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Shot on location at the Askar refugee camp in the Jenin area, UNRWA policies and practices encourage the latest wave of martyrs in murder sprees and terror attacks in Israel.
Cultural challenges: Israel’s need to speak the language of Middle Eastern diplomacy
The responses of Israeli elites to statements from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and the White House concerning the potential recognition of Israel by Saudi Arabia reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the Middle Eastern mindset. Instead of recognizing the intricacies and complexities of diplomatic relations, they hastily emphasized the benefits of such recognition, benefits that are evident to the Saudi authorities themselves and require no endorsement from Israel.
The enthusiastic response from Israelis served only to weaken their negotiating stance. After all, prudent Middle Easterners do not extol a product in the marketplace before haggling over its price. These impulsive reactions underscore a larger misconception among Israelis about the cultural and value systems that shape policies in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia.
Numerous Israeli commentators assume that because both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are Arab Gulf autocracies, the Saudi monarchy will follow the UAE’s path in normalizing relations with Israel. This perspective overlooks the profound ideological and strategic differences between the two nations.
The UAE has focused on positioning itself as the cosmopolitan commercial and financial hub of the Middle East and South Asia, even accommodating the construction of a Hindu temple to cater to the spiritual needs of South Asian guest workers. In contrast, Saudi Arabia, as the guardian of Islam’s holiest sites, takes immense pride in its role as the spiritual heart of the ummah, the worldwide community of Islamic believers.
While Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) may aspire to emulate the UAE’s economic and technological progress through normalization with Israel, the Saudi kingdom would face significant repercussions for such recognition. Deep-seated Muslim animosity toward Israel and Zionism persists, extending beyond self-interested elites to permeate the Arab and Muslim world.
Even more democratic Arab nations, like Tunisia and Iraq, deeply harbor anti-Israel rhetoric and policies. Acknowledging Israel could tarnish Saudi Arabia’s standing in the Muslim world, particularly among detractors who view its leaders as pro-American. Moreover, such recognition could bolster nations like Iran and Indonesia, which also vie for the spiritual leadership of Islam; not to mention Qatar, a pro-Muslim Brotherhood ideological adversary wielding considerable influence in the Arab world via its Al Jazeera Media Network.
These challenges are compounded by the composition of Israel’s current government coalition. The statements and actions of Israeli leaders, especially concerning religious sites like al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian state issue, complicate any potential peace agreement with Saudi Arabia. This is especially true considering that any escalation leading to loss of life in Gaza or Lebanon after such an agreement could damage the reputation of the House of Saud.
To contextualize the religious and ideological barriers facing Saudi elites, it’s worth noting that the Vatican only established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1993, much later than all other Catholic countries. This reluctance was driven by sensitivity surrounding Jerusalem and the Holy Land, a sentiment even more pronounced among Muslim leaders.
Unlike the ecclesiastical Canon Law, Islamic jurisprudence asserts ownership over both Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.
In light of these factors, the most pragmatic approach for Israel in the short and medium term is to expand informal economic, scientific, and cultural ties with Saudi Arabia that do not carry the stigma of official Saudi recognition. Over time, these connections can foster relationships and yield benefits that may overcome die-hard opposition to Israel.
Israeli and Jewish leaders should also lay the groundwork for diplomatic relations with Muslim nations by supporting Jewish-Islamic dialogues led by figures like Rabbi Dr. Yakov Nagen (director of Ohr Torah Stone’s Blickle Institute for Interfaith Dialogue and Beit Midrash for Judaism and Humanity) and Rabbi Ben Abrahamson (director at AlSadiqin – Institute for Historical Research in Islam and Judaism and its Association of Islamic and Rabbinic scholars of History and Jurisprudence).
Furthermore, sponsoring the translation and dissemination of materials about Judaism, Jewish history, and Israel in languages spoken by Muslims, particularly Arabic, will bolster legitimacy and support for these relationships.
Recent Saudi actions and reactions underscore that using discussions about Saudi attitudes toward Palestinians to impress his voter base is an ill-advised path for Netanyahu.
“You are definitely right. Unfortunately, Israeli politicians, Bibi included, do not understand the Arab and Islamic mindset and therefore make mistakes on [the] Right, Left, and Center.”
This was the response I received after urging a leading Israeli expert on the Arab world to teach Netanyahu the basics of good manners in the Arab world, or adab, and sending him the following message:
“I’d like to point out a crass misstep Bibi made a few days ago. When he told Bloomberg that the Palestinian issue is no obstacle to normalization with Saudi Arabia since the issue is barely raised by Saudis during negotiations, he messed up big time. Why?
“Because to make the Saudi monarchy, the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, look unconcerned about the fate of Palestinians and al-Aqsa, can only be construed by the ummah as a slap in the face. A few days later, MBS returned the slap by letting the world know that he was in no hurry for normalization with Israel, especially with the current government. This statement, which many sabras might even have welcomed as refreshingly honest, reassured the Arab and Muslim world that MBS views Israel, and especially Netanyahu, as a supplicant that must wait at the door. Soon afterward, MBS turned the slap into a punch by unilaterally recognizing the ‘State of Palestine’ and designating a Saudi consul to Jerusalem.
“If Netanyahu, during his interview with Bloomberg, had instead highlighted that Saudi Arabia believes that normalization with Israel will secure peace and progress for Palestinians, he would have made no concessions at all to Palestinians and avoided gratuitously humiliating the peace partners he courts.”
The writer is an independent political analyst specializing in Middle East politics and can be reached at rafaelcastro78@gmail.com.
Ignorance is Bliss: Academizing Anti-Israel Trends
17.08.23
Editorial Note
The Palestine Chronicle is an American non-profit organization with a mission to educate the general public by providing a forum that strives to highlight issues of relevance to human rights, national struggles, freedom, and democracy in the form of daily news. Its President is the Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud who, in reality, recruits academics in order to besmirch Israel.
Prof. Benay Blend, known to be Jewish, is a case in point. She received her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. She has taught at the University of Georgia, Memphis State University, and the University of New Mexico. Currently, she is an adjunct professor of Native American, American, and New Mexico history at Central NM Community College in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has published widely in such fields as Southwest women writers, Native American Studies, and nature writing. Although Middle East studies is clearly not her subject, she was recruited to write anti-Israel articles.
In her recent article “‘Ignorance is Bliss’: On the So-Called Contradictions within Israel’s Alleged Democracy,” she quotes two Israeli Arab academics, Prof. Ahmad H. Sa’di, of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University, who wrote, “There is little that sets the Zionist venture apart from many other colonial quests… other than its late appearance on the world’s stage.” and that “the legacy of colonialism still pervades all aspects of Western cultures.” (Ahmad H. Sa’di, “Towards a Decolonization of Colonial Studies,” Decolonizing the Study of Palestine: Indigenous Perspectives and Settler Colonialism After Elia Zureik, Ahmad H. Sa’di and Nur Masalha, Eds, 2023, p. 13).
