Archives for category: International

Christiane Amanpour interviewed Robi Damelin, an Israeli peace activist, about her organization’s work to replace hatred with compassion. Damelin’s teenage son was killed by a Palestinian sniper 21 years ago, and she has dedicated her life since then to building a parents group of both Israelis and Palestinians.

She advocates listening to the stories of others. She recognizes the terrible suffering of Palestinians, and she works with Palestinian friends to foster understanding.

The hope for the future of both Israelis and Palestinians lies with enlightened leadership, which neither side has now. Damelin remains steadfast in believing that change will come, built on a mutual desire to end the cycle of fear and death.

Damelin speaks for me, and I hope, for most people. She wants peace and dignity for all sides, and an end to shouting and hatred, which only breeds more shouting and hatred.

Please watch the interview. It is inspiring.

Categories Equity, History, Hope, International, Love

The Netherlands: Party of Far-Right Islamophobe Wins Parliamentary Elections

By dianeravitch

December 3, 2023 //

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who has espoused anti-Islamic views for many years. He has campaigned on a platform of putting Dutch people first and blocking immigration from Muslim countries. He has been called the Dutch Trump. In the recent parliamentary elections, his party came in first among a field of 15 parties. It won 37 of 150 seats and will need to persuade other parties to join in a coalition in order to govern. In the past, Wilders has promised to close mosques and Islamic schools, but he is already moderating his hardline views to win over partners. Wilders will need 76 votes—39 more than he has now— to form a new government.

The BBC reported:

Veteran anti-Islam populist leader Geert Wilders has won a dramatic victory in the Dutch general election, with almost all votes counted.

After 25 years in parliament, his Freedom party (PVV) is set to win 37 seats, well ahead of his nearest rival, a left-wing alliance.

“The PVV can no longer be ignored,” he said. “We will govern.”

His win has shaken Dutch politics and it will send a shock across Europe too…

He told the BBC that “of course” he was willing to negotiate and compromise with other parties to become prime minister.

The PVV leader won after harnessing widespread frustration about migration, promising “borders closed” and putting on hold his promise to ban the Koran…

A Wilders victory will send shockwaves around Europe, as the Netherlands is one of the founding members of what became the European Union.

Nationalist and far-right leaders around Europe praised his achievement. In France, Marine Le Pen said it “confirms the growing attachment to the defence of national identities”.

Mr Wilders wants to hold a “Nexit” referendum to leave the EU, although he recognises there is no national mood to do so. He will have a hard time convincing any major prospective coalition partner to sign up to that.

He tempered his anti-Islam rhetoric in the run-up to the vote, saying there were more pressing issues at the moment and he was prepared to “put in the fridge” his policies on banning mosques and Islamic schools.

The strategy was a success, more than doubling his PVV party’s numbers in parliament.

For Americans, the elections in the Netherlands and Argentina raise an urgent question: are these elections a portent of the persistence of far-right politics or are they the after-effects of the Trump era? Are they the future or an echo of the past?

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, International, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Argentina Elects Wild-Eyed Libertarian as Its New President

By dianeravitch

December 3, 2023 //

Thom Hartmann analyzes the implications of the recent presidential election in Argentina. The victor was an unconventional candidate with bizarre ideas and minimal experience in office. We have already had our Trump. Now it’s Argentina’s turn.

Hartmann writes:

I hope I’m wrong, but I think I just saw the future of America if Republicans manage to sweep the 2024 elections, Trump or no Trump.

Argentina just embarked on a Grand Experiment, untried before in any developed country in the world; it’s one that multiple American billionaires have been pushing in the US ever since David Koch ran for VP on the Libertarian ticket in 1980.
When I arrived at the airport in Buenos Aires on Sunday morning this week, Election Day, I asked my cab driver who he’d be voting for and why.

The cab driver said he would assuredly vote for Javier Milei, because inglation was out of control and things couldn’t get worse.

I asked him about the Libertarian Congressman’s (and now newly elected president’s) plans to replace the national “Medicare for All” type of healthcare system Argentina has with American-style private, for-profit health insurance plans that people must finance out of their paychecks (if they have a job, otherwise they’re SOL); to end the nation’s free colleges; and his plan to turn all the nation’s public schools and prisons over to “entrepreneurs” to run for profit.

And what about his promise to end all government support for average people, including disability payments, unemployment insurance, and all forms of welfare? His saying that abortion is murder and he’ll re-criminalize it, along with ending women’s and queer rights?

He shrugged.

“Things can’t get any worse,” was his terse reply, adding that he’s driving an airport car as a second job because inflation has wiped out the income from his regular job. This working two and three jobs, he said, has become common across the country.

Argentina has been suffering from an ongoing economic crisis for decades, but it got really bad when the “currency crisis” hit the nation in 2018 after they complied with IMF demands, wiping out half the purchasing power of the peso virtually overnight.

Much like the United States, up until the 1960s Argentina had a top income tax bracket of 90%, which stabilized the economy and prevented massive wealth inequality. Subsequent administrations, including the military dictatorship, cut that down to 35%, like today’s US, with enough loopholes that, like America, most billionaires pay virtually nothing.

Like the US, they also cut taxation on capital gains (although they’ve taken them all the way down to zero), giving a huge boost to Argentina’s morbidly rich and stripping massive amounts of revenue from the federal government.

Their draconian tax cuts, like Reagan’s, drove huge federal deficits. Right wingers, citing the deficits, demanded cuts in social programs, but, until now, weren’t successful in gutting Social Security and other social programs in either country.

In part, because the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency, we can sell debt (treasuries) to finance our deficits; Argentina has a much harder time, because nobody else uses the peso and international investors are wary, so they’ve been pursuing a policy of printing money and borrowing from the IMF, which has debased their currency leading, in part, to today’s massive inflation.
Inflation this year has been over 100%, exacerbated by previous presidents experimenting with neoliberalism as demanded by the IMF, irresponsible borrowing, along with several years of climate change-induced drought which have badly damaged Argentina’s agricultural production, driving up food prices.

Milei’s opponent in Sunday’s runoff election was the nation’s finance minister, so he took much of the blame for the state of things while Milei — often referred to as “Argentina’s Trump” because he’s a wealthy former TV star, tantric sex instructor, and crackpot economist with no governmental experience other than his first year in parliament — promised to dump the rapidly devaluing peso and replace it with the US dollar. (He campaigned carrying around a chainsaw, saying he was going to take it to “welfare,” the “deep state,” and the nation’s social programs.)

When Milei won the top slot in the runoff election a few months ago, his victory caused the peso to fall further, as markets anticipated mass chaos resulting from the possible implementation of his plan to abandon the Argentinian currency if he won the general election. (It’s going to require huge cooperation from the IMF, and they don’t seem inclined to want to help.)

His primary win set off a run on the peso and produced a further currency devaluation (inflation is at 143% today) which, in turn, caused greater voter discontent. Ironically, that funneled more votes to Milei, who overwhelmingly (55%) won Sunday’s election.

The Libertarianism that Milei and American politicians like Rand Paul and Mike Lee embrace, as I’ve noted previously, is a political/economic system that was invented and named in the 1950s by a front group for the real estate lobby to rationalize their opposition to rent control, which was then spreading out of New York City and across America.

It basically argues, as Koch did in his 1980 campaign, that the only “commons” (things publicly owned and administered) a country can legitimately claim are the police and the courts.
They, in turn, have the primary job of making sure that property rights of wealthy people supersede all other rights, including the rights to healthcare, education, clean air and water, protection from abuse by employers, housing, and anti-poverty programs (including Social Security). All of these, Libertarians will tell you, are simply vestigial forms of socialism (or communism) and should be turned over to billionaires or giant corporations.
Libertarians’ key rationalization for this is that “private industry is always more efficient than government,” an argument that, while false, anybody who’s ever stood in line for an hour at the DMV can understand.

Ever since the 1980s, when Reagan embraced the libertarian worldview claiming that, “The nine most frightening words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’” the GOP has increasingly embraced Libertarian policies. Republican presidential candidates now compete for who can gut or shut down the most federal government agencies, from the EPA to the DOE to, well, ask Rick Perry.
Milei haș taken it so far as to say that poor people should feel free to sell their body parts, children, and organs to wealthy people on private, unregulated exchanges to pay their rent and medical expenses.

