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ceasefire
Forging Peace in Gaza Would Also Help Harris Defeat Trump
It's the right thing to do morally and it's the wise thing to do politically. The polling data proves it and our shared humanity compels it.
Sep 09, 2024
If Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for U.S. president, were to take a decisive stance demanding that Israel agree to an immediate ceasefire and unimpeded aid to Palestinians, she would expand her vote lead over her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.
This is one of the key findings of a recent poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute working with pollster John Zogby. Between the Republican and Democratic conventions, AAI surveyed 2,505 U.S. voters to assess how the war in Gaza and U.S. policy toward Israel’s conduct of the war would impact their votes in November.
What the poll found was that 15% of all voters say that the crisis in Gaza would be “very important” in determining their vote(another 33% saying it’s “somewhat important”). But on this issue, like many others in today’s America, there is a deep partisan divide—with Republicans more supportive of Israel and Democrats favoring Palestinians.
When asked how it would affect their vote if Harris were to demand that Israel agree to an immediate ceasefire and unimpeded human aid into Gaza, voters overwhelmingly support such a move, while only a scant number oppose it.
Looking more closely at the data, we find that the partisan divide actually results from deep differences in the views of the demographic groups forming each party’s base—with younger and non-white voters more sympathetic toward Palestinians and critical of Israel, and older, white, and “born-again” Christians much more favorable toward Israel.
For example, most voters in all groups, except Republicans and “born-again” voters, disapprove of the way Israel is conducting the war, feel Israel has used too much force in Gaza, want an immediate ceasefire, and oppose unrestricted financial and military support for Israel if it continues to operate in a manner that puts civilian lives at risk.
A plurality of all voters (43%) disapprove of how Israel is conducting the war, with only one-third approving. Those disapproving include 54% of Democrats and 52% of young voters.
In addition, 36% of all likely voters feel that Israel has used too much force, including 46% of 18–34-year-olds.
One area where there is near unanimity is with regard to the importance of an “immediate ceasefire.” Three-quarters of all voters say this is important to them—one-half say “very important” and another one-quarter say “somewhat important.” Only 11% say it’s “not important.” This super-majority includes Democrats, Republicans, and Independents and majorities of every demographic sub-group. The most substantial majorities come, of course, from young and non-white voters. Only very small percentages in all groups say an immediate ceasefire is not important.
Another area where there is strong support from most sub-sets of voters is in response to a question asking whether Israel should continue to receive unrestricted U.S. aid or whether that aid should be conditioned on Israel’s use of that aid in a way that harms civilians. Only 28% feel Israel should always receive unrestricted aid, while 51% say there should be no unrestricted aid if Israel endangers civilians. On this question, GOP voters are evenly split at 40%, while by a margin of 59% to 20% Democrats oppose unrestricted aid to Israel. Independents oppose it 56% to 26%.
Overall, the Biden administration receives low marks for its handling of the war—31% positive and 50% negative—a negative view shared by voters in all parties and demographic groups. The poll reveals that this dissatisfaction provides an opportunity for Vice President Harris. When asked how it would affect their vote if Harris were to demand that Israel agree to an immediate ceasefire and unimpeded human aid into Gaza, voters overwhelmingly support such a move, while only a scant number oppose it. A deeper look into the numbers shows significant gain and very little risk for Harris by taking this stand, including very positive outcomes and few negatives among most key groups, including a plurality of Jewish voters. It would also win her the support of a plurality of those traditionally Democratic voters who are currently supporting third-party candidates or who remain undecided. Overall, if Harris were to take this stand, her vote tally would increase from 44% to 50%.
One area where Harris can grow support is by building on her already stated compassion for Palestinian suffering, her call for an immediate ceasefire, and her implied concern for how Israel has acted in this war by making clear that there will be consequences if the war continues...
The same positive results hold true if Harris were to support a suspension of arms shipments and withhold diplomatic support for Israel until there was a ceasefire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza. Such a stand would increase her support from 44% to 49%.