She then quotes Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud, formerly of the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University, as saying that Palestinians will still be the “target of discrimination.” In her view, “a state that explicitly defines itself as Jewish, rather than a state for all its citizens… cannot guarantee fundamental democratic rights and equal citizenship to its minority, and their integration into state institutions will be always conditional.”
Prof. Blend also refers to an article by American-Israeli journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg, titled “Israel is Best Understood Through Its Contradictions,” published in the New York Times, which covers the protests over proposed judicial reforms. She quotes Gorenberg, who wrote that, “A great many Israelis who ignored the chronic crisis of occupation, or long ago gave up on finding a cure… nevertheless recognize the new and acute threat to the country’s fragile democracy.” For Prof. Blend, without such a cure, “ostensibly the dismantling of the Zionist entity to make way for a secular state with equal rights for all, there is no democracy, fragile or otherwise. But Gorenberg fails to go there. It seems that he might think he lives within a ‘flawed but real democracy,’ but by leaving out the entire Palestinian population, the indigenous people of the land.” She then questions, “is his ignorance really bliss?”
She stresses the importance of confronting uncomfortable truths to achieve liberation. For her, Gorenberg’s case for “Israel’s democracy” is a good example because it is a “contradiction” since “the Zionist state was established by the Nakba (catastrophe), during which military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and murdered 15,000 more in a series of mass attacks, including dozens of massacres.” For Prof. Blend, there “never was a democratic Israel that Gorenberg says is now in danger of being lost, any more than America, founded on the extermination of Native tribes and on the backs of enslaved people, was founded as a democracy in any broad sense of the word.” In Gorenberg’s article, he states that the “size of the protests [have] been possible” because those “who oppose the occupation are intensely involved.” For her, Gronenberg contends that only by preserving this “big tent” can the “democracy movement” defeat the government’s drive towards dictatorship. She asks, “Who frequents this tent that is supposed to save the Zionist state’s democracy? Not ‘48 Palestinians.”
For her, the “pro-democracy protestors, who refuse to contend with Palestinians, will not come to the aid of fellow Israelis who understand that democracies do not co-exist with occupation.”
She then borrows from journalist Jacqueline Luqman’s dictum that “Black people will not make common cause with racists and bigots. Racists do not get a pass because they call themselves anti-war” and suggests that this should be a “warning to Israeli activists who oppose the occupation.”
According to Prof. Blend, “Zionist state repression reaches far beyond its borders.” She writes, “Indeed, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) recently adopted a resolution condemning the attacks on Palestine solidarity and Palestinian community organizing in Europe,” it also encourages institutions and legal organizations to “reject” the so-called “IHRA definition of anti-Semitism” that “seeks to equate anti-Zionism and support for Palestinian liberation with anti-Semitism.”
For Prof. Blend, “Pro-democracy protestors care mostly about democracy for Israelis and are content to leave apartheid as it is.”
Even by the often-shoddy standards of this type of diatribe masquerading as academic research, Prof. Blend’s article is appalling. She gives no explanation as to why she picked up the disjointed roster of authors to quote from, apart from the fact that most bash Israel. This is a common device in the genre of pro-Palestinian activist writings. After decades of delegitimizing Israel, this flourishing cottage industry created its own self-referential universe of activists quoting each other ad nauseam.
No wonder her articles have a huge gap between reality and fantasy. The message portrayed is that the Palestinians, who run two dictatorships, one in the West Bank and the other in Gaza, give the Israeli democracy a failing grade. The Palestinians can run terrorist organizations, blow up buses, hijack airplanes, massacre civilians, engage in honor killing of women, teach children to become Jihadists, arrest dissenters, persecute gay people and commit suicide attacks, yet, they come through as truly democratic compared to Israel.
As for Prof. Blend, ignorance is indeed bliss.
References:
‘Ignorance is Bliss’: On the So-Called Contradictions within Israel’s Alleged Democracy’
By Benay Blend
Gorenberg’s case for Israel’s “democracy” is a good example, and is itself a contradiction, because the Zionist state was established by the Nakba (catastrophe), during which military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.
This article draws its title from two opposing articles—Gershom Gorenberg’s opinion piece “Israel is Best Understood Through Its Contradictions” in the New York Times and Erica Caines and Geechee Yaws, “’Ignorance is Bliss’ and Other Fallacies of Counterinsurgency,” an article in Hood Communist which stresses the importance of confronting uncomfortable truths in order to achieve liberation.
“The media presentation of Israel’s mass protest as a fight for democracy is misleading, at best,” writes activist/journalist Ramzy Baroud, “as it fails to address the historical, ideological and, ultimately, class divides in Israeli society.”
Gorenberg’s case for Israel’s “democracy” is a good example, and is itself a contradiction, because the Zionist state was established by the Nakba (catastrophe), during which military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and murdered 15,000 more in a series of mass attacks, including dozens of massacres. Hence, as Baroud contends, Israel’s establishment as a settler-colonial state was “made possible by the expulsion of most of the native Palestinian population.”
“There is little that sets the Zionist venture apart from many other colonial quests,” writes Ahmad H. Sa’di, “other than its late appearance on the world’s stage” (Ahmad H. Sa’di, “Towards a Decolonization of Colonial Studies,” Decolonizing the Study of Palestine: Indigenous Perspectives and Settler Colonialism After Elia Zureik, Ahmad H. Sa’di and Nur Masalha, Eds, 2023, p. 13). Sa’di continues that “the legacy of colonialism still pervades all aspects of Western cultures” (p. 13), as it does in Gorenberg’s essay.
Indeed, as Baroud explains: “Israel’s dichotomy is that it was founded by an ideology, Zionism, which purposely conflated between religion and nationality.” In recent years, Israel’s “religious zealots,” once allocated to the margins, have far outflanked their fellow secularists, making possible the Jewish only laws that are the rational outcome of Zionist logic.
“The irony and the source of confusion,” Baroud concludes, “is that all past and current leadership of Israel – liberal, conservative or religious – are proud Zionists who saw Judaism as a centerpiece in the Israeli identity.” There never was a democratic Israel that Gorenberg says is now in danger of being lost, anymore than America, founded on the extermination of Native tribes and on the backs of enslaved people, was founded as a democracy in any broad sense of the word.
In his article covering the protests over proposed judicial reforms, Gorenberg states that the “size of the protests [have] been possible” because those “who oppose the occupation are intensely involved.” He contends that only by preserving this “big tent” can the “democracy movement” defeat the government’s drive towards dictatorship.
Who frequents this tent that is supposed to save the Zionist state’s democracy? Not ‘48 Palestinians, it seems, for, as Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud explains, they understand that whichever way the issue is decided, Palestinians will still be the target of discrimination. “A state that explicitly defines itself as Jewish, rather than a state for all its citizens,” Daoud contends, “cannot guarantee fundamental democratic rights and equal citizenship to its minority, and their integration into state institutions will be always conditional.”
Moreover, as Baroud explains, Yet, there were no protests “when Israel passed its Nation-State Law in 2018, defining Israel as the ‘national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.’” Indeed, he continues, most Israeli Jews have no problem with laws that seek to further disenfranchise Palestinian Arab citizens of their country.
