Salem Political Snark

South Korea's brief stint of martial law is a warning of what Trump might do

South Korea, like the United States, is a democracy.

But that didn't stop President Yoon Suk Yeol from declaring martial law today, reversing his order a few hours later following massive outrage and demonstrations from South Korea's citizens and a unanimous vote from parliament rescinding the order. But for a while, troops tried to prevent members of parliament from entering their building, since Yoon's order declared political gatherings unlawful.

For a while, things were really ugly in South Korea.

Yoon's martial law announcement sounded like a dream come true for Donald Trump. If the decree had been put into effect, political assemblies and demonstrations would have been banned, news outlets and journalists would have been jailed for promoting "fake news," and arrests would have been allowed without a warrant.

In short, Yoon wanted to be an authoritarian ruler of a democracy by invoking the danger North Korean sympathizers, communists, and such supposedly posed to Yoon's right-wing sensibilities. A story in The Atlantic, "South Korea's Warning for Washington," starts out with a compelling couple of paragraphs.

A right-wing wannabe authoritarian president—a leader who attacks the press, is accused of abusing power for personal gain, uses his power to block investigations into his family’s potential corruption, hopes to stay in office to avoid heading to prison, and only seems to have concepts of a plan to address his nation’s inflation and health care—declared martial law earlier today.

This is not a dystopian fever dream for what may soon come to pass in the United States, but instead a rapidly unfolding crisis in South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked his nation with a hastily executed surprise power grab under the pretext of an unspecified military threat from North Korea and enemies within. Late Tuesday evening in Seoul, Yoon issued a statement calling the country’s National Assembly a “den of criminals” and claiming that it was undermining governance. Martial law was needed, Yoon claimed, to stop the “anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people.”

Indeed, parts of Yoon's statement sound like they were adapted from a Trump campaign speech.

Dear citizens, I declare emergency martial law to defend the free Republic of Korea from the threats of North Korean communist forces and to eradicate the shameless pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people and to protect the free constitutional order.

Through this emergency martial law, I will rebuild and defend the free Republic of Korea, which is falling into ruin. To this end, I will surely eradicate the criminals of the anti-state forces who have been committing atrocities so far.

This is an inevitable step to ensure the freedom and safety of the people and the sustainability of the country, and to pass on a proper country to future generations from the unrestrained activities of anti-state forces aiming to overthrow the system. I will eradicate anti-state forces as soon as possible and normalize the country. I will crush the anti-state forces and normalize the country as soon as possible.

The declaration of martial law will cause some inconvenience to the good people who have believed in and followed the values of the Constitution of the free Republic of Korea, but I will focus on minimizing these inconveniences.

The good news for lovers of democracy is that South Korea appears to have weathered Yoon's attempt to substitute his own right-wing authoritarianism for the rule of law. After being narrowly elected president in 2022 by a margin of just 0.8% (not a whole lot less than Trump's 1.5% margin of victory in the 2024 popular vote), Yoon's approval rating sank to a dismal 17%. 

In April 2024, South Korea's citizens overwhelmingly voted for the opposition party, leaving Yoon with a parliament firmly against him -- for good reason. 

Mr. Yoon’s party had seen the 2024 elections as an opportunity to win back the chamber.

Instead the crises and scandals built. A Halloween celebration became a deadly catastrophe, and North Korea ramped up its threats. Doctors went on strike, describing a medical system of harsh working conditions and low wages. Allegations of corruption involving Mr. Yoon’s wife and a $2,200 Dior pouch roiled his party, with one senior member comparing her to Marie Antoinette.

Protests organized on social media by rival political activists became common, with a rough division of churchgoers and other older citizens on the right, and mostly younger people on the left.

The election devolved into vicious recriminations, with left-wing protesters calling Mr. Yoon a “national traitor” over what they called his anti-feminist policies and attacks on news outlets he accused of spreading “fake news.” They also criticized him for the Halloween crowd crush and his efforts to improve ties with Japan, the onetime colonial ruler of Korea.

Opposition leaders warned that Mr. Yoon was taking South Korea onto the path of “dictatorship.” In turn, members of Mr. Yoon’s party called the opposition “criminals,” and voters on the right rallied against what they called “pro-North Korean communists.”

"Instead the crises and scandals built." It sure seems like those words are a premonition of what awaits the United States after Trump is inaugurated next month.

I only hope that our 2026 midterm election hands Trump's Republican Party such a resounding defeat that we too will have shown that Americans value democracy and competent governance much more than bending the knee to a wanna-be authoritarian.

Netanyahu is Israel's Trump, caring only about himself, not the hostages

I feel sorry for the majority of people in Israel who want their country to do everything possible to save the lives of the remaining hostages kept captive by Hamas, but have to deal with a leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who only cares about staying in power, not what's best for Israelis. 

If that sounds just like Donald Trump, no big surprise. Trump and Netanyahu are close with each other, sharing a bond of unbridled egotism, self-centeredness, and a desire to remain in power in order to forestall legal proceedings accusing them of criminality.

Recently six hostages were killed by Hamas as Israeli troops were closing in on their tunnel location in Gaza. Several of the hostages were slated to be released in the first phase of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that remains stalled -- primarily because Netanyahu keeps making more demands of Hamas.

Intense anger over Netanyahu's stonewalling of a hostage deal sent hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets in protest. That was followed by a general strike that shut down parts of the country before those striking were ordered back to work by an Israeli court. 

