February 5, 2024: The Senate Border Deal

U.S. strikes Iraq and Syria; Hamas rejects hostage deal; David Samuels on Israel and Ukraine

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The Big Story

The Senate released the text of its much-anticipated border deal on Sunday. In addition to approving more than $60 billion in funding for Ukraine and $20 billion for border security, the deal, negotiated by Democrat Chris Murphy (CT), Independent Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and Republican James Lankford (OK), includes these main provisions:

• A new emergency expulsion authority that automatically “shuts down” the border if the number of border encounters either reaches 8,500 in a single day or averages 5,000 per day over a seven-day period. During the shutdown, the government must continue processing 1,400 asylum seekers per day, but beyond that, all migrants and asylum seekers will be automatically removed. But ...

• … the “shutdown” provision contains several loopholes. For instance, the bill allows the president to unilaterally suspend the emergency expulsion authority. Even if he doesn’t, the expulsion authority can be in effect only 270 days in the first year after the bill’s passage, 225 days in the second year, and 180 days in the third year. Unaccompanied minors cannot be removed under the expulsion authority. And migrants can be exempted from the expulsion authority based on ICE “operational considerations” or on “humanitarian” grounds.

• Tougher asylum requirements and a higher “credible fear” standard, which would bar anyone who either has a criminal record—or could have settled in another area of their home country or in a third country on their way to the United States—from claiming asylum. Asylum hearings are to be completed within 90 days. But…

• The asylum reforms are also full of loopholes. The 90-day requirement is a suggestion, not a mandate. The Secretary of Homeland Security has discretionary authority to refer asylum seekers to a “provisional noncustodial removal proceeding” in which they will be released into the country pending an asylum ruling and given the right to appeal any rejection of their asylum claims. And the bill empowers U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers—who tend to be more liberal than Border Patrol agents or immigration courts—to grant asylum directly to migrants without a hearing.

• An end to the use of humanitarian parole at the southern border (including via the CBP One app). Parole will remain in place at U.S. airports, preserving current parole programs for Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.

• A modification, but not an end, to “catch and release,” in which U.S. authorities detain migrants and then release them into the interior with an immigration court hearing years in the future. Single adults will, in theory, be detained until their hearing, but families will be released and monitored, while unaccompanied minors will not be eligible for detention or removal. 

• $2.3 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services for grants or contracts to “qualified organizations, including nonprofit entities” to provide services to refugees and migrants

• $933 million to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for its Shelter and Services Program, which disburses grants to municipalities and nonprofits to provide housing and social services to migrants. The total could rise to $1.4 billion if other border security milestones are met. 

• No amnesty or legalization of anyone currently in the United States illegally

• Finally, in what could be a hidden victory for advocates of more liberal immigration policies, the bill mandates that all legal challenges to its provisions be heard in the left-leaning D.C. District Court.

The bill is a small improvement on the current mess, particularly through its reform of the asylum process. But most of the damage under Biden has been done through executive action, including the abandonment of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, the facilitation of migration through bilateral negotiations with Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica, and the introduction of loopholes in the existing Title 42 expulsion authority—all of which could be reversed without new legislation. Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act states, “Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens.” No new shutdown authority is needed.

We’re also suspicious of the potential $4 billion in kickbacks to NGOs, which not only lobby against border security but work to facilitate unauthorized migration into the United States. A recent report by Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies, for instance, found that the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development were funding the faith-based NGOs participating in the Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan. This UN-led initiative will pay out $1.6 billion in benefits, including “humanitarian transportation” and cash debit cards, to U.S.-bound migrants in Latin America in 2024. We suspect that most of the $4 billion in this bill will go to those same organizations. 

A lot more was introduced in the border deal, including an extra 50,000 green cards per year, but it may be a moot point. On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) released a statement along with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) declaring the bill “dead on arrival” in the House. Several leading Republican Senators, including Tom Cotton (AR), Mike Lee (UT), Marco Rubio (FL), and J.D. Vance (OH) have also declared their opposition.

