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A New King Arose Who Did Not Know Moses

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Organizational Chart of Pharaoh’s Egypt in the days of Moses

It’s hard to understand what’s going on in Israel, Gaza, and throughout the Holy Land without a grasp on the religious background. My knowledge of Islam is scant, but my knowledge of Judaism is better because the Hebrew scriptures lead into my own Christian tradition. And what I know of the Hebrew scriptures brings me great grief as I look at what is going on in Gaza, the West Bank, and throughout Israel.

The first two books of the Torah — Genesis and Exodus, in more common parlance — tell two grand stories central to the Jewish people, and by extension, to my own Christian brothers and sisters as well. Over the last several years, and especially since the Hamas attack in early October, these two stories have been echoing through my head, especially with respect to Benjamin Netanyahu, his far-right cabinet, their supporters in Israel, and the dangerous political path they all are following.

The book of Genesis tells the stories of origins – the origin of the world, and the origin of the people of Israel as God’s chosen ones. Genesis ends with the story of Joseph and his brothers, ten older and one younger. The short version of the story is that Joseph was his father’s favorite, so much so that his older brothers were filled with anger, jealousy, and envy. One day, while the brothers were away from home, they beat Joseph and sold him into slavery in Egypt, then told their father that a wild animal had attacked and killed him. While in Egypt, Joseph came to the attention of the pharaoh, and interpreted a dream of pharaoh’s that foretold seven years of great harvests, followed by seven years of severe drought. Pharaoh listened, and stored up grain in the good years, and he named Joseph as the administrator of the grain program. When the drought arrived, Joseph’s brothers back home were caught in it, and came to Egypt to find grain. Joseph recognized them, but they did not recognize him. When Joseph finally revealed himself to them, they feared he would take revenge. Instead, Joseph offered forgiveness. “What you intended for evil, God intended for good.” Joseph told his brothers that while they let their anger rule, God was using Joseph to prepare for the great famine, and thus save his whole family. Because of Joseph’s great service to the pharaoh and all of Egypt, Joseph and his brothers were invited to stay in Egypt, and they did. Genesis ends with reconciliation between the brothers, the forebears of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Where Genesis was about the Lord and the relationships between the insiders, the brothers (and later, the tribes), Exodus is about the Lord and the relationships between the Israelites and the aliens, the non-Israelites. Exodus takes up the Genesis story generations later, when the Israelites had grown numerous in Egypt and “a new king arose who did not know Joseph.” Instead of continuing to respect what Joseph had done long before, the new king feared all these foreigners and ordered them enslaved. The Lord chose Moses to lead them out of slavery, and after a grand struggle (the ten plagues sent to torment Pharaoh), they left Egypt and entered the wilderness, moving toward the Promised Land. God gave Moses the ten commandments, and Moses spent the wilderness years teaching the newly-liberated children of Israel what it means to live as God’s people.

As the Lord spoke with Moses throughout these wilderness years, the Lord had a refrain for Moses and the children of Israel: “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt.” God was not simply reminding them that things were rough in the past. Instead, God was telling the children of Israel how they are to live in the the present and the future, saying in essence: “You used to be slaves, and I didn’t bring you out of slavery so you can become slave owners yourselves.” For example, consider the Lord’s words from Deuteronomy 24 (New Revised Standard Version, with emphasis added):

17 You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. 18 Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this. 19 When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings. 20 When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. 21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. 22 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.

You are not to be oppressors, said the Lord to Moses and the people, but you are to treat others as you were *not* treated when you were slaves in Egypt. Remember your heritage, said the Lord, and therefore care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien.

Can you see why passages like these have been echoing in my head in these last few months?

There is a difference between protecting yourself and taking vengeance, and Netanayhu and his allies have been confusing the former for the latter. Around 1200 were killed by Hamas last October and another 200 or so were taken hostage. In return, Israel has killed tens of thousands, leveled entire neighborhoods, forced hundreds of thousands to leave the rubble and seek new homes, and plunged the entire Gaza strip into hunger. Throughout the West Bank and often with explicit support of political leaders in Jerusalem, Israeli settlers have become more brazen in attacking their non-Jewish neighbors, taking their homes and land in violation of Israel’s own laws and international treaties to which Israel is a party.

