The politics of history and Germany’s “Staatsräson” in supporting Israel

German journalist Hanno Hauenstein recently wrote about the ongoing complications of Germany’s public rituals around rejecting the crimes of the past, the Nazi era in particular, while also refraining from publicly condemning Israel’s current war on Gaza civilians:

The German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, laid a wreath at [the Jerusalem Holocaust memorial] Yad Vashem this month and invoked the legacy of the German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer. A few hours later, Wadephul stood at a press conference in Jerusalem and expressed “understanding” of Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Friedländer, who had died days earlier aged 103, spent her final years warning against dehumanisation. The contrast could hardly have been starker.

It’s easy to condemn the past when it costs nothing. Speaking out about enduring injustice or the atrocities of your allies takes more courage.

Germany’s current approach to remembrance culture is selective and contradictory. The government relies on “historical responsibility” to refrain from challenging the Israeli government for its abuses in Gaza. Yet at home, the political and media class seems in denial about cultural patronage enabled by fortunes made possible by Nazi-era crimes. [my emphasis] (1)

This is a reminder that the past has to be constantly reinterpreted based on present perspectives. In the best case, those reinterpretations would be reality-based and aimed at drawing constructive lessons.

It’s legitimate for people to look for a “usable past,” i.e., past occurrences that help us understand the problems of the present. That could also be considered a part of researching legal precedents, since that requires making a judgment about how much a present situation can be meaningfully compared to past experiences. It would also be difficult to understand the founding of the United States without the Declaration of Independence. Or the founding of the State of Israel without reference to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 or the British Mandate paper of 1922.

As Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen puts it, “While we often think that being modern means aspiring to leave the past behind with every tick of the clock, reflecting on history is an integral aspect of modernity.” (2)

For perfectly understandable reasons, the Federal Republic of Germany – often referred to as West Germany during the Cold War – has tried to use its relationship with Israel as an ongoing sign that it has understood and accepted its particular responsibility of the Holocaust. Angela Merkel famously went so far in 2008 as to declare, ”This historical responsibility of Germany is part of the Staatsräson [reason of state] of our country. That means, the security of Israel for me as German Chancellor is not up for negotiation.” (3)

Israel’s then-Ambassador to Israel, Rudolf Dressler, had declared in 2005, "The secure existence of Israel lies within the national interest of Germany, [and] is thereby part of our Staatsräson." (4)

In both cases, that was a way of saying that the security of Israel was as critical to Germany as its own national security. Despite being a dramatic way of stating support for Israel’s national existence, it was also a misleading bit of hyperbole. “Reason of state” is a concept that has to do with a particular state, an understanding by that state of what is necessary to its own security and survival, of an individual state. It has to do with that state’s understanding of what is vital for its own preservation.

It’s one thing to say that it’s in a country’s national interest to be an ally of another country, or to support it military or economically. It’s another to say that the German state’s existence actually depends on the existence of the state of Israel, especially if that is interpreted to mean that Germany gives verbal or material support to war crimes or worse by Israel.

Now that Trump 2.0 and the Russia-Ukraine War have initiated a major shift toward Germany (along with the rest of the EU countries) becoming a much more defense-ready military power that also recognizes the need for Europe generally to build up its self-defense capabilities to function far more independently of Washington, Germany will also be less susceptible to pressure from Washington to back Israel unconditionally in actions like the current war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

We are apparently seeing some of that already from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz: (5)

Tom Khaled Würdemann last year framed the context of the discussion this way:

Israel is a state. This means that the "critique of criticism of Israel" lies in a sensitive area: as impersonal entities of violence and the exercise of power, states or their governments deserve to be subject to comprehensive criticism like hardly any other aspect of human society. This applies to Israel and its government as well as to other states and their governments. Alleged war crimes in the Gaza war, illegal settlements in the West Bank, and systematic discrimination against non-Jewish groups such as Palestinian citizens in East Jerusalem, must be clearly identified as such – as often happens.

At the same time, it is clear that antisemitism is flourishing in the shadow of "criticism of Israel". The Jewish state attracts a much higher level of criticism than other states. [Note: More than the US, or Russia, or China?] This criticism regularly ignores the Jewish people's right to security and self-determination and, worst of all, the potential of antisemitism to unite people in a lust for murder.