The poll also revealed that Democrats, concerned with President Biden’s age and capacity, were overwhelmingly supportive of his decision to step down as a candidate. This was especially true among Democratic voters. The President’s policy toward Gaza was also a factor, especially among young and non-White voters.
At the start of August, VP Harris held a slim lead against former President Trump in both a head-to-head and multi-candidate contest. This poll found the same to be true.
Both Harris and Trump have consolidated support among voters from their respective parties. Harris’ favorable/unfavorable ratings are better than Trump’s, with her strongest support coming from young and non-White voters. Trump’s support is strongest among White and born-again voters. Given the deep divisions in the American electorate, the presidential contest will most likely remain close.
One area where Harris can grow support is by building on her already stated compassion for Palestinian suffering, her call for an immediate ceasefire, and her implied concern for how Israel has acted in this war by making clear that there will be consequences if the war continues, a step President Biden has been loath to take.
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Biden, Harris, and the Brutal Truth of Dead Hostages in Gaza
If anyone should be looking at himself in the mirror at Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s death, it should be Biden.
Sep 03, 2024
The recovery of six further dead hostages has set off a tidal wave of fury in Israel.
Demonstrations, not seen since the protests over judicial reform, are shaking the country.
Israelis are calling it an uprising.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have walked out of their jobs in a general strike. Both the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and the security establishment are in open conflict with their prime minister.
Opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid called for people to go onto the streets. And they have. The main highways around Tel Aviv are blocked.
However the hostages died—Hamas initially indicated they were killed by Israeli gunfire, the Israeli army says they were executed at close range just before an attempt was made to free them—the blame for their deaths has settled firmly on Benjamin Netanyahu and the ultra-right-wing clique that props up his government.
Four of the six hostages were on Hamas’ "humanitarian" list of captives and would have been released in the first stage of a hostage deal had Netanyahu not refused to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor separating Egypt from Gaza.
This is not speculation.
Undermining a possible deal
Israeli security chiefs who repeatedly warned Netanyahu about what would happen to the remaining hostages if he continued to scupper a deal are saying so themselves.
Three days ago, a regular cabinet security briefing turned into a shouting match between Gallant and Netanyahu, Axios reported.
The hostages' deaths could be the tipping point that forces Netanyahu to U-turn in negotiations which remain deadlocked
Gallant reportedly told the meeting: "We have to choose between Philadelphi and the hostages. We can't have both. If we vote, we might find out that either the hostages will die or we will have to backtrack to release them."
Gallant, Israeli army Chief of Staff General Herzi Halevi and Mossad Director David Barnea, the head of the Israeli negotiating team, all confronted Netanyahu and his proposal to vote on a resolution to maintain full Israeli control along the border with Egypt that they said would undermine a possible deal with Hamas.
"We warned Netanyahu and the cabinet ministers about this exact scenario but they wouldn't listen," a senior Israeli official told Axios. The vote went ahead with the majority in favour.
However the hostages met their deaths, what the families of the hostages clearly understood is that this group of hostages were alive shortly before the army’s attempt to rescue them.
"A deal for the return of the hostages has been on the table for over two months. If it weren't for his [Netanyahu’s] thwarting, the excuses and the spins, the hostages whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably be alive," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
The deaths of the hostages have also reverberated across the US, in the same way that the Hamas attack on 7 October did.
Not least because the parents of one of the dead, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a US citizen, spoke on stage at the Democratic National Convention as thousands in the audience chanted "Bring them back".
In response, the outgoing US President Joe Biden vowed to "make Hamas pay" for these deaths and the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris said that Hamas must be eliminated.
Both know that the responsibility for the hostages' deaths lies with them too.
The Brutal truth
Biden clearly and unequivocally called for a permanent ceasefire four months ago. The UN passed a resolution for a comprehensive three-stage ceasefire in June.