IN THE BACK PAGES: Israelis won’t accept anything other than victory in Gaza, argues Gadi Taub

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The Rest

→Over the weekend, the United States struck 85 targets in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the killing of three U.S. troops in Jordan last Sunday, and hit another 36 in Yemen. Few details are available about the strikes, but CNN reported Sunday that there are “no indications of Iranian casualties”—no big surprise, given reports last week that the Iranians had evacuated their positions in Iraq and Syria in anticipation of the strikes. As for the U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran doesn’t have “full control” over its proxies, retired Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie offered this clarification to The Washington Post:

McKenzie said “there’s some truth” to Iran probably not directing the specific attacks against U.S. forces. A few years ago, he said, Iran gave blanket clearance for the militias to attack U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria, creating a structure where the militias do not need to go back to Tehran for approval.

In other words, Iran might not have specifically ordered its proxy to attack the U.S. base in Jordan, but that’s only because it had given it permission to attack U.S. positions whenever it wanted to. 

→Hamas has rejected the cease-fire-for-hostages deal that would have seen a pause of up to 142 days in exchange for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages, according to reports in the Israeli press. The Times of Israel reports that Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is demanding “solid guarantees” for an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops before he will agree to release more hostages. Sinwar’s intransigence may reflect his appreciation of the fact that absent an Israeli agreement to end the war, which can only be accomplished through international (and particularly U.S.) pressure, Hamas’ rule in Gaza is likely doomed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the IDF had defeated 75% of Hamas’ Gaza battalions and was close to “total victory,” and that defeating Hamas would “take months, not years.”

→Meanwhile, over the weekend, the IDF announced that it had deployed three divisions of troops to Israel’s northern border, warning Hezbollah that Israel will be “ready to attack immediately” if provoked, as the Israeli Air Force carried out a new series of strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and Syria. The Biden administration’s Lebanon envoy, Amos Hochstein, was in Israel over the weekend to work out a new deal between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia. As Tony Badran predicted in our Jan. 18 podcast conversation (listen here), the U.S. position calls for doubling down on the failed formula of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, except on terms more generous to Hezbollah. That resolution called for Hezbollah to withdraw all of its forces north of the Litani River, about 19 miles from the Israeli border. According to Israeli media reports, the current U.S. proposal is for Hezbollah to withdraw between 4.9 to 6.2 miles from the border. 

→Tablet Literary Editor David Samuels has a new essay in UnHerd today on Ukraine, Israel, and the illusions of American foreign policy since the Bush administration. Here’s the key paragraph:

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel share something else in common, too, which is their common origins in Barack Obama’s Iran Deal, the greatest US strategic blunder since George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. While Bush’s attempt to re-make Iraq as a democracy in the wake of 9/11 was a gigantic unforced error by the world’s only hyper-power, Obama’s Iran Deal, designed to rectify the expensive failure of Bush’s policy, has arguably proved to be an error of even greater consequence. While Bush’s failure in Iraq was the result of a shallow and overly optimistic understanding of the region he blundered into, it also showed that the US was capable of fielding an enormous army and wreaking havoc on its foes — thereby encouraging those foes to be cautious. By contrast, Obama’s parallel fantasies about reformists in Teheran have emboldened America’s most aggressive enemies, resulting in the global spread of chaos.

Read the rest here: https://unherd.com/2024/02/americas-arrogance-has-kneecapped-israel-and-ukraine/

→Dartmouth plans to require SAT or ACT scores for next year’s class of applicants, the first Ivy League school to reverse course after making standardized tests optional during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the move follows recent research from faculty at Dartmouth and Brown University showing that standardized test scores predict college performance better than high-school grades, even among students with similar high-school grades and demographic characteristics. More than 1,000 colleges and universities, including all eight Ivy League schools, scrapped standardized testing requirements in 2020, in part due to “equity” concerns. But the shift to “holistic” admissions has not necessarily led to egalitarian outcomes. A recent profile of education consultant Christopher Rim in New York magazine reported that Rim was charging New York City parents $120,000 per child to “help them craft a narrative he believes will appeal to college admissions officers.” A survey of the Harvard class of 2027, cited in the same article, found that 23% admitted to working with a private college consultant. 

