Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Let’s say Israel succeeds in taking out Hamas. Then what?

President Biden will be in Israel tomorrow and his trip has likely been planned with an eye toward holding back the Israeli government from the impulsive, grief-driven decision making that can lead to massive errors in judgement. From what we understand, the US and allies have been pushing Israel to take a breath, consider the humanitarian consequences and think about the day after. If anyone knows the folly of acting out of emotion and/or opportunism after a catastrophic terrorist attack it’s the United States. And the stakes are even higher for Israel.

One big demand on the part of the US is apparently that Israel have a plan for a post-Hamas Gaza. It’s unclear that they have one. This piece in the NY Times today by a post-war planner about what needs to be done seems highly relevant:

I headed postwar Iraq planning for the U.S. State Department in 2002 and 2003. Once the White House decided in 2002 to remove Saddam Hussein by force, I cautioned my superiors that there needed to be serious planning for what would follow. The study I led — the Future of Iraq Project, only some of which is now public — gave U.S. leaders an understanding of what postwar Iraq would need.

But before we could put plans into effect, we were thrown out of the Pentagon by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at Vice President Dick Cheney’s orders in a dispute over what to do in Iraq. As a result, many of the American civilians who went there had little experience and even less knowledge of what Iraq needed to recover from decades of brutal and corrupt rule under Mr. Hussein and his Baath Party. The result contributed to the tragedy for Iraq, the United States and the entire Middle East.

What we’re seeing now in Israel and Gaza gives me the same grave concern so many of us felt 20 years ago: a lot of talk about military plans and the devastation of war and not enough about what will need to come after. I have not written publicly before about the lessons the United States should have learned from what happened to postwar plans for Iraq. With the humility of hard-won experience, I would like to offer those lessons as advice to whoever assumes this role in Israel today: the official in charge of developing a plan for a post-Hamas Gaza.

Your job will be hard, but it’s not hopeless. Reject the cynics’ advice that Israel’s job begins and ends when it defeats Hamas militarily and destroys its ability to harm Israelis again. If you fail to try to build something better in Hamas’s place or try in a halfhearted way, Israel will gain only a few years’ respite. Destruction is easy, but building is hard. That does not mean it is impossible.

The self-defeating mind-set that took hold in the United States not long after Iraq’s occupation was that the decision to invade Iraq was an original sin — something so wrong that it could never have come out better than it did. That mentality is damaging because it cuts off any serious effort to understand what went wrong and why.

The label of forever wars that has been firmly attached to America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fails to acknowledge that poor planning and scant resources will always fail to secure postwar peace. It astounds me that anyone could be surprised by this. But the lessons of postwar Germany and Japan that led to their prosperous democracies today, including well-resourced physical and political reconstruction and the time to succeed, were utterly misunderstood and misapplied by Washington in 2003 and 2004. Israel has faced its own forever war since 1948. Poor planning and scant resources are also your enemy.

Just as Iraqis rightly told us before the 2003 invasion that Iraq is not Afghanistan, Gaza is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan. Factors unique to Gaza, such as decades of Hamas’s anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda and Israel’s treatment of Gazan civilians since 1967, will make both physical and political rebuilding especially challenging to Israel and even more challenging than southern Lebanon was to Israel from 1985 to 2000. The deep-seated hatred that many Gazans have for Israel today has no parallel to what U.S. forces faced entering Kabul or Baghdad. Anything Israel touches in a post-Hamas polity in Gaza risks becoming toxic; you must plan for this. Your plans need to understand what Gaza needs and to recognize that the government of Israel may not be the best means to deliver that.

Plan for the length of time you will need to bring about the fundamental changes that will break the cycle of violence Israel and Gaza have inflicted on each other over the past 50-plus years — not the time politicians think you will need. One reason the State Department’s best postwar plan for Iraq, which has still never been made public, was rejected by the White House was that Pentagon officials argued that a three-year timeline was too long. Decision makers opted for the siren song of one year or less and vastly inadequate physical or political reconstruction money, without regard for the reality that fast and cheap was doomed to fail. Instead, the United States expended more in blood and treasure from 2003 to 2011 and ended up strategically worse off than if a better postwar plan had been given the resources and time needed upfront. A repeat of Israel’s 15-year occupation of southern Lebanon is neither realistic nor desirable, but neither is the more recent pattern of quick ground incursions followed by withdrawals, or what’s called mowing the grass.

