The "Riviera of the Middle East"

 

There's something hilariously ghoulish about Trump's desire to own Gaza. We've gone from MAGAs claiming he's for America First and against war, to him talking about re-taking the Panama Canal, Greenland, and maybe making Canada the "51st state"--and now he has dreams of turning Gaza, a place he says is associated with so much death--

And turning it into the "Riviera of the Middle East." 

That's right, we will have to first permanently relocate the people already in Gaza. Then remove all the rubble and rebuild. And of course there will need to be a military presence....

The Very Discriminate Assault on WCK Humanitarian Workers

 

I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday.

Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen.

Here is my full statement. pic.twitter.com/Nl2jq8wqTt

— President Biden (@POTUS) April 3, 2024

With respect to my president, whom I continue to support, I lack faith in the ability of the IDF to investigate what they did wrong here and be honest about it, because they keep saying they are NOT indiscriminately bombing or attacking journalists or aid workers or children, and since the results are that aid workers and journalists and children keep being assaulted, I am going to have to take them at their word:

It isn't indiscriminate. If these are the results they are getting, and they insist they are targeting precisely, I must assume these are the results they want. 

I'm not an infant--I get that even innocents die in wartimes all the time. Privations are a part of the deal. But famines can be planned, and the deliberate starvation of Gazans over the decisions of their terrorist government is a bridge way too far. 

Hamas does not give a shit. Hamas rejects ceasefires. Hamas won't give up the hostages. They continue to fire missiles. I am not immune to the call for Israel to self-defense. I am long past immune, however, to the idea that the IDF is being disciplined in the process of this conflict or that they are taking necessary steps to minimize non-combatant casualties. I have begun to see the civilian population of Gaza as a kind of hostage as well. They seem to have decided on behalf of these innocent civilians to go ahead and let Israel to their worst, because when it comes to Palestinian liberty, well okay, they will also take death. For them. Those guys who aren't in the tunnels and end up paying for the privilege of eating intercepted aid to terrorist mafiosi. 

The Fine Red Line

 

I think it was an act of moral courage for Senator Schumer to express criticism of Israel PM Netanyahu and concern for the lives of innocent Palestinians. Leaving aside whether he was the best person to make this message because of his own Jewishness and long-standing support of Israel, that there needed to be daylight between what the United States supports and what Netanyahu's government is carrying out was a necessity, because OUR US government must be accountable. The ongoing suffering of people who had no choice in the horrific and malicious actions of 10/7 is inhumane. The idea of so much suffering on both sides without a clear path to reconciliation, and ultimately peace, feels unthinkable. 

There have been protests in Israel that suggest that many people do not feel like Netanyahu has done everything he can to get the hostages home and end the current war. Although Schumer called for elections what he did not do is imply who should win them--rather, he indicated that a referendum on the desires of the people in our democratic ally would settle what their vision is for the future of the Israeli state--without leaving it in the hands of someone who had done everything he could to prevent a two-state solution. 

TWGB: You Don't Have to Hand it to Hezbollah

Trump's reckless stream-of-consciousness diatribes are sometimes more revealing than he thinks they are. What does it say about the man when he feels the need to say that "Hezbollah is very smart" and that he has some beef with Netanyahu going back to the US strike on Iran's General Soleimani? You have to wind of the tangled thread of his speech; he might not know that Hezbollah is based in Lebanon making striking Israel in the north sort of logical: what should they do, go around?  He mentions the failure of Iran's intelligence. He says Netanyahu was unprepared...

Many people are saying, as the formulation goes, that Trump is really actually made at Netanyahu for acknowledging Biden's win over him in 2020 and for his gratitude at US support now. Trump is, in other words, jealous and feeling upstaged. This might make sense of another weird detail of Trump's ramblings lately, his insistence that Barack Obama is Joe Biden's boss. He needs to credit the competence of his political rival to someone else.

Could it Happen Here?

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has been officially charged with charges in three corruption cases involving bribery, fraud and breach of trust, which, given his inability to form a government and the likelihood of another vote this year, is not great news for him. I don't pretend to understand much about Israeli politics, but this event reminds me so much of something....it just makes me ask questions, is all.

