Criticism of Israel and antisemitism

Writing about Israel’s Independence Day (April 21-22), Gideon Levy commented on what he sees as the widespread unwillingness of his fellow Israelis to seriously reflect on their country’s militaristic and even genocidal policies: "’Why does the world hate us?’ is dismissed as an illegitimate question in the public conversation. The world is antisemitic, full stop. This is the prevailing mood on this Independence Day.” (1)

The former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy is also an excellent, critical-minded source who analyzes and explain Israeli politics and diplomacy. He is currently the president of the US Middle East Project (USMEP). In this recent interview with Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report, he stresses that the Netanyahu government’s military and foreign policy approach is not to have peace with nearby countries, but to dominate them. (2)

Ryan Grim reports on Israel’s policy of deliberately assassinating journalists: (3)

Democratic theorists, politicians, and political activists have long recognized that antisemitism is a threat to democracy and general decency. Paul Massing’s 1949 book Rehearsal foe Destruction: A Study of Political ‘Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany is one of many examples. (4) That was one of the volumes produced by the Studies in Prejudice project sponsored by the American Jewish Committee that was directed by Max Horkheimer.

Massing describes notable figures in the propagation of antisemitism, of hatred for Hews in general, such as Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909), an official chaplain on the German Imperial Court, who Massing credits as being the first to successfully channel the “confused grievances and claims through a host of spokesmen: priests and professors, quacks and crusaders, embittered journalists and romantic reactionaries” into a movement of political antisemitism. (p. 22) He was a bitter enemy of social-democratic politics, labor unions, and industrial workers in general. At the same time, he used techniques mostly identified with the Social Democrats, such as mass meetings for workers, to win their vote for reactionary politics. Hitler’s movement later followed this broad approach, as well. One of his main partners in that effort was a sleazy character named Emil Grüneberg, who had a “shady character and criminal record.” (p. 23) The German Conservative Party adopted Stocker’s brand of antisemitic politics.

Adolf Stoecker , a major pioneer of political antisemitism in Germany

One aspect of the current debates over antisemitism is the practice of the Israeli government to treat criticisms of Israeli government policies, especially those directed against Israel’s illegal attacks against neighboring countries and against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, as itself a form of antisemitism.

There is a document from International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) of antisemitism that is often cited as the basis of that claim. A number of countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, and various other members of the EU have either endorsed or formally adopted the IHRA definition, first adopted in 2016..

I wrote about the IHRA definition a couple of years ago. Kenneth Stern, who led the drafting of the definition, spoke to Christine Amanpour about what he sees as its misuse, the kind of misuse described in the Haaretz report. (5)

Long-standing ideological polemics can be headache-inducing. And this is a notable example. But headache-inducing is not the same as indecipherable. For people who aren’t necessarily familiar with this particular polemic, it can be bewildering sometimes to parse when criticism of Israel is used for antisemitic purposes and when not. A good general guideline is whether the criticism is focused on the government of Israel and its actions, or instead on using the actions of Israel to criticize Jews in general.

For Americans, the massive material and diplomatic support the US provides Israel puts an added responsibility for voters and political decision-makers to parse these differences honestly. Antisemitism is about more than Israel. And so is opposing antisemitism.

Peter Ullrich wrote about the IHRA definition for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in 2019, years before the post-October 7 2023 controversies. That institute is politically close to the German Left Party. So it’s safe to say it’s a “left” position. Ullrich:

[T]he “Working Definition” is conducive to contradictory and error-prone application in practice and leads to assessments of incidents and facts that are not based on clear criteria but on the preconceptions of those applying it or on prevalent interpretations adopted without reflection. Applying the “Working Definition” creates the fiction of an objective assessment guided by criteria. The definition provides procedural legitimacy for decisions that are in fact taken on the basis of other criteria that remain implicit and are specified neither in the definition nor in the examples.

The weaknesses of the “Working Definition” are the gateway to its political instrumentalization, for instance for morally discrediting opposing positions in the Arab-Israeli conflict with the accusation of antisemitism. This has relevant implications for fundamental rights. The increasing implementation of the “Working Definition” as a quasi-legal basis for administrative action promises regulatory potential. In fact, it is instead an instrument that all but invites arbitrariness. [my emphasis] (6)

Notes:

(1) Levy, Gideon (2026): Israel at 78 still believes it can live by the sword alone. A reckoning is due. Middle East Eye 04/23/2026. <https://youtu.be/XviEhjGBg-A?si=gRIusUl-qP4ux14E> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(2) Decoding Israel’s Superpower Ambitions. The Majority Report YouTube channel 04/20/2026. <https://youtu.be/PWyjl6BKJuA?si=3aIrtY25mmxUFNnS> (Accessed: 2026-25-04).

(3) Israel TRIPLE TAPS Lebanon Journalist. Breaking Points YouTube channel 04/24/2026. <https://youtu.be/KMwNy3ANKaY?si=GwKj5ohzjY3YPMNT> (Accessed: 2026-25-04).

(4) Full text available: American Jewish Committee: <https://ajcarchives.org/Portal/Default/en-US/SearchResults> Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.177835>

(5) He Helped Define “Antisemitism”; Now He Says the Term Is Being Weaponized. Amanpour and Company YouTube channel 05/02/2024. <https://youtu.be/6FFAcHMO488?si=9JL7eKI0kiBg3Yv0> (Accessed: 2026-18-04). ]

Stern, Kenneth (2019): I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it. Guardian 12/13/2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/antisemitism-executive-order-trump-chilling-effect> (Accessed: 2024-04-05).

(6) Ullrich, Peter (2026): Expert Opinion on the [IHRA’s[ “Working Definition of Antisemitism.” Oct. 2019. <https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/rls_papers/Papers_3-2019_Antisemitism.pdf> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

The grim state of Israeli military policies in the Iran War

Amos Harel in Haaretz delivers a grim, disturbing description of the performance of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with particular reference to their current war in Lebanon. He doesn’t use the word “colonialist” to describe the illegal Jewish settler movement in the West Bank or the IDF in Lebanon. But he concludes his column this way:

[S]ome of the seeds of this aberrant behavior were definitely sown on the hilltops of Samaria in the northern West Bank and made their way into the IDF and Israel proper. When coalition lawmakers talk with glittering eyes about pioneering that restores land in the territories to Jewish hands, we have to understand that these are calculated moves geared toward ethnic cleansing, even if this is still being done in small numbers. The whole story is about as romantic as that of the Ku Klux Klan in 1960s Mississippi. [my emphasis] (1)

It’s worth recalling here that in 1967, Southern white segregationists, despite being antisemitic for the most part, began to view Israelis as “white” people fighting against barbaric Arabs – or “sand n*****s,” in SegregationSpeak. That impression is very much part of the sentiment among Christian Zionists in America today, a key part of the Trumpista political coalition.

Israel has a national election scheduled later this year on October 27. Netanyahu faces prosecution on corruption charges once he is no longer Prime Minister. The wars he’s conducted since the October 7 attack in 2023 and is conducting right now against Iran and Lebanon have allowed him to postpone the time he has to face elections. And he has maximum political incentive to portray himself as the only one who can protect Israel from its enemies.

Israeli citizens have lived in a liberal democracy. But Netanyahu has gone a long way with his project of turning it into an authoritarian system. But the hasbara claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East” has continued. Samuele Arioli reported in 2024 for the V-Dem think tank:

For the first time in 50 years, Israel is downgraded from the liberal democracy category. … [V-Dem maintains a widely-used rating of countries according to measure of liberal democracy.]

Government attacks on the judiciary are becoming more frequent. In 2019, amid corruption charges, Prime Minister Netanyahu accused key figures in the judiciary of conspiring with police forces in a joint “attempted coup”. In 2023, the Knesset passed a bill that severely curtailed the Supreme Court´s powers to overrule government decisions and invalidate laws passed by parliament. Mass protests quickly gained momentum to denounce this plan of judicial overhaul against the most important Israeli court.

Moreover, international observers point at the widespread discriminatory practices that Israeli authorities employ towards minorities, resulting in arbitrary law enforcement. Administrative detentions, degrading treatment of prisoners, and incidents of torture have worsened significantly in 2023, in the context of the war against Hamas. This is reflected in the recent decline in the indicators of transparent laws with predictable enforcement and freedom from torture. [my emphasis] (2)

Netanyahu’s wars and his authoritarian politics have had grim implications for Israel and its army. Harel:

[ Reserve IDF Col. Udi Evental wrote that] Netanyahu is departing from the principles laid down by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion [Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister during the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians]. Israel's wars should be as short as possible, he averred, based on an understanding of the country's weaknesses. However, Evental writes, overturning that approach is liable to leave Israel with less, not more, security.

We have, he explains, passed "from a policy that sought to lengthen the periods of quiet between the wars on the basis of managing risks in the face of threats, and striving for settlements, to a policy that preserves an unbroken sequence of wars without political moves, while devouring the state's resources and imposing a growing load on the regular army, the reserves and the economy."

Harel’s column also points out that the current war in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah forces is encountering a great deal of difficulty and is also practicing familiar criminal methods:

Because most of the Hezbollah force in southern Lebanon was disabled or retreated northward, the bulk of the IDF's activity in the area looks like a copy-paste version of its activity in the Gaza Strip in 2025: systematic destruction of houses in villages, on the grounds that this constitutes the demolition of terrorist infrastructures.

