The Washington Post this morning has reported that the top Democrats on the Armed Services Committees — Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), and Senator Ben Cardin (Md.) — have finally given their nod on the biggest arms sale to Israel since Oct. 7.
In fact, after holding it up for months they gave their approval "weeks ago." Now Congress will be formally notified.
The package includes 50 F-15s that won't arrive in Israel for years, along with surface-to-air missiles and Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which retrofit unguided bombs with precision guidance, according to the paper. The package is worth $18 billion.
The two Democrats had been resistant to give their nods (the ranking Republicans gave their approval months ago) due in part to the continued blocking of aid in the strip. Meeks, according to the Post, told CNN in April that “I don’t want the kinds of weapons that Israel has to be utilized to have more deaths...I want to make sure that humanitarian aid gets in. I don’t want people starving to death, and I want Hamas to release the hostages. And I want a two-state solution.”
But we know there is enormous pressure on lawmakers who want the Biden administration to use its leverage — including $4 billion a year in military aid to pay for such weapons — to stop the civilian carnage Republicans have said that the administration is not giving the Israelis more missiles and ammo fast enough, calling it a "reprehensible" betrayal. Efforts to condition further aid have fallen largely by the wayside.
The administration has "paused" the transfer of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs due to recent events but are already consider "unpausing." The House has already passed a bill punishing the administration for holding back the weapons in the first place.
According to the Post, Meeks told the paper that he has been in “close touch” with the White House and “repeatedly urged the administration to continue pushing Israel to make significant and concrete improvements on all fronts when it comes to humanitarian efforts and limiting civilian casualties.” Cardin's office, for its part, said the package had gone through the "regular review processes."
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is Editorial Director of Responsible Statecraft and Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute.
Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-NY) speaks during a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hosts a roundtable with families of Americans held hostage by Hamas since October 7, 2023. (Photo by Allison Bailey/NurPhoto)NO USE FRANCE
Top image credit: Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security of Israel, shouts at the opening of the 25th Knesset session marking the anniversary of the “Iron Swords” war on Monday, in Jerusalem, October 28, 2024. DEBBIE HILL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, approved a piece of legislation on Thursday that gives the government permission to deport family members of those who Israel labels as “terrorists.” This law affects Israelis, as well as Palestinian citizens.
The law was sponsored by Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of the right-wing Likud party. If the legislation goes unchallenged by the courts, it would allow the interior minister to deport parents, siblings, or spouses of anyone labeled as a terrorist, if that person has “expressed support or identification” or failed to report information concerning an act of terror, or terror organization. Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh points out that one potential issue with this policy is that “all Palestinian factions are labeled as terrorist organizations by Israel.” Additionally, expressing sympathy for the humanitarian situation in Gaza has previously been labeled as being sympathetic to terror.
Annalle Sheline, research fellow at the Quincy Institute, agrees, saying “the proposed legislation is horrifying, both for expanding Israel's existing policy of holding individuals accountable for the actions of members of their family, and for the extremely broad definition of so-called 'terrorism' that they intend to apply.”
Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir expressed support for the new law on X: “today we passed a law deporting families of terrorists. It seems to me that the left has come under pressure, let's continue!”
The expulsions would range from 7-20 years depending on the legal status of the defendant. The law may be challenged in court, however, with a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, Eran Shamir-Borer, saying that the Supreme Court will likely strike down the law. “The bottom line is this is completely nonconstitutional and a clear conflict to Israel’s core values,” he said.
Israel does recognize a basic protection of freedom of speech and expression, but it is notably limited. Expression is restricted when it is likely to cause public harm. Speech that could insight racism, terrorism, Holocaust denialism, or insult to public servants is also restricted.
During the same session, the Knesset approved a temporary measure that allows for minors under the age of 14 to be imprisoned following a murder conviction that is connected to a terrorist act or organization.
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Top photo credit: French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and German Chancelor Olaf Scholz at the Elysée Palace in Paris on Feb. 8, 2023. (Frederic Legrand - COMEO/ Shutterstock)
President-elect Trump says he can end the war in Ukraine in a day.
But there is a catch. Washington institutions and EU policy makers have Trump-proofed the war for at least another year. This idea — that hard-wired Western support for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s fight against Russia could be insulated from the incoming U.S. president — has been cooking for the past year.
In the month before the first votes had been cast in this week’s U.S. election, policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic had been solidifying their fortifications against the risk of a Trump victory. In its October report, the International Monetary Fund — which the developing world often sees as a rich country club serving Western interests — made a baseline assumption that war in Ukraine would “wind down in late 2025,” at the earliest, one year after the U.S. election.
Provisional Western funding for another year of war had already been secured in June in the form of the G7’s $50 billion lending package for Ukraine. That gives Zelenskyy enough to plug the yawning hole in his state finances sufficiently to keep fighting. He will still need to manage other significant risks along the way, not least of which include the country’s energy infrastructure and military mobilization. Ukraine recently announced a plan to mobilize a further 160,000 troops following the April decision to lower the age of military draftees from 27 to 25.
But the EU has been working hard to ensure that Zelenskyy can take the risk, underwritten with European money. Although what they have created is catastrophically ill-thought through.
The European Union loan itself — up to a maximumof €35 billion (around $38 billion) — is so high precisely because of the uncertainty about whether the U.S. would match the funding of other G7 nations. This is Trump-proofing in action. In essence, even if Trump doesn’t agree to the proposed $20 billion U.S. contribution made by Biden, Europe is prepared to cover the cost of another year of devastating war.
