Another Rift between Biden and Netanyahu

A series of airstrikes by the IDF forces of Israel that resulted in the death of seven aid workers of the World Central Kitchen is the latest tragedy threatening to widen a rift between Biden and Netanyahu.

Palestinians inspect a vehicle with the logo of the World Central Kitchen, wrecked by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, April 2. A series of airstrikes killed seven aid workers from the international charity, leading it to suspend delivery Tuesday of vital food aid to Gaza.Ismael Abu Dayyah/AP

Jacob Magid Follow writing in the Times of Israel reports that US President Joe Biden indicated to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a Thursday, April 4, 2024 phone call that Washington’s policy regarding the war in Gaza will fundamentally change if Israel doesn’t implement a series of concrete steps to address the humanitarian crisis and protect aid workers, adding that an immediate ceasefire was essential for meeting those aims.

Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers,” according to a White House readout after the leaders held their first call since an accidental IDF strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy on Monday killed seven aid workers.

“He made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” the White House warned, adding that both recent Israeli strikes on aid workers along with the overall humanitarian situation in the Strip are “unacceptable.” (Follow, n.d.)

The article cites an interview with Sen. Chris Coons who told CNN:

“I think we’re at the point where President Biden has said and I have said… [that] if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to order the IDF into Rafah at scale — [if] they were to drop 1,000-pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas and make no provision for civilians or for humanitarian aid that I would vote to condition aid to Israel,” (Follow, n.d.)

Haroon Siddique, Legal affairs correspondent for the Guardian, reports that the number of signatories warning UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over a possible breach of international law in arming Israel rises to more than 750. The 17-page letter and legal opinion, also signed by four former court of appeal judges, more than 70 KCs, more than 100 partners and directors of law firms, and dozens of law professors, has added to already mounting pressure on the government to suspend arms sales in the wake of the Israeli airstrike that killed seven international aid workers, three of them British, on Monday, April 1, 2024.

Citing both the international court of justice’s conclusion that a plausible risk of genocide exists in Gaza, and the UK’s obligations under the 1948 genocide convention, the letter states that halting weapons sales is a “‘means likely to deter’ and/or ‘a measure to prevent’ genocide”.

It also calls for the government to work towards a permanent ceasefire, impose sanctions against those inciting genocide against Palestinians, restore funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. (Siddique, n.d.)

Fatima Al-Kassab and Lauren Frayer, in an article for NPR, report that a majority of Britons want the U.K. to halt arms exports to Israel.

British jurists wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak:

"The provision of military assistance and material to Israel may render the U.K. complicit in genocide as well as serious breaches of [International Humanitarian Law]." (Al-Kassab & Frayer, n.d.)

Last month, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. In an NPR interview, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, said one way to enforce that is to halt weapons sales to Israel.

"The only way to stop the weapons from killing people, while a cease-fire is being negotiated, is to stop the supply of weapons," Lawlor said. "This has done long-term credibility damage to the West." (Al-Kassab & Frayer, n.d.)

If Sunak were to halt U.K. arms exports to Israel, it wouldn't be the first time – nor would Britain be the first Israeli ally to do so. The British government briefly restricted all such sales in 1982, after Israel's invasion of Lebanon. In 2009, it also revoked some licenses.

In recent months, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have all announced they're suspending arms exports to Israel. Israel's biggest weapons suppliers, the United States and Germany, have not done so. (Al-Kassab & Frayer, n.d.)

On Friday, March 29, 2024, the United Nations' Human Rights Council is scheduled to consider a draft resolution calling for a global arms embargo on Israel, citing the "plausible risk of genocide in Gaza."

Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, in a Reuters article, reports that the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on March 29, 2024 calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

The resolution stressed "the need to ensure accountability for all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in order to end impunity".

It also expressed "grave concern at reports of serious human rights violations and grave breaches of international humanitarian law, including of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory".

Twenty-eight countries voted in favour of the resolution, 13 abstained and six opposed the resolution, including the United States and Germany. (Tetrault-Farber, n.d.)

The actions of the IDF and the inaction on increasing aid to civilians in Gaza has increased tension between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden that is also reflected in dissatisfaction in allied countries and fear of complicity in genocide in connection with a possible future judgement against Israel by the international Court of Justice.