There does appear to be an anti-occupation bloc within the larger protests. Members post frequently on Facebook regarding where to meet, what signs to carry, etc. For example, Tzvika Markovitz calls on others to join the “parade of the dead,” a demonstration in which protestors carry pictures of Palestinians who are the victims of state-sponsored murder. Like the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina (1976-1983), who carried photos of the disappeared, their action is in direct contrast to the majority who see no contradiction between state-sponsored assassination and democracy.
But are they really a part of the broader scene, and if so, are “big tents” a good idea? In a similar vein, organizers of the Rage Against the War Machine rally that was held in D.C. on February 19 proposed a “big tent” venue, a gathering of the left and right, all committed to ending the war.
In “Apologies Not Accepted: Or I Love It When the Universe Proves me Right,” journalist Jacqueline Luqman explained that when she pointed out the “very public bigotry” of the Libertarian party, which took part in the protest, she was accused of being a COINTELPRO agent who was “sowing division” within the ranks.
Luqman’s dictum that “Black people will not make common cause with racists and bigots. Racists do not get a pass because they call themselves anti-war” should be a warning to Israeli activists who oppose the occupation. “Pro-democracy” protestors care mostly about democracy for Israelis and are content to leave apartheid as it is.
“For now,” Gorenberg writes, “everyone trying to save Israel’s democracy is on the same side.” Even if this were so, when the protests are done, whoever wins, pro-democracy protestors, who refuse to contend with Palestinians, will not come to the aid of fellow Israelis who understand that democracies do not co-exist with occupation.
Gorenberg admits that there “is an essential contradiction between liberal democracy and the denial of rights to Palestinians.” As proof, he points out that he can report on the occupation and then return to his home “without fearing government retribution”; in fact, he is denying the existence of Palestinian journalists who have been assassinated for the crime of reporting what they see.
Indeed, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that over the past 20 years, Israel has murdered 22 Palestinian journalists, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a correspondent for Aljazeera, who was killed on May 11, 2022, by Israeli forces. As of this date, no one has been held accountable for these crimes.
Moreover, Zionist state repression reaches far beyond its borders. Indeed, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) recently adopted a resolution condemning the attacks on Palestine solidarity and Palestinian community organizing in Europe. It also encourages institutions and legal organizations to reject the so-called “IHRA definition of anti-Semitism” that seeks to equate anti-Zionism and support for Palestinian liberation with anti-Semitism.
Here is the crux: “A great many Israelis who ignored the chronic crisis of occupation, or long ago gave up on finding a cure,” writes Gorenberg, “nevertheless recognize the new and acute threat to the country’s fragile democracy.” Without a “cure,” ostensibly the dismantling of the Zionist entity to make way for a secular state with equal rights for all, there is no democracy, fragile or otherwise.
But Gorenberg fails to go there. It seems that he might think he lives within a “flawed but real democracy,” but by leaving out the entire Palestinian population, the indigenous people of the land, is his ignorance really bliss?
“In a world full of challenges which desperately requires sharp minds to resolve them,” write Caine and Yaw, “we should view phrases like these as methods of counterinsurgency that prevent us from pursuing awareness of not only past and present conditions, but of the way things could be in the future as well.”
– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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Eugenics and Ethnic Cleansing: The Values that Unite the US and Israel Articles, Commentary
September 20, 2020
By Benay Blend
By Benay Blend
“You’d have a hard time finding a point in history where the US government *wasn’t* running concentration camps and forcibly sterilizing people.” Onyesonwu Chatoyer, organizer for the All African People’s Revolution Party was responding to a recent lawsuit which alleges that a doctor subjected women to unwanted hysterectomies while being detained by Immigration Control and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
As Tina Vasquez writes, several organizations filed the complaint on behalf of immigrants inside the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), a facility in Georgia run by private prison company LaSalle Corrections. According to the whistleblower Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse at the center, several women told her that they were transported to an outside facility to see “the uterus collector,” their name for the doctor believed to be responsible for the measures.
“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” a detainee said in the complaint.
Indeed, ICE has a long history of targeting pregnant migrant women and other vulnerable people in the detention system. Under Trump’s new “birth tourism” policy, so-called after parents who allegedly travel to the United States to gain citizenship for their unborn child, certain applicants for visas must provide proof that they are not traveling for that reason.
Much of these policies are based on fear of changing demographics, a fear among white Americans that their cultural capital is losing value. Because presidential hopeful Joe Biden claims that a “shared soul that unites our countries [Israel and the United States}, generation upon generation,” it makes sense that both countries fear changing times.
For example, after years of denying it, Israel admitted in 2013 that it ordered doctors to inject Ethiopian Jewish women with a drug that would involuntarily sterilize them. In much the same language used by white supremacists in America, Netanyahu warned that illegal immigrants from Africa “threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Coerced or forced hysterectomies can be contextualized within a broader history of eugenics in both countries. Hitler is perhaps the most infamous proponent of a master race, but as Edwin Black observes, the movement for ethnic cleansing originated in the United States.
A pseudoscience directing at “improving” the human race, its most extreme form aims to exterminate “undesirable” human beings. Facets of this idea are found in strategic plans such as forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as restrictions on marriage between white people and African Americans that lasted well into the 20th century.
Well into the 1970s and 1980s, too, Native American women received tubal ligations when they thought that they were getting appendectomies. Perhaps as many as 25-50 percent of Native American women underwent such procedures between 1970 and 1976. Even more sterilizations are recorded in Puerto Rico where such acts form a dark part of the island’s history.
In a 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind… Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
This rhetoric is reiterated in Israel, where officials such as Ayelet Shaked, of the Jewish Home Party, are known for their racist remarks. For example, in 2015, Shaked openly called for the genocide of Palestinian people by posting a quote from Uri Elitzur, the late right-wing journalist and leader of the Israeli settler movement:
“Behind every terrorist, stand dozens of men and women, without whom [the enemy] could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
According to Ben Norton, Shaked’s views are held by others in Netanyahu’s government. During Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza, named “Operation Protective Edge,” Norton reports that the military carried out in action Shaked’s extreme rhetoric.
At that time, Moshe Feiglin, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, called for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.” His statement follows along the lines of ethnic cleansing. “This is our country – our country exclusively,” he said, “including Gaza.”
On September 14, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action tweeted:
“Forced sterilization is genocide. ICE is performing mass hysterectomies on immigrant women. ICE is committing genocide. It is part of a long history of eugenics and assaults on reproductive freedom in the United States — a system that directly inspired the Nazi regime.”
A “progressive” Jewish organization that calls attention to such issues, Bend the Arc fails to make the connection with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, also genocide as defined by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
If common values unite Israel and the United States, as Joe Biden claims, then we should all be worried. We should all be connecting the dots.
