World
Biden Admin Deployed Air Force Team to Israel to Assist With Targets, Document Suggests
Targeting intelligence — the information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons — has played a central role in Israel’s siege of Gaza. A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. Air Force sent officers specializing in this exact form of intelligence to Israel in late November.
Since the start of Israel’s bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’s strike on October 7, Israel has dropped more than 29,000 bombs on the tiny Gaza Strip, according to a U.S. intelligence report last month. And for the first time in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza since at least early November, ostensibly for hostage recovery by special forces. At the time the drones were revealed, U.S. Gen. Pat Ryder insisted that the special operations forces deployed to Israel to advise on hostage rescue were “not participating in [Israel Defense Forces] target development.”
“I’ve directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts,” said President Joe Biden three days after the Hamas attack.
But several weeks later, on November 21, the U.S. Air Force issued deployment guidelines for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, headed to Israel. Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting.
“They’re probably targeting people, targeting officers,” Lawrence Cline, who served as an intelligence engagement officer in Iraq before retirement, told The Intercept. Targeting intelligence refers to the identification and characterization of enemy activities including missile and artillery launches, location of leadership and command and control centers, and key facilities. “What I can see is we’ve got a lot of global assets in terms of satellites and the like and the Israelis have a lot in terms of more localized radar coverage.”
The deployment guidelines were issued by the Pentagon’s Air Force component command for the Middle East, Air Forces Central, on November 21. The document provides deployment instructions to air personnel sent to the country, including an “Air Defense Liaison Team” as well as “airmen assigned as the Intelligence Engagement Officer (IEO).”
Intelligence engagement officers, Cline explained, coordinate intelligence between the U.S. and partner militaries. When deployed in Iraq, Cline, who now works as an instructor for the Defense Department Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, recalled that he and other IEOs comprised a small team who spent “probably three quarters of our time working with the Iraqis, the other quarter checking in with headquarters,” adding that “it was sort of half and half a liaison and advising.”
Asked about the airmen’s mission, the Defense Intelligence Agency referred questions to the Air Forces Central, which did not respond to a request for comment. Neither the Office of the Secretary of Defense nor Central Command responded to requests for comment.
The intelligence engagement process provides a low-profile mechanism through which the U.S. can coordinate with the Israeli military, a valuable tool amid the political sensitivity of the conflict.
A U.S. Army primer defines intelligence engagement as a “powerful” tool that is useful “especially when U.S. policy might restrict our interaction,” as it “often does not require large budgets or footprints.” Experts say that may be the case here.
Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare, a website specializing in national security law, said that there seems to be an “Israel exception” to the U.S. rules around military assistance.
Past presidents have issued several executive orders banning the U.S. government from carrying out or sponsoring assassinations abroad. This ban has been interpreted to include wartime targeting of civilians, according to a recent Foreign Affairs article by Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser for the State Department who now works for Crisis Group.
And the so-called Leahy law, a set of budget amendments named for Sen. Patrick Leahy, requires the U.S. government to vet foreign military units for “gross violations of human rights” when providing training or aid to those units. Several progressive members of Congress have raised concerns that U.S. aid to Israel — both before and during the present war — violates that requirement.
“For air advisory missions, which I imagine involve intelligence sharing and training, specific domestic legal restrictions such as the Leahy law and the assassination ban would likely come into play,” McBrien said. But the Leahy vetting process is “reversed” for Israel; rather than vetting Israeli military units beforehand, the U.S. State Department sends aid and then waits for reports of violations, according to a recent article by Josh Paul, who resigned from his post as a State Department political-military officer over his concerns with U.S. support for Israel.
“As a general matter, U.S. officials who are providing support to another country during armed conflict would want to make sure they are not aiding and abetting war crimes,” Finucane told The Intercept. He emphasized that the same principle applies to weapons transfers and intelligence sharing.
The Israeli military intentionally strikes Palestinian civilian infrastructure, known as “power targets,” in order to “create a shock,” according to an investigation by the Israeli news website +972 Magazine. Targets are generated using an artificial intelligence system known as “Habsora,” Hebrew for “gospel.”
“Nothing happens by accident,” an Israeli military intelligence source told +972 Magazine. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
Israel’s War on Gaza
The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to conceal the nature of its support for the Israeli military. The Pentagon quietly tapped a so-called Tiger Team to facilitate weapons assistance to Israel, as The Intercept has previously reported. The administration has also declined to reveal which weapons systems it’s providing Israel and at which quantities, insisting that the secrecy is necessary for security reasons.
“We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters during a press briefing in October.
This contrasts with its support for Ukraine, about which it has been far more transparent. The administration has provided an itemized list of its weapons assistance to Ukraine, a country facing at least as much of a threat amid the invasion of Russia. The White House has never addressed the incongruity. Past administrations have also provided detailed public information about U.S. targeting support for the Saudi and Emirati military campaigns in Yemen, which U.S. officials claim was meant to reduce civilian casualties.
The secrecy “may reflect the fact that the U.S. has interests that are in tension, the Biden administration has interests that are in tension,” Finucane said. “On the one hand, they want to publicly embrace Israel and support Israel, providing what seems to be unconditional support. On the other hand, they don’t want to be perceived as taking the country into another war in the Middle East.”
The post Biden Admin Deployed Air Force Team to Israel to Assist With Targets, Document Suggests appeared first on The Intercept.
In Genocide Case Against Israel at The Hague, the U.S. Is the Unnamed Co-Conspirator
“South Africa has recognized the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people.”
With those words, Vusimuzi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, opened his government’s historic suit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, charging the state of Israel with multiple violations of the Genocide Convention during its three-month siege of Gaza.
South Africa, a nation whose population suffered for decades under an apartheid regime backed by the U.S., has embarked on its historic effort to prosecute Israel for its genocidal war against the people of Gaza. Its 84-page filing at the ICJ is a harrowing document. In meticulous detail, it offers an overview of a murderous campaign waged against a civilian population under the fraudulent cover of “self-defense.” It lays out the horrifying scope of Israel’s destruction in Gaza of human life, civilian infrastructure, history, and culture, and paints a devastating picture of the grave conditions faced by those Palestinians who have managed to survive.
The charges describe “an exceptionally brutal military campaign by Israel in Gaza, which is extensive and ongoing, and which Israel intends to intensify further still,” South Africa’s lawyers argued. “Israel has engaged in and failed to prevent or to punish acts and measures which are genocidal, constituting flagrant violations of Israel’s obligations” under the Genocide Convention.
South Africa’s filing cites scores of genocidal statements made by Israeli government and military officials, lawmakers, and former officials describing Israel’s intentions in Gaza since October 7. It spans some nine pages. It is difficult to imagine an honest argument that the sum of these statements — including Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoking the biblical tale of the Israelites’ collective killing of the men, women, children, and livestock of Amalek — do not constitute an announcement of genocidal intent.
Yet that is precisely what U.S. officials want the public to believe. “Yes, I read the indictment,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adm. John Kirby. “We find it without merit. We find it counterproductive. And I’ll leave it there.”