What's bizarre is that Republican politicians in the United States have been criticizing Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and other Democrats for calling for a cease fire to be negotiated with Hamas, which is the only way the remaining hostages are going to be released. They call this anti-Israel and pro-Hamas.

So what are those hundreds of thousands of Israelis who also are demanding a cease fire? Are they anti-Israel and pro-Hamas? Of course not.

They're patriots who detest Hamas, just as Harris, Biden, and other Democrats are. They simply don't see any point in prolonging the war now that most of Gaza has been destroyed, tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians killed, and Hamas reduced to a shadow of its former self. 

Netanyahu's own defense minister sees him as standing in the way of a deal with Hamas that would lead to the release of hostages. Here's excerpts from a New York Times story, "Biden Says Netanyahu is Not Doing Enough to Free Hostages in Gaza."

President Biden issued a one-word rebuke on Monday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to reaching a cease-fire and hostage release deal, the latest iteration of the White House’s monthslong effort to cajole and censure the Israeli leader.

As he exited Marine One on the White House lawn on the way to a meeting of his national security team, Mr. Biden was asked a series of questions by waiting reporters about whether Mr. Netanyahu was doing enough to achieve a deal to get the hostages back. The president responded simply: “No.”

...Hamas has demanded that all Israeli forces be withdrawn from the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land, less than 9 miles long, on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Mr. Netanyahu has said Israeli troops must remain in the corridor to prevent the movement of weapons and ammunition to Hamas.

The draft agreement calls for a major reduction in Israeli forces in the corridor during the first phase of the cease-fire, and full withdrawal thereafter. Israeli government negotiators have agreed to the phased withdrawal, but Mr. Netanyahu has backed away from that part of the deal, triggering an open dispute with his own defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

“It is too late for the hostages who were murdered in cold blood,” Mr. Gallant said on Sunday, declaring that Mr. Netanyahu had to drop his insistence on the presence of troops in the corridor. “We must bring back the hostages that are still being held by Hamas.”

Hopefully that will happen. But it's hard to see how the lives of the hostages can be saved as long as Netanyahu is Prime Minister of Israel. Netanyahu wants endless war with Hamas because he believes that as soon as the war stops, his legal problems will start again.

Israelis will have to make a choice between keeping the hostages alive and keeping Netanyahu's political ambitions alive. I sure hope they choose the hostages. 

Netanyahu lied shamelessly in his address to Congress today

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hugely unpopular prime minister, is that country's Donald Trump in this regard: Netanyahu lies shamelessly, seeks to cling to power to avoid being held to account for crimes he's committed, and avoids taking responsibility for his failures.

Today Netanyahu used an address to Congress, which was boycotted by a large proportion of Democrats in the House and Senate, to continue spreading falsehoods about how Israel has been conducting the war against Hamas under his failed leadership. 

I watched most of the speech, then couldn't stand all the B.S. that was flowing freely from Netanyahu's mouth, and fast-forwarded my recording of the speech to the analysis on CNN after he'd finished talking.

That analysis was pretty damn devastating. An Israeli criticized Netanyahu harshly, saying that his approval rating in Israel is dismal, about 30%, and the vast majority of Israelis want an election to be held where they can get rid of Netanyahu.

He added that Netanyahu failed to mention that the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas took place under Netanyahu's watch. Indeed, Netanyahu had harsh words for Iran, American protesters, Hamas, Palestinian leadership, and others, but somehow neglected to mention that he was the one in charge when Hamas conducted its "surprise" attack -- which actually wasn't a surprise, since Israeli intelligence had gotten word of it, but nothing was done to prevent it by Netanyahu's administration. 

Prior to the speech I heard Fareed Zakaria make some great points on CNN that Netanyahu also ignored in his speech. Netanyahu keeps saying that his goal is to destroy Hamas. But that's impossible, as Zakaria pointed out and many others have echoed.

Hamas is a movement, an ideology.

Its weapons and fighters can be destroyed, at least in part, but an ideology can't be destroyed so long as the conditions that make it appealing continue to exist. Israel's wholesale destruction of Gaza and the killing of 39,000 people in Gaza guarantee that Hamas will remain popular among a population that has suffered so greatly from the reckless way Israel has been conducting the war.

So Netanyahu is guaranteeing that Hamas will remain a viable ideology, Zakaria said, by ruling out the possibility of Palestinian statehood, the two-state solution favored by the United States and most of the rest of the world. Further, Netanyahu doesn't want Hamas to govern Gaza after the war is over, but he also doesn't want an alternative Palestinian government to do this.

It's obvious that Netanyahu doesn't want peace, but endless war -- with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with Iran.

That's the only way he can stay in power, by claiming that elections can't be held in Israel so long as the country is on a war footing. What was disgusting was that Israelis recognize what a self-centered liar Netanyahu is, while his mostly Republican audience kept cheering and having standing ovations for him today.

Netanyahu talked about how continuing the war against Hamas was necessary to bring all of the hostages home. But he failed to mention that almost all of the hostages who have been freed so far were released during a cease fire agreement with Hamas. This is why so many relatives of the remaining hostages are angry at Netanyahu for rejecting another ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

Here's some other lies in Netanyahu's speech, according to CNN's Jeremy Diamond.

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond argued many of the claims made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “flew in the face” of facts during his address to Congress.

