Day: October 14, 2023

The Israeli army said on Saturday it was investigating an incident in southern Lebanon in which a Reuters journalist was killed. A Reuters witness at the scene has said he was struck by missiles fired from the direction of Israel.

“We are aware of the incident with the Reuters journalist,” army spokesman Lt Col Richard Hecht told a regular briefing. “We are looking into it. We already have visuals. We’re doing cross examination. It’s a tragic thing,” he said.

Lebanon said on Saturday said it would submit a formal complaint to the UN Security Council on “Israel’s deliberate killing” of Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah, a Lebanese national, state media reported.

Abdallah was with a group of journalists from other organisations, including Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse, when he was killed on Friday while providing a live video signal for broadcasters.

The group was working near the village of Alma al-Shaab, close to the Israel border, where the Israeli military and Hezbollah have been trading fire in border clashes.

Maher Nazeh, who was wounded in the same incident along with his Reuters colleague Thaer Al-Sudani, said they were filming missile fire coming from the direction of Israel when one struck Abdallah as he was sitting on a low stone wall near the rest of the group. Seconds later, another missile hit the car being used by the group, setting it aflame.

While other news outlets, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, said the shells were Israeli, Reuters could not establish whether the missiles had actually been fired by Israel.

Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera each said two of their journalists were wounded in the incident.

---

New Zealand’s centre-right National Party led by Christopher Luxon will form a new government with its preferred coalition party ACT, as Prime Minister Chris Hipkins conceded his Labour Party could not form a government after Saturday’s general election.

The National Party, now in opposition, had 39% of the votes with 92% counted, while the ACT party had 9%. That would give the two parties enough seats to form a government, according to the Electoral Commission.

“On the numbers tonight National will be in the position to lead the next government,” Luxon, a former executive who once ran Air New Zealand and entered politics just three years ago, told supporters in Auckland.

“We will make this an even better country.”

National won over voters by promising relief for struggling middle-income New Zealanders, and to bring historically high inflation under control while reducing the country’s debt.

“The overwhelming driver was dissatisfaction with the (Labour government),” said political commentator and former National staffer Ben Thomas.

Under former leader Jacinda Ardern, Labour in 2020 became the first party to capture an outright majority since New Zealand switched to a mixed member proportional system in 1996.

But Labour has since lost support, with many New Zealanders disgruntled over the country’s long COVID-19 lockdown and the rising cost of living.

Hipkins has tried to re-engage with those voters, focusing on what he termed “bread-and-butter issues”, but was unable to gain traction in the polls.

The National-ACT majority is slim and the two parties may need support from the populist New Zealand First Party to form a government. Coalition negotiations between National and ACT are expected to begin in the coming days.

There are normally 120 seats in parliament but because the Te Pati Maori’s four seats from constituencies exceeded its share of the national popular vote, the electoral system calls for creating additional proportional seats to even out representation. This will alter the final seat tally.

In addition, the final vote count, which includes overseas and special votes, is not due until Nov. 3. Special votes have historically made slight changes to the outcome, adding seats for the left at the expense of the right-leaning bloc.

Gareth Hughes, a political commentator and former Green Party strategist, said it might not be clear until after the official vote count is returned whether National and ACT will need the support of New Zealand First to form a government.

“It’s a change election but the actual detail of the change is still to be seen,” he said.

Labour’s losses were significant, with some high-profile members of the party failing to hold onto their seats. Nanaia Mahuta, the foreign minister, lost her constituency seat and will not be returning parliament.

Related Galleries:

President Biden has responded to Hamas’s horrendous attacks on Israeli civilians with understandable outrage. In heartfelt terms, he called them “pure, unadulterated evil,” which they were. He spoke less powerfully about the Israeli government’s response, noting only that we “uphold the laws of war.” Unless the Israeli government heeds that advice, it will make a bad situation worse, which may well be exactly what Hamas hoped to provoke in a desperate attempt to revive the Palestinian cause.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Hamas’s random slaughter of Israeli civilians, its abduction of survivors as hostages, its indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel’s cities are all war crimes – egregious violations of international humanitarian law, which is designed to spare civilians as much as possible the hazards of war. Using that legal framework is important because it also binds the Israeli military, which is the best way to ensure that the civilian toll in Gaza from Israel’s aerial bombardment and possible ground invasion does not quickly surmount the deaths at the hands of Hamas.

Already the Israeli military is disregarding that law. By October 9, it had already toppled four large apartment buildings. In the past it has cited a supposed Hamas presence somewhere in the complex, but that does not justify the disproportionate cost of rendering hundreds of Palestinians homeless. It has compounded its 16-year blockade of Gaza by now imposing a siege, blocking food, water, and electricity, despite the legal duty to allow humanitarian aid to civilians in need. It has bombed a market, killing dozens, and two hospitals. This all threatens to get worse once the anticipated ground invasion commences.