If we lived in a just society, one which was governed by a rule of law applied evenly and fairly to all nations, U.S. officials would be appearing in international war crimes tribunals alongside the Israeli leaders whose criminal actions they are facilitating in every measurable manner. But that will never happen. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. government has operated as an emperor on matters of international law, issuing edicts about who can and cannot be held accountable for the gravest of crimes. There is even a law, known as the Hague Invasion Act, that authorizes the U.S. president to use force to liberate any American or allied personnel brought before an international court on war crimes charges.
On matters related to Israel, the U.S. has functioned as its rogue defender as a matter of bipartisan orthodoxy, vetoing or blocking any and all efforts — often supported by the vast majority of the world’s nations — to hold Israel responsible for its crimes against the Palestinians.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during his latest visit with the gangsters in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Tuesday, continued his monthslong kabuki performance, simultaneously playing the role of a dedicated propagandist and facilitator of Israel’s rampage and that of an observer who hopes that Israel might consider killing a few less civilians and letting in more humanitarian aid. “We’re working urgently to forge a path toward lasting peace and security in this region,” Blinken said as he stood alongside Israel’s president. “We believe the submission against Israel to the International Court of Justice distracts the world from all of these important efforts. And moreover, the charge of genocide is meritless.”
It has become a macabre ritual for Blinken to feign sorrow for the dead children of Gaza while simultaneously circumventing Congress to expedite the “emergency” shipment of weapons to a government whose public officials and lawmakers have spent the past three months openly declaring their intent to annihilate Gaza as a Palestinian territory.
As Israel’s war of annihilation against the people of Gaza enters its fourth month, the Biden administration has cemented its legacy as the mass-murder campaign’s chief political and military sponsor. No amount of empty platitudes offered by Blinken and other senior U.S. officials for the civilians of Gaza will wipe the blood from the administration’s hands.
Palestinian families run from the site of an Israeli airstrike on a residential building west of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Jan. 11, 2024.
Photo: Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A trial of Israel for genocide, if the judges at the ICJ decide the case has merit, could take years. But South Africa has also argued that the court should issue emergency provisional measures to protect the Palestinians of Gaza against ongoing attacks, citing voluminous evidence that Israel is engaged in ongoing violations of the Genocide Convention. “Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” South Africa argued in its suit. The ICJ should order Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza.” Based on previous cases, such orders could be issued within weeks.
South African lawyer Adila Hassim charged that Israel has engaged in a “systematic pattern of conduct from which genocide can be inferred.” She said that Israel had subjected the people of Gaza to “one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare” by sea, land, and air. “The level of Israel’s killing is so extensive that nowhere is safe in Gaza,” she added. “Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians with the full knowledge of how many lives each bomb will take. The devastation is intended to and has laid waste to Gaza.”
Beyond the citations of the vast civilian deaths and injuries caused by Israel in Gaza, South Africa’s lawyers argued effectively that Israel’s initial “evacuation” orders were in and of themselves genocidal, demanding the immediate flight of a million people, including patients in hospitals. Hassim cited U.N. statistics indicating that Israel has forced the displacement of 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza. The order issued by Israel on October 13, which called for more than a million Palestinians to flee their homes and hospitals, was itself genocidal, she said.
Hassim presented evidence of Israel’s alleged specific violations of Articles 2A, 2B, 2C, and 2D of the Genocide Convention, which prohibit the killing, maiming, and destruction of the way of life and ability to give birth of any racial, ethnic, or religious group, simply for being members of that group. “All of these acts individually and collectively form a calculated pattern of conduct by Israel indicating a genocidal intent,” Hassim said.
Beyond the clearly genocidal actions taken by Israel, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another lawyer for South Africa, addressed the issue of genocidal intent. “What state would admit to a genocidal intent?” Ngcukaitobi asked. The distinctive feature of this case has not been the silence of Israel, he argued, but the repetition of genocidal speech throughout every sphere of Israeli society, led by its prime minister, president, minister of defense, and other senior officials.
Ngcukaitobi played video of statements by Netanyahu and other senior officials and observed that one “extraordinary” element to Israel’s war against Gaza is that Israeli officials and leaders have systematically and publicly declared their desire to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza.
Ngcukaitobi said the statement by Netanyahu early in the war, invoking the biblical tale of the destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, was embraced by Israeli soldiers on the ground in “directing their actions and objectives.” “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our holy Bible,” Netanyahu said. “And we do remember.” The verse from the Book of 1 Samuel describes a command from God to Israel: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
The statements from Israeli officials as evidence of genocidal intent have been widely reported. But having them recited and at times played on video in an international war crimes court makes clear that Netanyahu and other officials felt comfortable uttering such shocking statements believing that they would never be held accountable. Indeed, Israel is well aware that the U.S. has already preemptively dismissed the veracity of South Africa’s charges.
John Dugard, a South African lawyer and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, presented South Africa’s argument for legal jurisdiction. “What more evidence could be required?” Dugard asked. “It is precisely because of a situation of this kind affecting the international community as a whole” that the ICJ has jurisdiction to provisionally order a halt to suspected genocidal actions.
“What is happening in Gaza now is not correctly framed as a simple conflict between two parties,” argued another South African lawyer, Max du Plessis. Du Plessis presented the legal argument that the ICJ must issue provisional orders to Israel to halt its operations on the basis of suspicion that genocide may be occurring in Gaza, which is the standard under the court’s mandate. He said that the ICJ must issue provisional measures to halt Israel’s attacks against Gaza on the basis that Israel may eventually be convicted of genocide and that failure to stop it now would represent a grave breach of the rights of the Palestinians still alive.
Israel, he charged, has “subjected the Palestinian people to an oppressive and prolonged violation of their rights to self-determination for more than half a century. Those violations occur in a world where Israel has for years regarded itself as beyond and above the law.”
Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, also representing South Africa, offered a brutal description of the extent of ongoing human suffering and destruction, declaring bluntly that “huge swathes of Gaza … are being wiped from the map.” Each day, she said, citing figures from Save the Children, 10 Palestinian children will have one or more limbs amputated, often without anesthesia; more mass graves will be dug, cemeteries bombed, and bodies exhumed. People will be bombed in places they have been told to evacuate to; whole families will be obliterated.
The ICJ has historically issued provisional orders to nations, including Russia and Serbia, to halt past military operations, she pointed out. “This is occurring in Gaza on a much more intensive scale [against] a besieged, trapped, terrified population that has nowhere safe to go,” she said.
“Israel continues to deny that it is responsible for the humanitarian crisis it has created, even as Gaza starves,” Ní Ghrálaigh said, warning the ICJ judges that a failure to order a provisional halt to Israel’s attacks against Gaza would be grave. “The very reputation of international law, its ability and willingness to bind and to protect all peoples equally, hangs in the balance.”
In an impassioned closing to her argument, she declared, “Despite the horror of the genocide against the Palestinian people being livestreamed from Gaza to our mobile phones, computers, and TV screens — the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain, hope that the world might do something — Gaza represents nothing short of a moral failure.”
Palestinians gather at the Nelson Mandela Square in Ramallah, West Bank, to demonstrate in support of the genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice on Jan. 10, 2024.
