The NY Times just reported that Israel has taken what I thought were two off-the-wall proposals to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and turned them into official proposals it submitted to its major allies, the US and the UK, among others:
Israel has quietly tried to build international support in recent weeks for the transfer of several hundred thousand civilians from Gaza to Egypt for the duration of its war in the territory, according to six senior foreign diplomats.
Israeli leaders and diplomats have privately proposed the idea to several foreign governments, framing it as a humanitarian initiative that would allow civilians to temporarily escape the perils of Gaza for refugee camps in the Sinai Desert, just across the border in neighboring Egypt.
“Humanitarian,” my ass. Any times I hear an Israeli official say that word, I know it conceals a sinister motive. Not to mention, the rejection of Israel’s proposal allows it to say to the world after the death toll spirals toward 20,000: we offered you a way out and you rejected it. Now don’t blame us for the results. That would be a deeply cynical and immoral perspective, but one characteristic of Israel.
Those countries encouraged to consider this proposal were rightly skeptical, even more than skeptical I would hope:
The suggestion was dismissed by most of Israel’s interlocutors — who include the United States and Britain — because of the risk that such a mass displacement could become permanent. These countries fear that such a development might destabilize Egypt and lock significant numbers of Palestinians out of their homeland, according to the diplomats, who spoke anonymously in order to discuss a sensitive matter more freely.
1-million Palestinian refugees were expelled from Israel during the Nakba. Only a few hundred at most returned. The post-1948 Infiltrator Law declared that the returnees could be shot, and many were.
The reporters attribution for his story is “six foreign diplomats.” Clearly they are the ambassadors of six countries whose governments Israel approached in its campaign for support. These governments were so alarmed, they all decided together to fire a shot across Israel’s bow by leaking it to the Times. That will–Biden, Blinken and others hope–send the Israeli officials peddling a plan for ethnic cleansing tied up in a bow to look like a ‘humanitarian’ birthday gift, scurrying back to their official lairs.
Some of Bibi’s close political allies have offered similar proposals which have the false ring of sincerity:
Danny Danon…a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said he supported evacuating Gazan civilians to give Israel more room to maneuver during its ground invasion of Gaza, and to move civilians out of harm’s way.
“We’re trying to lower the level of casualties for our troops and for the civilians,” Mr. Danon said…”We expect not only the Egyptians, but the entire international community to make a genuine effort to support and accept the residents of Gaza.”
That phrase–we Israelis “expect” the world to do this or that–it’s so damn Israeli. We, a country of 9-million people, expect our Arab neighbors and the greatest superpower in the world, to make the genocidal process of war in Gaza more convenient for us.
* *
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
–Karl Marx
The minister and the bomb
Amichai Eliyahu is the Jerusalem affairs and heritage minister in the Israeli government. He is a member of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist terror party, Jewish Power. The party name was a phrase first popularized by Meir Kahane in a deliberate borrowing from the Black liberation slogan, Black Power.
Eliyahu would, as a minister I suppose, be a frontbencher in any other government; but is a small and insignificant figure in this one. Fully a backbencher. His ministry is also insignificant, giving him playing-around-money he can spend on a few pet projects.
He does retain some luster as a protege of Ben Gvir, who plays a critical role in the current government. It was BG, after all, who secured the ministerial post for him. He surely didn’t earn it by his massive political following or natural charisma.
I thought of the Marx quotation applying to Eliyahu in two contexts. The first is Meir Kahane: he is the tragedy of late 20th century Israeli history. No one since Ben Gurion or Jabotinsky, has exerted such enormous influence on the politics and fate of the nation. He was denounced and ostracized both in the US, where the FBI threatened to charge him with terrorism crimes; and his adopted home of Israel, where his Kach Party was expelled from the Knesset for its extremism. But in death he has won every accolade and power he sought while alive.
Now Kahanism has become the state political religion. Everyone is either a Kahanist or near-Kahanist, including the so-called moderate parties. All of them, from center to far-right espouse some or all of the views of Meir Kahane. No one has had more influence in the past 65 years. Kahane is the Israeli ‘tragedy.’
