Tag Archives: Netanyahu

Is Israel Losing the Media To Palestine? Sheikh Jarrah

Let me explain something about the psychology of Americans to any Hamas supporters or anti-anti-Hamas folks who may be out there. This could just be me, but I think it probably applies much more widely. In recent years I have been falling away from the knee-jerk, no questions asked, pro-Israel stance I was born with. For a week now I have been following events in Israel & Palestine with growing outrage. I am stewing about the injustice of what now seems to be a permanent state of apartheid. I spent the past two days putting together a video condemning the occupation and urging change. After the news that 20 Gazans had been murdered, including 9 children, I became even more outraged, and spent last night looking for ways to make the video more scathing and angry…

…and then I woke up this morning to find that Hamas had successfully murdered two Israelis.

I just spent the morning making my video more mild and milquetoast and “Both sides”. I briefly considered bagging the vid entirely and running a rant on that pipeline attack instead. You can already see the effects in this post. I say Hamas murdered Israelis. But I just said that the Gazans were murdered. By who? Who knows? I am an American and Israelis have been murdered, I don’t care anymore. Is this unfair? Of course! I am deeply conscious of this messed up psychological tic that still values Palestinian life about a tenth as much as Israeli life. I hate that about myself. But it’s still there. And I am somebody who is trying to do better. A lot of people who may have been paying attention to this conflict for the first time will now tune it out entirely. “Sad they can’t get along, not my business.” Today’s video, which I will still run, highlighted a shift that I was seeing in US media post-Trump, and post-War on Terror. This Palestinian uprising felt different. US media was paying attention and getting beyond the AIPAC talking points. This uprising no longer feels so different. Hamas rockets have sent this set of “clashes” straight back to the standard media playbook. We ARE in a new era. Palestine does have new opportunities. But none of them will be realized with this old playbook. Hamas is the Israeli occupation’s best friend.

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Israel Palestine Trailer…

I have thought long and hard about each of the three options in this month’s contest to pick the channel’s next topic. But Israel-Palestine is probably the topic I have thought about the most. As somebody who attempts to cover issues in the Middle East, it is constantly thrown in my face. As someone who used to be an avid follower of conservative media I’ve become familiar with one set of arguments, and as someone who spent 6 years living in Turkey I’ve gotten a good look at the other side as well. It’s a fascinating conversation that I think I can contribute to, which I hope today’s video makes clear.

In some circles in the US today’s video could be seen as a blistering attack on Israel. For many in my old world audience, I imagine it could be seen as so wimpy that it betrays the Palestinian cause… I’m very excited for the comments on this one!

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Sudan Peace Would Be Israel’s Greatest Test | Sudan 2

The Sudan-Israel deal is a pretty impressive accomplishment. Yes, today’s video spends a ton of time undermining it by adding context, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a surprising thing. Trump really has extended the realm of the possible, whether or not this particular deal is the malign flop I expect. There are a lot of people, like me, who find Trump’s various middle east deals outrageous and impracticable, but I don’t think there are many people in Israel or Palestine who think that the pre-Trump dynamic was leading anywhere useful either.

To me it’s obvious that Trump isn’t pushing things in particularly useful directions, but that doesn’t mean that things shouldn’t be pushed out of their current frame. As the region, and the US’s involvement with it moves forward, however, we need to have a better sense of the context in which we are operating, especially if we’re trying to break new ground. Context is what today’s video attempts to provide.

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Is Syria’s Assad Israel’s Best Defense Against Turkey? | Syria 27

It’s basically impossible to over-state how stupid the current US position in Syria is. What’s going on there is a proxy war between two clearly opposed sides. Obviously it would be preferable if Syria was still whole, and half a million people hadn’t died, but it is possible to envision a fairly stable frozen conflict, that would allow everybody to move on and rebuild. There being no justice in the world, this frozen conflict would also work out pretty well for the US. Worried about Iran? Turkey’s there to balance them. Worried about Turkey’s growing influence in the region? Russia and Iran are there to confront Turkey. Want to shield the Kurds from Turkey’s (alleged) genocidal plots? Assad, who the Kurds have been working with closely since 2011, would be happy to do it.