There is a non-trivial segment of the Israeli political world that does not remember that they were slaves in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord does not want them to be slave-owners. The far-right in Israel, who claim that Israel should possess everything from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, is particularly firm in demanding that non-Jews of all stripes have no rights and no place in this land, because this is the land God promised only to them. Slowly but surely, the rights of non-Jews in Israel have been circumscribed, limited, and even taken away, such that the South African-born Israeli journalist Benjamin Pogrund, a Jew, has begun describing Israel using a word he long opposed using: apartheid. As he wrote last August — before the Hamas attack:

Israel 2023, South Africa 1948. I’ve lived through it before: power grabbing, fascism and racism – the destruction of democracy. Israel is going where South Africa was 75 years ago. It’s like watching the replay of a horror movie.

In 1948, as a teenager in Cape Town, I followed the results of the 26 May election on a giant board on a newspaper building. The winner-takes-all electoral system produced distorted results: the Afrikaner Nationalist party, with its smaller partner, won 79 parliamentary seats against 74 for the United party and its smaller partner.

But the Nats, as they were called, in fact won only 37.7% of the vote against the opposition’s 49.2%. Although the opposition received more votes, the Nats said they had a majority and could do what they wanted.

In the Israel of 2023, I’m reliving some of these same experiences.

[snip]

We deny Palestinians any hope of freedom or normal lives. We believe our own propaganda that a few million people will meekly accept perpetual inferiority and oppression. The government is driving Israel deeper and deeper into inhuman, cruel behaviour beyond any defence. I don’t have to be religious to know that this is a shameful betrayal of Jewish morality and history.

What was it that the Lord said to Moses and the children of Israel? Oh, yes: “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt . . .”

Pogrund remembers, and his whole piece is worth reading. Sadly, the events of the last five months have made it even more true than the day it was written. I read his piece when it first appeared last August, but these words from near the end continue to echo in my head even today:

We are at the mercy of fascists and racists (both carefully chosen words) who cannot, and will not, stop.

I write about South Africa and Israel because I know both of them, 53 years in one and nearly 26 years in the other. Neither is unique. The same pattern of rightwing repression has happened in our time in Hungary and Poland, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and earlier in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

I did not want to write this article. It was torn out of me, addressed to Israelis because the rightwing government is taking the country into institutionalised discrimination and racism. This is apartheid. South Africa under apartheid was straightforward: white v black. Israel is complex. The 21% Arab minority has the vote. Everyone pays the same national insurance and enjoys the same benefits – medical and social welfare. In hospital, I, a Jew, share a room with Arabs and we are cared for by the same Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses. Everything is open: beaches, park benches, movies, theatres, restaurants. The apartheid label is correct, but caution and thought are needed about comparisons.

In Israel, I am now witnessing the apartheid with which I grew up. Israel is giving a gift to its enemies in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and its allies, especially in South Africa, where denial of Israel’s existence is intense among many black people, in trade unions and communist and Muslim circles. BDS activists will continue to make their claims, out of ignorance and/or malevolence, spreading lies about Israel. They have long distorted what is already bad into grotesqueness, but will now claim vindication. Israel is giving them truth.

I didn’t want to write this post, either. But I look at and listen to the Jews who are protesting the actions of the Netanyahu government and their supporters, who sound more and more like the biblical prophets of old, calling the leaders of Israel to account. I look and I listen, and I could no longer remain silent. The complexity of Israel that Pogrund wrote about last summer is disappearing, faster and faster each day.

Because Bibi Netanyahu is the new king who did not know Moses.

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Image h/t to Pastor Daniel Erlander, from his excellent book Manna and Mercy: A Brief History of God’s Unfolding Promise to Mend the Entire Universe.

