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The only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is the end of the occupation and apartheid and the establishment of a truly democratic state for both the Palestinians and Jews.
Israel’s massive cyber-attack on Lebanon on 17 and 18 September, with the near-simultaneous explosion of 3,000-4,000 pagers and walkie-talkies, has killed a few dozen Hezbollah members and many civilians, including some children and health workers, has blinded and maimed hundreds of people and wounded many thousands. Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a long speech on 19 September, frankly admitted that the attacks had delivered a severe and unprecedented blow to the radical movement, but he said that the movement would recover from it.
From an intelligence and technical point of view, the booby-trapping of the pagers was a sophisticated espionage operation carried out by the Israeli Mossad. There is an international trail in this complex operation and, so far, even the company that produced those pagers and those who manipulated them have not been identified. In view of the impact of this extensive form of cyber terrorism on the current Israeli war and its repercussions in the region and beyond and what it means for cyber security in the future, this incident must be properly investigated to see which firms and which countries were involved in this heinous act.
Many international legal experts and academics have stressed the illegal nature of such indiscriminate action and have described it as another Israeli war crime. Luigi Daniele, a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and an expert in international humanitarian law, says that these acts constitute at least two war crimes. “The first is intentionally directing attacks against individual civilians not taking a direct part in the hostilities, for all the unlawful targets, so basically, diplomats or merely political affiliates of Hezbollah with no combat function.” The second is “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.”
Yet, some pro-Israeli commentators have bizarrely praised it as an example of Israel’s technical expertise and its intelligence dominance of the region. Writing in Haaretz, Yossi Melman called it a “genius move” and praised it as “a brilliant and innovative operation, showing that for imaginative spy craft planners the sky is really the limit.” However, he criticises its “early implementation”, rather than waiting for the start of a war on Hezbollah. Axios cited a former Israeli official who said Israeli intelligence services had originally planned to use the modified pagers as a “surprise opening blow in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah”, but three U.S. officials told Axios that they used them prematurely because they believed that their secret might have been discovered by the group.
Although so far, the United States has supported Israel at great cost to its reputation and its relations with Middle Eastern and Muslim countries as a whole, there are indications that most Americans, including young Jewish Americans have turned against Israel’s far-right government.
Clearly, the massive pager attack on Lebanon was meant to coincide with the start of a major Israeli invasion of Lebanon and it might still lead to a regional war. Israeli aircraft have already started bombing parts of Lebanon. Even from before the 7th October attack, Netanyahu spoke about a new Middle East. In a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu showed a map of Israel which had incorporated both Gaza and the West Bank.
Speaking two days after the Hamas attack on Israel, Netanyahu vowed to change the Middle East: “What Hamas will experience will be difficult and terrible … we are going to change the Middle East.” The day after the Hamas attack, Israeli forces shelled Lebanon, killing three Hezbollah members, to which Hezbollah responded by firing a salvo of rockets into northern Israel, marking a significant expansion of the conflict. These border attacks have continued ever since, displacing some 60,000 Israelis from their homes in Northern Israel and a larger number of Lebanese from southern Lebanon.
Israel’s technical prowess and the expansion of the war to Lebanon may be a sign of Israel’s military superiority, but in the long-run they may prove to be counter-productive and even foolish. Praising them is similar to praising Hitler’s aggressive wars as signs of German military strength. The German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the beginning of World War II with dire consequences for Europe, for the world, and especially for Germany. Yet, from a military point of view, it was a great achievement. It started with the Gleiwitz incident, which was a false flag attack on a radio station in Gleiwitz (then Germany and now Gliwice, Poland) staged by Nazi Germany as a casus belli for the invasion of Poland.
One of the aims of the invasion was to divide Polish territory at the end of the operation and seize large parts of it, something that the Israelis have done before in the case of Lebanon. The 1978 South Lebanon conflict (codenamed Operation Litani) began when Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon up to the Litani River in March 1978. The conflict resulted in the deaths of as many as 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, and 20 Israelis, and the internal displacement of nearly 250,000 people in Lebanon. In response to the Israeli invasion, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolutions 425 and 426, calling on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, which eventually she was forced to do.
