Gaza: Six Months On

If President Biden is voted out of office in November, the ongoing war in Gaza will be the reason.

Enough young people are appalled at Biden's unwavering support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to go after Hamas with the sort of force comparable to the use of a thermonuclear device, to deny Biden a victory in the election by going third party or staying home.  Nothing Netanyahu has done in prosecuting the fight against Hamas has persuaded the Biden White House to change their policy toward Israel because of Biden's interest in ensuring Israel's right to self-defense.

Except that Israel is gong way too much on the offensive.  This past week, members of Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen were killed by a precision missile fired by the Israeli "Defense" Force, leading many to suspect that part of Israel's strategy is denying relief workers the freedom to feed the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been turned into refugees and are barely scrounging to get by.  President Biden angrily demanded that Netanyahu open a route to food relief for charities to get through, threatening to condition further aid to the IDF, and Netanyahu acquiesced to the demand as the IDF punished those responsible for the firing of the missile .  This will help, but not much.  What Biden really needs to do is reduce aid to Israel to purely defensive weapons and get that damn temporary pier along the sea built to accelerate aid to the Palestinians. 

Biden has to make more of a tilt to trying to get a cease-fire arranged and get as much aid to Gaza as possible before he loses young people and Arab-Americans on such a widespread basis that it's impossible to win Michigan, a state with large Arab-American and Islamic populations as well as many politically active youth (particular among college kids) and a state he absolutely needs to win in November.  Alas, it may already be too late. 

MSDNC?

Donald Trump recently called MSNBC "MSDNC" as a way of suggesting that the cable news channel is merely an arm of the Democratic Party.  He may be right for once.

With the Israel-Hamas War continuing to rage in the Gaza Strip, Mehdi Hasan, a weekend MSNBC host of Indian descent and a Muslim, had been a extraordinarily vocal opponent of Israel's heavy-handed response to the Hamas attack on Israeli towns on October 7,  and he had grilled a leader of the Israeli Defense Force over the bombing deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza.  I'm using the past perfect tense for a reason; Mehdi Hasan was demoted from MSNBC.

Not canceled.  Demoted.  He still remains at MSNBC as an analyst and substitute host.  But the loss of his weekend program still sucks. 

Hasan spoke truth to power at a time when the Democratic foreign-policy establishment has a hard time absorbing the truth.  The Democratic Party is relentlessly pro-Israel and continued to put the onus on the Palestinians, continuing to blur the line between Palestinian civilians and Palestinian commandos - though, to be fair, Vice President Kamala Harris has sought to distinguish between the two in a postwar reconstruction plan for the Palestinian people that she recently outlined.  Hasan's fairness and toughness wih regard to the Israelis, though, was obviously too much for Democratic centrists, though many progressives - and reportedly, MSNBC staffers - are unhappy (to say the least) with Hasan's dismissal. 

This isn't the first time MSNBC has canceled a host for not towing the Democratic National Committee line.  Ed Schultz, you recall, was canceled in 2015 for speaking out so forcefully for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign at a time when the DNC was tipping the scales for Hillary Clinton to get the Democratic nomination and when many hosts and contributors were showering Hillary with praise, one contributor calling her the most qualified person to run for President since James Monroe two hundred years earlier.  Also, Phil Donahue's MSNBC show was canceled in 2003 in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq just as his dismal ratings were beginning to improve dramatically because of his opposition to the invasion.  Three of the four most recent Democratic presidential nominees, when they were in the Senate in 2002, voted to give Bush the authorization to use force to disarm Saddam Hussein.  Of those three, only Joe Biden became President. 

MSNBC is a clear liberal alternative to Fox News' red-meat Republicanism, and no, a Republican administration wouldn't handle the Israel-Hamas conflict any better.  In fact, a second Trump administration would let it or make it evolve into World War III, which is why it's important to stop Trump from regaining power.  But if the bosses at MSNBC, whose anchors promote the preservation of democratic values, want to avoid hypocrisy, they shouldn't acquiesce to Democratic (note capital letter) values and promote the Democratic party line on everything. Rather, it should promote more diverse points of view, but that obviously can't happen when someone like Mehdi Hasan gets canned for doing his job as a journalist - seeking the truth.

Free

Hamas has released several hostages taken on October 7 at the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict, including a four-year-old American girl whose parents were killed by Hamas militants, during a four-day truce, which, as of this writing, may end today or may even be extended.  Many more people are calling for a cease-fire - myself included - as Israel wants it made plain that its operation against Hamas in Gaza is not over.  Far from it - it wants to eliminate Hamas (the group's name is an Arabic acronym for "Islamic Resistance Movement") as a militant organization and directly rule the Gaza Strip.  No one in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, least of all Netanyahu himself,  wants a two-state solution despite the fact that President Biden wants it and despite the fact that it's the only recourse.  

As for the borders of a Palestinian state, they will likely be close to the borders of the current Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, so at least the Palestinians have the river and the sea.  Perhaps Gaza, a territory of 2.3 million people crammed into an area half again the size of Washington, D.C., can in peacetime serve as an important seaport for a Palestinian state and can also be transformed into a cozy seaside haven at the nexus point between Africa and Asia.  But it will be an exclave, and that's not that worst thing that could happen to a future nation of Palestine.  Other countries - Russia, Azerbaijan, Angola, the United States (Alaska?) have exclaves, and they manage.

Meanwhile, President Biden deserves some credit for his diplomatic skills in getting as many hostages released as he has, and some Democratic strategists believe that it will mitigate the friction between mainstream Democrats and young voters and Islamic voters disappointed so far with Biden's handling of the conflict and his tilt to Israel.  Trump wouldn't have gotten these people released.  Trump only has the support of people who want to see Palestinians bombed into the Stone Age.

So, a second Trump Presidency is still a possibility . . .. 😉