 

 

Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt#/media/File:Hannah_Arendt_1933.jpg

Stateless In Palestine

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The belief that all humans have certain rights, endowed by the Creator as Jefferson put it, is common. The lesson of Chapter 9 of The Origins of Totalitarianism (“Origins”) by Hannah Arendt is that such rights mean little or nothing if there is no one to enforce them. Realist diplomats after WWI knew that the successor states would not enforce the human rights of minorities and refugees unless forced to do so. They created the Minority Treaties to provide that enforcement, backed by the League of Nations.

It didn’t work. It turns out that the important part of Jefferson’s observation is the next phrase: “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….“ Absent the protection of the state, the mystical state of having rights is useless. And even having formal rights, like citizenship, is no protection against denaturalization. Arendt provides an example:

Yet, one need only remember the extreme care of the Nazis, who insisted that all Jews of non-German nationality “should be deprived of their citizenship either prior to, or, at the latest, on the day of deportation” (for German Jews such a decree was not needed, because in the Third Reich there existed a law according to which all Jews who had left the territory—including, of course, those deported to a Polish camp—automatically lost their citizenship) citizenship) in order to realize the true implications of statelessness. P. 280, fn omitted.

The problem of statelessness, and thus rightlessness, which runs through Origins is still with us. One salient example today is the Palestinian people. Arendt wrote about the impact of establishment of The State Of Israel in 1947.

The notion that statelessness is primarily a Jewish problem was a pretext used by all governments who tried to settle the problem by ignoring it. None of the statesmen was aware that Hitler’s solution of the Jewish problem, first to reduce the German Jews to a nonrecognized minority in Germany, then to drive them as stateless people across the borders, and finally to gather them back from everywhere in order to ship them to extermination camps, was an eloquent demonstration to the rest of the world how really to “liquidate” all problems concerning minorities and stateless.

After the war it turned out that the Jewish question, which was considered the only insoluble one, was indeed solved—namely, by means of a colonized and then conquered territory—but this solved neither the problem of the minorities nor the stateless. On the contrary, like virtually all other events of our century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of the stateless and rightless by another 700,000 to 800,000 people.

And what happened in Palestine within the smallest territory and in terms of hundreds of thousands was then repeated in India on a large scale involving many millions of people. Since the Peace Treaties of 1919 and 1920 thé refugees and the stateless have attached themselves like a curse to all the newly established states on earth which were created in the image of the nation-state. P. 289 — 90, fn. omitted, my paragraphing.

The problem of the stateless and rightness Arabs described by Arendt has not been solved. The Palestinian Authority has no ability, or will, to protect the human rights of Palestinians and Gazans. Hamas is a terrorist organization, not a government. No Hamas member from top to bottom cares about the lives of the people of Gaza, let alone their rights, though apparently the “leaders” care about their own safety and luxuries, living the rich life in Qatar.

The State of Israel doesn’t care about the Palestinians either. There’s the ruthless bombing. There’s the settler attacks in the West Bank, which go unpunished. Israel has sold oil leases that were thought to be the property of the Palestinians. Even as the war continues, it announced its intention to build 3,000 new housing units for settlers in the West Bank.

The failure of assimilation

In earlier chapters of Origins, Arendt discusses the history of anti-Semitism in Europe, especially France. She tells the story of Alfred Dreyfus. But probably she wasn’t aware that the French Vichy government deported Dreyfus’ granddaughter, Madeleine Levy, to Auchwitz, where she was murdered in the Holocaust. Nor does she mention the deportation and murder of other assimilated French Jews such as the family of Nissim de Camondo; there are monuments to these dead all over France. I read this part of Origins as saying that assimilation of Jews into European society was a failure, at least up to then.

Arendt was herself a Jew and stateless, and worked for Zionist organizations in the early 1930s in Germany and then in Geneva. Given her premise about human rights, it’s easy to understand why she might favor the goal of Zionism to establish a home state for Jews. If the Jewish people are to have rights they need a state that is willing and able to protect those rights. This is the founding goal of Zionism.