Billionaires and big corporations love Libertarianism because they end up with all the formerly-government-run sectors that they can then turn into profit centers to rip off the public. And shutting down regulatory agencies like the EPA, Interior, and USDA means they no longer have to pay for pollution controls, food safety systems, and other pesky protections for the “little people.”

Probably the example most Americans would recognize is Medicare Advantage, a privatized health insurance scam for seniors that makes billions in profits every week for our largest insurance companies while routinely refusing to pay for doctor’s visits, procedures, and even hospitalizations. It’s literally killing people by denying them care.

Milei ran on the promise of shutting down 10 of Argentina’s 18 federal agencies, throwing most of his countrymen, women, and children into the arms of the nation’s largest and richest corporations and the billionaires who own them.
He’s also a climate change denier, winning him — like Trump — the support of the nation’s fossil fuel industry, claiming the country’s drought and wildfire problems are part of natural climate variations.

Milei is a climate change denier, so count on Argentina to do nothing to mitigate climate change.

Milei claims that any attempts to “fix the problem of hunger” or “fix the problem of poverty,” or even deal with unemployment is “communism or socialism”; all of these problems should be left to billionaires and giant corporations to solve through private charity or minimum wage work.

Programs like public schools, the free college system that Argentina has that allows any capable student to become a doctor or lawyer at no cost, their national healthcare system, housing supports, Social Security, and even a minimum wage and unemployment insurance are “abhorrent,” Milei says. He claims that “social justice” is simply another word for “theft from rich people.”

Rightwing Republicans were giddy about Argentina’s new president.

Trump posted to his vanity Nazi-infested social media site, “MAKE ARGENTINA GREAT AGAIN!” while Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted, “May the spirits of {neoliberalism’s founders] Mises & Hayek be with you…”

Because Milei doesn’t have a parliamentary majority, it’s unlikely any effort to replace the peso with the dollar will to go anywhere, but all bets are off on his reconfiguring the federal government to trash the poor, gut social services, and privatize the nation’s schools, colleges, and medical system. Converting the country to dollars, however, would require a massive stock of the US currency that is simply unavailable within the country; the World Bank is suggesting they are unlikely to finance necessary reserves…

His victory is an international marker, of sorts, for America’s billionaires and largest corporations who share Milei’s desire to end liberal democracy and the so-called “welfare state” both in Argentina and around the world.

In its wake, expect to see the GOP double down on Milei-like language and policies as they try to drive America back toward their own libertarian ideal, which hundreds of years ago in Europe was simply known as “feudalism.”

Categories Accountability, Elections, Extremism, International, Trump

Jeffrey Herf: How Hamas Fooled the Left in the U.S. and Europe

By dianeravitch

December 3, 2023 //

Jeffrey Herf is a distinguished university professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the author of Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Since I am posting this exposé of Hamas, let me make clear that I oppose the Netanyahu government. I oppose the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. I deplore the wanton killing of civilians. I was sickened by the barbaric murders, rapes, pillage, and hostage-taking on October 7. I support a two-state solution (Hamas does not). I pray for a time when two self-governing states live side by side in peace.

In this article, Herf explores the sympathy of leftists and liberals in the West for Hamas, a terrorist organization. He analyzes the Hamas charter of 1988 and its revision in 2017, whose language was intended to place Hamas in the mainstream of leftist ideology about resistance to colonialism and to obscure its historic anti-Semitism and its determination to extinguish the state of Israel.

He begins:

The mass murders by Hamas on October 7 were the outcome of its core ideology, clearly expressed in its founding charter of 1988. That “ideology of mass murder” has its origins in the fusion of Nazism and Islamism that first took place in the 1930s and 40s, and then persisted in the Islamist politics of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, of which Hamas is an offshoot. Hamas’ ability to gain supporters, first in the universities, now in the streets, rests as well on its revised charter of 2017, which draws on the anti-Zionism of the secular Left. Hence a close reading of the revised charter, whose language and arguments now echo on campuses and in the streets, is in order.

The authors of the Hamas charter of 1988 were explicit about their ideological connections to the radical antisemitic conspiracy theories that had emerged in 20^th-century Europe, and to the virulent hatred of Jews, Judaism, and therefore Israel that they derived from their anti-modernist Islamist interpretation of Islam. Yet the deadly implications of this document received far too little attention in the mainstream media of the West, despite being easily accessible online in English and German translations. Instead, an objectively pro-Hamas Left began developing among academics in Europe, Britain, and the United States, as became apparent in 2014 during one of Hamas’ attacks on Israel. They found themselves in the peculiar position as leftists of repeating Hamas’ arguments.

They did so because they had adopted the view of Israel that had become the common coin of the international Left since the 1960s. According to that view, the Jewish state is in reality a colonialist and racist endeavor built on the expulsion of the indigenous population in 1948. Relying on that profound misinterpretation of the events surrounding Israel’s founding, they were willing to make common cause with an organization that is profoundly hostile to the modernist values that had long been associated with at least some segments of leftist politics.

Seventy years of Soviet and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) propaganda mischaracterizing Zionism and Israel, equally unbalanced UN resolutions, and New Left romance about third-world revolutions had placed Israel on the “wrong” side and the Palestinians on the “right” side of the global divide between oppressors and oppressed. In the course of doing so, a distinctive leftist form of antisemitism, expressed in the language of anti-Zionism and support for armed attacks on Israel, fostered an opening to support not only the secular PLO but also Hamas. In Britain, that support and leftist antisemitism gained political influence in 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn won election as the leader of the Labour Party. This bizarre fusion of the Islamist Right and the secular Left was the first time since the Hitler-Stalin pact that leftist organizations made common cause with a movement of the extreme right, and the only time I can recall when they supported a group rooted in religious fanaticism. Their shared antagonism to Israel surmounted the contrasting ideological starting points.

At the same time, the Hamas charter of 1988 remained an embarrassment at least for some leftist and liberal academics and intellectuals, for the anti-Zionist Left in the universities, and for activist organizations of the left. Its celebration of antisemitic conspiracy theories voiced by the Nazi regime was impossible to deny or justify, and its calls to take up arms against the Jews were unequivocal. Its selective quotations from the Koran offered very uncomfortable evidence that Hamas—in the tradition of Islamists from Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hassan al-Banna, and Sayyid Qutb, all associated with the Muslim Brotherhood—defined Islam as an inherently anti-Jewish religion. For those who thought like Karl Marx that religion was the opiate of the people, the Hamas charter of 1988 revealed that such a theologically induced drug had an Islamic component as well.

The revisions in the 2017 Hamas charter were intended to resolve those issues and present Hamas as a humanitarian organization that opposed Zionism, not Jews. The new language succeeded to the extent that leftist groups were celebrating the massacre of October 7, 2023, as soon as it happened.

Please open the link to read the rest of the article.

Categories Extremism, Fascism, History, International, Religion

One Brief Shining Moment When Peace in the Middle East Seemed Possible

By dianeravitch

November 30, 2023 //

David Kurlander, assistant to Preet Bharara at Cafe Insider, takes us back to the Clinton era, when peace between the Palestinians and Israel seemed to be a real possibility.

Kurlander writes:

The situation in Israel and Gaza is continuing to escalate, spawning overlapping humanitarian crises, regional instability, and fiercely competing narratives of culpability. Amid the carnage, President Biden visited Tel Aviv on Wednesday to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden’s diplomatic move both mirrors and devastatingly diverges from another visit concerning Gaza by an American leader: President Clinton and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat’s optimistic December 1998 meeting in Gaza City.

In sharp contrast to today, the outward dynamic between Israel, the United States, and Gaza in late 1998 was briefly hopeful.

I am by no means an expert, and I’m wary – given the extreme sensitivity of this issue right now – of being glib or biased in any way here, but I’m still going to endeavor to give a brief leadup to the visit: Five years earlier, in September 1993, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin had signed the Oslo Accords, a plan to transfer governing control of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority over the following five years.

