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By Jake Johnson
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Progressives in the U.S. Congress on Sunday urged the Biden administration to resist calls for an attack on Iran following the country's retaliation against Israel for the deadly bombing of Tehran's consulate in Syria earlier this month.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his call for an "immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid."
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Peace and human rights advocates on Sunday renewed calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an increase in lifesaving humanitarian aid for its starving people as the embattled enclave marked six months since the start of Israel's genocidal retaliation for the October 7 attacks.
In a letter, the Biden supporters—who according toThe New York Times include some six-figure donors—condemned the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel while also arguing that Israeli military actions are not achieving the goals of eliminating the Palestinian group or freeing hostages.
"As the Biden administration attempts to deny the death toll of Israel's campaign of mass murder in Gaza and sell genocide as a stimulus for the U.S. economy, these are the death merchants profiting from the war machine."
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With more than 7,300 Palestinians killed so far in Israel's three-week bombardment of Gaza, a series of reports this week have exposed how U.S. weapon-makers and billionaire donors are enabling what legal scholars say could amount to genocide.
After Israel declared war in response to Hamas killing over 1,400 Israelis and taking around 200 hostages, the stocks of major American and European war profiteers soared. A Thursday report from Eyes on the Ties—the news site of LittleSis and Public Accountability Initiative—targets five U.S. firms with a record of providing weaponry to Israel.
The outlet stressed that while announcing a supplemental funding request that includes $14.3 billion for Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden last week "invoked 'patriotic American workers' who are 'building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom,' but it's the defense company CEOs who rake in tens of millions a year, and Wall Street shareholders, who are the real beneficiaries of warmongering."
The five targeted industry giants collectively recorded $196.5 billion in military-related revenue last year, Eyes on the Tiesreported. They are Boeing ($30.8 billion), General Dynamics ($30.4 billion), Lockheed Martin ($63.3 billion), Northrop Grumman ($32.4 billion), and RTX, formerly Raytheon ($39.6 billion).
"The top shareholders in these five defense companies largely consist of big asset managers, or big banks with asset management wings, that include BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Capital Group, Wellington, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Newport Trust Company, Longview Asset Management, Massachusetts Financial Services Company, Geode Capital, and Bank of America," the news outlet noted.
Eyes on the Ties also highlighted how chief executives are handsomely compensated—and the CEOs' ties to Big Pharma, the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, and foreign policy think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for Strategic and International Studies.
According to the report:
Other reporting this week has taken aim at those CEOs for their suggestions that Israel's assault on Gaza is good for business.
During Lockheed Martin's latest earnings call, Taiclet correctly predicted Biden's request last week, saying that "there continues to be the option... for supplemental requests related to support Ukraine, Israel, and potentially Taiwan."
In addition to the request for Israel—which already gets nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid—Biden asked for $4 billion to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region and $61.4 billion more for Ukraine, which is battling a Russian invasion.
"We are all witnessing significant geopolitical tensions across the globe, including the ongoing war in Ukraine and the horrific attacks in Israel," Warden said during Northrop Grumman's Thursday earnings call, according toVICE. "As we saw last week, the [Biden] administration continues to make supplemental requests for urgent needs, including those in Ukraine and Israel, to include investments in weapons systems and defense industrial base readiness."
As The Leverreported:
"The Israel situation obviously is a terrible one, frankly, and one that's just evolving as we speak," said Jason Aiken, chief financial officer and executive vice president at General Dynamics, on Wednesday. "But I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side."
He continued: "Obviously that's been a big pressure point up to now with Ukraine, one that we've been doing everything we can to support our Army customer. We've gone from 14,000 rounds per month to 20,000 very quickly. We're working ahead of schedule to accelerate that production capacity up to 85,000, even as high as 100,000 rounds per month, and I think the Israel situation is only going to put upward pressure on that demand."
Last week, roughly 100 activists gathered outside of General Dynamics' weapons plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to protest the Israeli war, holding signs with slogans like, "Genocide: Brought To You By General Dynamics."
Both The Lever and VICE also pointed out that during RTX's Tuesday call, Hayes started by "acknowledging the tragic situation playing out in Israel" before turning to "an update on our end markets."