When news broke a few days ago of the forced sterilizations in Georgia’s detention center there was shock and outrage, as well there should have been. On the other hand, this treatment of “undesirables” has a long history in both Israel and the United States. Indeed, both countries could easily be charged with genocide, in Israel of Palestinians and in the US of the Indigenous people here.
Moreover, if there is very little difference between Trump and Biden regarding their 100 percent support for Israel, as Ramzy Baroud claims, then it seems that the best action for activists in this country will be education work and grassroots actions in the streets.
Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) once said that in order for non-violence to work your opponent must have a conscience. The US, he concluded, has none.
The same could be said for both candidates, at least regarding Israel. Indeed, Biden’s refusal to reverse many of Trump’s Israel policies, writes Baroud, including his application of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, makes clear the “moral bankruptcy” of the Democratic Party which seems motivated much more by its political, rather than ethical, agenda.
– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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שכחו אותן בבית
הן השתתפו בוויכוחים, יצאו בהמוניהן להצביע ועם היוודע התוצאות רקדו ובכו, אבל כשהגברים חזרו לנהל את הרשויות המקומיות, הן נותרו בבית
מאת סוהיר אבו עקסה דאוד
04 בנובמבר 2003
תוצאות הבחירות האחרונות לרשויות המקומיות מאכזבות עוד יותר מאשר במערכות הבחירות הקודמות. בכל פעם גוברות התקוות שהפעם – מכיוון שהנשים הערביות יותר משכילות, יותר פעילות ובעלות נכונות להתחרות בשדה הפוליטי ולצאת נגד המוסכמות – ייצוגן יגדל. רק שתי נשים נבחרו הפעם לכהן כחברות מועצה – אחת בנצרת ואחת בכפר עילבון שבגליל, שתיהן מטעם חד”ש. השמות ששמענו לפני הבחירות התאדו כמו השמות במערכות הבחירות הקודמות.
הייצוג הזעום הזה ממשיך מסורת של יותר מ-50 שנה, שבמהלכן הצליחו רק 12 נשים לכהן כחברות במועצות מקומיות. שבע מהן כיהנו מאז 1998 – ורק שתיים מתוכן נבחרו, שתיהן במועצת נצרת. השאר כיהנו במהלך הקדנציה חודשים ספורים. אשה אחת כיהנה כיו”ר – תופעה שלא חזרה על עצמה כ-30 שנה וכנראה לא תחזור בשנים הקרובות.
לפני הבחירות האחרונות דובר רבות על הצורך בייצוג נשי נאות במגזר הערבי. קורסי מנהיגות נפתחו, מאמרים נכתבו ומרבית הרשימות הציגו נשים ברשימותיהן אך המקומות, ברוב המקרים, לא היו ריאליים. וכשמישהי היתה במקום ריאלי, כמו רבאב אבו-לאשין, שעמדה בראש רשימת תע”ל בנצרת, היא נדחקה למקום ה-13 בשל הסכמים קואליציוניים.
בסך הכל הטעם המר שהותירו התוצאות מעורר את השאלה אם לא עדיף לפעמים להימנע בכלל מהצגת מועמדותן של נשים במקום להשתתף במשחק מכור. הנשים המועמדות בקרקס הזה הן הראשונות שחייבות להפסיק את ההתבזות.
על הסיבות למקום השולי שתופסות הנשים בפוליטיקה נכתב הרבה. במקרה של הערבים הישראלים אפשר להצביע על כמה סיבות השלובות זו בזו – החל בעובדה שהנשים הערביות הן חלק ממיעוט לאומי שולי במדינה שעדיין רואה בו קבוצה בעייתית ולא נאמנה, ועד למצור ששמים על האשה המנהגים הישנים בחברה מסורתית, שמרנית ופטריארכלית שבה משחקת החמולה הגברית תפקיד מרכזי. גם העובדה שהפוליטיקה נתפשת בעיני הנשים כתחום גברי מלוכלך ורווי תכסיסים, מדירה ממנה לא מעט נשים. ובכל זאת, נשאלת השאלה מדוע במקרים רבים כשנשים מאמצות דפוס חיים מודרני, המסורת מוכנה לזוז הצדה – אבל היא ממשיכה להתייצב כחומה בפני נשים השואפות לקריירה פוליטית ייצוגית. מין ופוליטיקה הם שני הטאבואים העיקריים המוצבים בפני האשה הערבייה בחברה הפוסט מודרנית, ואם בענייני מין כבר מוכנים “לוותר” לאשה פעמים רבות – בפוליטיקה לא.
וזה מעורר תהיות: כי רמת ההשכלה, רמת החיים והמודעות עלו, והרבה נשים היום הן בעלות כוח, יכולת פוליטית ורצון להגיע לעמדות פוליטיות ייצוגיות, אך למרות זאת נטרקות בפניהן דלתות הרשימות החמולתיות והמפלגות, שפתאום נעלמים להן הלהט והאידיאולוגיה המוצהרת על השוויון בין המינים.
דווקא העובדה שהפוליטיקה המקומית הערבית – מעוז הגברים המתוסכלים מהשאיפה האובססיוווית לשלוט במשאבים ולצבור כוח – עברה הפעם מהפך, יכלה לסייע לנשים. החמולתיות מתפוררת והאינדיוואליזם חוגג. לא עוד נאמנות למשפחה ולחמולה הגדולה אלא לאינטרסים אישיים גרידא. הדבר היה יכול ליצור יותר מרווח פעולה לנשים. הן לקחו חלק פעיל בוויכוחים לפני הבחירות, התחרו על התבשילים שהכינו לתומכים, יצאו, בהמוניהן, להצביע ועם היוודע התוצאות רקדו ובכו – אבל כשהגברים חזרו לסדר היום הרגיל של ניהול המועצות, הן נותרו בבית.
הכותבת היא סופרת וד”ר למדע המדינה באוניברסיטה העברית
(Google Translate)
Forgot them at home
They participated in debates, went out en masse to vote and when the results were announced they danced and cried, but when the men returned to run the local authorities, they stayed at home
By Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud
November 04, 2003
The results of the last elections for the local authorities are even more disappointing than in the previous elections. Each time the hopes increase that this time – because the Arab women are more educated, more active and willing to compete in the political field and go against the conventions – their representation will increase. Only two women were elected this time to serve as council members – one in Nazareth and one in Kfar Ilbon in the Galilee, both on behalf of Hadash. The names we heard before the elections evaporated like the names in the previous elections.
This meager representation continues a tradition of more than 50 years, during which only 12 women managed to serve as members of local councils. Seven of them have served since 1998 – and only two of them were elected, both in the Nazareth Council. The rest served during the term for a few months. One woman served as chairman – a phenomenon that has not repeated itself in about 30 years and probably will not repeat itself in the coming years.
Before the last elections, there was a lot of talk about the need for adequate female representation in the Arab sector. Leadership courses were opened, articles were written and most lists featured women on their lists but the places, in most cases, were not realistic. And when someone was in a realistic position, such as Rabab Abu-Lashin, who topped the Ta’al list in Nazareth, she was relegated to 13th place due to coalition agreements.
