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Zion and the Art of Armageddon

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Israel would not have been able to sustain its wars across the Middle East without the United States’s significant financial backing of more than $21bn since October 2023, according to a pair of new reports. The reports, which were released by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found that: without US weapons and money, Israel wouldn’t have been able to sustain its genocidal war on Gaza, start a war with Iran, or repeatedly bomb Yemen.

(Obviously.)

Hartung’s report was jointly released by the Costs of War and the Quincy Institute, which describes itself as promoting “ideas that move US foreign policy away from endless war, toward military restraint and diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace”...the US spent “a total of $31.35 – $33.77 billion and counting” since October 7, 2023 in military aid to Israel and in “US military operations in the region”.

However, many Americans have started to move away from the mainstream position on Israel. In recent months, as scholars declared Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, public perception of Israel in the US has severely degraded. This drop is also true among American Jews. According to a recent Washington Post poll, four in 10 US Jews believe Israel is committing genocide, while more than 60 percent say Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Al Jazeera
 
In the same vein, an article by Shaul Magid (professor of modern Judaism in residence at Harvard Divinity School) in the Guardian speaks how American attitudes to Zionism are changing from a consensus that - You could be a rightwing Zionist or a leftwing Zionist, but support for Israel as a Jewish state was a given, and questioning that narrative placed you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as Tablet magazine termed it in an essay in 2021.

We find ourselves at a moment where the compatibility of “liberalism” and “Zionism” feels increasingly untenable. How can a state that privileges its Jewish citizens while so egregiously devaluing the lives of the Palestinians under its control ever be called liberal? Basic principles of liberalism that include equality and the protection of individual rights for all do not cohere with present-day Israel even on a generous reading. The permanent occupation, to say nothing of the destruction of Gaza, has undermined any plausible claim to Israel as a “liberal” country.

Recently, Arielle Angel, the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents, wrote a piece titled: “We need new Jewish institutions”....[and] If American Zionists continue to deny a place at the table for those who are not Zionists, they will fade into increasing irrelevance as young Jews build institutions of their own. And they will soon attain considerable resources and power.
...
His forthcoming book; Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology will make interesting reading on the Harvard University campus, and among the Ivy League where the Jewish left are gathering support, refusing to be intimidated by the actions of the Trump administration and outraged by the actions of a Zionist government committing war crimes.
 
Peter Beinart; Editor-at-large of "Jewish Currents," who writes "The Beinart Notebook" on Substack, sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss his book, "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning," and speaking out against Israel. They talk about learning from Jewish history to be the saviors rather than the oppressors, America and the U.N.’s failure to hold Benjamin Netanyahu accountable, the urgency of engaging in critical discourse with other Jews, and how listening to Palestinian stories can illuminate the dehumanizing conditions.

 
While Arab and Western leaders were busy pouring Gatorade over Trump in Egypt, it was business as usual in the West Bank:

On Monday night, Israeli settlers uprooted 150 olive trees in the village of Bardala, in the northern Jordan Valley, destroying the livelihood of several families...Earlier on Monday, settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, injuring several of them. Witnesses said the attackers hurled stones, sicced dogs on people, and set fire to vehicles.

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Since October 7, 2023, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 10,000 injured across the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces and armed settlers, according to UN figures.

Allahu Akhbar@Al Jazeera
 
Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi says he has been fired by Benjamin Netanyahu...Hanegbi’s departure had been widely anticipated amid weeks of speculation in Israel over growing divisions between the two officials over Israel’s war on Gaza.

In his statement, Hanegbi also called for a “thorough investigation” of the failures leading to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, admitting he shares responsibility. Former Israeli army chief turned opposition politician Gadi Eisenkot criticised the firing, writing on X that it “is an expression of the continued evasion of responsibility by all Cabinet members and the Prime Minister of the October 7 debacle – in order to replace them with yes-men.”

The Israeli prime minister’s office said Gil Reich would be appointed as acting head of the National Security Council.

Al Jazeera

"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer"
 
Israel’s parliament has voted to give preliminary approval to a bill to impose Israeli sovereignty on the occupied West Bank, reports Al Jazeera, in a move tantamount to annexation of the Palestinian territory, which would be a blatant violation of international law. Despite opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party, lawmakers in the 120-seat Knesset voted 25-24 to advance the bill, in the first of four votes needed to pass it into law.

The bill was put forward by Avi Maoz, the leader of the far-right Noam party, which does not belong to the governing coalition. Most Likud lawmakers abstained or failed to show up for the vote, but one member – Yuli Edelstein – defied Netanyahu and cast the decisive vote in favour of the bill. “At this very moment, Israeli sovereignty throughout our homeland is the order of the day,” he said in a post on X.

Meanwhile...

Prominent Jewish figures around the world are calling on the United Nations and world leaders to impose sanctions on Israel over what they describe as “unconscionable” actions amounting to genocide in Gaza. Over 450 signatories, including former Israeli officials, Oscar winners, authors and intellectuals have signed an open letter demanding accountability over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“We have not forgotten that so many of the laws, charters, and conventions established to safeguard and protect all human life were created in response to the Holocaust,” the signatories write. “Those safeguards have been relentlessly violated by Israel.”

the Guardian

The final push to solve the Palestinian question is running into several major problems that can only be settled by the ballot, not the bullet, this time.
 
You can stop this harping on about Israel now. The world’s attention is now pivoting towards Russia and Ukraine again. Israel and Palestine is past history and no longer fashionable.
 
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