Hala Rharrit on Quitting State Dept. & Ending U.S. Complicity in Gaza
www.democracynow.org
As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel. We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. “We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel,” she says after more than a year of Israel’s war on Gaza. Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its “counterproductive policy,” which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. “We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations.”

As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel.

We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. “We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel,” she says after more than a year of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its “counterproductive policy,” which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. “We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations.”

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
    5·
    8 days ago

    Hamas certainly did commit war crimes on Oct 7, and many of the attacks were indiscriminate.

    This kind of violence does not come out of nowhere, Israel has committed this level of violence on the population of Gaza multiple times, on top of the daily violence of the blockade and occupation. The occupier does set the level of violence in Colonialist conflicts. It’s still unjustifiable for both sides, but the material conditions the occupier subjects the occupied to are critical to understand.

    When people are subjected to the daily violence of Apartheid for generations, they will inevitably use violence to fight back. The underlying cause of all this violence stems from Zionism (Ethnic Cleansing, Settler Colonialism, Apartheid), and the only way to end the violence to to end the underlying cause.

    Quotes

    Historian and professor of genocide studies Uğur Ümit Üngör noted that “many commentators rightly pointed out that Hamas committed a genocidal massacre”, while also highlighting the killing of Arab Israelis and Bedouins during Hamas’ attack as evidence that it may not have been “group selective”. He suggested that the attack might fall under the category of “subaltern genocide”, drawing comparisons to the mass killing of pied-noirs in Algeria. Political scientist Abdelwahab El-Affendi refuted the “subaltern genocide” thesis, pointing to a “near-consensus” in the field of genocide studies that “genocides are almost invariably perpetrated by states”, which does not apply to the Gazan enclave. He stated that the attacks were consistent with terrorism and mass violence, but that the taking of hostages for prisoner exchanges indicated that the intent of the attacks was not genocidal.

    By contrast, British academic Omar McDoom wrote in the Journal of Genocide Research that comparisons between the Holocaust and 7 October are indicative of a pro-Israel bias in sections of the Holocaust studies community. McDoom argues that the comparison is “problematic” because “the Germans were not an occupied and oppressed people. And Gaza is not a powerful, expansionary state. To the contrary.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel

    Infographics

    • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      8 days ago

      Your underlying causes do not go very far back in time. The first Zionist settlers purchased their land from Palestinians and lived peacefully alongside them. While I understand your desire to focus solely on material causes, one must also take ideology and religion into account as factors. Humans experience emotions, and emotions do not always have material causes.

      • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
        4·
        8 days ago

        Early Zionist settlers who did live side by side with the native Palestinian people did report that they were received peacefully, that is true. But the land purchases were not, that began the forced displacement.

        The Transfer Committee, and the JNF Ethnic Cleansing, which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate before the Nakba

        • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
          14·
          8 days ago

          The 1940s are still half a century after the first settlers arrived. Purchasing land from Palestinians is not forcibly displacing them.

          You’re starting your history at around the time Israel was founded, and the Jewish community had grown powerful. That is not the beginning, the beginning was 50 years earlier. Doing this is very common in propaganda.

          • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
            2·
            8 days ago

            I’m referring to the 1920s - 1930s

            Both the Zionist buyers and Levantine companies knew that many Palestinian Arabs still owned homes, olive groves, mills, warehouses and fields in the N-shaped region. They offered money to the families that came forward. But, Zionists forcibly evicted them if they refused compensation or to sell their land.

            From 3rd link

            Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants from their lands as Zionists bought land from absentee landlords.

            In 1936, Palestinian Arabs launched a large-scale uprising against the British and their support for Zionist settler-colonialism, known as the Arab Revolt. The British authorities crushed the revolt, which lasted until 1939, violently; they destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes, put 9,000 Palestinians in concentration camps and subjected them to violent interrogation, including torture, and deported 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders.

            From 4th link

            Forcible ‘Transfer,’ Ethnic Cleansing, has been central to Zionist thought since the 1880s

            Quote

            Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.

            The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.

            An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.

            • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
              13·
              8 days ago

              This still deals with Israeli atrocities after they became strong enough to commit them, and ignores much context. For instance, how Theodor Herzl proposed his Judenstaat to Jewish leaders of his time and was rejected, due to the dangers his ideas posed to existing Jewish settlements in the region.

              This ignoring of key details, and focusing in on only evidence that, in isolation, supports a certain narrative is not conducive to a healthy understanding and discussion of events. This is, again, a common feature of propaganda, and we should be wary of it in any conflict.