References

Al-Kassab, F., & Frayer, L. (n.d.). Why a majority of Britons want the U.K. to halt arms exports to Israel. NPR. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://www.npr.org/2024/04/04/1242745977/uk-israel-arms-sales 

Follow, J. M. (n.d.). Biden warns Netanyahu US policy on Gaza war will shift unless major changes made. Times of Israel. Retrieved April 4, 2024, from https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-netanyahu-holds-call-with-us-president-american-officials-say-biden-is-pissed/ 

Siddique, H. (n.d.). Fourth former UK supreme court judge signs letter over Israeli actions in Gaza. the Guardian. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/04/another-former-supreme-court-judge-signs-letter-genocide-law-breach-sunak-gaza-catastrophe 

Tetrault-Farber, G. (n.d.). UN rights body demands Israel be held accountable for possible war crimes. Reuters. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://www.reuters.com/world/un-rights-body-adopts-resolution-israel-accountability-possible-war-crimes-2024-04-05/ 

Discerning Who Benefits in the Culture Wars

 

Brian D McLaren has second thoughts about what the pro-life movement is doing to our country, our faith, and your own soul.

A Consistent Life Ethic for our Journey

 

He read Randall Balmer’s Thy Kingdom Come (Basic Books, 2006). (The central thesis of Balmer’s book is summarized in this Politico article, “The Real Origins of the Religious Right”: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133.)

It helped him understand the movement’s backstory. Balmer and Kruse (Kevin Kruse’s book One Nation Under God (Basic Books, 2015)) helped him see that hidden beneath the surface, two of America’s most deeply-embedded motivations — racism and greed — had joined forces to use the pro-life movement as a cover for their own agenda, which wasn’t pro-life: it was extreme right-wing and white nationalist. When he saw this,...He reached this conclusion that a group of political, economic, and religious powerhouses have combined efforts to use the unborn to win over sincere Christians (and others) to support their multifaceted agenda, first incidentally, and then intentionally. With unlimited lobbying and marketing power at their disposal, they attracted people to the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, but gradually required them to support everything hidden beneath the surface.He writes that when you vote Republican, you vote for all of the following:

Make abortion illegal through criminalization.

Assure that contraception not be covered by health insurance.

Separate families at the border, put children in cages apart from their parents, and instill the fear that family members may simply be “disappeared” by the U.S. government when they cross the border.

Increase access to guns of all kinds and do nothing about mass shootings, adopting the NRA’s policy of “the more guns, and the more destructive guns, the better.”

Deny people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health care, and maintain quality health care as a privilege for the rich.

Deny climate change, oppose renewable energy, and support fossil fuels, gas guzzling cars, and the de-protection of public wilderness and indigenous lands through a “drill, baby, drill” philosophy.

Be unconcerned about facts unless they back up your political agenda, and create “alternative facts” whenever necessary.

Make it harder for minorities to vote by alarming white people about voter fraud, an infinitesimal problem which Republicans exaggerate, while simultaneously supporting voter suppression.

Oppose equal rights for LGBTQ  citizens, and protect the right of straight religious people to discriminate as desired against LGBTQ citizens.

Provide advantages for Christians and Jews, and disadvantages for Muslims and other religious minorities.

Promise to reduce the national debt while actually increasing it through massive tax breaks for the super-rich, and through massive military spending and military intervention.

Reduce social services needed by the poorest among us, including public transportation, public health services, childcare support, parental leave, etc., putting poor and vulnerable people in ever-greater risk, so tax breaks may be given to the rich.

Oppose sex education in schools.

Support the death penalty.

Support militarization and a new nuclear weapons race.

Minimize the value of higher education, keep it as expensive as necessary so that only the privileged can access it easily, and do as little as possible about student loan debt.

Support mass incarceration, the “war on drugs,” privatization of prisons, and other policies that discriminate against people of color.

Increase corporate profits for the rich by weakening labor unions, putting workers in a position of increasing insecurity.

Reduce public protections from mega-corporate misconduct, especially environmental protections, disproportionately hurting the poor and people of color as well as the planet.

Provide huge tax breaks for the richest of the rich, claiming that their increased wealth will “trickle down,” even though it doesn’t.

Shift funding from public schools to private schools, especially conservative Christian ones, again hurting poor and minority families the most.

