Bloomberg, BDS and Biden

The news is neither good nor bad: Michael Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that he would not be running for president. After an extensive examination of his chances for victory, Bloomberg concluded his money would best be spent on launching a new initiative:

Beyond Carbon: a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.

At the heart of Beyond Carbon is the conviction that, as the science has made clear, every year matters. The idea of a Green New Deal — first suggested by the columnist Tom Friedman more than a decade ago — stands no chance of passage in the Senate over the next two years. But Mother Nature does not wait on our political calendar, and neither can we.

Speaking of Tom Friedman, his latest column "Ilhan Omar, Aipac and Me," is vintage Friedman. He defends the failed status quo -- in this case, the prohibition on criticism of Israel -- by marshaling arguments from the anti-establishment left.

Friedman grants that AIPAC is a blight, and chides its joined-at-the-hip alliance with the GOP, but he takes Ilham Omar's non-committal equivocations on BDS as proof that she hankers for the destruction of the Israeli state. I kid you not.

Here's Friedman's best shot, such as it is, at Omar:

When I see that dual-loyalty charge coming from a congresswoman who first signaled opposition to B.D.S. and then support for it, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who has never been to Israel, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who, to my knowledge, has never criticized the Palestinian leadership for its corruption and failure — time and again — to seize on peace overtures from Israeli leaders who, unlike Netanyahu, actually wanted to forge a two-state solution, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who seems to be obsessed with Israel’s misdeeds as the biggest problem in the Middle East — not Iran’s effective occupation of four Arab capitals, its support for ethnic cleansing and the use of poison gas in Syria and its crushing of Lebanese democracy — it makes me suspicious of her motives.

Basically it is the same old same old: corrupt Palestinian leadership (corrupted by who?); an Iranian bogeyman (a very tough sell); and Syrian poison gas (whose poison gas?).

But back to Bloomberg's latest aborted presidential run. The New York Times story made the argument that Bloomberg's path to the White House was a long shot, but it becomes well-nigh impossible with Biden in the race.

That leads one to believe that Biden is coming in (because, remember, Bloomberg waited until after Hillary's Super Tuesday 2016 romp before announcing that he would not pursue the presidency). All indications are that Biden will join the race soon. But why hasn't he announced already? Could it be he wants Andrew Cockburn's devastating Harper's cover story "No Joe!" off the newsstands before he tosses his hat in the ring.

Biden 2020 will be a version of Hillary 2016, with the DNC mucking about and a neo-McCarthyite song so shrill voters will a large supply of wax to plug up their ears.

Sullied Israel Embraces Ceasefire + Emerging Zeitgeist Spotted in Afghanistan

A ceasefire went into effect in Gaza this morning. The IDF has announced its complete withdrawal from the territory. Now negotiations with Hamas will begin in Cairo. The ceasefire is to last for 72 hours. Steven Erlanger recites the numbers in "Cease-Fire in Gaza Begins as Israel Says It Pulls Troops":

Gaza officials say that 1,834 Palestinians have died in the conflict, most of them civilians. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed since fighting began on July 8. 

*** 

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, the Israeli military spokesman, said that Israel had completed the destruction of “approximately 32 tunnels” built by Hamas into Israel, and that Israeli forces had killed “approximately 900 militants in combat.” He said that Israel had destroyed more than 3,000 rockets belonging to Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad, that those groups had launched more than 3,300 rockets toward Israel, and that Israel believed they had remaining stocks of 3,000 rockets.

Erlanger opines that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were ready to call it quits. No evidence or analysis is provided other than "They accepted an Egyptian proposal little changed from one that they had rejected earlier in the conflict; an earlier American attempt at a similar cease-fire also broke down quickly." Given that Netanyahu's cabinet unanimously rejected the previous ceasefire, one could just as easily say that it was the Israelis who were ready to call it quits. International public opinion was overwhelming opposed to Israel's assault on Gaza and its attacks on UN sanctuaries. Israel had also succeeded in alienating its benefactor in the White House. Mark Landler has the sordid details in "U.S. Diplomacy on Gaza Has Little Sway on Israel":

When the State Department condemned Israel’s strike on a United Nations school in Gaza on Sunday, saying it was “appalled” by this “disgraceful” act, it gave full vent to what has been weeks of mounting American anger toward the Israeli government. 