If Congress approves Biden's request for Israel, VICE explained, "some of the money would be used to restock Israel's Iron Dome rocket defense system, which RTX manufactured." Hayes said: "I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you're going to see a benefit of this restocking. On top of what we think is going to be an increase in [U.S. Department of Defense] top line."
It's not just defense executives enabling Israel's mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. As Eyes on the Ties reported, "Lobbying groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Democratic Majority for Israel have been active in Washington, calling on lawmakers to send money and weapons to Israel."
The report names some billionaire donors to the lobbying groups, including New England Patriots and the Kraft Group CEO Robert Kraft, private equity investor Marc Rowan, venture capitalist Gary Lauder, hedge fund managers Daniel Loeb and Paul Singer, and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who is also the founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said Wednesday that Americans "know that funneling billions more dollars into arms dealers' pockets won't keep our children safe from weapons of war at home or across the world. It won't keep our loved ones safe from toxins in our air and drinking water. They know that lining the pockets of weapons manufacturers won't help families struggling to afford housing, medicine, or grocery costs. They know defense contractors won't safeguard Medicare and Social Security or shield our communities against the climate crisis."
Unlike the CEOs of firms like Lockheed Martin and RTX, "moms who can't afford childcare, young folks who can't pay off their debt, veterans who can't keep up with housing costs, and children who go to school hungry don't have million-dollar lobbying budgets," added Lee, one of the few members of Congress pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza. "So it's up to us to stand up for their needs."
This article originally appeared in Common Dreams on October 27th, 2023.
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While Israeli Media Examine Government Failure, US Papers Push ‘National Unity’ , FAIR
Palestinian resistance in Gaza launches historic surprise attack against Israel, Peoples' Dispatch
Please support and visit The Brooks Blackboard's website for more news stories, and my brief bio.
How could Israel—so famous for its military might and advanced intelligence capabilities—have missed the warnings of such an attack? The coordinated nature of the rocket attacks and assaults on nearby towns make clear that this was a huge operation that took time and planning; paragliding attacks require practice runs that are not easy to hide (L’Orient Today, 10/9/23), for instance. Already, Israeli media have begun looking closely at the Israeli government’s actions to understand how and why this happened—in sharp contrast to US broadsheet opinion, which has largely rallied unquestioningly behind Israeli “national unity.”
In the wake of the Hamas attack, criticism of the Israeli government was widespread in the country’s media (Times of Israel, 10/8/23).
The Times of Israel (10/8/23) noted that Netanyahu was quoted telling Likud Party members in 2018 about his stance on Gaza, summarizing his quote saying “those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza”—meaning to Gaza’s Hamas-led government—as doing so maintains the “separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza,” thus dividing and conquering the Palestinians once and for all.
Gaza is sealed off, contained and highly surveilled (Middle East Institute, 4/27/22); it’s hard to believe no one in the Israeli government didn’t know something was being planned. The above ToI report quoted Assaf Pozilov, a reporter for the Israeli public broadcasting outlet Kan, saying before the attack, “The Islamic Jihad organization has started a noisy exercise very close to the border, in which they practiced launching missiles, breaking into Israel and kidnapping soldiers.”
An Israeli military veteran in the New York Post (10/9/23), hardly considered a pro-Palestine publication, blamed Israel for ignoring warnings from Egyptian intelligence about “something big.”
An editorial at Ha’aretz (10/8/23) put the blame squarely on Netanyahu, saying “he is the ultimate arbiter of Israeli foreign and security affairs.” It also pointed the finger at his right-wing policies on settlement expansion and allies with far-right extremist parties. “As expected, signs of an outbreak of hostilities began in the West Bank, where Palestinians started feeling the heavier hand of the Israeli occupier,” the editorial said, noting that “Hamas exploited the opportunity in order to launch its surprise attack.”
At the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (10/7/23), David Halperin, chief executive officer of the Israel Policy Forum, wrote that for the last year, “my colleagues and I…have joined with others in expressing concern about the nature of Israel’s far-right government.” The article—which questioned why Netanyahu’s government, famously hard-nosed on security, failed to protect the people—was reprinted in the Jerusalem Post (10/7/23).