Netanyahu spoke in front of Congress on Wednesday to discuss the ongoing war in Gaza. Shortly after the speech, Diamond appeared on CNN to fact check a number of things Netanyahu said.

“He talked about big numbers of aid getting in,” Diamond said, “but there is just very, very clear evidence — you talk to any humanitarian organization that actually works on the ground in Gaza, [like] The United Nations — and even when you look at Israel in the way that they have turned on and back off the faucet of aid to Gaza. There is clear evidence that Israel has not always allowed enough aid in, that they have not done enough to deconflict militarily, to provide safe routes for that aid to get in. And you also have to remember that ministers, members of his, Netanyahu’s own government called for starving the people of Gaza in the earliest days of the war.”

Diamond then called it “laughable” that when the prime minister talked about civilian deaths in Rafah, he claimed there were “practically none.”

“I can think of several strikes in which civilians were killed,” Diamond continued. “That just doesn’t even pass the smell test. And then he once again cited this West Point expert, John Spencer, claiming that Israel has the lowest civilian-casualty ratio. [If] you talk to any other expert on the conduct of militaries in warfare, including how the United States has carried out its campaigns, and they will all say that Israel has not taken nearly as many precautions as most modern militaries do in warfare, in Gaza.”

For sure.

As noted above, about 39,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began. Israel has said that about 14,000 Hamas fighters have been killed. This means about 25,000 civilians have been killed by Israel. That's about 1% of the population of Gaza. If the same proportion of Americans were killed, that'd be more that 3,300,000 people. 

Is it any wonder that most Americans disagree with how Israel has been conducting the war against Hamas? We may not be protesting in the streets, but 56% of us don't like what Israel is doing. This helps explain why Kamala Harris and JD Vance both passed on attending Netanyahu's speech. He isn't popular in Israel, and he isn't popular in the United States.

Salem City Council approves even-handed resolution on crisis in Gaza

Way to go, Salem City Council.

You did the right thing in your meeting last night, passing a resolution on a 5-4 vote that calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, along with calls for no more U.S. offensive aid to Israel until a ceasefire occurs, unrestricted humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, the release of all hostages and detainees, a two-state solution where Palestinians and Israelis live in peace, and condemnation of antisemitism, anti-Palestinian anti-Arab bigotry, and Islamophobia.

The full resolution can be read here. I've also copied it in below.

I wish the resolution had passed unanimously. But a Salem Reporter story, "Salem city council passes alternative Gaza ceasefire resolution following hours of public testimony," says: 

Councilors Jose Gonzalez, Virginia Stapleton, Linda Nishioka and Trevor Philips joined Mayor Chris Hoy in voting to pass the Gaza resolution. Councilors Deanna Gwyn, Micki Varney, Julie Hoy, and Vanessa Nordyke voted against it.

Congratulations to Councilors Stapleton and Nishioka for drafting an alternative to the language proposed by the Human Rights Commission, which mentioned genocide by Israel in several places, and the resolution proposed by city staff which combined some of the Human Rights Commission language with similar resolutions passed by other Oregon cities. 
Download HRC Gaza Resolution Proposal
Download Resolution by City staff

I think the resolution passed last night is accurate, well-written, and reflects the intent of the Human Rights Commission language without the controversial inclusion of "genocide." There's good reason to call what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people genocide, but if not using that word in the resolution enabled it to pass by the narrow 5-4 vote, it was a wise decision to omit mention of genocide.

Here's the resolution which passed. It seems pleasingly even-handed to me. Both Israel and Hamas deserve a lot of criticism, and the resolution does just that. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

RESOLUTION NO. 2024-__
A RESOLUTION ON THE CRISIS IN GAZA

WHEREAS, the City of Salem holds as a key value compassion and is committed to promoting
peace, unity, and respect for all its residents; and

WHEREAS, we recognize and stand in solidarity with our Muslim and Jewish communities,
reaffirming our commitment to their safety, security, and well-being; and

WHEREAS, Israeli and Palestinian citizens deserve to live their lives in peace, free from the
threat of violence; and

WHEREAS, we condemn Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens that took place on October
7, 2023 and tragically took the lives of over 1,200 and resulted in around 250 hostages; and

WHEREAS, the ongoing violence in Gaza has resulted in immense human suffering and loss of
life; and

WHEREAS, we share dire concerns with the atrocities in Gaza in which tens of thousands of
Palestinians have been killed and several thousand more are reported missing and presumed to be dead; and

WHEREAS, the people of Gaza face further devastation from displacement, the collapse of the
healthcare system, lack of food, water, sanitation, and other basic necessities, with over half a
million Gazans reported starving by the United Nations; and

WHEREAS, the use of civilian infrastructure by Hamas for military purposes further endangers
the lives of innocent Palestinians and exacerbates the humanitarian crisis in Gaza; and

WHEREAS, the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces, through violence and blocking
humanitarian aid is acknowledged by the United Nations to be violating international law; and

WHEREAS, Salem residents’ federal taxpayer dollars have been used to fund military actions in Gaza; and

WHEREAS, we acknowledge the urgency of the situation and the imperative need for immediate action;

NOW, THEREFORE, THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SALEM, OREGON
RESOLVES AS FOLLOWS:

Section 1. The City of Salem, Oregon calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and end to the hostilities in the region which are causing a catastrophic loss of Palestinian life; and

