Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Or, if as you say, you're not interested in discussing the topic with me, then don't read my posts since you seem to have a problem with restraint after reading one.

If I read something that's incorrect, illogical, or bigoted I'll make a comment about it.

Israeli public figures accuse judiciary of ignoring incitement to genocide in Gaza
Letter to attorney general and state prosecutor demands action to stop ‘explicit calls to commit atrocious crimes’

A group of prominent Israelis has accused the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring “extensive and blatant” incitement to genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza by influential public figures.

In a letter to the attorney general and state prosecutors, they demand action to stop the normalisation of language that breaks both Israeli and international law.

“For the first time that we can remember, the explicit calls to commit atrocious crimes, as stated, against millions of civilians have turned into a legitimate and regular part of Israeli discourse,” they write. “Today, calls of these types are an everyday matter in Israel.”

Signatories include one of Israel’s top scientists, the Royal Society member Prof David Harel, alongside other academics, former diplomats, former members of the Knesset, journalists and activists.

Represented by the human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, their 11-page letter contains multiple examples of “the discourse of annihilation, expulsion and revenge”.

The list of elite Israelis who have incited war crimes includes cabinet ministers and Knesset members, former top military officials, academics, media figures, social media influencers and celebrities, the letter says.

Comments quoted in the letter include several made by MPs. One, Yitzhak Kroizer, said in a radio interview: “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death.”

Tally Gotliv, from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, demanded the prime minister use a nuclear bomb on Gaza for “strategic deterrence”, the letter says, quoting her as saying: “Before we consider inserting ground troops, doomsday weapon.”

Another Likud MP, Boaz Bismuth, is quoted as evoking the biblical massacre of the Amalek nation, enemies of ancient Israel. “It is forbidden to take mercy on the cruel, there’s no place for any humanitarian gestures,” he said with reference to Gaza, then added the biblical reference: “The memory of Amalek must be erased.”

Among other commenters cited is the journalist Zvi Yehezkeli, who said on Channel 13: “[We] should have killed many times 20,000 people, [we] should have begun with a blow of 100,000.”

Sfard said he was stunned by the speed with which incitement to genocide and other extreme speech had been normalised in Israel. “I never could have imagined that I would need to write such a letter,” he said. “The fact that this type of talk has completely left the far, unimportant fringes and came into the mainstream in such a massive way, for me it’s incomprehensible.

“The first danger is that people will act in accordance with that speech, then you have the question of what kind of society we are going to be when this is the speech that governs our treatment of Palestinians. There are 2.3 million Gazans, most of them minors.”

The letter contrasts the lack of action on even “the gravest and most dangerous instances of incitement against residents of Gaza” with an intense campaign against incitement “whose potential victims are Israeli Jews”. Huge resources have been devoted to tracking down people, mostly anonymous and with little reach, over speech that authorities interpreted as supporting Hamas, the letter notes. By late November, 269 investigations had been opened and 86 indictments filed.

“It is quite amazing the number of criminal investigations, when it comes to Palestinian citizens of Israel, most of them completely anonymous, many of them almost with no audience,” Sfard said. “The gap between that and the freedom and impunity for those who advocate all kinds of things – ethnic cleansing, killing civilians, bombarding civilian areas, and even genocide – doesn’t square up, and that’s something for the authorities to explain.”

The language of genocide risks influencing how Israel wages war, the letter says. “Normalised discourse which calls for annihilation, erasure, devastation and the like is liable to impact the manner by which soldiers conduct themselves.”

It highlights the November killing of Yuval Doron Kestelman, who stopped a terrorist attack at a Jerusalem bus stop by shooting two gunmen but was then shot himself by soldiers who arrived at the scene minutes later and assumed he was a terrorist.

“We had years of incitement that dealt with not leaving terrorists alive at the scene of the crime, and there were people including myself that warned that it is immoral and illegal to kill a terrorist who is neutralised,” Sfard said. “Then came this tragic event with this Israeli who in a heroic action neutralised two Palestinian militants. He himself was then targeted, even though he threw away his weapons, took off his coat [to show he didn’t have a suicide vest], put up his hands.”

The letter was sent before South Africa filed a case at the international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide and of failing to stop incitement to genocide. “We filed this letter last week, before South Africa lodged their complaint, and without knowing they were going to do that,” Sfard said.

The group Sfard represents does not accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza; their letter is about incitement to genocide inside Israel. However, the charges of incitement levelled by South Africa includes language cited in the letter and notes authorities’ failure to take judicial action in response.

It was the role of the attorney general to make clear that comments inciting genocide were unacceptable, amount to incitement and had become normalised, Sfard said. “We want to flag this and allow the authorities an opportunity to do something about it.”

An official response is particularly important as Israel grapples with the legacy of grief and rage created by the “inconceivable and unforgivable war crimes and crimes against humanity” carried out by Hamas on 7 October, the letter says. “Israeli society is embroiled in trauma which will take years to heal. This is precisely the substrate on which immoral monsters are liable to grow, and are growing.”