All in all, the bitter taste left by the results raises the question of whether it is not sometimes better to avoid the presentation of women’s candidacies at all instead of participating in an addictive game. The women candidates in this circus are the first who must stop the humiliation.
Much has been written about the reasons for the marginal place that women occupy in politics. In the case of the Israeli Arabs, several interrelated reasons can be pointed out – starting with the fact that the Arab women are part of a marginal national minority in a country that still sees it as a problematic and disloyal group, to the siege placed on women by the old customs of a traditional, conservative and patriarchal society in which the male clan plays a central role. Also the fact that politics is seen by women as a dirty male field full of tricks, alienates quite a few women from it. Still, the question arises why in many cases when women adopt a modern lifestyle, tradition is ready to move aside – but it continues to stand as a wall in front of women who aspire to a representative political career. Sex and politics are the two main taboos placed before the Arab woman in postmodern society, and if in matters of sex they are already ready to “give up” to a woman many times – not in politics.
And this raises questions: because the level of education, the standard of living, and awareness have risen, and many women today have power, political ability, and the desire to reach representative political positions, but despite this, the doors of clan lists and parties are slammed in their faces, and the zeal and ideology declared for equality between the sexes suddenly disappears.
Precisely the fact that local Arab politics – the stronghold of men frustrated by the obsessive desire to control resources and accumulate power – underwent a transformation this time, could help women. Tribalism crumbles and individualism is celebrated. No longer loyalty to the family and the large clan but to purely personal interests. This could have created more room for action for women. They took an active part in the debates before the elections, competed for the stews they prepared for the supporters, went out, en masse, to vote and when the results were announced they danced and cried – but when the men returned to the normal agenda of running the councils, they stayed at home.
The author is a writer and doctor of political science at the Hebrew University
For Ilhan Omar, not all foreign influence spending is bad
During her time in Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has frequently voiced concern over the influence of foreign interests on American politics — most controversially with regard to the pro-Israel community in the U.S.
But when she visited Qatar last November to watch the World Cup, it was unclear who had paid for the trip, which the progressive lawmaker neglected to clarify. Her office did not answer questions from The New York Times in December about the funding source after she had returned.
It turns out that the trip was funded by the Qatari government, according to an annual House financial disclosure filed in May. The new statement, which has not previously been reported, shows Qatar paid for the four-day visit to Doha that overlapped with the U.S. men’s team’s opening match against Wales. Both “food” and “lodging” were covered by the Gulf nation, the disclosure indicates.
The Qatari Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed it had paid for Omar’s visit to the Gulf kingdom last year. The congresswoman “accepted an invitation from the Embassy of Qatar to attend events in Doha in November 2022,” a spokesperson told Jewish Insider last week, “as part of a program authorized under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act,” or MECEA, which allows House members to take trips funded by foreign governments provided that the travel is later disclosed in their annual financial statements.
The embassy did not share an exact figure for the cost of the trip, which was not listed in Omar’s financial report.
Omar was not alone among congressional lawmakers who quietly accepted funding from Qatar to attend the World Cup last year, recent disclosures show. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, according to Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has been critical of Qatar. “We see a huge amount of Qatari influence in the halls of Congress on a regular basis,” he said in an interview with JI. “I don’t think that Ilhan Omar is unique in that sense.”
Still, Schanzer suggested that Omar’s visit stands out in particular because of her outspoken criticism of the pro-Israel lobby and its involvement in American politics — underscoring what he characterized as a kind of “selective outrage.”
“Perhaps her most famous quip is that support for Israel is ‘all about the Benjamins,’” Schanzer said, referring to comments Omar made as a freshman that were condemned as antisemitic and for which she later apologized. “If there is a lobby right now that is truly ‘all about the Benjamins,’ it is the lobby that is spending tens of millions of dollars per year in order to acquire influence in the capital of the United States,” he said of Qatar, which has drawn condemnation for its treatment of migrant workers and ban on homosexuality, among other matters. “She does not seem to be bothered by that.”
In a statement to JI, Jeremy Slevin, a spokesperson for Omar, defended the congresswoman’s decision to accept the junket to Doha. “Rep. Omar attended the World Cup on a delegation with several elected officials, including Democrats and Republicans,” Slevin said. “As a lifelong soccer fan, she was proud to support Team USA. She remains committed to upholding human rights and the rule of law around the world, including FIFA’s mistreatment of migrant workers, and she shared these concerns during her trip.”
Two months before the visit, Omar was among a group of House Democrats who signed on to a letter expressing “dismay regarding FIFA’s inaction and heel-dragging on human rights abuses in Qatar” — and requesting a “written response” concerning FIFA’s “commitment to concrete steps for migrant worker compensation and empowerment.”
But the Minneapolis lawmaker has been comparatively muted when it comes to raising concerns about Qatar itself, which has been criticized for boosting the Muslim Brotherhood and funding Hamas. On the other hand, she has frequently condemned human rights abuses not only in Israel but in other Gulf nations including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which were among a group of Arab countries that imposed a three-year blockade of Qatar beginning in 2017.
Omar does not appear to have spoken publicly about the Qatar trip until after it had ended. “It was such a delight to root for #TeamUSA at the World Cup in Qatar and today we are excited to root for them here at home,” she wrote on Twitter in late November, posting a photo with David Beckham. “It was fun watching a World Cup game with him.”
“You can call for accountability, you can ask for justice, but you can also just enjoy the beauty of the game,” Omar explained to Business Insider shortly after she returned from Qatar, emphasizing that “there are no perfect countries that have a perfect record.”
In addition to Omar, the Qatari government also paid for Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), André Carson (D-IN), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Darin LaHood (R-IL) and Bryan Steil (R-WI) to visit Doha during the World Cup, according to financial statements reviewed by JI. With the exception of Carson — who as a congressman has traveled to Doha on multiple trips sponsored by the Gulf monarchy — the lawmakers’ offices did not respond to requests for comment from JI.
“Congressman Carson has traveled as a member of Congress to strategic locations, including those of our allies and security partners, with some trips sponsored by the United States or other governments,” Caroline Ellert, a spokesperson for Carson, said in a statement to JI on Tuesday. “As a champion of human rights, he has consistently addressed violations of human and civil rights and will continue to do so. As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Carson typically does not publicize details of such trips or discussions during overseas trips.”
At least two other House members — Reps. David Valadao (R-CA) and Lou Correa (D-CA) — accepted invitations to attend the World Cup in Doha but failed to disclose the travel on their financial statements, their offices confirmed to JI on Tuesday.
“Rep. Valadao was in Doha on this trip,” said a spokesperson for the congressman. “There was a mistake in his financial disclosures, which we are now working to amend.”
A spokesperson for Correa attributed the omission to an “inadvertent oversight” and said the “trip was mistakenly not added” to his annual financial statement. “As such, the congressman has amended his financial disclosure to include this trip.”
The Qatari Embassy did not respond to requests for comment on its outreach to other House members, nor would it share a full list of lawmakers who accepted funding to attend the World Cup last year.