Eliyahu is Kahanism as ‘farce.’ Among his other bon mots: when reporters asked for his response to the massive settler pogrom against the village of Huwara in which a Palestinian resident was murdered, homes and businesses were set ablaze with owners within them, and scores of vehicles torched–he doubted that the event had even happened. Nevertheless, he claimed there was “no such thing as settler violence.”
He also blamed Israel’s judicial coup for the country’s purported inability to stem Palestinian violence. He declared that the Supreme Court had prevented the State from expelling Palestinian terrorists who were citizens or legal residents. It had also prohibited it from stripping all state benefits from such individuals.
In short, Eliyahu is the ‘farce’ to Kahane’s ‘tragedy.’ The former is a clown. And not the kind sporting a red nose, baggy pants and a pocket full of tricks.
Yesterday, Eliyahu gave a radio interview in which the interviewer asked for options he would pursue against Hamas in Gaza. Perhaps seeking the sort of lurid headline he succeeded in getting, the radio host asked, for example, would he drop an atom bomb on Gaza? Definitely a possibility, the smart-as-a-whip minister replied. He neglected any consideration that a nuclear weapon dropped on Gaza would incinerate a quarter of Israel’s population as well. Not to mention the imapct of the radiation dose. But these are matters far to complex for someone of Eliyahu’s ilk to understand.
I wanted to return to the Marx quote: while Eliyahu’s comment borders on the farcical, it originates in a very real tragedy, the Gaza War. Just as Kahane became a great Israeli tragedy, this War has become the world’s tragedy. Clowns like Eliyahu follow in their wake, milking the tragedy for all it’s worth.
Netanyahu, who is used to these antics from his mouth-flapping far-right ministers, has a regular routine: wait to see how hot the temperature in the media. When it reaches the boiling point, he releases a statement of mock outrage: nothing could be farther from the truth; this government respects the law and would never do anything contrary to it, etc. Beyond this wrist slap, he rarely does anything further.
But this time, Eliyahu went so far off the reservation that Bibi was forced to actually discipline him. Did he fire him as minister? Did he demand the Knesset expel him? Did he demand that Ben Gvir expel him from his party? None of the above. Instead, the poor lad will be sent to the woodshed where Daddy Bibi will give a smack on the ass and be done with it.
His punishment? He is suspended…not from the cabinet or Knesset; but from “government meetings.” That’s like telling the Biden pet dog, Commander, who is known for biting White House Secret Services agents, that he will no longer be able to sit at his master’s feet during cabinet meetings. The dog never played a role in those meetings, and I’m sure Eliyahu didn’t in his either.
Even Israeli lunatics, like clocks, can be right (twice a day, at least)
In writing the above, I didn’t mean to say we shouldn’t take the substance of his comments seriously, no matter how bumptious the fool who made them. We should be as serious as a heart attack. This government is built on fascism laced with a heavy dose of genocide. There is no idea, no matter how criminal or outrageous it isn’t willing to entertain. Herman Kahn “thought the unthinkable” about using nuclear weapons. The Netanyahu regime is “large and contains multitudes,” not of a boisterous bountiful humanity as envisioned by Whitman, but of ghouls filled with blood lust. They are thinking the unthinkable in the same way Hitler did when he devised the Final Solution.
Popular Israeli artists echo the strains of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Here a religious Mizrahi pop singer leads a song which can only be described as Nuremberg set to music:
Judeo-Nazi performer rouses her audience to paroxysms of adoration and blood lust as she sings: “We get rid of Gaza [i.e. Palestinians], we resettle it [with Jews], we are a light unto the nations.” This is Nuremberg set to music. https://t.co/8lj6iVjv70
— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) November 6, 2023
For example, one minister proposed Israel expel 2.5-million Gazans and dump them in the Sinai–not before giving them tents, of course. Another MK, who was a former deputy director of the Shin Bet, suggested divvying up Gaza’s 2.5-million into increments of 25,000. Then asking 100 countries to accept them as refugees. Sounds like farce right? Wrong, this is close to what Israel did to the 1-million indigenous Palestinians it expelled during the Nakba. The only difference between the two is that in 1948 Israel dumped them on neighboring Arab states without any request and certainly without the tents promised by the minister.