Therefore, the discussion about antisemitism in relation to Israel must be controversial. [my emphasis in bold] (6)

It’s worth noting here that the protests in the United States against the current genocide Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is carrying out in Gaza, were often led by Jewish protesters. That not only relates to the famous Jewish social justice tradition. But also to the fact that American Jews are more likely to be familiar with the politics and history of Israel than the average Americans. The Christian Zionists are also aware of politics in Israel but are more likely to see it through the very distorted lens of apocalyptic prophecy interpretations that themselves have a strong antisemitic tone. (It’s not only European far-right parties who can be antisemitic and “pro-Israel” at the same time.)

And the sad reality is the state institutions of Israel are letting the war against Palestinians undercut the rule of law in Israel itself. Rule-of-law is an essential part of democracy, and vice versa. And Netanyahu has been pushing hard to undercut democracy, including the rule of law.

In a petition to the High Court of Justice, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel requested that the International Red Cross [IRC] be permitted to visit the country's security prisons. The panel consisted of Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, the deputy president, Justice Noam Sohlberg, and Justice Daphne Barak-Erez. But in practice, no petition was deliberated. Time after time, the state requested an extension to the deadline for submitting its response, and time after time the justices consented.

"There is no no no petition without without without a response," attorneys Oded Feller and Roni Pelli wrote in their reply, borrowing from a famous Israeli children's song. "So where where where where where where where where where where where where where is the response?"

That might have been amusing were it not that this was a petition "that addresses the heart of human rights," as the attorneys noted. The humorous protest made no difference. The state continued to submit requests for additional extensions, and another seven were granted (making a total of 18). In the meantime, testimony about the starvation of prisoners and violence against them continue to mount, but the petition is still pending – and no IRC representative has visited an Israeli prison. [my emphasis] (7)

A key element of Netanyahu’s push to establish a fully authoritarian government has been to try to wipe out the Israeli court system's independence. He’s gone a long way toward accomplishing that.

Notes:

(1) Hauenstein, Hanno (2025): Germany trumpets its reckoning with its Nazi past – except when it’s inconvenient. Guardian 05/24/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/24/germany-nazi-past-gaza-media-prize-state> (Accessed: 2025-24-05).

(2) Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa (2025): Reviving the Idea of a “Usable Past”. Yale University Press 07/25/2023. <https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2023/07/25/reviving-the-idea-of-a-usable-past/> (Accessed: 2025-24-05).

(3) My translation to English.

(4) Kaim, Markus (01/30/2015): Israels Sicherheit als deutsche Staatsräson. Was bedeutet das konkret? Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte [APuZ] 01/30/2015. <https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/199894/israels-sicherheit-als-deutsche-staatsraeson/> (Accessed: 2025-24-05).

(5) German Chancellor: Israel's Gaza offensive 'no longer justifiable' under pretense of fighting Hamas. DW News YouTube channel 05/26/2025. <https://youtu.be/lcMMqK0-tfM?si=EGLJSzZWJvp7HP4V> (Accessed: 2025-24-05).

(6) Würdemann, Tom Khaled (2024): Israel und der Antisemitismus: Antisemitismusdefinitionen im Kontext des Nahostkonflikts. APuZ 06/14/2024. <https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/antisemitismus-2024/549358/israel-und-der-antisemitismus/> (Accessed: 2025-24-05). My translation to English.

(7) Hasson, Nir & Maanit, Chen (2025): A Lost Battle for Human Rights: Throughout the War Israel's High Court Has Denied All Requests to Protect Gazans. Haaretz 05/23/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/magazine/2025-05-23/ty-article-magazine/.premium/throughout-the-war-israels-high-court-denied-requests-to-protect-gazans-human-rights/00000196-f8ac-d7c4-a9b6-fcae72440000> (Accessed: 2025-25-05).

US foreign policy ghoul happy with Trump’s new Israel team (Yes, I’m talking about Elliot Abrams)

The Menachem Begin Heritage Center has just published this podcast featuring an interview with Elliot Abrams, a member in good standing of the foreign policy establishment and one of the most ghoulish figures in the history of American foreign policy. (1)

Why does he enjoy that distinction? Charlie Pierce explains in his signature style how Abrams earned that title during the Reagan Administration:

Abrams fronted for murderous regimes up and down Central America. At the time, our old friend, Roberto D'Aubuisson, the [El Salvador] death squad jefe, was being feted as a celebrity by the American conservative movement. (Later, he would be invited to a private dinner with the D.C. conservative power elite not long after he reportedly tried to kill a U.S. ambassador with a car bomb. One of the sponsors of the dinner was...wait for it...the National Pro-Life PAC.) Abrams and D'Aubuisson were a match made several degrees south of heaven.