Sens. Todd Young (R-IN) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) were in Doha during the tournament, but their trips were funded by the U.S. government.
“The lack of super robust disclosure pre- and post-trip makes it harder to know the purpose of the trip and all the things you would get from privately sponsored travel,” Delaney Marsco, senior counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit government watchdog, said in an interview with JI last week. “That’s not ideal from a transparency perspective.”
Months before the World Cup, Omar, for her part, also traveled to Pakistan, where she made a controversial visit to a disputed part of Kashmir that drew criticism from India. The six-day trip, which took place in April 2022, was funded by Pakistan’s government, according to her financial disclosure.
Pull the other one
When someone tells you something that is so patently absurd, the natural response is an old English expression “pull the other one, it has got bells on it.”
This past week has been notable for a torrent of unbelievably asinine expressions of double speak and patently insincere rhetoric. In fact, there have been so many declarations that if we were to “pull the other one” the bells would be ringing continually.
Unsurprisingly those who should be screaming from the rooftops and exposing this tsunami of fake outreach are instead rather subdued. Apart from some mild expressions of disapproval, there has been no vigorous pushback, and as a result, those burbling nonsense are not held to account.
Some people are obsessing over the fact that President Biden has not yet issued a formal invitation for Israel’s Prime Minister to visit the White House and take part in the choreographed photo opportunities which inevitably follow. To be quite frank, following the pathetic performance of Biden when he and President Herzog met the press, I can’t understand why a similar rerun is so desirable. Seeing Biden mumbling incoherently while looking down at his prompt sheet exactly underscores the absurdity that characterises American foreign policy. When Bibi eventually meets Biden, it is doubtful that the latter’s understanding or comprehension of the reality confronting Israel will be any clearer.
Take the looming Iranian threat as a classic example.
Ever since the Mullah regime came to power, it has used the age-old tactic of taking hostages in order to achieve its various nefarious objectives. The most spectacular event took place in 1979 when American hostages were seized after the storming of the US Embassy. A botched attempt to rescue the hostages led to fruitless diplomatic bargaining and UN resolutions which were ignored. The Iranians demanded the lifting of economic sanctions and other punitive measures. The hostages were only released as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Perhaps the Iranians suddenly realised that instead of a weak, vacillating Democratic Jimmy Carter they were about to face the wrath of a determined Republican Ronald Reagan.
Fast forward to the present situation and you have a replay taking place, albeit with far more lethal consequences. Despite denials to the contrary, it has always been on the cards that the Biden Administration is desperate to consummate a deal that will shower the Iranians with dollars, thus enabling them to accelerate their march to the nuclear bomb. If, in the process, Israel and Gulf nations are caught by collateral damage, they can always be fooled and sidetracked by some diplomatic double-speaking State Department officials.
So it has come to pass.
In exchange for hostages illegally seized by Iran, the US will now shower the Iranians with US$ 7 billion. True to form, Secretary of State Blinken, with a straight face, asserted that “there would be no sanction relief.” In addition, “significant oversight” would be put in place to ensure that this windfall was used only for legitimate purposes.
Who are they trying to fool? Only the eternally gullible of course.
One has only to look at how “successfully” the international community has succeeded in preventing North Korea from developing missiles and nuclear capabilities to understand the total fiasco which will accompany this latest triumph of American diplomacy.
Another deal accompanied by murky denial which will gladden all the Democratic progressives and woke self-loathers, is gestating in the background. This is why Bibi will be invited to the White House. It will be another show to bolster Biden’s 2024 prospects and demonstrate his oft-repeated mantra of being one of Israel’s best buddies.
Washington will hope that this farce will be swallowed by enough local Jewish voters and Israelis eager to self-flagellate and that with the help of an always compliant media, the whole exercise will be a triumph of Hollywood make-believe. Incredibly, a majority of American Jews will still vote for a Democratic candidate no matter how many times that party lurches further to the progressive left and abandons its once solid support for Israel.
Another case of lurching leftwards and embracing false narratives is evident from the decision of the Australian Government to re-designate Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as illegally occupied Palestinian territory. In doing so, the Labor Party has joined the UN’s immoral majority, which claims that these historically Jewish sovereign places are off-limits to present-day Jews. Peddling patently fake Arab revisionist claims may gladden the hearts of the left-wing, Jewish and non-Jewish alike and the increasing Islamic voters. Still, it certainly won’t bring genuine peace one centimetre closer.
The biggest farce is when the Australian Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister put their hands over their hearts and pledge an undying solidarity with Israel.
How do they reconcile their rejection of Israeli sovereignty at the Kotel, Temple Mount, Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Hebron, and Rachel’s Tomb, among other places with a supposed solidarity? Why is there a glaring silence about the daily torrent of hate and incitement against Jews issuing forth from the PA and associated terror groups? Why is the Australian Government sending taxpayers’ money to UNRWA when everyone knows that its schools are inculcating poisonous ideas?
As the heirs of those who illegally occupied the Australian continent in the first place and established a penal colony there, it is the height of chutzpah for today’s politicians to be lecturing Israel.
Finally, trying to bask in the reflected glory of Dr Evatt, who, as the Labor Foreign Minister in 1947/1948, gave enthusiastic support to the re-establishment of the Jewish State, is glaringly hypocritical. Only gullible individuals, of which there are many, would fall for those sorts of verbal acrobatics.
The Israeli Foreign Minister is reported as asserting that “a security treaty with the USA would reassure regional allies that they are protected from Iranian aggression and therefore negate the need for nuclear weapons.” He was presumably alluding to Saudi Arabia. I cannot imagine anyone in Saudi Arabia falling for that pie-in-the-sky illusion. All one has to do is look at how North Korea has thumbed its nose at the US over the last few years. Has a US security treaty with South Korea and Japan prevented the acquisition of nuclear weapons and missiles by North Korea? How secure do they feel when North Korean missiles fly overhead and land in the ocean not far from their shores?
How safe and secure do the Taiwanese feel knowing that the Chinese intend to invade and destroy them one day? Can they actually be confident that when push comes to shove the American cavalry will ride to their rescue in time?
Israel knows from past bitter experience that so-called guarantees given by erstwhile friends can easily turn out to be worthless.
The US recognised Israel in 1948, and then when Arab armies invaded in an endeavour to destroy it the Administration imposed an arms embargo. This tactic was employed again in subsequent years every time the US disapproved of anything the Israel Government implemented. When Nasser blockaded Israeli shipping in 1967 and prepared to attack, the US abandoned its guarantees and left Israel to deal with the situation alone. During the Yom Kippur War, President Nixon did resupply urgently needed armaments but only after a crucial delay.
South Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese or Gulf States will be sadly mistaken if they are pinning their hopes on the US coming to their rescue in time in the event of a North Korean or Iranian nuclear attack. It will be all over before the White House, State Department, Congress and Senate manage to get their act together.
Most likely, the UN Security Council will still be deliberating after it is all over.
The Israel Intelligence Minister has urged the United Kingdom and European Union to act with moral clarity against Iran and its terror facilitators.