Again, on 6 June 1982, Israeli forces under the command of Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon on the false excuse of the attempted assassination of an Israeli diplomat in London by the PLO, despite the fact that the perpetrators belonged to Abu Nidal Organisation, which was an enemy of the PLO. Israel’s objectives were to expel the PLO members who had fled to Lebanon following the Nakba, and install a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel.
Israeli forces carried out massive bombardment of Beirut and Sidon, killing between 20,000 and 30,000 people and displacing hundreds of thousands of the Lebanese. Those savage attacks ended with the Sabra and Shatila Massacre when between 16–18 September 1982 several thousand unarmed Palestinians were massacred by Israeli-backed right-wing Lebanese militias, while Israeli forces provided lighting for the massacre. In February 1983, an independent commission chaired by Irish diplomat Sean MacBride, assistant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, concluded that the IDF, as the then occupying power over Sabra and Shatila, bore the main responsibility for the militia’s massacre.
The Shi’is who formed the majority in the south bore the brunt of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. This is how Hezbollah was born to force the Israeli forces to leave Lebanon, which they eventually achieved in the year 2000. The Israelis have a habit of describing all those who rise against their occupation as terrorists, whether the PLO and later the Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas which came to power in Gaza as the result of a democratic election, encouraged by President Bush mainly in order to weaken the PLO.
If Israeli forces are foolish enough to invade Lebanon again and try to occupy a part of it near their border they will face the same outcome. Despite massive and unquestioning US support, the Israelis constitute a tiny minority in the Middle East. The genocide in Gaza has alienated and infuriated many people, even many of Israel’s former friends. Far from achieving an Israeli-Arab front against Iran, many Arab countries that Netanyahu counted on, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have established relations with Iran. Egyptian and Iranian leaders have spoken of the possibility of renewing diplomatic relations. Turkey which has friendly relations with Iran has turned against Israel and has called Netanyahu’s government a terrorist regime.
Although so far, the United States has supported Israel at great cost to its reputation and its relations with Middle Eastern and Muslim countries as a whole, there are indications that most Americans, including young Jewish Americans have turned against Israel’s far-right government.
Netanyahu has not concealed his ultimate desire to expand the scope of the war and get the United States involved in a war against Iran. Such a war will not be in the interest of the region and the United States. Even if Israel manages to crush Hezbollah and weaken Iran, he will not be able to get rid of some seven million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and in Israel. In this day and age, the world will not allow another massive genocide and ethnic cleansing similar to the one Israel carried out in 1948. The only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is the end of the occupation and apartheid and the establishment of a truly democratic state for both the Palestinians and Jews.
The world’s highest judicial authority, the International Court of Justice, has described Israel’s massacres in Gaza as “plausible genocide”, and had ordered Israel to stop the war. It has also clearly declared the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as illegal and had ordered Israel to end the occupation as soon as possible. On 18th September, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel “brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The voting result was as follows: In favour: 124, Against: 14, Abstain: 43. This shows that the international community as a whole regards Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal and views its system as an apartheid regime. Israel should stop digging and should abide by international law.
As was done in the case of the apartheid South Africa, the international community must form a truth and reconciliation commission, to punish those who have been directly involved in the genocide and to form a unity government under United Nations supervision, until the two communities learn to live in peace together. Any other alternative will be a mirage and will lead to greater tragedies in the future.
While private sector gains are welcome news for millions of working families, access to paid sick leave remains vastly unequal.
Absent federal action, states and localities have expanded workers’ ability to earn paid sick leave to care for themselves and their families. The results of these efforts over the past dozen years are clear: There have been significant gains in access to paid sick time among private-sector workers. The latest data released Thursday morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that these trends continued into 2024: 79% of private-sector workers have the ability to earn paid sick leave, an increase from 63% in 2012.