From there, Abrams kept popping up every time there was a Republican administration in need of a proven public liar willing to support the death squads du jour. He fronted for Efrain Rios Montt, the genocidal leader of Guatemala. ...

At roughly the same time, Abrams got in up to his eyeballs in the Central American half of the Iran Contra scandal. This required his special skills. In 1986, he appeared before a congressional inquiry and, of course, he dealt in his own special kind of non-fact. He did it so well that Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating this fiasco, was prepared to indict him for several felonies. Abrams copped a plea and the charges were reduced to misdemeanors. Then, in December of 1992, in an obvious attempt to cover his own...er..involvement, President George H. W. Bush pardoned everyone except Shoeless Joe Jackson on his way out of town. This included Elliot Abrams, who, ever since, has been gum on the shoe of American foreign policy. [my emphasis] (2)

Under President Joe Biden, Abrams served as the State Department Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela.

This guy, the death squad enabler in some of the most infamous US meddling in Latin America – and that’s saying a lot – thinks Donald Trump’s announced Israel policy team is awesome. In this interview, he refers at least twice to the occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” the term the Zionist settler movement uses to refer to the area. That is part of the Eretz Israel, Greater Israel aka, from the river to the sea - which Netanyahu’s governing coalition has endorsed as its goal.

As a Haaretz editorial described it in 2023:

Israel has been carrying out de facto annexation in the West Bank for many years, with Israeli civilian authorities dictating the policy of the Civil Administration. All previous Israeli governments, however, have been cautious about interfering with the formal governing structure in the occupied West Bank and have been careful to keep the occupation as a military government.

The concentration of powers in an occupying military force, temporarily until an agreed solution is reached on the status of the occupied territory, is a principle of international law – an expression of the important prohibition against obtaining sovereignty that was introduced in the wake of World War II. The prohibition against annexing occupied territory is one of the foundations of the new world order that was built on the ruins of the world wars, and its goal is to eliminate one of the incentives for going to war. [my emphasis] (3)

In an article earlier this year, Abrams sneered at the idea of a “two-state solution.” This is now clearly an unrealistic option. But it still is the official negotiating position of the US and other Western countries, as Abrams knows very well. In fact, the practical choice is between an apartheid state “from the river to the sea” with Jewish citizens and disenfranchised Palestinians., or a one-state solution in which the current Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza become a secular and democratic state. This is a version of what has really always been the Israeli position: no Palestinian state and no place for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Ever. (4)

How helpful Abrams has been as a Biden official is illustrated by this fact:

Just weeks before the [October 7, 2023] attack [on Israel by Hamas from Gaza], Elliott Abrams, a longtime U.S. operative who is now a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, exemplified this kind of intelligence failure when he advised a congressional committee that Hamas was focusing its operations in the West Bank, not Gaza.

Hamas “wants to restrain attacks from Gaza,” Abrams told Congress. This is because “it wants to avoid Israeli strikes on Gaza, where it is governing. It wants a level of calm there. It wants the border crossings open.”

Despite these analytical errors, U.S. officials have maintained accurate intelligence on Gaza. Since the May 2021 war, the highest-level U.S. officials have understood that the cycle of violence would likely recur unless conditions in Gaza improved. (5)

Heckuva job, Elliott, heckuva job!

Notes:

(1) What Trump’s return will mean for Israel - Elliott Abrams. Begin Center YouTube channel 12/04/2024. <https://youtu.be/TKxYGxdZrRw?si=eUmz6VhHNXSHsw3W> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

(2) Pierce, Charles (2023): Congratulations to Elliott Abrams, Hype Man for Murderous Regimes Past, On His New Job. Esquire 07/05/2023. <https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a44444388/elliott-abrams-biden-appointment/> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

(3) Israel's Cabinet Just Advanced Full-fledged Apartheid in the West Bank. Haaretz 02/26/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-02-26/ty-article/.premium/israels-cabinet-just-advanced-full-fledged-apartheid-in-the-west-bank/00000186-8a7e-d525-a9ef-9efe63060000> (Accessed: 2024-07-12). Note: This was seven months before the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.