This is very much a part of the Iran War. Hezbollah is an allied force of Iran’s. It’s often referred to as an Iranian “proxy”, but in fact it is Lebanon’s only real military force. The official government forces are much weaker and are incapable on their own of defending their country from Israel attacks.

Gideon Levy offered these thoughts on May 1 on the current state of the Iran War, including Lebanon. And also on state of the Israeli press. Levy himself is a columnist for Haaretz: (3)

Notes:

(1) Harel, Amos (2026): Wishful Thinking Won't Topple Iran or Protect Israeli Soldiers From Drones. Haaretz 05/01/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-05-01/ty-article/.premium/wishful-thinking-wont-topple-iran-or-protect-israeli-soldiers-from-drones/0000019d-e009-db36-a1fd-e20f1cf50000?gift=e04652150fc242dfb0458b5b77c32073> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(2) Arioli, Samuele (2024): Democracy in Decline in Israel. V-Dem 11/28/2024. <https://v-dem.net/weekly_graph/democracy-in-decline-in-israel> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(3) 'Destroying southern Lebanon': Is Gaza now Israel's playbook for the whole region? Middle East Eye YouTube channel 05/01/2026. <https://youtu.be/jfUnnMYT6xQ?si=m1auN1RBMWG2qXnt> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

Iran War Monthly Summaries: Month 2 (April 2026)

The current Iran War began on Febuary 28, two months ago, with the illegal military attack by the US and Israel on Iran.

Trump, 04/16/2026:

US President Donald Trump said that the war in Iran is going "swimmingly" and that it "should be ending pretty soon."

“It should be ending pretty soon,” Trump said at an event in Las Vegas. "It was perfect. It’s perfect. It was the power we have... We had the most powerful military anywhere in the world." (1)

Iran has suffered considerable damage and death. But their strategic position in the world has been enhanced. Alastair Crooke made the following assessment as the Iran War moved into its second month, emphasizing that Iran has formidable ground and air forces (missiles) and warning that Iraqi forces of some kind could become active on Iran’s side. He even speculates that Iraq might decide to annex Kuwait! (2)

April was the month that the President of the United States openly, explicitly threatened Iran with genocide on his Truth Social app:

Making that threat is a war crime in itself.

Richard Haass 04/24/2026 isn’t impressed by the war Trump and “War” Secretary Pete Kegsbreath initiated alongside Israel:

This was a war that did not need to happen – a war of choice – and, on balance, it has left the United States worse off. Yes, Iran is weaker if measured strictly in terms of conventional military capability, but that’s about the only accomplishment the administration can boast. … As for the war itself, virtually every other metric shows the United States, the region, and the world to be worse off. [my emphasis] (3)

A big part of the story is the disastrous excuse for actual diplomacy that the Trump regime has been practicing. Featuring goofy pronouncements from the Orange Anomaly like this one, Trump 03/26/2026: “[Iran] did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present and the present arrived today. It was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize, and they gave it to us.” (4)

Did anyone ever figure out what the Very Big Present was? Apparently it was that Iran agreed to let ten oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Things quickly reverted to NACHO state (Not A Chance Hormuz Opens),

And, Trump on Iran 04/02/2026: “We could just take their oil. But, you know, I’m not sure that the people in our country have the patience to do that, which is unfortunate. You know, they want to see it end. If we stayed there, I, you know, I’d prefer just to take the oil. We could do it so easily.” (5)

The International Crisis Group, on the other hand, tells us something substantive about the war: “Iran’s conduct is best understood as an attempt to convert battlefield resilience into political leverage. Tehran regards the ceasefire not as an endpoint but as an opportunity to shape the terms of the conflict’s next phase.” (6)

The Houthis entered the war at the end of March.

Trump has been getting some good advice. But of course he’s ignoring it, especially when it’s about international law which he neither understands nor accepts:

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has accused the US president of war crimes by bombing bridges and threatening further attacks on Iran’s infrastructure, and deplored the “reckless” nature of the conflict and its effect on ordinary people in Iran.

“War is not a game show; peace-making is not a real estate deal; the world is not a casino”, said Mr Fletcher, who worked for three former British prime ministers: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

“You don’t hit civilian infrastructure. That includes hospitals. You don’t hit schools, energy sources, bridges. That is a war crime. That is absolutely clear in international law.

“Somewhere along the way, we have thrown all that aside. We have chosen impunity, indifference and game-show gambling over solidarity and humanity”, Mr Fletcher told the BBC. my emphasis] (7)

It was an ugly month in Lebanon, too, which is part of the war.

Since 2 March, Israel has carried out a large-scale air campaign in Lebanon, killing more than 2,290 people, wounding over 7,500, and displacing 1.2 million people, around 20 percent of the population.

At the same time, the Israeli military has launched a ground invasion, announcing plans to occupy large swathes of southern Lebanon and stating that displaced residents would not be allowed to return to their homes.

Israeli forces have spent weeks demolishing entire villages, using bulldozers and rigging homes with explosives before flattening them in large-scale remote-controlled detonations.

Within hours of the ceasefire coming into effect, Israeli troops carried out demolitions, artillery shelling, and land-clearing operations in several border areas, in violation of the truce. [my emphasis] (8)

Gideon Levy takes a thoughtful look at Israel’s situation in the war as he reflected on the 78th anniversary of Israel’s independence:

At the beginning of this state was the Nakba [ethnic cleansing operations against the Palestinians]: our day of celebration was the day of another people's historic catastrophe, a people who were here before us. Everything since has been bound up with what came before. What began in 1948 has not ended, not even in 2026.

From the Nakba to today, the basic principles by which Zionism operates have not changed, nor has the policy of successive governments of the Jewish state. The Nakba has never ended; it has merely altered in form. How disheartening it is to think that the values that led to the Nakba 78 years ago are still driving the State of Israel in 2026 - the same principles, the same objectives, the same methods.

Now a regional power and the closest ally of the most powerful superpower in the world, nothing has changed in Israel's overall outlook since it was a day-old state. It still believes it can live by the sword - and only by the sword - and that it has no alternative but a life sustained by the sword. [my emphasis] (9)

Michael Tomasky gave this summary of the state of affairs on April 24:

Trump made this problem. Entirely and solely. By pulling out of the JCPOA [Iranian nuclear agreement] in 2018, he ensured that Iran would start breaking the terms of the deal. He’s the one who made Iran strong. Then, eight years later, he comes back to us and says, Bad Iran! They broke the terms of the deal! They’re too strong. We must invade them.

But it’s actually even worse than that. Because we didn’t invade Iran because they broke the terms of the deal. We invaded Iran because Trump, having conquered (in his mind) America, needed to conquer farther reaches. Venezuela got him thinking, Hey, this war stuff is kinda fun. So he figured he’d be the guy who toppled the hated regime. A few bombs. Easy-peasy. [emphasis in original] (10)

And on the wartime diplomacy, Emily Horne offers this characterization:

It’s a real tell to negotiators in Iran that the people who are showing up at the table [negotiating for the US] really have no idea what they’re doing - that this is total amateur hour. …

JD Vance doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Steve Witkoff, the president’s golf buddy, is no diplomat. The president’s son-in-law can’t negotiate anything except a deal with crypto leaders in the Middle East that’s going to enrich himself. These people don’t know what they’re doing and they barely even tried at the Islamabad talks. They were on the ground for less than 24 hours, where they washed their hands of the whole thing and said that it was a failure. [my emphasis] (11)

Just Security has a helpful collection of articles on international law aspects of the current Iran War: https://www.justsecurity.org/114556/collection-israel-iran-conflict/

And the Institute for the Study of War is posting daily updates: https://understandingwar.org/analysis/middle-east/

Notes: (1) Trump says war on Iran 'should be ending pretty soon'. Middle East Eye 04/17/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/trump-says-war-iran-should-be-ending-pretty-soon> (Accessed: 2026-17-04).

(2) IRAN IS EMERGING as a DOMINANT POWER – Alastair Crooke. Daniel Davis-Deep Dive YouTube channel 03/29/2026. <https://youtu.be/XviEhjGBg-A?si=gRIusUl-qP4ux14E> (Accessed: 2026-29-03).

(3) Haass, Richard 04/24/2026): The US, Iran, & The Art of The Deal. Home & Away 04/26/2026. <https://richardhaass.substack.com/p/the-us-iran-and-the-art-of-the-deal> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(4) Greenhouse, Steven (2026): Trump’s strategy to get his way: declare one fake ‘emergency’ after another. Guardian 03/27/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/27/trump-national-emergency-elections> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(5) Breaking News. The New Republic 04/02/2026. <https://newrepublic.com/post/208535/white-house-accidentally-easter-lunch-trump-speech> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(6) International Crisis Group 04/15/2026 Iran Crisis Monitor Report #1. <https://www.crisisgroup.org/bnt/middle-east-north-africa/iran-israelpalestine-united-states/iran-crisis-monitor-1> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(7) Cooke, Millie (2026): UN chief tells Trump ‘war is not a game show’ after US bombs civilian targets in Iran. The Independent 04/03/2026. <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iran-war-trump-un-us-civilians-b2951408.html> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(8) A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon. Middle East Eye 04/21/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/history-israel-invasions-lebanon> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(9) Levy, Gideon (2026): Israel at 78 still believes it can live by the sword alone. A reckoning is due. Middle East Eye 04/23/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-78-believes-it-can-live-by-sword-alone-reckoning-due> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(10) Tomasky, Michael (2026): Let’s Hope America’s Dumbest War Doesn’t Become Its Most Tragic. TNR Politics 04/24/2026, <https://newrepublic.com/post/209477/trump-iran-jcpoa-dumbest-war-tragic> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(11) Transcript: Leavitt Goes Full Cult on Fox as War Leaks Humiliate Trump. The New Republic 04/22/2026. <https://newrepublic.com/article/209356/transcript-leavitt-goes-full-cult-fox-war-leaks-humiliate-trump> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

A nostalgic blogging moment, EU version

I had a flashback to the early years of blogging today when I saw a piece in Politico about European politics.