While these gains are welcome news for millions of working families, access to paid sick leave remains vastly unequal. As shown in the graph below, higher-wage workers have greater access to paid sick days than lower-wage workers. Among the 25% of private-sector workers with the highest wages, 94% have access to paid sick days. By contrast, among the 25% of workers with the lowest wages, only 58% have access to paid sick days. Prior releases have shown that the bottom 10% fare even worse, with only 39% having access to paid sick days in 2023 (though their access has improved, likely from state action).
This unequal access to paid sick days is particularly troubling since low-wage workers are least able to absorb lost wages when they or their family members are sick. Workers may have trouble paying for housing, food, health care, and other necessities (see Table 1 of this report).
While federal inaction on paid sick days continues to erode families’ economic security and needlessly spread illness, cities and states are stepping up for working people and serving as models for jurisdictions throughout the country. Minnesota is the latest example of states granting workers the ability to earn paid sick time in 2024. Measures to provide paid sick time are also on the ballots this November in Nebraska, Missouri, and Alaska.
Given variation in state laws, it’s no surprise that there are significant differences in access to paid sick time across the country, as shown below.
The share with access to paid sick days ranges from only 64% in the East South Central states (Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee) and 65% in the West South Central (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas) up to 95% in the Pacific states (California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska). Notably, many state governments in the East South Central and West South Central Census divisions have passed preemption laws prohibiting local municipalities from passing paid leave and sick day policies.
There is also huge variation in access to paid sick days across the private sector. Full-time workers are much more likely to have paid sick days than part-time workers (87% versus 55%). Unionized workers have greater access to paid sick days than nonunion workers (84% versus 79%).
Fortunately, there is a relatively simple way to address some of these inequities: The federal government can pass legislation to mandate paid sick leave for all workers. Paid sick leave not only helps reduce transmission of disease, it also provides economic security for workers who might otherwise lose income if they have to take time off from work.
The problem is that the Biden administration has not used its most powerful levers of influence—the flow of cash and armaments to Israel—to persuade Netanyahu to bend.
The numbers are clear. The temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in November last year resulted in the release of 109 hostages. Compare that to Israeli military operations, which have managed to rescue 8 hostages while killing three by accident. The military has also recovered the bodies of another 34 hostages, including six killed shortly before the Israelis made it to the underground tunnel where they were being held. Meanwhile, 33 hostages are presumed dead.
By the most conservative accounting, ceasefire tactics have been more effective than military tactics by a factor of 10 in saving Israeli lives.
In starting this most recent war in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu no doubt was remembering his brother, who led the daring rescue of hijacked passengers at the Entebbe airport in 1976 (and died in the process). Now the younger Netanyahu was facing his own hostage crisis. He decided, like his brother, to pursue force. He entertained fantasies of destroying Hamas, saving the 251 people kidnapped on October 7, and salvaging his own dismal political reputation.
It hasn’t worked out quite that way. The war hasn’t eliminated Hamas, and even the Israeli military cautions that this isn’t possible. The Israeli military has been spectacularly unsuccessful—and in some cases unforgivably negligent—in freeing hostages. Speaking of unforgivable, Israeli forces have also killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza. The Netanyahu government has escalated its policy of expulsion in the West Bank and is now poised to go to war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The recent coordinated explosions of the pagers that the Iran-backed militia purchased to avoid Israeli surveillance, followed by a second set of explosions involving walkie-talkies, could well be the starting gun for the war.
Despite (or perhaps because of) these horrors, Netanyahu is making a political comeback. Although his coalition would lose against the opposition if an election were held today, the prime minister’s Likud Party remains by a thin margin the most popular party in Israel today.