Revisionist Zionism

Rick Perlstein wrote an essay for The American Prospect discussing a book by Eram Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy. According to Perlstein, Kaplan says that there were two factions in the Zionist movement, Labor Zionism and Revisionist Zionism. Labor Zionism is the faction that seemed to prevail. It’s the faction of the Kibbutzim, people working the land to make the desert bloom. It’s the faction for which Jewish kids collected dimes to plant trees. It’s the founding story of Israel I learned growing up in the 50s.

Perlstein’s essay focuses on Revisionist Zionism. He begins with a discussion of an interview by the excellent Isaac Chotiner of a leader in the settlement movement. Chotiner talked to Daniella Weiss, a leader in the settlement movement for over 50 years. Weiss believes that the State of Israel should include all the land from the Euphrates to the Nile. She says Arabs and other non-Jews who live there now have no political rights:

Q. When you say that you want more Jews in the West Bank, is your idea that the Palestinians there and the Jews will live side by side as friends, or that—

A. If they accept our sovereignty, they can live here.

Q. So they should accept the sovereign power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean having rights. It just means accepting the sovereign power.

A. Right. No, I’m saying specifically that they are not going to have the right to vote for the Knesset. No, no, no.

Weiss may seem like an extremist, but Perlstein tells us she’s stating the ideological position of Revisionist Zionism. Perlstein writes that Kaplan says that the Revisionist faction was a fascist ideology, based on Italian Fascism.

Perlstein describes the ideas of a founder of this faction, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, showing the connection to Benito Mussolini’s fascism, including its emphasis on violence and moral purity as a means of returning to a former glory. Perlstein says the language used by Weiss in the Chotiner interview is the doctrine of Revisionist Zionism.

And make no mistake: What this settler told [Chotiner] was doctrine. “For Jabotinsky,” Kaplan writes, “human rights, civil equality, and even political equality could not create harmony among individuals. Only the common ties of blood, history, and language could bring people together.”

Perlstein tells us that Benjamin Netanyahu’s father was an associate of Jabotinsky, and argues that Netanyahu carries the entire tradition of Revisionist Zionism forward.

Discussion

1. The blithe disrespect for the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is shocking. You have to read it to believe it.

2. Perlstein’s essay is a bare introduction to Revisionist Zionism, and it’s the first I ever heard of it. It’s also shocking.

3. One of the many issues Perlstein discusses is the way his understanding of the history of the State of Israel has changed since he was a child. Perlstein is a historian, but he tells us he never heard of the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem until he was 30. Well, I never heard of the Tulsa Massacre until I was in my 60s.

The Christmas Story is a Very Political Story

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Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, Bethlehem, West Bank

I know that title will irritate many, especially on the theological and political right, but don’t get angry with me. Get angry with Luke.

Luke’s story is built around contrasts, and those contrasts begin with the Roman Emperor Augustus. You don’t get more political than starting your story like this:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.

Luke introduces us to the Roman emperor, Augustus, and his governor in Syria, Quirinius, doing what emperors and governors do: issuing orders. Here, the orders are related to the chief function of emperors and governors everywhere: collecting money. “We need to know how many folks live where, so we know how much we can expect to raise in taxes, and how many soldiers and tax farmers we will need to send out to collect it.” So the imperial orders get issued, and the ordinary people do what they do when emperors and governors issue orders: they do what they are told.

Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Enter Joseph and Mary, some of the countless ordinary folks to whom the orders were given. They do what they have been told, and head off to the ancestral home of Bethlehem, where they can’t find a place to stay and are forced to move into a stable. But this doesn’t matter to Augustus and Quirinius. All that matters to them is that their orders are carried out, regardless of the inconveniences or costs to the ordinary folks. All hail the power of the Senate and People of Rome!

And in that stable, Mary gives birth. Not in a hospital, not in their own home in Nazareth surrounded by family and friends, but in a stable surrounded by animals. To Mary and Joseph, what matters is the new life that has entered their lives under difficult circumstances. To Augustus and Quirinius, the only thing that matters is the count: add one more to the census for the newborn. More people, more taxes to collect.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.

