Last Call For Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

As I've said, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, having now survived three attempts to reform a government without him, is using last weekend's Hamas assault as proof that Israel doesn't have time to try to oust him again. Whether or not that works, we'll see. Vox's Zack Beauchamp:

 

In the past 24 hours, two reports out of Israel have pointed to a striking conclusion: that the failure to prevent Hamas’s murderous assault on southern Israel rests in significant part with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

First, the Washington Post’s Noga Tarnopolsky and Shira Rubin wrote a lengthy dispatch on the many policy failures that allowed Hamas to break through. They find that, in addition to myriad unforgivable intelligence and military mistakes — especially shocking given Israel’s reputation in both fields — there were serious political problems. Distracted by both the fight to seize control over Israel’s judiciary and their effort to deepen Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Netanyahu and his cabinet allowed military readiness to degrade and left outposts on the Gaza border in the south unmanned.

“There was a need for more soldiers, so where did they take them from? From the Gaza border, where they thought it was calm ... not surprising that Hamas and Islamic Jihad noticed the low staffing at the border,” Aharon Zeevi Farkash, the former head of the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence, said in comments reported by the Post.

Second, a columnist at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper unearthed evidence that Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

These exact comments have not yet been confirmed by other sources. But the Times of Israel’s Tal Schneider wrote on Sunday that Netanyahu’s reported words “are in line with the policy that he implemented,” which did little to challenge and in some ways bolstered Hamas’s control over the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Schneider notes, “the same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message.” Some Netanyahu confidants have said the same thing, as have outside experts.

Put together, these two pieces tell a larger story: that the strategic vision of Netanyahu’s far-right government is a failure.

The notion that Israel can deliver security for its citizens by dividing and conquering Palestinians, crushing them into submission as a kind of colonial overlord, is both immoral and counterproductive on its own terms. Recognizing this reality will be crucial to formulating not only a humane response to Hamas’s atrocity, but an effective one.

 

America failed to recognize this over two decades ago. What should have been the end of the political careers of anyone named Bush or Cheney turned into a second term and a second war that took two decades to extinguish, only for Israel to basically decide that planned incompetence was the way to go to save Bibi's neck when it should be his downfall.

 

Of course, Hamas did decide to butcher several hundred Israeli civilians and take several hundred more as hostages, so it's not like they are blameless here. But it's looking more and more like Bibi opened this particular gateway to hell and then deliberately looked the other way as the monsters came through.

 

You'd think it would cost him his job. Instead it's looking like we could be in for a major war in the Middle East again.

President Biden seems mostly on board.

President Biden said Tuesday that Americans were among the hostages being held by Hamas, in addition to 14 U.S. citizens who have been killed, and he vowed that the United States would stand by Israel as it responds forcefully to the surprise attack on its soil.

Biden, who did not provide a number of U.S. hostages, added that Israel has not only a right but a “duty” to respond to the onslaught by Hamas, which has left hundreds dead. His speech was the first official confirmation that Americans were being held captive, although officials had earlier suggested that was likely to be the case.

“As president, I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world,” Biden said. “Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond and indeed has a duty to respond to these vicious attacks.”

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that the administration could not confirm the number of hostages but that at least 20 Americans were missing. Sullivan stressed that did not necessarily mean there were 20 or more U.S. hostages.

Overall, between 100 and 150 people are being held in Gaza, according to an Israeli official, and Hamas has threatened to execute civilian hostages if Israeli airstrikes continue.

Biden, delivering remarks from the State Dining Room in White House, flanked by Vice President Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, spoke in unusually vivid terms about the assault itself.

“There are moments in this life when pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed in this world,” he said, referring to “stomach-turning reports of babies being killed” and “women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”

These are not exactly the words of a man seeking peace, folks.  Luckily the House GOP clown show may actually be to some benefit here for once as if they can't get their crap together and elect a Speaker, there's not going to be much additional military aid to Israel.  It might slow down the war train a bit.

We'll see.

Paxton, Repaxtonated, Con't

Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton, having survived impeachment proceedings against him over fraud and corruption charges, is now bringing the power of his office against state House Republicans who managed his impeachment case. 

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he will file criminal complaints against the Board of Managers who spearheaded his impeachment after his home address was published in documents posted online last week.

In a news release sent Monday, Paxton cited a new state law that makes it illegal to post someone’s address or phone number online “with the intent to cause harm or a threat of harm.” It is meant to protect people from “doxing,” the practice of posting someone’s personal information online without their permission and with malicious intent.

The attorney general said he and his family have received “multiple threats of violence.” The complaints will be filed with district attorneys in the managers’ eight home counties, according to the news release.

“The impeachment managers clearly have a desire to threaten me with harm when they released this information last week,” Paxton said. “I’m imploring their local prosecutors in each individual district to investigate the criminal offenses that have been committed.”

Paxton, a Republican, was impeached in May on allegations of corruption. The Texas Senate cleared him after a two-week trial last month.

