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… read about the conditions that create a recipe for terror in the absence of democracy.

It is not the habit of Critical State to showcase CNN stories, but I am making an exception because of the extraordinary nature of Mustafa Barghouti’s appearance on CNN. Barghouti is a leader with the Palestinian National Initiative, which works for democracy within Palestine. He spoke [[link removed]] with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria from his home in the West Bank. The interview aired on Oct. 8, 2023, which is important to note because it means that it lacked specific details of Hamas’ assault on southern Israel that had begun the day before. Unclear at the time of airing was the extent to which Hamas fighters were able to target, capture, and kill civilians after fighting through weakly defended Israeli military positions. Zakaria suggested that the retaliation for Hamas will create horrendous conditions for Palestinians. “Unfortunately, Fareed, what you have described is exactly what we already have,” responded Barghouti. “Today the whole West Bank is paralyzed by 560 military checkpoints, and these checkpoints were there during the last 30 years. We are suffering from a wall that is built on our land. The whole West Bank has been divided into 224 small ghettos separated from each other, and the settlers are everywhere attacking Palestinians. You speak about right-wing government in Israel? Already Israel is a right-wing government.” As Israeli bombs fall on Gazan civilians in retaliation for an attack by a militant group, killing 1,000 Palestinians [[link removed]] so far, it is hard to imagine further violence changing the situation on the ground.

The Shekel Stops Here

When Hamas launched its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, it found a military metaphorically and literally with its pants down. Soldiers in undress were captured, and the attackers were able to act with horrific impunity for hours. The attacks, which killed at least 1200 people [[link removed]] in Israel as of this writing, were an intelligence and military failure, as Israel was fully caught off guard. Haaretz, a prominent Israeli publication, responded by declaring [[link removed]] that the attacks were also the result of a political failure, specifically that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

“The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians,” declared the editorial, published as the voice of the publication.

The editorial offered a concise walkthrough of the points of failure, and specifically noted the way that this recent failure came from Netanyahu’s short-sighted electoral choices, eroding any reputation he had as a leader adept at managing the country. “In the past, Netanyahu marketed himself as a cautious leader who eschewed wars and multiple casualties on Israel’s side. After his victory in the last election, he replaced this caution with the policy of a ‘fully-right government,’ with overt steps taken to annex the West Bank, to carry out ethnic cleansing in parts of the Oslo-defined Area C, including the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Stand With Or Without You

Few long-running conflicts are as intricately bound up in US policy discourse as Israel. In a broader sense, US foreign policy is focused on Israel and its relation to both Palestine, which it keeps in apartheid, and its neighbors, who have been reluctant to normalize relations for decades because of that. It also leads to a particular phenomena: the boilerplate press release from public companies in the United States declaring they “stand with Israel,” without necessarily going on to explain if that stand is in sympathy with victims of violence or encouragement to perpetrators of retaliatory violence.

“This war is not primarily about Americans. But so long as leaders in both American and American Jewish politics are putting out statements that they stand with Israel, and as the fallout from the attack continues, as the death toll from both Hamas’ attack and Israeli retaliation continues to rise, perhaps it is worth unpacking: What does it mean to stand with Israel?” writes Emily Tamkin for Slate [[link removed]] in a piece that does a thorough job contrasting unqualified American stands with the profound and deep criticism of Israel’s government and policies coming from within the country.

Tamkin points to, among other perspectives, a statement from Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence, which notes [[link removed]] that Israel Defense Forces’ deployments to protect settlers in the West Bank meant that “our country decided — decades ago — that it’s willing to forfeit the security of its citizens in our towns and cities, in favor of maintaining control over an occupied civilian population of millions, all for the sake of a settler-messianic agenda.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE A Desert Called Peace: Part I

What good is peace among nations if there is not peace within nations? For much of the Middle East, especially the ruling elites of politically closed-off states, the answer is obvious enough: peace internationally maintains power and cash flows at home.

In “ The Paradox of Peace: The Impact of Normalization with Israel on the Arab World [[link removed]],” Dana El Kurd looks at how the process of pursuing a diplomatic peace internationally has strengthened the hand of authoritarian leaders in the Arab world. El Kurd specifically looks at instances in Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where normalization moves preceded and facilitated repression of local political speech.

“This paper builds on this important work by outlining the ways in which states are empowered transnationally to implement their methods of authoritarian conflict management,” writes El Kurd.