Little matter that, for Ukraine itself, $50 billion in extra debt represents around 30% of GDP for one year of fighting — if the country hasn’t collapsed in that time. According to the IMF, if war does indeed end in late 2025, Ukrainian debt will hit 108% of GDP and only start to fall in 2028. In this scenario, Ukraine’s economy wouldn’t return to its pre-war size until 2031, representing nine years of lost growth.
If war continues into 2026 (the IMF downside scenario), debt will hit a massive 136% of GDP, and Ukraine’s economy will be further stunted.
The G7 funding was made on the naive assumption that Ukraine would never have to repay it, or, in the IMF’s words, “to ensure debt sustainability.”
In late October, the European Parliament agreed on a Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism as “non-repayable financial support” to cover any repayments Ukraine needs to make against the G7 loan package of $50 billion. Separate from the G7 loans, it is the pot of funds made up of the profits from seized Russian assets of €210 billion (about $225 billion) held in EuroClear in Belgium. These funds currently generate around €4-5 billion ($4.3-5.4 billion) in profit each year although some of that profit is already being used, for example, in restoring Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
However, this Loan Cooperation Mechanism could easily fall apart in the coming year. Self-evidently, if a ceasefire is agreed in Ukraine and a peace process, finally, launched, Russia will press hard for the return of these assets as part of staged sanctions relief.
U.S. officials under the Biden administration had been pressuring the EU to agree to a longer freezing of Russian assets of 3-5 years, although Hungary blocked a decision to change EU policy on sanctions renewal until after the U.S. election. With Trump now elected, Hungary, and possibly others, likely won’t want to set the Russian asset freeze in stone.
Look at the EU small print, and you’ll see that if funds from frozen Russian assets run out or if no funds are received from Russia for war reparations, then Ukraine will have to service the loan itself.That would explode the IMF’s claim that this debt is sustainable and put significant additional pressure on Ukraine’s flagging finances. Economies rebound after wars though, so, perhaps, some might argue, this is worth the risk. Growth over time would help to reduce the massive Ukrainian debts brought on by war.
But what benefit is another year of fighting when Ukraine is losing the war in its east? Russia’s Donbas offensive sped up ahead of the U.S. election with a major southern push towards Khurakove. Around 50% of Donetsk remains under Ukrainian control, including major centers such as Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk. At the current rate of military progress, it would, according to some commentators, take Russia at least another year to complete its conquest of the Donbas.
Although with Ukraine potentially demoralized by the change in power in Washington, Russia will continue to press its advantage and gobble up more ground before Trump takes office. There is no foreseeable military scenario at the moment which predicts that Ukraine will reverse the tide of Russian advances. Despite stop-start talks in Qatar, Russia will continue to pummel Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure, rendering life miserable for even more Ukrainian people as the winter grows colder.
By giving Ukraine an extra $50 billion in lending, Europe will simply be helping Ukraine manage to sacrifice more of its land, at a huge cost in death and destruction.
As Vice President-elect JD Vance pointed out in April, the math doesn’t add up. And with a now significant possibility that U.S. weapon supplies will dry up, the risk of a complete collapse of Ukraine’s front line will grow.
The best way to stand with the glorious country of Ukraine is to end this nonsense and finally sue for peace. That will require difficult conversations between the 47th president of the United States and his war-hungry European colleagues. But first, he needs to pick up the phone to Putin and Zelenskyy.
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Top photo credit: Arab Americans gather at a restaurant for a presidential election watch party In Dearborn, Michigan, U.S. November 5, 2024. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
Foreign policy was way down on the list of voters' concerns in Tuesday's election, according to the exit polls, something that was expected.
It is not entirely clear, however, whether President Biden's Israel policy hurt the Democratic vote in swing states, particularly in Michigan, where returns Tuesday night indicated that Vice President Harris's performance in key Arab-American/Muslim counties like Wayne County (home to Dearborn) and Washtenaw County (home to University of Michigan) — were not rising to the level of President Biden's performance four years earlier.
Unofficial results in Dearborn reported overnight showed 27% for Harris and a stunning 46% for Trump and 22% for Jill Stein. The Mayor of Dearborn did not endorse Trump, but would not endorse Harris either, mainly because of the administration's Israel policy.
As of 7:30 a.m. ET today, Harris was winning Washtenaw County by 71% with 95% of the vote in; Biden won it by 72% in 2020. Meanwhile, Trump was getting 26% of the vote in Washtenaw, compared to 25% in 2020, so not so far off from 2020 results. However, in Wayne County, Harris was winning by 63%, which is lower than Biden's 68% in 2020, and third party candidate Jill Stein was getting nearly 1.5% — over 12,600 votes — which was much more than what she was showing in other Michigan counties. Trump was at 33% in Wayne, outperforming his 30% vote total of 2020.
In the Associated Press's VoteCast exit polls, foreign policy came in less than 8%, compared to 39% for the economy. In Michigan, foreign policy came in around the same percentage, while 41% of voters said the economy was most important to them.
In exit polling by a consortium of news organizations, including NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN, foreign policy came in at 4% nationally, far behind the economy at 27% and 35% who said the state of democracy was their most important issue.
What did these exit polls say about Israel? It's not a crystal clear picture.
In Michigan, 30% of voters polled said U.S. support for Israel is "too strong" (62% of Harris voters said so, as did 36% of Trump voters). Some 26% said U.S. support wasn't "strong enough" and 37% said it was "just right." This basically reflects the national polling on the Israel question.
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