It was the software Movable Type released in October 2001 that really allowing blogging to take off and become A Thing. Blogs existed before that. Josh Marshall’s Talking Point Memo (TPM) started in November 2000 and provided frequent updates on the infamous Florida Presidential vote recount. But Movable Type made it possible for people to do a reverse-dated online diary – most recent entry at the top – without having to have extensive programming knowledge.

One of the main targets of bloggers in those days was the often lazy habits of the mainstream process, now known as the “legacy media.” Especially the superficial “horse-race” reporting on politics, i.e., whose polls are up and whose are down. And their shamelessly fawning reporting on figures like John McCain who was very good at playing to their egos and sloppy habits.

The legacy media in those early years tended to regard bloggers and amusing sideshows. Of, in Heather “Digby” Parton’s phase, “damn f*****g hippies,” or DFH’s for short. Digby is still blogging and writing for Salon and appearing periodically on The Majority Report, still delivering her usual excellent political analysis. She used to say that she started blogging as an alternative to yelling at the TV.

This all came to mind when I read a Politico piece titled, Trump’s Iran showdown is becoming Europe’s political nightmare. It is basically a rewrite of the same tired stories we’ve been seeing since 2015, about how the far-right parties in Europea are taking over. This just two weeks after a large majority in Hungary rejected and removed Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian regime despite the substantial authoritarian controls he had established over the voting system and much of the Hungarian media.

With energy prices climbing and growth sputtering, pro-EU governments are bracing for a crisis they have little power to stop — and that could rip through the bloc’s already weakened political mainstream.

Across Europe, unpopular incumbents are facing a populist backlash that could strike hard enough next year in France to propel National Rally to victory, putting the far right in the Élysée Palace and sending shockwaves around the world. (1)

Sometimes boring and lazy reporting has something interesting and useful further down in the article. Not in this case, the third-to-last paragraph is, “The economic gloom is also reopening one of the EU’s oldest fault lines: the fight between frugal northern countries and southern states demanding more support from Brussels.”

That some EU nations are wealthier and more prosperous than others isn’t exactly news. It has always been one of the central purposes of the EU and its predecessor, the European Community (EC), to promote economic integration, increase the collective prosperity of the block and to reduce the economic disparities among the members. What Politico there call a “fault line” has always been a central feature of the European Union.

What they don’t bother to mention is that austerity economic has been a huge, self-imposed burden on the EU. There are also a couple of serious problems in the design of the euro currency: lack of common responsibility of all the countries in the currency zone for debt incurred in euros (euro bonds) and the lack of sufficient money transfers from the higher-productivity countries to the lower-productivity ones. Those are not just some sentimental concepts, those are things a currency zone needs to have to work properly. That’s why in the US we national tax dollar transfers from the wealthier states – which tend to be Democratic ones – the poorer and poorest states, which tend to be Republican ones.

And the reporting there on the rightwing “populist” parties – some of which do actually use “populist” rhetoric – is really superficial. And, in this case, devoid of any reference to polling indicating the key issues and target groups most likely to support authoritarian rightwing parties. Instead, there are vague references to economic troubles that may have some kind of effect on politics – about as anodyne kind of thing an article like this can say.

To be fair, Politico also has an article from the same day on Sarah Rogers, a US diplomat who job is to promote far-right parties in Europe, particularly by promoting xenophobic nationalism. (2) The Nationalist International at work.

Here’s a flashback to 2015, a key moment in the euro crisis. German austerity won out in that moment, which was a really problematic one for European unity and gave a boost to the nationalist sentiments behind Brexit:

Notes:

(1) Sorgi, Gregorio and Griera, Max (2026): EU Parliament vs. Germany in the battle of the budget. Politico EU 04/28/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-eu-budget-2-trillion-germany-opposition/> (Accessed: 2026-28-04).

(2) Ross, Tim et al (2026): Trump’s Voice of America: The free-speech crusader pushing MAGA on Europe. Politico EU 04/28/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-voice-of-america-free-speech-crusader-maga-europe/> (Accessed: 2026-28-04).

“Political violence,” USA 2026

Robert Pape has been in the news quite a bit lately, since he has been doing simulations of a US war with Iran for years now and is also an authority on the history of strategic bombing in war.

Gosh, if only Trump and his Secretary of “War” Pete Kegsbreath and Pete’s Crusader tattoo had known somebody like this might be around to talk to before attacking Iran and incurring a rapid strategic setback that is likely to get much worse before it gets better.

Pape also has a book about political violence scheduled for August publication Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy. (1)

The news hook on this interview is, of course, the shooting incident in the hotel where the White House Correspondents Dinner was taking place. We don’t know a lot of details about it yet. Ken Klippenstein has an early report on the suspect charged, Cole Allen. (2) The only thing that seems really clear is that Allen has a far more sophisticated understanding of Christian theology than Donald Trump ever has or will. And, yes, that a bar so low its underground. And we don’t know at this point if his intention to shoot at Trump, although that seems a likely assumption, and he has been charged with intending to do so. Caution is in order on the early reports. (3)

Charlie Pierce, as usual, has some sensible comments on the Allen shooting incident  incident:

Where do you go with this kind of thing? If you’re the MAGA robot army, or if you’re Dana Bash, you lay the events at the feet of dangerous extremists like ... Jamie Raskin? If you’re the Democrats, and you have even the ghosts of coglioni, you go on criticizing this president and his renegade band of misfits and lickspittles, and you train yourself not to care about the civility police. Cole Allen did what he did for his own mad reasons. The crimes and insanity of the past decade turned his mind into a furnace in which all those things melted together and then congealed into an immovable obsession. And then he went and got his guns. (4)

One thing to keep in mind about the inevitable and understandable speculation over the incident is that Trump has staffed senior posts with fools, sychophants, grifters, drunks, fanatics, and incompetents. And they have been shifting personnel to Stephen Miller’s priorities of deporting gardeners, house cleaners and Home Depot shoppers who happen to look Latino, and generally territorizing Democratic-run cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

So an when incident like that at the Correspondents Dinner makes federal law-enfocement look ill-prepared (“How could this happen?”), sheer incompentence may be a big part of the reason. The TechBro mantra of “move fast and break things” can have its downsides when applied to vital public services.

What do we mean when we say, “political violence”?

Pape is the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005). He “wrote the book” on the subject, we might say. In an article of the same title, he sketches out his argument. (5)

Given that another alleged Presidential assassination attempt is in the news, it’s worth remembering that “political violence” is a very broad subject including the following.

War: The most famous comment of the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) is, "War is merely the continuation of politics by other means." And that theory is still widely used and cited by military strategists. In that sense, war is far and away the most significant and most destructive form of political violence.

But when we talk about “political violence,” we’re usually talking about the practice of violence in internal domestic politics.

Civil War: Civil war could be considered as covering both the “war” version of political violence and internal political violence. In the case of the US, we did have a big, bloody civil war in 1861-1865. There was a preliminary version of it in “Bleeding Kansas,” where pro- and anti-slavery settlers fought a guerilla war over whether Kansas should become a slave state or a free one. Civil wars vary in time and intensity. The Austrian Civil War of 1934 lasted all of four days – but is still a touchy political memory.

Guerilla warfare: This has taken place in many countries over a long period of time. The name itself came from the Spanish resistance to the Napoleonic occupation of Spain in 1808-1814. Guerrilla warfare can be a supplemental part of regular warfare, of a revolutionary uprising, or of a protracted campaign by an internal dissident group.

Assassinations: This one is well known. This can be an act of a political opposition group, an act of war by a foreign power, or the attempted murder of a political or government official by the proverbial Lone Gunman, like Arthur Bremer’s crippling attack on George Wallace in 1972 or John Hinckley, Jr.’s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Riots: The widescale riots in major cities (and not-so-major ones) after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 certainly had a political component to them. But they were spontaneous expressions of outrage. For US rightwingers, black and brown people rioting is still their nightmare version of political violence. We hear echoes of that when Trump talks about Black Lives Matter protesters burning down cities, which didn’t happen.

Disruptive mass protests and coup attempts: These would include incidents like the January 6, 2021 invasion of the US Capitol by a traitorous cop-killing mob directly incited by Donald Trump himself to attempt a coup, overturning the results of the 2020 Presidential election. The 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization and its neoliberal economic policies were the result of a broad-based “anti-globalization” movement. The protesters included AFL-CIO members. There were also “black block” anarchist protesters who damaged property at businesses like Starbucks and Nordstrom. There was a lot of property damage but no deaths. (By using those two examples, I don’t mean to equate them. The Seattle people were protesting over real issues. The January 6 mob were a bunch of traitors trying to overthrow the government on behalf of the loser Donald Trump who were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

Terrorism: “Terrorism” is an evolving term which is normally used to describe acts of violence or intimidation by the Other Side. It is currently generally used to refer to illegitimate acts of violence committed against civilians as well as guerilla attacks in actual wars. “Terrorism” was once used to refer to state terror against its own population, as in the Terror during the French Revolution. Trump’s ICE Gestapo has been practicing state terrorism of that kind in 2025-2026.

