Politics

Arizona State Senate Passes ‘Defend the Guard Act’

by Michael Maharrey | Mar 22, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

[Yesterday], the Arizona Senate narrowly passed the Defend the Guard Act, a bill to require the governor to stop unconstitutional foreign combat deployments of the state’s National Guard troops. Passage into law would take a big step toward restoring the founders’ framework for a state-federal balance under the Constitution.

Sen. Wendy Rogers (R) and three fellow Republicans introduced Senate Bill 1367 (SB1367) on January 31. Titled the Defend the Guard Act, the legislation would prohibit the governor from releasing any unit or member of the Arizona National Guard into “active duty combat” unless specific constitutional requirements are met:

The United States Congress passes an official declaration of war or takes an official action pursuant to article I, section 8, clause 15, United States Constitution, that calls on the National Guard to expressly execute the laws of the union, repel an invasion or suppress an insurrection.

“Active duty combat” is defined as performing the following services in the active federal military service of the United States:

Participation in an armed conflict;
Performance of a hazardous service in a foreign state; or
Performance of a duty through an instrumentality of war.

“Official declaration of war” is defined as “an official declaration of war made by the United States Congress pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution.”

Last month, the Senate Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee approved the Arizona Defend the Guard Act by a vote of 4-3. On March 6, the Senate Rules committee also passed SB1367 by a 4-3 vote. Today, the full Senate approved SB1367 by a vote of 16-13-1.

In Practice

National Guard troops have played significant roles in all modern overseas conflicts, with over 650,000 deployed since 2001. Military.com reports that “Guard and Reserve units made up about 45 percent of the total force sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and received about 18.4 percent of the casualties.” More specifically, Arizona National Guard troops have participated in missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

Since none of these missions have been accompanied by a Constitutional declaration of war, nor were they in pursuance of any of the three conditions set forth in Article 1 Sec. 8, the Defend the Guard Act would have prohibited those deployments.

Background

Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16 make up the “militia clauses” of the Constitution. Clause 16 authorizes Congress to “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia.” Through the Dick Act of 1903, Congress organized the militia into today’s National Guard, limiting the part of the militia that could be called into federal service rather than the “entire body of people,” which makes up the totality of the “militia.” Thus, today’s National Guard is governed by the “militia clauses” of the Constitution, and this view is confirmed by the National Guard itself.

Clause 15 delegates to Congress the power to provide for “calling forth the militia” in three situations only: 1) to execute the laws of the union, 2) to suppress insurrections, and 3) to repel invasions.

During state ratifying conventions, proponents of the Constitution, including James Madison and Edmund Randolph, repeatedly assured the people that this power to call forth the militia into federal service would be limited to those very specific situations, and not for general purposes, like helping victims of a disease outbreak or engaging in “kinetic military actions.”

Returning to the Constitution

The founding generation was careful to ensure the president wouldn’t have the power to drag the United States into endless wars. James Madison made this clear in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.

Congress has abrogated its responsibility and allowed the president to exercise almost complete discretion when it comes to war. The passage of Defend the Guard legislation would pressure Congress to do its constitutional duty.

West Virginia Rep. Pat McGeehan served as an Air Force intelligence officer in Afghanistan and has sponsored similar legislation in his state.

“For decades, the power of war has long been abused by this supreme executive, and unfortunately our men and women in uniform have been sent off into harm’s way over and over,” he said. “If the U.S. Congress is unwilling to reclaim its constitutional obligation, then the states themselves must act to correct the erosion of constitutional law.”

Passage of Defend the Guard would also force the federal government to only use the Guard for the three expressly-delegated purposes in the Constitution, and at other times to remain where the Guard belongs, at home, supporting and protecting their home state.

While getting this bill passed won’t be easy and will face fierce opposition from the establishment, it certainly is, as Daniel Webster once noted, “one of the reasons state governments even exist.”