Though less frequently than in the past, the Israeli military is at times warning people in advance of attacks, as required when feasible, but that does not justify then reportedly pummeling entire neighborhoods. Civilians are still protected from attack whether or not they can, or choose, to heed such warnings. And it is difficult to see how the destruction of neighborhoods is a targeted rather than disproportionate response, a focused effort to attack Hamas fighters as opposed to collective punishment against civilians who have been forced to live under Hamas.

The Biden Administration has spoken only briefly about international humanitarian law, but the International Criminal Court will not be as reticent. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor, has been too slow to pursue his office’s open investigation of war crimes in Palestinian territory, but the renewed war should provide a spur. Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Khan’s predecessor for pursuing this investigation—an outrageous assault on an institution of justice. Biden did the right thing by lifting those sanctions. He also recognized the appropriateness of ICC charges against Valdimir Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine (because Ukraine conferred jurisdiction even though Russia has not joined the court), which should mean the U.S. government would no longer object to ICC charges of Israeli officials for war crimes committed in the territory of Palestine (which has also conferred jurisdiction).

An unwillingness to hold the Israeli government to the most basic rights standards has also characterized Biden’s recent broader approach to the conflict. Every serious human rights group that has examined the issue has concluded that the Israeli government is imposing apartheid on the millions of Palestinians in occupied territory. But the Biden Administration still pretends to see this oppression as only temporary, to be resolved by a moribund “peace process” whose main remaining backers are Western governments seeking to avoid addressing the issue and the Palestinian Authority, whose status depends on continuing lip service to a “two-state solution” that long ago morphed into a “one-state reality.”

That abysmal state of affairs could be seen in the negotiations for the normalization of relations between the Israeli and Saudi governments. The only party to these negotiations who publicly seemed to be addressing Palestinian concerns was Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, who is reputed to be contemptuous of the Palestinian cause but compelled to address it at least nominally because of Saudi public opinion. He reportedly was proposing an infusion of Saudi cash to the corrupt Palestinian Authority and a modest transfer of land from Israeli government that would do nothing to change the reality of apartheid.

The Biden Administration has been concerned by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s efforts to undermine the independence of Israel’s judiciary. The outpouring of Israeli opposition to this attack on a pillar of democracy has been impressive, but it has been carefully circumscribed to avoid addressing the Palestinian issue, which Netanyahu clearly hopes to continue kicking down the road indefinitely.

This indifference to Palestinian rights does not justify Hamas’s war crimes. Nothing does. But it is the backdrop to Hamas’s brutal attack. Biden is wrong to substitute outrage over this attack for a more principled defense of human rights, which is the best way to avoid periodic future outbreaks of such violence of despair.

Daniel Sokatch has spent much of his career fighting for equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. As CEO of the New Israel Fund, he runs the largest global organization promoting democracy and equality for all who live under Israeli control. Sokatch was horrified to hear the news of Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. But what further shocked him was the immediate response from some of his fellow advocates for Palestinian rights. “The reaction reeks of antisemitism,” Sokatch says. “You can celebrate the slaughter of those people, just because they’re Israeli, in a way that you wouldn’t anywhere else in the globe.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Instead of condemning and mourning the deadliest day for Jews since Israel’s founding, factions of the grassroots left appeared to celebrate the assault as an act of Palestinian heroism. The national chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine called it “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” A coalition of 34 Harvard student organizations issued a statement saying they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The Democratic Socialists of America promoted a pro-Palestinian rally in New York where attendees reportedly chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied.” One was shown displaying a swastika. A Twitter account apparently belonging to Black Lives Matter Chicago posted an image of a paraglider with a Palestinian flag on X, appearing to celebrate the Hamas terrorists who descended to slaughter hundreds of Israelis at a music festival.

“The glorification and justification of violence against civilians is not something I’ve seen in this movement in the 25 years I’ve been looking at it,” says Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism.

The tone-deaf response by college students and left-wing activists has been matched by statements from the halls of power that are equally callous toward Palestinian lives. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” said Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. “Level the place,” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said of Gaza. 

But the vehemently anti-Israel response from some parts of the left also reflects a significant ideological evolution on the issue, especially among younger generations. From 2011 to 2014, polling by Gallup found that millennial Democrats sided with Israelis over Palestinians by 25 points when asked their views on the long-running conflict. By 2023, the same group sided with Palestinians over Israelis by 11 points—a 36-point shift. The Pew Research Center found last year that 56% of Americans under 30 had an unfavorable view of Israel.

