theintercept--2020-11-13--Trump Destroyed Any Hope of Israeli-Palestinian Peace — and Biden Can’t Rebuild It

soccer match in which the goalie for one side , with a wink and a nod , decides to run off for coffee in the middle of the game .
That was basically President Donald Trump ’ s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past four years .
The Trump administration gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an open-goal opportunity to run up the score on the Palestinians , with no resistance and lots of connivance from the United States .
With President-elect Joe Biden trudging onto the field , it ’ s likely the U.S. foreign policy establishment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ modus operandi : an emphasis on two states and maintaining the illusion of being an honest broker , even if in practice Israel is favored .
There could be a few wrinkles , owing to Obama administration veterans ’ frustrations about Israel ’ s actions around two failed Palestinian peace pushes , as well as the Iran nuclear deal .
But Biden has historically been and will likely continue to be a traditional , Washington pro-Israel stalwart .
It ’ s also possible that none of it will matter .
The playing field @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different than what Obama veterans left behind in 2017 — not least thanks to Trump leaving an open goal for the Israelis .
The end result seems clear : yet another hefty nail in the coffin of the two-state solution , a result of radically altered facts on the ground green-lit by Trump — and unlikely to be reversed by Biden or any other U.S. president .
Over the past four years , Trump and his deputy-cum-son-in-law Jared Kushner helped Israel realize an incredible set of diplomatic and strategic gains at virtually no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On a raft of policy areas , Trump suddenly dropped objections long held by bipartisan U.S. presidential administrations over decades .
Establishing a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem , annexing the disputed Golan Heights , ramping up illegal settlements , strangling humanitarian aid to the Palestinians , demolishing record numbers of West Bank homes , threatening to brand human rights organizations critical of Israel as anti-Semitic , and even scoring public recognition for Israel from several Arab states — these are just a few of the mind-blowing changes that took place under Trump .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ all handed to Israel by the author of “ The Art of the Deal ” without negotiating anything in return .
In what appears to be a final gratuitous gift to the Netanyahu government , Trump ’ s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly plans to visit the annexed Golan Heights and a settlement in the occupied West Bank next week .
These moves , unprecedented for a sitting secretary of state , would further legitimate Israeli claims to these territories while emphasizing how little the U.S. is interested in Palestinian statehood or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and their advocates , the Trump approach reflected an unspoken reality suddenly blasted out over loudspeakers .
“ Trump made clear once and for all that the U.S. is entirely pro-Israel .
He removed the mask of the honest broker and made clear that the role of the U.S. in any negotiation is to act as Israel ’ s lawyer , ” said Diana Buttu , a political analyst based in Ramallah and former legal adviser to the Palestinian team during the Oslo peace process .
“ His legacy has been to check @ @ @ @ @ @ @ list.
” By most accounts , Kushner played a key role in driving his father ’ s Israel policy .
Jokes abounded when the real estate developer was handed the portfolio for Middle East peace .
But his tenure may indeed have been consequential for taking the Israelis and Palestinians further away from any deal .
The signs of Kushner ’ s openly one-sided approach were visible soon after Trump took office .
Early in his term , an amusing anecdote emerged about Kushner ’ s long personal history with the right-wing Netanyahu @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s family hosted Netanyahu overnight at their New Jersey home during one of his trips to the United States — a night during which the teenaged Jared was made to vacate his room for Netanyahu and move himself into the basement .
This personal experience of displacement at the hands of an Israel government official did not seem to have given Kushner much empathy for the Palestinians once in power .
During his role as Trump ’ s envoy , Kushner marshaled the full weight of U.S. diplomatic power to try and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bragging about his own in-depth reading on the Israel-Palestine conflict , Kushner has publicly cast aspersions on the presumed right of Palestinian self-governance and done his utmost to stifle their ambitions .
It ’ d be too easy to say that this effort has been unsuccessful .
With the facts on the ground under the Trump administration radically reshaped in Israel ’ s favor — through actions like the embassy move and annexation of the Golan Heights — far less has been left on the table to even negotiate about .
Even the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arab states normalizing relations with Israel has been annulled , with numerous nations , including the United Arab Emirates , Bahrain , and Sudan , already establishing public ties with Israel .
These moves have effectively destroyed what remained of the old Arab League consensus on this subject , which said that ties with Israel should be predicated on the creation of a Palestinian state .