Violence against property: There is always a lot of whining and gnashing of teeth over violence against property that might have any kind of political context. This is not really that hard. Breaking a store window or spray-painting insults on a Tesla are crimes against property. That may be political vandalism, but it’s a real stretch to call that political violence. If Klansmen burn down a bunch of houses where black people or immigrants live, yeah, that’s political violence. This really isn’t that difficult a distinction to make.

Note to Palantir snoops (or any other kind) scanning social media: Not everything that annoys Elon Musk or Peter Thiel is violence. Even though they claim to be able to define the world according to their whims.

Note to Trumpista trolls of any kind: If you aren’t unequivocally condemning the ICE/CPB murders of Renee Good and Alex Pritti and the deaths from abusive practices in the ICE concentration camps, don’t bother trying to explain to anyone why breaking a store window at a Tesla dealership is “terrorism” or “political violence.”

Notes:

(1) Latest Shooting Attempt Foreshadows 'Most Dangerous Midterms'. Times News YouTube channel 04/26/2026. <https://youtu.be/9QqWgwqoLjU?si=T-1mxynjrIgkw8dc> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

(2) Klippenstein, Ken (2026): Assassin Wasn’t on FBI’s Radar, Sources Say. Ken Klippenstein Substack 04/27/2026. <https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/assassin-wasnt-on-fbis-radar-sources> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

(3) Calitri, Lydia et al (2026): What we know about Cole Allen, suspected White House Correspondents' dinner shooter. NPR/Alaska Public Media 04/27/2026. <https://alaskapublic.org/news/politics/washington-d-c/2026-04-27/what-we-know-about-cole-allen-suspected-white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooter> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

Hernandez, Joe (2026): Alleged correspondents' dinner shooter is charged with trying to assassinate Trump. NPR 04/27/2026. <https://www.npr.org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5800175/white-house-correspondents-dinner-cole-allen-federal-court> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

(4) Pierce, Charles (2026): This Is the Wrong Time for the Predictable Democrat Response to the Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting. Esquire 08/27/2026. <https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a71138108/correspondents-dinner-shooting/> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

(5) Pape, Robert (2003). Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Australian Army Journal 3:3. <https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/australian-army-journal-aaj/volume-3-number-3/dying-win-strategic-logic-suicide-terrorism> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

Iran War and Washington’s strategic losses

Josh Marshall has a good summary of how he’s framing the Iran War situation in his reporting:

You can see the reality of the power balance in the visible fact that Trump wants negotiations and an end to the conflict more than Iran does. He keeps asking for them or demanding them. Iran holds back. They have the upper hand, notwithstanding all the vast damage to infrastructure, civilian and military, Iran has suffered.

It all comes back to the foundational fact that Trump lost control of the situation and lost the conflict itself in the first days. Everything since has simply been an effort to ignore or bluster through or deny that fact. [my emphasis] (1)

He blundered into a nasty war with Iran alongside Benjamin Netanyahu’s rogue government. Now he’s genuinely floundering.

Juan Cole, citing NBC News, writes that “during the 39-day war this spring, Iran did much more extensive damage to US bases than Washington had admitted, and did it with a relatively primitive old F-5 fighter jet.” (2)

Cole also mentions that Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on a diplomatic mission to Pakistan and Oman “did not meet, and had not been planning to meet, with US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, whom Tehran does not trust because it had been talking to them in Oman when Trump suddenly started bombing Iran.”

It’s sobering to think that resolving a very complicated situation like this is being handled by a US administration that can’t be bothered to follow any kind of normal, organized diplomatic procedure. Here Trump’s Mafiosi tendencies are serving him poorly, at least if getting a sound peace with Iran is any part of his intention. As Imran Khalid observes, “With diplomatic trust between major powers at a historic low, the international community is witnessing a period of profound geopolitical unpredictability.” (3)

And having a fanatical, arrogant prick Christian Nationalist zealot and all-rou9nd prick like Pete Hegseth in charge of the military certain doesn’t help to produce sound policies, either.

As Jon Alterman and Alie Vaez point out, Trump and Netanyahu’s Iran War has accelerated the relative decline of US power in comparison to Russia and China:

In Iran, Russia and China see the possibility of turning the tables on the United States. Both countries believe that a U.S. government enmeshed in endless Middle Eastern wars is one that would make much less trouble for them. Indeed, China’s international position improved remarkably in the 20 years after the September 11 attacks, when the United States was preoccupied with wars in the Middle East. As Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar memorably noted: “For two decades, China had been winning but not fighting [in the Middle East], while the U.S. was fighting without winning.” [my emphasis] (4)

And, as Khalid observes, China “is not rushing to fill the military vacuum [created by Trump’s policies] with its own naval flotillas. It is instead positioning itself as the reliable, continuous alternative to a volatile Washington.”

It’s also important to keep in mind that the Iran War has also involved the US in renewed conflict in Iraq. When the US and Israel began the current war, Israel struck targets in Iraq against pro-Iranian militia groups.

The Cheney-Bush Administration and their own Pete Hegseth in the person of Don Rumsfeld had fantasized that they would decapitate Saddam Hussein’s regime and Iraq would quickly be transformed into a kinda-sorta democracy that would be staunchly pro-US and pro-Israel. Instead they got an Iran-friendly regime, in no small part because of the large Shia population in Iraq. As Lahib Higel explains:

[T]he U.S. invasion [of Iraq] had put hundreds of thousands of troops answering to Washington, which had been Tehran’s chief foreign adversary since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, on Iran’s western land border. On the other hand, it had removed another mortal foe in Saddam Hussein, eventually replacing him with a government backed partly by Shiite Islamists who had spent years in exile in Iran. Still feeling the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Islamic Republic saw a chance to bring a more politically adjacent Iraq onto its side while hamstringing any scheme the U.S. might hatch to effect regime change in Tehran as well as in Baghdad. To counter the U.S. presence, it began cultivating Iraqi political parties and arming paramilitary groups. [my emphasis] (5)

Iran has also been attacking anti-Iran Kurdish forces in Iraq’s Kurdish area. Higel comments that remaining US forces in Iraq, which are in Kurdistan, are scheduled to be fully withdrawn in September. Meanwhile, of course, they are an obvious target for Iran to strike. And she notes, “The Iran-aligned groups [in Iraq] view the conflict as an existential matter both for their sponsor Iran and themselves. They seek to accelerate the exit of all U.S. troops from Iraq, as per their longstanding demand, while driving a durable wedge between Washington and Baghdad.”

The Iraqi government has been following a balancing strategy between the US Iran prior to the current war. But now that approach of “balancing the U.S. against Iran to insulate the country from external shocks, pursued by successive Iraqi governments, no longer seems workable.” As Higel observes, increased destabilization inside Iraq could delay the final withdrawal of American troops. There are lots of things that can still go wrong, and that makes the catastrophic state of US diplomacy under this administration even more of a problem. As has often before been the case, the Kurds being supported by the US could be damaged even more by the course of this war.

Robert Pape, who has been running war games simulations of an Iran War for years, has been eager to share his observations about the current situation: (6)

Notes:

(1) Marshall, Josh (2026): Making Sense of the Iran War. TPM 04/25/2026. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/making-sense-of-the-iran-war> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(2) Cole, Juan (2026): Iran: IRGC Insists on Control of Hormuz as Araghchi Seeks Mediation. Informed Comment 04/26/2026. <https://www.juancole.com/2026/04/insists-araghchi-mediation.html> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(3) Khalid, Imran (2026): Beijing’s Calculated Patience in the Middle East. Foreign Policy in Focus 04/24/2026. <https://fpif.org/beijings-calculated-patience-in-the-middle-east/> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(4) Alterman, Jon & Vaez, Alie (2026): How China and Russia Can Exploit the Iran War. Foreign Affairs 04/23/2026. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-china-and-russia-can-exploit-iran-war> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(5) Higel, Lahib (2026): Iraq in the Vise. International Crisis Group 04/20/2026. <https://www.crisisgroup.org/qna/middle-east-north-africa/iraq-iran-united-states-israelpalestine/iraq-vice> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(6) Robert Pape: “Trump Has DOOMED Us!” Iran Will DESTROY Presidency. Breaking Points YouTube channel 04/22/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcfvn8PvLJ0> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

Gunman incident at the 2026 “Nerd Prom”

The White House Correspondents Dinner is mostly known for being a ritual in which the national press shows its fealty to the President. Its nickname is the Nerd Prom. Part of the ritual is for the President to give a humorous speech making mild fun of himself and of the other prominent figures.

One of the low points for this annual event was in 2004 When Goerge W. Bush joked about looking for the non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” which was the lie he used about Iraq to justify invading it in yet another illegal war. It was downright macabre. Including the raucous laugh it drew from the Very Serious Reporters at the event. It is a reminder of how low the national press corps and the sponsoring White House Correspondents Association in particular had sunk that they continue the same ritual into future years. (1)

There was a shooting incident at the event last night (April 25). A suspect is in custody. Presumably there will be a lot of reporting on him over the next few days. It’s an obvious assumption to make in a case like this that the gunman intended to shoot the President. But as of this writing, we don’t actually know that.

