March 21, 2024: Who Is a Palestinian State For?

U.S.-funded Lebanese military works for Hezbollah; Hamas and Fatah throw elbows; Migrants overwhelm National Guard

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The Big Story

On Wednesday, 19 Democratic senators—including Chris Van Hollen (MD), Dick Durbin (IL), and Elizabeth Warren (MA)—sent a letter to Joe Biden urging the United States to take “bold diplomatic action” and “publicly outline a path for the United States to recognize a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.” In what has become a familiar administration formula since October 7, the senators urged that this new state be governed by a “reformed and revitalized Palestinian Authority.”

The letter coincided with the release of new public opinion polling from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which shows, as usual, that the PA is about as popular in Palestine as Netanyahu is in the Columbia faculty lounge: 

The good news for the would-be nation builders in Washington is that their preferred scenario—a PA under someone other than Mahmoud Abbas—is 2% more popular than the PA in its current form. The bad news is that this fictional PA is still trailing Hamas by a cool 31% in Gaza and by 46% overall. The only solution less popular than that is what is reportedly the preferred Israeli arrangement, control of Gaza by tribes and large families, which polled at 4% across the West Bank and Gaza. Seventy-three percent of Palestinians, meanwhile, oppose a “strengthened” and “reformed” PA backed by a U.S. and Arab coalition: 

To be fair, a differently worded poll question shows more evenly divided loyalties. Asked which party they support, 25% of Gazans, and 17% of Palestinians overall, said Fatah, vs. 34% of Gazans and Palestinians who support Hamas. And there is at least one potential Fatah candidate who could potentially defeat Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a free election: Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the Second Intifada, currently serving five life sentences in Israeli prison for murder: 

A matchup between Abbas and Haniyeh, however, would see Haniyeh winning 37% to 11%, with nearly half (48%) of Palestinians saying they would not participate in the elections. 

Finally, the poll asked whether Hamas made the “correct” decision to attack Israel on Oct. 7:

Notably, support for the attacks has moderately declined in the West Bank since the previous round of polling in December, but that decline has been compensated by a 14% increase in support for the attacks among Gazans. Perversely, that may reflect Israel’s growing success in avoiding harm to civilians since scaling down its bombing and artillery campaigns in late 2023. 

Washington’s big idea appears to be to create a “Palestinian state” that the Israelis don’t want, run by a party and leadership that the Palestinians don’t want, to be kept afloat by international aid money and U.S. security assistance. It is, as Tablet News Editor Tony Badran has argued, a plan to “Lebanonize” the Palestinian Territories, with the PA and its security services acting, like the Lebanese Armed Forces, as a legal fiction that allows the United States to deal with the real local power: the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas in a future Palestinian state.

This U.S. posture means that it is vital for Israel to sufficiently destroy Hamas’ power so that it cannot reconstitute itself in the future as the controlling element of a U.S.-backed Palestinian statelet. But it also underscores the importance of the Israelis coming up with a workable arrangement for postwar governance in Gaza, lest the American plan become a fait accompli.  

Read the poll results here: https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/969 

IN THE BACK PAGES: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman on the defenders of Kibbutz Alumim

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The Rest

→An example of what we mean by “Lebanonization”: The Times of Israel reported Thursday that a Lebanese military tribunal issued arrest warrants for two Lebanese civilians suspected of giving information to the Israelis that led to the successful assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in January. The United States has funded the Lebanese security services, including the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Internal Security Forces (ISF), to the tune of more than $3 billion since 2006, including, since January 2023, direct cash stipends to pay the salaries of LAF and ISF forces. Justified under the fig leaf of strengthening the “legitimate” Lebanese government against Hezbollah, this functions in reality as a direct U.S. subsidy to the terror group, since the Lebanese government is a fiction, and Hezbollah—and through it, Iran—is the hegemonic power in the country. Thus the endless stream of stories like this one, in which the U.S.-funded Lebanese military acts as the counterintelligence arm of Hezbollah and its allies in the Iranian-backed Axis of Resistance. 

One more example: The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday that Lebanese security forces detained and interrogated a political analyst, Makram Rabah, for discussing the presence of Hezbollah forces in the city of Baalbek in an interview. According to Rabah, he was informed he was being detained for “providing information in the interview regarding Hezbollah locations, which were considered coordinates for the enemy.” 