Section 2. We call for no more U.S. aid be directed to Israel or the Israel Defense Forces, for
offensive military aid, until a permanent ceasefire is reached; and

Section 3. We insist on the immediate and unrestricted proliferation of humanitarian aid
commensurate with the multiple levels of socioeconomic collapse in Gaza; and

Section 4. We urge leaders to prioritize the safety and well-being of all hostages and detainees,
recognizing their right to freedom and immediate and unconditional release; and

Section 5. We extend our support to diplomatic efforts and initiatives aimed at facilitating a two-
state solution where Palestinians and Israelis can live in peace; and

Section 6. The City Council asks all members of Oregon’s Federal Delegation to use the
platform provided by their office to end these atrocities and to facilitate immediate and long-term peace here and around the globe; and

Section 7. We express our unwavering commitment to fostering peace and unity within the City
of Salem and representing the voices and concerns of all its residents; and

Section 8. We stand in solidarity with our Palestinian, Muslim, and Jewish communities,
affirming our commitment to their safety, security, and inclusion within the fabric of our city;
and

Section 9. We condemn and will not tolerate antisemitism, anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab bigotry,
Islamophobia, or any acts of bias or hate against Jewish, Muslim, or Palestinian residents of the City of Salem; and

Section 10. We express our sincere hope that the current conflict will be resolved swiftly and
peacefully, leading to a just and lasting peace, and that an immediate and permanent ceasefire is the first step in bringing about that process; and

Section 11. This resolution is effective upon adoption.
ADOPTED by the City Council this ____day of ______, 2024.
ATTEST:
City Recorder
Approved by City Attorney:
________________

Drafted by Councilors Nishioka and Stapleton

Salem City Council to consider Gaza ceasefire resolution. Hope it passes.

Next Tuesday, May 28, the Salem City Council will consider adoption of a resolution drafted by the city's Human Rights Commission regarding the Israel-Hamas war. It calls for:

An immediate and permanent ceasefire, an end to the hostilities, the free flow of humanitarian aid and the release of all civilian hostages.

Hard to see how any member of the City Council could object to that, though I bet some will (Mayor-elect Julie Hoy, for one).

The only viable argument against the resolution that I can come up with is that Israel should be able to continue going after Hamas fighters until they're all dead or surrendered, even though by Israel's own admission they've been killing more innocent Palestinians in Gaza than Hamas fighters.

There's greater weight on the side of the resolution, given what I know about this conflict, which includes Israel's horrible treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank for decades, a fact beyond dispute. 

The United States has acknowledged that Israel hasn't been complying with international law in its conduct of the war.

But since President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are so wishy-washy when it comes to standing up against Israeli atrocities, they decided to take the easy way out and merely restrict the transfer of large 2,000 pound bombs to Israel, instead of cutting off offensive weapons entirely, as seems to be required by U.S. law when our weapons are being used in an inhumane fashion.

Thankfully, the International Criminal Court cares more about justice than Biden and Blinken do. The court is considering arrest warrants for the Prime Minister of Israel and the leader of Hamas. 

In a stunning announcement that drew sharp indignation from both warring parties, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said Monday that he was seeking to charge senior figures in the Israel-Gaza conflict, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar, with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Karim Khan’s statement listed extensive charges and sought additional arrest warrants for Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and two other top Hamas leaders — Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader.

The ICC is the only permanent international court that wields power to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Its announcement Monday was historic: Although Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, upon which the court is founded, the arrest warrants, if issued, would nonetheless stigmatize the country’s senior leaders.

The ICC’s pre-trial chamber will now consider Khan’s application. If it approves the request, international arrest warrants would be issued for the five men and would be enforced by the court’s 124 member states.

In addition, the International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to back off its invasion of Rafah, a city in the south of Gaza where about a million people had sought refuge from the fighting elsewhere in Gaza. 

A ruling Friday from the International Court of Justice ordering an immediate halt to Israel’s military offensive in Rafah marked a stunning rebuke of the Israeli leadership’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, including the decision to send troops and tanks into a city where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge.

The incursion into Gaza’s southernmost city, which began May 7, has already displaced more than 800,000 people, the court said, calling the developments “exceptionally grave.” Israel must halt the operation and open the Rafah crossing for the “unhindered” provision of aid, the judges said, adding that the offensive could destroy Palestinian life in Gaza.

Israeli officials swiftly indicated that they would ignore the ruling, which is binding but difficult to enforce, even as the high-profile judgment deepened Israel’s isolation on the world stage.

So the time is right for the Salem City Council to stand for peace against mindless war. Hamas engaged in horrific terrorism in its October 7, 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel. Since, Israel has been engaged in horrific war within Gaza, killing well over 10,000 women and children in what arguably is genocide against the Palestinian people, destroying most of the residences in Gaza.

If you agree, email testimony to the City Recorder prior to Tuesday afternoon, if possible.

Background information for Tuesday's agenda item includes this statement from city staff:

Salem residents have approached Mayor and Council and called on their elected leaders to address a crisis that has continued to unfold on the world stage for more than half a year: the siege in the Gaza Strip.

The City of Salem Human Rights Commission, at the request of the Mayor, met three times over three weeks and held some six hours of public discussion on the question. During the Commission’s public engagement, the Commission performed outreach to faith communities, received more than fifty pages of public input, 107 members of the public attended meetings, and forty-four provided spoken testimony. One commenter shared she had a petition signed by over 200 people in support of a resolution.