Repressive tools, from legal constraints on speech to surveillance technology, help confine public speech into permissible lanes, forcing dissent to be an underground activity. Normally, authoritarian restrictions are paired with a political crisis, like an active war, but in the case of Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE, the peace process is not an end to an active conflict but a prelude to changed diplomatic relations. There’s no reason, then, that such change must be accompanied by repression unless facilitating repression is part of the reason these states pursued peace with Israel.

“I argue that peace initiatives that do not address root causes of conflict facilitate authoritarian practices. Such initiatives help maintain conditions of structural violence, thus meriting the ‘illiberal’ denotation,” writes El Kurd. “Thus, peace with Israel allows Arab states to increase their access to authoritarian technologies, as well as project power abroad.”

Perhaps the most famous example of this is the case of Ahmed Mansour, an Emirati human rights activist who exposed [[link removed]] the country’s use of Israeli-made hacking software. “In response,” notes El Kurd, “the UAE prosecuted him for ‘ruining the UAE’s reputation,’ for which he will serve 10 years.”

Such prosecution is facilitated, like the surveillance technology itself, by close ties between the UAE and Israel. The countries normalized relations as part of the Trump administration-sponsored Abraham Accords, though they had cooperated beforehand.

“In the UAE, in recent years, there are no protests, and no violent mass crackdown; instead, the regime works to demobilize their population through targeted repression and high degrees of surveillance,” writes El Kurd. “Their ties to the state of Israel, its intelligence services, and surveillance companies directly facilitate this goal.”

In Bahrain, while protest still exists, opposition among the population to normalization with Israel predates the existence of the modern Israeli state. As Bahrain, too, drew closer to Israel, it made it a crime for public employees to dissent from official policy.

Much of the repression centers around these governments preventing their populace from speaking on, coordinating with, or organizing for people or causes in Palestine. Tools that facilitate apartheid in Israel are exported and shared through improved diplomatic relations with regional neighbors to facilitate discussion and protest against apartheid from abroad.

LEARN MORE [[link removed]]

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] RECEIPTS

Marco Werman interviewed [[link removed]] Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza City, about life under intensified siege. “My house was not flattened, but my grandmother's and my grandfather's house was flattened. My mother's aunt's house was flattened. My friend's house was flattened. My other friend's house was partially damaged. I saw one of my friends who was with me in school, and he was crying in the middle of the street,” Khoudary told Werman. “I evacuated in a hotel with international news agencies, and right now, I have a boat burning in front of my eyes because the Israeli airstrikes targeted the Palestinian seaport in the Gaza Strip. This is like the safest place in Gaza.”

Taylor Barnes reported [[link removed]] on the deaths of Jonathan Steinke and Ken Tran. Both men died Jan. 30, 2023, while working on the development of hypersonic missiles. “Before they died, Jonathan and Ken each walked down four flights of stairs alongside an autoclave, a vessel used to subject materials to high pressure and heat,” reported Barnes. Tran and Steinke were likely working on solving an argon leak when they died in an area that should have required a special permit but which contractor Northrop Grumman classified as not requiring one. Their deaths, in service of a weapon with no objective, were caused by a workplace made needlessly unsafe.

Sam Schramski and Cícero Pedrosa Neto visited [[link removed]] people living in and around the Mãe Grande de Curuçá Extractive Reserve, an area near the mouth of the Amazon that is being legally structured for carbon offsets. “Residents are always consulted about the demands that will be the focus of the initiatives implemented in the region,” said Carbonext, the company planning to sell carbon sites based on the reserve. Yet, residents told Schramski and Pedrosa Neto that they felt excluded from the process, with markets leaving out the concerns of locals who still inhabit the area and make their livelihood off the mangrove forests.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL-PLAYED

Who called it building a national brand around nutrient-loaded spreads for toast and not “ Going Yeast Mode [[link removed]]?”

Move over grammar police, we now have graffiti grammar editors [[link removed]].

Yesterday’s transactions are today’s primary source documents about horrific crimes ( now searchable [[link removed]]).

Aerospace Wars [[link removed]].

I hate when my vague and indefinite occupation of a country leads me to shoot down the drone of my ostensible ally [[link removed]].

Alphabet duel [[link removed]].

Reign of terror, rule of blood [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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