Read more here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/america-leaves-israel-eyeless-in-gaza 

→The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published a report earlier this week, citing Arabic-language media sources, on what appears to be a new round of fighting between Hamas and the PA. The dispute, according to MEMRI, concerns Mahmoud Abbas’ appointment of a new PA prime minister, Muhammad Mustafa, and reports that the PA security services are in talks with Israel and armed Palestinian clans about establishing a civil administration to replace Hamas in Gaza. According to MEMRI:

• On March 15, following Mustafa’s appointment, Hamas published on its Telegram channel a joint statement with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denouncing the move as “strengthening [Abbas’] one-man rule” and “deepening the schism” among Palestinian factions. The statement called on “our brethren in the Fatah movement” to “agree [on a different] way of managing this major historic period.”

• In response, Fatah published a statement attacking Hamas for failing to consult “the Palestinian leadership” before undertaking “the adventure of October 7.” It also taunted Hamas, asking if it wanted to “appoint a prime minister from Iran”?

• A separate March 17 editorial in a PA newspaper declared [emphasis ours] that “Hamas, which embarked on an adventure on October 7 based on its exclusive Iranian decision, has brought disasters upon our people not only in Gaza but throughout the territory of the occupied state of Palestine.” 

• MEMRI also notes that there have been contradictory statements from Gazan tribal elements with ties to both parties, with Fatah-linked elements issuing declarations of loyalty to Abbas and Mustafa, and Hamas-linked elements reiterating their loyalty to Hamas. Hamas has vowed to strike with an “iron fist” against any Gazans who collaborate with the Israelis. 

Hamas and Fatah are jockeying for position in postwar Gaza, so it is no surprise that Fatah is attempting to blame Hamas and Iran for the “adventure” that has cost so many Palestinian lives. It is worth remembering, however, that on Oct. 9, Fatah secretary in Lebanon Fathi Abu al-Ardat went on Lebanese television to proclaim that “all the Palestinian factions”—including Fatah—took part in the attack, praise the display of “Palestinian unity on the ground,” and declare that the attack was “the embodiment of the underlying principles we have always declared.” That Fatah now sees an opportunity to secure more U.S. largesse while delivering an elbow to its rival should not obscure the fact that, in Ardat’s words, “Our immutable position is that all guns are pointed at the Zionist enemy.”

On the other hand, it is certainly interesting that Fatah, when it needs a stick to beat Hamas with, chooses to attack it as an Iranian stooge. They might want to share that intelligence with the Biden administration. 

→Stat of the Day: 650

That’s how many terror operatives have been captured this week at al-Shifa Hhospital, according to a Thursday statement by the IDF, including several senior Hamas commanders and much of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Gaza leadership. Among those captured are three commanders from Hamas’ West Bank headquarters and at least two senior PIJ leaders, including the heads of the group’s intelligence unit and propaganda unit in Gaza City. The IDF said that it had killed an additional 140 gunmen in fighting in the hospital complex and that it expected the fighting there to go on for several more days. 

→Earlier this week, more than 100 prominent Democratic donors, among them several Jewish donors, published a letter to Biden demanding conditions on aid to Israel, citing “the disillusionment of a critical portion of the Democratic coalition” and their fear that “the Gaza war is increasing the chances of a Trump victory.” That may be a problem with “a critical portion of the Democratic coalition,” but a new poll suggests that it is not a problem with the American electorate writ large. A Thursday survey from Pew found that 58% of Americans believe Israel has valid reasons for fighting Hamas and that more believe Israel’s conduct of the war has been acceptable (38%) than unacceptable (34%), with 26% saying they are unsure. As in previous polls, younger Americans were more likely to hold anti-Israel views: Only 46% of respondents aged 18-29 held favorable views of the Israeli people, compared to 60% with favorable views of the Palestinian people. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents under 30, more held favorable views of Hamas (18%) than of the Israeli government (16%). 