Salem residents provided diverse perspectives. Most community members, regardless of perspective, centered on a concern for decency. Some residents communicated that they lived in fear, and asked Salem not to move forward out of concern for what they perceived to be the safety of the Jewish community in Salem.

Oh, please, give me a break. How is the safety of the Jewish community in Salem at risk from a resolution calling for an end to hostilities in Gaza? That's ridiculous. Playing the anti-semitism card whenever there is justified criticism of how Israel has been conducting its war against Hamas is deeply irritating.

Israel is a country led by right-wing extremists. Judaism is a religion. The two are distinct. I'm strongly anti-Israel when it comes to that country's despicable treatment of Palestinians. But I have no problem with the Jewish religion, aside from the problem I have with every religion: they're figments of the imagination with no basis in objective reality, since God almost certainly is a fiction.

So the City Council should pass the resolution with no concern about supposed anti-semitism. Again, if you agree, email testimony to the City Recorder prior to Tuesday afternoon, if possible.

Two well-researched stories show how badly Israel is treating Palestinians

I've said it before, I'm saying it again, and I'll keep on saying it because it is absolutely true: Israel has been treating Palestinians in its occupied territory extremely badly, allowing Jewish right-wing zealots and the military to murder Palestinians, take their property, and deny them equal treatment under the law.

So while some of the pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses have gone too far in criticizing Israel, on the whole they've been doing a great service by drawing attention to the infuriating policies of the Netanyahu government, which have gotten more extreme in recent years, yet are a continuation of previous anti-Palestinian policies that go against both international law and moral decency.

If you don't believe me, read two well-researched stories on this subject by highly reputable sources. The  March 4, 2024 issue of The New Yorker had this story in the print edition, which has this title in the online edition. The opening passage gives a good feel for what the story is all about.

The sounds of destruction carried through the valley. It was October 28th, and I was standing on a rocky slope in the West Bank with Bashar Ma’amar, a Palestinian who records the aggressions of Israeli settlers. Ma’amar pointed a camera at a group ransacking a house below us. A couple of days before, the settlers had set fire to it; the house’s owner had gone to the police, but they had not intervened.

As we watched, one settler kicked at the front door, and another tried to penetrate the charred walls with a board. Others tore a hole in the roof and slipped inside. On the hillside opposite us, three Israeli soldiers and a man with a rifle stood watching. Eventually, the settlers joined the soldiers to walk back to Eli, their settlement, where mothers pushed strollers down tree-lined blocks of red-roofed houses, people played tennis on courts with views of Palestinian farmland, and men and women carrying M16s and Uzis shopped in strip malls.

Sadly, by no means is this the most disturbing part of the story. Israeli settlers have been treating Palestinians much worse than that. 

Since October 7th, when Hamas-led fighters broke through the fence on Gaza’s border with Israel and killed some twelve hundred people and took some two hundred and fifty hostages, attacks near Qaryut have become routine. Settlers have burned cars and houses, blockaded roads, damaged electricity networks, seized farmland, severed irrigation lines, attacked people in their fields and olive groves, and killed, all without repercussion.

Ma’amar told me that a thousand acres had been cut off from Qaryut. The U.N. has recorded five hundred and seventy-three attacks by settlers in the West Bank since the war began, with Israeli forces accompanying them half the time. At least nine people have been killed by settlers, and three hundred and eighty-two have been killed by Israeli forces. Five Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, at least one of whom was a civilian.

On October 9th, settlers sent a picture on Facebook to people in Qusra, a few miles from Qaryut, of masked men holding axes, clubs, a gas can, and a chainsaw, with text that read, “To all the rats in the sewers of Qusra village, we are waiting for you and we will not feel sorry for you. The day of revenge is coming.” Two days later, at the edge of the village, settlers lit utility poles on fire and tried to break into a house.

For a half hour, a family huddled inside; then young men from the village arrived and threw rocks at the Israelis. Ma’amar drove over in his ambulance. At that point, the settlers started shooting. A man handed Ma’amar a six-year-old girl who had been shot. As the man walked away, he was shot and killed. When Ma’amar sped off, he said, settlers fired on his ambulance. Three Palestinians were killed, one of them the son of a man who had been killed by settlers in 2017. Then the Israeli Army stormed the village and killed a thirteen-year-old boy.

Today I saw two journalists from the New York Times Magazine interviewed about their story on Israeli settler violence and the complicity of the Isreali government in mistreating Palestinians. The short version of the story is:

Here's how it starts out. As a New York Times online subscriber, I'm able to gift a certain number of articles. Hopefully this link to the "Takeaways" story will work for you.

For decades, most Israelis have considered Palestinian terrorism the country’s biggest security concern. But there is another threat that may be even more destabilizing for Israel’s future as a democracy: Jewish terrorism and violence, and the failure to enforce the law against it.

Our yearslong investigation reveals how violent factions within the Israeli settler movement, protected and sometimes abetted by the government, have come to pose a grave threat to Palestinians in the occupied territories and to the State of Israel itself. Piecing together new documents, videos and over 100 interviews, we found a government shaken by an internal war — burying reports it commissioned, neutering investigations it assigned and silencing whistle-blowers, some of them senior officials.

It is a blunt account, told in some cases for the first time by Israeli officials, of how the occupation came to threaten the integrity of the country’s democracy.