Biden: take this very seriously or you will live to regret it
If I were a US president or diplomat I would not do precisely what I predict they would do if they paid the atomic bomb statement any attention at all (they won’t): I would take it extremely seriously. Not for the person who said it. But rather for what it signifies about the state of Israeli discourse. Such statements are not made in a vacuum. They spring from a sentiment in the minds and hearts of a significant portion of Israeli society.
NOTE: The following was written just before I learned of the NY Times story covered above.
Every time I report on plans like those above I think: someone is going to claim this is all delusional rantings of yet another messianist lunatic; then reality smacks me in the face. In this case, it turns out the ethnic-cleansingest of governments has actually lobbied its allies to expel (it didn’t use that term, obviously) hundreds of thousands of Gazans to Egypt as a–ahem–humanitarian gesture. Better they be refugees in Egypt, then sitting ducks in Gaza, I suppose the thinking (if there is any) goes.
Gaza is already an act of genocide, no matter how obtuse Biden and his hear-no-evil, see-no-evil gang may be. They think they can deny this. Perhaps they can for some period of time. But Israel has ripped off any restraints imposed by civilization or international norms. It is like the Hulk, the giant swelling with uncontrolled rage against Gaza. It stomps through the world trashing all it sees, leaving nothing but rubble in its wake.
In this environment true evil stalks the world. It is the genie you cannot stuff back in the bottle. Israel will serve as a model for dictators and genociders around the globe. They will realize they are now limited only by their own murderous imaginations. Why restrain yourself? Israel got away with it. My country surely can as well. There are generals and dictators, the Milosevics and Pol Pot’s of today’s world, watching Gaza closely. Biden and Blinken ought to consider that.
Heine famously said “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” To which I would add, where they talk of nuclear war, they will end in doing it (or something equally horrible). Instead of merely thinking the unthinkable, they will do the unthinkable.
About threatening the nuclear option… doesn’t this admit to having nukes, never mind the willingness to use them if these fanatics get into power? I understand this person was suspended. This worm will live. So when will we put our foot down with re Israel?
Notice by the way how awful Netanyahu looks lately.
Do you think the “Minister of Heritage” has any knowledge of Israel’s nuclear capabilities?
@ Rex: Not sure what you mean? Doe Eliyahu have his finger on the button? No. Does he know Israel has nuclear weapons? Most definitely. But this is all but irrelevant. The most important point is that he is a minister. A leader of the country. Not a poor shnook sitting at a cafe sipping his Turkish coffee.
Sure. He should have been fired, but Netanyahu is too weak (and delusional about his ability to remain in power). I’m just responding to Potter that I don’t think that this minister of a made up ministry has any access to Israel’s secrets such that him talking about using nuclear weapons could be seen as an Israeli admission to having those capabilities.
Hi Rex… Israel has not formally admitted it has nuclear weapons. Ambiguity is the policy. But it has them, enough for this long entry in Wikipedia which everyone can read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel
So we know. The world knows. We look the other way and allow this; part of the exceptionalism Israel enjoys. But those representing the government have never, to my knowledge, threatened to use them, let alone admit that they have them.
In addition Iran knows. And this is a problem if we do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons.
What this minister actually knows and what his power is is immaterial. He threatened that Israel should use (it’s) nukes… that’s enough. It can be taken as a oblique admission imo because he is a member of the government. He’s been suspended. For threatening to use them? For kinda admitting Israel has them? The suspension is theater?? to perversely SHOW (remind) Israel has them and can use them so other countries (Iran) should beware? And then to still be coy about it.
What it shows too is that a right wing extremist hot headed government might more seriously threaten to use them.