Alon Pinkas (Ha’aretz, 10/9/23) wrote more directly: “Netanyahu should be removed as prime minister immediately—not ‘after the war,’ not after a plea bargain in his corruption trial, not after an election. Now.”
Unity, not accountability, was the key theme in US media (New York Times, 10/9/23).
But top US editorial boards are elsewhere, failing to ask questions about intelligence failures and Netanyahu’s hand on the wheel. Instead, they urged Israelis to put aside the concerns they’ve had about democracy, which brought throngs of liberal and left-wing Israelis into the streets to denounce the Netanyahu government’s neutering of an independent judiciary—a decision that has been likened to the “sham democracy” of Hungary (Foreign Policy, 8/3/23). This summer, military reservists joined the protests, causing alarm about the country’s military readiness (AP, 7/19/23).
A Wall Street Journal editorial (10/7/23) used the Hamas offensive to downplay Netanyahu’s judicial power grab, saying, “The internal Israeli debates over its Supreme Court look trivial next to the threat to Israel’s existence.”
The Journal also discounted any criticism of the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza, saying, “Israel has been allowing 17,000 Gazans to work in Israel each day and would like to allow more.” The editorial said “the assault also underscores the continuing malevolence of Iran,” because its government “cheered on the attacks,” “provided the rockets and weapons for Hamas,” and “may have encouraged the timing as well.”
A Washington Post editorial (10/7/23) did blame the right-wing government for initiating the internal political crisis, but hoped that the political factions would soon come together. “Early signs are that Israel’s leading politicians are putting aside their differences with Mr. Netanyahu to meet the emergency,” it said. Another Post editorial (10/9/23) suggested that the US could take a lesson from Israel on the “risks of disunity,” criticizing Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul for setting off a “distracting backlash.”
An editorial at Bloomberg (10/8/23) admitted that Netanyahu’s judicial reform efforts “have needlessly riven Israeli society” and that his aggressive military policies in the Occupied Territories worsened things for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Yet the news service waved that all away, saying, “But all that’s for another time.” It also said the “assault deserves only one response from the world: outrage, and unwavering support for Israel’s right to defend itself.”
The New York Times editorial board (10/9/23) said that though Israelis were right to march against Netanyahu’s judicial restrictions, the Hamas attack changed the terrain, because “Israel’s military strength depends on its national unity, and Israelis have now come together to defend themselves.”
Of course, Israel, while mobilizing for war, has moved toward forming a unity government (Reuters, 10/10/23).
The other problem, according to Shimrit Meir (New York Times, 10/8/23), is that “Israelis acted as if we could afford the luxury of a vicious internal fight.”
Worse, the Times gave column space (10/8/23) to Shimrit Meir, a former advisor to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, to cite Israel’s political division as military weakness, urging the country to close ranks.
Israel was vulnerable to an attack because years of dissolving Knessets and new elections left the country divided, Meir said, adding that Israel had “forgotten its second role in the world, as a place that embodies the idea of Jewish solidarity,” and that the people “instead found themselves engaged in an all-out war—not against terrorists but against themselves.”
The idea that the Israeli populace–which has long included right-wing militarists, religious fanatics of various Jewish sects, left-wing anti-occupation activists and techy neoliberals—has always been one big family in political consensus without fierce debate is laughable. But for Meir, the dissension in recent years is a dangerous aberration:
As a nation, Israelis acted as if we could afford the luxury of a vicious internal fight, the kind in which your political rival becomes your enemy. We let animosity, demagogy and the poisonous discourse of social media take over our society, rip apart the only Jewish army in the world. This is our tragedy. And it carries a lesson for other polarized democracies: There is someone out there waiting to gain from your self-made weakness. This someone is your enemy.
She said she hoped that Israel returned “to its senses, ending the political crisis and forming a unity government.”
In other words, not only is Knesset opposition to Netanyahu’s internal policies now viewed as some kind of softness on the Hamas attack, but it was the nerve of the people to organize to protect their institutions that opened up the nation to the latest offensive.
The Washington Post (10/9/23) published an exceptional op-ed that pointed to the occupation as the root of violence.