In November 1995, an Israeli right-wing extremist hostile to Oslo assassinated Rabin during a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu, skeptical of Oslo’s aims, came into the Prime Ministership and – at least in part spurred by a series of suicide bombings by Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv– stalled the proposed transfer of Gaza and the West Bank and supported the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.

Still, at an October 1998 meeting in Maryland brokered by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Arafat and Netanyahu signed the Wye River Memorandum. Most notably, the agreement pushed Netanyahu to resume the transfer of 14.1% of the West Bank to Palestinian control.

The provisions on the Israeli side also concerned Gaza. They included declarations of support for the opening of an airport in Gaza, and for safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank.

On the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) side, Arafat agreed to remove several controversial articles from the 1968 Palestinian National Covenant, including those calling for Palestinian “armed struggle” and one calling Zionism “fascist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods.” The PLO also agreed to anti-terrorism enforcement efforts.

In his remarks at Wye River, Netanyahu underscored the significance of the compromise: “This is an important moment to give a secure and peaceful future for our children and the children of our neighbors, the Palestinians. We have seen this moment.”

Two months later, Clinton traveled to Gaza. When he arrived on December 14th, 1998, he first participated in a ribbon-cutting with Arafat at the brand-new Gaza Airport. Next, he traveled to the main cultural center in Gaza City, where he and Arafat spoke before 1,200 civic leaders, including some 450 members of the Palestine National Council.

The speeches are available in their entirety on the William J. Clinton President Library’s YouTube channel.

The words of the two leaders are full of hope, even if they ultimately did not totally reflect the realities on the ground. Arafat both called out the pain that the occupation had caused Palestinians, but also argued, in decidedly poetic terms, that a new future was dawning:

Mr. President, the beginning of this century marked a major injustice inflicted on our Palestinian people. Today, we see a nearing, shining light. We feel a renewed hope due to your support. We hope that the end of this century will witness the correction of the injustice and the inauguration of a new era: The era of peace and freedom, peace of the brave. Didn’t I tell you that I see that light at the end of the tunnel?

Arafat predicted that Palestinians would embrace the new aims of Wye River and help to defend the security protocols outlined in the agreement:

Our people will not go back to the ways before peace. And we will not allow or tolerate any violence or anyone to mess with the security of both sides, both sides, both sides. And we will confront all attempts of violence and jeopardizing security no matter what is the source, no matter where is the source.

Arafat ended his remarks by broadening out his wishes for peace to the entire region:

And now, my brothers and sisters — and here I am talking from my heart to your hearts — we are talking for peace for the Palestinian land for the Holy Land, in Israel and in Palestine, and in Golan, and in South Lebanon, and in the Middle East.

Clinton followed Arafat. He stopped short of calling for a Palestinian state explicitly – something that only former President Carter had done to that point – but he opened his remarks with a vision of Gaza, assisted by the airport, as an independent member of the global economic and political community:

Hillary and I, along with Chairman and Mrs. Arafat, celebrated a place that will become a magnet for planes from throughout the Middle East and beyond, bringing you a future in which Palestinians can travel directly to the far corners of the world; a future in which it is easier and cheaper to bring materials, technology and expertise in and out of Gaza; a future in which tourists and traders can flock here, to this beautiful place on the Mediterranean; a future, in short, in which the Palestinian people are connected to the world.

Addressing Israelis, Clinton acknowledged the difficult road to implementing Oslo, and nodded obliquely to Netanyahu’s support for settlements and aversion to the process:

I want the people of Israel to know that for many Palestinians, five years after Oslo, the benefits of this process remain remote; that for too many Palestinians lives are hard, jobs are scarce, prospects are uncertain and personal grief is great.

I know that tremendous pain remains as a result of losses suffered from violence, the separation of families, the restrictions on the movement of people and goods. I understand your concerns about settlement activity, land confiscation and home demolitions. I understand your concerns, and theirs, about unilateral statements that could prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations. I understand, in short, that there’s still a good deal of misunderstanding five years after the beginning of this remarkable process.

Clinton then focused in on children, detailing parallel interactions from the previous day with Palestinian and Israeli children whose parents were the victims of violence between the two sides:

I’ve had two profoundly emotional experiences in the last less than 24 hours. I was with Chairman Arafat and four little children came to see me whose fathers are in Israeli prisons. Last night, I met some little children whose fathers had been killed in conflict with Palestinians, at the dinner that Prime Minister Netanyahu had for me. Those children brought tears to my eyes. We have to find a way for both sets of children to get their lives back and to go forward.

I ask you to remember these experiences I had with these two groups of children. If I had met them in reverse order I would not have known which ones were Israeli and which Palestinian. If they had all been lined up in a row and I had seen their tears, I could not tell whose father was dead and whose father was in prison, or what the story of their lives were, making up the grief that they bore. We must acknowledge that neither side has a monopoly on pain or virtue.

As he wound up his address, Clinton explicitly thanked the Council for ratifying Arafat’s agreement to cut out the most intense Articles of the Covenant, arguing that Israel would respond with generosity and empathy to the change:

I thank you for your rejection — fully, finally and forever – of the passages in the Palestinian Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. For they were the ideological underpinnings of a struggle renounced at Oslo. By revoking them once and for all, you have sent, I say again, a powerful message not to the government, but to the people of Israel. You will touch people on the street there. You will reach their hearts there.

And – just as Clinton had highlighted the pain of the Israeli occupation, he also criticized Palestinians who had supported the acts of violence by Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad in the years since Oslo:

The time has come to sanctify your holy ground with genuine forgiveness and reconciliation. Every influential Palestinian, from teacher to journalist, from politician to community leader, must make this a mission to banish from the minds of children glorifying suicide bombers; to end the practice of speaking peace in one place and preaching hatred in another; to teach school children the value of peace and the waste of war; to break the cycle of violence. Our great American prophet, Martin Luther King, once said, “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

I believe you have gained more in five years of peace than in 45 years of war. I believe that what we are doing today, working together for security, will lead to further gains and changes in the heart. I believe that our work against terrorism, as you stand strong, will be rewarded – for that must become a fact of the past. It must never be a part of your future. Let me say this as clearly as I can: no matter how sharp a grievance or how deep a hurt, there is no justification for killing innocents.

Like Arafat, Clinton ended with a sweeping and forward-looking note, listing other diametrically-opposed societies who had found peace over the course of the previous century and arguing that Israel and Palestine were on their way:

Think of all the conflicts in the 20th century that many people thought were permanent that have been healed or are healing. Two great world wars between the French and the Germans; they’re best friends. The Americans and the Russians, the whole Cold War; now we have a constructive partnership. The Irish Catholics and Protestants; the Chinese and the Japanese; the Black and white South Africans; the Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims in Bosnia – all have turned from conflict to cooperation.

Obviously, Israel and Palestine have not joined the list of reconciled adversaries that Clinton outlined. And despite Arafat and Clinton’s soaring oratory, many on the ground met the meeting with skepticism.

In the Jabalia refugee camp, 55-year-old Abdul Jalil Freih was pessimistic about the prospects for Palestinian autonomy, telling the Los Angeles Times, “Clinton will not do anything for us. It doesn’t matter to us whether he comes or goes.”

Sure enough, 1999 and 2000 would be deeply painful. The Netanyahu government would collapse shortly after the Clinton and Arafat addresses, in part due to the Prime Minister’s opposition to Wye River and further implementation of the Accords. The 2000 Camp David Summit between Clinton, Arafat, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak would end without an agreement. And the violent Second Intifada – stoked, arguably, by both a bellicose and violent turn by Arafat and by Israeli politician Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount – broke out soon thereafter. A blame game followed: the Israeli government viewed Arafat as backing the Intifada, while Palestinians highlighted Israeli resistance to the Accords.

But even if the Clinton and Arafat speeches were ultimately unfulfilled visions of a peaceful future, they can perhaps show that the despair of the current moment has not always been total, and that the prospect for diplomacy and non-violent change can some day be realized in the wrenching conflict.

For more on the current conflict, listen to Preet and Carnegie Endowment for Peace Senior Fellow Aaron David Miller’s conversation last week on Stay Tuned with Preet. And for more on the history of Gaza, read my Time Machine article, “‘History is Unfortunately Repeating Itself’: The Aroyo Murders, Ariel Sharon, and the Pain of 1971 Gaza,” written during the 2021 Israel-Palestine Crisis.