Then Luke brings more of the folks on the bottom of society into the story: the shepherds. And make no mistake: shepherds were definitely on the bottom. The simple fact that they were out in the field at night, tending their flocks, ought to tell you just how much on the bottom they were. Rain or clear, cold or hot, shepherds were out in the fields, tending their flocks. If you are a storyteller wanting to describe the extremes of power and privilege, emperors and governors are at one end of the spectrum, and shepherds are at the other.

So far, this is an ordinary tale of ordinary life in an empire. The folks on top have the power and the money and give the orders, and the folks on the bottom do what they are told.

But not tonight.

Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

Here, finally, is the real contrast that Luke has been building toward: Augustus and his minions on the one hand and God on the other, standing with shepherds and ordinary folks. The messengers of Augustus announce the census, issue the orders, and prepare for the tax collections to come. The messengers of God, on the other hand, announce the birth of a savior, the Messiah, the one whose birth signals a new age.

Note that the angels came to the shepherds, not to the emperor or the governor. The messengers of good news came to those on the margins of society and those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, proclaiming that all the power and wealth of the emperor is no match for the power and love of God. In their joy and excitement, the shepherds became angels—messengers of God—themselves, going to the stable where they told Mary and Joseph about what they had heard and seen.

Like I said, the Christmas story is a very political story.

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Lots of families display a creche in their homes, showing the stable with its animals, the shepherds and their sheep, the wise men and their camels and gifts, and the holy family with the babe lying in the manger. These nativity scenes come in all shapes, sizes, and styles, from the realistic to the symbolic, from the pious to the kitschy. Many churches have their own nativity displays, and some go so far as to have a “living” nativity scene outdoors on the church lawn with members in costume.

The image at the top of this post is from Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem – part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land. (You can click on the picture to get a larger version.) NPR did a story this past week on the churches of Bethlehem and how the fighting in Gaza has changed this holiday season there. Toward the end of the piece is this:

A short walk from the Church of the Nativity is the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church. There, the Rev. Munther Isaac and his congregation chose this year to make a statement about the killing of so many children in Gaza.

Using broken cement and paving stones, they placed the baby Jesus in the center of a pile of debris from a collapsed home, inspired by television images of children being pulled from the rubble, Issac says.

“I always say we need to de-romanticize Christmas,” he says. “In reality, it’s a story of a baby who was born in the most difficult circumstances and the Roman Empire under occupation, who survived the massacre of children himself when he was born. So the connection was natural to us.”

Issac says he’s surprised at the international interest that his church has received as a result of its display of baby Jesus amid the rubble.

Broken cement and paving stones, with the baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh. Of all the creches I have seen, the one sitting to the side of the altar at Christmas Lutheran in Bethlehem tonight is by far the most powerful.

Peace to you, my friends, at this celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace, and peace to those who work for peace — peace in our families, peace in our communities, and peace in our world.

Will Obama Show Reagan’s Courage and Suspend Tank Transfers to Israel?

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In the worst strike yet by Israel against a United Nations school where Palestinian civilians were seeking shelter from the carnage, up to 19 people were killed and 125 were wounded last night when Israeli tanks shelled the school in Jebalya. Citizens in Gaza have very limited options on where to go once Israel issues an ultimatum to evacuate an area. Reuters reports that more than 200,000 have sought refuge in UN schools and other UN buildings since the fighting broke out. Also yesterday, Israeli tanks shelled the only power plant in Gaza, forcing it to be shut down when a fuel tank was hit.

Israel, of course, claims that there was mortar fire from the vicinity of the UN school:

An Israeli military spokeswoman said militants had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops fired back in response. The incident was still being reviewed.

It is hard to see the shelling of the power plant, however, as anything other than collective punishment for all of Gaza. For all of Israel’s yammering about terror tunnels and the scary rockets that Hamas is firing toward Israel, numbers in a CNN article this morning drive home the asymmetry of the conflict. Gaza is home to 1.8 million residents while Israel has a population of 8 million. Israel’s armed forces have 176,000 active personnel. As for Hamas:

The U.S. State Department says there are “several thousand” Gaza-based Hamas militant operatives along with a “reported 9,000-person Hamas-led paramilitary group known as the ‘Executive Force.'”