Pulling the other one has never been easier.
Iran Is About to Conduct a Nuclear test
According to a terrifying story in the Jerusalem Post that cites numerous European security agencies, the Iranian terror regime may be perilously close to conducting a nuclear bomb test.
Its biggest supporter appears to be the Biden administration, which has openly let Iran develop nuclear weapons while employing delay strategies in the name of continued “negotiations”.
The Post reported that the regime “has sought to obtain illicit technology for its active atomic weapons program, according to a series of shocking European intelligence reports released in 2023.”
The report also claims that Iran has consistently broken the Obama nuclear deal.
Based on research from the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published translations of the materials on its website.
The rapid creation of weapons-grade uranium in Iran, according to the Netherlands General and Intelligence Security Service (AVID), “brings the option of a possible Iranian first nuclear test closer.
That report states, “Iran advanced its nuclear program last year. The nation keeps building up its inventories of 20% and 60% enriched uranium. This can be used to further enrich the uranium to the 90% enriched level required for a nuclear bomb using centrifuges.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreements were made, according to the AVID assessment, but Iran continues to disregard them.
Additionally, it is improving its capability for enrichment by utilizing uranium enrichment centrifuges of ever-growing sophistication.
An authority on Iran, Israeli Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, told the Washington Post that “Iran is evidently committed to its nuclear weapons plan.
“The European intelligence reports describe covert Iranian efforts to reduce the breakout time of a nuclear arsenal by acquiring it illegally from various European countries,” Kuperwasser stated.
He said that the stories might be exaggerating the situation. “The reports only reveal a portion of Iran’s activities in Europe, and it is prudent to presume that the majority of those activities have remained covert.
Since European and US actions against Iran have been sluggish and uninspiring, Iran is likely to see Western policies towards it as a show of weakness. According to him, the US’s efforts to strike a nuclear agreement with Iran are “rewarding Iran with a new ‘understanding’ and would only incentivize Iran to continue and intensify its efforts to secure the necessary nuclear weapons components.
5 Ways the U.S. Hostage Swap Will Strengthen the Islamic Republic of Iran
1. Emboldens the Regime
While there’s much to celebrate about the release of Americans that were imprisoned in Iran, the United States unfreezing billions of dollars of Iran assets emboldens the regime to repeat their hostage diplomacy scheme. Since the very foundation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the Islamist supporters in Iran, Lebanon, and other parts of the world have been able to make demands of the U.S. and other western countries by kidnapping government officials and civilians. Despite international condemnation against kidnapping citizens, Iran continues to be emboldened and incentivized in their kidnapping diplomacy, facing no credible consequences and even gaining rewards. While the Biden administration may claim that the U.S. is providing relief to the people in Tehran, the fact is that much of the funds will go to strengthen the Ayatollahs and allow the Islamic government to continue its campaign of repression against Iranian citizens and sponsor terrorism abroad.
2. Worries Allies
As the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to fund Islamic-terrorist groups in the Middle East, the latest hostage transfer for funds has allies in the region worrying. Following the hostage transfer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu sounded off on the exchange, stating that the latest actions “do not dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, will not stop its nuclear program, and will only provide it with funds that will go to terrorist elements sponsored by Iran.” Israel’s Prime Minister and other experts see the funds going to groups like Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, using the money to train more terrorist fighters, purchase lethal arms against Israel, and lead to more rocket attacks against Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In the Persian Gulf, terrorist groups like the Houthis in Yemen and other proxies will have the means to continue launching attacks.
3. Strengthens Terror Proxies
The exchange will strengthen the terrorist entities supported by Tehran, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), its own paramilitary branch. Observers of the latest hostage transfer for funds note that the administration’s latest actions are akin to when then-Secretary of State John Kerry, under the Obama administration, acknowledged that the billions of dollars in sanctions relief to Iran would go to some terrorist groups. Despite promising to use the funds for the Iranian people, the regime in Tehran has had a history of lying to the international community about its true intentions, transferring vast amounts of funds from its domestic and international coffers to use for terrorism against America, the West, Israel, and Arab monarchies. In the past few months, terrorist proxies like Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iranian-backed Iraqi groups have been able to receive weapons from the regime to sow chaos, and now thanks to billions in unfrozen assets, such groups will be able to have more financial resources than ever before.
4. Provide Relief to the Regime
With the Ayatollahs receiving around $6 billion (about $18 per person in the U.S.) in sanctions relief from the U.S., many Iranian experts say such funds will assist the mullahs and their cronies. Following the major protests in Iran, ranging from the 2009 Green Revolution to the ongoing revolution which began in September following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s morality police over her hijab wear, the Islamic Republic has relied on its security forces to crush these movements. As a result of the Biden administration’s latest actions, the Islamic Republic will now have financial resources to continue to provide plainclothes, proxies, and supporters to crackdown on dissidents, target women who defy Islamic law, and purchase more military equipment to defend against any potential strikes. According to Iranian experts, the unfrozen assets will also most likely help the regime in its nuclear program, providing Tehran with the financial resources to possibly build more underground centrifuges, purchase material for atomic enrichment, and strengthen the security of its nuclear program. Subsequently, family and friends closely associated with the Ayatollahs will also gain a significant financial boost, given that they will most likely be able to transfer such funds overseas and secure their financial safety net.
5. Diminishes American Strength
In the past few months, America’s presence on the global stage has been devastating following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s brokering peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and international economic turmoil. While the Biden administration continues to tell Americans that the country is strong and secure against foreign threats, the latest hostage transfer suggests that the administration is kowtowing to enemies, displaying weakness. From Republican to Democrat administrations, Iran and other threats have been able to diminish America’s strength through hostage diplomacy and terrorist attacks, devastating the lives of military and civilian personnel at home and abroad. At a time when China, Russia, and Iran are consolidating their strength and power against the US, the latest actions are a boost to the rising axis that sees itself expanding in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Related Story: 5 U.S. Citizens Held by Iran Regime to Be Freed for $6 Billion in Frozen Assets
Boat trip aimed at saving Dead Sea also explores marvels revealed by its evaporation
As the owner of the second boat to sail the Dead Sea in the past 75 years, Noam Bedein knows its salty waters better than almost anyone. But lately, his excursions have led him to discover sites neither he nor anyone else has ever seen.
A few days before World Water Day in late March, Bedein came upon a bubbling brook feeding into the sea, which he named the Jerusalem River. The stream, the animals surrounding it and the beach it flows through were submerged underwater as recently as the mid-2000s. Bedein and his partner, Ari Fruchter, believe they are the first people ever to set foot there.
It’s an experience Bedein keeps having, and for him, it’s a paradoxical one: His mission is to save the Dead Sea. But as it dries up, it reveals new wonders to him.
“Out of the devastation, life finds a way,” Bedein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during one of his boat’s first excursions.
