Peter Myers Digest: Jan 1, 2024

(1) Prof Jeffrey Sachs: the US stands alone with Israel
(2) UN General Assembly Votes 172-4 for Palestinian Self-Determination. USA, Israel, Micronesia & Nauru voted No
(3) UN General Assembly Votes in Favor of Palestinian Self-Determination
(4) The resolution also stresses the urgent necessity to end the Israeli occupation
(5) Israel’s Jewishness is overtaking its democracy
(6) Israeli Supreme Court votes by 8 to 7 to strike down Natanyahu’s judicial overhaul law

(1) Prof Jeffrey Sachs: the US stands alone with Israel

Prof Jeffrey Sachs on Ukraine & Gaza wars

Quinh Quinh
1 Jan 2024

0:00
Ukraine is being uh slaughtered uh Russia is dominant on the battlefield

12.03
The United States stands completely isolated globally for supporting Israel in this massacre and the consequences of that are being felt all over the world in shifting alliances in economic patterns in changing geopolitical structures uh even in the use of the dollar is currency and many other things uh there is a massive a seismic change of geopolitics underway in which the US has chosen nearly total isolation in the world I see it every day uh because my job is to be out in the world discussing issues of Economic Development and finance the global economy trade uh the currency system and what’s happening is the the US so contrary to being what Biden in in his fantasy thinks that the world looks to the US for leadership
the world looks at the US ahgast the US stands alone with Israel […]

(2) UN General Assembly Votes 172-4 for Palestinian Self-Determination. USA, Israel, Micronesia & Nauru voted No

https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4030703?ln=en

The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination : resolution / adopted by the General Assembly
2023
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TitleThe right of the Palestinian people to self-determination : resolution / adopted by the General Assembly
Agenda<https://digitallibrary.un.org/search?f1=9911_0&as=1&sf=title&so=a&rm=&m1=e&p1=%28DHLAUTH%29934952&ln=en>A/78/251 70 Right of peoples to self-determination. SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES
ResolutionA/RES/78/192
Meeting recordA/78/PV.50
Draft resolution<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4025478?ln=en>A/C.3/78/L.24
Committee report<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4029261?ln=en>A/78/479
NoteRECORDED – No machine generated vote
Vote summary

