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Letter From 19 US Senators Contains a Dangerous Rhetorical Change for Israel
The US Capitol building exterior in Washington, US, January 21, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger.
Nineteen Democratic US senators have called on President Biden to “recognize a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.” Until now, Congressional supporters of Palestinian statehood have often used the term “demilitarized.” Why the sudden change?
There’s just no way it was an accident. Letters signed by US senators are reviewed and revised by a large team of writers and public relations advisors. In this case, the staffs of 19 different senators reviewed and approved this letter dated March 20. A change like this, from “demilitarized” to “nonmilitarized,” likely didn’t slip through without anybody noticing — especially when “nonmilitarized” is such a peculiar term. Throughout modern history “demilitarized” has always been the conventional term. Somebody made a conscious decision to change the word.
Here’s a theory as to why. It involves two reasons.
The first reason for the change could be rhetorical. A major problem for advocates of “demilitarization” is that this has a long history of failure. The most famous example is the German territory of the Rhineland, which was supposed to be demilitarized after World War One — that is, until Hitler decided to remilitarize it. And the world stood idly by.
American advocates of Palestinian statehood don’t want their opponents to be able to cite that historical precedent. They think that by changing the word, they can preempt criticism of the idea.
The second reason for the change is likely more practical. If you say “nonmilitarized,” you’re pretending that right now, the Palestinian Authority (PA) regime does not have military capability, so to create a state, you would just convert the existing entity into a fully sovereign state without having to impose any real changes on it.
But if you use the term “demilitarized,” that means acknowledging that the Palestinian Authority already has a de-facto army — and therefore, you would have to disarm it, which nobody in the international community is willing to do.
The PA’s de-facto army began its existence disguised as a “strong police force,” according to Article VII of the first Oslo agreement. Then, while nobody was paying attention, the PA expanded the original 12,000 man “police force” into a 60,000-man “security force.”
Next came Oslo II, in 1995, which required the PA security forces to “apprehend, investigate and prosecute perpetrators and all other persons directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism, violence and incitement.” (Annex I, Article II, 3-c).
The PA never fulfilled that obligation. In fact, just the opposite. The PA security forces list countless numbers of their members as “martyrs” — meaning they died while committing terrorism. In addition, fully 12% of all Palestinian Arab terrorists currently jailed in Israel are members of the PA security forces. Yet America continues to assist and fund the PA.
The World Atlas lists the countries that have the largest per-capita security forces. The largest ones are those with the tiniest populations, thus making the size of their security forces disproportionately large, like the Vatican, the Pitcairn Islands, and Monaco. Sixth on the list – despite having a population of several million — is the Palestinian Authority. The PA has a whopping 1,250 “police officers” per 100,000 people.
A 2018 report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, titled “Evolution of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces,” revealed that “by late 1998, the PA security services … had in almost every regard violated the letter of the agreements reached with Israel,” turning the PA-governed areas into “one of the most heavily policed territories in the world.”
“A proliferation of weapons was occurring, both in quantity and quality, well beyond that stipulated in Oslo II,” according to the Washington Institute. “By one estimate, there were at least 40,000 more weapons than allowed in the agreement, including RPGs, mortars, mines, grenade launchers, and sniper rifles; also being developed was a small-scale indigenous manufacturing capacity for hand grenades and other ammunition.” That was 15 years ago. One can only imagine what the PA has in its arsenal now.
Now you see the problem with using the term “demilitarization” — it would mean taking away most of the PA security forces’ weapons and military equipment.
Words matter. And when it comes to Middle East diplomacy, words really matter. Just think about the countless debates over why UN Security Council Resolution 242 said Israel should withdraw from “territories,” not “the territories.”
The same is true for “demilitarized” and “nonmilitarized.” That seemingly small change is actually a big deal. A very big deal.
Moshe Phillips is a commentator on Jewish affairs whose writings appear regularly in the American and Israeli press.
The post Letter From 19 US Senators Contains a Dangerous Rhetorical Change for Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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