And head to my Twitter account for supplemental archival threads on each Time Machine piece: @DavidKurlander.

Categories Accountability, International

Randi and Sharon in Israel Speaking of Compassion and Sorrow and the Path Forward

By dianeravitch

November 26, 2023 //

Randi Weingarten and her wife, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, flew to Israel to commiserate with friends and to sit shiva for the nation. They express a strong commitment to both Israelis and Palestinians and a hope that they can one day live in peace as neighbors, in two independent states. They speak out against the Netanyahu government, whose harsh policies towards Palestinians have intensified hatred. They recognize the brutality of the October 7 massacre without qualification. I am not a Zionist but their views and mine are aligned. Neither terrorism nor indiscriminate bombing of civilians brings peace closer.

The progressive publication Haaretz interviewed them:

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has traditionally had few qualms about being a member of a minority – as a lesbian rabbi, it is practically her brand. But in the days and weeks following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, she says it has been her identity as a liberal Zionist that has made her feel like a member of a minority.

Kleinbaum is the spiritual leader of New York’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBTQ synagogue. The space she and wife Randi Weingarten have long occupied – as high-profile American-Jewish leaders who are deeply connected to Israel, but also outspoken advocates for Palestinian rights and opponents of the occupation – is not a comfortable place to be right now.

Even within the pioneering congregation Kleinbaum has led for more than 30 years, she says the atmosphere is tense and full of “tremendous anxiety,” as the war continues with no clear resolution in sight…

“You know, the LGBT world is so focused on non-binary thinking. We’ve rejected the binary about sexuality, we’ve rejected the binary about gender identity,” Kleinbaum notes. “And yet at the same time, so many in this world have adopted a very binary approach to Israel-Palestine issues.”

Her community, she adds, is not at all immune from the expectations of conflict in American culture, in which “the good guys are always weak and the bad guys are strong. And people want a two-hour Hollywood movie in which at the end of it, the good guys overcome and vanquish the bad guys, the lights go up and you walk outside. The message I keep bringing to the congregation is that life is not a Hollywood movie.”

She tries at every opportunity, she says, to explain to those on both extremes that simple solutions are not available, and “there is not a good guy or a bad guy; there is not one victim and one perpetrator.”

That message is not always welcome. In far-left progressive circles, there are those who “believe that Israel kind of deserved what it got” on October 7 and “what Hamas did was an act of justified violence.” The fact that she “completely rejects and totally condemns” such views has made some “very angry” with her, Kleinbaum says.

At the same time, she says others are upset with her “because I continue to insist on the full equality of the Palestinian people, and I continue to stand against the occupation. I will continue to stand by the truth that I’ve said forever and is not new: Israel cannot oppress people.”

Union head Weingarten says she often finds herself in a similar position. “On the same day, I will be criticized by someone from AIPAC for being a Palestinian lover, and criticized by somebody from one of our local union branches that I have not spoken out strongly enough against Israel.”

She has been slammed in union circles for standing up for Israel’s right to defend itself, including during a AFL-CIO meeting that The New York Times described as a “raw” debate among top union officials on the Israel-Hamas conflict. She was accused by the far left of “green-lighting Zionist war crimes.”

Kleinbaum and Weingarten spoke to Haaretz on the second day of a Thanksgiving week trip to Israel, following breakfast with members of what they call their “Israeli family”: Israelis who were members of Kleinbaum’s synagogue during stints in New York, former congregants who made aliyah and other friends.

The couple note that during their last visit, in April, their friends were wearing pro-democracy T-shirts protesting the proposed judicial overhaul. Now these same people wear T-shirts with photographs of hostages on them. Like so many other Israelis, their friends have suffered losses, and some had stopped by on their way to or from 30-day memorials of loved ones killed on October 7.

“We’re so horrified and condemn what Hamas did in the strongest and most horrific terms, and we feel like we’re making a shivah visit to the whole country,” Kleinbaum says…

Both women felt they needed to be in Israel now, Kleinbaum says, “to absorb the energy here and really listen to the perspective of people who are here and to … pay our shivah call after the biggest pogrom that has happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust – and, just as importantly, also listen to Palestinian voices inside of Israel, and to listen to the voices that are fighting for shared society.” They intend to take those views back to New York.

“We have to keep telling the deep truths that those of us who are progressive Zionists understand: that there is no future except a shared future. And we have to keep reinforcing the message that this is the land with two peoples, two very complicated peoples, and that we continue to hope for a future in which both peoples can live with justice and peace and security,” Kleinbaum says.

She admits she doesn’t know where events will lead, but right now it “feels like we’re at an inflection point not only for the State of Israel, for Palestinians and Israeli Jews, but for the Jewish people. It feels like we’re at a very significant moment of Jewish history, including for Diaspora Jewish life…”

Both recognize that the failed leadership of Netanyahu and his cabinet of far-right ministers has alienated many progressive Jews.

Weingarten says “polls bear out that the Democratic Party is still supportive of Joe Biden’s approach to Israel and Gaza,” but there is still considerable pressure from those harshly critical of the amount of force used by the Israel Defense Forces, mounting calls for a unilateral cease-fire, along with a faction that does, in fact, challenge Israel’s right to exist.

Much of this, she believes, is a direct result of the images coming out of Gaza, and Israel’s decision not to widely circulate images of the horrors of October 7 in real time. Because of that decision, “the trauma, the massacre and the pogrom is just not well known and not understood in the same way as what happened to the [Gazan] hospitals” and the “sheer amount of death” in Gaza…

Biden is “a staunch ally of Israeli democracy and also supports Palestinians: he doesn’t support Israel to the detriment of the Palestinians, even though people accuse him of that. And if the Israeli right really doesn’t understand this, then they are really threatening the future of President Biden’s support. Because he cares deeply about Palestine; he cares about both people. That’s why he has said over and over again that there has to be a two-state solution,” Weingarten says…

And despite the fact that “extreme voices are the loudest right now and people are looking for simple solutions,” there are more people that share common ground with the president – particularly in America’s Jewish community.

“I believe that the majority of American Jews are actually looking for this vision,” Weingarten says. “They want to hear that they can stand with Israel, and stand with the rights of Palestinians. They don’t have to choose. And yes, today it’s a very narrow place to be. But I reject the binary that forces a simple choice. And even though it’s not an easy place to be, I believe if we keep standing in this place and pushing the message out there, more and more people will join us.”

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Extremism, History, International, Religion

President Biden: The U.S. Will Not Retreat in the Fights Against Putin and Hamas

By dianeravitch

November 18, 2023 //

President Biden published an opinion article in The Washington Post today, explaining his administration’s policies in confronting Putin and Hamas. His statement shows that he has a long-term vision to end the cycle of violence in the Mideast. I applaud his wisdom and experience.

He wrote:

Today, the world faces an inflection point, where the choices we make — including in the crises in Europe and the Middle East — will determine the direction of our future for generations to come.
What will our world look like on the other side of these conflicts?

Will we deny Hamas the ability to carry out pure, unadulterated evil? Will Israelis and Palestinians one day live side by side in peace, with two states for two peoples?

Will we hold Vladimir Putin accountable for his aggression, so the people of Ukraine can live free and Europe remains an anchor for global peace and security?

And the overarching question: Will we relentlessly pursue our positive vision for the future, or will we allow those who do not share our values to drag the world to a more dangerous and divided place?

Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests — and for the good of the entire world.

The United States is the essential nation. We rally allies and partners to stand up to aggressors and make progress toward a brighter, more peaceful future. The world looks to us to solve the problems of our time. That is the duty of leadership, and America will lead. For if we walk away from the challenges of today, the risk of conflict could spread, and the costs to address them will only rise. We will not let that happen.

That conviction is at the root of my approach to supporting the people of Ukraine as they continue to defend their freedom against Putin’s brutal war.
We know from two world wars in the past century that when aggression in Europe goes unanswered, the crisis does not burn itself out. It draws America in directly. That’s why our commitment to Ukraine today is an investment in our own security. It prevents a broader conflict tomorrow.