If you want to read the full article, here's a gift link to it, along with an excerpt. Whether or not you support how Israel is conducting its war against Hamas, hopefully we all can agree that brutalizing innocent Palestinians isn't how Israel should be behaving. 

Such violence over the decades in places like Khirbet Zanuta is well documented. But protecting the people who carry out that violence is the dark secret of Israeli justice. The long arc of harassment, assault and murder of Palestinians by Jewish settlers is twinned with a shadow history, one of silence, avoidance and abetment by Israeli officials.

For many of those officials, it is Palestinian terrorism that most threatens Israel. But in interviews with more than 100 people — current and former officers of the Israeli military, the National Israeli Police and the Shin Bet domestic security service; high-ranking Israeli political officials, including four former prime ministers; Palestinian leaders and activists; Israeli human rights lawyers; American officials charged with supporting the Israeli-Palestinian partnership — we found a different and perhaps even more destabilizing threat. A long history of crime without punishment, many of those officials now say, threatens not only Palestinians living in the occupied territories but also the State of Israel itself.

Many of the people we interviewed, some speaking anonymously, some speaking publicly for the first time, offered an account not only of Jewish violence against Palestinians dating back decades but also of an Israeli state that has systematically and increasingly ignored that violence.

It is an account of a sometimes criminal nationalistic movement that has been allowed to operate with impunity and gradually move from the fringes to the mainstream of Israeli society. It is an account of how voices within the government that objected to the condoning of settler violence were silenced and discredited. And it is a blunt account, told for the first time by Israeli officials themselves, of how the occupation came to threaten the integrity of their country’s democracy.

Willamette University students protesting Gaza war deserve much praise

Here's my message to the Willamette University students who are occupying a campus building in protest of the horrific death and destruction being inflicted on the people of Gaza by Israel:

Like so many student protests of the past, including those I took part in during my own college days (1966-71) in opposition to the Vietnam War, at first many will criticize you as misguided rabble-rousers. Then, with time, history will show that you were right and your critics were wrong.

What are you right about? Many things.

How Israel is killing tens of thousands of innocent Gaza civilians needlessly. How Israel is blocking sufficient humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, causing tremendous suffering. How the United States is failing to put enough pressure on Israel to end that country's hugely misguided policy of avenging 1,200 deaths at the hands of Hamas on October 7, 2023 by killing an estimated 14,000 children in Gaza.

This is a photo of one of them, Karam.

Karam died not from a bullet or a bomb, but from complications of malnutrition, because Israel is using starvation as an act of war, which is likely a war crime. I learned about this boy from an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof in today's New York Times, "One Photo That Captures the Loss in Gaza."

I'll share it in full, because what Kristof says deserves to be read as widely as possible.

An American surgeon who volunteered in Gaza sent me a photo that sears me with its glimpse of overwhelming grief: A woman mourns her young son.

I’ve known the surgeon, Dr. Sam Attar, a professor at Northwestern University School of Medicine, for a decade. He has worked in war zones around the world, from Ukraine to Iraq to Syria, but Gaza has been particularly harrowing for him, in part because so many children have suffered or died.

He performed amputations and other orthopedic surgeries recently at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. He was preparing to go into the operating room one day when a woman called him over and asked him to photograph her young son, Karam, in his bed in the I.C.U. Sam went over and only then realized that the boy was dead.

“Every time staff wanted to cover him fully with a blanket, she would flip it back and say, ‘No!’” Sam told me. “And she would start talking to him, asking him where he went.”

The nurses and other doctors who were in the I.C.U. that day said that Karam died of complications from malnutrition. The United Nations confirms that Gazan children have starved to death.

The nurses wanted to remove Karam’s body after he died an hour earlier, but his mother wouldn’t allow it. In her grief, she told Sam that Karam was a prince and she wanted Sam to share the boy’s photo. Perhaps she thought this was a way of commemorating her son.

I’ve criticized the way Israel has conducted the war in Gaza and President Biden’s strong support for it, for a child is killed or injured in the war every 10 minutes, according to the United Nations. More than 14,000 children have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza health authorities. But that’s a number; this photo captures a preventable tragedy.

As I argue that it’s time to end this war, I think this photo has a persuasive power greater than my words, so I’ve given my column space over to this image. As we discuss Gaza, let’s keep in mind that the war unfolds through lives like Karam’s.

Here’s the photo, a reminder to us all of what’s at stake.

The Willamette University students don't need that reminder. The rest of us do, because too many people are characterizing the nationwide student protests as not understanding how awful the Hamas attack on Israel was, and how Israel has a right to defend itself.

Actually, almost all of the students understand that perfectly well. What they don't understand is why the United States is supplying the weapons Israel is using to kill innocent people like Karam while demanding Israel do more to protect the lives of civilians in Gaza.

I don't understand that either. That's why protests are so important. Someone, somehow, has to drum some sense into the thick skulls of President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken to use the leverage our country has over Israel to bring the suffering of people in Gaza to an end.

Criticizing Israel isn't anti-semitic. Supporting Palestinians isn't pro-Hamas.

I can't stand how so many politicians and political observers are calling the demonstrations in support of Palestinians on college campuses "pro-Hamas." That's utterly wrong. It's equally wrong to call criticism of how Israel has been conducting its war in Gaza "anti-semitic." 

Back in my college days, I took part in protests against the Vietnam War. The response from conservatives back then was Love it or leave it. Meaning, either love the United States Vietnam War policy, or leave this country.