Webster made this observation in an 1814 speech on the floor of Congress where he urged actions similar to the Oklahoma Defend the Guard Act. He said, “The operation of measures thus unconstitutional and illegal ought to be prevented by a resort to other measures which are both constitutional and legal. It will be the solemn duty of the State governments to protect their own authority over their own militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power. These are among the objects for which the State governments exist.”

What’s Next

SB1367 will now move to the House for further consideration. It will first need to pass through the committee process before the full Chamber can concur. Residents of Arizona are strongly urged to contact their state representative to firmly request that they support the bill (locate contact info here).

This article was originally featured at the Tenth Amendment Center and is republished with permission.

These Iraq War Supporters Are Still in Congress

by Hunter DeRensis | Mar 18, 2023 | Blog, Foreign Policy, Politics

On March 19, 2003 the United States began its military invasion of Iraq. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq passed Congress in October 2002, with 296 congressmen and 77 senators voting in favor of giving President George W. Bush carte blanche authority to decide if and when to go to war.

Twenty years later, this is a list of members of Congress who voted for the AUMF and are still in office.

There are sixteen congressmen, including nine Republicans and seven Democrats.

Ken Calvert (R-CA)
Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Mike Simpson (R-ID)
Hal Rogers (R-KY)
Sam Graves (R-MO)
Chris Smith (R-NJ)
Frank Lucas (R-OK)
Joe Wilson (R-SC)
Kay Granger (R-TX)
Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)
Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Adam Smith (D-WA)

There are ten senators, including five Republicans and five Democrats.

Susan Collins (R-ME)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Ed Markey (D-MA)¹

These politicians voted for arguably the most unnecessary foreign policy blunder in United States history and incurred no electoral repercussions.

TGIF: Beware of All Tribalism

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 17, 2023 | Featured Articles, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Tribalism is bad. Sensible people will know what I mean by tribe. It’s not a club based on some common preference like stamp collecting or bowling or cooking. It’s more than that. It involves a judgment-suspending commitment. Nationalism is a good example.

Tribalism is bad because it can erode important social cooperation, which comes in many forms including the division of labor and trade, domestic and foreign. It’s also bad because it encourages people to overlook even the grossest injustice that they would not tolerate if their tribe was on the receiving end.

We lately have witnessed increasing and more virulent tribalism in the area of race and certainly in politics. If you want to see it in action, watch how the Democrats treated journalist Matt Taibbi when he appeared before a House committee recently. It was disgraceful.

But tribalism can occur when you least expect it. For example I was surprised when I watched Mark Steiner of The Real News Network interview Kenneth Roth the other day. Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1993 to 2022, was invited in 2021 to assume a fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. But disinvited this year because, he says, after he and HRW had criticized Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinians, he was accused of antisemitism. After protests on Roth’s behalf, however, Roth was re-invited. The Kennedy School denies that charges of antisemitism were the reason for the invitation withdrawal (Roth disputes this), instead calling it a mistake and not an attempt to limit debate.

Human Rights Watch and other prestigious human-rights organizations, including Israeli Jewish groups, have certainly criticized Israel for how it abuses the Palestinians. (HRW criticizes many states throughout the world for violating individual rights; it has also criticized the Palestinian Authority, which Israel set up under the Oslo Accords.) In 2021 the HRW report “A Threshold Crossed” stated,

Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

The idea that criticism of Israel is ipso facto antisemitic is worse than wrong. It is designed to innoculate Israel against all criticism. And that aim, I believe, is premised on the notion that after the monstrosity of Nazi Germany — indeed, after the long history of anti-Jewish persecution — the normal moral rules do not apply to Jewish people, at least not those in Israel. “How dare you criticize the Jewish State?” is a way to tell Palestinians and their defenders to shut up and go away, stigmatizing them as bigots in the process.

You can imagine my surprise when I heard Roth talk about his case and Israel without discussing the plight of the Palestinians. Here’s the key part of the interview. Roth said:

I am 100 percent Jewish. I totally identify…. I am not advocating for a weak state [of Israel], but even a strong state has to respect rights because ultimately, people’s sense of right and wrong, the sense that everybody has rights that need to be respected is key to the long-term survival of Israel and the Jews, particularly when Israel lives in such a hostile neighborhood where who knows what the crazies in Iran might do if they get a nuclear bomb? So you want these norms against abusing people to be as strong as possible. That’s a critical part of their defense not only of Israel but of Jewish people around the world. [Video at 12:24. Emphasis added.]