In Finnish main media there is nothing about, what minister Amichai Eliyahu said of using nuclear weapons in Gaza. Not even this open threat by an Israeli cabinet minister is a very big “thing” in surrounding countries. All those countries have publicly and vocally protested against what this Israeli idiot minister said. Still it is no “news” in the western countries. Imagine if some Iranian or Saudi minister woud have made same threat about Israel. It would be here in western countries the main news for weeks and all Jewish possible pressure groups would bring the subject up in all possible “possibilities” for years. The truth is that Israel has in hundreds of existing ready nukes and their delivery systems, Iran and Saudi Arabia have only hypotetical nukes.
A new feature in reporting here about the events around Gaza, besides the most minimalized possible time in presenting them, is that when the amount of killed in Gaza by Gazans or reporters there is mentioned, they now in Finnish television say: we can not confirm the figures from neutral sources. With Israeli figures and often obviously unbelieveble claims such dissmissive “confirmation demands” are not presented. It is a bit extraordinary that Israel knows, that Hamas is using some ambulance, claiming that they do know who is in the car, but in Lebanon they do not know that in car Israelis bomb are a grandmother and her 3 grandchildren.
Hey Steve, when push come to shove these meglomaniacs would easily start a nuclear war.
The people of ‘the book’ they call themselves. The light upon the nations/ non-jews as that Sephardic Jew was singing.
Utterly laughable.
At the end of the day as a state/people they and their policies and practices are a stain on humanity.
Temporary settlement on Egypt’s border, and only for the duration of the war.
Sounds humanitarian to me.
Obviously, this would help Israel militarily insofar as the temporary resettlement would allow Israel to concentrate on destroying Hamas without Gazan civilians getting in the way.
And BTW, British and American interlocutors aren’t supporting Israel’s proposal because Egypt is dead set against it.
@ Miroslav:
You’re a credulous fool. Palestinians (and I) know far better what Israel has planned for them. “Humanitarian?” My ass.
A warning to Israeli apologists here who peddle IDF propaganda: you just regurgitated a few key IDF talking points. This is not the place. The army has more than enough spokesliars. They won’t take up my online real estate here. If you do it again, you’ll be moderated.
Thousands of Gazans are now taking advantage of a temporary humanitarian pause and fleeing south under the auspices of the IDF.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-772068
Richard. You can liberally throw around the word, ‘ genocide’, but how about citing International law and Laws of Armed Conflict jurists that support your claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Just one cite, please.
@ Yellow:
As for using the Jerusalem Post as credible evidence for anything. Really…
Sure. This is a small sample. There are literally dozens or more examples. But thsi will suffice for now.
UN experts say ceasefire needed as Palestinians at ‘grave risk of genocide‘
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-experts-say-ceasefire-needed-palestinians-grave-risk-genocide-2023-11-02/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/have-war-crimes-been-committed-in-israel-and-gaza-and-what-international-laws-apply
Center for Constitutional Rights: Rights Lawyers Release Legal Analysis of U.S. Complicity in Israel’s Unfolding Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza
https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/rights-lawyers-release-legal-analysis-us-complicity-israel-s
Gaza crisis: Hundreds of academics sign letter calling for Irish universities to suspend ties with Israeli institutions
Academics write: ‘The scale and severity of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip has exceeded all previous levels of violence in the prolonged and brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine’
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2023/11/04/war-in-the-gaza-strip/
[comment deleted: after breaking the one comment rule twice and being moderated, you’ve done it a third time. 3 times you’re out.]
Some Gazans don’t want to go for fear that this would be a second Nabka. They don’t even want to leave northern Gaza, some cannot. Why should Egypt trust what will happen in Gaza will allow a return? A potential outcome would be a “festering wound” residing in Egypt. Why should Egypt help Israel get rid of it’s population of Palestinians, accepting the responsibility of hundreds of thousands of refugees for an unknown period of time. Some Gazans would stay, some would be angry, living in refugee camps again moved one notch over, wanting to go home.
I.E. Why should Egypt take the pressure off of Israel, help Israel to get rid of Palestinians?
