Is Raf OK? -- Installment #121

2024-06-05 -- Tel Aviv

Jun 05, 2024

Tags: 8 Min; Raf Analysis; Videos; Big Relief Area

The prior post, #120, set new records for readership. Let me know what worked? Questions, comments and howls can be sent as replies to this email or to my personal coordinates.

Friday afternoon drumming near my place

It's summer. Warm. Humid in Tel Aviv. Dry in Jerusalem. I've spotted American and German tourists. The beaches are busy but not crowded. I have a new favorite shwarma stand (instead of 20 yards from my building, it's 30). Dizengoff is the expensive street... five falafel balls are usually five shekels. The place I stopped today charged ten!

They were good. But not blog-worthy.

Mail

Biden to Bibi: Kick Me Again

An expanded(!) and reworked(!?) response to what started as an email thread with N.B.

What do you think of Robert Kuttner's piece, "Biden to Bibi: Kick Me Again"?

From my chair, Kuttner’s position is destructive.

To his own side.

The problem is the framing. Specifically: "Biden keeps right on financing Bibi’s war crimes in Gaza."

This is the kind of attitude and language that can hand the White House to Tr*mp. It is destructive "enemy making" within the American Left.

The White House is enabling, actively and passively, war crimes all over the world (at the moment not including by the American Army). It is horrible. And every single White House in our lifetimes has done so.

Kuttner blames Biden for 50 years of U.S. military aid to Israel. Is that constructive? Since around 1970, the U.S. has considered Israel an “ally” on par with NATO. I am not saying this is right or wrong, but it is long standing reality. While that ally may have a problematic administration (Bibi et al), the ally is the country, not its administration.

Also, Kuttner didn't do his homework: The "baseline" military aid that Israel receives is under a 10 year agreement Bibi made with Obama in 2016. Much of these funds are for defensive systems such as Iron Dome. The U.S. also funds Egypt, at something like 1/3 to 1/2 as many dollars as to Israel (and the White House issues waivers because Egypt's human rights record makes it ineligible to automatically receive that aid).

Israel buys the vast majority of arms it receives from the U.S. with its own money. Every country in this violent region buys tons of arms from the U.S. Israel is "normal" in this regard. The recent extra military funding sent to Israel was passed by Congress. So tell me, Mr. Kuttner: Other than suppressing votes for him in November, what is accomplished by parking blame for a war among foreign actors at Biden's feet?

The wars here (and Gaza is, let’s recall, one of five "hot" wars here: Gaza; Lebanon; Red Sea; West Bank; Iran). Every one of these wars [except Iran, so far] involves civilian deaths, destruction and, in the case of the Red Sea, worldwide inflation (because shipping insurance became more expensive).

It is healthy to be frustrated and hurt by war. That means you have a heart. But to vilify an American administration that strongly prefers fighting to cease, has made huge efforts in that direction (probably saving many lives in Rafah) is not productive. The White House did not want the war. Hell, neither does Israel.

If war is the enemy, take a position against those who agitate for war.

Kuttner, with his language, makes himself part of the problem.

Context

President Carter made the case that American arms and aid should be restricted to countries with clean human rights records. This is a principled approach. I'd be fine with such an approach if it was universally applied. That said, it appears that principles like this are for neutral countries. Sweden and Switzerland can hold themselves out as "principled actors." The U.S. is an empire (so far). I don't think there is a basis or precedent for empires to have rules other than "looking out for #1."

(I'm not saying that is the world I want, but I think it is the world I live in.)

I would say the essential oversight of Kuttner (and many on the progressive side of the U.S. spectrum) is thinking the White House has a magic wand that controls others. When it comes to foreign actors, the White House has relatively little room to act. Biden could stay silent. Or he can speak up. When he speaks up, he can speak for war or for peace. Vis-a-vis Ukraine, he speaks up for war. Vis-a-vis Gaza/The Middle East, he speaks up for peace.

I am fine with what Biden has agitated for, and I hope Kuttner is too.

But the White House can't actually create peace (though at times it tries). The domestic politics of Israel/the Palestinians/Egypt/etc are going to make decisions and act under local constraints. There is a lot of shitty leadership in this region that makes a lot of destructive choices (America's invasion of Iraq is probably one of them). If Biden were to actually stop allowing armaments to go to Israel (which seems to be a mantra of the Progressive Left) two things would happen. No, three:

The entire world (Ukraine, Putin, China, the E.U. and the Ayatollahs chief among them) will understand immediately that no American "ally" is safe. The U.S. cannot be relied on. The U.S. is stepping back from its empire. (FWIW, this is exactly the path that Tr*mp's chief aid Bannon wants.)
The U.S. will no longer "have pull" in Israel. Basically, the "cut off arms" card can be played once. Once it is played, Israel will move on, whatever that means. (To become an Iran-like international pariah, a China aligned regional power or G-d knows what.) [Playing this card is not expected to elevate sensible peace seekers to power. It is expected to elevate racist, nationalistic doomsdayers. On all sides.]
Israel will do whatever the hell it wants in Gaza/Lebanon/West Bank and will give no heed to America. Because it pulled out.