Finally, remember that military victory is an asset whose power decreases over time. If and when Israel succeeds in defeating Hamas, use that limited time wisely. What you decide to prioritize may be all you get done, so it has to lay the groundwork for constructive steps, not chaos, to follow. Recovery from disastrous decisions at the outset — like the U.S. decisions to disband the Iraqi army and to fire tens of thousands more Baath Party members than necessary from their government jobs, thus largely creating the Sunni insurgency — is almost impossible.

So what should you prioritize at the outset? Consider these six points, however difficult some may seem before a ground war even starts:

1. End Hamas’s culture of economic corruption in Gaza. Corruption is at the heart of what Hamas uses to keep the Gazan people in line. This needs to end. You may have a chance to put in place once-in-a-generation root-and-branch reforms in public integrity in government contracting, civil service hiring and business practices in Gaza.

2. Listen to what Gaza’s residents want. Ordinary Gazans must have a say in their future.

3. Change the educational curriculum. This has been Hamas’s basis for ensuring enduring hatred of Israel. But don’t listen to the equally poisonous voices in Israel that would overplay your hand and undermine lasting educational reforms that would work for Gaza. There are many experts today in the Middle East and outside it who have constructive ideas for an educational curriculum that is true to Palestinian history and in the best interests of lasting coexistence.

4. Find a path for Gazans to write a constitution that will lead toward a more democratic state that can live in peace side by side with Israel. Israel needs to demonstrate that it is committed to a two-state solution. This is one way to do that.

5. Show Gazans that Israel is prepared to help Gaza rebuild economically. This close to Oct. 7, Israelis cannot readily conceive of committing to a Marshall Plan for Gaza. But Israel needs to think through what conditions would make this the right thing to do.

6. Border security for Gaza that Israel can live with — not a siege — is vital. The U.S. failure to plan for security along the Iran-Iraq border was one of the most egregious flaws in the entire U.S. postwar plan. Iran poured money, explosives and operatives into Iraq, undermining any hope for a more stable Iraqi government. It is obvious that the measures Israel has had in place since 2007 have not prevented Iran from funding, arming and helping train Hamas. Israel needs now to do better. Even when Israeli ground forces ultimately pull back from Gaza and Gazans start to provide their own police force, Israel will want to ensure for at least three decades, as unobtrusively as possible, that neither Iran nor anyone else has the ability to smuggle into Gaza the means of waging war. At the Department of Homeland Security, I helped draft this kind of plan for Israeli-Palestinian border security that could be retrieved from storage and updated — and to be made real.

As David Fromkin wrote in “A Peace to End All Peace,” it took Europe well over a thousand years to settle the fall of the Roman Empire. No one should be surprised that it is taking the Middle East more than a hundred years to settle the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Is any of this realistic? I have no idea. Let’s hope those who do are thinking this through.

Update: Jesus. This is so awful. A nightmare.

At least 500 people were killed by an explosion at a hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday that Palestinian authorities said was caused by an Israeli airstrike.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the number of casualties was expected to rise. Many civilians were sheltering at Al Ahli Arab Hospital, better known as Al-Ma’amadani, before it was hit.

The Israeli military said it was investigating if it was responsible for the blast. “We’re checking,” said Maj. Nir Dinar, a military spokesman. In the past, rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups have occasionally malfunctioned and hit civilian neighborhoods.

The deadly blast on the hospital came as President Biden was preparing for a visit to Israel on Wednesday as conditions in besieged Gaza grew ever more desperate. What little remains of the enclave’s food, fuel and water supplies was dwindling fast on Tuesday, and hundreds of thousands of people were on the move, fleeing the strip’s northern half to escape a planned Israeli ground invasion.

No matter who did it and whether it was a target or a mistake it’s going to change things for the worse. And it was already very bad.

They’re not sending their best to the MAGA rallies

During a New Hampshire event, Klepper stumped some of the supporters sporting the ex-president’s mugshot t-shirt that read “Never surrender.”

“Never surrender to the tyranny,” said a blond young man, pronouncing the word tie-ranny.

“What is Trump doing here on this shirt?” asked Klepper.

“This is his mugshot,” the man said.