He went on to say that although accusing Israel’s critics of antisemitism may strengthen that state by silencing some people, this comes “at the expense of Jews wherever they live and that is not a smart move.” How so? By watering down the term antisemitism, which helps real antisemites.

To give Roth the benefit of the doubt, I’ll emphasize that his organization and he personally have criticized Jewish supremacy and apartheid policies toward the Palestinians. Also, he may have been taking his lead from the interviewer, Mark Steiner. Finally, it is certainly effective to point out that, as he says, “cheapen[ing]” the meaning of antisemitism does Jews no favor, even if it silences some of Israel’s critics.

Still … how could he not even mention the long-suffering Palestinians? He says Israel ought to stop the injustice because “ultimately” the survival of Israel and the Jewish people hangs in the balance. He makes it sound as if it’s all about the Jews and not the Palestinians.

Roth even worked in the “hostile neighborhood” trope and the Iranian “crazies” who allegedly want a nuclear weapon. The main reason for the hostility is that in 1947-48 and in 1967 Israeli forces led by Europeans seeking a Jewish state dispossessed innocent Palestinians of land they had worked and lived on for many generations. They’ve been oppressed and subjected to apartheid policies ever since.

As for Iran, it is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and inspected regularly; plus it signed, along with the Obama administration and several other nations, the redundant JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which would have made it even more certain that Iran would not build a bomb. In return, the West would lift the sanctions that have increasingly crushed the Iranian people. But Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, and Biden has yet to restart it. The sanctions continue. Meanwhile, Israel has conducted covert warfare against Iran and has been trying to get the U.S. government to attack Iran.

The point here is that even Kenneth Roth has not escaped tribalism.

Pro-Censorship Democrats Whitewash the Federal Government’s Iron Fist

by Jim Bovard | Mar 13, 2023 | Featured Articles, Politics

The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing last Thursday on the Twitter Files. Elon Musk purchased Twitter last October and was aghast to learn how the feds had previously domineered his new company. “Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene,” he tweeted on December 10. Musk chose a handful of journalists to go through Twitter’s records and expose how the feds domineered the company.

Prior to Thursday’s hearing, the Twitter Files revealed that the U.S. State Department had directly pressured Twitter to cancel almost 300,000 accounts (including those of journalists and foreign diplomats). In June 2021, a State Department contractor sent Twitter a list of “around 40k Twitter accounts that our researchers suspect are engaging in inauthentic behavior…and Hindu nationalism more broadly.” But the list was full of hapless Americans with no ties to India or its politics. The State Department sent Twitter a list of 5,500 names believed to be “Chinese…accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation.” The list was so sloppy that it “included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees based abroad,” according to a Twitter internal analysis. One Twitter executive ridiculed the presumption that “If you retweet a news source linked to Russia, you become Russia-linked.”

The FBI perpetually browbeat Twitter to suppress accounts, including Twitter parody accounts that only idiots or federal agents would not recognize as humor. Taibbi wrote, “The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which ‘FBI San Francisco is notifying you’ it wants action on four accounts.” In a March 2022 meeting with top Twitter executives, FBI agent Laura Dehmlow “warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government.” Dehmlow had a task force of 80 agents to curb “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government.” Her team continually pounded Twitter headquarters with tweets and individuals they wanted suppressed.

Biden’s COVID policymakers were some of the most brazen censors of social media. The Biden White House browbeat Twitter into canceling the accounts of Alex Berenson and many other lockdown critics. A lawsuit is exposing how the Biden White House sought total suppression of any content on social media that raised doubts on the efficacy of the COVID vaccine. Twitter Files added new logs to the bonfire on the morning of the hearing with revelations of a federal contractor pressuring social media companies to suppress “stories of true vaccine side effects” and “true posts which could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy.”