Photo: Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty Images
Israel, which has accused South Africa of “blood libel,” will present its defense on Friday. The final lawyer in South Africa’s line-up, Vaughan Lowe, was tasked with anticipating Israel’s likely arguments. The veteran British barrister preemptively addressed Israel’s attempt to shift focus to Hamas and October 7: This case concerns Israel’s attacks in Gaza, he said. “Hamas is not a state and cannot be a party to the Genocide Convention.” There are other legal processes to be taken against Hamas and other actors, he said.
Lowe dismissed Israel’s claims to be acting in “self-defense” and cited U.N. rulings that Gaza remains an occupied territory because of the substantial control Israel continues to wield over its land, air, sea, and access to basic life necessities. “No matter how monstrous or appalling an attack or provocation, genocide is never a permitted response,” Lowe said. “Every use of force, whether in self-defense or enforcing an occupation or policing operations, must stay within the limits set by international law.”
Arguing, too, for the ICJ to order an immediate halt to Israel’s attacks against Gaza, Lowe said, “If any military operation — no matter how carefully it’s carried out — is carried out pursuant to an intention to destroy a people, in whole or in part, it violates the Genocide Convention and it must stop.” Israel cannot sidestep rulings of the court, he said, by simply unilaterally declaring that it is following international law, citing “Israel’s apparent inability to see that it has done anything wrong in grinding Gaza and its people into the dust.”
Israel’s War on Gaza
Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, closed the hearing by reading South Africa’s demands for the ICJ to order a halt to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. “South Africa has come to this court to prevent genocide,” he said. He asked the court to provisionally order Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza and to preserve evidence for a potential future trial.
While the U.S is not named in South Africa’s case, it has openly and enthusiastically supported and armed Israel’s campaign and should be viewed as an unnamed co-conspirator to Israel’s actions. While the ICJ proceedings may do nothing to halt Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza, a ruling in South Africa’s favor would increase pressure on countries across the world to make their positions clear. It would also serve as an important test of whether nations, namely U.S. allies in Europe, believe in upholding international laws and conventions or whether they accept the U.S. as the ultimate overlord enforcing its own set of unevenly applied rules.
The post In Genocide Case Against Israel at The Hague, the U.S. Is the Unnamed Co-Conspirator appeared first on The Intercept.
South Africa Just Made Its Case at The Hague. What's Next?
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South Africa’s genocide charges against Israel were formally brought to The Hague today, with the post-apartheid nation facing off against Israel for two days of emergency hearings. South Africa’s immediate aim is to win a ruling later this month — perhaps as early as next week — ordering Israel to cease and desist its assault of Gaza.
Today’s hearing at The Hague was South Africa’s opportunity to lay out its case; tomorrow Israel will respond. The case they made (watch it here), which played live on TVs set up outside the building for crowds to watch, was straightforward: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken in biblical terms about wiping out the Palestinians and followed up by urging them to flee to safe zones, and then flattening those safe zones with 2,000 bombs. South Africa also played clips of Israeli soldiers echoing Netanyahu’s genocidal rhetoric, vowing to wipe out “the seed of Amalek.” “What more evidence could be required?” one South African lawyer asked. My colleague Jeremy Scahill has more of the blow-by-blow.
I am covering the situation outside of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). At 10 am, Dutch local time starts the South African's case against Israel's genocide. pic.twitter.com/mcTuqxYyIs
— HalalFlow (@halalflow) January 11, 2024
South Africa's legal team begins argument at ICJ by saying, "South Africa has recognized the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people."
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) January 11, 2024
A preliminary ruling to cease the assault, if it’s made, would then raise the question of how it would be enforced and who would be willing to stand up to the United States to enforce it. It would also give new global legitimacy to the Yemeni blockade of shipping in the Red Sea destined for or originating from Israeli ports.
In the hours before the hearing, the number of countries backing the genocide charges exploded. In our hemisphere, Brazil, Colombia, and Nicaragua signed on; Malaysia, Turkey, Brazil, the Maldives, Namibia, Jordan, Iran, Bangladesh, Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen also joined. Many of these countries endorsed the charges through the Arab League, whose support is a body blow to the Abraham Accords.
South Africa needs to win over eight of the 15 ICJ judges hearing the case, and it’s hard to imagine many of them supporting a charge of genocide. The judges are from the United States, Russia, China, France, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, Slovakia, Somalia, and Uganda. The U.S. judge, obviously, won’t be easy to win over, but neither will the Russian, as their country faces charges for its invasion of Ukraine, and China may tread lightly given its own treatment of Uyghurs in western China. China, however, is also poised to benefit geostrategically if the crisis can help displace American power in the Mideast.
The makeup gives South Africa at least a plausible path toward victory; judges are not necessarily under instructions from their home countries, though they are, of course, aware of the political pressures at work.
U.S. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, is being sued in federal court for his failure to stop the genocide, a case now joined by 77 human rights and civil society organizations, my colleague Prem Thakker reports. On Wednesday, we covered the South African charges on “Counter Points.”
Netanyahu is clearly feeling the weight of the charges. He posted an English-language video to social media Wednesday afternoon that was markedly different from his bellicose rhetoric to date. “I want to make a few points absolutely clear: Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population,” Netanyahu said in the video, a break from his previous willingness to entertain the idea, which is regularly floated by ministers in his government. “Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population, and we are doing so in full compliance with international law.”
"I want to make a few points absolutely clear:
Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.
Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population, and we are doing so in full compliance with international law. pic.twitter.com/amxFaMnS0P— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) January 10, 2024
But the rest of his government continues to reiterate that mass displacement is their goal. Here is his minister of communications on Wednesday: “We certainly need to encourage emigration so that there’s as little pressure as possible inside the Gaza Strip from people who, yes, at the moment they’re uninvolved, but they’re not exactly lovers of Israel and they educate their children to [embrace] terror. And we’d like to see, and we’ve talked about this in government meetings, by the way, there aren’t any countries that want to take them in. No one wants them, even if we pay a lot of money. Voluntary emigration is important. It doesn’t in any way harm human rights,” he said. “We should encourage voluntary migration and we should compel them until they say they want it.”
“How?” he was asked by an Israeli presenter.
“The war does what it does,” he explained.
Israel Minister of Communications says continuing the war to make life impossible for civilians and force them to leave Gaza is the best way. More important evidence for the ICJ trial pic.twitter.com/85rijf9Aqb
— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) January 10, 2024
That the Israeli ministers are still speaking openly like this — talking about the war as one against an entire population — as the hearings are underway at The Hague only strengthens South Africa’s case.
A new report from Save the Children has found that, on average, 10 children in Gaza have lost at least one limb on every day of Israel’s bombing campaign. For those who required amputations, many were performed without proper anesthesia, they note, as well as a lack of access to antibiotics, due to Israel’s blockade of the area.
In the Senate yesterday, Bernie Sanders moved forward on a privileged resolution that will force a vote on whether to order the State Department to investigate whether Israel is committing human rights violations with U.S. weapons. After 30 days, Congress can then vote to block the weapons transfers. Sanders is relying on an obscure provision of the Foreign Assistance Act, Section 502(b), which, believe it or not, I floated back in November as a path available to Sanders after he told my colleague Dan Boguslaw in the Capitol hallway he was considering forcing a vote on the issue of arms sales to Israel. Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first time this has ever been tried.
