day. That is
far more THC than is consumed in typical medical studies of its health
effects.
This spike in marijuana usage and THC consumption might seem
unimportant in an era when fentanyl and other synthetic drugs are
killing over 80,000 Americans per year, but describing a drug as less
dangerous than fentanyl is damning with faint praise. There are
exceptions, of course, but on the whole, daily marijuana use is neither
health-promoting nor performance-enhancing for the typical daily user.
On the positive side, the kids are mostly all right. Just 2 percent
of 12-17 year-old marijuana users consume daily or near daily. As a
result, youth account for just 3 percent of the 8.3 billion annual days
of self-reported marijuana use in the country. Adult (18+) daily and
near-daily users account for three-quarters of those days of use—and a
considerably greater share of consumption because they use more per day
than weekend-only users.
Indeed, marijuana is becoming something of an old person’s drug. As a
group, 35-49-year-olds consume more than 26-34-year-olds, who account
for a larger share of the market than 18-25-year-olds. The 50-and-over
demographic accounts for slightly more days of use than those 25 and
younger.
Still, it is worth asking what the population effects are of so many
people consuming high-strength cannabis regularly. Science has struggled
to keep up with the new world of cannabis, but potentially concerning
signs include increases in emergency room visits for both psychotic episodes and cannabis-induced cyclical vomiting, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and higher rates of automotive crashes involving impaired drivers.
And gram for gram, smoking cannabis creates about as many carcinogens,
tars, and other lung-damaging chemicals as tobacco—although grams
consumed per day is only about one-tenth as great. For others, the
effects might be the opposite of a cognitive enhancer, with intoxication
adversely affecting short-term memory, concentration, and motivation,
resulting in lost opportunities in schools and the workplace.
The biggest long-term medical health risk may concern serious and
lifelong psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. Early hopes—not
to say hype—that cannabis would prove an effective medication for mental
health disorders have been challenged as studies repeatedly find that
use concurrent with conditions like depression and PTSD often predicts a worse course of illness.
responsiblestatecraft | In what might sound like something out of Louis Carroll's Alice in
Wonderland, or for the more modern twist, Seinfeld's Bizarro World, two
Republican congressmen have introduced legislation that
would extend the same employment protections to Americans serving in
the Israeli army as Americans who leave work and home to serve the U.S.
military.
In other words, no different than U.S. National Guardsman or Reservists, they are just fighting for another country.
“Over
20,000 American citizens are currently defending Israel from Hamas
terrorists, risking their lives for the betterment of our ally,” said
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), in a recent statement.“This
legislation will ensure we do everything possible to support these
heroes who are standing with Israel, fighting for freedom, and combating
terrorism in the Middle East.”
“As our closest ally in the
Middle East continues to defend itself against terror, many brave
Americans have decided to lend a hand,” added Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio).
“I’m proud that this legislation extends important protections to those
Americans who chose to risk their lives in the fight against terror.”
Their legislation would, according to the lawmakers, amend title 38 of United States Code, and the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA)
to include American citizens, including Israeli dual citizens, who
serve in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The SCRA allows protections
against foreclosure, default judgements in legal cases, repossession of
rental property or leases and hiked interest rates while a individual is
serving. This amendment would also extend to these IDF soldiers
protections under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA),
which extends "civilian job rights and benefits for veterans, members
of reserve components, and even individuals activated by the President
of the United States to provide Federal Response for National
Emergencies."
According to the Washington Post, as of February, some 23,380 American citizens are currently serving in the Israeli Army, many of them emigres to Israel, though reservists living in the U.S.
have been called back to Israel to fight. Some 21 Americans in IDF
units have been killed inside Gaza, another one died along Israel’s
northern border with Lebanon, and another was killed in Jerusalem while
serving in Israel’s border police.
Military service is compulsory
for all Israeli Jews after high school; many stay on to serve in the
reserves. According to reports, Israel called up 350,000 reservists
after the Hamas attacks.
Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., caused a stir in
October, shortly after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, when he showed up
for work on the floor of the House wearing his IDF uniform. "As the only
member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defense
Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” Mast wrote in a post on X, alongside several photos of him wearing the uniform.
teenvogue |While President Joe Biden
gave a commencement address (and received an honorary degree) from
Morehouse College in Atlanta on Sunday, May 19, several students staged
pro-Palestine protests — some turning their backs and others walking
out. The students who protested cited the president's ongoing policy
decisions in Israel's war on Gaza.
Before Biden took the stage for his address, Morehouse valedictorian DeAngelo Fletcher gave a rousing speech
calling for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza strip,"
and was met with applause from both the crowd and Biden, who also shook
Fletcher's hand. “From the comfort of our homes, we watch an
unprecedented number of civilians mourn the loss of men, women and
children, while calling for the release of all hostages," Fletcher said.
The audience also included Morehouse alumni vocally supporting Biden during the ceremony, giving the president a standing ovation
as he approached the stage, according to video taken from the event.
Meanwhile, some graduates who wore keffiyeh scarves and Palestinian
flags opted to turn their chairs away from Biden for the duration of his speech, according to the New York Times. Other graduates walked out of the ceremony as a sign of protest, though the Times notes that Biden's speech was largely uninterrupted. When he finished, attendees in the VIP section chanted, “Four more years.”
“I support peaceful nonviolent protest,”
Biden told students in his speech. “Your voices should be heard, and I
promise you I hear them.” He also said he is "working around the clock”
for an immediate ceasefire.
After Morehouse announced that it would welcome Biden to deliver the
commencement speech this year and grant him an honorary degree from the
historically Black college, current students and alumni pushed back on
the Atlanta-area school, urging them to reconsider. In one open letter
to Morehouse's faculty from a group with the Atlanta University Center
Students for Justice in Palestine, Dr. Marlon Millner, class of 1995,
asked that Morehouse “not award [an] honorary degree to someone morally
complicit in a war in Gaza.”
“[Morehouse alumni Martin Luther King
Jr.] challenged a historically courageous [Lyndon B. Johnson] on
Vietnam after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. That’s moral
courage, not moral complicity or moral complacency,” Millner wrote.
“Morehouse does produce businessmen, but let’s not fail to produce
better men. Morehouse does produce politicians, but let’s not fail to
produce men of principle. This is a defining moment where actions, not
accolades will matter.”
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