The Washington Post, to its credit, ran an op-ed (10/9/23) from a Palestinian journalist that didn’t necessarily put the blame squarely on Netanyahu, but called on the US to support Palestinian statehood. But Post columnist David Ignatius (10/8/23) jumped in on the idea that the quarrel over the Supreme Court contributed to Hamas’ offensive. “Did that political chaos contribute to the Gaza attacks? I don’t know,” he said, adding that the “domestic feuds of the past few months might have led Hamas and its backers in Tehran to believe that Israel was internally weak and, perhaps, vulnerable.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal ran fiercely jingoistic pieces from well-known American neoconservatives like Douglas Feith (10/9/23) and Daniel Pipes (10/8/23), while Mitch McConnell (10/9/23), the Republican Senate minority leader, called for more US support for Israel’s war effort. And far from questioning the Israeli government’s preparedness, law professor Eugene Kontorovich (10/8/23) said the US and others “must not only refrain from limiting Israel’s operation in Gaza but resolve to oust the genocidal regime in Tehran.”
While Israelis, including those in the media class, ponder if their country is run by inept and corrupt leadership, much of the US media skip all this and insinuate that now is no longer the time for debate, but a time to brush aside uncomfortable conversations in the face of war.
Originally published on FAIR.org, October 13th, 2023. Reprinted with permission.
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October 07, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch
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In a major turn of events, Hamas fighters in the early morning of October 7 launched a surprise offensive called “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel from Gaza. The operation involves land, sea and air attacks across Israel, breaking through a nearly 17-year long blockade.
As per reports, Hamas claims to have launched over 5,000 rockets across Israeli territory from Gaza. The rockets were reported to have hit as far north as Tel Aviv. The attack also included Hamas fighters pushing through the land and sea routes and penetrating into Israeli territory.
The offensive is viewed as the biggest escalation since 2021 in the ongoing violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip, which has been under a total Israeli land, air, and sea blockade since 2005. It is also reported to be the first time ever that Gazan fighters were able to conduct an armed operation into Israel on such a massive scale.
Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades has also declared that it has taken several Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage from southern Israel, with local reports estimating around 50 hostages.
According to Israeli authorities, at least 40 people are reported to have been killed in the attack and over 500 injured during the attack.
The multi-fronted attack prompted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare that Israel is “at war”. Israel has responded with airstrikes against Gaza and close to 200 Palestinians have already been killed.
Hamas leaders have stated that the attacks were in response to an escalation of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in both the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“We want the international community to stop atrocities in Gaza, against Palestinian people, our holy sites like Al-Aqsa. All these things are the reason behind starting this battle,” said Hamas spokesperson Khaled Qadomi.
“This is the day of the greatest battle to end the last occupation on earth,” said Mohammed Deif, the Hamas military commander. Deif has also called on the resistance movement in the West Bank, as well as “Arab and Islamic nations” to join the struggle against Israel.
Deif’s statement is widely seen as a message to the leaders of the Arab and Islamic world against forming normalization deals at the expense of Palestinians.
The Hamas offensive is possibly the first of its kind in decades wherein resistance fighters were able to launch on Israeli territory, sending shockwaves across the world.
As outlined by Hamas commanders, the operation is directly in response to the intensification of violence against Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces, especially under the new right-wing coalition government led by Netanyahu.
Israeli violence and oppression against Palestinians has increased substantially with deadly raids becoming increasingly regular. Prior to the attacks, Israeli forces had already killed over 224 Palestinians, including 38 children, already this year. Of the total, 187 were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and 37 in Gaza. This figure had already surpassed the record high of 178 killings in the whole of 2022.
The widespread occupation violence can also be seen in the 1,264 Palestinians currently being held in administrative detention without charge or trial, a two-decade high, as well as the 170 children that are currently being held in Israeli prisons.
This year has also witnessed an increase in Palestinian armed resistance, with both the formation of new groups and the strengthening of historic formations.
This article originally appeared at PeoplesDispatch.org on October 7th, 2023.
Please support and visit The Brooks Blackboard's website for more news stories, and this link for my brief bio.
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