→On Friday, The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed from the Middle East Media Research Institute’s Steven Stalinsky titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital.” The article provided several carefully cited examples of pro-Hamas rallies in Dearborn, Michigan, and of antisemitic and pro-Hamas comments by Dearborn imams and community leaders, including one sheikh, Ahmad Musa Jibril, who described Biden as a “senile pharaoh” while urging his supporters to normalize the term jihad by using it frequently on social media. The op-ed prompted a bona fide media freak-out about Islamophobia and racism (under the special definition of those terms that includes pointing out what Dearborn imams are saying in their own words), which we’d be inclined to ignore … if it hadn’t made it all the way to the White House:

You can read the op-ed here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/welcome-to-dearborn-americas-jihad-capital-pro-hamas-michigan-counterterrorism-a99dba38 

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TODAY IN TABLET: 

My Uncle, the Crook, by Allan Levine

David Rabinovitch digs into the history of his mysterious relative who made a fortune off jukeboxes—and organized crime

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Israelis Won’t Stand for Anything Short of Victory in Gaza

Leveraging the fate of the hostages to compel an Israeli surrender to Hamas is a sick, manipulative strategy that is doomed to political failure

by Gadi Taub

Something fundamental changed in Israel on Oct. 7. We were reminded of the mortal danger our complacency and fantasies about our neighboring enemies pose to our survival. This in turn awakened in us a fierce determination to prevail and a spirit of self-sacrifice we thought we no longer had. At the same time, our political concepts, habits, alliances, and enmities remain those of Oct. 6. In our public square, or what modern states have for a public square—newspapers, TV shows and social media—we still revert to fighting old battles. These fissures are being exacerbated, if not driven, by the preferences and demands of our biggest ally, the United States.

The Biden administration recently tasked CIA Director William Burns with brokering an ambitious deal that, as The Washington Post reported, would include the release of all the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for a six-week ceasefire, the release of Palestinian prisoners at a 3-to-1 ratio, the repositioning of Israeli troops in Gaza, and an increase in humanitarian aid to the Strip. All this spells an end to the war short of an Israeli victory—which is to say, it would be a victory for Hamas.

Against the backdrop of this American initiative, internal scuffling has resumed in Israel. The U.S. posture reinvigorated the belief among die-hard Israeli supporters of the “two-state solution” that what they cannot sell to voters will now be more easily imposed on an Israel chastened by a deal which would in effect spell an Israeli defeat. This hope has seduced some of them into making a gross political miscalculation: a chillingly cynical attempt to leverage the suffering of the hostages and their families in order to promote the deal that would stop the war.

The suspicion that the hostages may be used in this way was there from day one. Less than 24 hours after Oct. 7, media strategist and well-known veteran of the anti-Bibi protests, Ronen Tzur, organized a forum for the families of the abducted. The forum and its supporters, along with left-leaning politicians and, importantly, the press, then launched a very public and very loud campaign that demanded prioritizing the return of the hostages to their families: "Bring Them Home, Now!"

Had the campaign stuck to the slogan "Bring Them Home,” the whole country would easily have been on board. Add “Now!” and you begin to lose some of the traction. Attach the demand to end the war with the hostage deal of "all for all”—all the terrorists in Israeli jails, numbering over 6,000, for all 136 hostages—and the support narrows down mostly to the suffering families and to those who still want Netanyahu's removal above all else, such as the two-staters who believe that toppling the prime minister will open the door to a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. That does not add up to a large percentage of Israelis. But this social segment includes strategically positioned elites: the press, the bureaucracy, academia, leftist politicians, and the upper echelons of the IDF and the security services. Call them all the Oct. 6 progressive elites.