Read more here: https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/majority-in-u-s-say-israel-has-valid-reasons-for-fighting-fewer-say-the-same-about-hamas/ 

→Video of the Day:

That video, captured by James Breeden for the New York Post, shows illegal immigrants in El Paso, Texas, breaking past razor-wire barricades and then overrunning troops from the Texas National Guard before rushing the border wall. As Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin notes on X, “This is on U.S. soil.”

→An inquiry into the relationship between faux scholarship and destructive public policy, from The Washington Free Beacon: 

[An] anonymous complaint [filed Wednesday with Stanford University’s provost and dean of research] … alleges that Professor Jo Boaler—the most prominent influence on California’s K-12 math framework that nudges schools away from accelerated math pathways—has in 52 instances misrepresented supporting research she has cited in her own work in order to support her conclusions. These include the notions that taking timed tests causes math anxiety, mixing students of different academic levels boosts achievement, and students have been found to perform better when teachers don’t grade their work. This pattern of "citation misrepresentation," the complaint alleges, violates Stanford’s standards of professional conduct for faculty, showing a disregard for accuracy, and may violate the university's research integrity rules.

Boaler has been credited as the inspiration behind San Francisco’s decade-long experiment with eliminating middle-school algebra to promote “equity,” which saw eighth-grade math proficiency fall from 51% when the policy was implemented in 2014 to 40% in 2023. In February, the San Francisco school board voted to reintroduce eighth-grade algebra with pilot programs starting next year. The Beacon notes that Boaler sought help from Laurene Powell Jobs—the Democratic megadonor, owner of The Atlantic, and widow of Steve—to convince California Gov. Gavin Newsom to adopt a California state math framework that she helped author. Boaler also runs a lucrative consulting service, which charges California public schools a rate of $5,000 per hour.  

Read it here: https://freebeacon.com/california/san-francisco-cited-this-professor-to-end-8th-grade-algebra-her-research-had-reckless-disregard-for-accuracy-complaint-alleges/

→While the Department of Homeland Security was cracking down on “misinformation” and “violent extremism” among American citizens on video-game platforms, it was apparently forgetting to file its paperwork for deportation proceedings, according to a report released Wednesday by Syracuse University. The report from the university’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that approximately 200,000 deportation cases have been dismissed by immigration judges since 2021 because DHS officials failed to file the required Notice to Appear by the time of the hearing. Of those 200,000 dismissals, three-quarters were never “rectified”—that is, DHS never filed a new NTA that would allow the court case to restart. The report notes an “almost total lack of transparency on where and why these DHS failures occurred” and a “lack of solid information on what happened to these many immigrants when DHS never rectified its failure.”

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TODAY IN TABLET: 

Facing Hate in Berlin, by Daniel-Ryan Spaulding

It is fascinating how quickly people I knew—even in the city’s open-minded queer scene—turned against me for supporting Israel

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SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that  you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.

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Today’s Back Pages is, again, an excerpt. A link to the full version can be found here.

Black Sabbath

The defenders of Kibbutz Alumim fought off Palestinian terror squads on Oct. 7 and saved their homes and families

By Bruce Maddy-Weitzman

The evening of Oct. 6 was especially festive at Kibbutz Alumim, one of the two religiously observant kibbutzim among the communities that dot the Gaza envelope, the part of Israel’s fertile northwestern Negev region adjacent to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Most of Alumim’s 500 residents and their guests had gathered at the kibbutz’s synagogue to celebrate with song and dance the start of the Simchat Torah holiday, one of the two most joyous days on the Jewish calendar. Many of them didn’t finally retire until after midnight.

Ordinarily they would have returned to the synagogue the next morning to continue the celebration. Instead, at 6:29 a.m., they were suddenly roused from their beds by a deafening cascade of rocket launches from a nearby Iron Dome anti-missile battery, and the resulting booms marking the interceptions of some of the thousands of missiles launched from Gaza, less than 4 kilometers away. The usual Color Red warning alarms were barely audible amid the deafening tumult. So many intercepts were being fired that it was as if the Iron Dome firing mechanism was somehow stuck in the “launch” position. After a few minutes, the firing stopped completely, apparently because all of the battery's available missiles had been used.

