Montreal, Canada – More than a month into its bombardment of Gaza, the Israeli military issued a warning: Ground troops had surrounded the largest hospital in the Palestinian enclave, al-Shifa. A raid would be launched “in minutes”.

The impending siege of the Gaza City health complex sparked panic among the thousands of injured patients, medical staff and displaced Palestinians sheltering there.

But amid urgent international pleas to protect Gaza’s hospitals, much of the focus in Canada was on the tougher tone of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I have been clear: The price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. Even wars have rules,” Trudeau said in a news conference on November 14, around the time the al-Shifa raid began.

“I urge the government of Israel to exercise maximum restraint,” he continued, offering his toughest comments since the war began. For weeks, Trudeau had been ignoring calls – and some of Canada’s largest protests in recent memory – demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

“The world is watching. On TV, on social media, we’re hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who’ve lost their parents. The world is witnessing this. The killing of women and children – of babies; this has to stop.”

The response from Tel Aviv was swift. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted publicly to Trudeau’s speech, arguing on social media that the Palestinian group Hamas, not Israel, was responsible for any civilian casualties. Netanyahu pointed to Hamas’s attacks in southern Israel on October 7, one of the events that precipitated the war.

Pro-Israel lobby groups in Canada echoed that argument, saying “the blood of dead babies – Israeli and Palestinian – is on Hamas” and accusing Trudeau of fuelling anti-Semitism.

In the days that followed, Canadian ministers sought to temper Trudeau’s comments.

“The prime minister, quite understandably, is concerned about innocent lives on both sides of that border,” Defence Minister Bill Blair told the Canadian network CTV. “We’ve also been crystal clear: Israel has the right to defend itself.”

The episode is one of many examples in recent weeks of what observers have described as Canada’s “schizophrenic” foreign policy when it comes to Israel and Palestine.

“Whenever [Trudeau] does show any mettle with respect to this, he invariably then steps back from what he said after any sort of criticism coming from either the Israel lobby in Canada or Israeli leaders,” Michael Lynk, a former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told Al Jazeera.

Unlike its powerful neighbour and Israel’s foremost backer, the United States, Canada says it aims to tread the middle ground in its policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It supports a two-state solution, opposes illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and says international law must be respected by all parties.

But experts say Canada has two policies when it comes to the conflict: one on paper and one in practice.

They note that Canada has cast UN votes against its own stated positions and opposed Palestinian efforts to seek redress at the International Criminal Court, and argue that it has backed hardline, Israeli policies and failed to hold the country accountable for rights abuses.

“This government, as well as previous Canadian governments, have unfortunately had a blind spot with respect to Israel,” said Farida Deif, Canada director at Human Rights Watch.

She added that Canada’s stance has not changed despite the nearly two-month-long military campaign in Gaza, where bombs have struck hospitals, refugee camps and schools serving as shelters. More than 15,200 Palestinians have been killed.

“What we’ve seen with respect to Canada’s policy on Israel-Palestine is really a lack of coherence, confusion, and essentially not really engaging with the reality on the ground,” she told Al Jazeera. “And the reality on the ground that we’ve seen – that Palestinian organisations, Israeli organisations, international organisations have documented – is the reality of apartheid and persecution.”

So what drives Canada’s position?

Al Jazeera spoke to nearly a dozen human rights advocates, politicians, former officials and other experts about how foreign and domestic calculations influence Ottawa’s stance – and whether public outrage could shift its strategy.

Canada has had close ties to Israel for years. It recognised the country shortly after it was founded in 1948 and established an embassy there not long after.

The two countries have had a free-trade agreement in place since 1997, with two-way trade totalling 1.8 billion Canadian dollars ($1.3bn) in 2021. Last year, Canada also exported 21.3m Canadian dollars ($15.7m) worth of weapons to Israel.

Some observers argue that the countries enjoy a natural affinity because of the similar ways in which they were created. Like Israel, Canada was built on the dispossession and forced removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands.

But relations truly flourished during the almost decade-long tenure of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “Canada and Israel are the greatest of friends and the most natural of allies,” Harper said in a speech to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in 2014.