Voting Summary
Yes: 172 | No: 4 | Abstentions: 10 | Non-Voting: 7 | Total voting membership: 193
Vote date2023-12-19
VoteAFGHANISTAN
Y ALBANIA
Y ALGERIA
Y ANDORRA
Y ANGOLA
Y ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
Y ARGENTINA
Y ARMENIA
Y AUSTRALIA
Y AUSTRIA
Y AZERBAIJAN
Y BAHAMAS
Y BAHRAIN
Y BANGLADESH
Y BARBADOS
Y BELARUS
Y BELGIUM
Y BELIZE
Y BENIN
Y BHUTAN
Y BOLIVIA (PLURINATIONAL STATE OF)
Y BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Y BOTSWANA
Y BRAZIL
Y BRUNEI DARUSSALAM
Y BULGARIA
Y BURKINA FASO
Y BURUNDI
Y CABO VERDE
Y CAMBODIA
A CAMEROON
Y CANADA
Y CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
Y CHAD
Y CHILE
Y CHINA
Y COLOMBIA
Y COMOROS
Y CONGO
Y COSTA RICA
Y COTE D’IVOIRE
Y CROATIA
Y CUBA
Y CYPRUS
Y CZECHIA
Y DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA
Y DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Y DENMARK
Y DJIBOUTI
DOMINICA
Y DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Y ECUADOR
Y EGYPT
Y EL SALVADOR
Y EQUATORIAL GUINEA
Y ERITREA
Y ESTONIA
Y ESWATINI
Y ETHIOPIA
FIJI
Y FINLAND
Y FRANCE
Y GABON
Y GAMBIA
Y GEORGIA
Y GERMANY
Y GHANA
Y GREECE
Y GRENADA
A GUATEMALA
Y GUINEA
Y GUINEA-BISSAU
Y GUYANA
Y HAITI
Y HONDURAS
Y HUNGARY
Y ICELAND
Y INDIA
Y INDONESIA
Y IRAN (ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF)
Y IRAQ
Y IRELAND
N ISRAEL
Y ITALY
Y JAMAICA
Y JAPAN
Y JORDAN
Y KAZAKHSTAN
Y KENYA
A KIRIBATI
Y KUWAIT
Y KYRGYZSTAN
Y LAO PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Y LATVIA
Y LEBANON
Y LESOTHO
LIBERIA
Y LIBYA
Y LIECHTENSTEIN
Y LITHUANIA
Y LUXEMBOURG
Y MADAGASCAR
Y MALAWI
Y MALAYSIA
Y MALDIVES
Y MALI
Y MALTA
MARSHALL ISLANDS
Y MAURITANIA
Y MAURITIUS
Y MEXICO
N MICRONESIA (FEDERATED STATES OF)
Y MONACO
Y MONGOLIA
Y MONTENEGRO
Y MOROCCO
Y MOZAMBIQUE
Y MYANMAR
Y NAMIBIA
N NAURU
Y NEPAL
Y NETHERLANDS (KINGDOM OF THE)
Y NEW ZEALAND
Y NICARAGUA
Y NIGER
Y NIGERIA
Y NORTH MACEDONIA
Y NORWAY
Y OMAN
Y PAKISTAN
A PALAU
Y PANAMA
A PAPUA NEW GUINEA
A PARAGUAY
Y PERU
Y PHILIPPINES
Y POLAND
Y PORTUGAL
Y QATAR
Y REPUBLIC OF KOREA
Y REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA
Y ROMANIA
Y RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Y RWANDA
Y SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS
Y SAINT LUCIA
Y SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
Y SAMOA
Y SAN MARINO
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE
Y SAUDI ARABIA
Y SENEGAL
Y SERBIA
Y SEYCHELLES
Y SIERRA LEONE
Y SINGAPORE
Y SLOVAKIA
Y SLOVENIA
Y SOLOMON ISLANDS
Y SOMALIA
Y SOUTH AFRICA
A SOUTH SUDAN
Y SPAIN
Y SRI LANKA
Y SUDAN
Y SURINAME
Y SWEDEN
Y SWITZERLAND
Y SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC
Y TAJIKISTAN
Y THAILAND
Y TIMOR-LESTE
A TOGO
A TONGA
Y TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Y TUNISIA
Y TURKMENISTAN
A TUVALU
Y TÜRKI?YE
Y UGANDA
Y UKRAINE
Y UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Y UNITED KINGDOM
Y UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA
N UNITED STATES
Y URUGUAY
Y UZBEKISTAN
Y VANUATU
VENEZUELA (BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF)
Y VIET NAM
Y YEMEN
Y ZAMBIA
Y ZIMBABWE

(3) UN General Assembly Votes in Favor of Palestinian Self-Determination

UN General Assembly Votes in Favor of Palestinian Self-Determination

By: BNN Correspondents
Published: December 21, 2023 at 8:56 pm EST

The General Assembly of the United Nations has passed a resolution endorsing the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people. The resolution was adopted with an overwhelming majority of 172 votes in favor, with only Israel and three other nations opposing it.

Global Support for Palestinian Self-Determination

The resolution reaffirms the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, including their right to establish their independent state of Palestine. This significant move by the global body is a clear indication of the international support for the Palestinian cause. Despite opposition from a handful of countries including the United States, Canada, and Hungary, the resolution passed with a substantial majority.

Call to Action

The resolution calls upon all nations and institutions within the United Nations system to continue supporting the Palestinian people in their fight for self-determination. It underlines the need for concerted efforts from all countries, specialized agencies, and institutions to expedite the realization of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Grassroots Support

In a parallel development, faculty members at the University of California have initiated ‘Faculty for Justice in Palestine’ groups in support of pro-Palestinian students on campus. This move was prompted by reports of harassment and threats faced by these students in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. These campus movements shed light on the broader global tensions between supporters of Israel and Palestinians, reflecting the microcosm of the larger issue.

(4) The resolution also stresses the urgent necessity to end the Israeli occupation

https://www.alquds.com/en/posts/104769

UN General Assembly supports the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination by an overwhelming majority

Yesterday evening, Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled “The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” by an overwhelming majority, as the resolution received the support of 172 countries, and 4 countries opposed it: (the United States, Israel, Micronesia, and Nauru), and 10 countries abstained from voting.

This resolution reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to have their independent state of Palestine, and urges all countries, specialized agencies and organizations of the United Nations system to continue supporting and assisting the Palestinian people to achieve their right to self-determination as soon as possible.