Last week, the managers who unsuccessfully fought for Paxton’s removal from office posted dozens of pages of evidence they said they were unable to release during his impeachment trial. The address of the Paxton family’s Austin home was temporarily visible on several documents. The managers pulled them offline the morning after they were published to redact them, saying they were correcting the “mistake.”

Rep. Andrew Murr, who led the 12-member Board of Managers, issued a statement late Monday that noted Paxton’s address has been in exhibits posted to the Senate’s website without incident since August. While redacted from his annual personal financial disclosures, Paxton’s home addresses are also visible on local public appraisal district websites.

“Growing up on a ranch, I was taught to keep the manure on the outside of my boots. Mr. Paxton’s baseless threats about filing criminal complaints are horse manure, and they are filling his boots full,” Murr, R-Junction, said.

Rusty Hardin, one of the private practice lawyers who prosecuted the impeachment on behalf of the managers, said Paxton’s complaints have “no merit in the law.”

“He’s going to abuse the criminal justice system to punish the people who brought him before the impeachment court,” Hardin said, calling it an abuse of power.

The Dallas Morning News asked the police, sheriff and prosecutors’ offices in Collin, Dallas and Tarrant Counties whether they’d received any complaints from Paxton. The Dallas Police Department said to reach out to the district attorney, whose spokesperson did not answer a request for comment.

A representative with the Collin County sheriff said they had not, to their best of their knowledge, received such a complaint but would not answer further questions.

“Our office will not comment on this matter. Please seek alternative sources for your story,” Sgt. Jessica Pond wrote in an email.

 

Now, we're talking Texas Republicans here. There are no "good guys" in this fight, only shades of racist, white supremacist, transphobic, antisemitic assholery to parse. Paxton trying to put other Republicans in state prison is actually fine with me. Let them fight until the cows come home.

And just maybe, Texans can throw all of them out in 2024 and 2026.

Fani, Flagged In Georgia, Con't

With their signature "rogue prosecution" law having been passed and having taken effect as of October 1, Georgia state Republicans are now trying to shut down Fulton County DA Fani Willis's RICO fraud case against Donald Trump and his inner circle of co-conspirators.

 

Georgia Senate Republicans filed a formal complaint to punish Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she sought charges against former President Donald Trump under a new law aimed at sanctioning “rogue” prosecutors.

The complaint contends Willis “improperly cherry-picked cases to further her personal political agenda” and asks the newly formed Prosecuting Attorneys Qualification Commission to initiate an investigation and take “appropriate measures” to sanction her.

“The integrity of our justice system is at stake, and the trust of the community in the District Attorney’s Office has been severely eroded,” states the complaint, which a group of eight state senators submitted hours after the law took effect Oct. 1.

The Republicans don’t specifically mention Trump in the complaint, but they sought to link a spate of deaths in the Fulton County Jail to Willis’ decision to “empanel a special grand jury to investigate her political adversaries” amid a yearslong backlog of cases.

Willis, who has criticized the law as racist and retaliatory, declined to comment through a spokesman. But she has long said that she can balance the high-profile trials in the Trump case with the other demands of her office.

The complaint sharpened an already deep rift over Trump among state Republicans.

Gov. Brian Kemp, a chief sponsor of the law, has repeatedly said there’s no evidence Willis should face any sanctions by the commission for bringing the indictment against Trump and his allies alleging they participated in a “criminal enterprise” to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Kemp, however, has criticized the timing of the charges.

“I haven’t seen anything that she has done that has broken the law or the procedures that we have. And I’ve been very honest with people about that,” Kemp said in a recent interview. “It may be a political action she’s taken in some ways, with timing and other things, but it doesn’t mean it’s illegal.”

But the GOP-controlled state Senate has forcefully broken from that approach. Senate leaders encouraged their constituents to file complaints with the commission against Willis shortly after she announced the indictment in August.

And last week, Senate Republicans launched a probe into dangerous conditions at the Fulton County Jail that is expected to scrutinize Willis’ handling of the backlog of cases that worsened during the coronavirus pandemic.

The document, reviewed Monday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was filed by a group that included Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch and state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, another high-ranking Republican in the chamber.

The complaint contends that Willis has “prioritized cases that align with her political party’s interests” rather than on the merits of each case. And it invokes the 10 inmates who have died in Fulton County custody in the past year.

 

Republicans can't let Fani Willis prosecute the case, or Trump will destroy them. They have to punish her or their political careers will be ended. That's where we are right now, even though this investigation will most likely go nowhere as far as the Trump case.

 

But they can make it very difficult for Willis and frankly, since Georgia Republicans are writing the laws and GOP Gov. Brian Kemp signed off on the legislation, an investigation into her office right now could very well sink the case completely on a technicality or "prosecutorial misconduct". Anything to get Trump off the hook.

 

And if you think Brian Kemp is going to play along when he's told his career ends if he doesn't, he will fall in line in the end. They always do.

We'll see where this goes.