Americans’ freedom of speech is increasingly targeted by a vast, federally funded Censorship-Industrial-Complex. The feds and their contractors are going on ever-more wild goose chases to suppress any views the Washington establishment disapproves.

Twitter Files reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were the witnesses at last week’s hearing. Though both are bestselling authors with long records of excellent reporting, they were treated as shameless grifters who basely smeared noble federal agencies.

In lieu of refuting the Twitter Files, congressional Democrats sought to destroy Taibbi and Shellenberger. The witnesses labored under the misconception that congressional hearings seek to reveal facts. Instead, Democratic members viewed them as sacrifices on the altar of boundless federal prerogatives. Democratic members continually cut off the witnesses, signaling that their role was to shut up and take a whupping.

The ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), derided Taibbi and Shellenberger as “so-called journalists” and claimed they “pose a direct threat to people who oppose them.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FLA) vilified Taibbi: “Elon Musk spoon-fed you his cherry-picked information, which…generates another right-wing conspiracy theory.” She accused Taibbi of unfairly profiting from his work because he now has more Twitter followers and Substack subscribers. She concluded by casting Taibbi’s character into the abyss: “Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention.” (Wasserman Schultz was named the “most unethical politician” in Congress in 2017 by the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.)

Shortly after the hearing, Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) tweeted that “Republicans have launched a dangerous political circus that’s sole purpose is to inject extremist politics into our justice system” and promised to fight “outright conspiracy theories.”

But Rep. Garcia was the Know Nothing Poster Child at the hearing. She pounded Taibbi on whether he disclosed the information in that morning’s Twitter Files to Twitter before publishing. He was mystified by her questions: he had posted a series of tweets. Garcia couldn’t comprehend that tweeting is the same as simultaneously publishing on Twitter. She interrogated Taibbi: “You posted on your umm I guess it’s kind of like a web page. I don’t quite understand what Substack is.” Where do the Democrats find these wizards?

Democrats continually sought to expose ulterior motives that didn’t exist. Rep. Garcia asked Shellenberger how he joined the Twitter Files project. He said his friend Bari Weiss had asked him. “So this friend works for Twitter?” Garcia asked. Shellenberger said no, she is a journalist. Garcia continued, “So you work in concert with her…You’re in this as a threesome?” There is no menage a trois—several other writers are reporting the dirt in the Twitter Files.

The prevailing Democratic beliefs were epitomized by Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), a former Obama administration official who condemned the hearing even before it started. Appearing on MSNBC a week earlier, he declared, “This is the tinfoil hat committee…They have nothing because there is no there there. They are trying to prove something that has not really happened. That is why it has been a dud.”

At the hearing, Allred was smug, condescending, and righteous. He used part of his five minutes of the hearing to showcase a deranged tweet by Kanye West that supposedly proved Uncle Sam must micro-manage social media. He repeatedly cut off Taibbi’s attempts to respond and lectured him—and all Americans—about their duty to think well of their federal masters. He declared, “It should be a bipartisan goal to ensure that Americans and only Americans determine the outcome of our elections, not fear mongering.” So maybe Allred missed Biden’s raving Philadelphia speech last September with a background inspired by V for Vendetta and Leni Riefenstahl?

Allred was the ultimate Deep State shill at the hearing. He tut-tutted the witnesses: “It’s possible, if you take off the tinfoil hat, there’s not a vast conspiracy. Or that ordinary folks and national security agencies responsible for our security are trying to find a way to make sure that our online talk doesn’t get folks hurt or our democracy undermined.” He concluded, “The very rights that you think they are undermining, they may be trying to protect.” Allred did not introduce any evidence to support that notion.

Kowtowing by congressional Democrats thrilled Biden supporters. MSNBC highlighted their report on the showdown: “Weaponization of government hearings backfire on GOP.” Similarly, The Majority Report with Sam Seder crowed, “Matt Taibbi’s Lack Of Journalistic Integrity Exposed During Twitter Hearings.”