We are keeping American troops out of this war by supporting the brave Ukrainians defending their freedom and homeland. We are providing them with weapons and economic assistance to stop Putin’s drive for conquest, before the conflict spreads farther.

The United States is not doing this alone. More than 50 nations have joined us to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself. Our partners are shouldering much of the economic responsibility for supporting Ukraine. We have also built a stronger and more united NATO, which enhances our security through the strength of our allies, while making clear that we will defend every inch of NATO territory to deter further Russian aggression. Our allies in Asia are standing with us as well to support Ukraine and hold Putin accountable, because they understand that stability in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific are inherently connected.

We have also seen throughout history how conflicts in the Middle East can unleash consequences around the globe.

We stand firmly with the Israeli people as they defend themselves against the murderous nihilism of Hamas. On Oct. 7, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people, including 35 American citizens, in the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. Infants and toddlers, mothers and fathers, grandparents, people with disabilities, even Holocaust survivors were maimed and murdered. Entire families were massacred in their homes. Young people were gunned down at a music festival. Bodies riddled with bullets and burned beyond recognition. And for over a month, the families of more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas, including babies and Americans, have been living in hell, anxiously waiting to discover whether their loved ones are alive or dead. At the time of this writing, my team and I are working hour by hour, doing everything we can to get the hostages released.

And while Israelis are still in shock and suffering the trauma of this attack, Hamas has promised that it will relentlessly try to repeat Oct. 7. It has said very clearly that it will not stop.

The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own and a future free from Hamas. I, too, am heartbroken by the images out of Gaza and the deaths of many thousands of civilians, including children. Palestinian children are crying for lost parents. Parents are writing their child’s name on their hand or leg so they can be identified if the worst happens. Palestinian nurses and doctors are trying desperately to save every precious life they possibly can, with little to no resources. Every innocent Palestinian life lost is a tragedy that rips apart families and communities.

Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today — it should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of unceasing violence, and build something stronger in Gaza and across the Middle East so that history does not keep repeating itself.

Just weeks before Oct. 7, I met in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The main subject of that conversation was a set of substantial commitments that would help both Israel and the Palestinian territories better integrate into the broader Middle East. That is also the idea behind the innovative economic corridor that will connect India to Europe through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, which I announced together with partners at the Group of 20 summit in India in early September. Stronger integration between countries creates predictable markets and draws greater investment. Better regional connection — including physical and economic infrastructure — supports higher employment and more opportunities for young people. That’s what we have been working to realize in the Middle East. It is a future that has no place for Hamas’s violence and hate, and I believe that attempting to destroy the hope for that future is one reason that Hamas instigated this crisis.

This much is clear: A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Though right now it may seem like that future has never been further away, this crisis has made it more imperative than ever.

A two-state solution — two peoples living side by side with equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity — is where the road to peace must lead. Reaching it will take commitments from Israelis and Palestinians, as well as from the United States and our allies and partners. That work must start now.

To that end, the United States has proposed basic principles for how to move forward from this crisis, to give the world a foundation on which to build.

To start, Gaza must never again be used as a platform for terrorism. There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory. And after this war is over, the voices of Palestinian people and their aspirations must be at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza.

As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution. I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank.

The international community must commit resources to support the people of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, including interim security measures, and establish a reconstruction mechanism to sustainably meet Gaza’s long-term needs. And it is imperative that no terrorist threats ever again emanate from Gaza or the West Bank.

If we can agree on these first steps, and take them together, we can begin to imagine a different future. In the months ahead, the United States will redouble our efforts to establish a more peaceful, integrated and prosperous Middle East — a region where a day like Oct. 7 is unthinkable.

In the meantime, we will continue working to prevent this conflict from spreading and escalating further. I ordered two U.S. carrier groups to the region to enhance deterrence. We are going after Hamas and those who finance and facilitate its terrorism, levying multiple rounds of sanctions to degrade Hamas’s financial structure, cutting it off from outside funding and blocking access to new funding channels, including via social media. I have also been clear that the United States will do what is necessary to defend U.S. troops and personnel stationed across the Middle East — and we have responded multiple times to the strikes against us.

I also immediately traveled to Israel — the first American president to do so during wartime — to show solidarity with the Israeli people and reaffirm to the world that the United States has Israel’s back. Israel must defend itself. That is its right. And while in Tel Aviv, I also counseled Israelis against letting their hurt and rage mislead them into making mistakes we ourselves have made in the past.

From the very beginning, my administration has called for respecting international humanitarian law, minimizing the loss of innocent lives and prioritizing the protection of civilians. Following Hamas’s attack on Israel, aid to Gaza was cut off, and food, water and medicine reserves dwindled rapidly. As part of my travel to Israel, I worked closely with the leaders of Israel and Egypt to reach an agreement to restart the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance to Gazans. Within days, trucks with supplies again began to cross the border. Today, nearly 100 aid trucks enter Gaza from Egypt each day, and we continue working to increase the flow of assistance manyfold. I’ve also advocated for humanitarian pauses in the conflict to permit civilians to depart areas of active fighting and to help ensure that aid reaches those in need. Israel took the additional step to create two humanitarian corridors and implement daily four-hour pauses in the fighting in northern Gaza to allow Palestinian civilians to flee to safer areas in the south.

This stands in stark opposition to Hamas’s terrorist strategy: hide among Palestinian civilians. Use children and innocents as human shields. Position terrorist tunnels beneath hospitals, schools, mosques and residential buildings. Maximize the death and suffering of innocent people — Israeli and Palestinian. If Hamas cared at all for Palestinian lives, it would release all the hostages, give up arms, and surrender the leaders and those responsible for Oct. 7.

As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace. To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.

And here at home, in moments when fear and suspicion, anger and rage run hard, we have to work even harder to hold on to the values that make us who we are. We’re a nation of religious freedom and freedom of expression. We all have a right to debate and disagree and peacefully protest, but without fear of being targeted at schools or workplaces or elsewhere in our communities.

In recent years, too much hate has been given too much oxygen, fueling racism and an alarming rise in antisemitism in America. That has intensified in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. Jewish families worry about being targeted in school, while wearing symbols of their faith on the street or otherwise going about their daily lives. At the same time, too many Muslim Americans, Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans, and so many other communities, are outraged and hurting, fearing the resurgence of the Islamophobia and distrust we saw after 9/11.

We can’t stand by when hate rears its head. We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate and bias. We must renounce violence and vitriol and see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans.

In a moment of so much violence and suffering — in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza and so many other places — it can be difficult to imagine that something different is possible. But we must never forget the lesson learned time and again throughout our history: Out of great tragedy and upheaval, enormous progress can come. More hope. More freedom. Less rage. Less grievance. Less war. We must not lose our resolve to pursue those goals, because now is when clear vision, big ideas and political courage are needed most. That is the strategy that my administration will continue to lead — in the Middle East, Europe and around the globe. Every step we take toward that future is progress that makes the world safer and the United States of America more secure.

Categories Biden, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Freedom, International

Hillary Clinton: Hamas Must Go

By dianeravitch

November 17, 2023 //

Hillary Clinton wrote in The Atlantic about why Hamas must go. It is a barrier to any future peace, she writes. It is a terrorist organization that has consistently blocked a two-state solution. It shamelessly uses the Palestinians as human shields. As the Washington Post recently documented, the massacre of October 7 was intended by Hamas to provoke an overwhelming Israeli military attack, which was sure to turn public opinion to the Gazans and eclipse any memory of the savage murders, rapes, and brutality of October 7. And for maximum impact, the Hamas terrorists wore body cams to document their atrocities.

She wrote:

One morning in November 2012, I knocked on the door of President Barack Obama’s suite in the Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, so early that he was barely out of bed. I had an urgent question that could not wait for the president to finish his morning coffee: Should we try to broker a cease-fire in Gaza? Then, like now, the extreme Islamist terror group Hamas had sparked a crisis by indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians. Israel had responded with air strikes, and a ground invasion of Gaza appeared imminent.

The president and I debated whether I should leave Asia, fly to the Middle East, and try to negotiate a halt to the fighting before the situation escalated further. The reason to go was clear: Stopping the violence would save lives and prevent the conflict from spiraling into a wider regional war.