A year later, the Conservatives would lose to Trudeau’s Liberal Party in the federal elections, ending Harper’s tenure.

Yet, while Harper’s support for Israel was largely motivated by right-wing, Christian ideology, Trudeau and his more centrist government appear driven by political pragmatism.

Part of that pragmatism stems from Canada’s need to maintain good relations with the US, the country’s largest trading partner and most important ally, according to Peter Larson, chair of the nonprofit Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine.

“Canadian policymakers make a political calculation that coming out strongly or critical of Israel or supportive of the Palestinians is likely to get the Americans angry with us,” Larson said.

The government’s perspective, he said, was that Canada has “no control” over what happens in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. “We have no purchase there, we have no trade there, we have no military there. So why in the world would we get the Americans mad at us when we can’t really do anything anyway?”

Michael Bueckert, vice president of the advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), agreed. “Every time we see an indication of a policy position [from Canada], it’s closely following whatever the US says,” he told Al Jazeera.

He pointed out that Canada has continued to mirror US positions during the war in Gaza.

“It just seems like everything that Canada does is triangulated based on what the US and Israel are saying,” Bueckert said. “That’s more important to them than being aligned with all other members of the UN, for example, or every humanitarian agency, or a majority of Canadian public opinion.”

Yet sources with knowledge of the government’s inner workings say that domestic politics is the primary driver behind Canada’s position. One of the most important factors, they maintain, is the pro-Israel lobby.

Corey Balsam, national coordinator of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, an advocacy organisation, said the lobby groups have an “unmatched” ability “to be in the room” with political decision-makers.

“The lobby writ large is very well-resourced and influential and well-placed,” he said.

That has forced the Liberal government to weigh whether their decisions will spark a backlash among pro-Israel lobby groups, which could lose them votes, notably to their Conservative rivals, Balsam said.

“I don’t know exactly the calculations that they’re making, but these are the things that they pay attention to – votes in certain ridings [electoral districts], for instance. Also funds and fundraising for the party, I think this is a big factor for them.”

Lynk, the former UN special rapporteur and Canadian law professor, also said Ottawa’s position on the conflict relates in large part to “who has access to the corridors of power”.

The Trudeau government attacked Lynk’s UN appointment at the outset in 2016, as did pro-Israel lobby groups, which put out statements arguing that he had an anti-Israel bias. Green Party leader Elizabeth May and Lynk’s colleagues at Western University in Ontario came to his defence, but the damage was done.

“I tried to engage with as high a level of political and diplomatic decision-makers as I could. I didn’t get very far [in Canada],” he told Al Jazeera.

“What I was trying to do is say, ‘I’m showing you what international law says. I’m showing you what, in fact, your own foreign policy ends up saying … Why is your foreign policy so schizophrenic when it comes to Israel and Palestine?’ Doors weren’t open for me.”

Several people Al Jazeera spoke to for this story described a pervasive fear of being accused of anti-Semitism for speaking out on Israeli rights abuses.

“There’s a certain weight [to anti-Semitism accusations] that is instrumentalised,” said Balsam.

“I think racism influences whose complaints are taken more seriously and whose pain is taken more seriously more broadly,” he added. “Complaints that invoke anti-Semitism – whether or not it is actually anti-Semitism – are taken seriously, whereas on the other hand, with Muslim and Arab groups or Palestinian groups and individuals, they can be much more easily brushed off.”

During the Gaza war, nowhere has Canada’s position been more clearly on display than at the United Nations. After the UN Security Council failed to pass any resolution to address the situation, the focus shifted in late October to the General Assembly, where a non-binding motion was put forward to urge a humanitarian truce.

The measure passed with overwhelming support, but Canada abstained. It also put forward an amendment to the resolution to condemn Hamas.

“Unfortunately, Canada cannot support the text as it is currently proposed. We cannot act as the UN General Assembly without recognising the horrible events of October 7 and without condemning the terrorists behind them,” Canada’s UN ambassador, Bob Rae, said as he presented the amendment on October 27. It failed.

