Following the June 17 vote to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq in 2003, the House is doing a bit more cleaning, sweeping out other “zombie laws” on the books that have authorized such militarism in the Middle East for 30 years — and more.
Today, under a suspension of the rules — meaning no amendments — the chamber is expected to pass a measure led by Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) to repeal a Cold War era law on the books that found “the preservation of the independence and integrity of the nations of the Middle East vital to the national interest and world peace.”
This law — codified in section 1962 of Title 22 of the U.S. Code — has authorized the President since 1957 “to use armed forces to assist any such nation or group of such nations requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism … consonant with the treaty obligations of the United States and with the Constitution of the United States.” The short law also authorized the executive branch to provide military assistance to any nations of the greater Middle East who want it.
In further House cleaning, a resolution led by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) will repeal Congress’ 1991 authorization for the U.S. military to wage war against Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait.
The Heritage Foundation has been pressing for repeal of these old provisions. It feels odd to say this, but ‘well done!’
At the same time, however, Congress is also expected today to pass a measure to deepen U.S. efforts to counter politically motivated violence in the Sahel region of Africa. HR567 would make it the “policy of the United States to assist countries in North and West Africa, and other allies and partners active in those regions, in combating terrorism and violent extremism through a coordinated interagency approach.” The U.S. has supposedly had a coordinated, interagency approach to combatting terrorism in this region for nearly two decades. This move comes as the French are stepping away from their leadership of counter terror train and assist efforts in the region.
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Top image credit: Students and other individuals walk throughout campus as they protest to express support for Palestinians in Gaza, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in front of the residence of the University of Michigan's president, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S. November 21, 2024. REUTERS/Emily Elconin
As one administration exits and another takes form, a harsh reality is becoming clear for critics of maintaining U.S. support for the Israeli government: in government bureaucracies and university campuses alike, crackdowns and pressure on free expression and assembly will continue in force.
Precisely how the incoming Trump administration will handle such criticism remains to be seen — but views expressed by his congressional allies and recent cabinet picks suggest a further diversion from upholding freedoms of speech and assembly in the name of maintaining support for Israel's war on Gaza and beyond.
Most recently, Trump selected Pam Bondi as his new nominee for attorney general. Last year, Bondi told Newsmax that students demonstrating in support of Hamas should be deported, whether they are here on student visas or as American citizens.
“Frankly, they need to be taken out of our country,” Bondi said. "Or, the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away.”
Trump himself echoed similar sentiments on the campaign trail, telling a group of donors in May that he would “throw out” any student that protests for Palestine and calling on the Biden administration to revoke the visas of foreign nationals who “support Hamas.”
Trump’s congressional allies have echoed the same sentiments in recent weeks. In October, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) met with members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) during which he threatened to revoke accreditation to universities that allow purported pro-Hamas or anti-Israel sentiment. Scalise discussed the various “levers” and “tools” by which the government can crack down on universities, even threatening their existence altogether.
“Clearly this administration doesn’t care, but if you get an administration that actually says ‘we’re not going to play the game anymore,’ there’s a lot of levers and tools that will get [universities’] attention, day one,” Scalise said. “Your accreditation is one the line, you’re not playing games anymore or else you’re not a school anymore.”
The hour-long meeting was framed as a discussion about antisemitism, but no one present attempted to differentiate between prejudice against Jews and criticism of the Israeli government and its actions. Scalise also slammed Jewish students who criticize Israel, asserting that they “just feel guilty that they’re alive.”
Despite Scalise’s accusations of Democratic apathy, and while the harshest rhetoric against universities has come from Republicans, crackdowns on criticism of Israel remains a bipartisan status quo in Washington. In the last year, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pushed for punishment of pro-Palestinian voices and protesters.
In response to last spring’s widespread college protests, encampments and disruptions, the House overwhelmingly (320-91) passed S. 4127, the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act, on May 1. The bill expands and codifies the definition of antisemitism to include “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was one of 70 Democratic House members who voted against the bill, with 133 in favor.
“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination. By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly,” he said in an April 30 hearing on the bill.
In the eyes of Tyler Coward, Lead Counsel on Government Affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), references to a foreign nation becoming a proposed exception to free speech protection is a worrying concept.
“Our Constitution and First Amendment jurisprudence hold that political speech is entitled to the most robust protections under the First Amendment, and that’s including speech and expression about foreign policy or foreign states,” Coward said. “Inclusion of references to Israel itself triggers those concerns right out of the gate.”
However, efforts to constrain or police speech about Israel are nothing new. Many hawkish Israel supporters have pushed for years to expand what anti-semitism entails in federal anti-discrimination law, often along the lines of the definition laid out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. That definition says charges of antisemitism “might include” criticism of Israel.
“The goal here has long been to refocus the fight against antisemitism — and there is real antisemitism out there, which needs to be fought — to redefine it and make the central focus of this battle the shutting down of criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism,” said Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
Friedman has spent years documenting legislative and lobbying efforts in the U.S. to restrict speech on Israel and pass the IHRA definition into federal law. Many states have already passed resolutions or adopted laws to embrace this framing, according to the Foundation’s data.