The post South Africa Just Made Its Case at The Hague. What’s Next? appeared first on The Intercept.
77 Groups Worldwide Back Genocide Lawsuit Against Biden in U.S. Court
Dozens of legal and civil society organizations from around the world have thrown their weight behind a U.S. lawsuit accusing President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for failing to “prevent an unfolding genocide” in Gaza.
In late December, 77 groups — representing tens of thousands of lawyers, civil society leaders, and activists from six continents — filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit that Palestinian human rights organizations, residents of Gaza, and U.S. citizens with family members impacted by Israel’s ongoing assault brought against the Biden administration.
In the amicus brief, which is an avenue for groups not directly involved in a lawsuit to give the court information to consider in its ruling, the organizations argue that the plaintiffs establish that a genocide, or serious risk of genocide, of Palestinians in Gaza is occurring. They also argue that the U.S. is violating its duties under international law to prevent and not be complicit in genocide, and that those U.S. failures contribute to the erosion of “long and widely-held norms of international law,” including the Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both established in 1948 in the wake of World War II.
The lawsuit is headed for a hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California later this month. Meanwhile, in an 84-page complaint brought by South Africa, Israel faces charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court will begin to hear arguments in that case on Thursday and could issue provisional measures. That could include directing Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza, stop any procedures that are forcibly displacing or starving Palestinians in Gaza, or preserve evidence related to the allegations.
The lawyers overseeing the U.S. lawsuit believe that the decisions rendered by the ICJ could indirectly impact their case as well.
“While the District Court is obviously not bound by the ICJ, it will have to, and the government will have to, contend with the fact that the highest authority, the world court, has issued an order in which it has found that the case of genocide — there’s a plausible case,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, an organization representing the plaintiffs against the U.S. “It will have implications for the United States around both its failure to prevent this genocide and for its complicity.”
In December, the Biden administration filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the plaintiffs are asking the court to act beyond its purview to “override the executive branch’s foreign policy and national security determinations.” The administration also argued that the plaintiffs don’t have standing to bring the lawsuit because the court has no authority over the activities of another sovereign state.
Top administration officials have been dismissive of the case before the ICJ as well, with White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby calling it “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” and Blinken deriding it on similar terms. On Wednesday, Kirby doubled down in his assessment.
People bury the bodies of Palestinians killed during the war in a mass grave across the Kerem Shalom border crossing after Israel returned 80 bodies of Palestinians, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Dec. 26, 2023.
Photo: Loay Ayyoub/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Filed in November as the horrifying statistic arose that Israel had killed one out of every 200 people in Gaza, the lawsuit against the U.S. argues that Biden administration officials “repeatedly refused to use their obvious and considerable influence to set conditions or place limits on Israel’s massive bombing and total siege of Gaza.” The plaintiffs — including the Palestinian human rights organizations Defense for Children International – Palestine and Al-Haq, Gaza residents, and U.S. citizens with family members who have been killed and displaced by Israel’s war — cite U.S. vetoes of United Nations resolutions calling for a ceasefire and its actions to “fund, arm, and endorse Israel’s mass and devastating bombing campaign and total siege of the Palestinians in Gaza.”
At the time, the death toll in Gaza was around 11,000. It has now exceeded 23,000. It is believed that one in four people in Gaza are starving, and 90 percent are dangerously food insecure, while most health facilities are no longer functional.
In the months since the lawsuit was filed, the Biden administration has continued to actively support Israel’s mass-killing campaign while obstructing international efforts to stop the carnage. On December 8, the U.S. singlehandedly vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire and hostage release. A day later, the Biden administration approved sending Israel $106.5 million worth of tank shells without congressional approval. On December 12, the U.S. voted against a 153-10 U.N. General Assembly vote for a ceasefire and hostage release.
In late December, the Biden administration delayed a U.N. Security Council vote for humanitarian aid to Gaza for days while working to water it down. The administration negotiated the removal of the word “cessation” in a call to end fighting, as well as a provision that would have allowed an independent inspection of aid going into Gaza, rather than the Israel-administered checks that have slowed aid shipments to a crawl. The changes were made to avoid another American veto — only for the U.S. to abstain from voting.
Palestinians line up in the area where the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East distributes flour to families as Israeli attacks continue in Rafah in Gaza on Jan. 4, 2023.
Photo: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images
Both the lawsuit against the Biden administration and South Africa’s case against Israel lay out in extreme detail expressions of genocidal intent by Israeli officials. On October 9, just two days after Hamas’s attack on Israel, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a complete siege of Gaza, which is home to more than 2 million people. “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said at the time. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
In late October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked a biblical verse about an enemy of ancient Israel that has long been cited to justify killing Palestinians. “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our holy Bible,” he said. “And we do remember, and we are fighting.” (South Africa’s ICJ complaint points out that weeks later, Israeli soldiers were recorded in Gaza dancing and chanting, “May their village burn, may Gaza be erased,” and “We know our motto: there are no uninvolved civilians,” and “to wipe off the seed of Amalek.”)
According to Law for Palestine, a human rights and legal advocacy organization, there have been at least 500 instances of Israeli lawmakers, officials, and officers inciting genocide.
Israel’s War on Gaza
Basel Sourani from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which signed the amicus brief, told The Intercept that Israel has been emboldened by the lack of consequences for its conduct in Gaza. “We warned from the very first moment that this is a genocide unfolding because of the many statements that we have seen from Israeli political, military, and security leaders,” he said.
Sourani said that the statements by Israeli officials, along with the actual blockade, the indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian buildings, the basic lack of safe space, and the mass displacement of millions of Palestinians makes it clear: “All of this is tantamount to genocide.”
The plaintiffs responded to the administration’s motion to dismiss on December 22, arguing that there is precedent for U.S. courts to adjudicate questions surrounding genocide and that their legal challenge is about more than the actions of a foreign state. Rather, the plaintiffs argued, their injuries are “fairly traceable” to the actions of the U.S. government. “The suggestion that the U.S. does not or cannot influence Israel borders on the absurd, not least because the Israeli government acknowledges its actions could not happen without U.S. license and support, and Defendants have boasted about their coordination with and influence over Israel,” the plaintiffs wrote.
The Biden administration has until Friday to issue a response. The Oakland, California-based federal court is set to hear arguments on the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, and on the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss, on January 26. (The Biden administration is facing another federal lawsuit that accuses it of failing to protect Palestinian Americans stuck in Gaza, drawing a contrast to its efforts to help Israeli dual nationals.)
In the lead-up to the ICJ trial, U.S. officials said that their Israeli counterparts told them they will be shifting away from a wide-scale assault on Gaza to a more “targeted” approach. On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces posted a video expressing its concern for the “suffering of civilians in Gaza,” arguing they are “ready and willing to facilitate as much humanitarian aid as the world will give.” Despite such claims, Israel has continued to drop bombs on civilians, reportedly targeting ambulances, hospitals, and Doctors Without Borders shelters with little abandon. As of Wednesday, Israeli forces had killed at least 147 people in the past 24 hours.