Peggy Mason, president of the Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based nonprofit, said whereas Canada previously was seen as a bridge-building country, the amendment was a “bridge-weakening exercise”.

“And it was unconscionable, in my view, in the context of efforts to curtail an unfolding humanitarian crisis of horrific dimensions,” she told Al Jazeera.

Canada came under even closer scrutiny when its UN mission voted against a draft resolution on November 9 condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as illegal – even though the government’s stated position is that the settlements violate international law.

In a statement explaining the vote, Canada said it was concerned by the number of resolutions that “unfairly single out Israel” at the General Assembly every year.

“Canada reiterates the importance of a fair-minded approach at the United Nations and will continue to vote ‘no’ on resolutions that do not address the complexities of the issues,” the statement read.

According to Bueckert of CJPME, no one is buying that excuse. “They’ve created this rationale for it, but good luck convincing Canadians of this, that these actions make any sense. That it makes sense to vote against things that you say you support,” he told Al Jazeera.

The resolution to condemn the Israeli settlements is among a number of Palestinian-related motions that come up for a vote at the UN General Assembly every year.

And the way Canada votes on these resolutions is dictated by the prime minister’s office, according to a source familiar with the matter, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely.

“It’s unusual that the [prime minister] would directly intervene on an issue before the United Nations,” the source said. Usually, foreign policy files are handled by Canada’s foreign affairs department, known as Global Affairs Canada.

Lynk, the former UN expert, also told Al Jazeera that most foreign policy issues “are decided at Global Affairs and rarely ever make it to the prime minister’s office for yea or nay”. But matters related to Israel and Palestine are different. They are “determined and directed out of the prime minister’s office”, Lynk said.

Meanwhile, the anonymous source said Canada’s UN mission has faced direct pressure from pro-Israel lobbyists. That person described a meeting years ago in which a top lobbyist urged Canada to change its votes. The mission told the lobbyist no, but 24 hours after their meeting, the prime minister’s office directed the mission to vote the way the lobbyist had wanted.

“I thought it was outrageous, and I was angry and offended,” the source said. “It’s not the way to run a country. It’s not the way to run a foreign policy.”

Trudeau’s office redirected Al Jazeera’s question on whether it handles Canada’s UN votes to Global Affairs Canada. Global Affairs Canada did not answer the question when pressed by Al Jazeera.

“When it comes to votes at the UN, Canada reiterates the importance of a fair-minded approach,” the department said in an emailed statement.

“We will continue to vote no on resolutions that do not address the complexities of the issues or address the actions of all parties. We also remain opposed to the disproportionate singling out of Israel for criticism. Canada rejects the suggestion that there is any kind of ‘double standard’ at play.”

Many people Al Jazeera spoke to said there is a growing sense that the Canadian government’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict could change in the face of shifting demographics.

“As Parliament gets more diverse and has connections to different communities, I do think that the calculus – in terms of, ‘Is this going to hurt me or help me electorally?’ – is shifting,” said Bueckert.

“It clearly hasn’t shifted enough to change Canada’s position in a meaningful way, but that is how we can make sense of the change in tone where Canada at least has to appear to care about what’s happening to people in Gaza.”

Since the war began, there also has been a split within the Liberal Party between politicians who staunchly support Israel and those calling for a ceasefire despite Trudeau’s own reticence to do so.

Less than two weeks into the Israeli military operation, Liberal MP Salma Zahid, who represents a district east of Toronto, Canada’s largest city, stood up in the House of Commons to urge Ottawa to call for a ceasefire.

“It’s very, very important that Canada be a strong voice to call for a ceasefire and make sure that we put an end to the killing of these innocent civilians,” she told Al Jazeera in a phone interview in November.

Asked about divisions within her own party, Zahid said the Liberal Party is a “big tent” and that all views can and should be heard. But she said she aims to represent her constituents, many of whom are Muslim Canadians.

“Some people have called me a terrorist sympathiser. That is sad to see that. But I will not stop because of these comments on social media or anything. I think it is really very important that I be there as a strong voice for the Palestinian people and also for the community,” Zahid said.

