Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

On this edition of Parallax Views, a MASSIVE, wide-ranging conversation with Hussein Ibish, a Senior Resident Scholar at The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a contributor to publications like The Atlantic and the UAE's The National, that delves into the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict and where it is headed. We go through the diplomatic failures, the formation of Israeli and Palestinian national identities, the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush era efforts to bring about a political solution, the 2000 Camp David Summit and its controversies, the ongoing Occupation by Israel of Palestinian territories since 1967, the BDS movement and why Hussein considers "Divestment" to be where activists should focus their energies as opposed to "Boycott" and "Sanctions", the two-state solution vs. the one-state solution, riparian rights (ie: issues related to water) concerns related to a two-state solution, the rise and fall of the American Task Force on Palestine, Condoleezza Rice's forgotten approach to Israel/Palestine in the Bush years, Elliot Abrams and how pushes for a two-state solution have been diminished by shifting focuses of administrations over the years, Israeli and Palestinian competing narratives over 1948 (for one it meant independence; for another it meant destruction and the "Nakba" or "Catastrophe"), Hamas and the psychology of rage in Gaza, the Israeli operation in Rafah, cycles of violence, Israeli obstinance and the one-state reality, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party, the Gaza War, terrorism and how Israel's current approach is creating a recruitment boom for Hamas, the power asymmetry in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the potentially for explosive violence in the West Bank to lead to an ethnic cleansing campaign, Hussein's close friend the late Christopher Hitchens and Hitchen's stance on Palestine, and much, much more.

A note that this was recorded on 5/29/24.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Osgoode Hall Law School of York international law scholar Prof. Heidi Matthews joins us in the first segment to discuss the ICC (International Criminal Court) and its announcement that it will seek arrest warrants for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders like Yahya Sinwar in relation to the Gaza War. We get into the nitty gritty of what this means for Israel/Palestine and discuss issues such as genocide, war crimes, the breaking news that Israeli intelligence has been engaged in a nearly decade long covert war against the ICC, the massacre in Rafah, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, and much, much more.

In the second segment of the show, Quincy Institue for Responsible Statecraft intern Brett Heinz joins the show to discuss his Responsible Statecraft piece "Foreign bribery in Congress: 'The way business is done'?"as well as the Quincy brief he co-wrote with Ben Freeman entitled "Subsidizing the Military-Industrial Complex: A Review of the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) Program". Recently, two Congressmen, Rep. Henry Cuellar and Sen. Bob Menendez, were indicted on charges of foreign bribery. But that's only the tip of the iceberg, argues Brett Heinz. We look at foreign bribery scandals from Koreagate to Abscam up to the present day and Heinz offers insight into what is needed to combat this problem in the halls of Congress and the political system in America more broadly.

On this edition of Parallax Views, the Uncommitted movement, which seeks to push Democratic voters to vote "Uncommitted" rather than "Joe Biden" in the Democratic primaries over Biden's policies on Israel/Palestine and the Gaza War, has been in the news lately alongside the student encampments and Gaza War protests. The movement has garnered much criticism, but what's it all about? Uncommitted New Jersey's Elektra Kostopoulou and Rutgers University graduate and student encampment participant Kale Yost joined me on this edition of the show for a free-flowing dialogue about the Uncommitted campaign and the student encampments that are in making headlines.

On this edition of Parallax Views, the Middle East Institute's Geoffrey Aronson returns to the program to discuss his Responsible Statecraft article "There is no 'plan for Palestine' because Israel doesn't want one". Also relevant to this conversation is a piece I HIGHLY RECOMMEND reading that Geoffrey wrote for his Substack entitled "The Second War for Palestine". Elements of that Substack piece are covered here, but there's more in there that we couldn't get to in our time together.

The majority of this conversation deal with the United States under the Biden administration's talk of the needs for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict with the creation of a Palestinian state, presumably administred by the Palestinian authority. Problem is, according to Aronson's analysis of the history, that Israel doesn't want that. Thus U.S. talk of the "Day After in Gaza" scenario becomes irrelevant because Israel, whether under Benajmin Netanyahu or a potential successor like Benny Gantz, is not interested in the advice the U.S. is offering. We will also delve into Israeli strategy since 1967, with a particular focus on the words and thinking of the late Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel Moshe Dayan. We'll talk about the failure of the Oslo process, how the day after in Gaza looks like both today and yesterday, the "Three Wars" Israel is fighting right now, the West Bank, strategies of management vs. seeking a long-term solution, Islamist movements like Hamas and the strategy of dividing Palestinians, and much, much more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Israeli commentator Ori Goldberg, who has become well-known since the Gaza war began for his criticisms of Netanyahu and the state, or mindset, of Israeli society since October 7th. In a previous life he was a Middle East scholar who specialized in studying Iran. We start the conversation off with that as Ori gives his thoughts on the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and comments on the adaptability of the Islamic Republic in face of crisis.

From there we shift to a conversation about the state of Israeli society today. Before October 7th much was made about the internal divisions in Israeli political life that has been summed up as a battle between a secular state of Israel vs. a religious state of Judea embodied by the far-right coalition created by Benjamin Netanyahu. Then the Hamas attack of October 7th happened. And in Ori's estimation it has led to a surfacing of something almost mythical in regard to the Israeli identity. In the course of our conversation Ori attempts to articulate the mindset that and structural make-up of Israeli society and the Israeli psyche. This leads us to a discussion of supremacist beliefs in Israeli society and how Israel sees itself in relation to the world. He argues that his country must go through a reckoning and transformation for a viable future. But he does not argue this from the frame of a mundane political analysis. Rather he seeks to offer what he believes is an intimate and intense portrait of Israel at this moment. Ori will also offer his thoughts on the dehumanization of Palestinians in Israel and how the process dehumanization degrades and dehumanizes even the perpetrator of it. Finally he comments on his statement that, in Israel, "Palestinian blood has become cheaper than air." Ori paints a grim picture of where Israel is at as a society, but maintains that he is optimistic about change and transformation.