Correction: January 10, 2024, 4:45 p.m. ET
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked Amalek in November; in fact, he made those comments in late October.
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Rep. Sara Jacobs Urges Pentagon to Make Amends to Family of Drone Strike Victims
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., has urged the Pentagon to immediately make amends to a Somali family following an investigation by The Intercept of a 2018 U.S. drone strike that killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
Her call for action follows a December open letter from two dozen human rights organizations – 14 Somali and 10 international groups — calling on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate the family for the deaths. The family is also seeking an explanation and an apology.
The April 1, 2018, attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. A U.S. military investigation acknowledged the deaths of a woman and child but concluded their identities might never be known. This reporter traveled to Somalia and spoke with seven of their relatives. For more than five years, the family has tried to contact the U.S. government, including through U.S. Africa Command’s online civilian casualty reporting portal, but never received a response.
“I find it deeply troubling that after the Department of Defense confirmed that a U.S. drone strike killed civilians, Luul Dahir Mohamed and her daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse, in 2018, their family has reportedly yet to hear from DoD — even years later,” said Jacobs, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she serves as ranking member of the subcommittee on Africa. “While the U.S. government can never fully take away their loved ones’ pain, acknowledgment and amends are needed to find peace and healing.”
Jacobs’s call for reparations comes on the heels of the Pentagon’s late-December release of its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” or DoD-I, which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm.”
The document, mandated under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, and approved by Austin, directs the military to “acknowledge civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations and respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations” including “expressing condolences” and providing so-called ex gratia payments to next of kin.
“We welcome this policy, which is both the first of its kind and long overdue. But like any policy, what’s on paper is just the first step,” said Annie Shiel, the U.S. advocacy director for the Center for Civilians in Conflict, one of the groups that authored the open letter about the Somalia strike. “The real measure of its success will be in implementation, and how or whether it delivers results for civilians – both by preventing a repetition of the devastating civilian harm caused by U.S. operations over the last twenty years, and by finally delivering answers and accountability to the many civilians harmed in those operations who are still waiting for acknowledgement from the U.S. government.”
Although the DoD-I also mentions “ensur[ing] a free flow of information to media and the public” and the need for public affairs personnel to “provide timely and accurate responses to public inquiries and requests related to civilian harm,” the Pentagon did not respond to questions about the letter to Austin, the DoD-I, or Jacobs’s comments. Another set of questions about civilian harm, emailed to the Defense Department in September 2022, also have yet to be answered. “I have pressed for responses to your questions,” Pentagon spokesperson Lisa Lawrence wrote in an email late last month. “As with all queries, it takes time to coordinate.”
In 2022, following increased scrutiny of the U.S. military’s killing of civilians; underreporting of noncombatant casualties; failures of accountability; and outright impunity in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, the Pentagon pledged reforms. The 36-page Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, known in Washington as the CHMR-AP, provides a blueprint for improving how the Pentagon addresses noncombatant deaths but lacks clear mechanisms for addressing past civilian harm. Jacobs — founder and co-chair of the Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus — has been one of the foremost elected officials pressing the Pentagon to take greater accountability for civilian casualties. Last July, she introduced the Civilian Harm Review and Reassessment Act, which would require the Defense Department to examine and reinvestigate past civilian casualty allegations, stretching back to 2011, and make amends if necessary.
The 2024 NDAA, passed late last year, included another provision, authored by Jacobs and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., requiring the director of national intelligence to notify Congress if U.S. intelligence, used by a third party, results in civilian casualties. Jacobs’s efforts also led to a Government Accountability Office assessment of the effectiveness of civilian harm training including an evaluation of the efficacy of current methods. That report, due by March 1, is nearly complete according to Chuck Young, a GAO spokesperson.
“After U.S. military operations have caused civilian harm, victims, survivors, and their families often face significant obstacles to getting answers and acknowledgment from the U.S. government, let alone amends for what happened,” Jacobs told The Intercept, referencing the April 2018 drone attack that killed Luul and Mariam. “I urge the Department of Defense to live up to its responsibility in the CHMR-AP to make amends for past civilian harm and immediately address this case.”
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Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage.
The print media outlets, which play an influential role in shaping U.S. views of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, paid little attention to the unprecedented impact of Israel’s siege and bombing campaign on both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip.
Major U.S. newspapers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7. Pro-Palestinian activists have accused major publications of pro-Israel bias, with the New York Times seeing protests at its headquarters in Manhattan for its coverage of Gaza –– an accusation supported by our analysis.
The open-source analysis focuses on the first six weeks of the conflict, from the October 7 Hamas-led attacks that killed 1,139 Israelis and foreign workers to November 24, the beginning of the weeklong “humanitarian truce” agreed to by both parties to facilitate hostage exchanges. During this period, 14,800 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Today, the Palestinian death toll is over 22,000.
The Intercept collected more than 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about Israel’s war on Gaza and tallied up the usages of certain key terms and the context in which they were used. The tallies reveal a gross imbalance in the way Israelis and pro-Israel figures are covered versus Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices — with usages that favor Israeli narratives over Palestinian ones.
This anti-Palestinian bias in print media tracks with a similar survey of U.S. cable news that the authors conducted last month for The Column that found an even wider disparity.
The stakes for this routine devaluing of Palestinian lives couldn’t be higher: As the death toll in Gaza mounts, entire cities are leveled and rendered uninhabitable for years, and whole family lines are wiped out, the U.S. government has enormous influence as Israel’s primary patron and weapons supplier. The media’s presentation of the conflict means there are fewer political downsides to lockstep support for Israel.
Coverage from the first six weeks of the war paints a bleak picture of the Palestinian side, according to the analysis, one that stands to make humanizing Palestinians — and therefore arousing U.S. sympathies — more difficult.
To obtain this data, we searched for all articles that contained relevant words (such as “Palestinian,” “Gaza,” “Israeli,” etc.) on all three news websites. We then parsed through every sentence in each article and tallied the count of certain terms. For this analysis, we omitted all editorial pieces and letters to the editor. The basic data set is available here, and a full data set can be obtained by emailing ottoali99@gmail.com.
Our survey of coverage has four key findings.
Disproportionate Coverage of Deaths
In the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, the words “Israeli” or “Israel” appear more than “Palestinian” or variations thereof, even as Palestinian deaths far outpaced Israeli deaths. For every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times — or a rate 16 times more per death that of Palestinians.
Graphic: The Intercept
“Slaughter” of Israelis, Not Palestinians
Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around. (When the terms appeared in quotes rather than the editorial voice of the publication, they were omitted from the analysis.)
The term “slaughter” was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and “massacre” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. “Horrific” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.
Graphic: The Intercept
One typical headline from the New York Times, in a mid-November story about the October 7 attack, reads, “They Ran Into a Bomb Shelter for Safety. Instead, They Were Slaughtered.” Compare this with the Times’s most sympathetic profile of Palestinian deaths in Gaza from November 18: “The War Turns Gaza Into a ‘Graveyard’ for Children.” Here “graveyard” is a quote from the United Nations and the killing itself is in passive voice. In its own editorial voice, the Times story on deaths in Gaza uses no emotive terms comparable to the ones in its story about the October 7 attack.