In other words, Netanyahu has some reason to believe that he has a winning strategy: talk tough, be tough, hang tough. He thinks that he can safely ignore the pleas of the hostages’ families, the demands of the demonstrators on the street, and the advice of his own military advisors—not to mention anything that the U.S. government has said. The Israeli prime minister has dismissed evidence that the failures of his own intelligence agencies played a role in the events of October 7. As long as he visits punishment upon Israel’s enemies—Palestinians, Hezbollah in Lebanon, selected targets in Iran—he can secure the support of the Israeli far right and continue to present himself as his country’s savior.
As such, Netanyahu believes that he has two more enemies to fight against: compromise and ceasefire.
Thus, each time Israeli and Palestinian negotiators seem close to a negotiated ceasefire, Netanyahu has pulled the rug out from underneath them. So, for instance, Hamas withdrew its initial insistence on Israel committing to a permanent ceasefire from the beginning. As for the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza, another key element of the three-part plan put forward by the Biden administration, Netanyahu is now insisting that Israel retain control of the Philadelphi corridor, the section of Gaza that borders Egypt, in order to interdict any potential weapons shipments to Hamas.
This apparently non-negotiable demand from Netanyahu does not reflect any real consideration of Israeli security needs. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, not exactly the most pro-Palestinian voice in journalism, points out that the Israeli military did not consider this supposedly indispensable corridor
important enough to even occupy for the first seven months of the war. Israeli generals have consistently told Netanyahu there are many alternative effective means for controlling the corridor now and that supporting Israeli troops marooned out there would be difficult and dangerous. And they could retake it any time they need. Staying there is already causing huge problems with the Egyptians, too.
Netanyahu’s own defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has reportedly said that “the fact that we prioritize the Philadelphi Corridor at the cost of the lives of the hostages is a moral disgrace.”
So, if his own defense minister can’t change Netanyahu’s mind, what can be done to dislodge the prime miniester from his unyielding position?
Since the Labour Party took over in the United Kingdom in July, it has made three consequential decisions related to Israel/Palestine. First, it resumed funding for the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees. Next, it reversed the Tory decision to challenge the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu.
And, at the beginning of September, it blocked a certain number of arms sales to Israel. Not surprisingly, Netanyahu condemned the decision as “shameful” and “misguided.”
In fact, the UK’s move was both tepid and not hugely important. The decision affected only 30 out of 350 export licenses. And Britain supplies just 1 percent of Israeli imports.
Netanyahu wasn’t worried so much about the UK weapons per se but rather the domino effect the decision might have on the three biggest suppliers of the Israeli military. Between 2013 and 2023, the United States provided around 65 percent of the country’s military imports, Germany roughly 30 percent, and Italy a bit under 5 percent.
Italy claims that it has basically stopped arms exports, only honoring existing contracts if they don’t involve the use of those weapons against civilians (no one really knows how the Italians are making this determination). German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has made a great show of pledging military support for Israel, but the country’s Federal Security Council has effectively stopped providing the promised assistance. “Ultimately, the growing concerns [against Israel] are the reason why fewer approvals are being granted, even if no one wants to say it out loud,” an employee of a representative on the Federal Security Council told The Jerusalem Post.
Which leaves the United States. The Biden administration announced $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel in mid-August, after ordering a pause in deliveries of heavy bombs (subsequently reversed) and threatening to cancel shipments if Israel invaded Rafah (it did and the U.S. did nothing).
The weapons that the United States delivers to Israel are its only real leverage over the Netanyahu government. It could be argued that this doesn’t amount to much leverage, particularly when Israel isn’t asking for as much these days. Also, Israel has its own military-industrial complex and can produce a lot of what it uses. Still, the nearly $4 billion that the United States sends Israel every year is a significant chunk of the Israeli military budget ($27 billion and rising). And that should translate into political capital that an American administration could use to influence Israeli policy.
But Biden did not condition aid on Netanyahu signing a ceasefire deal. Talk about a non-transactional president!
