Frontline does great documentaries. This documentary mixes eyewitness interviews with cell phone, security camera, and later journalist footage from the October 7 attacks and the attacks on Gaza that have followed over the last year and counting. It’s powerful, affecting, disturbing stuff, and the human suffering is just unfathomable. I say this with the greatest sympathy to everyone directly affected.
This article by Schlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli prime minister, points out that there are religious fundamentalists among Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike who all think that ushering in a civilization-destroying war is a good idea. And in fact, some of these people are actively hoping that the current conflict in the middle east is the early stage of this war, and even actively working to make it the first stage of such a war. I’m all for freedom to follow one’s religious beliefs and practices, but let’s stop pretending that electing people who hold violent, homicidal, suicidal, and/or genocidal beliefs to public office could ever be a good idea.
Let’s tackle the U.S. Israel lobby just with a few facts and figures.
First, a book I haven’t read: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Here’s the description on Amazon:
Originally published in 2007, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. A work of major importance, it remains as relevant today as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006.
Mearsheimer and Walt describe in clear and bold terms the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argues that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. They provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East―in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict―and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America’s national interest nor Israel’s long-term interest. The lobby’s influence also affects America’s relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror.
The publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy led to a sea change in how the U.S-Israel relationship was discussed, and continues to be one of the most talked-about books in foreign policy.
amazon.com
Second, a chart from the Council on Foreign Relations showing that since 1946, Israel has received close to double the amount of U.S. foreign aid compared to the next largest recipient, which is Egypt. The overwhelming amount of this aid has been military, which in practice often means the U.S. government buying weapons from the private U.S. arms industry to send abroad.
And this is one argument I have heard, that part of the solid base of political support for the Israel lobby is the U.S. arms industry, because a relatively small investment in lobbying yields a huge return in profits. Which you can say about any lobbying, but in this case it is compounded by the already strong ideological, geopolitical, and highly motivated lobbying efforts in Israel’s favor.
All numbers here are as reported in the CIA World Factbook, except the last row which is me calculating GDP times % of GDP spent by the military.
| Israel | Iran | Jordan | Saudi Arabia | Egypt | |
| Population | 9 MIllion | 88 Million | 11 Million | 36 Million | 109 Million |
| GDP Per Capita (PPP) | $44,400 | $15,500 | $9,500 | $50,200 | $12,800 |
| Ginni Index | 38.6 | 40.9 | 33.7 | 45.9 | 31.9 |
| Unemployment Rate | 3.7% | 8.8% | 19% | 5.6% | 6.4% |
| Average Life Expectancy | 82.2 | 75.4 | 76.3 | 76.9 | 74.7 |
| Total GDP (PPP) | $424 Billion | $1.4 Trillion | $107 Billion | $1.8 Trillion | $1.4 Trillion |
| % of GDP spent on military | 4.5% | 2.5% | 4.8% | 6.0% | 1.2% |
| Estimated Military Spending | $19 Billion | $35 Billion | $5.1 Billion | $100 Billion | $17 Billion |
The sources of these numbers are not always crystal clear, so we can take them with a grain of salt, but still they yield some insights. Israel is just a small country. It’s about a tenth the size of Iran or Egypt in terms of population (I’m not sure how settlers and people in occupied territories are counted, but we are talking orders of magnitude here), and about a quarter to a third the size of Iran, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia in terms of GDP. An average person lives a rich country lifestyle and enjoys a long life in Israel, but in terms of sheer amount spent on the military you can see why they need foreign (i.e. U.S.) assistance and conscription to be on a similar level with these other countries in the region. I threw in Jordan, but it is a relatively small, not very wealthy country by these numbers. You can see why they would prefer not to get in fights with their neighbors or the world’s superpowers.
Please note: I wrote this before the fast-moving current events of Friday, April 19, 2024.
According to the (paywalled) Financial Times, an Israeli and/or US military strike on Iran could involve half a dozen important oil producing countries as well as snarling shipping traffic. This would seem like particularly bad news for Biden as Americans fuel up their planet-burning behemoths for the “summer driving season” followed by the fall voting season.
Most frightening and/or depressing story: Ralph Nader says the civilian carnage in Gaza is an order of magnitude worse than even the Gaza authorities say it is. Which is almost unthinkably horrible if true, and makes the Israeli public statements about collateral damage seem even less credible. However even handed you try to be in considering this war could be a proportionate response to the original gruesome attack, it is getting harder.
Most hopeful story: Yes, there are some fun native (North American) wildflowers you can grow from bulbs. Let’s give the environmental and geopolitical doom and gloom a rest for a moment and cultivate our gardens.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I looked into Belarus, and now I am just a little bit less ignorant, which is nice.
This is an article from 1996 in something called the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. Here are some facts about Benjamin Netanyahu as reported by this article.
The article veers into some interesting territory from there, but I found these apparently fact-based nuggets interesting.
I haven’t made up my mind on the Gaza situation, and therefore I haven’t talked a lot about it. And I probably shouldn’t, but I want to get my own thoughts in order. You can stop reading here if you want.