Like, bribery, fraud and breach of trust--those are pretty bad, right? So, if a leader basically seemed to be engaged in bribes, whether of other governments, or just, like, accepted them, like maybe other world leaders or international businesses gave Trump shit-tons of money in expectation of favors, that would be pretty bad, right? Like if it turned out that Saudi Arabia was renting tons of Trump property for no good reason or just wiring money to the US, and then Trump made decisions about ignoring an obvious murder or just let them have their way regarding military attacks on Yemen or whatever--that would look really like corruption. Or if they leaned on Qatar with a blockade and then Qatar bailed out Trump's son-in-law on a property that was hemorrhaging money--that would be bad, right? 

Because those aren't "champagne and cigars" kinds of bribes. It just seems to me like, if Netanyahu could get indicted over there for something like this, well? Maybe charging a sitting president here wouldn't be such a bad idea. 

Of course, I think (and I don't pretend to understand Israeli politics, once again) that Netanyahu should step down because the government situation is already fraught and he will be very occupied in his self-defense.  After all, once former US President Nixon realized that his presidency would be consumed by scandal, that's exactly what he did, despite his absolute landslide 1972 re-election. 

Of course, Nixon called the whole thing a "witch hunt" at first, and Nixon mega-fan Pat Buchanan actually did write about how an impeachment attempt was a coup d'état. (I love Rachel Maddow, but I will never love how Uncle Pat was a fixture for a while on her show. That 1992 "culture war" speech of his struck me as a war on me when I first heard it, and it did her as well. I guess you could say I have always been in favor of deplatforming Nazis (and Nazi-symps), not parading them as if they were tame. They are never tame.) 

Ditto Trump and Netanyahu. But, in a democracy, we accept that all elected people have term limits, right? We expect them to be held to standards that demonstrate they are working in the public trust--not for their own benefit? It is not a coup when the system of government stands, and the laws and customs remain in place, because governments are made of laws--and human beings are fallible, and no one singular person is essential. 

Anyway, I'd like very much if we did away with the idea that the sitting president is immune to indictment in the event of serious charges of misconduct. Barring that, it would just be great if Trump fans would stop barking about how accusing Trump of things he apparently did and even inquiring about his impeachment is somehow a coup. The Founders put impeachment in the Constitution as a lawful means of dealing with an unlawful public servant. It is not a coup. 

Petty Tyrants and Their Enablers

Despite previous statements from Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer to the effect that Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar would be permitted to visit Israel, and WH Spokesperson Stephanie Grisham to the effect that it was "fake news" to suppose that President Trump would pressure Israel not to allow their entry, today Prime Minister Netanyahu effectively banned the entry of the US's only two Muslim congresswomen to that nation. 

The record (Twitter) will show that Trump definitely did exert just a little pressure:

It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep.Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a disgrace!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2019

and one has to ask--if there had been no change in what Reps. Omar and Tlaib stood for last month, or even additional information revealed about them during that time, what in the world changed? Is the weakness that Israel (Netanyahu) would have allowed these US Reps in, or is it rather that, instead of doing so, and possibly correcting any incorrect ideas they may have had or trying to promote a dialogue, he knuckled to the petulant social media demand of the US president because he might be facing a difficult election? (It certainly could be interpreted the latter way).

Of course, Trump's intention, as it has always been, was to demonize the two congresswomen as anti-Semitic because  he's regularly called racist (as I think he should be) and slamming Muslim congresswomen is very much his shit (because he's terrible) and now Netanyahu's spokepeople have to also demonize the two a bit to justify his decision, even though even worse people have totally been let into the country.

That's the thing about enabling petty tyrants--it sometimes does carry a benefit (like Netanyahu appeasing Trump and satisfying hardliners) but you also end up continuing doing their bidding for a loooonnng time. Sometimes people even catch on that you're doing it, And that? Can be some of the weakest shit of all.

A Presidential Trip Abroad 2: Israel

Oh man, watch Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (on right couch) react when Trump says—in Israel—"We just got back from the Middle East." pic.twitter.com/x7nb4uvqpR

— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) May 22, 2017

I don't know whether I want to say that President Trump misspoke when he said that because he was tired, or because, in his mind, "the Middle East" is Islamic and Israel isn't, even if he intellectually knows better, or, as an even dimmer take, he really didn't know Israel is part of the Middle East in the first place. It would seem that any adult person, on hearing "Middle East crisis" or "conflict" must have heard about Israeli/Palestinian...