With such a state now effectively out of the picture and the Arab League moving on regardless , the Palestinians have been left alone to an uncertain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration will go equally hard in the opposite direction to bring the Palestinians back to negotiating parity with Israel seems unlikely to most analysts .
The new balance of power that Kushner , Netanyahu , and a few other well-placed individuals have established is unlikely to be radically changing anytime soon .
“ There are certain bells that the Trump administration has rung on this issue that Biden will not , and can not , unring .
Things such as recognizing Jerusalem as Israel ’ s capital , annexing the Golan Heights , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accept these as the new normal , ” said Yousef Munayyer , executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights .
“ The U.S. is in an economic recession and dealing with a pandemic virus .
Meanwhile , on the international stage , there are a host of other pressing issues created by the Trump administration that are crying out for attention .
Those things are going to be at the top of the agenda for the Biden administration.
” Under the Trump administration , U.S. relations and economic support for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of a hardball campaign aimed at compelling their surrender to Israeli terms .
While Biden is unlikely to put pressure on Israel to make concessions , he will likely seek a return to the status quo ante with Palestinian leaders that previously existed under the Obama administration .
The Palestinian leadership , meanwhile , has its own problems : weak , divided , and rudderless , led by a septuagenarian ruling class that was caught almost entirely flat-footed by the Trump administration ’ s merciless campaign to destroy Palestinian nationalism .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Biden doing some halfhearted goaltending against the most blatant Israeli abuses , will not save them .
But it could give them the breathing space to begin to rethink their approach to a conflict that has left them at the mercy of shifting American political winds .
“ There has been a serious internal legitimacy crisis that the Palestinian Authority leadership has faced for more than a decade , ” said Khaled Elgindy , a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of the book , “ Blind Spot : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Trump.
” “ Biden is not going to institute earth-shattering changes on the ground , but by resuming aid funding , reestablishing political relations , and ceasing the constant assault that we ’ ve seen under the Trump administration , he might at least give Palestinians the breathing space they need to put their own house in order .
”

Imagine a soccer match in which the goalie for one side, with a wink and a nod, decides to run off for coffee in the middle of the game. That was basically President Donald Trump’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past four years. The Trump administration gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an open-goal opportunity to run up the score on the Palestinians, with no resistance and lots of connivance from the United States.
With President-elect Joe Biden trudging onto the field, it’s likely the U.S. foreign policy establishment will seek a return to the Obama-era modus operandi: an emphasis on two states and maintaining the illusion of being an honest broker, even if in practice Israel is favored. There could be a few wrinkles, owing to Obama administration veterans’ frustrations about Israel’s actions around two failed Palestinian peace pushes, as well as the Iran nuclear deal. But Biden has historically been and will likely continue to be a traditional, Washington pro-Israel stalwart.
“Trump made clear once and for all that the U.S. is entirely pro-Israel. He removed the mask of the honest broker.”
It’s also possible that none of it will matter. The playing field of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be radically different than what Obama veterans left behind in 2017 — not least thanks to Trump leaving an open goal for the Israelis. The end result seems clear: yet another hefty nail in the coffin of the two-state solution, a result of radically altered facts on the ground green-lit by Trump — and unlikely to be reversed by Biden or any other U.S. president.
Over the past four years, Trump and his deputy-cum-son-in-law Jared Kushner helped Israel realize an incredible set of diplomatic and strategic gains at virtually no cost in concessions to the Palestinians. On a raft of policy areas, Trump suddenly dropped objections long held by bipartisan U.S. presidential administrations over decades. Establishing a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, annexing the disputed Golan Heights, ramping up illegal settlements, strangling humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, demolishing record numbers of West Bank homes, threatening to brand human rights organizations critical of Israel as anti-Semitic, and even scoring public recognition for Israel from several Arab states — these are just a few of the mind-blowing changes that took place under Trump. More remarkable still, these gifts were all handed to Israel by the author of “The Art of the Deal” without negotiating anything in return.
In what appears to be a final gratuitous gift to the Netanyahu government, Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly plans to visit the annexed Golan Heights and a settlement in the occupied West Bank next week. These moves, unprecedented for a sitting secretary of state, would further legitimate Israeli claims to these territories while emphasizing how little the U.S. is interested in Palestinian statehood or other basic interests. For some Palestinians and their advocates, the Trump approach reflected an unspoken reality suddenly blasted out over loudspeakers.