The 10,000 number of dead, more than 4,000 children announced by the Gazan Health MInistry caused by Israeli indiscriminate and disproportionate retaliation for October 7th, is having it’s effect. The numbers matter and are reflected in judgements, emotions of the crowds regarding right and wrong and who are the victims. It’s plain to see. The history and context of this tragedy is now back. People wanted to talk about it on Oct 7th. That was hotly dismissed as sacrosanct, irrelevant, the crimes so shocking and horrendous it was pure evil, no further discussion. Now we are reading listening remembering and looking at the whole tragic story
UAE condemns Israeli minister’s comments about dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza Strip | The National News UAE |
Saudi Arabia and Arab Parliament also criticise the remarks and hit out at international community’s ’shameful silence’
An Israeli comedian mocking Eliyahu –
https://youtu.be/HMBVq7oOkQg
Trump-Pompeo
Today with the atrocities in the Gaza war, interesting developments …
Bilateral agreement or one-sided decision: Abraham Accords a false peace | Shanghai Gov – 11 Oct 2023 |
EC President VDL …
Gaza might become an international protectorate after the war, the EU has said, adding that neither Palestinian group [not “terror” group?] Hamas nor Israel should ever rule there again.
IMO Joe Biden would like to task the Europeans for this conflict zone … Afghanistan … Iraq … Taiwan … although Israel-Lebanon-Syria falls under USCENTCOM and not USEUCOM.
Who visited NATO HQ and Jens Stoltenberg …
King tells NATO everyone is paying price for absence of political solution to Palestinian-Israeli conflict \ Jordan Times |
His Majesty: Dealing with the day after the war must begin with addressing the root cause of the conflict, on the basis of the two-state solution
Antony Blinken travels to the Middle East got a dose of reality, Biden’s proposals didn’t fly … Nakba 2.0 is DOA
Israel will just demolish Gaza, but there will be no Nakba 2.0 pushing Palestinians into neighbouring states for a new refugee status in UNRWA camps. Unacceptable by the Arab States. Palestine needs to be established..
Ceasefire now … get humanitarian aid in and water, food, fuel and medical supplies. Stop the immoral slaughter of civilians.
I don’t know if you saw that there was an assassination attempt on Mahmoud Abbas today. It wasn’t successful, but it points to the fact that a lot of these leaders in the Middle East, not just Bibi, are very vulnerable to coups right now. It also kind of puts Israel’s, and by extension the US’, “post war” strategy into the spotlight. If their goal is to eliminate Hamas, but Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are also dismantled in the war, what then? There’s no “legitimate” Palestinian leadership to push either a “two state solution” or even a one state one. It just makes the goal of genocide that much more apparent, which will not end well for either the US or Israel on the world stage. We’ve already seen a few countries cut ties and several more recall their ambassadors to Israel as result of the genocide. The bleeding will get worse and will eventually extend to sanctions and divestment.
So it seems like those videos were fakes, but the rest of the post still stands.
How can we ask Russia for war reparations for Ukraine, but not ask Israel for reparations for Gaza? How is it that Israel can destroy so much, cause a refugee problem, and then expect others to pay for it? And we give the weapons for this!. This is what gives Israel impunity. It rides on a victimhood that should be past it’s sell by date. It rides on a cry of anti-semitism that it exacerbates. It rides on a need to fight the hate and anger coming at Israel that Israel helped to create. (I am not denying that there is a perennial visceral anti-Semitism that gets passed on and that some people hold.)
Israel should conduct some major humanitarian relief in Gaza similar to what Israelis do in other parts of the world where there is disaster. They can do it. Maybe Israel should welcome innocent Palestinians to it’s hospitals, and social services. Children. Offer refuge to the old and sick, give emergency aid and services .. wild huh?
Netanyahu rhetoric declares 10/7 a 12/7 moment of Pearl Harbor … he is wrong on all accounts … the act by Hamas reminds me of the attack on US Marines Barracks in South Lebanon.