News report on the event: (2)

Gun violence has become so normalized in the US, and mass shootings in schools in particular, that the previously anodyne phrase “thoughts and prayers” had become a synonym for “I don’t give a s***.” That became the standard phrase Republican politicians use after such a mass shooting before they go on to defend the unrestrained proliferation of small arms in the US. That gun proliferation also plays a key role in drug gang violence in Mexico, because most of their weapons come from the US.

There will be plenty of tiresome and dumb commentary on tis over the next few days. The Trump cult media will do their best to blame Democrats for it somehow.

When – and I mean when not if – the Trump cultists blame the Democrats for this somehow, what a real press corps would do whenever some Republicans suggests that is to immediately ask them if they personally condemn the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by Trump ICE Gestapo in Minneapolis. We don’t know at this moment what the gunman at the Correspondents’ Dinner intended. But we all can see the real-time footage of the murders of Good and Pretti. And we know that the Trump regime continues to shield the murderers from prosecution.

Notes:

(1) Bush jokes about searching for WMD, but it's no laughing matter for critics. Guardian 03/26/2004. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/26/usa.iraq> (Accessed: 2004-26-03).

(2) White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter arrested and identified. Sky News Australia YouTube channel 04/26/2026. <https://youtu.be/rn_LamYwVeg?si=bqSzNkaUCkcJRDdY> (Accessed: 2004-26-03).

Iran War: Is it too soon to call it a “quagmire”?

This is a star-studded podcast from the Quincy Institute featuring Stephen Walt (my own favorite foreign policy scholar), Stephen Wertheim, Monica Toft and Quincy’s head an Iran expert Trita Parsi. (1)

Walt comments that he expects the Iran War “is going to have more profound consequences that the Iraq War did.” Let that sink in for a moment.

When the current Russia-Ukraine War started in 2022, I hoped as many people did that it could somehow be ended relatively quickly on terms that wouldn’t be disastrous for Ukraine. That didn’t happen. And now that war has gone on longer that that between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany of 1941-1945.

I would like to believe that could happen with the current Iran War. But Donald Trump is the American President. So if I had to forecast, I would guess it will continue until at least early 2029, when Trump leaves the White House. Because Trump’s regime has shown a staggering inability to practice any kind of normal diplomacy, much less any competent diplomacy.

One point that the panel discusses is the Trump Administration isn’t a dovish, peace-oriented manager of foreign policy. It’s basic orientation is the idea that the US can threaten, bully, and bomb other countries to do it the Trumpistas want them to do. It’s the real face of the so-called rightwing “isolationist” viewpoint, which is really just narrow nationalism and militarism.

Sidney Blumenthal recently did an analysis of how lost Trump clearly is over the Iran War. In addition to losing the war itself, of course. Trump has created a huge mess for himself, the US, and the world by his Iran War. And to get out of it in any kind of constructive way, he would have to have some minimal understanding of how the international system works beyond just using his position to extort bribes. And he would have to be able and willing to apply professional diplomacy to build the kind of arrangement that would be able to establish a stable, long-lasting peace. It’s especially difficult with Israel involved, especially since the current Netanyahu government clearly wants to turn Iran into a failed state they can bomb periodically without having to worry much about military retaliation. He writes:

By Easter morning, the 37th day of Trump’s Iran war, on 7 April, he had thoroughly terrorized himself. He ramped up his rhetoric to threaten genocide. His exit strategy was annihilation. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he tweeted. …

The Genocide convention, article III, which the US has … ratified explicitly, punishes “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”. …

Robert P George, a professor at Princeton, a highly influential conservative legal scholar and political philosopher, and a pre-eminent figure in the Federalist Society, issued a statement: “I don’t see any way to interpret President Trump’s ‘prediction’ that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ as other than a threat to order the military to commit crimes against civilians. If he issues such an order, it will be the duty of military leaders to refuse to comply.” (2)

This is a serious mess. And the chances of the war being permanently settled during Trump’s term currently seem to be very close to zero.

And, as others have observed, Alfred McCoy has emphasized that Trump and Netanyahu’s war against Iran has given a geopolitical boost to China: “Oblivious to the dangers of war in a region [the Middle East] that is the epicenter of global capitalism, Washington is now proving ever more dangerously disruptive of the global economy, making China look like a far more stable choice for world leadership.” (3)

Notes:

(1) Grand Strategy Implications of Trump’s Iran Debacle: Is This the End of Primacy? Quincy Institute YouTube channel 04/23/25. <https://www.youtube.com/live/W8MKSO15fCI?si=T-ljTrI5sVz8NLb9> (Accessed: 2026-23-04).

(2) Blumenthal, Sidney (2026): Trump’s Iran fiasco has led him into the gravest territory. Guardian 04/11/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/11/trump-iran-international-law> (Accessed: 2026-23-04).

(3) McCoy, Alfred (2026): The Iran War and the End of the American Empire. Infomred Comment 04/24/2026. <https://www.juancole.com/2026/04/iran-american-empire.html> (Accessed: 2026-23-04).

A nostalgic left polemic like those of the 1970s

I wrote recently about one of the cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs conspiracist narratives that the Trumpista right has been channeling for years. It goes like this:

There was a group of German Jewish Marxist intellectuals known as the Frankfurt School who migrated to America after the Nazis took over Germany. (This is the only part of this conspiracy story that has some visible contact with reality.)

Then: The Frankfurt School’s Jewish commies begat “Cultural Marxism.” (There have been Marxists and political theorists of many other types who have written about culture. I can’t think of anyone who actually defined themselves as a “Cultural Marxist.” Maybe there was someone. But I think for the Trumpists, “cultural Marxism” is just another synonym for “Jews.”)

Next step: “Cultural Marxism” begat “political correctness” - a term normally used to refer to something the speaker thinks is politically incorrect. (Why, yes, it does often seem like rightwing clichés are some kind of random intrusions from another dimension. Why do you ask?)

Along the way it also begat “postmodernism” which is another form of political correctness. Or maybe it was postmodernism that begat political correctness? Which is strange enough since those are two very different ways of understanding the world. Conspiracist genealogies of ideas can get kind of murky.

Next step: Political Correctness begat critical race theory, aka, CRT. (The Trumpista faithful were happy with that, but it was kind of a fuzzy idea. It was sort of like DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion - which is also often used to mean “scary black people!” – and that may have pushed “CRT” out of their vocabulary, because I haven’t heard it in a while.

And finally: CRT begat Wokeism. That one seems to be functioning fine as a bogeyman among conservatives in the US and Europe who are apparently fans of Asleepism.

Maybe if they wake up from this phase they’ll forget about that particular kooky theory. But don’t count on it. It’s been around a while. Bill Berkowitz reported on it for the SPLC back in 2003:

“Cultural Marxism,” described as a conspiratorial attempt to wreck American culture and morality, is the newest intellectual bugaboo on the radical right. Surprisingly, there are signs that this bizarre theory is catching on in the mainstream. …

The theory holds that these self-interested Jews - the so-called “Frankfurt School” of philosophers - planned to try to convince mainstream Americans that white ethnic pride is bad, that sexual liberation is good, and that supposedly traditional American values — Christianity, “family values,” and so on - are reactionary and bigoted. With their core values thus subverted, the theory goes, Americans would be quick to sign on to the ideas of the far left.

The very term, “cultural Marxism,” is clearly intended to conjure up xenophobic anxieties. But can a theory like this, built on the words of long-dead intellectuals who have little discernible relevance to normal Americans’ lives, really fly? As bizarre as it might sound, there is some evidence that it may. Certainly, those who are pushing the theory seem to believe that it is an important one. (1)

I thought about this again when I came across a recent review article by Russell Jacoby, who actually has a reality-based expertise in this area, just published by the social-democratic site Jacobin. (2) It’s a review of a book that argues that “Western Marxism” – which actually is A Thing and includes the Frankfurt School’s “critical theory” trend, though Critical Theory includes thinkers that don’t necessarily consider themselves Marxists.

The book is by Gabriel Rickhill, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (2025). And, according to Jacoby, the book is a defense of the Soviet version of Marxism – which also evolved a lot over the existence of the USSR – against what Rickhill, sees as a deficient “Western Marxism.”

It sounds like a real walk down the leftie nostalgia lane! Jacoby isn’t impressed with Rockhill’s effort:

Its author, Gabriel Rockhill, draws a sharp contrast between the supposed virtues of Soviet-inspired Marxism and the supposed failings of the New Left’s leading intellectuals, notably those associated with the Frankfurt School. But he fails to deliver a fair criticism of his subjects. Rather, he resorts to innuendo and guilt by association in a bid to demolish their reputations. He might be viewed as a Marxist-Leninist in the school of Donald Trump: use any means to defame your foe. [my emphasis]

“Marxist-Leninist in the school of Donald Trump” is a bit too much of a reach for my limited brainpower!

He also gives this helpful brief definition of the term Western Marxism:

The phrase “Western Marxism” first emerged in the 1920s as an insult used by Soviet spokesmen who lambasted some European Marxists, accusing them of being too philosophical and too little invested in the ideas of Lenin and vanguard party–building. The term is a misleading one in as much as the line of demarcation does not denote geography but ideas. “Soviet Marxists” existed aplenty in the West, while dissident “Western Marxists” popped up in the Soviet Union itself.