The United States is the only thing standing in the way of a more peaceful situation that works out better for the United States. Our insistence, with Israel, on being everybody’s enemy, all at once, keeps Syria in a permanently unbalanced state. Thanks to the Russians, the meat grinder stopped a number of years ago, but it could tip over into a mass death situation again at any moment. It almost did this past spring. My hope is that today’s video can help to illustrate how much better off we would be if we just left.

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The UAE Israel Peace Deal Is The End Of An Era

This is a video I’ve wanted to make for a while. After looking at it intensely for at least three years now, I’ve got some very strong opinions on the history of the Arab World. I’ve been reluctant to lay them out however, because it’s impossible to talk about the Arab world in general without talking about Israel. It’s a topic that is guaranteed to alienate at least half my audience. As you can tell from today’s video, my views are capable of irritating all sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I have held off on addressing that conflict directly because of general chicken-heartedness, and a feeling that I haven’t read enough on the subject yet.

Well a week or so back Israel and the UAE took it out of my hands. The deal announced by Trump is tremendously significant, though not for the reasons that the parties or the deal-makers suspect. This really could be a turning point in Arab history more generally. Or maybe not. Anyway, I’m delighted to have been forced to get these ideas out there. Let me know what you think!

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Does Israel Run US Foreign Policy? | MIC 16

Let me preface this by saying again that I’m not any kind of Israel expert, but I figured I should talk a bit more about the claim at the end of today’s video, that Israel has helped reduce its neighbors to smoking ruins. The question of Israel’s role in the run-up to the Iraq war is controversial, but the consensus seems to be that they were very much for Bush’s invasion, and did what they could to promote it. The current Israeli government’s almost gleeful support for the destruction of Syria is less controversial. Israel is officially neutral, but in 2017 they conceded that they had carried out around 100 airstrikes against Syrian and Hezbollah targets over the course of the war, and they have acted as a stumbling block to the peace process.

I think this is all a terrible mistake. This policy of aiding in the destruction of Iraq and Syria might have made sense during the Cold War. It would have been vicious then, but it would at least have had some justification. During that era, when they were faced with the opposition of a vastly better armed Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as the opposition of the Soviet Union, taking these sorts of actions would have been rational. Israel’s current leadership still acts as if they face this sort of existential threat. They don’t. And the world knows it. The desperately promoted threat from Iran is virtually nonexistent. The policies against Iraq and Syria that Israel supported did give Iran more power on the ground in these countries, but Israel remains free to bomb them at will in Syria. Most of Iran’s weapons systems date back to the Shah. Iran has made some limited progress with missile technology, but the use of that technology would quickly result in a complete roll-back of Iranian power in the region, and no doubt the destruction of multiple Iranian and Syrian cities by the Israeli and US air forces.

The Soviet Union is gone. Egypt and Jordan are now Israeli allies, and amazingly Saudi Arabia, if still officially hostile, is now largely seen as an Israeli ally as well. The international Palestinian terrorist threat of yore has been almost completely neutralized. It has been co-opted by the Palestinian Authority, and it has been fairly comprehensively rooted out of its old homes in Lebanon and Jordan. With the fences and walls around Gaza and the West Bank, the threat of a third Intifadah is largely meaningless. Palestinians would die in their thousands, in return for a few miles of burned Israeli farms. Netanyahu and company seem to think they are now secure enough to treat the Palestinians any way they want. This is a terrible mistake.

Despite all Israel’s protestations, the world, outside of Washington, DC, can now clearly see that it is more secure than it has ever been. All 21st century wars are media wars, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is even more so than others. Netanyahu’s behavior makes it look, even to Israel’s most natural allies, like Israel is THE destabilizing element in the region. Much of Israel’s support in the world, and in the US in particular, is based on the perception that the country is a plucky underdog. Killing Palestinians by the thousand, with the support of former enemies like Egypt, while increasing security cooperation with Saudi Arabia, does not fit that image. As today’s video says, Israel’s current leadership serves the interest of US defense contractors, not the interests of Israel.

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Gaza and Gezi Park

I’m terribly conflicted when it comes to Israel and Palestine. But no government should be allowed to kill 60 people without their story being questioned. So that’s what I do with today’s video.

If you want to learn more about my experience at Gezi park, and how it sort of launched this YouTube channel, you can check out this video here.

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