Truth, Not Apartheid and The Bear Hug, Not Divestment

President Joe Biden's different way of approaching Israel

An encampment at Middlebury College

By now it’s important to make it clear: I am against the anti-Israel campus protests breaking out on American college campuses.

This stance might surprise you given my reputation as a critic of the IDF, its front groups like the ADL, and of the Israeli state. You’d expect that someone who was targeted by these malefactors that I’d be excited by the youths taking to the quad. To some extent, I am. It’s long overdue, and it’s a sign of the overall collapse of the Zionist disinformation machine that the children increasingly don’t fear the blacklist that governed, and to some extent still governs, my life.

But I have to be honest. I find that the protests are, well, sophomoric about the issues at play. Though much of the agita feels very much like street theatre, the matters here are decidedly quite serious.

I had thought initially that my bias — I’m against going to mass protests on aesthetic grounds and I’m definitely not a joiner — might color my perspective. So I took a closer look.

It isn’t clear what their actual aims are. Nor does it seem as if the college students are taking a real risk besides the occasional arrest. Camping in the quad seems like good fun but it’s unlikely to change much of anything at all.

Worse yet, one wonders if, masked up to ward against Israeli facial recognition, how many of them are wittingly or unwittingly, serving the Netanyahu government by taking the focus off of the genocide in Gaza and toward their own narcissistic concerns. I was young once, so I get it. It’s fun to be a part of something even, and perhaps especially, if you don’t know what it is. And what is this?

Don’t we all kind of know that this is fake?

I agree that there have been agent provocateurs who have infiltrated The Movement and I suspect that that’s what that is.

Now it was always inevitable that the Israeli occupation would have its own dire consequences for American democracy. I’d argue that it already has had far reaching consequences for our national security. The compromise of the FBI by Israeli and Russian influences is a considerable part of the reason we’ve had a rather lackluster law enforcement response to the Israeli and Russian misbehavior in the United States, especially when it comes to targeting our intelligent people or our American technologists.

American law enforcement can no longer be complicit in maintaining the Israeli government’s lies about Jewish lives being in danger. Indeed whenever Jews have had reason to worry about their safety, more often than not, it’s a cynical play by the Netanyahu government to get Jews to flee to Israel. We’ve seen them stage terrorist attacks here and abroad with precisely that aim.

Are we really going to ignore the Israeli-American teenager who was found guilty in Israel of making about 2,000 hoax bomb threats against Jewish and other institutions in the United States and elsewhere during Donald Trump's rise to the U.S. presidency in 2016 and 2017?

I do not support divestment. Divestment means you’ll sell the asset to someone else. No, you should have to take your losses. This includes TikTok and DJI and a whole host of other Chinese companies doing business in America. It does us no good if we trade one oppressor — Meta — for another. Far better to shut them down — or fund American alternatives. We can compete. We will compete. The venture funds which understand this time for choosing will survive. Those that don’t will not.

To be clear: I support ending the Netanyahu regime. There is no substitute. Whether that happens with ballots or bullets I’m ambivalent about how it happens, only that it must happen and soon. We cannot allow a dictator to have nuclear weapons, particularly one as enfeebled as Israel’s. They aren’t a responsible country.

In large measure we got into the problems we got into because we weren’t willing to talk honestly about Israeli looting of Silicon Valley’s brains and pillaging of America’s endowments and pension funds. Many of these Israeli security companies were financed on the back of US pensioners or colleges. That can’t happen any longer. It’s too dangerous for our own freedoms.

I suspect that a lot of these protests are, in some sense, backed by Silicon Valley itself, angered about how it is increasingly shut out of investment capital from American endowments. What better way than to mock or jeer at the college students who are protesting the mass murder of civilians?

We weren’t willing to do the necessary thing: shaping Israeli technology while shaping the Israeli government. That’s on us and we need to be deliberate about fixing it.

The left-wing critics of Israel are correct. Israel is a colonial state. But the question has always been whose colony? Ours? Or the Soviets? Or the Chinese? Or, worst of all, global organized crime? Ultimately this question must be answered and answered decisively. The appropriate policy mechanism is to effectively annex Israel and remove the pretense of its sovereignty. Ours is an imperial age and we should face it openly.