Lest anyone imagine that Donald Trump would do any different if he returned to the White House, the infamously transactional candidate suspended that particular aspect of his character when dealing with Israel. During his four years in office, he gave Israel everything it wanted and got nothing in return (other than the adulation of Netanyahu and the Israeli far right).
Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza has generated considerable international condemnation. The UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, ruled in July that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal and must end. The International Criminal Court, meanwhile, has issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu (along with Defense Minister Gallant and three Hamas leaders, two of whom have already been killed).
The UN Security Council has approved several ceasefire resolutions, including one that called for a Ramadan pause, which was ignored. In June, the Security Council passed a resolution introduced by the United States that supports (not surprisingly) the three-part ceasefire plan devised by the Biden administration. Netanyahu has so far ignored this one as well.
Plenty of countries have registered their protests against Israel in other forms. Several European countries—Norway, Ireland, Spain, and Slovenia—recently went ahead and recognized an independent Palestinian state. They join 143 other countries around the world that had already made that decision.
Turkey has executed an about-face from being a key Israeli trade partner to a leader of the economic boycott of the country. Now, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening to assemble a Sunni coalition, along with Egypt, in support of the Palestinians.
People around the world have voted with their feet by joining protests. In the days following the October 7 attack and the start of the war in Gaza, there were thousands of pro-Palestinian gatherings in dozens of countries. Demonstrations spread on campuses, particularly in the United States and Europe but also in Australia and India.
Meanwhile, in Israel, sentiment has shifted. A week ago, half a million people thronged the streets of Tel Aviv, with 250,000 rallying in other Israeli cities, demanding an immediate ceasefire. The overriding issue in Israel is the release of the remaining hostages. Interestingly, polling for the first time shows that a majority of Gazans now believe that the Hamas attack on October 7 was a mistake. This is a marked reversal since the early days of the war, when both Israelis and Palestinians were convinced that the military actions of their political representatives were correct.
So, at this point, it’s not a question of persuading the people of Israel and Palestine of the importance of negotiations or the need for a ceasefire. The machinery of international law has been mobilized to put pressure on the Israeli government. The country most committed to Israel’s military defense, the United States, has also been pushing for a ceasefire.
The problem is that the Biden administration has not used its most powerful levers of influence—the flow of cash and armaments to Israel—to persuade Netanyahu to bend. The Israeli leader and his right-wing allies listen to the American voices they want to hear—the Republican Party, AIPAC—and ignore what they consider to be a lame-duck administration. Netanyahu would no doubt prefer Donald Trump to win in November. But even if Kamala Harris wins, he doesn’t worry that the Democrats will make any significant changes in U.S. policy, especially if the Republicans manage to win the Senate.
If anything, Netanyahu is moving even further away from compromise. Israel has ramped up operations in the West Bank in the furtherance of its campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Israeli army is preparing for a sustained military campaign against Hezbollah, which is now mulling a response to the two recent waves of bomb attacks—pagers, walkie-talkies—that were the result of an Israeli operation to insert explosive devices in the devices somewhere along the supply chain.
According to the most pessimistic analysis, Israel will eventually settle for a ceasefire in Gaza in order to turn its attention more fully to the West Bank and Hezbollah. Achieving a ceasefire and a hostage deal would also remove the chief obstacle to a national unity government that would give Netanyahu the political cover for these expanded operations.
So, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is necessary but not sufficient. The Biden administration must attach strings to Israeli aid related to the country’s overall policies of expulsion. Time is running out. Biden must back Palestinian demands for political autonomy before Israel has occupied all Palestinian land. He must push for regional negotiations that address the essential conflict between Israel and Iran that lies behind the dispute with Hezbollah.
It’s not likely that the administration will push anything so ambitious before the election. But when Biden enters his lame-duck period, he will have one last chance to back a ceasefire-plus scenario. He can even shoehorn this effort into the “Abrahamic Accords,” the Trump-era initiative to negotiate the Arab world’s recognition of Israel.