The reasons not to go were more nuanced but also compelling. President Obama and I were both wary of suggesting that Israel did not have a right and a responsibility to defend itself against terrorists. If Hamas did not face consequences for its attacks, it would be emboldened to carry out more. We also knew Hamas had a history of breaking agreements and could not be trusted. For that matter, neither side seemed ready to pull back from the brink. Diplomacy is all about leverage and timing. If I tried and failed to negotiate a cease-fire, it would reduce America’s credibility in the region and lower the likelihood that we could reengage successfully later.

In the end, we decided the risks were worth it. I headed to the region and began intense shuttle diplomacy among Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Late into the night in Cairo, I went line by line through a proposal I’d worked out with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The Egyptians were on the phone with Hamas leaders in Gaza. Finally, I was able to announce that all parties had agreed to a truce.

On the long plane ride home, I asked my aide Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, if Hamas was abiding by the agreement we’d just struck. So far, he told me, the answer was yes. I was relieved that we’d prevented further bloodshed, but I worried that all we’d really managed to do was put a lid on a simmering cauldron that would likely boil over again in the future.

Unfortunately, that fear proved correct. In 2014, Hamas violated the cease-fire and started another war by abducting Israeli hostages and launching rocket attacks against civilians. Israel responded forcefully, but Hamas remained in control of Gaza. The terrorists re-armed, and the pattern repeated itself in 2021, with more civilians killed. This all culminated in the horrific massacre of Israeli civilians last month, the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

This history suggests three insights for the current crisis and the future of this complex and volatile region. First, October 7 made clear that this bloody cycle must end and that Hamas cannot be allowed to once again retrench, re-arm, and launch new attacks—while continuing to use people in Gaza as expendable human shields. Second, a full cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power would be a mistake. For now, pursuing more limited humanitarian pauses that allow aid to get in and civilians and hostages to get out is a wiser course. Third, Israel’s long policy of containment has failed—it needs a new strategy and new leadership.

For me, Israel and Gaza are not just names on a map. I have grieved with Israeli families whose loved ones were abducted or killed in terrorist attacks. I have held the hands of the wounded in their hospital beds. In Jerusalem, I visited a bombed-out pizzeria and will never forget it.

I have also been to Gaza. I have talked with Palestinians who have suffered greatly from the conflicts of the past decades and dream of peace and a state of their own. Before Hamas seized power, I met women using microloans from the United States to start new businesses and become breadwinners for their families, including a dressmaker who—because she was finally able to buy a sewing machine—could send her two daughters to school. My decades of experience in the region taught me that Palestinian and Israeli parents may say different prayers at worship but they share the same hopes for their kids—just like Americans, just like parents everywhere.

That is why I am convinced Hamas must go. On October 7, these terrorists killed babies, raped women, and kidnapped innocent civilians. They continue to hold more than 200 hostages. They have proved again and again that they will not abide by cease-fires, will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.

Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people. Hamas deliberately places military installations in and below hospitals and refugee camps because it is trying to maximize, not minimize, the impact on Palestinian civilians for its own propaganda purposes. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is heartbreaking—and every death means more blood on Hamas’s hands.

So the Biden administration is correct not to seek a full cease-fire at this moment, which would give Hamas a chance to re-arm and perpetuate the cycle of violence. Hamas would claim that it had won and it would remain a key part of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance.

Cease-fires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them. In 1999, the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević called for a cease-fire in Kosovo, where NATO air strikes were trying to stop his brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It was a cynical attempt to preserve Serbia’s control of Kosovo, and the Clinton administration continued bombing until Milošević’s forces withdrew. Today, global allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin call for a cease-fire in Ukraine because they know freezing the conflict will leave Russia in control of large swaths of Ukrainian territory that it seized illegally. Putin could reinforce his troops and then resume the conflict at a time of his choosing.

In 2012, freezing the conflict in Gaza was an outcome we and the Israelis were willing to accept. But Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed. A cease-fire now that restored the pre–October 7 status quo ante would leave the people of Gaza living in a besieged enclave under the domination of terrorists and leave Israelis vulnerable to continued attacks. It would also consign hundreds of hostages to continued captivity.

Cease-fires can make it possible to pursue negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting peace, but only when the timing and balance of forces are right. Bosnia in the 1990s saw 34 failed cease-fires before the Clinton administration’s military intervention prompted all sides to stop fighting and finally negotiate a peace agreement. It is possible that if Israel dismantles Hamas’s infrastructure and military capacity and demonstrates that terrorism is a dead end, a new peace process could begin in the Middle East. But a cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power and eager to strike Israel will make this harder, if not impossible. For decades, Hamas has undermined every serious attempt at peace by launching new attacks, including the October 7 massacre that seems to have been designed, at least in part, to disrupt progress toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. (Those negotiations also aimed to bring important benefits for Palestinians.)

By contrast, the humanitarian pauses advocated by the Biden administration and tentatively accepted by the Israelis can save lives without rewarding Hamas. There is precedent: During previous wars in Gaza, Israel and Hamas agreed to a number of pauses so that relief could get into the area. Recent conflicts in Yemen and Sudan have also undergone brief humanitarian pauses. Whether for hours or days, breaks in the fighting can provide safety to aid workers and refugees. They could also help facilitate hostage negotiations, which is an urgent priority right now.

Rejecting a premature cease-fire does not mean defending all of Israel’s tactics, nor does it lessen Israel’s responsibility to comply with the laws of war. Minimizing civilian casualties is legally and morally necessary. It is also a strategic imperative. Israel’s long-term security depends on its achieving peaceful coexistence with neighbors who are prepared to accept its existence and its need for security. The disaster of October 7 has discredited the theory that Israel can contain Hamas, ignore the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and freeze Israeli control over Palestinians forever.

Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead. At home, it will have to reaffirm Israeli democracy after a tumultuous period. In Gaza, it should resist the urge to reoccupy the territory after the war, accept an internationally mandated interim administration for governing the Strip, and support regional efforts to reform and revive the Palestinian Authority so it has the credibility and the means to reassume control of Gaza. In the West Bank, it must clamp down on the violence perpetrated by extremist Israeli settlers and stop building new settlements that make it harder to imagine a future Palestinian state. Ultimately, the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a secure, democratic, Jewish state is by achieving two states for two peoples. And in the region, Israel should resume serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia and others to normalize relations and build a broad coalition to counter Iran.

For now, Israel should focus on freeing the hostages, increasing humanitarian aid, protecting civilians, and ensuring that Hamas terrorists can no longer murder families, abduct children, exploit civilians as human shields, or start new wars. But when the guns fall silent, the hard work of peace building must begin. There is no other choice.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Hillary Clinton, International

Adam Grant: What We Can Learn from International Assessments

By dianeravitch

November 17, 2023 //

I have been critical of the focus on international tests because real life teaches us that the test scores of 15-year-old students do not predict future economic success for nations. I find it bizarre that people say that America is a great country but its schools are no good. That doesn’t make sense.

Adam Grant, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, injects a dose of common sense into that newspaper’s education coverage:

He writes:

Which country has the best education system? Since 2000, every three years, 15-year-olds in dozens of countries have taken the Program for International Student Assessment — a standardized test of math, reading and science skills. On the inaugural test, which focused on reading, the top country came as a big surprise: tiny Finland. Finnish students claimed victory again in 2003 (when the focus was on math) and 2006 (when it was on science), all while spending about the same time on homework per week as the typical teenager in Shanghai does in a single day.

Just over a decade later, Europe had a new champion. Here, too, it wasn’t one of the usual suspects — not a big, wealthy country like Germany or Britain but the small underdog nation of Estonia. Since that time, experts have been searching for the secrets behind these countries’ educational excellence. They recently found one right here in the United States.

In North Carolina, economists examined data on several million elementary school students. They discovered a common pattern across about 7,000 classrooms that achieved significant gains in math and reading performance.

Those students didn’t have better teachers. They just happened to have the same teacher at least twice in different grades. A separate team of economists replicated the study with nearly a million elementary and middle schoolers in Indiana — and found the same results.