The blunt, unsparing language — among the toughest diplomats recall ever being aimed at Israel — lays bare a frustrating reality for the Obama administration: the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has largely dismissed diplomatic efforts by the United States to end the violence in Gaza, leaving American officials to seethe on the sidelines about what they regard as disrespectful treatment.

Even as Israel agreed to a new cease-fire with Hamas, raising hopes for an end to four weeks of bloodshed, its relationship with the United States has been bruised by repeated clashes, from the withering Israeli criticism of Secretary of State John Kerry’s peacemaking efforts to Mr. Netanyahu’s dressing down of the American ambassador to Israel.

“This is the most sustained period of antagonism in the relationship,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel who now teaches at Princeton. “I don’t know how the relationship recovers as long as you have this president and this prime minister.”

Landler then goes on to admit that the U.S.-Israel relationship is essentially unchanged:

The White House seems determined to tamp down the latest eruption in tensions. “The nature of our relationship is strong and unchanged,” the press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters on Monday, pointing to comments by Mr. Netanyahu over the weekend, in which he said, “I think the United States has been terrific.” 

The two statements are part of a recurring pattern for this administration: an angry outburst, followed by calmer words and the grudging recognition that little is going to change in the fundamental relationship between the United States and its closest ally in the Middle East.

Israel has the political establishment and media monopoly wired. That is a given. But I believe what hastened its withdrawal from Gaza along with an acceptance to begin negotiations in Cairo is that the disconnect between public opinion on the one hand and the captured media and political elite on the other was gaining too wide a purchase. As Robert Fisk pointed out last week, readers were in open rebellion against their newspapers' false-equivalence portrayal of the conflict. The slaughter of innocents, particularly those located in UN sanctuary schools, could not be papered over with crude and specious arguments about "terror tunnels" and human shields. And when the pro-Israel media monopoly attempted to do just that, it had the effect of confirming to a mainstream audience all that we on the "lunatic fringe" have been saying about Zionist domination of Western public discourse. Also, I would imagine, the BDS Movement, which I am sure Israel keeps a close eye on, received and is receiving a big boost.

No, the Zionist domination of public discourse was too much on display in this the latest orgy of war crimes inflicted on the people of Gaza; hence, the ceasefire. Now the pressure will be on the Palestinians to avoid the outcome that followed the last two Israeli assaults, after which the ceasefire held but so too did the blockade. Hamas will have to deliver; the blockade will have to end. Otherwise, Israel wins and the death of 1,800 Gazans will be just another episode of Israel "mowing the grass."

Ramzy Baroud, in article last week, "The War Netanyahu Cannot Possibly Win," thinks that at the very least the old leadership of the Palestinian Authority, represented by Mahmoud Abbas, will be swept away. As Baroud says, "[T]here is much more to Palestine than the whims of the aging Palestinian Authority ‘President’ Mahmoud Abbas and his Ramallah-based henchmen, or even Hamas’s regional calculations following the rise and fall of the ‘Arab Spring.’ " I hope so.

Before signing off this morning, Matthew Rosenberg and Harris Kakar are reporting, "Three NATO Officers Killed at Afghan Military Academy, Officials Say," a big green-on-blue attack at the Afghan National Army Officer Academy outside Kabul:

The Afghan official and a coalition official said that it appeared that the foreign casualties were high-ranking officers who were taking part in a meeting at the academy.

Lt. Gen. Afzal Aman, the director of operations at Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry, said that the academy’s commander, Brig. Gen. Ghulam Saki, was wounded in the shooting along with two other senior Afghan officers.

General Aman added that it was only American officers who were present during the shooting, but said that he could not provide any additional details because the entire academy was under lockdown and information remained scarce. 

The attacker was killed, the defense official said.

The Afghan Defense Ministry declined to comment, saying it was still investigating the incident. 

Sher Alam, an Afghan soldier guarding the entrance to the academy, located at Camp Qargha, said that senior Afghan and coalition officers had been meeting there on Tuesday, and that reports from inside the camp indicated that a number of the foreign officers were killed in the attack. He said that soon after the shooting, coalition helicopters landed inside the academy to evacuate the dead and wounded. 

Tuesday’s shooting was the first so-called insider attack in Afghanistan in months. Such attacks, in which Afghan troops open fire on unsuspecting coalition forces, at one point posed a serious challenge to the war effort, sowing distrust and threatening to upend the American-led training mission that is vital to the long-term strategy for keeping the Taliban at bay. 