“Trump made clear once and for all that the U.S. is entirely pro-Israel. He removed the mask of the honest broker and made clear that the role of the U.S. in any negotiation is to act as Israel’s lawyer,” said Diana Buttu, a political analyst based in Ramallah and former legal adviser to the Palestinian team during the Oslo peace process. “His legacy has been to check off everything on Israel’s wish list.”
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner delivers a speech during the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018. Photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images
The Kushner Legacy
By most accounts, Kushner played a key role in driving his father’s Israel policy. Jokes abounded when the real estate developer was handed the portfolio for Middle East peace. But his tenure may indeed have been consequential for taking the Israelis and Palestinians further away from any deal.
The signs of Kushner’s openly one-sided approach were visible soon after Trump took office. Early in his term, an amusing anecdote emerged about Kushner’s long personal history with the right-wing Netanyahu. In the late 1990s, Kushner’s family hosted Netanyahu overnight at their New Jersey home during one of his trips to the United States — a night during which the teenaged Jared was made to vacate his room for Netanyahu and move himself into the basement.
This personal experience of displacement at the hands of an Israel government official did not seem to have given Kushner much empathy for the Palestinians once in power. During his role as Trump’s envoy, Kushner marshaled the full weight of U.S. diplomatic power to try and bury the Palestinian national movement. While bragging about his own in-depth reading on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Kushner has publicly cast aspersions on the presumed right of Palestinian self-governance and done his utmost to stifle their ambitions.
It’d be too easy to say that this effort has been unsuccessful. With the facts on the ground under the Trump administration radically reshaped in Israel’s favor — through actions like the embassy move and annexation of the Golan Heights — far less has been left on the table to even negotiate about. Even the veto that the Palestinians once held over Arab states normalizing relations with Israel has been annulled, with numerous nations, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan, already establishing public ties with Israel. These moves have effectively destroyed what remained of the old Arab League consensus on this subject, which said that ties with Israel should be predicated on the creation of a Palestinian state. With such a state now effectively out of the picture and the Arab League moving on regardless, the Palestinians have been left alone to an uncertain fate.
An Israeli man works near a sign for a new settlement named after U.S. President Donald Trump in the Golan Heights, which is occupied by Israel, on June 17, 2019. Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images
Biden Unlikely to Reverse
The odds that a Biden administration will go equally hard in the opposite direction to bring the Palestinians back to negotiating parity with Israel seems unlikely to most analysts. The new balance of power that Kushner, Netanyahu, and a few other well-placed individuals have established is unlikely to be radically changing anytime soon.
“There are certain bells that the Trump administration has rung on this issue that Biden will not, and cannot, unring. Things such as recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, annexing the Golan Heights, supporting normalization — the Biden administration will accept these as the new normal,” said Yousef Munayyer, non-resident Senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC. “The U.S. is in an economic recession and dealing with a pandemic virus. Meanwhile, on the international stage, there are a host of other pressing issues created by the Trump administration that are crying out for attention. Those things are going to be at the top of the agenda for the Biden administration.”
“There are certain bells that the Trump administration has rung on this issue that Biden will not, and cannot, unring.”
Under the Trump administration, U.S. relations and economic support for the Palestinian Authority were choked off, as part of a hardball campaign aimed at compelling their surrender to Israeli terms. While Biden is unlikely to put pressure on Israel to make concessions, he will likely seek a return to the status quo ante with Palestinian leaders that previously existed under the Obama administration.
The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, has its own problems: weak, divided, and rudderless, led by a septuagenarian ruling class that was caught almost entirely flat-footed by the Trump administration’s merciless campaign to destroy Palestinian nationalism. A return to the Obama-era status quo, with Biden doing some halfhearted goaltending against the most blatant Israeli abuses, will not save them. But it could give them the breathing space to begin to rethink their approach to a conflict that has left them at the mercy of shifting American political winds.
“There has been a serious internal legitimacy crisis that the Palestinian Authority leadership has faced for more than a decade,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of the book, “Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump.” “Biden is not going to institute earth-shattering changes on the ground, but by resuming aid funding, reestablishing political relations, and ceasing the constant assault that we’ve seen under the Trump administration, he might at least give Palestinians the breathing space they need to put their own house in order.”