“This has been fought since long before October 7, and it hasn't passed in Congress because it is so obviously controversial,” Friedman said. “You have major organizations that are not Israel-focused that have come out and said this would massively violate free speech.”
The antisemitism bill has been stalled in the Senate for months, so its definition of antisemitism is not yet the legal standard. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently proposed adding the legislation to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“Schumer wants to put it on the NDAA, basically saying, ‘I want this to pass, but I don't want to force Democrats to vote on it because some will vote against it, and then they'll call Democrats bad on antisemitism,'” Friedman told RS. “And [Republican Speaker of the House Mike] Johnson is saying, ‘No, we have to have an up-or-down vote and force the Democrats all to vote on it.'”
The proposal’s resurgence was not the only way Congress worked to police criticism of Israel on college campuses this past year. Shortly after the Antisemitism Awareness Act was introduced, members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce aggressively questioned several university presidents at length about alleged antisemitism on their campuses. Republican members, in particular, notably including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump’s nominee for U.N. ambassador, leveled harsh accusations against the witnesses, calling them weak and demanding to know why so few students have been suspended and professors fired for their participation in pro-Palestinian protests.
“Those who are in charge of universities who negotiate with pro-terror protesters are not doing their jobs,” Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) declared in opening the hearing.
To the ire of the committee, the three presidents dodged some questions and provided opaque answers for others. Changes this semester, however, suggests that the pressure had its intended effect.
Colleges across the country have significantly restructured their speech, expression and assembly rules to crack down on demonstrations. As the fall term began, Columbia University, for example, restricted access to its main campus. Northwestern University adopted a new demonstration and free speech policy, declaring that no one “may disrupt, prevent, or obstruct, or attempt to prevent or obstruct the regularly scheduled activities of the University.”
On November 20, a small group of tenured faculty deliberately violated Northwestern’s new policies by hosting a small protest at “the Rock,” a central square on campus. The demonstration rules prohibit protests at the Rock before 3 p.m. on weekdays. History professor Helen Tilley, one of the attendees, described why she felt a personal responsibility to participate.
“I believe that my privileges of free speech and academic freedom also come with obligations to stand up for people who have less power and who are already being punished by the changes in rules that I do not consider fair,” Tilley said.
Moreover, the New York Times recently revealed that 950 campus protest events have taken place this semester, in comparison to 3,000 last semester. About 50 people have been arrested so far this fall, compared to 3,000 in the spring.
Four students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently attended two pre-trail hearings. The students face up to three years of incarceration on felony “mob action” charges for their participation in campus encampments.
Also this week in Virginia, police raided the home of two George Mason University students associated with Students for Justice in Palestine regarding a spray-paint incident that, according to the Intercept, was “part of the widespread campus protests related to Israel’s war on Gaza.” The school’s SJP chapter was shut down and the students were barred from campus for four years.
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Top Photo: Palestinians inspect their destroyed homes after an Israeli air strike on a house belonging to the Hassan family, in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, on May 19, 2024. Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock.com
Today, Amnesty International became the first major human rights organization to accuse Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza, releasing a detailed report to substantiate this claim.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” says Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International. “It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.”
The Israeli foreign ministry has denied the allegations, calling them “entirely false.” Amnesty Israel also disagreed with the findings, saying that the “scale of killing and destruction carried out by Israel in Gaza has reached horrific proportions,” but that Israel’s war in Gaza does not meet “the definition of genocide as strictly laid out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
For its part, the United States also rejects these findings. “We disagree with the conclusions of such a report. We have said previously and continue to find the allegations of genocide to be unfounded," said State Department deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel, adding that Washington disagrees with Israel's charge that Amnesty International is "deplorable."
“Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse,” said Amnesty International in its press release. “Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families. It has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century.”
The report highlights the level of destruction in Gaza, particularly that of civilian infrastructure, stating “there is consensus among UN agencies and experts and humanitarian organizations that the level and speed of damage and destruction caused to Palestinian homes and life-sustaining infrastructure across all sectors of economic activity has been uniquely catastrophic ….” Amnesty also pointed out that the U.N. estimated reconstruction would not be complete until 2040, “even under an optimistic scenario.”
Amnesty also points out the high levels of dehumanization seen in the Gaza Strip. The report states that “senior Israeli military and government officials intensified their calls for the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, using racist and dehumanizing language that equated Palestinian civilians with the enemy to be destroyed.”
In October, the Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, used the label “ethnic cleansing” to describe Israel's actions in northern Gaza. “For a year now, since the war began, the international community has shown utter impotence to stop the indiscriminate attack on civilians in the Gaza Strip,” B’tselem stated. “Now, when it is clearer than ever that Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war, the world’s nations must take action.”
Amnesty says that “States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide,” adding that “all states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”
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Top image credit: An image of Stephen Feinberg, co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Cerberus, is seen on the company website in this illustration picture taken June 20, 2023. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration
President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly chosen private equity billionaire Stephen Feinberg as deputy secretary of defense. If confirmed, Feinberg would effectively become the Pentagon’s Chief Operating Officer, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the agency.