Underpay teachers, first responders, health care workers, and childcare workers, and oppose all efforts to address the minimum wage.

Refuse to address systemic racism, or even admit it exists, and be more concerned about Colin Kaepernick kneeling as an act of peaceful protest during the national anthem than a police officer kneeling on a black man’s neck or shooting a black man in the back seven times.

Assist Israel in dispossessing Palestinians, and discount the civil and human rights of Palestinians, calling any critique of the nation of Israel an act of anti-Semitism.

Create widespread fear of immigrants, especially Mexican and Muslim immigrants, and actively or tacitly support acts of racist hate against minorities.

Stop accepting refugees.

See federal government (except the military) as the problem, and reduce government to a size where it can do little beyond fighting wars, leaving us vulnerable to pandemics, foreign interference in our democracy, and other dangers.1

Randall Balmer writes that abortion opposition as the origin of the religious right is a myth that quickly collapses under historical scrutiny.

 In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.2

An NPR Interview with Kevin Kruse on "How 'One Nation' Didn't Become 'Under God' Until The '50s Religious Revival reviews the history of ‘one nation under God’. 

As this new religious revival is sweeping the country and taking on new political tones, the phrase 'one nation under God' seizes the national imagination," Kruse tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It starts with a proposal by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic lay organization, to add the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance. Their initial campaign doesn't go anywhere but once Eisenhower's own pastor endorses it ... it catches fire." Kruse's book investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and '40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise. He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage in the '50s under Eisenhower's watch.3

Patrick Carolan and Brian McLaren share the opinion that it is time to change the abortion debate in America. The abortion debate, as currently framed, has raised huge sums of money for non-profits and political organizations, especially those on the right. It has also provided leaders of both parties with a simple issue around which to mobilize voters: for Republicans, the rights of the unborn, and for Democrats, the rights of women.

We must acknowledge that there aren't only two positions on abortion. It would be more accurate to say there are five, with purists on either end of the spectrum, and in the middle, three groups that account for the majority of us, those who are against abortion but do not want to criminalize it, those who support abortion rights but who would like to see abortion rates reduced, and those in between who see wisdom (and problems) on both sides. If we get beyond the old two-sides framing, we can drop the old pro-life versus pro-choice binary entirely. The fact is that life and choice are not mutually exclusive, and in a democracy, we can hold our own moral convictions about life and choice, rooted in our religious traditions, without feeling that others should be forced to live by them. … Again, I know that virtually all of you, my white Christian pro-life friends, are completely sincere in your desire to see human life treated as sacred and abortion rates reduced. And I am not asking you to change that desire! I only wish you would consider the possibility that your moral sincerity is being politically manipulated, leading to unintended and highly dangerous consequences.4

María Teresa (MT) Dávila, associate professor of Practice, Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts, comments that hyper focus on the abortion issue obscures the call of common good and paired with the political manipulation of the issue, draws a false line in the sand and creates a litmus test for the role of people of faith in the public square that obscures the multiple ways in which we participate in a culture of death. She shares recent church teachings to raise up a number of examples.

The rejection and exclusion of persons with disability and the elderly (Fratteli Tutti, 19).

The racial marginalization and racist violence toward African Americans, Latinos and Latinas, Asian Americans (especially since the start of the pandemic) and Native Americans (Open Wide Our Hearts).

Environmental destruction, misuse of natural resources and climate change denial (Laudato Si', especially 6, 14, 66-69).

The rejection and mistreatment of migrants and refugees at the border and globally (Fratteli Tutti, 37-41).

Gender violence, domestic violence and gender inequality, which place many women in crisis situations, especially when becoming pregnant (Amoris Laetitia, 54).6

Church teachings, including Pope Francis' third encyclical “Fratelli tutti”, emphasize the duty of all people of good will to be agents of action to promote the common good. The Catholic concept of a consistent ethic of life challenges us to answer the question of the Parable of the Good Samaritan about who is my neighbour? Christians are to be known by their love. We need to answer the supplemental question about who does Jesus call us to love? Ourselves? Others?