None of the congressional Democrats responded to the hard facts exposed by the Twitter Files. Instead, they are relied on a simple standard for absolution. The feds are innocent until and unless they confess their crimes. And if that happens, any technical legal violations will be “water under the bridge” and no reason not to boost the budgets of those federal agencies.

Republicans offered plenty of fresh evidence of federal meddling endangering both freedom of speech and public health. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) recapped how his tweets on how natural immunity provided better protection against COVID than vaccines were suppressed. Massie declared, “This truth was toxic to a narrative Pfizer was spreading that Biden wanted out there so he could force the mandates” on everybody—including those who had natural immunity after having COVID.

But according to the Democrats, federal agencies and contractors were merely making polite requests to make certain people and ideas vanish from the Internet. The fact that President Biden in July 2021 publicly accused social media companies of murdering people by not suppressing criticisms of COVID policy was irrelevant. Likewise, the Biden White House’s brazen threats of antitrust investigations against social media companies that failed to suppress “disinformation” didn’t count.

Congressional Democrats championed the National Lampoon definition of Censorship: Unless there is a photo of an FBI agent holding a gun to the head of a Twitter employee, the feds did nothing wrong. But Team Biden is getting closer and closer to pulling the gun out in public. Vice President Kamala Harris responded to the Twitter Files by announcing that she “would require” social media companies to submit to Biden administration disinformation edicts to “protect democracy.” But “disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods.

Perhaps the biggest “lag time” is Americans learning how the feds are suppressing freedom of speech. The Twitter Files were not disclosed by the federal agencies that sought to veto Americans’ thoughts. The Biden White House efforts to suppress heretical thoughts on COVID are being exposed by lawsuits by savvy attorneys, including the case by the state attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and the New Civil Liberties Alliance. (Their latest “findings of fact” are jolting). The last few years (okay, the last century) have proven the folly of waiting for federal agencies to voluntarily disclose their crimes.

Democrats’ absolution of federal censorship is not solely a problem for the First Amendment. They will use the same dishonest standards to absolve federal violations of any constitutional right. The Founding Fathers intended Congress to be a check on the abuse of power by the executive branch. But that vision of representative government is now as archaic as balancing the federal budget.

Most of the mainstream media has ignored the evidence of federal censorship that the Twitter Files and lawsuits have exposed. This is the same template the Washington establishment has used to shroud its crimes for decades. The FBI sending in military tanks to demolish the Branch Davidians’ home, ending with 80 dead men, women, children, was irrelevant because David Koresh allegedly abused children. George W. Bush lying the nation into war against Iraq was irrelevant because Saddam Hussein was a bad man. The National Security Agency’s crime sprees against Americans were irrelevant because Edward Snowden was supposedly a traitor. If Biden drags America into World War III against Russia, all subsequent carnage will be irrelevant because Putin is a bad man.

Will the feds succeed in shutting down Twitter Files? Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sounded the alarm over the Federal Trade Commission’s letter to Twitter demanding information on any journalist involved in the Twitter Files project. Does the FTC now consider exposing federal abuses to be an Unfair Trade Practice by the media? Musk denounced the federal demand as “a shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!”

Disguising the federal iron fist in a velvet glove is a crime against the Bill of Rights. Perhaps it is time for the Democratic Party to formally rechristen itself as the Leviathan Anti-Defamation League. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) offered the best lesson from the hearing: “Sunshine is the best disinfectant and…our federal government need to be fumigated.”

TGIF: Hear, O Israel — Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 10, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

An older generation of Americans, including Jewish Americans, admire the colonists who resisted the British king and parliament in the late 1700s. Jewish Americans go further and admire the Judeans who revolted against the Greeks and Romans (twice) in antiquity.

So isn’t it peculiar that they do not applaud the similar Palestinian resistance to Israel’s domination? The most we get from U.S. politicians is Bernie Sanders’s weak statement about putting conditions on the massive aid to Israel, which is in political disarray because its ruling competition wants to subordinate the independent judiciary.