Uthman Quick, communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said a recent poll showed the disconnect between public opinion and the Liberal government’s positions.

The poll, released by the Angus Reid Institute on November 7, found that 30 percent of Canadians said they wanted an immediate ceasefire, compared with 19 percent who did not. Among Liberal voters, 34 percent supported a ceasefire compared with 12 percent who were opposed.

While Quick said the federal government’s tone has shifted since the war began, rhetoric alone is not enough. “For the amount of violence and killing that we’ve seen in Gaza, I think that warrants a more drastic approach from our government to really call for peace and for a ceasefire,” he told Al Jazeera.

He also said the government’s position could lead to political ramifications that extend beyond Arab and Muslim communities, as anti-war protests draw people of all backgrounds. “It’s not just a purely Muslim slash Palestinian slash Arab community divide on electoral fronts,” Quick said.

According to Deif at Human Rights Watch, Canada should be trying to pursue a “consistent policy” rooted in international law – and condemn war crimes regardless of who is responsible and who is the victim. It also should suspend weapons sales to Israel so long as “Israeli forces commit widespread, serious abuses against Palestinian civilians with impunity”.

“What we would like to see is Canada engaging on Israel-Palestine in the way that Ambassador Bob Rae engaged on Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis, in the same way that [Foreign] Minister [Melanie] Joly engaged on Ukraine following the Russian invasion,” she told Al Jazeera.

The consequences of inaction, she added, can be devastating.

“When powerful governments, whether it’s Canada or other Western states, turn a blind eye to the Israeli government’s abuses and serious violations of international humanitarian law, it certainly sends a message that it can continue to commit those acts.”

Source : Al Jazeera

The post Israel, Palestine and Canada’s ‘Schizophrenic Foreign Policy’ appeared first on Policy Print.

Israel was not founded by religious Jews. The early Zionists were secular, rational, and uniquely unsentimental about the Jewish condition in late 19^th-century Europe and beyond. They believed that if Jews were to end their tragic two-thousand-year exile, their reliance on God and the fatalism it bred needed to be expunged.

The early Zionists’ focus on secularism seems to have been vindicated by recent events. 

How could the catastrophe on 7 October, which claimed the lives of at least 1,400 Israelis and has left 220 as hostages of Hamas, have happened? How could Israel lose control, over the course of a few hours, of an entire swath of its sovereign territory, including twenty-two kibbutzim and other villages? Beyond the obvious intelligence failure, one reason is that a good portion of the troops in the enlarged division that was meant to be guarding the Gaza border had been redeployed to keep order and protect an ever-expanding archipelago of tiny, often unauthorized West Bank settlements and roads leading to them. The sole purpose of these outposts was to establish a de facto Jewish presence in the West Bank and hence restrict the actions available to future Israeli governments. Objections and warnings by the defence establishment that the military and security services were overstretched, that the army no longer had the requisite forces or the time to train soldiers properly, were dismissed as the defeatism of an old and tired secular elite, by a growing chorus of hyper-patriotic, right-wing zealots, people often with little or no practical military experience. 

For more than a generation, defence policy and much else has been increasingly determined by the dictates of Israel’s religious settler lobby and its Messianic visions. Though not numerous, parties representing the settlers exploited Israel’s system of proportional representation, which magnifies the influence of small, well-organized pressure groups, to effectively capture an entire state. A careful programme of entryism allowed the Likud, too, to become heavily influenced by MKs and party members from the settlements that in no way reflected the party’s broader voter base. 

It is not just the tactical decision-making power of this group over troop deployments that has now collapsed, but their larger strategic vision. This was a belief that by dispersing a population of Jews around the West Bank we could gradually annex it, all the while pretending that we could ignore the presence of three million hostile Palestinians, and the demographic consequences their incorporation would entail. It is in this context that the settlers, and their secular avatar Benyamin Netanyahu, came to view Hamas as a strategic asset, because its radicalism made any efforts to find a compromise, or even merely to contain the conflict, impossible. Suitcases of cash, supplied by Hamas’ Qatari allies no less, could be relied upon to keep Hamas in power but restrained. What better proof was needed that God was on our side?