Though the number of attacks has dropped sharply since 2012, when dozens occurred, they remain a persistent threat for coalition troops serving alongside Afghan forces.

As Afghanistan falls back under the sway of the Taliban and the U.S. moves towards its exit, I am going to try to keep a watch on events there. The Iranian Revolution and U.S. funding of the mujahidin in Afghanistan mark the entryway at the end of the 1970s to our current exhausted neoliberal paradigm. Events in both countries will reveal the way forward to the new Zeitgeist emerging.

Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice

What I have started doing, which so far seems to have been pretty effective, is write a list of things I would like to see accomplished by the end of the weekend. I put it on the smallest size post-it note and affix the post-it note on my kitchen calendar. When I go to the kitchen I take a look at the list and cross the items that I have completed.

One of those items was to donate to the Rachel Corrie Foundation. Rachel Corrie was murdered by an IDF bulldozer while she defended Palestinian homes in Rafah, which Israel is saturating with bombs since this past Friday following the breakdown of the ceasefire. Ten more innocent Palestinians are reported to have been killed by another  Israeli strike on a United Nations school.

Rachel Corrie Foundation is part of the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel. This is direction we need to go for those of us who live within the countries of the Western core.

Israel's Lunacy

From 1 AM this morning until about 45 minutes ago, around 4:30 AM, a man shouted and sang on the street below my studio apartment. Whether he was insane, drunk or stoned was unclear to me. If I had to pick one, I would say the first. I am almost positive that he is the same guy, a young white man of the street, who I ran into early one perfect quiet sunny morning in June as I returned from a run. It was 9 AM. The neighborhood still slept. The morning sky was sunny blue clear. The birds sang and bees danced. Then shooting through this cinematic perfection was this angry insane ranting. I thought the guy might be frying on acid.

At 1 AM this morning it began with loud bellicose tuneless singing. Then it devolved into the pattern I was familiar with from the sunny morning in June. He calls out to some invisible interlocutor. Calls out a name. Says something like, "I'm here! I love you!" That repeats for a time and then trails off. After listening to this for 30 minutes, I drifted off to sleep, and when I started to dream I dreamed inside this young insane guy's patter. I was dreaming his insanity.

But at least I slept. When I woke at 4 AM, someone from one of the nearby apartment buildings was shouting down his own insanity -- I guess he was not so lucky as I in being able to sleep -- at the insane guy on the street below. Lots of insanity.

That is the world today. There are those of us who wake early every morning and study the news, note the contradictions in the official narrative provided by the media monopoly, attempt to draw attention to the pathological levels of violence practiced by the dominant powers, and basically make some attempt (in my case, quite meager) to point out the ruses, the lies, the divisiveness as the great game is played on the grand chessboard. We occupy what is known as the "lunatic fringe."

Real lunacy is on front-page display lately. Israel, in its slaughter of innocent women and children in Gaza, has now picked a fight with the United Nations. But before getting to that story, let us note that the Kerry-brokered ceasefire which began at 8 AM this morning has already collapsed. There was an exchange of fire between the IDF and Hamas at a tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza. A Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas. Israel responded with saturation bombing of Rafah. According to Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram in "Gaza Cease-Fire Collapses; Israeli Soldier Is Captured":

Gaza health officials said that 35 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded as Israeli forces bombarded the area. Palestinian witnesses said by telephone that Israeli tank shells hit eastern Rafah as residents returned to inspect homes they had evacuated. 

Hamas blamed Israel for violating the truce, saying in a statement that the announcement about the capture of one of its soldiers was “to cover up the barbaric massacres, especially in Rafah.”

The Kerry ceasefire lasted 90 minutes. How could it be sustained when it allowed the IDF to continue military operations against Palestinian "terror tunnels"? So it wasn't really a ceasefire to begin with; its short duration proved.

But on the front page of the Gray Lady this morning is the story penned by two reliable court scribes, Michael Gordon and Mark Landler, "Cease-Fire in Gaza Conflict Takes Effect as Talks Are Set," praising the U.S. Secretary of State for his hard work putting the ceasefire together. The idea was to have a ceasefire that would freeze the IDF's forward operations in Gaza but let it continue to root about for the "terror tunnels" in places it had troops. Hamas could respond if fired upon. In the meantime, all the players were rushing to Cairo to begin negotiations. The U.S. was sending heavy hitters like William Burns, the guy who got the nuclear talks with Iran cooking. The hope was that enough progress would be made in three days to extend the ceasefire.

