On complicity - Mark O’Connell interviewing Rashid Khalidi in NYRB:

‘Khalidi was born in New York City, where his Palestinian father was a member of the United Nations Secretariat. While relating the history of Palestine through six major acts of war on its people, his book draws on the archive of his father’s family. It begins, for instance, with an extraordinary correspondence in 1899 between his great-great-great-uncle Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, who had been mayor of Jerusalem, and Theodor Herzl, the progenitor of modern political Zionism.’

(…)

‘O’Connell: And so at what point do we stop talking about America’s “complicity” in this slaughter, and begin to talk of America as an antagonist, of America being at war with Palestine? Khalidi: That has always been my view. When we were negotiating with the Israelis in Washington, I realized that actually the Americans and the Israelis were really on the same side, opposed to us.* It was in effect a joint delegation. Now you actually have revelations in the American press of joint targeting, and of intelligence operations to find and kill leaders of Hezbollah and of Hamas. If you look carefully, you’ll see that the United States is actually directly at war. It’s an intense, high-level collaboration in planning and targeting. Not to speak of the fact that virtually every shell, every missile, every bomb is American, and that the Israeli army couldn’t go on for more than three months without those hundreds of airlifted shipments. So it is participation at an active level without, for the most part, boots on the ground.’

(…)

‘Khalidi: You have to understand a couple of things. One, there is an almost unquenchable desire for revenge for what happened on October 7 of last year: the destruction not just of the Gaza division of the Israeli army but of a large number of settlements along the Gaza border; the killing of the largest number of Israeli civilians since 1948; the abduction of over a hundred civilians and perhaps a hundred soldiers; the destruction of a sense of security, which is the cornerstone of how Israelis see themselves. So the thirst for revenge for what happened seems to be unquenchable. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that the Israeli security establishment has a plan. Every time Israel is at war, it attacks civilian populations on the pretext that there’s a military target there. It has always done this. There was always an ostensible military target somewhere, but the point was never only that military target. The point was also to punish civilians and force them to turn on insurgents. This is their practice and has always been. It’s taken directly from British military doctrine. Go to British wars in Kenya, go to Malaya, and you’ll see that the British military did the same thing. My point is, therefore, they are purposely killing civilians. They are purposely making life impossible. They are purposely making Gaza uninhabitable, as a means—in the twisted, war-criminal minds of the General Staff—of forcing the population to turn against the insurgents.

(…)

‘Thirdly—and I’m not as sure about this as I am about the first two things that I mentioned—they may not have appreciated the degree to which attacks on civilians would justify and enable Israel’s completely disproportionate response. You can contrast that with the way in which Hezbollah seems to have very carefully tried to target military and industrial installations in its attacks. Now, their attacks have killed many civilians in northern Israel, but a tiny number by comparison to what happened around Gaza on October 7. That reflects an understanding that there may be ways to limit Israel’s retaliation. I’m not sure that that has to do with Hezbollah’s respect for the laws of war, or an understanding of the moral aspect of war; I think it has to do with cold political calculation, which shows a degree of political sophistication that I don’t think Hamas had. You’ll have young people who say, “How can you criticize the resistance?” Well, if you don’t want to accept international law, you don’t want to accept morality, how about politics? How about what is smart? How about what is stupid? I’m not trying to praise Hezbollah. I’m just describing what happened.’

(…)

‘Khalidi: Exactly. It’s money, and the fear of legal liability. The way American antidiscrimination law has been weaponized to shut down dissent is frightening. It’s not the first instance in American history. You had this during the McCarthy era. You had it at different periods of American history. But it’s quite frightening.’

(…)

‘Israel has always benefited from wall-to-wall support in every Western country, with very few exceptions. It had never lost public opinion. It has now lost public opinion. That may change, and evolution is not inevitable, but if that trend continues, things will have to change for the better, however fiercely the pro-Israel elites resist. Israel cannot go on without the complete support of the West. It’s not possible. The project doesn’t work. We’re in a different world than the world we’ve been in for over a century. And that might be a source of optimism.’

Read the article here.

Antidiscrimination laws used to shut down dissent. Yes, what else could we expect?

Besides the fact that bigots and worse than just bigots love to call themselves dissenters.

The idea that Israel has become an extension of the US is not new, but might be truer now than before.

How long can a pariah state live? I would say, it depends on its weapons.

The US didn’t leave Iraq because of public opinion. And it didn’t leave Iraq to be accurate. The empire just stopped pretending that what it was doing there was nation building.

The US did leave Afghanistan, but not because of public opinion. The empire lost interest, got bored et cetera.

As to Trump, he might be against war before he will declare that it is inevitable. You can always win a peace prize for a war you yourself began.