As the co-founder and CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm named after the three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell, Feinberg oversees more than $65 billion in assets, according to Pitchbook.
Feinberg is also a major Trump donor, doling out $975,000 to a Trump-aligned PAC in 2016 just days before the election before repeating the feat with an even $1 million in 2020. Feinberg was rewarded by being selected to lead a review of the intelligence agencies as the chair of the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
Feinberg presents as the anti-Pete Hegseth, the logical reclusive counterpart to the brash secretary of defense nominee. Plagued by scandals Hegseth claims have been generated by his political rivals, the Fox News host faces the toughest confirmation of all Trump’s nominees. On Wednesday, reports emerged that Hegseth may not have all GOP senators on board for the vote, and that Trump might be looking for a replacement. All of this makes the number two job at the Pentagon all the more relevant.
Feinberg may relish the comparison, which may make him look like a logical choice by comparison on Capitol Hill. Instead, lawmakers should comb through his record of overseeing companies that trained Saudi hit squads and defrauded the agency he is now slated to run — and raise questions over conflicts of interest arising from his stakes across the defense sectors.
Trump’s potential pick of Feinberg shines a spotlight on Cerberus’s defense portfolio. Cerberus casts a wide net across the sector, making significant investments in companies involved in defense test systems, military aircraft training, manufacturers of military vehicles, hypersonic test data, and foreign military training. With such a far reach, some watchdog organizations and conflict of interest experts are eager to ensure Feinberg will look out for American interests rather than his bottom line.
“My principal concern is whether he will follow tradition by divesting himself of all of his holdings. As the longtime CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, that would be a big deal,” Greg Williams, Director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, told RS.
Indeed, Cerberus’s investments are near-ubiquitous. The private equity firm’s portfolio includes Navistar Defense, which defrauded the U.S. Marines Corps to the tune of $50 million for inflated armored vehicle prices. Earlier this year, Cerberus bought out Transdigm, a hypersonics company that the Inspector General of the Department of Defense revealed was price-gouging, in one case to the tune of 9,400 percent in excess profit for a metal pin.
Until it was bought out in 2020, the crown jewel in Cerberus’s defense portfolio was Dyncorps, which provided planes for drug wars in Central America, and trained U.S.-backed armies in Iraq, Liberia, and Afghanistan.
Perhaps most alarmingly, a Cerberus subsidiary called Tier 1 Group trained four members of the Saudi hit squad team that murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. With the approval of the State Department, Tier 1 Group reportedly trained the Saudi nationals in marksmanship, countering attacks, surveillance, and close-quarters battle between 2014 and 2017, the years preceding Khashoggi’s murder.
In 2020, Trump nominated another Cerberus executive, Louis Bremer, to a separate Pentagon post. Bremer’s nomination sparked a tense confirmation hearing, during which Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) grilled him on Cerberus’s involvement with the Saudis. "Senators deserve answers to my questions about Tier 1’s role in training any Saudis implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. I don’t feel comfortable moving forward on this nomination until I get answers,” said Kaine at the time.
Should Feinberg’s nomination advance, similar questions would likely be raised by lawmakers.
“It’s concerning to see that President-elect Trump is considering another nomination for another person affiliated with Tier 1 Group,” said Raed Jarrar, Advocacy Director at Democracy for the Arab World Now, during an interview with RS. “That sends an alarming message of a lack of accountability when it comes to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and our foreign policy.”
Feinberg will be expected to liquidate his current assets as quickly as possible, but will likely not have to sit out decisions regarding his former companies, explained Jeff Hauser, the Executive Director of the Revolving Door Project, in a phone call with RS. “It remains a near-inevitability that as part of the Pentagon’s top brass, he will make decisions regarding his former companies.”
Hauser also explained that Cerberus’s wide-ranging defense portfolio almost, ironically, may insulate Feinberg from charges of conflicts of interest. “There's an understanding in the ethics world that the more conflicted you are, the less you may have to recuse yourself. And, if he does need to recuse himself, Hauser explained, “he can get a waiver from an ethics official who has every incentive to demonstrate loyalty to the Trump administration.” Federal government employees are expected to sit out decisions involving their former employer for at least a year, but the Trump administration can issue waivers if it deems the conflict of interest will not affect the integrity of the decision.
In 2017, Feinberg and Blackwater founder Erik Prince tried to pressure the Trump administration to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan. Feinberg reportedly put more emphasis on giving the CIA full control over operations, where paramilitary units would be “subject to less oversight than the military” — a proposal that incidentally his companies stood to gain from.
Even if Feinberg divests for his holdings, it’s impossible to divest from a baked-in contractor-first ideology.
The deputy secretary of defense “needs skeptics at the highest levels of leadership — not individuals with interests in the financial decisions of an agency with a near trillion dollar budget,” explained Julia Gledhill, a research associate at the Stimson Center, in a written statement to RS. “The revolving door continues to spin for the arms industry."
Jarrar invited lawmakers to take their pick for why Feinberg should be disqualified for the number two job at the Pentagon — “Whether it’s money in politics, relationships with foreign governments, gross violations of human rights, or training of mercenaries and killers, this nomination should be categorically rejected.”
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