The resolution also stresses the urgent necessity to end, without delay, the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, based on the relevant United Nations resolutions, the Madrid terms of reference, the Arab Peace Initiative, and the road map plan to find a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of the two-state solution. It also stresses the necessity of respecting and preserving the unity, contiguity and integrity of the entire occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

The United Nations General Assembly also adopted a draft resolution affirming the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to their natural resources, and the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.

158 countries voted in favor of this resolution, while 6 countries opposed it: the United States, Israel, Canada, Neru, Micronesia, and Palau, while 13 countries abstained from voting.

Following the vote, Minister Riyad Mansour, Permanent Representative of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, thanked the countries that voted in favor of the resolution, praising the overwhelming support for it, which indicates that the international community strongly supports the rights of the Palestinian people in all their aspects, especially in the midst of the barbaric Israeli aggression against our people. In the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, stressing the need to oblige Israel to implement these decisions.

(5) Israel’s Jewishness is overtaking its democracy

How Israel’s Jewishness is overtaking its democracy

How Israel’s Jewishness is overtaking its democracy

Shibley Telhami

March 11, 2016

Editors’ Note: According to a new Pew poll, half of Israeli Jews have come to seek not only a Jewish majority but even Jewish exclusivity in Israel. That doesn’t bode well for Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel, writes Shibley Telhami—even aside from what happens in the West Bank and Gaza. This post originally appeared on the <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/03/08/how-israels-jewishness-is-overtaking-its-democracy/?postshare=7211457441647491&tid=ss_tw>Monkey Cage blog.

When U.S. leaders and commentators warn that the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make it impossible for Israel to be both a Jewish and democratic state, they generally mean that a Jewish democracy requires a Jewish majority; if Israel encompasses the West Bank and Gaza, Arabs will become a majority. What they may not have realized is that, in the meantime, half of Israeli Jews have come to seek not only a Jewish majority but even Jewish exclusivity.

That is one of the most troubling findings of a new <http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society>Pew poll in Israel. And it doesn’t bode well for Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel—even aside from what happens in the West Bank and Gaza.

This major study was conducted from October 14, 2014, to May 21, 2015, among 5,601 Israeli adults ages 18 and older. (Disclosure: I served as an adviser to the project). It found that 48 percent of all Israeli Jews agree with the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel,” while 46 percent disagreed. Even more troubling, the majority of every non-secular Jewish group, including 71 percent of Datim (modern orthodox Jews) agreed with the statement.

While age is not much of a factor when it comes to attitudes toward expelling Arabs from Israel, younger Israelis are slightly more likely to agree with the statement that Arabs should be expelled than older Israelis.

These attitudes are anchored in a broader view of identity and of the nature of the Israeli state. Overall, only about a third of Israeli Jews say their Israeli identity takes precedence over their Jewish identity, with the overwhelming majority of every group, except for secular Jews, saying their Jewishness comes first.

This view has consequences for citizen rights. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of all Jewish Israelis (98 percent) feel that Jews around the world have a birthright to make aliya (immigration to Israel with automatic Israeli citizenship). But what is striking is that 79 percent of all Jews, including 69 percent of Hilonim (secular Jews) say that Jews deserve “preferential treatment” in Israel—so much for the notion of democracy with full equal rights for all citizens.

These attitudes spell trouble for Arab citizens of Israel who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s citizens. It’s true that attitudes are dynamic; they are partly a function of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel itself, but also outside, especially within the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Like their Jewish counterparts, Arab citizens of Israel (mostly Muslim, but also including Christians and Druze), <http://sadat.umd.edu/IsraeliArabPollPost12102010.ppt>identify themselves with their ethnicity (Palestinian or Arab) or religion above their Israeli citizenship. And these ethnic/religious identities intensify when conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza intensifies. There is no way to fully divorce the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict from Arab-Jewish relations within Israel.

In recent years, this latter linkage has become central for two reasons: loss of hope for a two-state solution, and the rise of social media that has displayed extremist attitudes that used to be limited to private space. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, Arab and Jewish citizens post attitudes that deeply offend the other: An Arab <http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.607517>expresses joy at the death of Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinians, while a Jew posts a sign reading “<http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.679990>death to Arabs.” Hardly the stuff of co-existence. Leave it to opportunist politicians, extremists and incitement to do the rest.