(I can also add here that if the U.S. were to do this to Israel, it would likely also cut aid to Egypt. (Because aid to both underlies the Egypt-Israel Peace Accord of 1979.) This is expected to cause the Egyptian state to fail and the Muslim Brotherhood -- aka Hamas -- to take over Egypt. I am not saying this is the world I want....)

Israel has been a pain in the neck of multiple U.S. administrations. President Carter was supremely miffed that U.S.-supplied weapons were used in Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1980 (saying to effect, "Hey, it's in writing! These weapons are for defensive purposes only!"). Reagan received massive Israel-related grief for the AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia. President Bush Jr. paused loan guarantees to Israel on concern of American economic power facilitating Israeli settlements in the West Bank. And more.

In spite of this mess, Presidents Carter and Clinton made real progress toward de-conflicting the region. Obama got a muzzle on Iran's nuclear ambition, and couldn't do more because Israelis keep putting Bibi in power. Tr*mp, who has zero interest in peace, actually got Bibi to make a peace proposal (the very existence of which is fucking amazing, IMO). It was dead on arrival, but it was a thing.

But none of them paused arms sales to Israel in a material way, and all of em sold piles of bombs to Saudi Arabia and other unsavory countries which were used to kill orders of magnitude more than have been killed in Gaza.

Kuttner: "Biden’s release of the Israeli proposal, forcing Netanyahu into an uncomfortable position, may eventually establish some framework to end the war."

That is a good thing Biden did?

Kuttner: The only way for Biden to break this pattern of repeated humiliations is to suspend all offensive weapons aid to Israel and end the carnage, both in Gaza and in domestic U.S. politics.

Don't ask me what a relatively small (in terms of overall weapons exports) amount of U.S. weapons export has to do with U.S. domestic politics, but the real issue is the proposal that suspending offensive weapons will change anything. The U.S. is the only country that makes bombs? %85 of Israeli defense spending is its own money, not America's. And sadly, Kuttner, a perfectly intelligent thinker, shows in this statement that he has been coopted by Palestinian/Iranian propaganda. Yes, the U.S. could wash its hands of the Middle East and stop selling weapons. That doesn't mean the carnage ends.

Kuttner should get a clue that while Bibi is a destructive agent, this region is full of em. The real enemy is the American Right.

Not Biden.

It's Not Just Protesters

Who think Israel badly mis-sequenced the response to October 7. Former IDF deputy chief Maj. Gen. Matan Vilnai says:

Releasing the hostages should be our top priority. It should have been dealt with before going to war.

He also says the war should be stopped immediately.

Another Story of the 7th

Under fire, two tankists jumped in a tank and battled for hours. In Hebrew, turn on Auto Translate for English subtitles. 7 Min.

On The Web

Postmark

Israel

Last month, before the Rafah offensive, an Israel Democracy Institute poll found that 62 percent of Israelis prioritized releasing the captives over additional military action, compared to 31.5 percent who believed the Rafah operation should take precedence.

Hezbollah Web Site

Since October 7, Hezbollah has announced 331 deaths in its ranks. The result of 200+ attacks by the Israeli Air Force. These announcements look like this:

Hussein Sabra
Sabra was an engineer, and was eliminated while driving a vehicle in the Kothariya area in southern Lebanon this morning (June 4)

Aleppo, Syria

A notable aspect of the war in Lebanon (to Raf) is that the IDF has attacked across all of Lebanon and areas in Syria that are far afield. (Syria considers Lebanon to be part of Syria, so I can too for this paragraph... g)

There was just an attack in Aleppo which resulted in this:

Official Iranian media: Sayid Aviar, member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, was killed in an IDF attack tonight in Aleppo, Syria.

I imagine he wasn't a corporal (he is thought to be a General)... The last time Israel killed Iranians in Syria was on April 1...

The Fatemiyoun? Never heard of them…

Fatemiyoun is a Shiite mercenary militia that Iran operates for its needs mainly in Syria, consisting mostly of Afghans. It has been working many years for Iranian interests for small sums of money and "Iranian citizenship".