Collective punishment, though, is wrong. I support accountability for specific bad actors doing specific bad things. Divesting from South Africa caused the rapid looting of South Africa’s economy and ultimately benefited China and the smuggler class. Some might wonder if that was precisely the point. China is now the number one trading partner for South Africa. It’s now thirty years since South Africa became its own country. Even NPR is asking the question of whether South Africa is still an emblem of democracy.

Where did all the money go? Well, by some measures the South African Diaspora is among the richest and most powerful in the world. Its members include some of my dear friends, my colleagues and my most powerful allies.

Some of them, like Elon Musk, are a great danger to our republic. One might wonder if, perhaps, the smuggling that Elon did of gems into America was not, in fact, part of this larger operation of trying to get as much wealth out of South Africa as quickly as possible.

Could that be why Sequoia managing partner Roelof Botha of the South African deep state continues to back Elon Musk even though Musk has long overstayed his welcome? Botha makes it seem as if his loyalty to Musk is what has persuaded him to back Musk’s ill fated efforts around Twitter and his new AI venture. Does he really expect us to believe him?

Is Elon Musk's Real Job Smuggling?

This insight is not to support the system of apartheid but we do need to ask the larger question of compared to what. When I visited Israel in 2022 the receptionist at the Jaffa Hotel who checked me had recently made aliyah from South Africa. When I asked her why she left the Rainbow Nation she described no running water and rolling blackouts throughout much of the country. Not ideal. The hope and the promise of an independent South Africa has not matched the reality.

Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa

Nor has the hope and promise of a Jewish yet democratic Israel lived up to the hype. The “only democracy in the Middle East”? Please, that’s Turkiye. “An aircraft carrier for American interests”? That’s Jordan, or increasingly and intriguingly, the United Arab Emirates which is seemingly turning its ill-gotten gains to clever alliances.

That disconnect between what’s real and what’s fake is how much of the misery has befallen us when thinking about Israel and the Palestinian territories. Make believe never had more purchase than in the Middle East.

It’s a legacy we are still dealing with today. Many of the problems we currently face with respect to Israel start from our failed policies with respect to sanctions targeting whole countries. In fairness we lacked the requisite surveillance technology to appropriately monitor the transfers and bad actors. But now we have no excuse.

Collective punishment is wrong though it may sometimes be necessary. The Likud supporters of the genocide in Gaza make false comparisons to America’s efforts in World War II. The end of World War II was almost eighty years ago. It’s time for different analogies. Technology has evolved. We’ve gotten better at knowing who is who which makes it totally inexcusable that Israel would be allowed to assassinate aid workers with impunity — or to character-assassinate Americans who stand up to them.

The Israel aid package that Congress passed is about forcing Israel to live under the surveillance state that they once envisioned for us after September 11th. Technology is about putting them on a leash. I’m proud to have done my part. The satellite company I invested in makes clear that they are lying about their devastation.

The only way out here is for the International Criminal Court to bring Netanyahu to justice. It should have been done before. It must be done now.

It may not be enough but it’s a start.

One of the reasons I remain Christian is because I believe in the power of forgiveness, of redemption, and ultimately, of grace.

I extend this Christian spirit even to my enemies. After all, who do we make peace with if not first ourselves and then our enemies?

Not so long ago I was a young person — some might even say I was a campus radical though my radicalism was to embrace a kind of juvenile contrarianism I’m only now getting over, thanks to my mid-thirties.

Have you been to South Africa lately? A disaster.

The correct approach isn’t to ban Pegasus but to embrace it so tightly it can’t do anything but work for the U.S. government. It’s often joked that Israel is the 51st. That’s not quite right. But it should become a protectorate in much the same way that Korea and Japan have become satellites of U.S. power.

Japan was stripped of its military after it attacked the United States. So, too, should Israel see itself stripped of its military as should most of the powers within the region.

We’re not there yet. Maybe Jimmy Carter’s death — he’s ninety-nine and on hospice — will provide an opportunity to recalibrate.

How can we pivot to Asia if we’re busy funding the Middle East?