“Gotcha. So that was taken when he surrendered to authorities to have his picture taken?” Klepper asked.

There was an awkward silence as the man considered the word “Surrender.”

“Huh?” is all the man could muster.

This is the MAGA cult and while I’m sure there are many who aren’t quite this thick, Donald Trump is equally absurd dozens of times a day and they are willing to make him president of the United States.

Broadcast radicalization

You’ll recall the hissy fit conservatives threw at the FBI’s suggestion post-Jan. 6 that domestic terrorism by “white supremacists, militias and other extremists” was a growing threat in this country.

Some years earlier, the Department of Justice was focused on foreign terrorists’ efforts at “online radicalization.” As in “Online Radicalization to Violent Extremism” (2014):

Using a combination of traditional websites, mainstream social media platforms, YouTube, and other online services, extremists broadcast their views, provoke negative sentiment toward enemies, incite people to violence, glorify martyrs, create virtual communities with like-minded individuals, provide religious or legal justifications for violent actions, and communicate individually with new recruits to groom them for violent activities

I’m wondering today (again) when the DOJ will turn its attention to the threat of broadcast radicalization. But I’m not holding my breath even after the stabbing death of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Chicago, allegedly by Joseph Czuba:

In the petition requesting that Czuba be detained, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Fitzgerald said that right before the attack, the landlord confronted the boy’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, and “told her he was angry at her for what was going on” in Israel.

Shahin “stated she responded to him ‘let’s pray for peace’,” the petition said. Shahin “stated Czuba gave her no chance to do anything … then attacked her with a knife.”

Czuba, the boy’s mother told investigators, was an “angry” man. His wife, Mary, told investigators that Czuba “listens to conservative talk radio on a regular basis” and became obsessed with the war between Hamas and Israel.

This is beyond bearing. https://t.co/nRjU2L0f93

— Sherrilyn Ifill (@SIfill_) October 17, 2023

Meanwhile in Georgia:

A Black man who spent 16 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a violent crime was shot and killed by police in Georgia on Monday.

Leonard Cure, 53, was killed after a sheriff’s deputy pulled him over in south-eastern Georgia’s Camden county early on Monday morning. The Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI) is examining the shooting.

Cure was released from prison in Florida in 2020 after a conviction review unit exonerated him of robbing a drug store in 2003.

These days, one is not willing to take the cops’ story at face value. But here it is:

Preliminary information indicates that at about 7:30 a.m., a Camden County deputy initiated a traffic stop on Interstate 95 Northbound, just south of Mile Marker 9 in Camden County, GA. The driver of the car, later identified as Leonard Allan Cure, age 53, got out of the car at the deputy’s request. Cure complied with the officer’s commands until learning that he was under arrest. After not complying with the deputy's requests, the deputy tased Cure. Cure assaulted the deputy. The deputy used the Taser for a second time and an ASP baton; however, Cure still did not comply. The deputy pulled out his gun and shot Cure. EMT’s treated Cure, but he later died.

There is no reference to body- or dash-cam footage that might corroborate the deputy’s account. Nor is there a reason given for the traffic stop. Mr. Cure is permanently unavailable for comment.

And this?

Southern MN high school cancels homecoming after students draw swastikas and anti-Islamic slurs on another student’s vehicle. https://t.co/ZXzT7TKS4j

— Christopher Ingraham🦗 (@_cingraham) October 17, 2023

Kids just being kids? Whose kids?

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

“an absurd and dangerous choice”

The Washington Post is posting live updates of Jacketless Jim Jordan’s quest to be Speaker of the House and second in line for the presidency. Really.

The House begins business today at noon, “two weeks to the day since former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted.”

“The next speaker should not be someone we already know is willing to manufacture  disputes and support groundless claims to overturn an election to install the president he wants,” Jill Lawrrence writes at The Bulwark. She offers a detailed list of why the Ohio congressman is “an absurd and dangerous choice for that reason and too many others to count.” Among them is former House Speaker John Boehner’s assessment of his fellow Ohioan: “Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio House and Senate. . . . A terrorist. A legislative terrorist.”

Not to mention being an election denier and Trump co-conspirator, Jeffrey K. Tulis and William Kristol remind Bulwark readers.

Jordan has Donald Trump’s endorsement. That’s another strike against him for Americans who can barely recall “normal.” It was the kiss of death for many candidates in the last cycle.