It turned out that we protesters have been vindicated by history. The Vietnam War was pursued under false pretenses and caused huge numbers of needless deaths among both combatants and civilians.

The same vindication is true of the war in Gaza. While Israel was justified in responding to the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas militants, the Israel Defense Force has killed tens of thousands of innocent people -- women and children -- in over-the-top retaliation for what Hamas did.

Thus the demonstrations in support of Palestinians are absolutely justified. If I was in college now, I'd be taking part in them. Yet there's a disturbing amount of talk among people who should know better, such as some Jewish Democratic politicians, about criticism of Israel being anti-semitic.

That's ridiculous. 

Sure, Israel was founded as a Jewish country. But there's a lot of diversity among Israeli citizens, many of whom are Palestinians. Considering that criticism of Israel amounts to anti-semitism is as wrong as considering that criticism of the United States is anti-Christian, just because most Americans are Christian. 

Israel doesn't get a free pass on criticism because of the Holocaust and past discrimination against Jews.  Currently Israel is run by a right-wing government led by a prime minister accused of several crimes who has tried to pass laws that would protect him from prosecution. 

Israel refuses to consider a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. Israeli settlers are routinely murdering Palestinians in the West Bank. The Israeli military has been accused of war crimes because of the needless deaths of so many residents of Gaza from attacks on civilians. 

If Israel wasn't a Jewish nation, it would be extremely difficult for anyone, conservative or liberal, religious or atheist, to defend the horrendous way Israel has pursued its war against Hamas.

But since evangelical Christians in this country view Israel as protecting the Holy Land for the second coming of Jesus, whereas Palestinians are mostly heathen Muslims, there's a reflexive tendency to defend indefensible actions by Israel.

Hamas acted badly on October 7.
Israel has been acting badly in its response to that attack.
Palestinians have been treated badly by Israel. 

Each of these things is true. I'm confident that the vast majority of demonstrators on college campuses agree with those three statements. They are entirely justified in calling for urgent actions to alleviate the plight of innocent Palestinians. 

If a few people go overboard and make anti-semitic insults, that's unfortunate. But that's the way free speech works. The blathering of a few extremists shouldn't distract from the justness of the cause being sought for: Palestinian rights.

Here's some posts on X that caught my eye today. 

Israel kills seven World Central Kitchen staff in Gaza. Not an "accident."

Israel is doing its best to squander the goodwill extended to it after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel. 

Since, the Israel Defense Forces, under the incompetent leadership of their despicable Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has killed about 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza, two-thirds women and children. 

It seems clear that Israel has committed war crimes in response to the war crimes committed by Hamas. So now there's basically a moral equivalency between the horrible things Hamas did to people in Israel on October 7, and the horrible things (on a much larger scale) Israel has been doing to people in Gaza since.

I'm outraged at how Israel has been acting for numerous reasons.

One big reason is that polls show that most Israelis, who like to claim that they're morally superior because of the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust, are behaving in a similar genocidal fashion by wanting to deny humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

Indeed, Israel is using famine as an act of war. That's a war crime, for sure. Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are at extreme risk of starvation due to Israel failing to allow sufficient food into Gaza.

Which gets me to the latest Israeli outrage. The World Central Kitchen headed up by chef José Andrés has been distributing food in Gaza. They've notified Israel of when and where their aid convoys have been going. Their vehicles are clearly marked with World Central Kitchen on the roofs.

Yet late Monday night Israeli drones killed seven World Central Kitchen staff. Netanyahu is lying when he claims it was an "accident."

This wasn't a case of bullets or a shell going astray. This was a pinpoint attack on three World Central Kitchen vehicles, not an accident. The drone operator directed a missile to hit the roof of this vehicle, hitting it right next to the World Central Kitchen logo and name. 

A New York Times story, "Israeli Strikes Kill 7 Aid Workers in Gaza," says:

Israeli strikes on an aid convoy run by the charity group World Central Kitchen killed seven of its workers in the Gaza Strip, setting off international outrage and underscoring the risks to humanitarian workers trying to alleviate a looming famine.

The aid workers — a Palestinian, an Australian, a Pole, three Britons and a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen — were traveling in two armored vehicles clearly marked with the World Central Kitchen logo and a third vehicle when they came under fire late Monday night, according to the charity.

The convoy was hit despite having coordinated its movements with the Israeli military, the group said. The workers were leaving a warehouse in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid that had arrived by boat on Monday, World Central Kitchen said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who rarely comments on deadly strikes in Gaza, released a videotaped statement on Tuesday in which he appeared to acknowledge that the Israeli military was responsible. Israel launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the strikes.

...World Central Kitchen, which was founded by the renowned chef José Andrés, said on Tuesday that it was suspending operations in the territory.

“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” Erin Gore, the group’s chief executive, said in a statement. “This is unforgivable.”

Several nations, including the home countries of the people killed, voiced indignation and demanded explanations.

President Biden said in a statement: “I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen.” He added: “Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen. Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians.”

David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, called the workers’ deaths “completely unacceptable” in a social media post, adding, “Israel must urgently explain how this happened and make major changes to ensure the safety of aid workers.”

Videos and photos verified by The New York Times suggest the convoy was hit multiple times. The imagery shows three destroyed white vehicles, with the northernmost and southernmost vehicles nearly a mile and a half apart.

