September 11,
2024
ABC provided a
transcript of the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. I have some
thoughts on the Middle East dimension:
On Gaza, Harris
said, “Well, let’s understand how we got here. On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist
organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis. Many of them young people who were
simply attending a concert. Women were horribly raped. And so absolutely, I
said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it
does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians
have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It
must when, end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a cease-fire
deal and we need the hostages out. And so we will continue to work around the
clock on that. Work around the clock also understanding that we must chart a
course for a two-state solution. And in that solution, there must be security
for the Israeli people and Israel and in equal measure for the Palestinians.
But the one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the
ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that
Iran and its proxies pose to Israel. But we must have a two-state solution
where we can rebuild Gaza, where the Palestinians have security,
self-determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve.”
But that isn’t
how we got there. The Israelis expelled 250,000 Palestinians to Gaza in 1948
from their homes in what became southern Israel, making Gaza a big refugee
camp. The population has grown to 2.2 million. They detached from Gaza its
agricultural lands and left it cut off from its markets. From 1967 the Israelis
came after the Palestinians in Gaza again and occupied them. In 2007 they
slapped an economic siege on the Gaza Strip, imposing 55% unemployment and
causing children to be malnourished. So Hamas committed horrific terrorism on
on civilians on October 7 last year, for which there can be no justification.
But if it had only attacked the Israeli military it might have had grounds in
international law, which permits resistance groups to fight foreign military
occupation. Harris left out the Nakbah or Palestinian displacement by Israel,
and the long decades of military occupation and siege, so she made the story
impossible to understand.
She is much
better than Biden in at least expressing some empathy for the tens of thousands
of innocent civilians Israel has killed in Gaza. But empathy, while better than
nothing, won’t stop the killing, which is daily and directly enabled by US
supply of weapons and ammunition (the Israelis ran out months ago).
The cease-fire
deal she is touting does not exist. It was just a cheap trick pulled on Biden
by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to giving him breathing space to
continue the war, Netanyahu has constantly tacked on new conditions, most
recently his occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of Rafah, which he
knows Hamas (and even Egypt) will never agree to.
There is no
two-state solution to be had, and politicians should start being honest about
it. Gaza is rubble and there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters in
the Palestinian West Bank. Where would you put a state?
Trump’s response
was to say that the war would not have happened on his watch because he starved
Iran of money. That assertion is not true and it isn’t a policy. It is just a
narcissistic boast that he can magically control the world. He can’t.
As usual, what
he said is arrant nonsense. The CIA assesses that Hamas did not tell Iran it
was planning Oct. 7. Iran had nothing to do with it.
Further, Biden
has kept all the Trump sanctions on Iran, which is not a good thing. It puts
the US on a war footing with Iran. Washington tries to interfere in Iran’s
normal commerce such as selling its oil. There are no grounds in international
law for this behavior. The US has even sanctioned the Iranian national bank,
making all economic transactions with Iran a form of terrorism, including
sending food or medicine. It is unprecedented to call the national bank of a
country a terrorist organization.
Trump has no
policies, just insults, such as that Harris hates Israel and even hates Arabs
because her hatred of Israel will get Arabs killed. I couldn’t follow the
argument because of that arrant nonsense thing.
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