A couple of those Post updates:

Jordan mounted a pressure campaign over the weekend, part of which is the roll-call vote today is Jordan “daring his opponents to vote against him and incur the wrath of the far-right media and political ecosystem that is firmly behind him.”

Leigh Ann Caldwell adds:

“Jordan’s team has the knives out,” said one House Republican who represents a swing district, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the pressure being exerted on the member to vote for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as speaker.

“I’ll vote my conscience, which is a ‘no,’ but I don’t want to be a punching bag for the next three days,” the member said.

The member said Fox Newshost Sean Hannity contacted them directly, urging them to support Jordan. Hannity is saying that the war in Israel is a reason to get behind Jordan now, according to the member.

Jordan will have to woo or strong-arm over 50 more of his colleagues to win the speakership. CNN reports, “He can now only afford to lose three GOP votes on the floor, assuming everyone votes, given Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis will be away from the Capitol for a few hours on Tuesday until he returns in the evening, his office told CNN.”

Let the games begin.

The Judge in Trump’s January 6th case issued a narrow gag order today.

A federal judge has barred Donald Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and court staff involved in his Washington, D.C., criminal case, imposing a gag order that sharply escalates the tension between Trump’s 2024 bid for the presidency and the realities of his status as a criminal defendant.

“First Amendment protections yield to the administration of justice and to the protection of witnesses,” Judge Tanya Chutkan said Monday as she issued the gag order. “His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify … public servants who are simply doing their job.”

She didn’t mention herself specifically so I guess Trump does feel that he has carte blanche to vilify her:

Trump attacks Chutkan: Her whole life is not liking me pic.twitter.com/7pNGboiRtS

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 16, 2023

Here he is also being very presidential today. And they loved him.

While discussing the deaths in Israel, Trump is distracted by flies… he proceeds to talk about how you can’t buy fly paper anymore pic.twitter.com/ZTzqJwQYrD

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 16, 2023

It makes you feel crazy to see it.

Will Marge Greene and her allies go along?

Looks like Jim Jordan is telling people what they want to hear. Will the caucus allow that?

Four House Republicans walked away from conversations with House GOP speaker nominee Jim Jordan under the impression he’ll allow a floor vote on linking Ukraine funding with Israel funding if he wins the gavel, Axios has learned.

Many hardline House Republicans are pushing for the U.S. to stop providing funding to Ukraine, but allowing a House floor vote could allow funding to pass thanks to significant help from Democrats.

A Jordan spokesperson denied that the speaker nominee made promises, telling Axios that Jordan’s conversations were about working to find the right approach, rather than specific promises.

 “However you feel about Israel and Ukraine, I think a responsible and reasonable government ought to address those questions separately,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said last week.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently posted on X: “We need a Speaker who is able to put their full efforts into defeating the communist democrats and save America. We must stop funding foreign wars—Ukraine.”

Jordan publicly flipped multiple Republicans into supporting him on Monday, most prominently House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.).

Rogers said in a statement that Jordan had answered his concerns on multiple issues, including defense spending.

Defense hawks have been adamant in their push to continuing supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggressions.

The Biden administration has been working to reassure European allies that the U.S. will keep supporting Ukraine, as Axios reported earlier in October.

But more than half of House Republicans voted against supplemental aid to Ukraine in a late September vote.

If he pulls it out, the truth remains that Jim Jordan is a liar who has never shown the least bit of talent for leadership in anything, so who knows what’s going to happen? I am expecting an even bigger clusterfuck than what’s already happened.

It’s the only way to work your way through the moral morass

October 16th, 2023
Statement on Behalf of Israel-based Progressives and Peace Activists
Regarding Debates over Recent Events in Our Region:

We, Israel-based academics, thought leaders and progressive activists committed to peace, equality, justice, and human rights, are deeply pained and shocked by the recent events in our region. We are also deeply concerned by the inadequate response from certain American and European progressives regarding the targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas, a response which reflects a disturbing trend in the global left’s political culture.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack that included mass murder of innocent civilians in their homes, indiscriminate violence towards women, the elderly, and children, and mass kidnappings of Israeli citizens. Entire families were wiped out in this carnage, whole communities were reduced to ashes, bodies were maimed, infants were massacred. It is impossible to overstate the damage caused by these events, both on a personal and a collective level. The traumatizing events of that Saturday in October will leave a lasting mark on our hearts and memories.