It is Biden’s first duty as commander in chief to make sure a key security ally in the Middle East abides by US policy, especially an ally as dependent on the supply of US arms as Israel is.
The brutal truth of these killings is that if Biden had been prepared to enforce his own policy with an arms embargo, a ceasefire would now be in place and many of the remaining hostages, Americans and Britons among them, would be freed.
If anyone should be looking at himself in the mirror at Goldberg-Polin’s death, it should be Biden.
For Harris to meekly follow in these footsteps is folly. She should remember what her own generals have said about the impossibility of defeating Hamas in Gaza.
It could nevertheless be that these deaths are the tipping point that forces Netanyahu to U-turn in negotiations, which still remain deadlocked.
The US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the families of the US hostages held in Gaza that the US will present Israel and Hamas with a take-it-or-leave-it final offer on a ceasefire deal.
This has been said many times before, and one reason why US officials have lost all credibility with independent negotiators Egypt and Qatar.
However, if what results is a phased Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, and Netanyahu buckles under the domestic and international pressure, he knows full well he will be tipped into another crisis.
End of Ashkenazi control
It's not just the likelihood that Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, the two of the most extreme in his government, will walk out as they have repeatedly threatened to do.
Netanyahu knows that Israel is split down the middle. He has more than half of the country demanding he "finish the job" that David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, failed to complete.
This uprising, like the demonstrations against the judicial reforms last year, is one of the last throws of the dice for the liberal Ashkenazi elite
This uprising, like the demonstrations against the judicial reforms last year, is one of the last throws of the dice for the liberal Ashkenazi elite.
They sense they are losing control of the country they built. They have already lost control of the army and the police force to the settlers. Not much is left in their exclusive hands and there has been an exodus of Israelis and money to Europe over the last year to prove it.
Netanyahu is not solely acting out of personal political survival. He, too, senses Israel is on the cusp of a right-wing revolution. That is why every political instinct tells him the stakes are so high. If it happens, it will be totally at odds with a Democrat US presidency.
Unravelling in real time
Biden should also be looking himself in the mirror at what is happening in the Occupied West Bank.
Unable, for a variety of reasons not least military preparedness, to open a second front against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Netanyahu has turned his attention on the three towns in the north of the West Bank in a full-scale military operation called "Operation Summer Camps" designed to force a population transfer.
As night follows day, attacks have begun on Israeli troops all over the West Bank and particularly in the southern Hebron area.
Biden and Harris should take note of who shot three Israeli policemen dead in response to the army operation in the north.
The shooter was a member of Fatah and a former Palestinian presidential security guard. Furthermore, Muhannad al-Asood, a resident of Idhna in Hebron, who was born in Jordan and was a citizen of the country, returned to his native West Bank in 1998 with his family after obtaining family reunification.
Asood’s personal history carries a clear warning for the consequences of how Palestinians in the West Bank will react to the opening of a second front of this war in the occupied territories, using much the same weapons and techniques in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas as they did in Gaza.
Asood was not a member of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or part of any known local resistance group. He made an individual decision that resistance was the only answer to Israel’s military offensive.
There are hundreds of thousands of armed, unaffiliated Palestinians like him in the West Bank and Jordan who are coming to the same conclusion.
Furthermore, tensions between Jordan and Israel are mounting exponentially.
The launch of the offensive was accompanied by a war of words between Israel's foreign minister, Israel Katz, and his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi.
Katz not only told Jenin’s residents to leave in a "temporary" evacuation. He repeatedly accused Jordan of the build-up of arms in the camps, claiming it was unable to control its own territory.
"Iran is building Islamic terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, flooding refugee camps with funds and weapons smuggled through Jordan, aiming to establish an eastern terror front against Israel. This process also threatens the stability of the Jordanian regime. The world must wake up and stop the Iranian octopus before it's too late," Katz tweeted on X.