On November 6, regardless of who wins the election on the day before, Biden needs to withdraw all his political capital from the bank and spend it in the Middle East. Netanyahu and his far-right allies are a threat to Israel, to Palestine, to the entire region. Biden gave an enormous gift to the United States when he stepped aside as a presidential candidate. In his lame-duck session after the election, he can make one final, legacy-making gift by applying just the right combination of carrots and sticks to contain Netanyahu and end the horrors in and around Israel/Palestine.
From ordering police raids on civil rights workers to spreading conspiracy theories about voter fraud, the Republican Party is finding new ways to suppress the votes of people of color.
A Florida resident named Isaac Menasche received a home visit this September from a police officer asking whether he’d signed a petition for a ballot measure.
The petition, which Menasche had indeed signed, was for a November initiative overturning a strict abortion ban that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year. Now the governor is attempting to discredit those signatures using state-funded cops. According to the Tampa Bay Times, state law enforcement officers have visited the homes of other signers as well.
DeSantis created an elections police unit in 2022 to investigate so-called election crimes. By that August, he’d arrested 20 “elections criminals” for allegedly voting improperly in the 2020 election.
If their rhetoric weren’t so dangerous, it would be funny that Trump is a felon and Musk is an immigrant.
A majority of those arrested—some at gunpoint—were Black. Most had been formerly incarcerated and thought they were eligible to vote, since Floridians had overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure restoring their voting rights. But DeSantis and his GOP allies in the state legislature used every maneuver they could to thwart that popular decision.
If anyone is breaking voting laws intentionally in Florida and elsewhere, it’s white conservatives who’ve been caught engaging in deliberate voter fraud numerous times, including attempting to vote multiple times and voting under the names of their dead spouses.
Further, given that voter intimidation is patently illegal, DeSantis is clearly the one flouting laws.
DeSantis’ fellow Republican, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, is on a similar crusade. He recently authorized police raids on the homes of people associated with a Latino civil rights group called the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), including grandparents in their 70s and 80s.
Like DeSantis, Paxton has been aggressively prosecuting voters of color based on little to no evidence of nefarious intent. The most egregious example is the conviction and harsh sentencing of a Black voter named Crystal Mason. Mason spent six years fighting her case and was acquitted last May because of a lack of evidence.
Bruce Zuchowski, a Republican county sheriff in Ohio, called on supporters to “write down all the addresses of the people who had [Kamala Harris] signs in their yards” so they can be forced to take in migrants—whom he called, in a garbled Facebook post, “human locusts.” Local residents say they feel intimidated.
It’s not just government officials. The extremist Heritage Foundation sent staffers to the homes of Georgia residents thought to be immigrants, in an effort to find voter fraud where none existed. (This is the same behind Project 2025, a playbook for a future Republican president promising the dystopian destruction of federally funded programs.)
And of course, the loudest and most bizarre conspiracy theories come from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who invokes non-existent fraud to explain why he lost the 2020 election. His billionaire backer Elon Musk has added fuel to the fire by amplifying these false claims.
If their rhetoric weren’t so dangerous, it would be funny that Trump is a felon and Musk is an immigrant.
There’s a long and disturbing history of voter suppression aimed at communities of color, from poll taxes to lynchings. Although the 1965 Voting Rights Act was aimed at preventing such race-based suppression, right-wing justices on the Supreme Court gutted parts of the law, opening the door to systematic disenfranchisement and intimidation.
Numerous investigations of voter fraud claims have repeatedly been found to be utterly baseless. So why do Republicans make them?
As a federal judge in Florida concluded, “For the past 20 years, the majority in the Florida Legislature has attacked the voting rights of its Black constituents. They have done so… as part of a cynical effort to suppress turnout.” And that’s precisely the point.
There are strict laws in place against voter intimidation. And while the Biden administration is ready to enforce them with a small army of lawyers, it’s critical that voters know their own rights and ask for help if they believe their right to vote is under threat.