To appreciate the Palestinian resistance and daily Israeli attempts at suppression, watch the Mondoweiss video “On the Brink: Jenin’s Rising Resistance” (video and transcript). It begins like this:

Male Voice: “Palestinian health officials say at least nine Palestinians have been killed.” Female voice (Yumna Patel): “It was the bloodiest few [almost five] hours the West Bank had seen in years.” Male voice again: “More than a hundred military vehicles entered the camp [on Jan. 26 this year].” Female voice again: “Ten Palestinians [including two teen-aged boys and a 61-year-old woman sitting in her home] were killed in a single Israeli army raid. Dozens more were injured. Palestinians described it as a massacre, and it all took place in an area of less than half a square kilometer.”

According to host Patel, “The Jenin refugee camp is home to over 15,000 Palestinian refugees, the descendants of those who were forced out of their homes by Zionist militias in 1948, during the creation of the state of Israel.” Jenin is also home to “armed resistance groups who routinely confront Israel soldiers during army incursions into their camp,” On this latest raid Palestinian medics with the Red Crescent were kept by Israeli forces from administering aid.

Contrary to what you may have heard, this is not “antisemitism,” a word used to describe disparate things in different places throughout history, including criticism of Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians that goes back well over 100 years.

“In 2002,” Patel says, “in the midst of the Second Intifada, the Israeli army launched a massive invasion of the Jenin refugee camp following a number of suicide bombings inside Israeli territory. During the invasion, the army killed more than 50 Palestinians and destroyed more than 400 homes in the camp, displacing more than a quarter of the camp’s entire population. More than 20 years later, the effects of the 2002 invasion are still felt in the camp today.”

This is about individual rights and personal autonomy. “During January’s [this year] raid, Mohammad al-Sabbagh witnessed his family home being destroyed for the third time.” Also, “During the army raid on January 26, 21 years after his father was killed, Ziad al-Sabbagh barricaded himself alongside his comrades inside his family home during the army’s assault. Though he made it out alive, he was arrested by Israeli forces. And the al-Sabbagh family home was once again destroyed.”

“It’s death or freedom,” says one fighter. That sounds like Patrick Henry, who purportedly said, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” (March 23, 1775, St. John’s Church, Richmond, Virginia, speech at the Virginia convention.)

The unconscionably inhumane treatment of the Palestinians is either consistent with what are called Jewish values or it is not. If it is, well then… But if it is not, then why has it gone on 56 years after the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights were taken militarily (to be annexed in law or in fact) and 75 years after a group of Europeans declared the existence of Israel (no borders specified) and the Palestinians who managed to stay in Israel, despite the catastrophe (Nakba) of their brethren being driven from their homes, were made no better than second-class citizens (if that), subject to all sorts of government and quasigovernment mistreatment and discrimination? So much for Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which promised that “it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.” (This took place following a UN General Assembly recommendation that Palestine be divided, with more than half given to Jewish Europeans even though Jews were a minority of the Palestinian population and the UN had no right to partition the land.)

“Back in 2002,” Patel says, “the army framed the deadly invasion of the camp as a defensive measure to prevent future attacks against Israeli citizens. The raid on January 26 was justified for the same reasons. But the residents say that Israel’s frequent raids over the years have only created more resentment and motivated more people to take up arms.”

Jamal Hweil told Patel: “Any person who wants to know the truth has to ask, is the resistance a result or a cause? The cause is the presence of the occupation. The cause is the existence of the [refugee] camp and the displacement of the Palestinian people and the persistence of the refugee issue. The cause is the presence of an occupation of our lands. Resistance isn’t the cause. Resistance is the result.”

As a young Jenin Brigade fighter told Patel: “The world must know that we are not terrorists, as the [Israeli] occupation claims. We are fighters in the name of God. We came out of our mothers’ wombs into this world to fight this occupier, who has stolen our religion, our customs, our traditions, and who has killed our fathers and our brothers. The world needs to know we aren’t terrorists. The occupation is the only terrorist in this world.” He continued:

What pushed me towards resistance are my own personal convictions, from what I’ve seen in my life. We were brought up as kids in the middle of this, every day an army raid, every day an operation, every day someone is arrested, everyday youth are executed, women are executed. The occupation enters the camp and the city without differentiating between the old and the young. It will kill whoever is in its way.