All lies, his Jordanian counterpart retorted.
Safadi wrote: "We reject the claims of the extremist racist ministers who fabricate threats to justify the killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their capabilities. The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, and the Israeli escalation in the region constitute the greatest threat to security and peace.
"We will oppose with all our capabilities any attempt to displace the Palestinian people inside or outside the occupied territories."
A larger conflagration
Now in its fifth day, the stage is set once more for an operation in the occupied West Bank which could last as long as Gaza and which the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is powerless to stop.
Palestinian teenagers are fighting back. Wael Mishah and Tariq Daoud were born after Oslo. They did not see the First or Second Intifadas.
Even with the obvious reluctance of Hezbollah and Iran to get involved, all the ingredients are there for a much larger conflagration
Both had been released during a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas in November. On his release Mishah talked of the plight of children being beaten and abused in Israeli prisons.
Mishah’s short journey was preordained. "He went from being a prisoner to being wanted, to confronting [the occupation], then a martyr," his mother said.
He was killed by a drone at dawn on 15 August as he fought an Israeli raid on Nablus. There are thousands more like him who are being driven to battle.
Another fighter killed by Israel was the commander of the Tulkarm Battalion, Mohamed Jaber, known as Abu Shuja’a. He was described by Israel as its most wanted militant but he was only 26 years old, and born four years after Oslo. Abu Shuja’a was a refugee in Nur Shams Camp who came originally from Haifa. Killing him will inspire many more to join as he himself was inspired by others.
Even with the obvious reluctance of Hezbollah and Iran to get involved, all the ingredients are there for a much larger conflagration.
An Israel in the grip of an ultra nationalist , religious, settler insurgency; a US president who allows his signature policy to be flouted by his chief ally, even at the risk of losing a crucial election ; resistance that will not surrender; Palestinians in Gaza who will not flee; Palestinians in the West Bank who are now stepping up to the front line; Jordan, the second country to recognise Israel, feeling under existential threat.
For Biden or Harris, the message is so clear, it is flashing in neon lights: the regional costs of not standing up to Netanyahu could rapidly outweigh the domestic benefits of being dragged along by him.
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Biden's Cruel and Orwellian Remarks on Gaza at the DNC
A speech that denied the suffering of Palestinians was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel.
Aug 20, 2024
An observation from George Orwell—“those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future”—is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night. His words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month, depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual slaughter of civilians.
“We’ll keep working, to bring hostages home, and end the war in Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” Biden told the cheering delegates. “As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since October 7th.”
It was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. Yet the Biden delegates in the convention hall responded with a crescendo of roaring admiration.
A political reflex has been in motion from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.
Applause swelled as Biden continued: “We’re working around-the-clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families, and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”
In Chicago’s United Center, the president basked in adulation while claiming to be a peacemaker despite a record of literally making possible the methodical massacres of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Orwell would have understood. A political reflex has been in motion from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.
And so, working inside the paradigm that Orwell described, Biden exerts control over the present, strives to control narratives about the past, and seeks to make it all seem normal, prefiguring the future.
The eagerness of delegates to cheer for Biden’s mendaciously absurd narrative about his administration’s policies toward Gaza was, in a broader context, the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck president.
Hours before the convention opened, Peter Beinart released a short video essay anticipating the fervent adulation. “I just don't think when you’re analyzing a presidency or a person, you sequester what’s happened in Gaza,” he said. “I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.”
Beinart continued: “And it’s really not that controversial anymore that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on this. I don’t see any genuine scholars of human rights international law who are saying it's not indeed there. . . . If you’re gonna say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, has done, vis-a-vis Gaza. It’s central to his legacy. It's central to his character. And if you don’t, then you’re saying that Palestinian lives just don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter this particular day, and I think that’s inhumane. I don’t think we can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don't matter because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.”
Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and embraced his offspring. Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any one of the many thousands of children the president has helped Israel to kill.
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