An important passage in the Gordon/Landler story is the likely failure of any bargaining between Israel and Hamas:

The substance of the negotiations will be no less tricky than the choreography. Israel and Hamas have both said they will not be satisfied with a “quiet-for-quiet” deal like those that ended violence in 2012 and 2009. 

Hamas, and the broader Palestinian leadership, is demanding a lifting of all Israeli restrictions on import, export, farming and fishing, as well as an opening of the border crossings — which depends not only on Israel but on Egypt. 

Mr. Netanyahu has increasingly emphasized the need to demilitarize Gaza — a process that some say can be accomplished only by Israel effectively reoccupying Gaza — and will be looking for an international mechanism to guarantee that Hamas’ rocket stockpile will not be replenished and that it will not be able to dig new tunnels into Israel.

Mr. Abbas may have his own set of demands, like the release of long-serving prisoners in Israeli jails who were supposed to be freed as part of the American-brokered peace talks that collapsed in April. Hamas has also asked for the release of some 50 men, who were freed in a 2011 exchange for an abducted Israel soldier and rearrested during an Israeli crackdown in June.

With the collapse of the ceasefire and Israel's resumption of saturation bombing of defenseless civilians, the story to read is Somini Sengupta's "Tensions Escalate Between Israel and a Second Party in Gaza: The United Nations." Israel has declared war on the United Nations.

Gaza, since Israel's 2007 blockade, is now more than ever a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) responsibility. UNRWA feeds 800,000 of Gaza's population of 1.7 million.

In public, the war of words intensified this week, with the United Nations blaming Israel for an attack that killed at least 19 people who were taking refuge at a United Nations school early Wednesday and Israel, in turn, accusing the world body of helping Hamas.

The United Nations has been dragged into the conflict: Eight of its staff members have been killed in the past 24 days, and more than 100 of its facilities have come under fire, including the school. United Nations officials said they had repeatedly told Israel of its exact location. 

The deputy secretary general, Jan Eliasson, a former Swedish diplomat, was visibly riled on Wednesday when he publicly reminded Israel of the Geneva Conventions, which established international law governing warfare. In Geneva, the United Nations’ top human rights official, Navi Pillay, raised the prospect of war crimes. 

Christopher Gunness, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesman in Gaza, broke down at the end of an interview with Al Jazeera, which promptly went viral. And Pierre Krähenbühl, the commissioner general of Unrwa, the agency responsible for aiding Palestinians, told the Security Council on Thursday that military operations had been “waged with excessive — and at times disproportionate — force in densely populated urban settings.”

Israel has responded by mocking the UN as a tool of Hamas, a position that even the U.S. cannot parrot. This is from the Gordon and Landler story:

The White House on Thursday came closer than it had since the conflict began to criticizing Israel’s actions, saying it did not dispute the United Nations’ conclusion that Israel was responsible for the shelling. 

“What we are simply asking the Israelis to do — in fact, urging the Israelis to do — is to do more to live up to the standards that they have set for their own military operations to protect the lives of innocent civilians,” the press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters. 

Mr. Earnest called the strike on the school “totally unacceptable and totally indefensible.”

But behind closed doors, the United States is blocking any condemnation of Israel's bloody assault by the United Nations Security Council. Sengupta says:

Regardless of the verbal volleys, there is little that United Nations officials can do without instructions from the Security Council. The Council met Thursday for more than three hours behind closed doors, but failed to reach consensus on a proposed statement that would have condemned attacks on United Nations installations. Diplomats said they were stuck on language that would have also condemned the use of its facilities to store rockets. 

In the past, the United Nations has been useful in supporting political deals and keeping warring parties at bay in the Middle East: One of its first peacekeeping missions was in the Golan Heights. The tensions now may make it far more difficult for the United Nations to play that role. 

As the Security Council met behind closed doors, the Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, shoulders hunched, rued that it had not taken any legally binding steps to end the fighting. “There’s a big test for the 15 members in the chamber as they are deliberating right now — I think tests to their hearts, tests to their conscience, tests to their brains — whether they’ll condemn these crimes,” Mr. Mansour said. 

Like his Israeli counterpart, he was not too bullish on the international community. He said the people of Gaza “feel the international community is failing them.”

Israel has gone too far. The BDS Movement will flourish. The Intifada will ignite the West Bank and Israel. The U.S. has no more moral legitimacy to shield Israel from the rest of the world.