Bracing for new escalation by Israel against Gaza civilians

The dreary diplomatic show - around Bibi Netanyahu's all-too-real war against Gaza civilians - goes on, as Laura Rozen reports:

President Biden in a call today urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send a senior interagency team to Washington in the coming days to discuss alternative ways to achieve their goals of defeating Hamas other than an Israeli ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said.

“Today, President Biden asked the Prime Minister to send a senior interagency team… to Washington in the coming days to hear U.S. concerns about Israel's current Rafah planning and to lay out an alternative approach that would target key Hamas elements in Rafah and secure the Egypt/Gaza border without a major ground invasion,” Sullivan told journalists at the White House briefing today (March 18), following the first Biden/Netanyahu call in a month.

“The Prime Minister agreed that he would send a team,” Sullivan said. “Obviously, he has his own point of view on a Rafah operation, but he agreed that he would send a team to Washington to have this discussion and have this engagement. And we look forward to those discussions.” (1)

With every week that passes in this war now in its sixth month with no end in sight, it becomes harder to take statement like that from the White House as anything but public-relations fluff.

The recent incidents involving the Israeli army's 98th Division Commander, Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfuss, and 99th Division Commander, Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram, are but a symptom of the disintegration of the IDF's chain of command, which is far more severe than previously perceived.

Not even a faint reservation was heard from the IDF's general staff in November, when the commander of the army's 36th Armored Division, Brig. Gen. David Bar Kalifa, issued a handwritten battle directive to his troops, calling on them to take revenge on the Palestinians.

Is there any wonder that when Bar Kalifa was ordered to move his forces outside of Gaza, senior army officials suspected that their directives were intentionally disregarded? (2)

Diplomatic rhetoric is hard enough in general for the public to sort through. It’s especially hard right now to tell how much of the Biden Administration’s public signaling to Israel is seriously meant to restrain Israel from targeting and starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza, how much is political trial-balloon efforts, and how much is cynical cover for continuing to back Netanyahu’s war at this point.

But if the Biden Administration seriously intends to restrain Netanyahu’s government, it’s hard to see how it can be done without a cutoff of US arms supplies. Even the qualification that the US might cut off all but “defensive” weapons seems like a cynical dodge at the current moment.

This week’s report from the Washington Post doesn’t give us reason to have confidence in the integrity of Biden’s Israel policy and his public statements defending it:

On Oct. 27, three weeks into Israel’s punishing counterattack in Gaza, top Biden officials privately told a small group assembled at the White House what they would not say in public: Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets.

The group - top foreign policy officials from the Biden administration and previous ones - also discussed the apparent lack of an Israeli plan for defeating Hamas despite repeated U.S. prodding, according to three people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private exchange.

“We never had a clear sense that the Israelis had a definable and achievable military objective,” said one of those familiar with the meeting. “From the very beginning, there’s been a sense of us not knowing how the Israelis were going to do what they said they were going to do.”

Publicly, however, the Biden administration was providing Israel unfettered support in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, when Hamas militants murdered 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. On the same day as the private meeting, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the U.S. was imposing no “red lines” on Israel’s military campaign. (3)

If you want to hear the broad issues over Israel-Palestine argued out at some length, here is a discussion that comes in just a couple of minutes of five hours. (4)



The four guys left-to-right in the YouTube image are podcaster Destiny, Benny Morris, Mouin Rabbani, and Norman Finkelstein. As the YouTube description notes, “Norman Finkelstein and Benny Morris are historians. Mouin Rabbani is a Middle East analyst. Steven Bonnell (aka Destiny) is a political livestreamer.”

Finkelstein is extremely well-informed on the relevant historical issues and has been very critical of Israel’s occupation policies, of the Zionist ideology, and of Israel’s instrumental use of Holocaust memory. Benny Morris is also a respected historian, whose work has been important in describing the extent to which the founding of Israel involved deliberate mass expulsion of Palestinians, even though he is takes a very hawkish position in the current situation. Mouin Rabbani is highly critical of the Netanyahu regime and its current policies; he writes regularly for Jadilliya. Bonnell is a rightwing podcaster who apparently specializes in being a fast-talking twit.

Krystal Ball focuses on Norm Finkelstein takedown of Bonnell in this report. (5) When someone is taking this approach of which many rightwingers of obviously fond of just talking over those differing with you to drown out what you’re saying, what Finkelstein does is probably the best you can do. Krystal describes Bonnell’s approach as a “combination of ignorance, willful blindness, and debate-bro tricks of the trade.”

Notes:

(1) Rozen, Laura (2024): Biden asks Israel PM to send team to discuss alternatives to Rafah invasion. Diplomatic 03/18/2024. (Accessed: 2024-19-03).

(2) Levy, Yahil (2024): The War in Gaza Exposes a Disintegrated Israeli Army. Haaretz 03/19/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-03-19/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-war-in-gaza-exposes-a-disintegrated-israeli-army/0000018e-5309-d282-a19f-7fd999950000> (Accessed: 2024-19-03).

(3) Abutaleb, Yasmeen & Hudson, John (2024): How Biden became embroiled in a Gaza conflict with no end in sight. Washington Post 03/18/2024. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/biden-israel-gaza-rafah-palestinians/> (Accessed: 2024-20-03).

(4) Israel-Palestine Debate: Finkelstein, Destiny, M. Rabbani & Benny Morris. Lex Fridman YouTube channel 05/14/2024. (Accessed: 2024-14-05).

(5) Norm Finkelstein DOGWALKS Destiny In Israel Debate. Breaking Points YouTube channel 03/19/2024. (Accessed: 2024-14-05).