Tellingly, CNN does not separate Palestinian civilians from Hamas militants when it first touches on casualty figures, stating only that “more than 1200 Palestinians have been killed”. The Reuters article linked above puts the number this morning at 1270. Only later in the CNN article do we learn that Israel estimates that it has killed “more than 300” Hamas militants. That means that Israel’s own estimate is that 76% of the Palestinians they have killed are civilians. For all of Israel’s claims about the “pin-point precision” of its attacks, that is a horrible track record.

Of course, Israel hides behind claims of Hamas using civilians as human shields to justify the high civilian death rate. The problem, though, is that it is impossible to see how Israel faces any sort of imminent danger from any Hamas militants who may be hiding among Palestinian refugees (or even in the terror tunnels!). While the death toll of Palestinian civilians is approaching a thousand in this conflict, a grand total of three Israeli civilians have died, along with 53 soldiers who have died once Israeli forces crossed into Gaza. The UN is taking as many precautions as they can to screen the refugees in their shelters, and they have found and disclosed rockets that operatives tried to hide in shelters three times now.

Given the horrific numbers of civilians killed and the clearly punitive nature of bombing the power plant, it is time to visit the regulations and policies that apply to US arms and arms funding that flows to Israel. Consider this policy pronouncement in Defense News in April of this year, where we learn that:

a State Department official said Washington’s classified Conventional Arms Transfer Policy has been updated to make clear that the US will not transfer arms, equipment or training to countries that commit genocide, crimes against humanity or violate international humanitarian law.

The law against collective punishment is clear and the ratio of civilians to militants killed, along with the repressive blockade and power plant bombing would seem to be slam dunks for proving collective punishment.

Further, none other than the war mongers’ best friend Ronald Reagan actually intervened (pdf) in arms transfers to Israel once when they over-stepped the bounds of humanity:

Questions raised regarding the use of U.S.-supplied military equipment by Israel in Lebanon in June and July 1982, led the Reagan Administration to determine on July 15, 1982, that Israel “may” have violated its July 23, 1952, Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with the United States (TIAS 2675). Concerns centered on whether or not Israel had used U.S.-supplied anti-personnel cluster bombs against civilian targets during its military operations in Lebanon and the siege of Beirut. The pertinent segment of that 1952 agreement between Israel and the United States reads as follows:

The Government of Israel assures the United States Government that such equipment, materials, or services as may be acquired from the United States … are required for and will be used solely to maintain its internal security, its legitimate self-defense, or to permit it to participate in the defense of the area of which it is a part, or in United Nations collective security arrangements and measures, and that it will not undertake any act of aggression against any other state.

It should be noted that none of the critical terms such as “internal security,” “legitimate self-defense,” or “act of aggression” are defined within this 1952 U.S.-Israeli agreement. The House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings on this issue in July and August 1982. On July 19, 1982, the Reagan Administration announced that it would prohibit new exports of cluster bombs to Israel. This prohibition was lifted by the Reagan Administration in November 1988

Note that Israeli tanks appear to have been involved in the shelling of both the school and the power plant. That would make tanks and their ammunition perfect candidates to replace the cluster bombs in a repeat of Reagan’s move in 1982. From the figures in this document (pdf, see this pdf for a guide to the categories), it appears that in 2013, the US provided over $620 million worth of assistance in the category of “Tanks and Military Vehicles” to Israel, just among the figures reported by the State Department rather than the Defense Department.

Of course, don’t look for Obama to have the courage to stem the flow of money and weapons to Israel any time soon. In the meantime, it will be up to outside groups to apply what little pressure they can.

Update: From the UN statement on the shelling of the school (the sixth one hit!):

Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.

We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge. We believe there were at least three impacts. It is too early to give a confirmed official death toll. But we know that there were multiple civilian deaths and injuries   including of women and children and the UNRWA guard who was trying to protect the site.  These are people who were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli army.

The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times,  to ensure its protection; the last being at  ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling.