But see? My idea of what one must have known is irrelevant, because my experiences are different from Donald Trump's. I know that Israel is in the Middle East, and Donald Trump is a reality tv "billionaire" who became president. He's old enough to be my father, and I am old enough to be his third wife. And I nearly dislike him as much, if a picture is worth a thousand words. Also, it really is hard to gauge the relative awareness of a person who addresses the problem of inadvertently (or "advertantly"?) leaking classified intelligence to Russian representatives by confirming the source of the intelligence:

LIVE UPDATES: Trump Tells Netanyahu He 'Never Mentioned' Israel in Intel Leak to Russianshttps://t.co/XaPL1AbCm5 pic.twitter.com/S0JXqGlygC

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 22, 2017

To me, this all looks like someone who isn't ready for the job and who probably should have spent the weekend on one of his properties in his cleats golf-carting his way through 18 holes planning something cool for a reality show, not someone making a reality show out of other people's property tearing up diplomatic turf with his cleats-like tongue. And digging himself at least 18 holes in the process.

But that's just my broad take on the thing.

No, Really. Shut up.

I'm not pretending that I have all the answers but I will say this--not all opinions are created equal. You could have some flaming hot takes on a thing based on an ideology you inherited that you haven't really thought the hell out, or you could be a person who regularly confronts the actual human toll of determining what some definition of "others" really "ought" to do with themselves, and the situation they "ought to consider themselves in" to sort themselves out properly (not like a threat, ha ha!?) just as a very real and remembered historical tragedy.

Just idly wanting to call Jews who support Obama "Kapos" as if implying that the current American presidential administration is exactly like a concentration camp committing genocide, is not merely disgustingly inflammatory, but cheapens the idea of genocide. It's clearly intentionally inflammatory. Schlichter doesn't see any problem with equating a person like Bernie Sanders with Pol Pot.  Really? Wanting a living wage and health care for all is exactly like exterminating numerous people for political reasons? When we talk about Donald Trump's love of dictators, which is a real thing, are we even bringing up genocide? Or are we trying to demonstrate that Trump doesn't even know what he's about? That he wants to approach dissenters with force because he doesn't even have a handle on how to subdue them with informed rhetoric?

I don't think Schlichter knows what he's about in alleging that folks at the Auschwitz Museum don't understand what genocide is. I'm just spending a minute on him here because being that badly wrong needs to be recognized. Israel is vulnerable to terror, and exposed--in part especially in the settlement regions. Failure to recognize this danger, and the peril of any thinking that antagonism is necessarily the best strategy in addressing these threats--is if one might pardon my assumptions, a recipe for violence. Trying to mitigate the situation to remove most potential for provocation is diplomacy. Doing otherwise is setting a stage for war. And avoidable deaths. This is a valid criticism many Israel supporters have against RW hardliners like Netanyahu.

But I doubt he's addressing this rationally, but to be exploitative. And his response to the Auschwitz Museum is just more exploitation. In other words, doing exactly the thing they pegged him with.

Netenyahu Hangs On

I'm a little thankful that I understand pretty well my limits at understanding what other countries' elections are supposed to look like, so I never bothered to prematurely speculate whether Netanyahu might lose.  It looks like his Likud party did pretty well and he has the office of Prime Minister once again to go ahead do his thing in, as he has been doing.

And we can ask how it's been working, or what he plans, but I just want to focus on what he's done the last couple days, because I am not qualified to actually discuss Israeli politics, but as for politics in general, I know some desperate when I'm looking at it. Using the speech he made to the US Congress in an ad was probably to be expected.  But a recorded spot from Chuck Norris is a little out-there.

Switching from supporting a two-state solution regarding Palestinians to being a one-state kind of guy was a pretty major thing, I would have thought. That looked like some really last-minute, grab the right wingers stuff, right there.

But this odd bit about thinking the Israeli-Arabs were messing with the vote by their lawful participation was just plain...racist? Would you call delegitimizing the votes of a bloc of people solely because you know they damn well won't vote for you and are of an ethnic and religious minority sort of racist? It's like he's saying that if he lost, it was because of some conspiracy--like ACORN in the Negev or something. But it looks like Israeli-Arabs didn't vote in a particularly above-par way. So that was some kind of...?

To me, he looked like a guy whose internal polling was saying "Are you sitting down?" But Likud did a little better than exit polling would have suggested. Not my country, so I know I don't understand everything, but will the kind of weird behavior he's displayed the past couple weeks leading up to the election pretty much negatively effect his current term? And overall, does it look like his coalition is a little weaker?

I guess this answer is still evolving.

(If not for the speech before Congress, I wouldn't have these questions at all.)