As expected, in response to Hamas’s actions, the State of Israel launched a massive military operation in Gaza. We still cannot estimate the death toll of these attacks, but it is likely to be higher than anything we have witnessed heretofore. This cycle of aggression severely undermines our long-standing struggle against oppression and violence and in pursuit of full rights and equality for all residents of Israel-Palestine. At this moment, more than ever, we need support and solidarity from the global left, in the form of an unequivocal call against indiscriminate violence towards civilians on both sides.

Many of our peers worldwide have expressed strong opposition to Hamas’s attack and have offered unambiguous support for its victims. Prominent voices in the Arab world, too, have made it clear that there is no justification for sadistic murder of innocent people. However, to our dismay, some elements within the global left, individuals who were, until now, our political partners, have reacted with indifference to these horrific events and sometimes even justified Hamas’s actions. Some have refused to condemn the violence, claiming that outsiders have no right to judge the actions of the oppressed. Others have downplayed the suffering and trauma, arguing that Israeli society brought this tragedy upon itself. Yet others have shielded themselves from the moral shock through historical comparisons and rationalization. And there are even those – no small number – for whom the darkest day in our society’s history was a cause for celebration.

This array of responses surprised us. We never imagined that individuals on the left, advocates of equality, freedom, justice, and welfare, would reveal such extreme moral insensitivity and political recklessness.

Let us be clear: Hamas is a theocratic and repressive organization that vehemently opposes the attempt to promote peace and equality in the Middle East. Its core commitments are fundamentally inconsistent with progressive principles, and thus the inclination of certain leftists to react affirmatively to its actions is utterly absurd. Moreover, there is no justification for shooting civilians in their homes; no rationalization for the murder of children in front of their parents; no reasoning for the persecution and execution of partygoers. Legitimizing or excusing these actions amounts to a betrayal of the fundamental principles of left-wing politics.

We emphasize: there is no contradiction between staunchly opposing the Israeli subjugation and occupation of Palestinians and unequivocally condemning brutal acts of violence against innocent civilians. In fact, every consistent leftist must hold both positions simultaneously.

The seventh of October is a dark day in the history of Israel-Palestine and the lives of the peoples of this region. Those who refuse to condemn Hamas’s actions do immense damage to the prospects of peace becoming a viable, relevant political option. They weaken the left’s ability to present a positive social and political horizon, turning it into an extreme, narrow, and alienating political force.

We call on our peers on the left to return to a politics based on humanistic and universal principles, to take a clear stance against human rights abuse of any form, and to assist us in the struggle to break the cycle of violence and destruction.

You can see the signatures at the link.

People are very emotional about this issue and it’s totally understandable. I’m never one to celebrate the death of other human beings — I hate the cheering and clapping outside of prisons for executions and couldn’t even stomach the joyful celebrations of the death of Osama bin Laden. I believe in justice but enjoying it is something I’ve never fully understood. It’s solemn and serious and there’s nothing fun about any of it for me.

I don’t think the pro-Palestinian demonstrations this past week were generally joyful, although there was some element of febrile excitement. But it seems to me that some elements on the left side of the dial here in American and elsewhere have lost the thread on this and it’s quite disturbing. This letter explains why.

I will never forget one of the worst (and stupidest) things I’ve ever heard from a White House official. It took place during the Obama administration:

ADAMSON: …It’s an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he’s underage. He’s a minor.

GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.

That kid wasn’t a terrorist. He was a 16 year old American kid who had gone looking for his father. And the answer from the Obama Press Secretary to the question of whether he should have been targeted by a drone attack and killed was that he should have had a more responsible father.

You can’t blame people for getting agitated and upset over this horrific violence. But it’s important to try to keep your head and remember your principles.The leadership of the United States didn’t do that after 9/11 (or cynically used the event to advance their agendas) and the result was one of the worst disasters in American history. Things never, ever end well in those circumstances.

When asked who you plan to vote for you really don’t need to say anything else:

Also, the incumbent president isn’t the world’s greatest sore loser who is currently under 91 felony indictments. There’s that too.

Who ya gonna call?

