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.”

  • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    21 days ago

    It’s not just one reason, it’s many reasons, all weighing together. That’s pretty standard for how govt decisions are made, an attempt is made to tally up and weigh all the pros and all the cons.

    One reason seldom discussed is US reputation as standing by its allies after attacks. The US is allied to all of NATO, almost all of S America in the Rio Convention, along with a slew of other, individual alliances like Israel and Morocco. The idea that if you’re an ally and you are attacked, we will help you, is an important one in preserving our network of global allies. We have seldom historically made distinctions that you have to be on the right side of history.

    Coupled with domestic factionalist opinions, AIPAC money, MIC money, hamas and Hezbollah themselves being oppressive, genocidal movements, etc etc, balanced against Israel throwing out the two-state solution post Oslo Accords in favor of illegal settlement, Apartheid and now openly advocating for an ethnic cleansing, and there’s a lot of weight on the scale pulling each way. Really heavy fucking scale, one of the heaviest in the world, and with a century+ of backstory that is far from one-sided.

    Big, big mess basically. Historically epic clusterfuck. Biblical proportions, even.

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      21 days ago

      Hamas and Hezbollah are anti-colonialst resistance movements, not genocidal ones. They exist due to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of local populations.

      Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution

      How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

      ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

      One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

      Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.

      During the current war, Hamas officials have said that the group does not want to return to ruling Gaza and that it advocates for forming a government of technocrats to be agreed upon by the various Palestinian factions. That government would then prepare for elections in Gaza and the West Bank, with the intention of forming a unified government.

      • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        21 days ago

        Yes, I’ve heard that rhetoric before. I apply the same skepticism to hamas as I do Israel, though, given both are engaged in outright warfare. Political maneuverings are to be expected during times of war. I am not surprised they would offer a prisoner swap, the only surprise is that they would think any chance exists that Netanyahu might actually agree, after given such a clear casus belli and opportunity to enact his long-term goals.

        Ultimately, language like this is legitimate cause for suspicion, though: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/

        Additionally, you can point to the indiscriminate attacks on Oct 7th against nonmilitary targets to give evidence to their lack of distinguishment between Israeli people and the Israeli military. It’s not just language about the destruction of a country of people, they exhibit actions to back it up.

        Ultimately, it does not matter why they want to destroy Israelis, that is not a pre-requisite to fighting against occupation. Do Ukrainians seek to destroy Russia? Or merely battle its military to liberate their land? This is a key distinction, the following of the laws of war.

        • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          21 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
            0·
            21 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
              0·
              21 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
                0·
                21 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
                  0·
                  21 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
                    0·
                    21 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.