(4) Abrams, Elliott (2024): The Two-State Delusion. Tablet 02/01/2024. <https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/two-state-delusion> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

(5) Hunt, Edward (2023): The Real U.S. Intelligence Failure in Gaza. Foreign Policy in Focus 10/12/2023. <https://fpif.org/the-real-u-s-intelligence-failure-in-gaza/> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

Netanyahu, Iran, the US and a widening war

Business Insider reports on the revelation by the New York Times that Israel apparently just did major sabotage on Iran’s energy infrastructure.

Iran and Israel are not officially at war with Israel, though Israel claims that Iran-aligned groups like Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen are Iranian proxies. Iran is allied with both those groups.

"This shows that the covert networks operating in Iran have expanded their target list and advanced beyond just military and nuclear sites," Shahin Modarres, a security analyst focused on the Middle East, told the Times. "It's a major challenge and reputation blow for Iran's intelligence and security agencies."

While Israel has targeted military and nuclear sites in Iran before, this attack hit the Islamic Republic's vital energy infrastructure.

"The level of impact was very high because these are two significant pipelines going south to north. We have never seen anything like this in scale and scope," said Homayoun Falakshahi, a senior energy analyst at Kpler, per The Times. (1)

It’s important to keep in mind that Bibi Netanyahu for years has been trying to get the US involved in a direct war against Iran. A goal for which neoconservative hawks have been enthusiastic.

Middle East Eye reported in December:

Over the years Israel has been linked to numerous strikes in Iran, primarily targeting the country’s nuclear program, but the country rarely publicly confirms its role in the attacks.

In January of this year [2023], Iran reported a large explosion in the city of Isfahan which was caused by a failed drone attack on a military plant in the central city, according to authorities.

Tehran did not say who launched the attack against the plant but suspicion fell on Israel, which is also accused of starting a series of fires in industrial, military, and nuclear sites across Iran.

In 2021, Tehran vowed to seek revenge against Israel after it accused Tel Aviv of sabotaging the Natanz nuclear power plant. (2) [my emphasis]

Almost a year ago, the Times of Israel carried a report headlined, ”Netanyahu said to huddle repeatedly with military brass over possible attack on Iran.” (3)

Netanyahu has been at this for a while:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities caused such “panic” in the US that the Obama administration rushed to accept an Iranian proposal to open negotiations on a nuclear deal in 2012, before economic sanctions against the regime had taken their full toll, according to the author of a new book on Israel’s espionage and security agencies.

The Israeli prime minister’s bellicose rhetoric, his preparations for an attack, and his approval of the Mossad’s continued assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, thus prompted the very deal he has so bitterly opposed, said Ronen Bergman, whose “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” is published in the US next week. [2018] (4)

But it goes back even further:

In 1992, MK [Member of the Knesset] Benjamin Netanyahu said that within three to five years Iran would have a nuclear bomb. In 1993, he published an opinion piece in the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth in which he predicted that by 1999 Iran would have a nuclear bomb, and argued that this was the greatest threat to [Israel].

In July 1996, newly minted Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a special session of the U.S. Congress in which he warned of an Iranian bomb and said that the regime was approaching this goal with worrisome speed. In September 2002 “worried citizen” Netanyahu appeared once again before Congress. He encouraged its members to go to war against Iraq and said that there was “no doubt” that Saddam Hussein was approaching an atom bomb and his nuclear program was so advanced that he has centrifuges the size of “washing machines” (Saddam did not have a nuclear program). Netanyahu claimed that Saddam also had biological and chemical weapons (he didn’t) and warned that the moment the United States attacked, Saddam would launch these weapons against Israel and most interesting of all – he predicted that Saddam’s fall would have a particularly positive effect on the entire region, and might even lead to the fall of the regimes in Iran and Libya. (5) [my emphasis]

And he was still at it a couple of months before last year’s October 7 attack by Hamas:

Whenever things get difficult, complicated or politically untenable, you can always count on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rant and issue grave apocalyptic warnings about Iran. After all, stopping Iran's nuclear program and saving Western civilization along the way is the defining historic role of his life. This is 1938 all over again, Iran is Nazi Germany and Netanyahu sees himself as the reluctant Winston Churchill empowered by history to stand up to the threat. ...

