Author: Daniel Larison

Israel launched a new wave of airstrikes on Lebanon today. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, the strikes have killed at least 182 people and wounded more than 700 others. This appears to be the first stage in a major assault on Lebanon. The Israeli government is choosing a larger war, and the Biden administration has done nothing to stop them.

The latest attacks followed a toothless warning from Washington against further escalation. The NSC spokesman John Kirby said that “ we don’t believe that escalating this military conflict is in their best interest,” but this sort of appeal is useless when dealing with a government that has been eager to escalate for months. The president said that the administration was “going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out,” but we already know that they won’t do the one thing – cutting off arms transfers – that might make the Israeli government think twice about this.

Continue reading “A New Wave of Israeli Attacks on Lebanon”

Van Jackson read the Harris campaign’s new “policy” page and he was not impressed:

It pains me to observe this because I want better, we need better, and I’m very invested in her beating Trump. But we are well and truly in the territory of HBO’s Veep and nobody wants to say it for fear of harshing the vibes that appear to be central to the current strategy.

The foreign policy section was notable for saying very little about anything. Most of the text on foreign policy issues seems to have been lifted verbatim from Harris’ acceptance speech, complete with the same hollow words on Gaza that we have seen before. Like the foreign policy remarks in the speech, this “policy” page comes across as a box-checking exercise to satisfy the party’s hawks. It talks about having “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” and reaffirms Harris’ willingness to bomb Iranian allies, but there is precious little about non-military policy tools and there is no mention of climate, migration or pandemics in the foreign policy section. If you didn’t know that the Harris is the Democratic nominee, there wouldn’t be much in the foreign policy section to let you know. Put another way, there is nothing in here that would make Dick Cheney uncomfortable.

Continue reading “Harris’ Missing Foreign Policy Vision”

An Israeli soldier fatally shot an American citizen and peace activist, Aysenur Eygi, in the head on Friday while she was participating in a peaceful protest against an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Haaretz reports on what witnesses to the shooting saw:

Three eyewitnesses present at the protest in the West Bank town of Beita, where a 26-year-old American-Turkish human rights activist was shot dead on Friday, told Haaretz that Israeli troops shot her for no reason and there had been no clashes at the time.

Like the murder of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper in May 2022, this is a clear case of a member of the Israeli military gunning down an unarmed American citizen. The IDF’s account of this killing – that their soldiers were responding to a rock-throwing “instigator” – is no more credible than the story that they spun two years ago when one of their men shot a journalist in the head. There must be a credible independent investigation into Aysenur Eygi’s murder, and the shooter must be made to answer for the crime.

Continue reading “The Murder of Aysenur Eygi”

Genocide studies scholar Omer Bartov now believes that the Israeli government’s campaign in Gaza is genocidal:

But another part of my apprehension had to do with the fact that my view of what was happening in Gaza had shifted. On 10 November 2023, I wrote in the New York Times: “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is now taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening. […] We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time.”

I no longer believe that. By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that at least since the attack by the IDF on Rafah on 6 May 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions [bold mine-DL]. It was not just that this attack against the last concentration of Gazans – most of them displaced already several times by the IDF, which now once again pushed them to a so-called safe zone – demonstrated a total disregard of any humanitarian standards. It also clearly indicated that the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory [bold mine-DL]. In other words, the rhetoric spouted by Israeli leaders since 7 October was now being translated into reality – namely, as the 1948 UN Genocide Convention puts it, that Israel was acting “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part”, the Palestinian population in Gaza, “as such, by killing, causing serious harm, or inflicting conditions of life meant to bring about the group’s destruction”. [bold mine-DL]

Continue reading “The Ongoing Genocide in Gaza”

The foreign policy section of Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech was predictably brief, and there wasn’t much to it. Anyone still holding out hope that she might signal a change in direction on U.S. policy in Gaza was completely disappointed. Harris said:

With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock, because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a cease-fire deal done.

And let me be clear. And let me be clear. I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.

At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.

President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.

Continue reading “Harris’ Hollow Words on Gaza”

Blinken is selling a bridge to nowhere:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Israel has accepted a proposal to bridge gaps in ceasefire negotiations and the next step is for Hamas to accept ahead of further negotiations expected to take place later this week.

The so-called bridging proposal is not a serious effort to secure a ceasefire. The only gap that it closes is between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government, and it does this by including even more conditions from the Israeli side that Hamas won’t accept. Netanyahu agreed to the new proposal only because he knew that Hamas wouldn’t.

Continue reading “Blinken Wants To Sell Us a Bridge”