At the same time, antisemitism in the U.S. has been on the rise. According to the ADL, antisemitic incidents hit their highest mark in 2022 since the group began record-keeping in the U.S. in 1979, rising 36% in a single year. Research released earlier this year by the ADL found a spike in antisemitic beliefs among the American public, with 85% of Americans believing at least one anti-Jewish trope, up from 61% in 2019. 

Over the last week, many American Jews felt as if anti-Israel sentiment and rising antisemitism was visible in the response to the massacre. “It’s going back to the idea that the Jews who were killed, that they had it coming, that they were part of a nation of colonizers, it’s blaming Jews for their own misfortunes,” says Mike Rothschild, a journalist and author who writes about antisemitism.”It’s ever present in right-wing discourse, but I’m seeing it much more on the left than I’ve ever seen it.”

Despite the tropes, the response to the Hamas massacre by elements of the left took many Jews by surprise. “I have always defended the rights of people to criticize Israel, even very harshly, and not be accused of antisemitism,” says Sokatch. “There’s a big difference between leveling the harshest criticism at Israel for what it is doing in the West Bank and Gaza, and celebrating the murder, torture and rape of innocent people.”

It’s not antisemitic to criticize Israel or Israeli policy—many Jews do. But the ferocity of anti-Israel sentiment and the unsympathetic reaction to the massacre from parts of the young progressive left has revealed a political and generational chasm on the issue. Many young leftists equate the struggle for Palestinian liberation with the fight for racial equity in the United States, under the binary, simplistic rubric of oppressor and oppressed. “It became impossible for someone to ID as a progressive who values human rights, and go along with the idea that Palestinians can continue being treated this way,” says Omar Badder, a Palestinian-American political analyst. “It’s no different than South African apartheid, no different than Jim Crow.”

The same forces that have drawn many young Americans further left over the past decade or so—Black Lives Matter, social media, and Occupy—have also drawn them closer to the movement for Palestinian liberation. Palestinian activists and Black Lives Matter protesters built common cause amid the Ferguson uprising in 2014, when Palestinians advised racial-justice protesters about how to resist militarized police. “There was a combination of the Occupy protesters and Palestinian protesters who taught us what to do when we got tear-gassed,” says DeRay Mckesson, a racial-justice activist who became one of the most prominent Ferguson protesters.

At the same time, social media has democratized information sharing, exposing the rising generation of American activists to more stories of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, and hearing more Palestinian voices than their cable-watching parents ever saw. In the same way cell phone video awakened a generation to the reality of police violence against Black Americans, social media has spread awareness of the reality on the ground in Gaza. “You have a generation of people who grew up on social media rather than broadcast television,” says Waleed Shahid, a progressive political strategist who has worked for Bernie Sanders and the Justice Democrats. “There’s a generation of people who have grown up with footage of Palestinians expelled from their homes by settlers, or checkpoints, or separation walls.”

The rightward lurch of the Israeli government in recent years—and the American right’s emphatic embrace of Israel—has only driven young lefties further towards Palestinian solidarity. “It’s hard to think of Israel as something good, because we’ve only known it as a place where bad things happen and things keep getting worse,” says Max Berger, a progressive strategist who worked for liberal Jewish organization J Street and co-founded IfNotNow, a movement of American Jews that works “to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system.” “I’ve only ever known it as a place where people invoke my name in horrible human-rights offenses.”

Thanks in part to the Occupy movement, this is also a generation attuned to the power of money in politics. Some young left-wing activists—including many Jews—say they became increasingly frustrated by the pro-Israel lobby’s role in American politics, specifically the money it spent attacking progressive candidates. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)’s spending to boost pro-Israel politicians inspired even more young leftist solidarity with the Palestinian cause, Berger says. “If the people who have an unbelievable amount of power and money are crushing anyone who even questions this, that is going to become something that you focus on,” he adds. “That creates a gravitational pull.”

Yet the alarming rhetoric from the far left makes it harder to mount broad political resistance to the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, which is sure to result in even more deaths of innocent children. Many leading progressives, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, have expressed horror at the massacre while simultaneously advocating for the protection of Palestinian human rights. Ocasio-Cortez condemned the DSA-endorsed pro-Palestinian rally in Manhattan. “It should not be hard to shut down hatred and antisemitism where we see it,” she told Politico, condemning the “bigotry and callousness” of the event.

But for many members of the young left, the massacre of Israeli innocents represents a glitch in a moral dogma that reduces most political conflict to an underlying battle between the oppressor and the oppressed.  “The default of the left is to side with the victims and defend them,” says Berger, and in the long-simmering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, “it doesn’t seem like the Jews are the victims.”