Even judging by his own standards of endless shamelessness and audacious chutzpah, Netanyahu's criticism of the U.S.-Iranian understandings being reported in the media this weekend stands out. “Arrangements that do not dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure do not stop its nuclear program,” said a statement Saturday evening from the Prime Minister’s Office.

All this from the man whose recklessness brought Iran to the nuclear threshold. The man who opposed the original nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), went behind then-President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s backs in 2015 and sanctimoniously told Congress there was a “better deal” but, unsurprisingly, never came up with one.

This is the man who enthusiastically encouraged then-President Donald Trump to withdraw from the deal in 2018, because “it’s a bad agreement,” and because Trump, who negotiated real estate deals in Manhattan and sees himself as the ultimate dealmaker, could of course get a better nuclear deal with Iran.

This is the man who hoped Trump would launch a military strike against Iran, and the same man who egregiously failed to produce or even propose an alternative policy. This consequently led Iran to uninterruptedly enrich uranium – which brings us to where we are now. (6) [my emphasis]

It has been Netanyahu’s long-standing goal to involve the United States in a war against Iran.


Notes:

(1) Rommen, Rebecca (2024): Israel strikes 'reputation blow' to Iran with sabotage attacks on its gas pipelines, says report. Business Insider 02/17/2024. <https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-disrupts-gas-heat-supplies-israel-in-new-attacks-2024>  (Accessed: 2024-18-02).

(2) War on Gaza: Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett calls on US to bring down Iran. Middle East Eye 12/29/2023. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israel-former-pm-naftali-bennett-us-bring-down-iran> (Accessed: 2024-18-02).

(3) Netanyahu said to huddle repeatedly with military brass over possible attack on Iran. Times of Israel 02/22/2023. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-huddles-with-military-top-brass-as-israel-looks-to-rattle-some-sabers/> (Accessed: 2024-18-02).

(4) Horovitz, David (2018): Netanyahu’s threats to attack Iran ‘panicked’ Obama into nuke talks, author says. Times of Israel 01/26/2018. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-threats-to-attack-iran-panicked-obama-into-nuke-talks-author-says/>  (Accessed: 2024-18-02).

(5) Drucker, Raviv (2015): Netanyahu's Long History of Crying 'Wolf'. Haaretz 03/08/2015. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2015-03-08/ty-article/.premium/on-iran-netanyahu-cries-danger-again/0000017f-ec6a-ddba-a37f-ee6e1a770000?lts=1708245581723> (Accessed: 2024-18-02).

(6) Pinkas, Alon (2023): Sidelined, Desperate Netanyahu Is Back to Apocalyptic Warnings on Iran. Haaretz 08/13/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-13/ty-article/.premium/sidelined-desperate-netanyahu-is-back-to-apocalyptic-warnings-on-iran/00000189-eef1-db6f-a1e9-eef7b10a0000> (Accessed: 2024-18-02).

Biden's Israel policy and the complications Trump created for it

H-Diplo has a helpful new essay on the current status of US relations with Israel and their significance in other areas of US diplomacy: The Trump Presidency, the Question of Palestine, and Biden’s Business as Usual 05/27/2021, by Dirk Moses, editor of the scholarly Journal of Genocide Research, and Victor Kattan, editor of the book Violent Radical Movements in the Arab World (2019). (PDF here.)

Moses and Kattan stress:

... the necessity of recognizing how the conflict between Israel and Palestine has not commanded bipartisan consensus in Washington since the time of the Obama presidency. Nor has the US’s Iran policy, with which it intersects. Concerned about Obama’s Middle East initiatives, Republican politicians and Israel advocacy groups colluded with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resist Obama’s policies on Iran and Israeli settlements. Thus politicized, different parts of the U.S. political class, with aligned domestic constituencies, identify with different factions of the Israeli political class: for instance, Democrats support centrist anti-Netanyahu forces, while all sides try to co-opt a secular, technocratic Palestinian leadership in Ramallah into their respective visions. [my emphasis]

One of the more disturbing of many disturbing moments in the intransigent Republican opposition to the Obama-Biden Administration was when the Republican majority in Congress invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress without an invitation from President Obama in order to lobby the US Congress against the US President's policy of the moment, particularly the Iranian nuclear arms control agreement. (Krishnadev Calamur, In Speech To Congress, Netanyahu Blasts 'A Very Bad Deal' With Iran NPR 03/03/2015; Chris McGreal, How Netanyahu's speech to Congress has jeopardised US-Israel relations Guardian 02/24/2015)

The Democrats are still enormously weighted down by its bipartisanship obsession, so this didn't produce the kind of sharp criticism of Israel and his Prime Minister from Democrats that one might have expected. But that moment did illustrate a significant turning point in the two parties' respective position on Israel. That mainly means that the Democrats stuck with their distinctly deferential position toward even very dubious actions by Israeli governments while the Republicans became even more receptive to the positions of Netanyahu and other far-right Israeli politicians.