Yet beyond the failure of both tactics and strategy, it is the cultural effects of this way of thinking—which bred arrogance, complacency, and above all wishful thinking—that has created the greatest threat to Israel in at least fifty years. Religious obscurantists with government portfolios declared that Yeshiva study was as important as military service in protecting Israel from its enemies. Study Torah and God would not forsake us.

God did not intervene to save families like mine in 1939; and in 1973, the small number of surviving tank crews who ultimately stopped the columns of Syrian armour on the Golan Heights knew that only their heroism and sacrifice would protect their families from a similar fate. The kibbutzniks who fought and died trying to protect their communities against the Hamas terrorists on 7 October understood the same thing. One hopeful sign of change is that hundreds of ultraorthodox men, in defiance of their Rabbis and politicians, have now contacted the IDF and asked to be inducted into the reserves.

Netanyahu and his cabinet of Twitter warriors, sycophants and fixers need to go. Now. It is hard to see any of them being able to offer effective leadership during what may be a lengthy conflict, all the while knowing what future official inquiries are likely to reveal about their behaviour these last few months. Even if we exclude the ministers who were serving in the cabinet on the morning of the attack, there are enough people in the Knesset from both the coalition and opposition with serious defence credentials to form an emergency government, including two lieutenant generals (former chiefs of staff), a major general, two brigadier generals, two former chiefs of police, and the former deputy head of the Mossad. There are also people with executive experience in the civilian realm, particularly several former mayors.

And that is just the beginning. Long term, Israel is too vulnerable to be governed by feckless people in the grip of childish fantasies. For nine months, the government has been fixated on replacing Israel’s ill-designed, highly centralised democracy with a new model that would magnify its worst flaws, and passing a series of laws that would exempt it from judicial oversight. 

In the days that followed the attack, survivors and the families of the hostages were left to their own devices. Israelis discovered just how hollowed out and incompetent state institutions had become—hobbled by years of corruption and patronage, proving how badly we need more, not less, accountability and external scrutiny. What did prove robust and filled the vacuum were Israel’s civil society organisations and volunteer networks—precisely the types of institutions that are incompatible with the overbearing system of centralized power the government wished to impose. Indeed, among the most effective have been the movements that brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets in recent months to protest the government’s constitutional machinations. And no one more than the military reservists and retirees of Brothers and Sisters in Arms, who have been at the forefront of the protests to preserve Israel’s liberal democracy from the beginning. 

It was through this network that several retired senior military officers were alerted that morning that Hamas’ terrorists had crossed the first line of defence and were killing people in communities close to the border and the music festival nearby. Men of this type, aged sixty and over, whose first instinct was to grab a gun and drive toward the slaughter to kill terrorists and save random strangers, are not produced in societies governed by strongmen. In Israel, as in Ukraine, democracies foster initiative, improvisation, courage, and resilience rather than conformity and passivity.

The goal of eradicating Hamas as an organisation may prove infeasible. Ensuring it never again governs the Gaza Strip may prove difficult as well, particularly given that the Palestinian Authority that governs much of the West Bank will not wish to be seen to be collaborating with Israel. They will be reluctant to resume control of the territory from which its officials were chased out or killed by Hamas thirteen years ago. Nonetheless, eliminating the physical infrastructure Hamas uses to manufacture rockets that target Israeli cities is achievable. So is killing or capturing some part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s terror armies, which together constitute 40,000 individuals. 

The Western press these days is full of warnings about the dangers of any such operation and is essentially lobbying Israel to stand down and agree to an unconditional ceasefire. One hears one commentator after another solemnly affirming Israel’s right to defend itself before asserting that any possible offensive action it might take will constitute a war crime. Though Israel uses precision guided bombs, Gaza’s packed population means that civilians will indeed inevitably be hurt, particularly if Hamas does not let them leave their homes. Cutting off food, water, or even just the electricity Hamas uses to manufacture fresh rockets to launch at Israel, will create a humanitarian disaster. Even the targeting of Hamas officials is deemed to be illegal extra-judicial killing. Needless to say, a ground invasion is treated as out of the question, as civilians will again be in the way. Yet even more nuanced commentators do, rightly, raise valid questions about how much that option will achieve.