Because the divisive call for a hostage deal that would effectively end the war is nested inside the widely shared empathy for the abducted and their families, the Never-Bibi crowd and their promoters in the press believe they have made a clever play, and consequently have deafened themselves to the public mood. As a result, they are now on a collision course with something greater than a vibe. They are going up against Israel's instinct for self-preservation, the ferocity of which is manifest now like it has never been in our lifetime.

Keep in mind that the current generation serving in the military is the one that sociologists and pundits bemoaned as the Israeli version of Gen Z—self-absorbed, semi-illiterate and addicted to screens, faking superficial glamour on social media by taking pictures of their food, and also eventually bound to adopt the infantile pseudo-morality, increasingly prevalent in the U.S., of victim-worship and "safe spaces." Or so we assumed. But look at these soldiers now, with their newly adopted slogan, lo noflim midor tachach! (Not Falling Short of the ’48 Generation!). The declaration, staccato sounding and as grammatically incomplete in Hebrew as it is in the English translation, refers to the pioneers, the warriors, and the heroes of the founding generation, which lost more lives in battle than any other generation, in proportion to the pre-Independence Jewish community in the land of Israel. That is a high bar to set for oneself. But so many have already proven their mettle.

The “Bring Them Home, Now!” campaign not only assumes Israeli weakness. It also assumes that emotions have triumphed over rational thought, that as soft, first-world netizens we'll be willing to relieve our present pain at the cost of mortgaging our future security, and that we have lost the nerve required to make wise strategic choices. It assumes that the Israeli public's sympathy, and its devotion to the ideal of pidyon shvuyim—the Jewish moral imperative to free the abducted—will blind it to the obvious fact that clamoring for the hostages' return Now! only weakens our bargaining position—as evidenced by a document, possibly written by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, that the IDF discovered in Gaza. The first line reads: “Distribute pictures and videos of the hostages, due to the psychological pressure they create.” The document adds the following instructions: “Keep spreading the message that Netanyahu is responsible for what has happened” and “Damage the Israeli narrative that claims that the ground offensive helps secure the return of hostages.”

But worst of all, the campaign to bring back the hostages at any cost is trying to marginalize the imperative of victory in this war, and, in fact, is demanding we resign ourselves to defeat. Any politician who embraces this position will face the full wrath of the voters.

Gadi Taub reports on the two ongoing wars that will shape Israel's future: The military and diplomatic conflict between Israel and her enemies, and the struggle between Israel's Western-oriented elites and her democratic institutions.

Moreover, the campaign to stop the war by means of a hostage deal is morally abhorrent: It is sending the families of the hostages, or those of them who cooperate with the campaign that uses their family members as political instruments, to crash on the rocks of the overwhelming public demand to destroy Hamas.

The hostages’ families are bound to suffer needlessly from the clash with their fellow Israelis. There are around 200,000 evacuees from the western Negev and from the north of Israel who cannot return home if we lose this war. There are 350,000 reservists who are either still in uniform or have just taken it off. There are the families of soldiers who die every day. And then there is what almost all Israelis share: the chilling understanding of what lies in store for us if we leave our blood in the water for larger sharks to smell.

Very few Israelis will agree to a retreat from Gaza that leaves the Nazis on our borders as a necessary price for returning 136 hostages, no matter how much we all care about their individual fates. The groups that seem poised to turn this sentiment into political action are the internally displaced and the reservists. And relative to the size of Israel's population, their numbers—200,000 and 350,000 respectively—are huge. There are already reservists who are demanding to stay in service until the job is done. I've interviewed some of them over the last few weeks. We're not going back home, they say. One of them, who is also an evacuee from the Gaza envelope, said his children asked him why he's back from the front if they all can't return to their home. "Call me up for a month, call me up for two months, call me up for two years," he said, "I'll come."