              Even the 1920s are not the beginning, if we want to understand this conflict, we should be paying attention to the earliest influx of Jewish settlement, which began in the 19th century, not the 20th century. Without understanding of the earliest atrocities, we lack important context for the environment that led to our future.

              • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
                2·
                8 days ago

                Here’s some more context. None of this changes the realities of Zionism as a Settler Colonialist Ideology.

                Quotes

                It is only we, with hindsight, who can appreciate the significant change of orientation that occurred within Zionism; one doubts whether the urban leadership of the Palestinian community knew of these developments. The movement became a more potent factor in Palestine’s affairs after Herzl’s unique success in allying it to Britain, and his failure to persuade the Zionists to agree to settling in Uganda.

                To the end of his life, Herzl believed that Zionism could not succeed without the blessing of a European power. We can see now that he was correct, and that he chose the right ally in Britain. It was a logical choice given the recent British interest in the Middle East, a colonialist interest that began with the occupation of Egypt in 1882, but did not end there. The British residents in Cairo, and an expansionist school of thought in the Colonial Office at home, had looked to Palestine as a future British acquisition, should the Ottoman Empire collapse.Such a collapse was now a feasible scenario, once dreaded by British policy makers as a formula for a European war, but by the 1880s one to which Britain itself contributed with the occupation of Ottoman Egypt. If the Jews, like the Anglican missionaries, could ease British expansion into the land of Palestine, they should be welcomed. The pro-Zionist bent in British Middle Eastern policy at the end of the nineteenth century was produced by a mixture of new colonial perceptions of global reality and old theological concepts connecting the return of the Jews to Palestine with the second coming of the Messiah. Herzl succeeded in inflaming the British colonialist and evangelist imagination when he offered the British government the opportunity to turn the arid area of El-Arish, near Gaza, into a Zionist oasis. All that was lacking, he explained, was a canal bringing fresh water from the Nile. However, the British governor of Egypt, Lord Cromer, an ardent utilitarian, was not impressed by these visions, and his objection led to the plan’s demise.

                Herzl was now desperate. He tried another avenue, the last before his death in 1904. He attempted to enlist British help in installing a temporary Jewish state (i.e. one that would eventually be moved to Palestine) in British Uganda, an offer which was conceived originally in Whitehall. He proposed Uganda for tactical reasons, but his offer seemed to many in the movement a betrayal of Zionism. Leading ‘territorial Zionists’ foiled the Uganda plan. After all, it was Herzl who had sanctified Palestine by defining Jewish nationalism as Zionism, irrevocably connected to settling Palestine (Zion). He had created a yardstick by which patriotism or loyalty to Jewish nationalism would be judged. Any unpatriotic act was dealt with as in any other national movement – with contempt and hostility.9 Something of the new Zionist vitality and energy must have left a mark on those in the urban elite interested in politics. This is probably why the Palestinian protests against Zionism became more conspicuous after 1904 and were quite well orchestrated by Palestine’s few representatives in the Turkish parliament, re-opened in 1908 after being suspended by Abdul Hamid. These representatives tried, sometimes successfully, to pass legislation curbing Jewish expansionism in Palestine. The settlers continued to arrive, however, and laid the foundations for the Zionist community. They would meet serious opposition only after the end of the First World War.

                Read Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha if you want the history of the region since before British Occupation.

                Read The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 by Nur Masalha if you want the details about Zionism and it’s origins.

                Read A History of Modern Palestine by Ilan Pappe if you want the history of the region since the 1800s (this is the book I quoted, pg 89)

                • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  12·
                  8 days ago

                  Nur Masalha appears to be a well-regarded Palestinian expert in Palestinian history, very good. Ilan Pappe is a post-modernist though, there’s a little too much narrative massaging without evidence in that philosophy. In most fields this is fine, but history is a dangerous one due to its common use for propaganda purposes.

                  You’ll note, I’m trying very hard to avoid spreading any propaganda myself, pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. I’m very leery of the stuff, and it is very common unfortunately due to how it can be used to justify violence that people may wish to commit for any number of reasons. Opposing viewpoints should always be viewed together, with appropriate attention given to all available evidence.

                  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
                    1·
                    8 days ago

                    This is a genocide. I wouldn’t ‘both sides’ this conflict anymore than the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Zionism is a fascist ideology. I won’t equate that to an anti-colonialist resistance.

                    Advocating for the humanity of Palestinians, a permanent ceasefire, and a One-State Solution with equal rights for all is the right way to approach this issue.