Historically, fighting a guerrilla army in a densely populated urban setting exacts a heavy toll on regular troops. Hamas has spent years planning for this type of war. Every house along the plausible invasion routes will be filled with booby traps. Beneath the surface of every road, they will have buried special mines designed to take out tanks and other armoured vehicles. These will be stacked to increase their lethality and make removing them difficult. If all else fails, some fighters can escape capture by changing into civilian clothes and blending in with the civilian population. Warnings that Hamas may be deliberately luring the IDF into a long, bloody, and ultimately unwinnable campaign cannot be completely dismissed. The fate of the hostages and the possibility that Hezbollah, a far more powerful force, might open a second front makes all this more difficult still. Yet the successful fight by the US against Al Qaeda in Fallujah, and the combined efforts by the West and its local allies against ISIS in Mosul and Rakah, teach us that it is possible to defeat the Jihadis.

Furthermore, while many commentators have carefully elaborated the dangers of a ground invasion, they have generally failed to consider the broader implications for Israel should it choose not to invade. First, if Hamas emerges with its forces largely intact, there is nothing to stop it from launching further attacks in the years to come at a moment of its choosing. Others, too, will be emboldened by this Hamas victory. Far from garnering the world’s respect, restraint will be interpreted as weakness. Allies, including the United States, will gradually abandon Israel—no one needs a weak ally. The Arab states may publicly denounce Israel’s aggression, but privately they have much to fear from a Hamas victory and the resurgence of its ideology around the region. Yet Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE have no reason to cooperate with an Israeli state that is unable or unwilling to protect itself, and that has lost the confidence of its own citizens. 

There are also wider implications for the core nations of the West in Europe and North America. In the last two years, Russia and now Iran—through its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon—have each gone to war against members of the West’s democratic alliance. With stocks of ammunition and arms running short, how soon before China and North Korea each do the same against Taiwan and South Korea? Who is to say which parts of the core Western alliance will come under pressure after that? 

In the West, some people on the left complain bitterly about the hyper-individualism and social atomization of modern market-driven societies. But when such people talk about “community” and the “collective good,” some of them seem to mean only such things as safe bike lanes and free yoga classes—not protection from an invading army coming to kill your family. Because we wish to believe that we live in a world where such atrocities can never, ever happen. That blind spot reflects a different sort of religious dogma, equally unmoored from reality. 

As for Israel, the drift towards religious nationalism and the magical thinking it encourages led us to underestimate our enemies and overextend our forces. In 2015 a previous hard-right government led by Netanyahu reduced the period of required military service for men from 36 to 32 months and announced plans to lower it to 30 in the future. The military was forced to condense training schedules to accommodate these changes. In retrospect, militaristic rhetoric was no substitute for more and better trained soldiers. Because despite all our hopes and prayers, there is so far no sign the Messiah is on his way. We are on our own.

Source : Quillette

The post A Generation of Misguided Policy in Israel appeared first on Policy Print.

Thousands of protesters gathered in Washington on Saturday to demand a ceasefire in Gaza where thousands have been killed in an Israeli offensive since an attack by Hamas, and to denounce President Joe Biden’s policy towards the war.

Protesters carried placards with slogans such as “Palestinian Lives Matter,” “Let Gaza Live” and “Their blood is in on your hands,” as the US government continued to reject demands to add its voice to calls for a blanket ceasefire.

Activists called the planned protest a “National March on Washington: Free Palestine” and organized buses to the US capital from across the country for demonstrators to attend, said coalition group ANSWER, an acronym for “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.”
“What we want and what we demand is a ceasefire now,” said Mahdi Bray, national director of the American Muslim Alliance.

The demonstration was among the largest pro-Palestinian gatherings in the United States and among the biggest for any cause in Washington in recent years, Reuters reported.
Crowds began gathering at Freedom Plaza near the White House in the afternoon before the protest started with a moment of silence as demonstrators held up a large poster with names of Palestinians killed since Israel’s massive retaliation began.