But the Biden-Harris Administration's position on the recent Israeli-Palestinian clashes was part of the bipartisan continuity in US policy:

... the asymmetric exchange of missiles between Hamas in Gaza and Israel in May 2021 has its roots in expansionist Israeli policies in Jerusalem and the West Bank that had been greenlighted by the Trump administration, and which the Biden administration has not rolled back. In not doing so, it is adhering to long-set patterns of US foreign policy.

One of the key policies that was an actual achievement of the Trump-Pence Administration - an extremely problematic one, but an achievement - was the Abraham Accords, the agreement that normalized Israel's relations with the Muslim countries of Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). (Sean Mathews, Despite Gaza bloodshed, few see Abraham Accords derailing Aljazeera 05/21/2021).

Moses and Kattan how the blundering, blinkered Trump-Pence foreign policy created at least one serious complication a considerable distance from Israel:

Regarding Morocco’s recognition of Israel, this came in exchange for the Trump administration’s recognition of Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. This was another attempt to legitimise an illegal act in international law, and again, it remains unclear whether the Biden administration will reverse this decision. Given that the recognition of Western Sahara was tied to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, the administration may be less sanguine about reversing it. But the erosion of core rules of international law, such as the non-recognition of territory acquired through the use of force, could embolden other revisionist powers to press their own territorial claims for seizing or retaining control over other “disputed” territories, which may not necessarily serve U.S. interests – for example in Taiwan, the South China Sea, or Ukraine. [my emphasis]

In one sense, of course, international diplomacy runs on hypocrisy. But international law matters, and the US position on one such issue of illegal annexation can affect the positions other nations are willing to take when the US invokes international law in other situations.

They also cite other recognitions of annexations to which the Trump-Pence Administration agreed:

This strategic continuity in the Trump Presidency’s Palestine and Israel policy must be weighed against evidence of discontinuity in key domains. Whether in style (the bullying of Palestinians by closing the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s [PLO] diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C., and cutting funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East [UNWRA]), or in substance (consenting to the annexation of the Golan, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and the greenlighting of Israeli settlements, ‘gifts’ given to the Netanyahu government seemingly without any concessions in return), the diplomatic novelty is impossible to ignore. [my emphasis]

Diplomacy often moves slowly. Obviously! But it's hard to see how the long-sought two-state solution can come into being now.

If the two-state solution remains the preferred solution for the “international community,” then the Biden administration’s refusal to rein in Israeli expansionism will surely signal its official demise. ...

Doing nothing is a choice, then, one with increasing domestic and diplomatic costs, but so far the signs are that the administration believes they are lower than expending capital on reigning in Israeli expansionism. Biden must recall the hornets’ nest of opposition that Obama stirred when he pushed for a settlement freeze. ...

Instead, observers who are awake to this reality are imagining a future in which all people who live in Israeli-controlled territory between the Jordan and Mediterranean enjoy equal rights. The question is whether such a vision can be attained in one state with a Palestinian majority that would defeat the very purpose of the Zionist project. Or whether a confederation, or a two-state plan similar to that enshrined in General Assembly 181 (II) of 29 November 1947 that provided for the establishment of two states could be reimagined as the basis for new conversations between Israelis and Palestinians today: an economic union with open borders, minority safeguards, and the protection of private property without discrimination. [my emphasis]

If a durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians were ever seriously the goal of US policy - and at least for some people, it was - it has failed. Not suddenly with the latest spate of violence, but slowly, over decades. The US needs to start make much more practical calculations about its real interests in supporting the plans of Netanyahu's government in the short run.

The US gives large amounts of aid to Israel in various ways. That gives the US a lot of leverage. Repeatedly and continually reassuring Israel's governments that nothing they do will affect the amount of support the US provides will be seen by Israeli governments and by the rest of the world as unqualified support for Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.