Droning Cell Phone Calls

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Noah Shachtman is going to convince me to give up my cell phone. Today he notes an AP story reporting that Palestinians believe Israel’s spy drones are jamming cell phone lines and then using them to take out targets.

Palestinians say they know when an Israeli drone is in the air: Cell phones stop working, TV reception falters and they can hear a distant buzzing. They also know what’s likely to come next — a devastating explosion on the ground.

Palestinians say Israel’s pilotless planes have been a major weapon in its latest offensive in Gaza, which has killed nearly 120 people since last week.

[snip]

Wary Gaza militants using binoculars are on constant lookout for drones. When one is sighted overhead, the militants report via walkie-talkie to their comrades, warning them to turn off their cell phones and remove the batteries for fear the Israeli technology will trace their whereabouts.

The AP goes on to note that the US has used such Predator drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well–though the AP doesn’t explicitly say these drones triggered using cell phone signals.

In January, a missile fired from a Predator killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaida commander, in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region of north Waziristan. Coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have launched a number of missile strikes from drones against Taliban and al-Qaida militants hiding on the Pakistani side of the border, but the U.S. military has never confirmed them.

This report follows on one from last week, in which the Taliban demanded cell phone operators in Afghanistan turn off cell signal for 10 hours a day–or they’d take the towers out.

Taliban militants threatened Monday to blow up telecom towers across Afghanistan if mobile phone companies do not switch off their signals for 10 hours starting at dusk.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed said the U.S. and other foreign troops in the country are using mobile phone signals to track down the insurgents and launch attacks against them.

Since that time, the Taliban have taken out at least two cell towers (h/t oscar).

Two mobile phone antennas were destroyed in southern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday, after Taliban militants threatened to bring down such masts, alleging they are used to locate hideouts.

Read more →

The Gazan Jail-Bust and Middle East Dynamics

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While we were all glued to CSPAN on the FISA fight yesterday, Hamas engineered a massive jail-break, breaking down the wall between Gaza and Egypt so Palestinians who have been under siege could go into Egypt to get food and supplies. The jail-break may have redefined the dynamics of Middle Eastern politics. While the jail-break had obviously been planned for some time, it occurred at a time when Israel was intensifying the Gaza siege, even while Bush had just traipsed around the Middle East claiming he was serious about seeking peace between Israel and Palestine. While it’s still early, the jail-break has the potential of dramatically altering dynamics in the Middle East.

As Jonathan Edelstein notes, the siege was really more of a joint Israeli-Egyptian siege.

I’ll close by questioning received wisdom, noting a legal paradigm shift, and indulging in some wild speculation.

Questioning received wisdom: I think we’ve been wrong all along in describing the siege of Gaza as an Israeli siege. In fact, ever since Israel left the Philadelphi route, it’s been an Israeli-Egyptian siege, and Egypt has maintained its end for its own reasons. Hamas correctly perceived Egypt as the military and political weak link, and chose to break the siege at the Egyptian border. I’ve actually wondered why it took so long; there have been partial breaches of the wall before, and I remember thinking at the time that Hamas would gain an advantage by widening them. Maybe it wasn’t yet ready, but I think it’s now very clear that they and Israel were never the only players.

Adelstein wonders whether this jailbust might lead to increasing influence from Hamas in Egypt, something Egypt can ill afford.

As for Bob Spencer’s speculation that Gaza might “become some sort of loosely associated part of Egypt,” I wonder if it might end up more the other way. I did some speculating of my own about the Gaza-Sinai relationship in late 2005, at the time the Rafah crossing reopened and before the rocket-closure-raid cycle started developing its own logic. The key points were that Gaza has six times the population of North Sinai governorate, that there was more money in Gaza than in that part of Egypt, that Egyptian security control in that region was tenuous and that the ports of al-Arish and Port Said had the potential to become a key Palestinian import-export route. All these, except possibly the second, remain true, and given that it will be a political impossibility for Mubarak to re-close the border (although he has built walls against his own Bedouin citizens), Sinai al-Shamaliyya might end up becoming a de facto Palestinian economic appendage. Interesting times. Read more →