Every child has hidden potential. It’s easy to spot the ones who are already sparkling, but many students are uncut gems. When teachers stay with their students longer, they can see beyond the surface and recognize the brilliance beneath.

Instead of teaching a new cohort of students each year, teachers who practice “looping” move up a grade or more with their students. It can be a powerful tool. And unlike many other educational reforms, looping doesn’t cost a dime.

With more time to get to know each student personally, teachers gain a deeper grasp of the kids’ strengths and challenges. The teachers have more opportunities to tailor their instructional and emotional support to help all the students in the class reach their potential. They’re able to identify growth not only in peaks reached, but also in obstacles overcome. The nuanced knowledge they acquire about each student isn’t lost in the handoff to the next year’s teacher.

Finland and Estonia go even further. In both countries, it’s common for elementary schoolers to have the same teacher not just two years in a row but sometimes for up to six straight years. Instead of specializing just in their subjects, teachers also get to specialize in their students. Their role evolves from instructor to coach and mentor.

It didn’t occur to me until I read the research, but I was lucky to benefit from looping. My middle school piloted a program to keep students with the same two core teachers for all three years. When I struggled with spatial visualization in math, Mrs. Bohland didn’t question my aptitude. Having seen me ace a year of algebra, she knew I was an abstract thinker and taught me to use equations to identify the dimensions of shapes before drawing them in 3D. And after a few years of observing what fired me up in social studies and the humanities, Mrs. Minninger knew my interests well. She saw a common theme in my passions for analyzing character development in Greek mythology and anticipating counterarguments in mock trial — and suggested doing my year-end project on psychology. Thank you, Mama Minnie.

Most parents see the benefit of keeping their kids with the same coaches in sports and music for more than a year. Yet the American education system fails to do this with teachers, the most important coaches of all. Critics have long worried that following their students through a range of grades will prevent teachers from developing specialized skills appropriate to specific grade levels. Parents fret about rolling the dice on the same teacher more than once. What if my kid gets stuck with Mr. Snape or Miss Viola Swamp? But in the data, looping actually had the greatest upsides for less effective teachers — and lower-achieving students. Building an extended relationship gave them the opportunity to grow together.

The Finnish and Estonian education systems are far from perfect, and Finland’s PISA scores have dipped a bit in recent years. But both countries have done more than just achieve high rates of high performers — they’ve achieved some of the world’s lowest rates of low performers, with remarkably small performance gapsbetween schools and between richer and poorer students. Being disadvantaged is less of a disadvantage in Finland and Estonia than almost anywhere else.

Looping isn’t the only practice that makes a difference. Both Finland and Estonia have professionalized education systems — they often require master’s degrees for teachers, training them in evidence-based education practices and methods for interpreting ongoing research in the field. And teachers are entrusted with a great deal of autonomy. Whereas American kindergarten has become more like first grade, with more emphasis on spelling, writing and math, Finland and Estonia make learning fun with a play-based curriculum. Elementary schoolers typically get 15 minutes of recess for every 45 minutes of instruction. Teachers don’t have to waste time teaching to the test. And over the years, if students start to struggle, instead of labeling them as remedial or forcing them to repeat grades, schools in both countries offer earlyinterventions focused on individual tutoring and extra support. That helps students get up to speed without being pulled off track.

Over the years, American students have consistently lagged behind two to three dozen countries on the PISA. A major factor in our lackluster results is the huge gapbetween our highest- and lowest-performing students. The U.S. education system is built around a culture of winner take all. Students who win the wealth lottery get to attend the best schools with the best teachers. Those who win the intelligence lottery may get to enroll in gifted-and-talented programs.

Great education systems create cultures of opportunity for all. They don’t settle for no child left behind; they strive to help every child get ahead. As the education expert Pasi Sahlberg writes, success is when “all students perform beyond expectations.” Finnish and Estonian schools don’t invest just in students who show early signs of high ability — they invest in every student regardless of apparent ability. And there are few better ways to do that than to keep students with teachers who have the time to get to know their abilities.

Categories International, Standardized Testing, Students

Swedish Expert: The Market System Is a Disaster for Students and for Sweden

By dianeravitch

November 16, 2023 //

Over the years, I have made friends on Twitter with educators and scholars in Sweden, who have generously provided me with analyses of Sweden’s free market of schooling. My friends, not surprisingly, agree that the introduction of “choice” and for-profit providers has been a disaster for schooling in Sweden. The outcome has been more socioeconomic segregation and an impoverishment of public schools. The following post was written by Linnea Lindquist, experienced educator and journalist.

THE SWEDISH SCHOOL SYSTEM

By Linnea Lindquist

I believe many in Sweden choked on their coffee when Lotta Edholm, the school minister from the Liberal Party, critically spoke about the school system in an interview with The Guardian. She stated, “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything.”

I have been a part of the school debate for several years and there has been a change in how politicians talk about the school system itself. I will return to this later in the text.

Sweden has one of the most extreme school systems in the world. Whether schools are run by municipalities, the state, or as independent entities, they are funded entirely by taxpayer money. It is the combination of per-student funding, free school choice, and unlimited profit extraction that makes Sweden’s school system unique (in a bad way) in the world. However, this is not enough. We also have free establishment rights for independent schools, meaning that anyone can apply to start a school. The state School Inspection Authority grants permission, but it is the municipalities that finance the schools. This means that municipalities have no control over the number of schools in their area. As a result, municipalities are forced to maintain many empty school places, diverting funds that could have been used for teaching to finance these empty spots. The problem is not that the municipalities have empty classrooms, the problem is a few empty chairs in each classroom.

Sweden has significant performance disparities between schools. While parents in neighboring Finland feel confident that the nearest school is among the world’s best, Swedish parents lie awake at night wondering which school to choose for their children. When students fail in school, the blame is placed on parents for making the wrong school choice.

Sweden has major problems with its school system, and in this text, I will try to explain the reasons for these issues and what needs to be done to solve them. Let’s start with how the school system is structured.

Market-Driven Schools

In most of Sweden’s 290 municipalities, schools are financed with a per-student funding model. This funding is not the student’s money to shop for education; it is merely a model for distributing money between schools. Legislation states that the funding should be equal for municipal and private schools. Private schools in Sweden are free of charge as they are financed by taxes. This means that if a municipality compensates its own schools with 100,000 SEK per student, it should also compensate independent schools with the same amount per student. One might think this is reasonable since all schools provide education.

However, in Sweden, we have a supply responsibility. What is the problem with that? I’ll try to explain.

We have compulsory schooling, meaning all students in primary education (ages 6-16) must attend school. The state has given municipalities the responsibility to ensure that all students have a school placement. This is known as supply responsibility. In turn, this means that municipalities must always be prepared to accommodate students who do not wish to continue studying in independent schools or if the independent school decides to cease operations. Independent schools are businesses and can shut down whenever they want. Municipalities must also have schools in all geographical areas since all citizens of a municipality do not live in the same geographical location. All this costs money, and since we have a principle of equal treatment, the municipalities receive zero compensation for these additional costs.

When independent schools are established in a municipality, it often results in a budget deficit for the municipality as it creates more empty school places. When they have a deficit, they have to spend more money than budgeted for at the beginning of the year. Then the per-student funding increases as independent schools must receive the same funding as the municipality’s schools. This results in what’s called the “independent school penalty.” Municipalities must compensate independent schools with the same amount per student that they have in deficit for all students attending independent schools. This creates new deficits and the negative spiral begins.

It is the principle of equal treatment in the School ordinance that leads to significant problems in the school market. In Sweden, we pay independent schools for a responsibility they do not have. Yes, I know you won’t believe me, but this is the foolish system we have in Sweden.

For an independent school to make a profit, they must operate at a lower cost per student compared to the municipality’s average. How do you cut costs easily? By employing fewer qualified teachers, serving cheaper food, and providing less teaching resources. Most importantly, one must have students that mainly come from academic homes. When you have students from academic homes, you can have larger group sizes and every additional student in a group, compared to the municipality’s average, is pure profit. It costs the same to educate a group of 20 and 25 students. The income is obviously much higher if you have 25 students per teacher as we have per-student funding. The cost of schools is 90 percent fixed since the largest expenses are rent and salaries. However, revenues are 100 percent variable because each student generates a per-student funding for the principal’s annual budget.