The Washington Post employed “massacre” several times in its reporting to describe October 7. “President Biden faces growing pressure from lawmakers in both parties to punish Iran after Hamas’s massacre,” one report from the Post says. A November 13 story from the paper about how Israel’s siege and bombing had killed 1 in 200 Palestinians does not use the word “massacre” or “slaughter” once. The Palestinian dead have simply been “killed” or “died” — often in the passive voice.
Children and Journalists
Only two headlines out of over 1,100 news articles in the study mention the word “children” related to Gazan children. In a notable exception, the New York Times ran a late-November front-page story on the historic pace of killings of Palestinian women and children, though the headline featured neither group.
Despite Israel’s war on Gaza being perhaps the deadliest war for children — almost entirely Palestinian — in modern history, there is scant mention of the word “children” and related terms in the headlines of articles surveyed by The Intercept.
Meanwhile, more than 6,000 children were reported killed by authorities in Gaza at the time of the truce, with the number topping 10,000 today.
Despite Israel’s war on Gaza being perhaps the deadliest war for children in modern history, there is scant mention of the word “children” in headlines.
While the war on Gaza has been one of the deadliest in modern history for journalists — overwhelmingly Palestinians — the word “journalists” and its iterations such as “reporters” and “photojournalists” only appears in nine headlines out of over 1,100 articles studied. Roughly 48 Palestinian reporters had been killed by Israeli bombardment at the time of the truce; today, the death toll for Palestinian journalists has topped 100. Only 4 of the 9 articles that contained the words journalist/reporter were about Arab reporters.
The lack of coverage for the unprecedented killing of children and journalists, groups that typically elicit sympathy from Western media, is conspicuous. By way of comparison, more Palestinian children died in the first week of the Gaza bombing than during the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, yet the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times ran multiple personal, sympathetic stories highlighting the plight of children during the first six weeks of the Ukraine war.
The aforementioned front-page New York Times report and a Washington Post column are rare exceptions to the dearth of coverage about Palestinian children.
As with children, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times focused on the risks to journalists in the Ukraine war, running several articles detailing the hazards of reporting on the war in the first six weeks after Russia’s invasion. Six journalists were killed in the early days of the Ukraine war, compared to 48 killed in the first six weeks of Israel’s Gaza bombardment.
Israel’s War on Gaza
Asymmetry in how children are covered is qualitative as well as quantitative. On October 13, the Los Angeles Times ran an Associated Press report that said, “The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that 1,799 people have been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Hamas’s assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children and young music festivalgoers.” Notice that young Israelis are referred to as children while young Palestinians are described as people under 18.
During discussions around the prisoner exchanges, this frequent refusal to refer to Palestinians as children was even more stark, with the New York Times referring in one case to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.” (Palestinian children are referred to as “children” later in the report, when summarizing a human rights groups’ findings.)
A Washington Post report from November 21 announcing the truce deal erased Palestinian women and children altogether: “President Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that a deal to release 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.” The brief did not mention Palestinian women and children at all.
Coverage of Hate in the U.S.
Similarly, when it comes to how the Gaza conflict translates to hate in the U.S., the major papers paid more attention to antisemitic attacks than to ones against Muslims. Overall, there was a disproportionate focus on racism toward Jewish people, versus racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, or those perceived as such. During the period of The Intercept’s study, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times mentioned antisemitism more than Islamophobia (549 versus 79) — and this was before the “campus antisemitism” meta-controversy that was contrived by Republicans in Congress beginning the week of December 5.
Despite many high-profile instances of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism during the survey period, 87 percent of mentions of discrimination were about antisemitism, versus 13 percent mentions about Islamophobia, inclusive of related terms.
A projection declares the Washington Post “complicit in genocide” during a march for Gaza on a worldwide day of action for Palestine on Oct. 12, 2023.
Photo: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP
When Major Newspapers Fail
Overall, Israel’s killings in Gaza are not given proportionate coverage in either scope or emotional weight as the deaths of Israelis on October 7. These killings are mostly presented as arbitrarily high, abstract figures. Nor are the killings described using emotive language like “massacre,” “slaughter,” or “horrific.” Hamas’s killings of Israeli civilians are consistently portrayed as part of the group’s strategy, whereas Palestinian civilian killings are covered almost as if they were a series of one-off mistakes, made thousands of times, despite numerous points of evidence indicating Israel’s intent to harm civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The result is that the three major papers rarely gave Palestinians humanizing coverage. Despite this asymmetry, polls show shifting sympathy toward Palestinians and away from Israel among Democrats, with massive generational splits driven, in part, by a stark difference in news sources. By and large, young people are being informed of the conflict from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, and older Americans are getting their news from print media and cable news.
Biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television news is impacting general perceptions of the war and directing viewers toward a warped view of the conflict. This has led to pro-Israel pundits and politicians blaming pro-Palestinian views on social media “misinformation.”
Analysis of both print media and cable news, however, make it clear that, if any cohort of media consumers is getting a slanted picture, it’s those who get their news from established mass media in the U.S.
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Israeli Refuseniks Forsake Army Despite Post-October 7 Nationalist Frenzy
In Israel, nearly everyone is conscripted into the military when they turn 18, but Tal Mitnick refused. He became the first Israeli 18-year-old to conscientiously object to joining the Israel Defense Forces as nationalist sentiment soared during Israel’s assault on Gaza. In response, the government sentenced the teen to 30 days in prison, potentially with more if he continues to refuse. The sentence is out of step with the normal precedent: Many objectors in the past faced up to 10-day stints behind bars.
Like many so-called refuseniks, Mitnick also faces mass ostracization and threats in a society where objecting to serve is often seen as a national betrayal — made all the worse amid Israelis’ shock and the government’s fierce response to Hamas’s October 7 attack. Still, Mitnick was steadfast.
In September, things would have been different. Dissent was on the rise. The Israeli left and anti-government bloc had been growing over the past year, as hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for a judiciary power grab. The protests had begun to include objection to Israeli authoritarianism, in particular against Palestinians in the occupied territories. Mitnick said his refusal to serve was about these very issues: “I do not want to take part in the continuation of the oppression and the continuation of the cycle of bloodshed, but to work directly for a solution.”
Whatever sentiment against the occupation had been unearthed during the protests, though, fell away after October 7 — especially for conscientious objectors seen to be abandoning their country.
“To refuse to serve is considered to be betraying your country — certainly now in a time of war,” said Mairav Zonszein, an Israeli American journalist and senior Israel–Palestine analyst with the International Crisis Group. “Even people who are against the occupation, or who consider themselves to be leftist, they’ll argue that you’re leaving the difficult job of defending Israel’s borders to other people, and how could you, and 1,000,001 things that people will say is betrayal.”
“The process of conscientious refusal is not an easy one.”
Mitnick is not alone. He is part of a growing network of young Israelis refusing military service and encouraging others to join them — even as pressures mount after the October 7 attack. Along with some of the others, Mitnick is part of Mesarvot, Hebrew for “we refuse,” where young people support each other as they prepare their Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, refusals. Mesarvot provides conscientious objectors with support in preparing for imprisonment and legal cases, and, perhaps most importantly, by giving them a community.