Bedein is the latest activist to confront a problem that has bedeviled Israel — how to save this ecological marvel and tourist attraction that is being depleted by water scarcity, industry and climate change. Bedein’s approach with his and Fruchter’s nonprofit, the Dead Sea Revival Project, is to raise awareness about the disappearing Dead Sea by bringing people to see it for themselves.
Bedein’s immersive boat tours provide visitors “with an intimate encounter that fosters deep connection and understanding” about the Dead Sea, he told JTA.
Bordered by Israel and the West Bank on the west and Jordan on the east, it is the deepest point on earth, has almost 10 times as much salinity as the ocean and is renowned for its therapeutic mud. In 2019, according to records from the Israeli Tourism Ministry, it was the country’s third-most visited site, after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, drawing a million tourists per year, reported Israeli business publication The Marker.
The Dead Sea is also an economic engine for Israel — something that, ironically, is a threat to the sea’s continued existence. A market research report published last year found that the Dead Sea mud cosmetics market is slated to be worth $2.6 billion by 2031. The chemical factories producing the cosmetics, which extract potash and bromine from the area, are found in both Israel and Jordan, and pump some 61.3 billion gallons of seawater per year in total as of 2018, according to NBC.
That extraction, plus a reduction in the inflow of water from the Jordan River, has led the Dead Sea to dry up in recent decades. A 2022 Israeli government report said that since 1980, the sea has lost some 40% of its volume and is retreating by more than three feet per year. According to Bedein, the Dead Sea’s water loss amounts to as much as 600 Olympic pools every day.
The southern basin of the Dead Sea, which is called Ein Bokek and is lined with hotels, has been disconnected from the northern part. Today, the “sea” at Ein Bokek is actually comprised of 12-foot-deep evaporation pools that are entirely artificial. According to Bedein, most tourists at the hotels are unaware that they are not actually at the Dead Sea.
“However you look at it, there isn’t a magic pill to fix this, and that’s the reason nothing’s been done so far,” Nadav Lensky, head of the Dead Sea Observatory at the Geological Survey of Israel, told JTA. “Every solution that is put forward comes with problems of its own.”
Hailing from the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, Bedein, 41, worked in Israel advocacy in the Gaza border town of Sderot before shifting his focus to the Dead Sea. He is an environmental photojournalist by training who has now trained his lens on this body of water, hoping to show people what it actually looks like — and the ecological damage that is caused — when a large saltwater lake disappears.
The Dead Sea has lost 40% of its volume in recent decades. (Noam Bedein via JTA)
To do that, he convinced the Israeli government to allow him to sail a boat on the Dead Sea, a quest that involved more than a year of overcoming bureaucratic hurdles. It is only the second boat to take to the water since Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. The boat, which holds up to 13 passengers, makes up to three trips a day, three times a week, but as of September, its operations will be expanded to five days a week. In total, Bedein says he has hosted between 400 and 500 people on private excursions.
Bedein is acutely aware that the end goal of saving the Dead Sea is “way above my personal shoulders,” but, he said, that knowledge does not detract from his mission.
“The journey is fascinating and motivating for me,” he said.
The boat’s two-hour journey is filled with wonders. On a recent outing, the blinding white salt formations look like glaciers or the snow formations known as penitentes, and clash with the backdrop of the Judean Desert’s brutal reddish rock. Graduated terraces hewn out of the cliff look manmade, but each three-foot-high step represents another summer in which the waters of the Dead Sea have evaporated.
A salt cavern perched on a rock several meters above sea level elicits a gasp from Bedein. He has not been to the area in at least three years. Rifling through a wad of photographs, Bedein shows the passengers on the boat a photo of the same cavern from 2016, its mouth at sea level. He snaps a shot of the newly elevated cavern. The side-by-side images went on display as part of a timelapse photo exhibition marking this year’s Earth Day at the Cultural Center in Arad, a city 17 miles west of the Dead Sea.
“You can feel the density of the water lugging at the boat and the bitter, sticky spray on your face and lips,” said Naomi Verber, who was on board with her baby. “The salt rock formations are otherworldly, like seeing the transition between sea and land in suspended animation.”
(Bedein claimed that Verber’s child was “the first infant to sail the Dead Sea in at least 100 years.” Whether that is true is unclear. Orit Engelberg-Baram, an environmental historian who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Dead Sea, told JTA that a baby may well have sailed its waters during the evacuation of Kibbutz Beit Ha’arava, located in what is now the West Bank, during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.)
Fruchter, meanwhile, is spearheading an effort to promote awareness about the ecological crisis of the Dead Sea by raising money to build the Dead Sea Museum of Art on a five-and-a-half-acre parcel of land in Arad. The museum, which hopes to attract half a million tourists a year once it is constructed, will combine exhibits on climate tech innovation and multimedia art installations in a carbon neutral building to both educate people about the sea and, in a grim but possible future, memorialize it.
While the industrial activity surrounding the sea often gets blamed for its depletion, Bedein says it isn’t the main culprit. He estimates that the chemical plants contribute 30% of the problem, while the other 70% is due to the reduction of the source of the water in the Jordan River.
According to Lensky, 60 years ago, a billion cubic meters of water flowed from the Jordan River into the Dead Sea. Today, less than 10% of that amount reaches it, partly because of the construction of dams around the Yarmouk River — which flows between Israel, Jordan and Syria — and partly because Jordan, one of the driest countries in the world, cannot afford to both provide water to its population and regenerate the Dead Sea. Jordan, Syria and Israel all draw water from the Sea of Galilee basin that would otherwise be flowing into the Dead Sea.
The chemical plants, Bedein said, also draw attention to the Dead Sea, which he sees as a positive.
The receding waters of the Dead Sea have revealed new rock formations. (Noam Bedein via JTA)
“It’s not about how much water is being pumped out of the Dead Sea, it’s about how much water is coming in,” he said. “It’s very reductive to blame the factories. If you close down all the factories tomorrow, there goes the entire industry in Ein Bokek, and you will have reduced awareness even more.”
The key to saving the Dead Sea, researchers say, is to bring freshwater back into it, or what Bedein terms as “restoring its historical flow.” According to Lensky, bringing freshwater back into the Dead Sea is easier said than done.
“We have no freshwater in the region and if we wanted to create some, it would come at a high price, environmentally and economically speaking,” he said.
Several projects – planned within the Israeli government and between countries – to mitigate the Dead Sea’s evaporation have been launched, including a proposed plan to construct a canal to replenish the Dead Sea with desalinated water from the Red Sea — called the Red-Dead Canal. That plan, like others, has attracted its fair share of controversy, in part because of the environmental risks it poses both to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea itself.
Bedein is not optimistic about those initiatives. The last meeting of the Knesset committee on saving the Dead Sea, which Bedein attended, took place in 2017. The five rounds of elections Israel has held since 2019, he said, haven’t helped. “The government changes every year or two, this isn’t a priority and there’s simply no one to speak to,” he said.
In the meantime, Bedein will keep taking passengers out on his boat, and will keep marveling at the new features that come to light as the sea level dips lower.
“We have the opportunity to explore uncovered landscapes for the first time,” he said. “It’s inspiring.”