Even during Marx’ lifetime, there were debates in the various socialist parties over what was the correct Marxist positions on politics, history, economics, etc. The pre-World War I Socialist International of socialist/social-democratic parties of various countries split after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 into a Communist International and a social-democratic Second International (called the Labour and Socialist International, LSI), who spent decades accusing each other of betraying the true Marxist cause.

There was a third group headed by Austria Social Democratic leader Friedrich Adler, called the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP), also known as the Vienna Union and (mockingly) the Two-and-a-Half International. It included “the Independent Social Democrats in Germany (still a party of 340,000, even after the majority left for the Comintern), Britain’s Independent Labour Party, and most socialist parties in the Balkans.” (3) It also included the Austria Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) – which still exists, btw, and is currently the junior partner in the national government coalition headed by the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP). There was even a debate in the 1920s over the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which the SPÖ continued to advocate in a radical-democratic form different from that of the Soviet Union.

Jacoby goes on to give a helpful description of the meaning of “Western Marxism” and how the Frankfurt School relates to it. And makes some salty criticism of what appears to be downright hackery by Rickhill. I’m a bit surprised that Monthly Review Press would let some of this stuff from Rickhill get pass their editors. But I’ll have to admit I enjoyed Jacoby’s dissection of those bloopers.

Like I say, it’s like a nostalgic blast from the 1970s to read Jacoby’s article. And, not surprisingly in an article of seven pages or so covering a very broad subject, a lot of nuances inevitably get left on the digital cutting-room floor.

In pointing out one of the broad areas of his criticism, Jacoby comments: “What Maoism, a program of peasant insurgency, meant in urban New York or London was always a mystery, even while Mao was alive, but Rockhill cannot be bothered to explain it.”

Jacoby has been covering this turf for a while. He did a pamphlet back in 1976, when those now-long-ago ideological hairs were being enthusiastically split, on Stalin, Marxism-Leninism and the Left. (4) Essentially, he argued there that the seeming failure of the New Left of The Sixties “redoubled the attraction of the Chinese Revolution, and of a successful model of revolution in general. The left is in search of a successful theory of revolution and nothing seems more successful than Marxism-Leninism.” (Keep in mind, this was 1976, not 1999!)

Part of the Maoist ideology at that time was that it defended the images and ideas of Joseph Stalin. That had to do in large part with the Sino-Soviet split. The post-Stalin Soviet leadership denounced Stalin, so China was happy to take him as a symbol to denounce Soviet “revisionism.” (Those polemics over the true interpretation of Marxism didn’t end in the 1930s!) He argued there that what many Maoist fans outside of China saw in the image they had of Mao and the Chinese Revolution was a more flexible, even more “democratic and non-authoritarian manner” than what the USSR had done during the Stalin years.

Of course, today even the official Communist Chinese narratives would criticize at least the “excesses” of the Cultural Revolution. And presumably there are few historians now who would describe that period without reference to the large number of lives lost in both the political struggles and in the economic disruptions caused by the Cultural Revolution - and earlier by the Great Leap Forward.

The information about internal events in China was exceptionally limited for the public in most of the world in those pre-digital days, certainly compared to today. And left-leaning activists in the US and elsewhere had good reason to be skeptical of the claims their governments were making about the villainy and danger represented by peasants in Vietnam and China. Also, by the early 1970s, there was a major shift in US policy under Nixon and Kissinger toward treating China as less of an enemy. Which also meant that the US government and media were tending to promote a much more benign and less threatening image of “Red China.” Everyone in America to the left of the John Birch Society was trying to look on the bright side about China.

It was the “Nixon goes to China” moment.

Snapshot of Mao and Nixon meeting (from the Chinese CGTN)

The Nixon Presidential Library has a 45-minute documentary on the event. (5) This is a reminder than once upon a time, even Republican Presidents were actually capable of conducting competent diplomacy. Seems like a long time ago now, though.

Götz Aly, one of Germany’s leading historians, in a book of his on The Sixties in Germany, was critical of his contemporaries back then for not being more aware of the ugly sides of the Cultural Revolution period, citing some of the scholarly research available in Germany at the time about contemporary China. (6) But German New Left types of that time also had good reason to be skeptical of accounts that fit smoothly with Cold War official posturing by Western governments.

And it was not only people in 1965 or so that drew very different lessons from the experiences of Mao Zedong’s version of revolutionary theory. I did a series of posts in 2024 on Julia Lovell’s 2019 book, Maoism: A Global History on the varied forms it took in practice in other countries.

Notes:

(1) Berkowitz, Bill (2003): ‘Cultural Marxism’ Catching On. SPLC Intelligence Report 08/15/2003. <https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/cultural-marxism-catching/> (Accessed: 2024-23-04).

(2) Jacoby, Russell (2026): No, Western Marxism Wasn’t a CIA Plot. Jacobin 04/18/2026. <https://jacobin.com/2026/04/review-rockhill-western-marxism-cold-war> (Accessed: 2024-23-04).

(3) Balhorn, Loren (2022): Why the Three Internationals Couldn’t Agree. Jacobin 04/02/2022. <https://jacobinmag.com/2022/04/conference-three-internationals-1922-division-communists-social-democrats> (Accessed: 2024-23-04).

(4) Jacoby, Russell (1976): Stalin, Marxism-Leninism and the Left. Somerville: New England Free Press. The publisher has helpfully made this and several other pamphlets available for free in PDF format: <https://www.nefp.online/_files/ugd/63d11a_815e8b77de244ff4932553135154db03.pdf>

(5) Nixon in China (The Film). Richard Nixon Presidential Library YouTube channel 02/23/2012. <https://youtu.be/4cfsI4ZjTbU?si=xmwTmDq_Bf-9gqXl> (Accessed: 2026-23-04).

(6) Aly, Götz (2008): Unser Kampf 1968 – ein irritierter Blick zurück. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.

Sarah Posner on the ever-evolving Christian Right in the US

Sarah Posner is a journalist who has been covering the Christian Right and Christian nationalists in the US for years, including at Talking Points Memo, where she seems to more often publishing the last couple of months.

In a column from last November, she reminds us that the mainstream media for decades largely tiptoed around the role played by the Christian Right in the Republican policy, even though they have played visible and important roles there since the late 1970s. Here she recalls how the legacy media covered that beat very superficially even into the early 2000s:

Back in those days, some, but certainly not all, newspapers and magazines were still reluctant to run investigative stories on the Christian right. Stated reasons included having recently published an article about religion, or an assumption that their readers would not have heard of the religious leaders who were the subject of the story. Tacit reasons were an allergy to covering religion critically at all, out of fear of being accused of disrespecting people’s faith, particularly, evangelical Christians. Those people, this reasoning went, say they just want to protect babies and families and express their piety in public. Who are we to judge? Some editors thought the religious right was too fringe to be relevant, or that the Republican Party did not actually care about them, and only used them for their votes every fourth November. [my emphasis] (1)

She recalls this example of the Christian Right’s practices:

Back in 2014, TPM published one of my stories that no one else wanted to touch. I had been working on it for several years, my reporting taking me around the United States and even to Israel, which plays a central role in many evangelicals’ apocalyptic theology and domestic politics. Former members of the International House of Prayer (IHOP) accused the organization and its leader, Mike Bickle, of myriad abuses, rooted in his demands for total capitulation to his unconventional, apocalyptic theology that required participation in a round-the-clock prayer room in a strip mall in suburban Kansas City, Missouri. Submission to his program of prayer and fasting in this insular, totalizing environment, Bickle convinced his acolytes, was essential to join an army of spiritual warriors who would bring about the militaristic, bloody, and world-altering second coming of Christ. [my emphasis]

The current US Ambassador to Israel, Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, used his official role to promote the idea that God somewhere in the mists of time had permanently promised Israel a much bigger geographical presence than it now holds, which would include territory that is now part of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, even parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. When that remark understandably drew criticism, Huckabee resorted to typical Christian Right obfuscation, saying that he was speaking theologically, not politically, whatever that may mean coming from the US Ambassador to Israel. (2)

Of course, pure religious piety, however misguided, isn’t the only factor at work with the Christian Right’s influence on the Republican Party. As Posner notes there, “It is maddeningly possible for the country to be led by an authoritarian fundamentally at odds with the desires of the majority, owing to how this movement, fueled by deep-pocketed donors, has become the core of the Republican electorate.”

And, as she reported earlier this month, this faction of the Republican Party is enthusiastically supporting Trump’s war of aggression against Iran, waged of course in conjunction with Israel. As she put it, the Christian nationalists “are intensifying their messaging that Trump is divine, that he is persecuted like Jesus was, that his war is destroying Iran and protecting Israel from Iranian savagery, all while igniting a Christian revival in America.” (my emphasis) (3)

She also notes that there are complications within the MAGA movcment/Trump cult between some rightwingers like Tucker Carlson who are criticizing Trump’s Iran War and giving it what sure looks like an antisemitic spin. “That is why an organization like the NFAB is making a bubble within a bubble — that is, a Christian Zionist bubble inside the MAGA bubble. They need to shield followers who might be at risk of absorbing MAGA anti-war messages. And so the Trump-cult group, the National Faith Advisory Board “is making a bubble within a bubble - that is, a Christian Zionist bubble inside the MAGA bubble.”