But there is also an American responsibility—not so much with regard to failure of diplomatic efforts, but with the very positing of the nature of the conflict itself, and the nature of the state of Israel. As President Obama considers steps he could undertake on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before leaving office, he may contemplate addressing what has become a distorting and detrimental discourse that serves to give a pass to non-democratic attitudes, and diversion of attention from core problems.

First, there is something wrong with positing the possibility of Arabs as constituting a demographic problem for Israel. It legitimizes the privileging of Jewishness over democracy. It also distorts the reason why Israel is obligated to end occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; it has nothing to do with the character of Israel as such, but with international law and United Nations resolutions.

Second, while states can define themselves as they wish (and are accepted by the international community accordingly), the American embrace of the “Jewishness” of Israel, cannot be decoupled from the Palestinian-Israeli context, or from the overarching American demand that all states must be for all their citizens equally.

In part, this is based on the notion that the UN General Assembly (<https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/5ba47a5c6cef541b802563e000493b8c/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253?OpenDocument>Resolution 181) recommended in 1947 dividing mandatory Palestine into an “Arab” and a “Jewish” State. In part, it’s based on the notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a political conflict that can be resolved through two states, one manifesting the self-determination of Jews as a people, and one manifesting the right of self-determination of Palestinians as a people. The two were bound together. An embrace of a Jewish state that excludes a Palestinian state defeats the principle.

If two states become impossible, America chooses democracy over Jewishness. In fact, this has been consistently reflected in American public attitudes across the political spectrum, most recently in this November 2015poll; in the absence of a two-state solution, 72 percent of Americans would want a democratic Israel, even if it meant that Israel ceases to be a Jewish state with a Jewish majority.

More centrally, even with two states—one manifesting Jewish self determination and one Palestinian self-determination—an overarching, principled American position takes precedence: If Israel is a state of the Jewish people, it must also be above all a state of all its citizens equally; (and if Palestine is to be a state of the Palestinian people, it must also be a state of all its citizens equally). This democratic principle, highlighted front and center in a reformulated American position, can help avoid legitimizing undemocratic attitudes in the name of Jewish identity.

(6) Israeli Supreme Court votes by 8 to 7 to strike down Natanyahu’s judicial overhaul law

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/01/israel-supreme-court-judicial-overhaul-netanyahu-gaza

Israeli Supreme Court strikes down Bibi’s controversial judicial overhaul law

Barak Ravid

Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday narrowly struck down a controversial law that’s part of the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul and limited the court’s ability to review government decisions.

Why it matters: The dramatic ruling could thrust Israel back into a constitutional and political crisis amid the war in Gaza and concerns about a potential war with Lebanon.

A strong reaction by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his radical right-wing political allies could
What they’re saying: Netanyahu’s Likud Party said in a statement that it is “unfortunate” that the court decided to publish a ruling that deals with a central disagreement in Israeli society amid the war in Gaza. “The court’s ruling is opposed to the people’s will for unity, especially in times of war,” the party said.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the court upheld its duty to protect the citizens of Israel. “If the government resumes the fight over the supreme court it will show they didn’t learn anything from Oct. 7,” Lapid said

The law was the first piece of legislation of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul — a plan that destabilized Israel’s economy, military and foreign relations.

The Supreme Court struck down the law in an 8-7 vote.

The court ruled that the law should be canceled because it seriously and unprecedentedly damages Israel’s democratic character.

Twelve out of 15 Supreme Court judges ruled that the court has the authority to conduct judicial oversight on basic laws and intervene in extreme cases when the Knesset oversteps its legislative authority.
A draft ruling was leaked a few days ago to Israel’s Channel 12 in an unprecedented way that resembled the leak of the 2022 Roe v. Wade ruling in the U.S.

After the leak, Netanyahu and his political allies called on the court not to publish the ruling, claiming it would be divisive if it happened in the middle of the war in Gaza. Some also hinted that they believed the ruling would be illegitimate because two of the judges who supported striking down the law had already retired.

In a statement to Axios a day before that July vote, Biden urged Netanyahu not to rush the bill “given the range of threats and challenges confronting Israel.”

In the weeks before the law passed, Israeli intelligence services warned Netanyahu four times that the internal crisis around the judicial overhaul weakens Israel’s deterrence and encourages its enemies in the region to consider attacking it.

Since the Hamas attack, many in Israel have claimed Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul created a domestic crisis that distracted Israel’s attention from external threats and led to intelligence and security failure on Oct. 7.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional details throughout