The Times of Israel says:

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi issued an apology after midnight on Wednesday for a deadly Israeli strike on an aid convoy in Gaza, adding that it was a result of a “misidentification,” which was being investigated and learned from.

The stoic video statement from the military leader came as new details emerged from the Monday night incident, which reportedly saw three cars from a World Central Kitchen convoy targeted one after another by drone-fired missiles, leaving seven humanitarian workers dead.

I have extremely little confidence in whatever B.S. report the Israel Defense Forces come up with in an attempt to excuse their war crime. Israel, under Netanyahu, has lied repeatedly about the war in Gaza. The country seems to have an archaic Old Testament view of the war: God favors the Jews, so Israel can do no wrong in smiting their enemy. Even when it does.

As people die of starvation in Gaza, Israel ignores the famine

I'm a moderate progressive Democrat. I've always considered myself evenly balanced between the plight of Palestinians and the need for Israelis to have a secure homeland. 

But given the horrendous way Israel has been carrying out its war with Hamas since the terrorist attacks on October 7 of last year, which has now brought the innocent people in Gaza to the brink of starvation -- more than that, since many already have died from a lack of food -- I never will look upon Israel in the same way again.

Israel has squandered the goodwill that virtually the entire world felt toward it after Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis. Much of the blame belongs to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government. 

However, polls show that most Israelis support the scorched earth, don't worry about the slaughter of over 30,000 people in Gaza (mostly women and children) warmaking policy of the Netanyahu government. 

That's entirely in accord with the cruel, malevolent Old Testament God the Jewish religion worships. But it is entirely against modern views of how war should be conducted, which includes the requirement that every effort be made to protect civilians.

It seems clear that both Israel and Hamas are guilty of war crimes. That's to be expected of Hamas. It's a huge disappointment to those, like me, who thought Israel understood that the needless killing of innocent people is a moral disaster. Have Israelis forgotten the lesson of the Holocaust?

Apparently, since Israel is allowing the people of Gaza to suffer mightily from lack of food, water, medicine, and other essentials by blocking sufficient humanitarian aid from entering the country. A story in yesterday's Washington Post, "U.N. chief calls for 'unfettered' aid to Gaza as aid groups report imminent famine," describes what Israel has wrought. Here's how the story starts out: 

Famine may already be happening in northern Gaza, and it risks spreading across the besieged enclave, plunging 2.2 million Palestinians into the broadest and most severe food crisis in the world, the globe’s leading body on food emergencies said Monday.

The new report from a cluster of international organizations and charities known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC, outlined a devastating situation with up to half the population of Gaza — 1.1 million people — facing catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation between now and July. The most immediately affected areas are in the northern regions, which Israeli forces cut off from the enclave’s southern half and which only a trickle of aid has been able to enter.

Compared with the IPC’s previous analysis in December, acute food insecurity in the Gaza Strip has deepened and widened, with nearly twice as many people projected to suffer those conditions by July. The most dire projection is based on an escalation of the conflict, including a ground offensive in Rafah.

In the IPC’s five-tier classification of food crises, Gaza now has the largest percentage of a population to receive its most severe rating since the body began reporting in 2004, Beth Bechdol, deputy director general at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told The Washington Post.

By comparison, today in Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan — where millions are suffering crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity — none of the population falls into the worst tier of catastrophic food shortages, Bechdol said.

People in areas designated at Phase 5 are considered to be “starving” and facing a significantly increased risk of acute malnutrition and death.

“So, for Gaza to have 1.1 million people in IPC 5 is unprecedented,” she said. She added: “This is 100 percent a man-made crisis. There’s no hurricane, there’s no cyclone, there’s no 100-year flood. There’s no protracted year-on-year drought.”

The report is likely to add fuel to the increasingly sharp criticism of Israel from governments in the United States and Europe about the grim dimensions of the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On Monday, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, repeated his assertion that Israel was using starvation as a “weapon of war.” He noted that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had recently told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “we cannot stand by and watch Palestinians starve.”

“In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine; we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people,” Borrell said at the start of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels. “This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war.”

Moamen al-Harthani, a 29-year-old resident of the northern Gaza town of Jabalya, described how people in the north were eating weeds and other plants to survive.

“There is no rice, no sugar, no beans, no lentils. … No fruit or vegetables,” Harthani said. “People eat the food of animals and livestock,” he said. Unable to find or afford flour, Harthani makes a bread-like substitute out of animal feed.

It's said that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. I heartily agree.

Any moral high ground Israel enjoyed after the October 7 attack by Hamas is gone, gone, gone. Israel is acting as cruelly as any terrorist organization. It just has better public relations, as this post on X says. Hassan isn't speaking specifically about using starvation as a weapon of war here, but his point applies to that also.

Here's two other X posts on the subject of famine in Gaza. Murphy is a United States senator.

Lastly, this is the final paragraph of a story in the March 25, 2024 issue of TIME magazine, "Spring won't bring Gaza relief."

The situation continues to "deteriorate day by day," the International Rescue Committee has said, noting that only a swift and lasting cease-fire would allow "the level of aid that the people of Gaza so urgently need to survive." In a recent study, Checchi and his co-authors projected that even in the absence of epidemics, an additional 58,260 Palestinians will be killed over the next six months if things remain unchanged. That figure jumps to 74,290 in the event of an escalation. "The way things are heading right now is consistent with our worst scenario," Checchi says, perhaps "even a little bit worse than that."