If yesterday was a news storm, today was a lot of follow-up.

Tensions in the Middle East continue to tighten with the explosion of two bombs at a ceremony today honoring prominent Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his death from a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. At least 95 people were killed. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings. Iran-backed militias, including Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are aligned against Israel.

Meanwhile, today the U.S. and twelve allies warned the Houthis to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea or face military action. Since December 19, Houthi rebels have hit more than 23 ships in the crucial passage. ​​“Let our message now be clear: we call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews,” the countries said. “The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell today said that the world must “impose” a solution to the Middle East war before it expands.

At home, at least eight U.S. state houses had to evacuate today. According to Andy Rose of CNN, an emailed bomb threat was sent to state officers in 23 states. Law enforcement officers found no explosives and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has called the threats a hoax. It is not clear who was behind the threats.

Aside from today’s threats, the dramatic rise of violence in our politics since former president Trump entered political life is reshaping the country. In Vox yesterday, Zach Beauchamp noted that mayors, federal judges, public health officials, election workers, and even school board members, officials who previously had gone about their business without much attention, are facing unprecedented threats. Before 2020, threats against election workers were virtually nonexistent, Beauchamp notes; now they are so frequent that 11% of election workers surveyed by the Brennan Center for Justice are “very or somewhat likely” to leave their jobs before the 2024 election.

While attacks on election workers and political officials show Trump’s attempt to erode faith in our electoral system, Beauchamp notes that another key aspect of today’s violence has been to threaten Republicans to fall in line behind Trump. The fear of physical violence from Trump supporters kept certain Republicans from voting to convict him after his impeachments. MAGA Republican threats against other Republicans insufficiently supportive of Trump have led party members to swing publicly behind a leader that many of them privately oppose.

That pressure has reduced the formerly grand old Republican Party to a vehicle for promoting Trump.

Today, Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), whose bid for the House speakership Trump torpedoed just weeks ago, became the latest to endorse Trump for president as party leadership lines up behind him.

The decision of the right-wing Fifth Circuit today illustrated what the Trump leadership of the MAGA party means for the majority of the country. Three Republican judges, two appointed by Trump, ruled that hospital emergency rooms don’t have to perform life-saving abortions in states that have passed antiabortion laws.

After the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services reminded hospitals that accept Medicare money that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), they had to provide care to stabilize patients in a medical emergency, including abortion care, regardless of state law.

Texas sued, and the Fifth Circuit has agreed, saying that the EMTALA does not preempt Texas law.

Today’s news also highlighted the MAGA plan for immigration. House leaders have refused to pass legislation providing additional funds to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion until the measure also contains their own immigration policies, patterned on Trump’s. Although President Biden has asked for additional funding for the border since he took office and has said he will offer significant concessions in negotiations even though those concessions will anger progressive Democrats, House Republicans say they will reject any compromise and will insist on their own policies.

Those measures include significantly narrowing asylum programs or even ending them altogether, outlawing the electronic application system the Biden administration put in place to require appointments to apply for asylum, ending parole programs for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees, and taking private property to build a border wall. Their plan has no provision for creating a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers, those brought to the U.S. as children, although a strong majority of Americans support such a pathway.

Now House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says the House conference does not want and will not accept a compromise, such as the one senators are working on; they want a complete change of policy. That is, the Republicans in the House, who have a majority of two, are bowing to their far-right members and insisting that until that faction’s policies are put in place over those of the Senate and the president, they will refuse to fund Ukraine, whose defense from Russian aggression is key to our own national security.

It’s a wild power grab. And it is apparently being done with an eye to 2024. Representative Troy Nehls (R-TX) said to Manu Raju, Melanie Zanona, and Lauren Fox of CNN, “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating.”

As CNN anchor and chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto noted, “This would leave Ukraine—currently under its worst bombardment since the start of the Russian invasion—very much out in the cold.”

Finally, today is the 65th anniversary of Alaska’s joining the Union as the 49th state. In order to convince Congress and the president to make their territory a state, Alaskans had to overcome concerns on the part of President Dwight D. Eisenhower that, because the territory bordered the Soviet Union, its admission as a state might compromise national security.

I wonder if the power behind Biden/US is ready to grab all the oil in the Middle East.

The United States likely surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest crude oil producer earlier this year, based on preliminary estimates in EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). In February, U.S. crude oil production exceeded that of Saudi Arabia for the first time in more than two decades. In June and August, the United States surpassed Russia in crude oil production for the first time since February 1999.

I would never vote for Trump.

Quote:

I would never vote for Trump.

(...but I don't care if wins.)

I wonder if the power behind Biden/US is ready to grab all the oil in the Middle East.

Instead of candidates vying to attract voters with policies for us, all they have to do is say the other guy is worse.

It seems that voting for the least disgusting candidate is the aim of elections.