The idol of the Christian Right:

Notes:

(1) Posner, Sarah (2025): Traditional Media Never Took the Christian Right Seriously. TPM 11/04/2025. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/traditional-media-never-took-the-christian-right-seriously> (Accessed: 2026-11-04).  (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

(2) Clayton, Freddie (2026): Outcry after Ambassador Mike Huckabee suggests Israel has God-given right to Middle East land. NBC News 02/22/2026. <https://www.nbcnews.com/world/israel/outcry-us-ambassador-mike-huckabee-israel-god-right-middle-east-rcna260133> (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

(3) Posner, Sarah (2026): Trump’s Evangelical Leaders Are Working Overtime to Spin the Iran War. TPM 04/06/2026. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/trumps-evangelical-leaders-are-working-overtime-to-spin-the-iran-war (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

Iran War: It isn’t over and the US seems to have no actual diplomatic strategy

The Iran War isn’t over. Although the US hasn’t been actually declaring wars since the declarations of war on Japan and Hitler Germany.

At the moment, there has been a ceasefire since Friday between Israel and Lebanon/Hezbollah. Netanyahu’s government seems to be unhappy about the US having insisted on that ceasefire – which Netanyahu can use to preserve his hardliner image, and which fits with Trump’s Peace President posturing. That ceasefire may be over by the time I finish drafting this post, the way things are going. Netanyahu’s war against Iran and Lebanon is broadly popular in Israel.

But Netanyahu seems determined to continue its war in Lebanon, which is part of the war as far as Iran is concerned and which was part of the current ceasefire agreement. How well the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are doing in the fight in Lebanon against Hezbollah is another question. The IDF has based its training and war planning around short wars. Since October 7, 2023, they’ve been fighting a forever war to keep Benjamin Netanyahu in power and out of jail. He faces corruption charges in Israel for which the legal process has been suspended for as long as he is Prime Minister.

Former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry had some blunt criticisms recently of Trump’s and Netanyahu’s Iran War in this interview with Boston Public Radio. (1) Kerry outlines what people need to know about the current wobbly and short ceasefire with Iran in this interview:

Former Senator and former Secretary of State John Kerry had some blunt criticisms recently of Trump’s and Netanyahu’s Iran War in this interview with Boston Public Radio. (1) Kerry outlines what people need to know about the current wobbly and short ceasefire with Iran in this interview:

Kerry talks a bit in this interview about the need for a transition to clean energy and mentions without prompting that he is part of an investment group focusing on green energy.

This is also an insightful interview with Anne Applebaum, who notes emphatically (and correctly!) that Trump obviously has no understand of geopolitics – how the international state system functions – and also no understanding of strategy (in diplomacy or anything else). Hearing Kerry talking about his negotiations with Iran as Secretary of State highlights how little competence the Trump regime has in diplomacy. (2)

Kerry comments in his interview that peace is a state of engagement between countries and peoples. That’s part of this whole “geopolitics” claim about which Trump, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner are obviously clueless.

Haaretz reported on the negotiations with Iran, which at the time of the article were scheduled to formally begin on the afternoon of April 11 (according to Iran):

Iran's key demands include a U.S. commitment not to attack Iran and a cease-fire across all fronts, including Lebanon; continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz; recognition of Iran's right to enrich uranium; the lifting of U.S. and international sanctions; payment of compensation to Iran; and the withdrawal of American forces from the region.

The U.S. demands include a ban on uranium enrichment on Iranian soil; removal of enriched uranium buried under the rubble of nuclear facilities bombed in June; curbs on Iran's ballistic missile program; and a commitment by Iran to halt support for regional proxy groups, including Hezbollah and the Houthis. (3)

Netanyahu has never been closer to his grand dream of wrecking Iran and turning it into a failed state. Iran is sometimes characterized as being the White Whale to Netanyahu’s Captain Ahab. He can be expected to try hard to sabotage any possibility of a peace agreement at this point.

Dahlia Scheindlin, whose analysis has been highly critical of Netanyahu’s authoritarian politics, warns:

Israelis should know the failings of indecisive diplomacy better than anyone. This was precisely the nature of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, where the failure was not in giving up territory but in refusing to declare the final status aim of Palestinian statehood next to Israel, once and for all. Phased conditions set up for failure characterized the hostage release-cease-fire deals with Hamas in Gaza – the war that is far from over. The Middle East analyst and recently released hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov argued that Israeli ambiguity is actually a symptom of a complete lack of strategy.

The Trump administration's 15-point plan might represent a comprehensive agreement; but it also might be too far-reaching for Iran to agree to, no matter how battered. If not, one can only hope – or recommend – that after buying into Netanyahu's ideology of waging war on Iran, Trump and his team do not adopt the pointless diplomatic doctrine of never deciding how to end those wars. [my emphasis] (4)

This is a mess, a confusing mess. It’s definitely not over.

Notes:

(1) John Kerry outlines what to know about the 2-week cease fire with Iran.  GBH News News YouTube channel 04/11/2026. <https://youtu.be/Jv7Jt1TJwek?si=Te21_msTkANhIVa3> (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

(2) Trump Wants to Invent a Fake Reality (w/ Anne Applebaum). The Bulwark YouTube channel 04/11/2026. <https://youtu.be/fkW_UU_BBaY?si=lZNdY_N-homWs6aw> (Accessed: 2026-11-04). The explicit discussion about geopolitics starts after 49:00 in the video.)

(3) Rozovsky, Liza & Reuters (2026): U.S., Iran Teams in Pakistan for Peace Talks Amid Doubts Over Lebanon, Sanctions. Haaretz 04/11/2026. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2026-04-11/ty-article/u-s-iran-teams-in-pakistan-for-peace-talks-amid-doubts-over-lebanon-sanctions/0000019d-7b3e-d68a-a39d-7b3f13f20000?gift=389c963817a74aa6a512384dcc326c68> (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

(4) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2026): How Not to End a War, According to Trump and Netanyahu. Haaretz 04/09/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2026-04-09/ty-article/.premium/how-not-to-end-a-war-according-to-trump-and-netanyahu/0000019d-72f1-dc9d-a5bd-7ffbb2950000?gift=d14b36d2fe0c47139c9e0093830121e2> (Accessed: 2026-11-04).

The challenges of ending the Iran War (Plus: Netanyahu speaks about one of his heroes)

Would it surprise anyone that Benjamin Netanyahu admires Genghis Khan?

Benjamin Netanyahu’s first English-language press conference since the start of the war with Iran, held earlier this month in Jerusalem, will be remembered less for the updates he provided on the progress of Israel’s military campaign than for his pronouncements on two seemingly disparate world-historical figures: Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan.

“History proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan,” the prime minister asserted, citing the American historian Will Durant. “Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation.”

“The democracies led by the United States have to reassert their will to defend themselves and to oppose their enemies,” he continued, “before the jarring gong of danger wakes them up, and wakes them up too late.” (1)

I wonder if Donald Trump thought his buddy Netanyahu was dissing him with that comment?

Someone should ask Baptist minister and current US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee what he thinks about his pal Netanyahu’s historical comparison there.

But the Christian Zionists – who overlap very much with the Christian nationalists – generally cheer whatever the most warmongering leaders in Israel are demanding.

Cease-Fire in Lebanon? Or somewhere?

Supposedly there’s a new ceasefire in Lebanon. By the time someone reads this a couple of hours after I post it, the “ceasefire” may already be over.

The public conventions around the endless number of ceasefires declared in Israel’s endless wars are confusing. One of those conventions is that Israel’s government, currently headed by Netanyahu, blames the US for forcing them into the “ceasefire.”

Of course, Israel and the US are not the only power players in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pressed US President Donald Trump on the importance of a ceasefire in Lebanon in a private phone call on Wednesday, the Arab and western officials told MEE.

Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire on Thursday afternoon, which several of the officials attributed to the kingdom’s lobbying.

It is still unclear whether Israel will comply with the agreement and how much pressure Trump will put on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (2)

That last sentence is part of the standard framing: The US pushes Israel into moderating its course. Israel reluctantly agrees. Fighting resumes, sometimes within hours. Ceasefire falls apart, sometimes minutes or hours after it begins. Israel blames Islamic terrorists. Or Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Iran, or the United Nations, and (always) antisemitism. Repeats endlessly that Israel has a right to exist, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the Israeli Defense Forces are the most moral army in the world.

Amos Harel is a journalist with Haaretz who seems to have good connections with the Prime Minister’s office, although he doesn’t seem to be doing stenography in his reporting.. In an April 17 column, he hits various points being floated by various players on the current ceasefire. His opening points:

A cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon was due to take effect at midnight on Thursday, after being imposed on both sides by U.S. President Donald Trump. It is set to last for 10 days, and the administration hopes for it to become permanent at the end of that period. During the cease-fire, Israel Defense Forces units will remain in the positions they seized in southern Lebanon. However, it's possible that Washington will force withdrawals on Israel from Lebanon, as it did last year in the Gaza Strip. (3)

This allows Netanyahu to claim he was forced into a pause, and we’ll soon see how much of a pause it is. In the current situation, Iran officially regards the illegal war that the US and Israel together on February 28 as involving Lebanon, from which Israel is trying to annex more territory, and Arab oil monarchies siding with the US and allowing the US to establish bases on their territory and use those facilities to wage the war.