After more than 15 years of intermittent attacks from their neighbors, Alumim’s residents ostensibly knew the drill: One had 30 seconds to scurry into reinforced rooms (mamadim) and remain there for 10 minutes, until the risk of being hit by rocket or mortar fire, or falling shrapnel from the interceptions, had passed. This time it was different. The unprecedented barrage of rockets and mortars was quickly followed by a sustained ground assault by thousands of heavily armed men at 30 different points along the border. Their mission, explicitly defined in documents later found on the dead bodies of their commanders and on computer files, was to kill as many people as possible, to take hostages, and wreak destruction on both civilian and military installations.

A map of Alumim found on the body of one of the Palestinian commanders showed two different lines of attack. The one carried out by the first squad was pointed toward the nerve center of the kibbutz—the nishkiya (armory), the secretariat, and the kibbutz’s “war room” (hamal), a below-ground, two-room complex monitoring the various security cameras spread around the kibbutz. A similarly detailed plan for neighboring Kibbutz Sa’ad described the location of the secretariat (“a significant source of information for our forces”), the dining hall (a place to gather hostages), and the animal feed factory (a suitable place for the forces to gather and replenish themselves). For whatever reason, however, the first wave of attackers at Alumim didn’t follow the plan, instead choosing to try and first secure the front gate and adjacent areas of Road 232, the north-south artery parallel to the Gaza border.

The blackest day in Israel’s history had begun. Alumim’s residents, like those in neighboring communities, would spend many harrowing hours closed up in rooms that proved to be safe from rocket attacks, but in most cases couldn’t even be locked from the inside. In some localities, they would prove to be death traps.

Fortunately for Alumim’s residents, they would be spared the worst of the horrors visited on neighboring kibbutzim, thanks to a combination of good fortune, apparent mistakes by the Hamas attackers, late arriving assistance from various security forces and, most of all, the courage and resourcefulness of its plucky defenders. Alumim’s 41 foreign workers—22 Thais and 19 Nepalis—on the other hand, were far less lucky, and paid a terrible price.

As elsewhere in Israel’s border areas, the first layer of Alumim’s defense rested on its 12-member security team (kitat konenut: KK), backstopped by three persons manning the kibbutz’s hamal. In recent years, the IDF had cut down the sizes of the KKs, viewing them as increasingly unnecessary in light of new technological and engineering measures that supposedly ensured the defense of the border, and even a nuisance. It had also imposed new restrictions upon members who wanted to keep their weapons in their homes, requiring the installation of heavy wall locks embedded in concrete to prevent thefts (in fact, the thefts mostly occurred at army bases). The weapons themselves had neither long-range scopes nor night-vision equipment. Hence, the size of the KK at Alumim, once 16, was now 12.

Most of the KK members ranged in age from mid-30s to late-40s. Some worked on the kibbutz, others outside: One was a lawyer, another a university professor in brain research, two others were engineers in large companies. Had the attack taken place during the week, and not on the holiday or Sabbath, some of them would not have been home, and the outcome would have been far worse. Eerily, a similar situation characterized the beginning of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war exactly 50 years and one day earlier: The Egyptian and Syrian surprise attacks were launched on the Yom Kippur holiday, when nearly everyone in the country was at home, thus expediting the army’s ability to mobilize in the first critical hours and days.

Each KK member had considerable military experience. Nearly all were married, with three or more children. Most of their weapons, primarily M-16 rifles, were locked in the small nishkiya located in the center of the kibbutz not far from the hamal. The annual training exercise had been held a month earlier: The scenario that they practiced was one in which a few terrorists penetrated the kibbutz, took hostages and held them in a building. The KK’s role was to set up a thin line of defense, confront any attackers, and isolate the building in question, until nearby army units arrived, within the expected 15-20 minutes.

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Eyal Rhein, 49, father of four, was the head (ravshatz) of the KK. His responsibilities included organizing the annual one- or two-day training exercise, mobilizing new members when needed, maintaining the necessary weapons and ammunition, and communicating with the IDF’s nearby Gaza Division during any emergencies and escalations. Realizing that the rocket fire was out of the ordinary, he quickly donned his Shabbat (Sabbath) pants and shoes, a simple protective vest, and the white shirt marking his status as ravshatz, grabbed his pistol, and went outside to have a look around, on an electric bike. At 6:52 a.m., while near the kibbutz's back gate, he received a message from the army command to activate the KK. He quickly sent everyone a WhatsApp message to meet at the nishkiya, but not everyone would see it right away. Rhein was also told to close roads and gates in the fields immediately surrounding the kibbutz.