The deep-rooted Israeli-Palestinian conflict reignited on Oct. 7 when scores of fighters from Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, crossed into Israel, killing at least 1,400 people.
Israel has since struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground assault, stirring global alarm at humanitarian conditions in the enclave. Gaza health officials said at least 9,488 Palestinians had been killed as of Saturday.

The growing number of civilian deaths has intensified international calls for a ceasefire, but Washington, like Israel, has so far dismissed them, saying a halt will give Hamas chance to regroup.

Source : Aawsat

The post Protesters Oppose Biden War Policy in Large Pro-Palestine Rally appeared first on Policy Print.

Thousands of protesters in the US capital on Saturday called for a ceasefire in Gaza amid Israel’s relentless bombing campaign, with some slamming President Joe Biden’s support for Washington’s top ally in the Middle East.

The rally, at which demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and wore the traditional keffiyeh scarf, was the largest protest in Washington since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7.

“Free, free Palestine,” and “End the siege on Gaza now,” the protesters shouted.

Other slogans targeted the US president: “Biden, Biden you can’t hide, you signed off on genocide” and “We say no, Genocide Joe.”

“It is unacceptable to allow for the loss of so many innocent lives and we cannot consider this a proportional conflict,” said 24-year-old Amanda Eisenhour of Virginia.

“This is a massacre, a genocide… a stain on our history, and I cannot accept as a citizen that my taxes are funding this.”

Jasmine Iman, 25, came from New York to attend the protest and said she will not vote for Biden in next year’s presidential election because of his steadfast support for Israel.

“We will not vote for the Democratic Party. We will make sure that everyone we know knows not to vote for the Democratic Party because of (Gaza),” she said.

Biden, 80, is likely to face off against 77-year-old Republican former president Donald Trump a year from now, with polls showing a hypothetical matchup in a virtual dead heat.

If the election ends up being a choice between Biden and Trump, “I’ll sit it out,” Iman said.

Fighting raged in Gaza on Saturday for a 29th day since Hamas militants stormed across the Israeli border and, according to Israeli officials, killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and abducted over 240 others.

Since then, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the Gaza Strip and sent in ground troops. The health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory says 9,488 people have been killed, around two-thirds of them women and children.

Source : Al Monitor

The post Protesters Slam Biden’s Israel Policy at Pro-Palestinian March in Washington appeared first on Policy Print.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) ripped U.S. policy towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Saturday.

“U.S. policy is essentially that Netanyahu has no achievable goals in Gaza and a ground invasion risks regional war, including potential US troops,” Omar said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “And also we should give him $14 billion in weapons with no restrictions, and say there are no red lines as he bombs refugee camps.”

“See how this doesn’t add up?” Omar added. 

Omar has called for a cease-fire in the current conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, alongside other progressive lawmakers.

President Biden called for a “pause” in the fighting Wednesday after the White House had said it would consider a “humanitarian pause” to get aid into Gaza. However, it has pushed back against calls for a cease-fire. 

Netanyahu told Secretary of State Antony Blinken (D) in a meeting Friday that his country “refuses a temporary cease-fire that does not include the release of our hostages. Israel will not enable the entry of fuel to Gaza and opposes sending money to the Strip,” according to The Times of Israel. 

Omar’s comments come shortly after her House colleague Rep. Rashida (D-Mich) criticized Biden Friday in a video posted to X, saying he “supported the genocide of the Palestinian people” in relation to his administration’s support for Israel amidst its conflict with Hamas. 

The current conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas began with a Hamas attack on Israel in early October that left more than 1,400 people dead. Israeli air campaigns and a recent ground offensive in response have left more than 9,200 Palestinians dead, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. 

Source : The Hill

The post Omar Rips US Policy Toward Israeli PM, Saying It ‘doesn’t Add Up’ appeared first on Policy Print.

The Wall Street Journal exclusively and convincingly reported on Sunday that Iran helped plot the ongoing military attack against Israel “over several weeks.” The facts of the Journal’s report utterly undercut Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assertion over the weekend that there is no direct evidence of Iranian complicity in Hamas’s attack on Israel.