Last month, as congressional Republicans devolved into endless chaos and the political world finally accepted that Donald Trump would almost certainly be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024, Joe Biden’s campaign decided it would highlight the fact that the president and the Democrats continue to do their jobs professionally and behave like leaders. They called this the “split-screen” strategy, and according to press reports they sent out talking points and daily memos to illustrate the contrast between the steady leadership of the Biden administration and the constant turmoil on the Republican side .

For instance, while the president was addressing the U.N. in September and walking the picket line with striking auto workers, Republicans in the House were squabbling over a defense spending bill they couldn’t pass and preparing to oust their own speaker of the House because a handful of members had a personal grudge against him. Donald Trump was whining about all the legal problems he’s faces and ranting about Republican officials he deems to be disloyal. The contrasts have only gotten starker since then.

But Trump is also deploying his own version of a split-screen strategy, and it’s a lurid fantasy that rivals anything in “Game of Thrones.” His split screen has Joe Biden on one side as a senile incompetent, while all around him crime is rampant, violent immigrant hordes are invading the country, decent Americans are starving and begging in the streets, children are being molested by transgender teachers and the nation’s cities look like something out of “A Clockwork Orange.” On the other side of the screen is the utopia of the Trump years: Everyone was rich, the world was at peace and the whole country was happy and content like pampered children in a fairy tale, all because of their unfairly-defeated Dear Leader.

Whether Trump consciously conceived such a strategy is unclear, but that’s not likely — it’s probably just the natural offshoot of his endless bragging and his relentless insults directed at anyone who opposes him. He believes, not without reason, that if he says this kind of stuff often enough lots of people will believe him, and that he can rely on right-wing media to help him convince half the nation that 2017 to 2020 were the apotheosis of American happiness and achievement and that since then we’ve been plunged into a nightmarish hellscape with no end in sight.

His problem, of course, is that the Biden split-screen is mostly grounded in realities that even the right-wing media can’t fully ignore. At this moment of global crisis, after a catastrophic terrorist attack in Israel with a major war unfolding, the president is behaving like a statesman, conferring with world leaders and giving speeches expressing empathy for the victims. His sincere horror at the Hamas attack was obvious and his administration has supported Israel’s right to defend itself. More recently, the Biden administration has shifted its public rhetoric, with the president and others emphasizing over the past few days that they are trying to calm the situation. Biden appeared on “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, making clear that he is pushing for a process to protect civilians in Gaza from the consequences of what is likely to be a devastating Israeli invasion:

Scott Pelley: There are about 2 million people in Gaza, as you know, Mr. President, 2 million people trapped. About half of them are children. Are you asking Israel to establish a humanitarian corridor in that area or get humanitarian supplies into it?

Joe Biden: Yes, our team is talking to them about that. And — whether there could be a safe zone. We’re also talking to Egyptians — whether there is an outlet to get these children and women out of that area at this moment. But it’s — it’s hard.

Biden went on to express his support for a Palestinian state — difficult as it is to imagine that prospect at the moment — and warned the Israelis not to reoccupy Gaza. One hopes that pressure, mediation and diplomacy behind the scenes reflects the careful balancing act he’s attempting to achieve in public and that it will help temper Israel’s response, which has already resulted in more deaths than the original Hamas attacks. Just try to imagine Donald Trump in this situation. Or rather, don’t.

Trump can’t really compete from his presidency-in-exile in Palm Beach, but you might have expected him at least to make statements that appeared serious and on point. That’s pretty much the president’s main job, and he’s running to get that job back. Instead, Trump’s first words after the Hamas attack came four days later at a rally for his supporters, where he complained that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had let him down when he was president, called another Israeli official a “jerk,” and made the ludicrous assertion that the attack would never possibly have happened if he were president. Of course he was under no obligation to praise Netanyahu, which nobody in the world is doing at the moment. But his petty and intensely self-centered response struck a sour note, to put it mildly. After hearing criticism from his Republican rivals — a rare event in itself — Trump backtracked slightly, saying that he supports Netanyahu. But the damage was done.

The Biden team isn’t spending any time on this particular split-screen contrast. They’ve focused instead on congressional Republicans, whose dysfunctional spectacle gets more and more preposterous every day. While the president carries out his actual duties, speaking with other world leaders and addressing groups like the Human Rights Campaign — as he did this past weekend, delivering a fine speech about empathy, solidarity and tolerance in a time of great upheaval — House Republicans are still unable to perform even the most basic tasks assigned to them as the majority. From what we can gather at the moment, the MAGA candidate for speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, still doesn’t appear to have the votes, and nobody else does either. Nothing can happen in the Congress until they get that done.