The campaign to end the war by using the fate of the hostages as a pivot is a transparent form of bad-faith manipulation. Its rhetoric relies on minimizing the most vital question that preoccupies Israelis right now: the question of victory or defeat in this war. Instead of debating it, the press tends to declare that we've already lost, or downplay the importance of winning. It then endlessly trumpets the risible argument that the right—especially the right-wing devils Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and above all Benjamin Netanyahu—are obsessed with their own personal concerns and don't care about the fate of the hostages, while "we," the enlightened, liberal left, have empathy for the suffering of the innocent.

But there is nothing enlightened or enlightening about crude manipulation of the families of hostages. Pretending that there is no strategic dilemma, and then promoting a disastrous strategy, is not a principled moral stance. It's a disgrace.

Most Israelis know full well that no moral equation can make the fate of 136 people outweigh that of 10 million. Most Israelis also believe that teaching our enemies that they can force us to surrender if they just kidnap enough of us in our own homes is not a good idea.

Since the American press gets most of its information about Israel from the Israeli press, and since the latter amplifies the "Bring Them Home, Now!” campaign, the strength of the counterprotest movement is generally not appreciated outside Israel. The movement involves more than just protests by reservists. A forum called Mothers of IDF Soldiers has just published an open letter to President Biden. "We are an organization of mothers of IDF soldiers, who are now serving on the front lines in the war for our national survival," the letter says. "We accept the inherent risks our sons and daughters take, but we cannot accept placing their lives in unnecessary danger due to concerns for the enemy population." They go on to say that "Israel has to keep fighting until all of our War Cabinet goals are achieved: Hamas is defeated, and our 136 hostages are freed." They also demand "No further entry of humanitarian aid or fuel,” which they say goes directly to Hamas and only prolongs the war that their children are fighting, and that causes Gazans to suffer as well. Recognizing that this stance is in line with public opinion, war cabinet ministers and Netanyahu rivals Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot are now reportedly considering limiting the amount of aid entering Gaza.

You will not convince mothers or fathers who have assumed the risk of losing their sons and daughters—not to mention those who have already sacrificed a child in this war—that Israel can just leave the Gaza Strip without victory. And then there is a recent open letter to the war cabinet, published in prominent journalist Amit Segal's Telegram channel, by 130 senior reserve officers demanding perseverance till victory.

These forces are now ready, it seems, to test their power: A demonstration is being organized for Thursday, Feb. 8, not far from the Knesset, to demand victory. Last week already saw a clash between a “Bring Them Home, Now!” march in Tel Aviv and evacuees from the south and the far north, when the march passed by a hotel where evacuated families have been housed for almost four months. Predictably, the incident got little attention in the press. One brief online story in Maariv, however, included a video of a displaced woman shouting at the marchers, "You want the soldiers to come back home? How will I return home? Should I return and let Hezbollah come to slaughter me? Promise me they won't slaughter me, idiots."

On Jan. 18, a handful of activists blocked Ayalon Highway, which crosses Tel Aviv, with the number 136, the number of the hostages, written on the asphalt in fire. The Israeli press lavished attention on the incident. Yet the same press gives much less attention to another kind of road-blocking protest going on for the last two weeks, which also reportedly included families of hostages, and which is delaying the entry of "humanitarian aid" trucks into Gaza. Clearly, this group wants to increase the pressure on Hamas, not reach a deal with it.

If you ask yourself which of the two movements will eventually have its way, you should first ask yourself how you rate the moral fiber of Israelis in general, not how you rate the political sophistication of their elites. If you believe that Israel has become soft and spoiled, you'll arrive at the conclusion that Hamas will be able to bring us to our knees by torturing us with videos of the hostages. If, however, you think we might be worthy successors to the ’48 generation, then the conclusion seems to be this: No government will be able to hold power in this country if it resigns itself to defeat at the hands of genocidal jihadists.