“The process of conscientious refusal is not an easy one,” said Iddo Elam, who plans to refuse when his conscription date arrives a few months after graduation and is part of Mesarvot. “You can feel very secluded as an outsider. So this network basically gives a home to the people who decide to refuse. I even remember many talks with refusers that came back from jail before their next sentence, and talked with each other about how the past, for example, two weeks have been in prison. It raises their morale to go again, and to not give up.”
Anti-Occupation to Refusal
Elam’s views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict were clarified by his activism, which had taken him to the occupied West Bank and brought him into contact with Palestinians, whom he befriended. His stances were hardened not only as he watched the Israeli military’s treatment of his new friends, but also in how the soldiers viewed him. “They treat me as a traitor. They laugh at my face when they see me with Palestinians,” he said. “I realized that this whole system is very corrupting.”
“They treat me as a traitor. They laugh at my face when they see me with Palestinians.”
As he concluded that he planned to refuse, Elam sought out others. Even Israelis who opposed the occupation sometimes didn’t understand: Some soldiers seek to not serve in combat units, but even were incredulous at the idea of full refusal. It wasn’t surprising: Israeli education laws require preparing students for IDF service.
The expectation that everyone serves is so pervasive that few register that this makes them part of a system that oppresses Palestinians. “A lot of the Israelis that do not consider that is because they were born into Israeli society, a society that from kindergarten teaches us about previous wars, about Israeli nationalist heroes,” Elam said. “I would almost say I cannot blame the people who do join the army. But at the end of the day, us refusing is us attempting to bring this up into conversation to make more people do it.”
Yona, another soon-to-be refusnik who asked The Intercept to withhold her last name because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that as more people over the past year have connected the erosion of democracy to the occupation, Mesarvot has played a pivotal role in providing community, demystifying refusal, and preparing young Israelis for the consequences.
“There are plenty of people who are, you know, at the level where they could afford to do it and just don’t consider it as a possibility or don’t consider it as something viable, as something worthwhile,” Yona said. “And that’s certainly something that Mesarvot helped change — bringing that voice, making people realize it exists. It’s something people do proudly, it’s something that is important, and it makes noise.”
Democracy and the Occupation
For Mitnick, Yona, Elam, and others, preparing for refusal with groups like Mesarvot doesn’t come without precedent, nor in isolation. The Israeli teenagers have spent much of the past year protesting the Israeli government’s anti-democratic moves, its treatment of Palestinians, and the occupation more broadly.
Last February, Mesarvot activists were present when protesters traveled deep into the West Bank villages of Masafer Yatta to protest the eviction of some 1,300 residents from their homes. The Israeli military had declared the area a closed “firing zone” — ostensibly for security and training purposes — decades before, with the aim of getting the Palestinian villagers out. With the push to expel residents last year, the activists showed up in violation of the law, since entering closed zones was forbidden.
The group also organized protests on Israel’s side of the Green Line, which roughly demarks Israel’s internationally recognized borders from the occupied territories. In May, Mesarvot activists gathered at Beit Sokolov, a building in Tel Aviv which houses the Israel Journalists Association, in honor of the anniversary of the IDF’s killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
The following month, as members of Mesarvot demonstrated in memory of Sarit Ahmed Shakur, an 18-year-old victim of a homophobic murder, a member of the group said an activist was attacked by undercover police officers who tried to confiscate a Palestinian flag. The group said the activist was arrested after he tried defending himself and was subject to “contemptuous and degrading treatment, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic curses.”
With protests against the government’s seizure of the judiciary swelling nationwide, Mesarvot gained steam, connecting the refusal to serve with Israel’s anti-democratic turn. While the protests had come as a surprise for much of the outside world, the country’s left wing had long since warned that the occupation, holding millions of Palestinians in stateless subjugation, was bound to bring authoritarianism creeping back into Israel. Now Mesarvot activists were among the small minority of Israelis connecting the erosion of democracy with the occupation itself.
“The dictatorship that has existed for decades in the territories is now seeping into Israel and against us,” said a September letter by 230 Israeli teenagers announcing their forthcoming refusal to join the IDF. “This trend did not start now — it is inherent to the regime of occupation and Jewish supremacy. The masks are simply coming off.”
The teens had planned an event at a Tel Aviv high school to declare their refusal publicly, with the support of their principal. The school’s board of directors tried to block the protest by suspending the principal and canceling the event. The principal resigned in solidarity with the teens, and they hosted the event anyway, in front of a crowd with additional hundreds more. Since then, at least 50 more young Israelis have signed on to the refusal letter and, in recent months, some of the signatories burned their conscription orders as they announced their refusals.
“Very Militaristic”
Since October 7, Israel has maintained a widespread crackdown against dissenters, particularly against Palestinians. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi pushed in October for the arrest of those deemed to be a threat to the “national morale.” Later, he tried to sanction Haaretz, a liberal daily newspaper, for its criticisms of the war effort in Gaza and for purportedly being a “mouthpiece for Israel’s enemies.” Israeli police chief Kobi Shabtai said in mid-October that there would be “zero tolerance” for anti-war demonstrators — threatening to send them to Gaza.
There was little tolerance. Officers arrested protesters at will, including those who’d lost family members in the October 7 attack. In early November, Israeli forces arrested former member of Parliament Mohammad Baraka, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who was on his way to an anti-war protest, along with four other protesting Palestinian politicians. Meanwhile, Israeli police have pursued at least 250 prosecutions — largely against Palestinian students, largely for social media posts — targeting dissenters. This weekend, Israeli police cracked down on anti-war demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, detaining a handful of protesters and throwing some to the ground.
Israel’s War on Gaza
This is the atmosphere, the post-October 7 world, that the activists of Mesarvot find themselves in. Yet few have wavered. Support, Elam and Yona both said, especially from the international community, played an encouraging role as they continued to tie their wider protests to their refusals. “It strengthens me, makes me feel less alone,” Yona said. And she sees their protests as part of a larger struggle for dignity and equality being led by Palestinians.
“Israeli society right now is very militaristic,” Elam added. “I want to say to the world that peace and anti-apartheid, anti-occupation activists do not feel safe. A lot of them have been attacked, have been doxxed, have been threatened, arrested.”
Elam singled out the arrests of Palestinian citizens of Israel, often for terror-related charges linked to little more than denouncing the Israeli war on Gaza. “Someone sees that the police arrest people because of online posts about this war, that is an issue that should bring up massive protests to the extent that we saw against Netanyahu,” Elam said. “We cannot say that we live in a democratic country when not only people are being silenced, but people are being actively arrested and oppressed for only saying stuff online.”
Now more than ever, the teenaged activists of Mesarvot see themselves as but one aspect of a movement, just one way to pierce the bubble of repression and nationalism surrounding Israeli society. They want their movement to grow and for the larger movement for democracy and justice to grow, too — to regain and then sustain the momentum they’d gotten before October 7.
Resistance is out there, Yona said. That’s what the refusals to serve in the IDF can show. She knows because it showed her a path to more than merely joining a movement. “It makes you feel like you’re not just taking on the mantle,” she said. “You’re doing something that is even more important in my eyes, which is working towards an equal society for everyone who lives between the river and the sea.”