 

References

 

1	(2020, September 12). Dear White Christian Pro-Life Friends (1 – 4 compiled) – Brian .... Retrieved October 7, 2020, from https://brianmclaren.net/dear-white-christian-pro-life-friends-1-4-compiled/
2	(2014, May 27). The Real Origins of the Religious Right - POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved October 7, 2020, from https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133
3	(2015, March 30). Interview: Kevin Kruse, Author Of 'One Nation Under God' : NPR. Retrieved October 7, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/396365659/how-one-nation-didnt-become-under-god-until-the-50s-religious-revival
4	(2020, January 9). It's time to change the abortion debate in America | National .... Retrieved October 7, 2020, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/its-time-change-abortion-debate-america
5	(2019, May 27). Ponder Patterns Discerning Benefits for all in Culture Wars. Retrieved October 7, 2020, from https://ponderpatterns.blogspot.com/2019/05/discerning-benefits-for-all-in-culture.html
6	(2020, October 13). Hyperfocus on abortion issue obscures call of common good .... Retrieved October 13, 2020, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/theology-en-la-plaza/hyper-focus-abortion-issue-obscures-call-common-good

Public good and private gain in vehicle standards

An article in The Economist from February of 2019 explores some facts about big oil and climate change.

A crucial blnce

The balance that some business leaders believe must exist between private gain and public good

Polluting capitalism

may be in danger of disruption. The resulting pollution of capitalism may hasten the collapse due to failure to address inequalities.

 Yet amid the clamour is a single, jarring truth. Demand for oil is rising and the energy industry, in America and globally, is planning multi-trillion-dollar investments to satisfy it. No firm embodies this strategy better than ExxonMobil, the giant that rivals admire and green activists love to hate. As our briefing explains, it plans to pump 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than in 2017. If the rest of the industry pursues even modest growth, the consequence for the climate could be disastrous.ExxonMobil shows that the market cannot solve climate change by itself. Muscular government action is needed. Contrary to the fears of many Republicans (and hopes of some Democrats), that need not involve a bloated role for the state.1

 National Public Radio (NPR) has asked What's The Future For Gas-Powered Transportation? 

 Going electric is not just an eco-friendly goal, an ambition that would help fight climate change. It's a business reality, according to industry analysts. But if the general path ahead is widely agreed on, the speed of the change — and the role that combustion vehicles will play during the transition — is far from clear.2

 Merran Smith & Joanna Kyriazis offer an opinion in the National Observer that Canadians will save money and reduce GHG production if Canada maintains the agreement, designed by the Obama administration, and adopted by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to require auto manufacturers to produce more fuel efficient vehicles.

These standards don’t just cut pollution, they also keep money in the pockets of Canadians by making cars less expensive to fill up. While more fuel-efficient vehicles have a slightly higher sticker price, this can be recouped in a few years, beyond which drivers come out ahead. The International Council on Clean Transportation predicts that the average car built to comply with 2025 standards, for instance, will save about $383 per year on fuel. That same analysis finds that pickup trucks and SUVs built to 2025 standards would see an annual savings of $662. Trump’s rollback would lead to higher fuel bills with higher polluting, less efficient vehicles.
In a recent public opinion survey conducted by Pollara on behalf of Clean Energy Canada, two-thirds of Canadians were supportive of the current vehicle emission standards. They frequently cited cutting pollution, improving public health, improving vehicle efficiency, and spending less on gas as reasons for their support.3 

The local CBC Maritime Noon radio program investigated the economics for Maritimers to choose electric vehicles (EV’s) now.

 June 4, 2019: ... Phone-in on electric cars4

When manufacturing more efficient vehicles, either ICE or EV, produces real public good for Canadians’ fight against the climate emergency, we have to question unregulated private gain by large companies that increase GHG emissions.

References

1	(2019, February 9). The truth about big oil and climate change - The Economist. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/09/the-truth-about-big-oil-and-climate-change
2	(2019, February 16). As More Electric Cars Arrive, What's The Future For Gas-Powered .... Retrieved February 18, 2019, from https://www.npr.org/2019/02/16/694303169/as-more-electric-cars-arrive-whats-the-future-for-gas-powered-engines
3	(2019, May 21). High gas prices? There's a policy for that, and it helps combat climate .... Retrieved June 5, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/05/21/opinion/high-gas-prices-theres-policy-and-it-helps-combat-climate-change
4	(n.d.). Maritime Noon with Bob Murphy | Live Radio | CBC Listen. Retrieved June 5, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-38-maritime-noon