Wednesday, June 05, 2024
From Ian:
Amb. Alan Baker: Can Contemporary International Law Cope with Today's Terror?
Amb. Alan Baker: Can Contemporary International Law Cope with Today's Terror?
The war between Israel, Hamas, and other terror organizations has heightened the awareness of the question of whether today's international law is capable of addressing armed conflict between a state and terror organizations. How is a sovereign state, obligated by the conventional rules of international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict, expected to engage in asymmetrical war with terror organizations that distinctly, and by definition, do not consider themselves bound by such rules?Seth Mandel: How the Anti-Israel Propaganda Ecosystem Works
The international community lacks practical and legal means, as well as the basic desire and capability, of obliging such terror groups to abide by the rules. It is questionable whether the law of armed conflict as it exists today is capable of providing legal as well as operative answers to the practical issues arising out of today's struggle against terror.
In light of the biased and partisan reaction of the international community and its automatic accusations against Israel of committing war crimes and even genocide, it is high time that responsible states come to terms with the fact that modern-day terror undermines and abuses accepted humanitarian norms and standards. This must be dealt with both militarily and legally.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these NGOs are extremely powerful, because their perceived authority magnifies their voices above those who may know much more about the issues but who don’t have the megaphone or the credibility lent to the European-funded activist groups masquerading as “humanitarians.” Throughout the current war, polls of American public opinion have never demonstrated that the progressive pro-Hamas rump on college campuses or among city protest groups should be catered to. In Israel vs Hamas, Americans don’t hesitate to side with Israel. Even the “ceasefire at any cost” crowd is smaller than it looks and sounds. A Marist poll last week put their share of the public at 25 percent. Yet they have nudged President Biden’s policies in their direction.Biden’s mixed messaging on Israel confuses friends and foes alike
How? The protests on college campuses showed not just the organizing power of the left but the role of the media in amplifying their grievances and whitewashing their violence and lawbreaking. And it works in the other direction too: In many cases the media plays a key role in feeding the wildfire of misinformation that fuels the protests before turning around and reporting on them.
UN groups have been uncritically parroting the obviously inaccurate Hamas-produced death tolls. So have the media. In explaining why the Washington Post trusts Hamas propaganda enough to report it as fact, the paper quoted Omar Shakir in Hamas’s defense. Shakir is the Israel/Palestine director of Human Rights Watch and someone who was expelled from Israel over his support for BDS-affiliated groups that seek Israel’s destruction. In other words, if you switched the staffing of the Hamas Health Ministry and Human Rights Watch, the output of both organizations would likely be unchanged.
Employees of the UN’s Palestinian agency, UNRWA, have been credibly accused of taking and holding one or more hostages during the current conflict and of participating in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA was caught sharing space and resources with Hamas commanders, and its schools have reliably been found to host Hamas weapons and tunnel entrances. Yet high-level officials and directors at UNRWA, this clear adjunct of Hamas, go on to leadership positions at the International Committee of the Red Cross (and vice versa). Despite the Red Cross’s clear pro-Hamas orientation during this conflict, journalists quote it as if it speaks in the voice of God.
All of which, as we have seen, feeds the hysteria of the crowds organized by Palestinian groups. That hysteria, in turn, is reported on by the same journalists who’d whipped those protesters into a lather by using Omar Shakir or a Red Cross official on loan from a Hamas-linked UN agency.
In 2013, Karim Khan explained clearly how all of this creates a weighted narrative that influences supposedly objective processes. Now, a decade later, Khan is using that same system to his benefit just so he can nail the Israelis with bogus smears. Those charges will then get reported ad nauseum in the press, and the cycle continues from there.
Though he didn’t intend it at the time, Khan was shining a light on the entire squalid ecosystem of institutional corruption, unethical journalism, and incestuous melding of propaganda outfits that are often funded by governments that then justify their policies toward Israel by citing that very propaganda. If you can’t beat ’em, Khan decided, might as well join ’em.
What’s everyone else’s excuse?
On Tuesday morning, Time magazine published the full transcript of its recent Oval Office interview with President Joe Biden, conducted a week prior. One line quickly went viral among Middle East experts: When asked whether Biden believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the country’s war with Hamas to further his own political survival, Biden said the answer might be yes. “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” the president responded.
Hours later, Biden appeared to reverse himself on that sentiment. A reporter shouted a question at Biden as he left an event: Is Netanyahu “playing politics” with the war? “I don’t think so. He’s trying to work out a serious problem he has,” Biden said.
That Biden’s public reversal took place in a single day made the incident especially notable, even for an 81-year-old gaffe-prone president known for speaking off-the-cuff (much to the chagrin of his staffers). But it was not the first time onlookers were confused by his comments on the Middle East.
The White House’s pattern of contradicting itself over Israel’s war against Hamas has become a regular occurrence since October. Interpreting what the administration’s precise policy is at any given moment can take Talmudic levels of parsing, and clarifying whether Biden’s often-vague language reflects a change in message, or is simply a function of misspeaking, is a frequent challenge for journalists.
Stakeholders and experts describe a White House approach rooted in a desire to appease divergent and at times conflicting constituencies, stemming from difficult political realities at home and a fear that the bloody conflict in Gaza will still be raging as Election Day approaches. But trying to make everyone happy is often a self-defeating strategy in Washington, especially on one of the most divisive issues in politics.
“There’s a big danger that the Biden team faces in trying to be everything to everyone and all people at once, that you may end up risking being nothing meaningful,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Biden has tried to chart a course that maintains U.S. support for Israel, leaning on his longtime self-identification as a Zionist, while also criticizing Israel for not doing enough to protect civilians in Gaza. The farthest he has gone was a threat last month to withhold some U.S.-made offensive weapons depending on Israel’s actions in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Yet his frequent criticism of Israel’s military tactics does not go far enough to appease left-wing Democrats unhappy with Biden’s overall support for Israel; meanwhile, his outreach to the anti-Israel segment of the party irritates Jewish voters and pro-Israel moderates. And Biden’s frequent admonitions of Israel risk hampering the country’s war effort, in the view of many of its supporters. (A National Security Council spokesperson declined to comment.)
Biden’s occasionally harsh rhetoric toward Israel amid the mounting death toll in Gaza is “an indication of real anger and frustration, without actually being willing to confront or be identified fully, to make real what [he] feels, so you get a policy that is conflicted,” said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime State Department employee and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I think the reason they’re conflicted is because he’s got these constituencies that he certainly isn’t going to satisfy. He can try to manage them.”
Behind closed doors, the messaging differs depending on whom the White House is addressing — and who is delivering the message. Biden’s closest advisers on the Middle East are National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; Sullivan’s deputy, Jon Finer; and Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Each of them takes a slightly different approach to the unfolding conflict.