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No country for old men: Why ignore our elder statesmen?
I am currently reading a book by Jeffrey Sachs whose articles often grace these pages. I am struck by the wealth of his experience having advised governments over many years, and his ability to take a long view of world events, in particular the deterioration in the United States position in the world since the Continue reading »
We need to shift from ‘Indo-Pacific’ back to ‘Asia-Pacific’
The difference between “Asia-Pacific” and “Indo-Pacific” is not just geographical. These are entirely different notions with entirely different economic and geopolitical implications. In 2023, President Xi Jinping was in the United States for a meeting with President Joe Biden and for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ meeting in San Francisco. It has been quite a Continue reading »
CNN Runs Gaza Coverage Past Jerusalem Team Operating Under Shadow of IDF Censor
Whether reporting from the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication, under a long-standing CNN policy. While CNN says the policy is meant to ensure accuracy in reporting on a polarizing subject, it means that much of the network’s recent coverage of the war in Gaza — and its reverberations around the world — has been shaped by journalists who operate under the shadow of the country’s military censor.
Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. As The Intercept reported last month, the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor.
CNN’s practice of routing coverage through the Jerusalem bureau does not mean that the military censor directly reviews every story. Still, the policy stands in contrast to other major news outlets, which in the past have run sensitive stories through desks outside of Israel to avoid the pressure of the censor. On top of the official and unspoken rules for reporting from Israel, CNN recently issued directives to its staff on specific language to use and avoid when reporting on violence in the Gaza Strip. The network also hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter at the onset of the war.
“The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” a CNN spokesperson told The Intercept in an email. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”
The spokesperson added that the protocol “has no impact on our (minimal) interactions with the Israeli Military Censor — and we do not share copy with them (or any government body) in advance. We will seek comment from Israeli and other relevant officials before publishing stories, but this is just good journalistic practice.”
One member of CNN’s staff who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal said that the internal review policy has had a demonstrable impact on coverage of the Gaza war. “Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the [Jerusalem] bureau — or, when the bureau is not staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior management — from which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance” that favors Israeli narratives.
A shaky arrangement has long existed between the IDF censor and the domestic and foreign press, forcing journalists to frequently self-censor their reporting for fear of running afoul of prohibited subjects, losing their press credentials, and potentially being forced to offer public apology. CNN, like other American broadcasters, has repeatedly agreed to submit footage recorded in Gaza to the military censor prior to airing it in exchange for limited access to the strip, drawing criticism from those who say the censor is providing a filtered view of events unfolding on the ground.
“When you have a protocol that routes all stories through one checkpoint, you’re interested in control, and the question is who is controlling the story?” Jim Naureckas, editor of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, told The Intercept.
CNN’s team in Jerusalem are the “people closest to the Israeli government,” Naureckas added. “In a situation where a government has been credibly accused of singling out journalists for violent attacks in order to suppress information, to give that government a heightened role in deciding what is news and what isn’t news is really disturbing.”
While CNN has used its standing to obtain raw footage of human suffering inside Gaza, it has also pushed out near-daily updates delivered directly from the IDF to its American and international viewers and embedded reporters alongside Israel soldiers fighting in the war.
Early in the war, on October 26, CNN’s News Standards and Practices division sent an email to staff outlining how they should write about the war.
“Hamas controls the government in Gaza and we should describe the Ministry of Health as ‘Hamas-controlled’ whenever we are referring to casualty statistics or other claims related to the present conflict. If the underlying statistics have been derived from the ministry of Health in Gaza, we should note that fact and that this part of the Ministry is ‘Hamas-controlled’ even if the statistics are released by the West Bank part of the ministry or elsewhere.”
The email goes on to acknowledge CNN’s responsibility to cover the human cost of the war but couches that responsibility in the need to “cover the broader current geopolitical and historical context of the story” while continuing to “remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of Israeli civilians.”
Intense Israeli army activity in Gaza seen from Kibbutz Be’eri as Israeli attacks continue in Be’eri, Israel, on Jan. 4, 2024.
Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images
The email further instructed reporters and editors to “make it clear to our audiences whether either or both sides have provided verifiable evidence to support their claims.”
In a separate directive dated November 2, Senior Director of News Standards and Practices David Lindsey cautioned reporters from relaying statements from Hamas. “As the Israel-Gaza war continues, Hamas representatives are engaging in inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda. Most of it has been said many times before and is not newsworthy. We should be careful not to give it a platform.” He added, though, that “if a senior Hamas official makes a claim or threat that is editorially relevant, such as changing their messaging or trying to rewrite events, we can use it if it’s accompanied by greater context.”
The language of the directives mirror similar orders from CNN management at the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, when Chair Walter Isaacson ordered foreign correspondents at the network to play down civilian deaths and remind readers that the violence they were witnessing was a direct result of the attacks on September 11.
Also in October, CNN hired a former IDF soldier to contribute writing and reporting to CNN’s war coverage. Tamar Michaelis’s first byline appears on October 17, 10 days after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel. Since then, her name has appeared on dozens of stories citing the IDF spokesperson and relaying information about the IDF’s operations in the Gaza Strip. At least one story bearing only her byline is little more than a direct statement released from the IDF.
According to her Facebook profile, Tamar Michaelis served in the IDF’s Spokesperson Unit, a division of the Israeli military charged with carrying out positive PR both domestically and abroad. (Last year, the Spokesperson Unit was forced to issue a public apology for conducting psychological operations, or “psyops,” against Israeli civilians.) Michaelis recently locked her profile, which does not indicate the dates of her service in the IDF, and she did not respond to a request for comment.
“Tamar Michaelis worked with CNN on a freelance basis for a few months last year, and worked in the same way as any freelancer, within our normal guidelines,” the CNN spokesperson wrote.
Israel’s War on Gaza
CNN’s Gaza war coverage, regardless of where it originates, has been subject to the news organization’s internal review process for reporting on Israel and Palestine. According to an email reviewed by The Intercept, CNN expanded its review team over the summer — as the highly controversial overhaul of Israel’s judicial system moved through Israel’s Parliament — to include a handful of editors outside of Israel, in an effort to streamline the process.
In a July email to CNN staff, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Richard Greene wrote that the policy exists “because everything we write or broadcast about Israel or the Palestinians is scrutinized by partisans on all sides. The Jerusalem bureau aims to be a safety net so we don’t use imprecise language or words that may sound impartial but can have coded meanings here.”
But because the protocol could slow down the publication process, Greene wrote, “we have created (wait for it…..)
The Jerusalem SecondEyes alias!”
The CNN spokesperson told The Intercept that Jerusalem SecondEyes “was created to make this process as swift as possible as well as bring more expert eyes to staff it across the day, particularly when Jerusalem is dark.” The spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether CNN has a similar review process in place for other coverage areas.
“Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility.”
The CNN staff member described how the policy works in practice. “‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the person said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”
The post CNN Runs Gaza Coverage Past Jerusalem Team Operating Under Shadow of IDF Censor appeared first on The Intercept.