Fortunately, Rhein didn’t have the keys for two outlying gates, and headed back home to get them. Otherwise, he would have run into a squad of heavily armed attackers that was approaching from Gaza. Luck was also with other members of the KK: Nitai Nachtomi had overslept and thus didn’t make his regular early morning jog around the perimeter of the kibbutz; Eitan Okun had turned his alarm clock off at 6:05 a.m., thus delaying his planned drive to the Zikim beach just north of Gaza, where he would have found himself assaulted by seaborne Hamas squads; Amichai Shacham had overslept as well, delaying his attending to the cow sheds that were directly in the path of the Hamas invaders.

Rhein returned to his house, grabbed a helmet, rifle and ceramic vest, and the keys to the nishkiya. By this time, he had received an urgent message from 59-year-old Avi Braverman, who had gone to the hamal to monitor the security cameras: Armed men were at the back gate, and breaking in. At 7:06 a.m., Rhein sent another WhatsApp message to the KK that terrorists on motorcycles were in the kibbutz. The perimeter fence and gate separated fields and orchards from the kibbutz’s economically productive areas—packing houses, the cow sheds and state-of-the-art milking station, and chicken runs. Alumim’s foreign workers were also housed in this area, which proved to be fatal for many of them.

Ohad Braverman, 23, recently discharged from the Israeli Air Force’s elite heliborne search and rescue Unit 669, lived in the young people’s neighborhood of the kibbutz, about 500 meters from the back gate. Along with curious others, he had gone outside after the initial 10-minute waiting period to view the aerial spectacle. Just before 7:00 a.m. he heard an explosion, followed a few minutes later by bursts of small arms fire. Braverman exchanged knowing looks with his friend, 25-year-old Saguy Kenaan, a career army officer home for the holiday, and they quickly got organized. Toting a rifle, Kenaan gave Braverman his pistol, and together they set out in the direction of the firing.

Suddenly, two motorcycles, each carrying four or five heavily armed Hamas fighters, zipped by on the kibbutz’s outer circumference road, just 30 meters from where they stood behind some bushes. Shacham saw them too: He was on his way to check on the cows when he heard the shots and grenade explosions. He was first to arrive at the nishkiya, where he was joined after some minutes by Rhein and most of the rest of the KK, and also by Yaniv Beigel, 27, whose father, Zevik, was also a KK member. They hurriedly equipped themselves with the available rifles, five ammunition clips (each containing 29 bullets), a variety of well-worn helmets and protective ceramic vests.

What they didn’t have at this point were two-way radios, which under army regulations couldn’t be stored there, but had to be held in the hamal. Two hours would pass before KK members were able to get them. However, there weren’t enough to go around, and not all of them were properly charged. Led by Barak Shalom, who was in charge of the KK’s operational decisions, they set out, deploying in a number of places, and cautiously heading toward the front gate, where at least four of the Hamas attackers were awaiting them.

Menachem Binyamini was running about 20 minutes behind the others. He had been busy settling his four children in the family’s mamad and hadn’t immediately seen the burst of WhatsApp messages. Wearing shorts and sandals, he met up with the rest as they deployed. Some went toward the front gate, where they heard shooting. Ayal Young and Shacham went to a two-story building (the mechina, in kibbutz parlance) to check on visiting family members, and guide them to a mamad. Nachtomi and Okun joined them.

Shacham and Ohad Braverman were both trained combat medics. Together with Young, Kenaan, and Yaakov Bergstein, they proceeded to the area of the cow sheds, where they had heard some of the initial explosions and shooting. Some of the equipment had been damaged, and they quickly searched the area to ensure that there were no terrorists in the vicinity. Joined by Gilad Hunwald, a medic with the Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance service when not tending to the kibbutz’s avocado orchards, they then went to the foreign workers’ quarters. Some of the workers gradually emerged from hiding, and led them to the others.

Read the rest here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/black-sabbath-kibbutz-alumim-hamas