For a group that bleats incessantly about the Democrats’ supposed “weakness,” the House Republican majority is offering one of the most pathetic displays of impotence in political history.

So, we have a number of split screens happening. There’s Trump’s Peter Pan fantasy, in which the former president portrays Biden’s America as the poorest, most derelict country in the world and tells his followers to clap their hands and bring back the (completely imaginary) perfect and beautiful years. Then there is the split-screen showing the competent and experienced current president on one side and the absurd circus of the House Republican caucus on the other. Finally, there is the screen that shows Joe Biden acting like a statesman and Donald Trump whining endlessly about how mean everyone is to him. I wish I had confidence that most Americans will be able to tell which of these screens depicts reality and which is total fantasy, but I don’t. It all depends on which screen you like the most.

Salon

She gave birth in a jail shower

Lost amidst the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, this popped up in my feed just this morning. It’s the “fetal personhood movement” put into practice. No one “protected” is being protected.

The latest example of outrageous behavior showing that the misnamed “right to life” movement (empowered by its allies in government) is really a hatred of women movement with no regard for actual children or the women who bear them. https://t.co/JQtc91IrO7

— David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) October 15, 2023

Here’s the story from The Guardian:

In March 2021, sheriffs in Etowah county, Alabama, arrested Ashley Caswell on accusations that she’d tested positive for methamphetamine while pregnant and was “endangering” her fetus.

Caswell, who was two months pregnant at the time, became one of a growing number of women imprisoned in the county in the name of protecting their “unborn children”.

But over the next seven months of incarceration for “chemical endangerment” in the Etowah county detention center (ECDC), Caswell was denied regular access to prenatal visits, even as officials were aware her pregnancy was high-risk due to her hypertension and abnormal pap smears, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday against the county and the sheriff’s department. She was also denied her prescribed psychiatric medication and slept on a thin mat on the concrete floor of the detention center for her entire pregnancy.

In October, when her water broke and she pleaded to be taken to a hospital, her lawyer says, officials told her to “sleep it off” and “wait until Monday” to deliver – two days away.

During nearly 12 hours of labor, staff gave her only Tylenol for her pain, the suit says, allegedly telling her to “stop screaming”, to “deal with the pain” and that she was “not in full labor”. Caswell lost amniotic fluid and blood and was alone and standing up in a jail shower when she ultimately delivered her child, according to the complaint and her medical records. She nearly bled to death, her lawyers say.

After she was taken to a hospital, she was diagnosed with placental abruption, a condition in which the placenta separates from the wall of the uterus and the fetus is deprived of oxygen, meaning there was a risk of stillbirth. The baby survived, but Caswell was immediately separated from her newborn.

“Giving birth to my son without any medical help in the jail shower was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. My body was falling apart, and no one would listen to me. No one cared,” Caswell said in a statement. “I thought I’d lose my baby, my life, and never see my other kids again.”

The lawsuit, filed by the non-profit groups Pregnancy Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center, is the first case to challenge the conditions for jailed pregnant women in Etowah county, which advocates say is ramping up its prosecutions. Data suggests the county is the national leader in arresting women under the guise of protecting their fetuses.

“The sheer level of callousness here and complete disregard for human suffering is part of a broader scheme to criminalize and incarcerate as many pregnant women as possible in a way that is unprecedented across the country,” said Emma Roth, senior staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice.

Alabama targeting women

Jezebel follows up with this:

AL.com reported last year that as many as 12 pregnant or postpartum people suspected of substance use were held in Etowah County Detention Center in August 2022 alone. The conditions some of these women have reported are horrific, and include being forced to sleep on the floor after being jailed for alleged marijuana use, and denied sanitary products for bleeding after being jailed within days of giving birth. One woman was jailed for allegedly using substances while pregnant until a pregnancy test she’d initially been denied showed she wasn’t even pregnant.

First they came for the Blacks, and I did not speak out—because I was not Black.

Then they came for the immigrants, and I did not speak out—because I was not an immigrant.

Then they came for the women….