Syria has not been front-and-center in the war. But the new Islamist government in Syria – which has drastically curtailed the autonomy and democratic practices by the Kurdish Rojava region, is also in talks with Israel over their illegal occupation of Syrian territory, including the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon. “Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa said talks with Israel have not reached a dead end, but are progressing with ‘great difficulty’ due to Israel's insistence on maintaining a presence on Syrian territory.” (4)

Harel’s report based on his government sources reflects the standard the-US-made-me-do-it position that allows Trump to claims for another two minutes or so that he is the Peace President who has established his Everlasting Peace Plan in the Middle East.

Not that Netanyahu had much of a choice. At this stage of the war, which he entered into largely due to Netanyahu's persuasion, Trump has become the final, if not the exclusive, arbiter. In fact, the contention that Israeli foreign policy was hijacked by the American president has a basis in fact. Just as Trump forced the conclusion of the previous 12-day war against Iran in June, he has now imposed temporary cease-fires in Iran and in Lebanon.

This lets Netanyahu claim to the Israeli public and political parties that he’s a relentless hardliner who would be crushing Israel’s enemies right and left if the US weren’t holding him back. The truth is that the US and Israel initiated a war against Iran that they are losing at the moment. Trump may or may not be willing to take the plunge of making a massive ground invasion. But his clown-show diplomacy that has so far been on display isn’t going to produce the kind of complicated settlement that would be required to actually end the Iran War and create an environment where some long-term structure for actually peace in the Middle East could take place.

And Israel since its founding has never accepted its own official national borders as permanent. Netanyahu is Captain Ahab and Iran is Moby Dick. It’s his life’s dream to turn Iran into a failed state. This is not in any realistic view of the national interest of Israel as it currently exists in its present official borders a policy protecting Israel’s national interests. But Netanyahu and even most of the opposition in the Knesset are committed to further expansionism.

Harel describes the determination of the Netanyahu government to continue the current war in what is probably the most polite way it could be phrased:

The stoppage of fighting on the two fronts voids the war's momentum, and lowers the likelihood of its resumption. Israel is halting the campaign in Lebanon with its craving half-fulfilled. Netanyahu will have a hard time persuading the public that the war's goals were achieved given that Hezbollah is not disarmed and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is still intact. [my emphasis]

Quaint as it may sound in this context, the world’s system of nation-states and of international law does not allow for unprovoked attacks by one sovereign nation on another. Neither Netanyahu nor Trump care about that in principle or in practice, except to the extent that potential victims of attack from the US and Israel can be translated into effective oppositions by enough other countries.

Iran and Hezbollah don’t seem to be ready to surrender:

Trump acceded to Iran's request for a cease-fire in Lebanon, which is aimed at leaving Hezbollah on its feet despite the blow it suffered. Despite their desire for a truce so they can recover, top figures in the Shi'ite organization threatened the Lebanese president and prime minister after they had agreed to a meeting between the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to Washington.

Netanyahu presumably isn’t disturbed by that kind of description of his policies, because it lets him claim that the weak-kneed Americans caved in on this point, not the staunch Netanyahu government who is determinedly pursuing Israel’s territorial ambitions.

This may be the most important part of Harel’s report:

The prime minister [Netanyahu] took an overly optimistic line regarding regime change in Tehran, and Trump was swept up after him. This week, Mossad head David Barnea had to explain that the campaign to topple the regime will continue, even if the war ends. But that depends mainly on what Washington will say, and what a possible agreement between Iran and the U.S. will stipulate. [my emphasis]

Negotiations have to cover a lot

So far, Trump’s negotiations with Iran haven’t been able to produce an end to the war or a new nuclear-nonproliferation agreement after Trump 1.0 just threw out the JCPOA agreement that the Obama Administration negotiated and which was considered a model of an enforceable agreement of this type.

So far, Trump’s negotiations with Iran haven’t been able to produce an end to the war or a new nuclear-nonproliferation agreement after Trump 1.0 just threw out the JCPOA agreement that the Obama Administration negotiated and which was considered a model of an enforceable agreement of this type.

Harel touches on a number of key issues to be resolved if the Trump team somehow finds a way to establish agreements despite their only model of negotiation is Mob protection-racket style. I’m listing some of them as well as some others on which he didn’t focus in his long article. Ask yourself while scanning them if the Trump 2.0 regime has shown anything remotely close to the diplomatic creativity and professionalism resolving them would require.

Reaching a permanent ceasefire between Iran on the one side and the US and Israel on the other. This in itself wouldn’t require resolving all the issues listed here but it would involve several of them.

• Illegal Israeli occupations in Lebanon, and Syria. Gaza and the West Bank are also illegally occupied territories but those are not part of Iran’s goals in the current war.
• Navigation of the Strait of Hormuz
• Navigation of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden next to Yemen
• Iran’s uranium enrichment, including its current supply of enriched uranium
• Iran’s supply of conventional missiles
• Iran’s path to developing a nuclear bomb
• Efforts by Israel and the US to oust the Iranian government including US and Israeli regime-change operations inside Iran
• Iran’s support of Hizbollah and the Houthis
• Reparations to Iran from the US and Israel for damage caused during the current war
• Release of frozen Iranian funds controlled by the US
• The massive US sanctions imposed on Iran
• US bases in the Middle East

I didn’t include human rights issues inside Iran because neither Trump nor Netanyahu actually care about that. And insisting on those would inevitably involve uncomfortable discussion of Israeli colonial practices in the occupied territories and their genocidal actions in Gaza, as well plenty of public reminders of Trump’s ICE Gestapo goons and drastic gaps in the rule of law in the US. We hear a lot about the large numbers of hangings conducted by the Iranian government against protesters, and those are genuinely bad actions. But is the US going to ask Iran to agree to ban capital punishment and offer to do so in the US as a compromise? Israel itself just approved a new apartheid law on capital punishment for Palestinians only; are they going to put that on the negotiating table?

As Harel notes politely: “Despite the Americans' vast military advantage, the gap between the skills of the two sides' negotiators is worrisome. Talks on a nuclear agreement require patience and expertise, and the Iranians are far more adept in those categories than the Americans.” That’s certainly is a worrisome gap! Although I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen the word “worrisome” used as a synonym for “wide as the Grand Canyon.”

He also notes: “Last week, Trump threatened to annihilate the Iranian civilization, and then swiftly announced a new cease-fire. This week he quarreled with the pope, and accused him of being "weak on crime."

Harel is careful to assign responsibility for the whole current mess to … Palestinians: “The lethal flapping of the butterfly's wings, which began with the appalling massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, set in motion a lengthy series of regional changes whose peak was the second attack on Iran initiated by Israel and the United States.” But he goes on to observe drily, “Israel's boasting about their total defeat [of all their enemies] was not backed up on the ground.” Another smooth euphemism, this time meaning “bogus.”

Harel does have a gift for phrasing things politely:

Poised in the middle [between Iran and the US-Israel alliance] is an American president whose comportment is giving rise to growing doubts about his mental condition; an Israeli prime minister who replaced a cautious, suspicious approach to military adventures with a readiness to undertake almost every possible risk to remain in power and evade potential imprisonment, while waging a planned campaign of destroying Israeli democracy and the country's international standing; and a new Iranian supreme leader who was seriously wounded during the assassination of his father, the previous leader, who is in hiding underground and whose status in Tehran's decision-making system remains unclear. [my emphasis]

Also, apparently not having enough trouble on its hands, Israel would like to take on Türkiye militarily, as well! (Türkiye is a NATO ally.)

In his final paragraph Harel offers this observation:

A Pew Research Center poll published last week found that a majority of the American public, even among under-50 Republican voters, has a negative or very negative view of Israel. A pair of Israeli researchers who analyzed the data, Prof. Ted Sasson and Dr. Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis from the Institute for National Security Studies affiliated with Tel Aviv University, describe a total collapse of Israel's standing among young Americans, including among a public that Israel viewed as salient supporters. It's happening even among under-50 Christian Evangelicals.

Trump’s cheerfully posting AI images of himself as Jesus Christ is probably not helpful on the US public-opinion front, either.

Notes:

(1) Rapoport, Meron (2026): Less Jesus, more Genghis Khan: How Netanyahu sees Israel’s place in the world. +972 Magazine 03/31/2026. <https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-genghis-khan-jesus-sparta/> (Accessed : 2026-16-04).

 (2) Matthews, Sean (2026): Saudi Arabia pressed US to secure a Lebanon ceasefire to preserve Iran negotiations, sources say. Middle East Eye 04/16/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-pressed-us-ceasefire-lebanon-preserve-iran-negotiations-sources-say> (Accessed : 2026-17-04).

(3) Harel, Amos (2026): Trump Dictates the Terms in Lebanon and Iran, Leaving Netanyahu Boxed In. Haaretz 04/17/2026). Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-04-17/ty-article/.premium/trump-hijacked-israeli-foreign-policy-so-netanyahu-had-no-say-in-lebanon-truce/0000019d-97f2-d290-afbf-b7f6aed40000?gift=d119d9a0330b4f03b0c4e1cedc417d30> (Accessed : 2026-17-04).

(4) Khoury, Jack (2026): Syria’s al-Sharaa: Israel talks not deadlocked but face 'great difficulty' over presence in Syria. Haaretz 04/17/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-04-17/ty-article-live/trump-says-war-in-iran-should-be-ending-pretty-soon/0000019d-9934-d9bd-abfd-fbf508480000?liveBlogItemId=1200413739#1200413739> Accessed: 2026-17-04).