On this edition of Parallax Views, noted Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst and Jadaliyya magazine co-editor Mouin Rabbani took time out of his busy schedule to discuss a number of topics related to the Gaza War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly. We begin the conversation by delving into the news of the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli leaders as well as Hamas leaders like Yahya Sinwar. From there we branch out into a discussion of Mouin's contribution to the recent OR Books anthology DELUGE: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm. In this regard, Mouin delves into the regional dynamics at play with regard to the Gaza War and argues that the often-repeated analysis that Hamas committed the Oct 7th attack in order to sabotage Saudi-Israeli normalization is in fact wrong. He'll also discuss his analysis of what he believes were the motivations behind the Oct 7th attack. Additionally, Mouin and I discuss the issue of propaganda and how to cut through it when examining the Israel/Palestine conflict, the two-state solution's feasibility, prerequisites for a long-term solution to the broader conflict, Israel's us of artificial intelligence in warfare, the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas as an obstalce to ending Palestinian divisions, and more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, the University of Connecticut's Prof. Jeremy Pressman, Director of Middle East Studies at UConn and author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force, joins the show to discuss the myths of the 2000 Camp David Summit and Taba talks. During recent appearances in media programs such as Morning Joe w/ Joe Scarborough, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought up the old trope that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" that is often invoked when discussing PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the 2000 Camp David Summit. This is used to say that Arafat failed the Palestinian people and "rejected an offer". It's also a talking point used to justify use of military force rather than pursuing a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It forecloses on the possibility of a diplomatic solution or peace being achieved by saying the Palestinians are "not ready" for peace.

Prof. Jeremy Pressman wrote a researched, footnoted piece entitled "Visions in Collision: What Happened at Camp David and Taba?" that pushes back on this oversimplified narrative of the Clinton-era diplomatic negotiations between Israel and Palestinians. We'll dig into all the different areas of the 2000 Camp David Summit as well as dealing with the pre-history of it, specifically the Oslo Accords and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. We'll also compared Camp David to the Abraham Accords, cycles of escalatory violence, land swaps and the two-state solution, the Confederation model and the arguments against the two-state solution, the power asymmetry between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. concessions made by the Palestinians in negotiations, and much, much more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Prof. Joel Beinin joins the program to discuss his July 2023 972 magazine essay "A century after its founding, the Israeli Communist Party is at a crossroads". In said essay, Prof. Beinin gives a history of Communism and the Communist Party in Israel/Palestine that offers an insight into how the Left dealt with issues such as Zionism, anti-Zionism, Arab nationalism, partition, imperialism, and colonialism as they related to Israel/Palestine and the Middle East during the 20th century.

In our conversation Prof. Beinin will give a history on the Communist Party in Israel/Palestine that delves into the splits between Palestinian and Israeli in this history as well as how the Soviet Union, the Cold War, the aftermath of the Holocaust, Egyptian President Abdel Nasser and Arab anticommunism, the formation of Hadash (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) in Israel, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Communist Party successful mobilization against Israeli Minister of Agriculture Moshe Dayan's proposed Consolidation of Lands Law in the 1960s, and more. We'll also discuss the failings of the Communist Party in Israel/Palestine and the lessons that can be gleaned from those failings for the Left today in regard to Israel/Palestine.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Leila Hilal, an international human rights lawyer and the former co-director of the New America Foundation Middle East Task Force, joins the show to discuss her experiences as an advisor to Palestinian negotiators, Israel/Palestine, Israel's assault on Gaza, the situation in the West Bank and settler violence, misunderstandings about UNRWA, the U.S.'s refusal or inability to reign in Israel during this war, dynamics of extremism and containment, Yasser Arafat and the PLO in the era of the Oslo Accords, risks of regional war and the recent confrontation between Israel & Iran, the role of the Arab world in Israel/Palestine going forward, the "Palestinian Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity" trope and dehumanization of Palestinians, the recent settler attack on an aid truck, the one-state reality and Palestinians' struggle for bare life survival/search for dignity in the West Bank, the Second Intifada's effect on Palestinians and Israelis, and much, much more.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Palestinian children's books author Rifk Ebeid, author of Baba What Does My Name Mean?: A Journey to Palestine, You Are the Color, and Birthday Kunafa, joins the show to discuss her books, Palestinian identity and experience, and her animated children's short I Am From Palestine. We'll also discuss how one of her books was censored a Philadelphia library, the need for Palestinians to know their stories and identity, suppression of Palestinian identity, positive and negative feedback she's gotten on her children's books, thoughts on the Gaza protests, centering Palestinian voices, the Nakba ("The Catastrophe" or 1948 Palestinian expulsion) and the Naksa ("The Setback" or the 1967 Palestinian expulsion), Rifk's awareness of her Palestinian identity even going back her early childhood, Ron DiSantis and Republican book banning efforts, the absurdity of being theatened by a children's book, Rif's work in speech language pathology, censorship, and a number of other topics.