His denial is no longer plausible. It should by now be clear that U.S. foreign policy toward Iran needs a thorough reassessment.

The current policy is based on wishful thinking and false assumptions about Iran’s long-term involvement with Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Iranian-directed attack on Israel is part of a global plan intended to undermine U.S. national security by diminishing our most important ally in the region and sending a chilling message to partners worldwide that America is stumbling in the geopolitical landscape.

Events should induce President Biden, the State Department and all U.S. agencies to abandon the conviction that Iran is reformable. Iran cannot be appeased with monetary gifts, sanctions relief or nuclear concessions. In fact, all of these gestures have been and are counterproductive. In fact, the carrot-and-stick approach used since 2009 has been an all-around failure.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, the Biden administration has chosen only to partially enforce American sanctions against Iran.  This has allowed Iran to prosper through oil shipments to China in the naive hope that this will make Iran more willing to pause development of nuclear weapons. You can connect the dots from U.S. sanctions largesse and relief to Iranian monetary support of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

Not only must maximum sanctions be enforced, but America and the West need secondary sanctions against nations that circumvent them. Those who say that sanctions don’t work never tell you that we have not fully enforced them. They also make the mistake of using an impatient Western timeline to judge success.

As for U.S. policy concerning the Israeli situation in the south with Hamas, an American-designated terrorist organization, Biden’s initial unconditional rhetorical support must translate to long-term support of a sustained Israeli operation, particularly when the anti-Israel wing in Congress raises its voice to advocate for a ceasefire before Israel can accomplish its goals.

American goals should be aligned with Israel’s regarding Hamas and, more importantly, the Iranian puppet-masters behind it. President Barack Obama tried creating “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel, to endear ourselves to the Iranian dictatorship. The results of this experiment should by now be clear enough.

Unfortunately, educating a polarized America about the true nature of Hamas and why there is a war today is incredibly difficult. For example, a New York Times article referred to a “blockaded” Gaza without context, due to its editorial bent. When Israel left 100 percent of Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians could have chosen to become Hong Kong on the Mediterranean, with open borders and relations with Israel. Instead, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas chose terrorism and poverty.

That is why, for reference, the Times chooses not to educate readers with quotes from the Hamas Charter, a blatantly anti-Semitic document calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. From the beginning, The Times conflated Israeli civilian casualties with Palestinian terrorist totals, deliberately obscuring the facts of the conflict.

Can the administration swim against the tide, when the war becomes confusing and parties revert to their echo chambers? The truth is the first casualty of war, and already, parties are taking advantage of the fog of war to advance agendas.

Elliot Abrams’s advice in National Review offers a much better path. “It would be far better to see Republicans and Democrats realize and say the obvious: The world is a very dangerous place, and when our friends and allies are attacked, we will have their backs. That’s the message we want Hamas, Hezbollah, their backers in Iran, and their partners in Russia and China to receive.”

The only question now is whether Biden and Blinken can rise to the challenge, overcome partisan interests and entrenched thinking and reassess the U.S. relationship with Iran in a rational and fact-based manner.

Source : The Hill

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Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman of the Palestinian presidency, said in a press statement that “the continuation of the Israeli escalation against our people will explode the situation in the region and push it to a stage that is difficult to control.”

On Thursday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement that three Palestinians were killed and four others injured during an Israeli raid on the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Israeli soldiers have repeatedly stormed Palestinian areas since early January, and the escalating tension between the two sides since then has led to the killing of more than 100 Palestinians and 19 Israelis, according to official figures from both sides.

Abu Rudeineh said that the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is fully and directly responsible for this escalation, which always pushes for more tension and violence.”

He called on the U.S. and the international community “to immediately intervene and press Israel to stop its aggressive policy against the Palestinians, their land, and their sanctities.”

Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye said in an official press statement that “the Israeli government is fully responsible for the crimes and violations it commits against the Palestinian people.”

He called on the international community “to unify their standards and hold the Israeli government accountable for its horrific crimes and continuous violations against the Palestinian people.”

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