The October 7 attacks were horrific and it is entirely understandable why Israel would choose an overwhelming and violent response. In case we forget the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invaded not one but two sovereign countries after those attacks, and occupied them for 20 years. There were not so many video cameras in those countries as we have in Gaza now, so the civilian suffering was not in the western public eye to the extent it is now, but the suffering was undoubtedly horrible. This is more like the Vietnam war, which was very public and which people had a very visceral reaction to.
Second, there are people in positions of power on both sides who espouse hateful, racist ideologies. These people have intentionally monkey-wrenched the peace process at least since the hopeful moment of the Oslo accords in the 1990s. The participants in that peace accord were murdered by racist ideologues (one assassination 100% documented; the other somewhat obviously poisoned in my opinion, but maybe not established 100%.) Antisemitism has been a problem since Roman times, and is a problem throughout the Muslim world today. Hateful, fundamentalist ideology also drives the settler movement. I do have a position on the settlements – I agree with the international consensus that they are wrong and illegal, and they need to stop.
Now to war crimes. I am not an expert on the subject, but I know there is an international consensus against collective punishment and against ethnic cleansing. The Israeli government is quite clearly engaging in these two things under any logical textbook definition, and I don’t think this is justified as a response to the original attacks. As for genocide, I don’t believe they are intentionally exterminating civilians, which is what many people associate with genocide. Under the UN definition of genocide, the ethnic cleansing (forcible and permanent moving of populations) counts as genocide, and they are guilty of it. There is a question of whether the Israeli government intends the movement to be permanent, but I am convinced that there is at least an element within the Israeli government that would like to reduce the Palestinian population of Gaza permanently by forcing people across the Egyptian border. I have always found the UN definition problematic though because some of its sub-parts are so obviously more violent and evil than others. There are degrees of unimaginable depravity. For example, murdering 6 million people is a higher plane of depravity than taking children away from their parents for reeducation to destroy their traditional culture and language (the Chinese approach in Xinxiang, the U.S. treatment of Native Americans well into the 20th century – of course, the U.S. military shot and displaced plenty of Native Americans in support of settler colonialism in the 19th century, lest we forget).
So back to civilian suffering, which is horrible. Is it justified as unavoidable collateral damage in an otherwise proportionate response to the original attack? I can’t answer this, but it seems there is much more that can and should be done to alleviate the suffering. The extreme ideological elements on both sides seem mostly indifferent to this suffering.
I promised to get to Ralph Nader. He says the real death toll is closer to 300,000 than 30,000. The 30,000 counts only official deaths reported by hospitals, while he believes there are hundreds of thousands of bodies buried under rubble that have not been counted.
With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm, and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine, and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death and injury toll. But for different reasons. Hamas keeps the figures low to reduce being accused by its own people of not protecting them, and not building shelters. Hamas grossly underestimated the savage war crimes by the vengeful, occupying Israeli military superpower fully and unconditionally backed by the U.S. military superpower.
The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the “official” rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism.
Ralph Nader
Strong words. If true, it is an impressive piece of propaganda for the Israeli government to question the Hamas estimate as being too high by a factor of 10, when it is actually too low by a factor of 10.
As for the aftermath of the operation, I picture something like the Chinese government’s approach in Tibet and Xinjiang, where the location and behavior of individual people is individually tracked and people are taken away for incarceration or reeducation. This also meets the UN definition of genocide, but at least it would be relatively bloodless compared to the intense suffering we are seeing now (and Chinese government’s genocide is relatively bloodless compared to the U.S. invasion and occupation of neighboring Afghanistan). For Palestine, I don’t see much hope for a return to the optimism of the 1990s any time soon.
I heard major combat operations were over, but according to Al Jazeera the U.S. has about 2500 troops in Iraq.
Well, the answer to this one has to be zero, right??? According to the War Powers Report submitted to Congress by the White House in December, the answer is “a small number”. The summary letter I have linked to also lists other deployments the U.S. considers part of its “counterterrorism” efforts in the greater Middle East. So the “war on terror” is very much continuing. Most of this is about combating “ISIS” and “ISIL”, more or less at the invitation of the host government. These groups are not “Iran-backed” as far as I know, and in fact are even threatening to Iran.
The U.S. is also sometimes attacking Iran-backed groups and Iranian military advisers under the umbrella of counterterrorism. This particularly catches my eye:
As reported on November 22, 2023, I directed United States forces to conduct discrete strikes on the night of November 21, 2023, against facilities in Iraq used by the IRGC and IRGC-affiliated groups for command and control, logistics, and other purposes. These strikes followed attacks against United States personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria that threatened the lives of United States personnel and Coalition forces operating alongside United States forces, and that were perpetrated by the IRGC and militia groups affiliated with the IRGC. A United States contractor suffered a fatal cardiac incident while moving to shelter during one of these attacks. I directed these discrete military actions consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive and to conduct United States foreign relations.
whitehouse.gov
I’ll try: “Iran-backed” groups are fighting “US-backed” groups in various countries. Iran and the US both have military advisers in various countries. U.S. troops and contractors are occasionally getting hurt in attacks maybe aimed directly at them, and maybe aimed at more local parties. We’re there because they are fighting us, and they are fighting us because we’re there.