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**NOVEMBER 1, 2023**

On the Prospect website

Israel and Palestine's Existential War

The shock of the October 7 attacks has exposed just how much is at
stake, and the decisions being made now will reverberate for decades. BY
MAIRAV ZONSZEIN

Electric Vehicles Labor Uphill

The UAW agreement with the Big Three builds a base of good jobs in EVs,
and could help the entire transition. But interest rates are a huge
impediment right now. BY DAVID DAYEN

The Culture of Corporate Criminal Impunity Continues

Attorney General Merrick Garland continues to let big companies skate.
BY RYAN COOPER

The Slow Cooker of Corporate Flameouts

A band of Reddit contrarians tried to make Rite Aid the first meme
stock. A truly staggering series of miscues thwarted their dreams. BY
MAUREEN TKACIK

Kuttner on TAP

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**** Biden's Nakba

The catastrophic effects of the president's indulgence of Netanyahu

In 1967, as Lyndon Johnson was escalating the ruinous Vietnam War and
liberals were temporizing for fear of looking pro-communist, the great
Jules Feiffer published one of his best cartoons ever. It showed a
queasy liberal with a sign that read, "A Little Less Bombing."

This is precisely the posture of the Biden administration as Israel
continues the destruction of civilian Gaza, shifting Israel in much of
the world's eyes from a victim nation to a nation willing to commit
atrocities. There is something worthy of Jonathan Swift in Biden's
modest demand that Netanyahu allow in more "humanitarian aid." (You'll
recall Swift's famous Modest Proposal to alleviate starvation in an
Ireland brutalized by Britain by having the Irish eat their children.)

Why, after all, the need for more aid? The only reason Gaza is short of
food, water, fuel, shelter, and other necessities of life is that Biden
is allowing Israel to systematically destroy Gaza. Would it not be more
efficient, if one cares about Palestinian humans, to reduce the need for
humanitarian aid by ceasing the destruction?

There is another ominous analogy with 1967. As liberals ceded the
anti-war narrative to radicals, they lost the effort to contain
Johnson's war until it was too late. By 1969, the year of the belated
mainstream "Moratorium" marches against the war, Johnson had been forced
from office, divided Democrats had allowed Richard Nixon to narrowly win
the presidency, and the one great social justice era in America that
spanned the New Deal and the Great Society was over.

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In the Middle East, globally and at home, the liberal failure has
allowed the radicals to take over the narrative. The radical
condemnation of Israel is a little too cavalier about waltzing around
the October 7 massacre by Hamas. (In wartime, if the first casualty is
truth, the second casualty is nuance.) But the basic story of Israel
destroying the peace process and pursuing ethnic cleansing and
brutalization in the occupied West Bank is all too accurate. With its
long-term policy of "Israel right or wrong," the U.S. has its
fingerprints all over not only Israel's current atrocities in Gaza but
Israel's sabotage of the two-state peace process and carnage in the
West Bank.

All of this not only puts Biden's re-election at dire risk. It is also
a gift for the world's antisemites. American Jews have enjoyed a
respite from antisemitism ever since the Holocaust. But while
antisemitism may go into periods of slumber, it never goes away. All it
takes is the right spark.

For centuries, one of the slanders against Jews has been the charge of
dual loyalty. They may look like they are loyal to France, Germany,
Italy, Hungary, the U.S., you name it, but their real loyalty is to
their tribe.

Nothing lends credence to that ancient charge of dual loyalty more than
Israel demanding total support from American Jews. And if wealthy Jews
use their money to pressure universities to repress dissent, that
reinforces another ugly stereotype. Face it: The global upsurge in
antisemitism, which then takes on a life of its own, is primarily the
responsibility of Israel.

And 1967 was also the year of the Six-Day War and Israel's
internationally recognized borders, before the illegal occupation of the
West Bank. It is these borders that are part of the peace process and
the all-but-ruined two-state solution.

Netanyahu's notion that first Hamas can be destroyed at acceptable
cost, and then someone else can be found to govern Gaza, and then some
kind of regional settlement can be achieved is lunacy. This has become
Biden's war. Now it has to be Biden's peace, starting with much
tougher constraints on Israel.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

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