The per-student funding that municipalities pay to independent schools is something that a municipality can not control. It is up to the independent school what they use the money for and if it is a private company there is no demand for publicity due to competition legislation. The Swedish school system is entirely unregulated, meaning there are no requirements on the proportion of teachers, size of groups, or whether a school must have a cafeteria, library, or gymnasium.

I wrote initially that we have free establishment rights in Sweden. This means that schools are started even when there is no need for more schools. The state’s School Inspection Authority overrides the municipalities all the time. Municipalities express their views and describe to the School Inspection Authority that granting permission leads to cuts in the municipal education. The municipalities state that there are no needs for more schools and that school segregation will increase. Unfortunately, the state’s extended arm does not listen to those who are close to the schools runned by municipalities. Those who advocate the current school system argue that it is important for freedom of choice that we have free establishment rights. Anyone who knows anything about schools has by now understood that it’s not about freedom of choice. It has never been about freedom of choice.

The free establishment right, and what we will now come to – the free school choice, has never been about freedom of choice. The so-called freedom of choice reforms, implemented in the early 90s, were meant to legitimize school segregation. It’s not about choosing to – it’s about choosing not to. System-savvy and quick-footed parents were given the opportunity to avoid poor schools. Today, school choice is used to avoid schools where students have less-educated parents. Regardless of where in the school system the students are, a significantly higher proportion of students from academic homes attend independent schools. There are no independent schools that have a student base that matches that of the municipalities. I have not found any examples of this, and I have read 1,400 municipal school budgets and reviewed the statistics of hundreds of schools in cities with vulnerable areas.

Opinion

I initially wrote that public opinion has turned when it comes to market-driven schools. When I entered the school debate over five years ago, I was called a free school hater, an opponent of freedom of choice, and a communist every time I wrote about the problems with the school system. Now, politicians on the right side of the political spectrum have started using the words and concepts that I, and other critics of the school system, use when we describe the system’s flaws. It’s not the politicians who have changed the opinion; they have been forced to change their view of the school system due to public opinion. In Sweden, it is now political suicide to defend the current system. However, I don’t believe the politicians have changed their opinions, but they are forced to make changes in the system if they want to be re-elected in the next parliamentary elections in 2026.

Marcus Larsson and Åsa Plesner, who run the think tank Balans, have mapped the prevalence of lobbying in the welfare sector, especially in education. They have shown many examples of politicians being lobbyists in the independent school sector while holding political positions of trust. Sweden stands out when it comes to allowing politicians to sit on double or triple chairs. Several of those who created the market-driven school in the early 90s now own school corporations with high profitability.

If one wonders why the market-driven school remains, despite the majority of the Swedish population wanting change, one should look at the politician’s school-business. When politicians own school corporations and sit on boards for school companies, it is not hard to understand that they want to maintain the system. Lotta Edholm, the schoolminister, sat on the board of a school corporation until the day she took office as a minister. There are many examples of politicians having fingers in several pies.

The freeschool system is a threat to national security

The Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI has released a report titled “Foreign Investments and Ownership in Swedish Primary and Secondary Schools – A Study of Risks”. It’s authored by Maria Refors Legge, Alma Dahl, Michal Budryk, Helene Lackenbauer, and Jens Lusua. There are numerous ways an antagonist could influence the democratic education and rights of Swedish students, one being the acquisition of existing school authorities. This allows for rapid establishment across the country. If one aims to influence Sweden, reaching a large number of students is easier, but it also increases the risk of detection. The report offers several examples of how foreign owners or Swedish school owners who do not wish to operate schools based on democratic principles can function. They describe how schools can be used to counteract the integration of students and parents in vulnerable areas, maintaining and reproducing norms and values that are anti-democratic.

The report explains how the free choice of teaching materials can influence student values and support school ownership. The risk of being detected is relatively low, and if detected, one can continue operating a school, even if deemed unsuitable, by having all paperwork in order.

The report outlines various risks and our vulnerability in Sweden to foreign influence through our school system. There are risks in the free school system that could be exploited by a foreign owner with antagonistic intentions, such as influence operations undermining democratic values. The authors emphasize that the security risk is not due to foreign ownership of schools but rather how the Swedish free school system is structured.

Since it’s impossible to trace how school funding is used, authorities can’t intervene against an antagonist. School owners can use the school funding as they wish, and thus neither municipalities nor the state can control whether it’s used for anti-democratic purposes. The authors argue that the School Inspectorate and other supervisory authorities lull us into a false sense of security, having few tools to detect antagonists in the school system. This makes Sweden particularly vulnerable.

I shouldn’t say – I told you so, but I’m saying it anyway.

What’s stated in the report should not be news. We’ve known for many years that the school system is open to corruption and to foreign and anti-democratic forces. It’s astonishing that the security risk doesn’t come from foreign ownership of independent schools but from how we’ve structured the Swedish freeschool system. For 30 years, we’ve had an education system structure that’s a potential threat to national security. Swedish politicians should let this sink in.

Every time an antagonist is exposed, politicians scream for a more powerful School Inspectorate. It doesn’t matter how much the School Inspectorate, the Security Police, and other authorities check the independent schools. When we have a free-school system closed to scrutiny yet wide open to corruption, anti-democratic forces will use it for their own gain.

Believing that free school choice and freedom of choice would protect against corruption and anti-democratic school owners is naively lawful. Parents choose schools that match the values and norms they want to pass on to their children. Parents with children in schools run by anti-democrats think it’s good, otherwise, they wouldn’t have placed their children there. Rather, parents uphold and reproduce anti-democratic values through free school choice.

We have foreign owners of schools in Sweden that we probably don’t know about. Long chains of ownership, subsidiaries, and funds, combined with a lack of transparency, make us extremely vulnerable.

The worst thing in all this is that we have politicians who on one hand say that they are concerned about the terror threat, and on the other hand, they defend a free-school system which itself is a threat to national security.

In conclusion

When the Education Minister expresses herself in The Guardian with the words – “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything,” it is proof that she has been influenced by public opinion.

I don’t have high hopes for any system changing reforms. The government wants to limit profits, but anyone who knows anything about business economics knows there are many ways to circumvent profit restrictions.

The government wants independent schools to be more tightly controlled. Anyone who knows anything about the school system knows that you can’t control systemic errors. It’s the incentives that must be removed. This means that if we want independent schools to compete with quality, we must stop paying them for a responsibility they don’t have. Municipalities must be allowed to decide how many schools there should be in a municipality.

If we want freedom of choice in the school system, we must have admission rules that are common to all schools, regardless of who runs them. Therefore, the queues for charter schools must be abolished.

If the government wants order in the school system, they must open up those schools for scrutiny under the same principles as municipal schools. They must regulate lobbying and forbid politicians from sitting on multiple chairs at the same time.

I have worked as a principal in Sweden’s toughest areas for the past 12 years. Before that, I was a teacher in a particularly vulnerable area. I see segregation with my own eyes daily.

The consequences of the school market for students is clear.

I have a dream.

A dream that politicians will start making decisions based on what’s best for the children. I wish they would do more of what we expect of them, not the least they can get away with in the next election.

Björn Dahlman, a well-known teacher, author and school debater in Sweden, wrote a wise thing on Twitter, currently X ,a while ago. – “In Sweden, municipalities are punished for educating the students that privately owned schools can not make money on.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

To address the problems in the Swedish school system, we must:
– Rework the school funding system so that municipal schools are compensated for their supply responsibility.
– Abolish the free establishment right.
– Make school choices collectively. No queues.
– We should not allow foreign owners to Swedish schools.
….to begin with.

Why should we make these reforms? The answer is: for the sake of the students. It’s also for the sake of national security, future democracy and freedom of speech. If we want an education with high quality for all children and competence provision in the future, we need a school system without principles of market.

To politicians in other countries, I have one thing to say to you: Don’t copy our school system. It’s a true disaster and a failure for the nation. Don’t go that way, please!

Thank you for reading this far.

Linnea Lindquist

If you want to read more from me, please visit my blog at www.rektorlinnea.com

Linnea Lindquist: @rektor_linnea

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