Realism and pragmatism needed on Israel-Palestine, but American policymakers find those very difficult

The current outbreak of violence in Israel-Palestine, clearly initiated by Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government, currently facing the dilemma of being unable to form a new government after elections, is obviously developing quickly at the moment. The Israeli attack on worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque was a very dramatic, highly symbolic act of violence and contempt for not only Palestinians but Muslims generally. (Oliver Holmes and Peter Beaumont, Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem and Peter Beaumont Guardian 05/10/2021; Frank Andrews, Al-Aqsa under attack: How Israel turned holy site into a battleground Middle East Eye 05/12/2021)

Juan Cole has a suggestion for how we should describe it at this point: "a performance of Israeli dominance and Palestinian defiance." (Gaza and Israel’s Kidnapper’s Dilemma: Keeping a Million Children Brutalized in its dark Basement Informed Comment 05/15/2021)

He calls attention to the dramatic disparity of power between the two sides:

Israel’s staccato bombardment campaigns against Gaza (2008-9, 2014, 2021) are not a war. Israel has an army, Gaza does not. Israel has a sophisticated Air Force with 581 aircraft, including fighter jets and helicopter gunships. The Palestinians in Gaza don’t have a conventional army or navy or air force, don’t have tanks or aircraft or artillery. Most of their rockets are high school science experiments (they have a handful of longer range rockets). The Izzuddin Qassam Brigades have a few tens of thousands of poorly armed and trained volunteer militiamen. If they tried to mount a conventional assault on Israel they would all be killed in an afternoon. The Asian Spa killer in Atlanta killed more people than Hamas has since the beginning of the current hostilities.

Pragmatic realism on the Israel-Palestine conflict has been desperately hard to find in American politics. It's not that no one has been trying. Two books that appeared during the Cheney-Bush Administration, when conflict with Muslim countries and groups took center stage in American politics represent two significant exceptions. One was The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007) by the über-Realist scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. This combined a realist analysis of general US policy toward Israel with a fact-based discussion of groups lobbying for US support for Israeli policies, a subject that has been used in dishonest ways by anti-Semitic propagandists. Having two of the most important American foreign policy intellectuals lay out this analysis was an important step in demystifying the whole topic.

Jimmy Carter's 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is the other. The idea that Israel was in real danger of making a two-state solution a practical impossibility, and that they would be left with an apartheid state, with a Jewish majority and a Palestinian minority deprived of equal civil rights and many denied basic human rights, forcibly held in desperate conditions.

American policy didn't change for the better. Cheney and Bush saw Israel's rightwing governments as allies in the War on Terror against Muslims, and made no serious attempt to forward the Israel-Palestine peace process. The Obama Administration was so stridently anti-Muslim. But the Obama-Biden Administration was generally willing to give Netanyahu's government free rein, as well, and also did little to advance the peace process. And the Trump-Pence Administration was completely deferential, even recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a major issue in an attempt to end the Israeli occupation in a way that would bring actual peace.

There's certainly no guarantee that the Biden-Harris Administration will do better, though the public should demand they do. But there are signs that there might be important shifts in American understandings of the conflict. The two-state solution seems less feasible than ever. And it's at least no longer as shocking as it was in 2006 to talk matter-of-factly about the possibility and reality of "apartheid" in Israel. And there's at least some hope that a more realistic discussions among politicians and at least some of the establishment press about American pragmatic foreign policy interests, human rights, and international law in regard to Israel than we've had for a long time.

But it's not as though there isn't plenty of solid information and analysis on the subject available for those who are motivated to look.

Zaha Hassan and Daniel Levy provide a good example with Biden's Old Playbook Won't End Israeli-Palestinian Violence Foreign Policy 05/13/2021:

They also have a good analysis of why the latest developments in Israel-Palestine is a problem for the foreign-policy branding that the Biden-Harris Administration is attempting. As they note, "the United States is indisputably the most consequential external actor in this arena." And however cynically pragmatic professed US concerns about human rights problems in other countries so often are, the "soft power" of the US in matters of democratic governance and human rights really is A Thing. And the (so far thankfully tentative) new-cold-war posture toward China has relevant implications on Mideast issues: "The 'America is back' message has been all about a law-abiding, norm-promoting, rights-respecting nation leading a resurgence of democracies. ... It's not hard to imagine the refrain in Beijing: 'You say Uyghurs, we say Palestinians.'"