Says Patel: “The Jenin Brigade was started in 2021 by fighters affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement but has since evolved to include fighters from a number of factions in the camp. The new cross-factional model has since inspired the birth of other groups outside Jenin, who spread messages of Palestinian unity against Israeli occupation.” [Emphasis added.]

“It’s a message,” Patel says, “that hadn’t been heard in years, and it has appealed primarily to young men, who have grown increasingly disillusioned with their own leaders after decades of political infighting and a stalled peace process.” [Emphasis added.]

As one fighter says, “When this generation witnesses this frustration, when it sees a dead end on the political horizon, when it sees the worsening economic conditions, what do you expect from these youths?”

Ammar Izz al-Din told Patel: “Enough of the ‘negotiations.’ These negotiations have brought us nothing. Since I was born I’ve been hearing about negotiations, and it’s all been for nothing. You can’t negotiate with Israel.”

I’m not endorsing violence, but this despair is Israel’s — its rulers’ and most of its people’s — fault; they have all refused to address the Palestinians’ legitimate grievances. The former head of the World Zionist Organization, Nahum Goldmann, wrote in his 1969 autobiography that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, told him that were he an Arab, he wouldn’t talk to Israel’s founders because “We had taken their country.” (And let’s remember how the Israelites came to possess all of Canaan in the first place, according to the book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible.)

A day after the latest Israeli raid, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem whose grandfather was killed by an Israeli settler in 1998, “killed seven people inside an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.” He was killed at the scene. Yet the government of Benjamin Netanyahu cracked down, Patel reports, “announcing sweeping measures that rights groups warned amounted to collective punishment…. At the same time, Israeli settlers in the West Bank carried out a series of ‘revenge’ attacks against Palestinians, burning people’s homes and cars, hurling rocks at Palestinian vehicles, and even shooting at Palestinians with live ammunition. It was reported that in a single night, settlers carried out close to 150 attacks against Palestinians and their property.”

Why care about this? Because the U.S. government, influenced by the Israel lobby (Rep. Ilhan Omar was essentially right when she said it was “all about the Benjamins;” for some politicians it is), gives billions in military aid to Israel every year. And Netanyahu, with his eyes on Iran as a world, threatens to start a war or to goad America. into starting it.

It may be worth a reminder that the prophet Hosea (4:1-2, 6-7, 9) said, “Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood…. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee…. As they were increased, so they sinned against me: therefore will I change their glory into shame…. and I will punish them for their ways….”

And Jeremiah (32:42), “For thus saith the Lord; …I have brought all this great evil upon this [‘my’] people.”

And Ezekiel (7:8) says, “Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon thee [‘Israel’], and accomplish mine anger upon thee: and I will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense thee for all thine abominations.”

I’m not saying this, and I don’t buy it. But it’s in The Book!

Admittedly this is a god who reportedly ordered genocide against other Canaanites and was angrier at the children of Israel for worshiping other gods than for anything else. But the remnant of anti-Zionist Jews (bless their hearts) such as the American Council for Judaism interpret unfaithfulness to include a failure to act justly. and idolatry as the placement of the Jewish state above all else. It is ironic that Israel does not heed its own foundational, if allegorical, texts.

Thomas Jefferson’s statement concerning American slavery, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, comes to mind: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just….”

Of course the reason for Israel and Jewish Americans to behave justly toward the Palestinians is not Yahweh’s wrath. It’s justice itself!

As I wrote in Coming to Palestine:

Realization of the [Zionist] dream of a Jewish state logically entailed the dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians, who by the common standard of justice were legitimate owners of their land. Those who remained were made third-class citizens or even worse in an apartheid state. The countless micro offenses against those individuals were compounded by a macro offense: the destruction of their flourishing culture, communities, and country….. [H]ere’s one thing advocates of universal freedom and justice can say: The rights of the Palestinians must not be plastered over by irrelevant claims about the Jewish State’s right to exist.

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