Now that Joe Biden has stepped down as Democrat candidate for president and endorsed Kamala Harris, the question arises whether he should resign as well. This Wednesday, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu will address Congress. Seemingly unrelated, the address and Biden’s fitness for office are closely connected.
The recent history between the two leaders has been fraught, but the immediate future would be truly dangerous.
“Hamas can’t be destroyed.” So announced Israel Defense Forces spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, last week. Immediately, Prime Minster Netanyahu contradicted him, revealing extraordinary disarray at the highest levels of the Israeli government.
Actually, Netanyahu’s rebuke was a concession, in which he reformulated his original war aim of “eradicating Hamas” into “the destruction of Hamas’s military and governance capabilities.”
While the concession was long overdue, it did not acknowledge the whole of what Hagari said “This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear – it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public. Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people – anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.” The “idea,” of course is freedom for Palestinians.
April brought a big surprise – unexpectedly robust individual income tax receipts of $483 billion, a $103 billion, or 27%, increase over April 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Uncle Sam can use the revenue, but even a $100 billion surprise will hardly make a dent in ongoing massive federal deficits. But why was it unexpected?
The increase included a $77 billion, or 26%, increase in final payment of taxes paid in estimated installments throughout the year, so-called non-withheld taxes. A large portion of non-withheld taxes are taxes on capital gains.
The time may be right for an international protectorate on the West Bank and in Gaza, creating a homeland for Palestinians and providing strategic security for Israel. Troops from a multinational coalition led by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia would replace Israeli troops. For Palestinians, this would end the hated IDF occupation; for Israel, it would place its existential security in the hands of troops from a broad and powerful international coalition.
The promise of the proposed multinational protectorate approach has just been demonstrated in an ad hoc way as multiple nations coordinated with Israel in the successful repulse of the recent Iranian missile and drone attack.
Two weeks ago, Joe Biden okayed more weapons for Israel to use during the U.N.-mandated Gaza ceasefire that Biden then greenlighted. Huh?
Yes, you read that correctly. As widely reported, Biden okayed the U.N. resolution for an immediate unconditional ceasefire in Gaza on March 25th. Few knew that, over the prior weekend, Biden had certified Israel as being in compliance with U.S. law and U.S foreign policy regarding acceptable use of U.S.-supplied weapons. So, more bombs and artillery shells are headed to Israel for... Somewhat incoherent, right?
Wednesday, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Senate Republicans via video link. Netanyahu’s only friends in the world seem to be Republicans in the U.S.
Republicans seem to have forgotten the example of Ronald Reagan. When Israel began heavy bombing of West Beirut nine weeks into its 1982 invasion of Lebanon, President Reagan called then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and expressed ''outrage'' at the ''needless destruction and bloodshed.” Begin halted the bombing the next day.
Biden is no Reagan. He has been characteristically timid and feckless in his attempts to rein in Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has adopted a non-negotiable stance on his invasion of Rafah, despite that it will achieve none of his stated objectives. Backing down will constitute a dramatic rebuke for him – and, unfortunately, the nation he leads. How to prevent the assault on Rafah without Israel losing complete credibility?
With casualties in Gaza exceeding 100,000, the obliteration of the territory and the reduction of Gazans to such a state of desperation that over 100 died trying to access a rare aid convoy, the parade of horrors has been so continuous that there has been virtually no time to consider the fundamental justification of Israel’s invasion. It is assumed to be self-defense, but it is not.
It is widely acknowledged that the Netanyahu regime and the Israeli defense establishment were grossly negligent in failing to defend Israel on October 7th, when effective defense would have required so little. Few have applied the same logic with a future view. With all the military might that the U.S. supplies – fighter jets, tanks, howitzers, bombs – Israel is only exposed to Hamas fighters with their homemade weapons if it lapses into another instance of such gross negligence.
Palestinians cry “From the river to the sea,” while Israelis seize and settle the land from the sea to the river. The Times of Israel reports that an Israeli cabinet minister and his father, a rabbi, suggest the option of nuking Gaza and eradicating Palestinians, unavoidably evoking the Final Solution and the Holocaust.
The massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, where 130 Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7th, recalls the documented 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin, where Jewish guerrillas executed over 100 Palestinian men, women and children.
Hamas and Hezbollah seem tragic descendants of last century’s Jewish guerillas, the Urgun and Lehi.
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Palestinians enjoying peace and tranquility in their own homeland from the river to the Green Line is the best way to defang the terrorist movements. How many families living in genuine peace will offer their children to be suicide bombers? To be terrorists? To live in tunnels in Gaza or caves in Southern Lebanon? Peace is the greatest threat to terrorists. It is time to carry out the threat.
After Hamas's heinous attack on Israel, President Biden - wisely - has been talking about peace in the Mideast, even as hostilities rage in Gaza, the West Bank and at the Israel-Lebanese border. Without a peace settlement, these hostilities are open-ended, as they have been for decades. Yet, Biden has resurrected the old idea of a Palestinian state under the Palestinian Authority. That plan is a dead letter. Instead, we should try an entirely new approach, a permanent international protectorate on the West Bank.
The protectorate would be established and governed by a multinational coalition which would take control of the West Bank and demilitarize it completely, replacing Israeli Defense Forces with international peacekeeping troops.
The Palestinian state is a casualty of two realities. First, Israel could never accept a fully sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank high above Israel which is but six miles wide at its narrowest point. That would be an unacceptable existential risk for the Jewish state.
Nor would the Palestinians accept the emasculated version of a state contemplated in failed negotiations to date, a small demilitarized entity with IDF troops stationed on all its borders. That would be little different from the current status quo. Peace negotiations over the years have bogged down in fatally complex detail in attempts to square the circle of these irreconcilable positions.
Let me say first that I am not a lawyer. Nor am I a supporter of Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination. Yet, I am troubled by the New York Executive Law § 63(12) (the “Law”) under which Donald Trump and his associates have been found to have committed fraud, his business licenses cancelled and various of his business units ordered dissolved within 10 days – all before a trial in which New York State seeks a whopping $250 million from The Donald.
This Law strikes me as dangerous, certainly to anyone doing business in New York State. As the order by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron (“the Order”) acknowledges, no victim of Trump’s activities “lodged a complaint” or “otherwise claimed damages.” Usually, a murder conviction requires that the victim’s body be found. In the Trump case, the body is alive and kicking.