Aaron David Miller and Daniel Kurtzer write about the current situation in Battle between Israel and Hamas is an unwelcome surprise for Biden CNN 05/12/2021: "It is doubtful whether the current crisis in Jerusalem -- which has now grown into a larger battle between Israel and Hamas -- will impel the Biden administration to launch a full-throated effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But, at a minimum, it should compel the administration to do everything it can to defuse this dimension of the crisis."

The lame duck Trump Administration isn't really into this whole bipartisan harmony idea

“Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” https://t.co/2F4FpGgWmp

— Slate (@Slate) November 28, 2020

No matter how hard establishment Democrats try, Republicans just do not seem to value Bipartisanship for its own sake!

Isaac Arnsdorf reports for ProPublica, Trump Races to Weaken Environmental and Worker Protections, and Implement Other Last-Minute Policies, Before Jan. 20 11/25/2020

Even as Trump and his allies officially refuse to concede the Nov. 3 election, the White House and federal agencies are hurrying to finish dozens of regulatory changes before Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. The rules range from long-simmering administration priorities to last-minute scrambles and affect everything from creature comforts like showerheads and clothes washers to life-or-death issues like federal executions and international refugees. They impact everyone from the most powerful, such as oil drillers, drugmakers and tech startups, to the most vulnerable, such as families on food stamps, transgender people in homeless shelters, migrant workers and endangered species. ProPublica is tracking those regulations as they move through the rule-making process.

One change they are trying to rush through is to change Department of Agriculture regulation to allow chicken processors to speed up their production lines, which "could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella."

But, to be fair, the QAnon Republicans may think that salmonella outbreaks are a HOAX. You know, just like COVID-19.

And why not also sabotage nuclear nonproliferation and maybe try to start a war with Iran on the way out the door? Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist, assassinated near Tehran BBC News 11/27/2020:

Trita Parsi discusses the grim situation with Iran in How the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist can sabotage diplomacy & start a war Responsible Statecraft 11/27/2020.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blames Israel for the recent assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was "head of the ministry of defence's research and innovation organisation" and who "was clearly still a key player" in the Iranian nuclear program. (Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: Iran vows to avenge scientist's assassination BBC News 11/28/2020)

Of course, we don't know at this point who was behind Fahrizadeh's assassination, and who knows when if ever the information will become public. Trita Parsi explains why it plausible to think that Israel was behind it. He also explains the international alignment in which Israel and Saudi Arabia perceive it in their interest to have the US go to war against Iran. It's a type of let's-you-and-him-fight kind of diplomacy on their point. Provoking military tensions and conflicts among other countries, of course, is nothing at all new in international relations.

Parsi explains:

While it’s highly unlikely that Israel would have carried out the assassination without a green light from the Trump administration, a more direct U.S. role cannot be entirely discounted. The Trump administration has reportedly run several joint sabotage operations with Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the past year and relied in part on Israeli intelligence in carrying out the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani outside the Baghdad airport last January. Earlier this month, Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of attacking Iran with his top national-security advisers, while it was just last week that the administration’s most prominent Iran hawk, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, well as leaders of Iran’s adversaries in the Persian Gulf, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. [my emphasis]

In any event, conducting attacks in Iran has few downsides for Israel right now. Iran could lash out and spark a broader conflict that sucks in the United States, bringing about a U.S.-Iran confrontation that Netanyahu has long sought.

Or, if Iran sits tight to wait to deal with President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is highly unlikely to impose any costs on other Israeli provocations.  [my emphasis]

Julian Borger (Iran scientist's assassination appears intended to undermine nuclear deal Guardian 11/27/2020):

Israel is widely agreed to be the most likely perpetrator. Mossad is reported to have been behind a string of assassinations of other Iranian nuclear scientists – reports Israeli officials have occasionally hinted were true.

According to former officials, the Obama administration leaned on Israel to discontinue those assassinations in 2013, as it started talks with Tehran that led two years later to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by which Iran accepted constraints on its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

It would be a fair guess that Joe Biden would also oppose such assassinations when he takes office on 20 January and tries to reconstitute the JCPOA – which has been left wounded but just about alive in the wake of Donald Trump’s withdrawal in 2018.

He quotes Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “The objective behind the killing wasn’t to hinder the nuclear programme but to undermine diplomacy.”

It's also a reminder that whatever Trump's America First foreign policy may have been, it was not a peace policy.