theintercept--2020-11-13--Now We Have to Fight Trump’s Tin-Pot Coup — and Biden’s Worst Instincts

Republican voices echoing manufactured claims of mass election fraud hasn ’ t petered out yet .
So , is it : • An elaborate scheme to flatter a nuclear-armed narcissist into gradually accepting the reality that he is what he most fears : a loser ?
• An attempt to preemptively drain the Biden-Harris administration of perceived legitimacy , in an effort to clip its wings and then use its ineffectiveness to secure big Republican wins in the midterms ?
• An actual , thought-through , coordinated plot for Republican-controlled state legislatures to use the pretext of public concerns over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of thin air through sheer force of repetition by Trump and his minions — to claim a constitutional “ duty ” to override their states ’ certified election results and instead directly appoint Republican presidential electors ?
In short , is what we are witnessing the prelude to an Electoral College coup ?
As David Sirota first reported , a harrowing paper by Ohio State constitutional law expert Edward Foley warned about this precise scenario last year , explaining how state legislatures could attempt to claim this kind of constitutional cover in order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take ?
A through D are definitely happening , while the risk of E being a real threat is very slim .
But slim isn ’ t nil and given the stakes , that ’ s makes it enough to deserve some attention .
To be clear , the reason a tin-pot coup attempt remains highly unlikely has nothing to do with the laughable idea that Republican lawmakers have too much respect for core democratic principles to engage is such a brazen power grab .
These are people who owe their holds on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their entire careers , to openly anti-democratic redistricting schemes and other wily tools of suppressing , at all costs , the terrifying prospect of majority rule .
They keep finding new ways to tell us that they don ’ t actually believe in representative democracy , and we should believe them .
Moreover , the tactic of taking minor voting irregularities and outlandishly inflating them to the level of election-stealing , thereby justifying a very real coup d ’ etat , has been the go-to tactic in countless U.S.-backed “ regime-change ” operations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it must be said , by Republicans and Democrats alike .
Do not tell yourself they are above bringing the tactic home .
If the Republican Party refrains , and I believe it will , it won ’ t be out of fealty to democracy but rather out of loyalty to market and empire .
If multiple state governments were to openly override the express will of their electorates , the result would be massive protest and unrest , as well it should be .
In the face of this kind of uncertainty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , markets would crash and U.S. global power would further erode .
That ’ s why Rupert Murdoch and other corporate titans are rumored to be trying to talk Trump off the cliff .
Still , given the kind of profitable chaos Republicans and their donors have grown accustomed to under Trump , nothing can be ruled out .
And as Sirota reported , these are not abstract fears : “ Most ominously of all , Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania , Georgia , Wisconsin , Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they haven ’ t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.
” Given this reality , Joe Biden ’ s “ Come on , man ” approach of brushing off Republican election denialism as an “ embarrassment , ” rather than a serious threat , is probably a poor one .
The Republican strategy , if they do go down this road , relies on state legislators appealing to a perception — not a reality — that the public has lost faith in the election results .
That ’ s a lot easier to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your offices and bombarding you with phone calls and emails are Trump supporters shouting conspiracy theories about voter fraud , while the people who would see a challenge to certified results as a straight-up coup have already moved on , convinced that Republicans wouldn ’ t dare cross yet another democratic red line so they aren ’ t even bothering to make the point .
To be absolutely clear : The point shouldn ’ t have to be made .
There is zero evidence of widespread fraud , and ratifying certified results should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is one core lesson to take from the Republican victory in Florida in 2000 , when the Bush campaign staged astroturf riots and the Gore campaign told supporters to stay home and trust the process , it is that partisan decision-makers are swayed by street-level messaging wars .
If Republican state lawmakers are inclined toward flagrantly overriding the will of the people , the ability to claim that the overwhelming majority of the people they are hearing from have lost faith in the elections may be excuse enough .
Remember : they would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which they obviously already know , but rather a marginally plausible cover story .
One-sided protests could provide that .
It is in this context that Democrats should be out there forcefully defending the integrity of the votes and condemning coup-plotting for what it is .
That means not waving it away as “ embarrassing , ” but , as Sen. Bernie Sanders had done , denouncing it as “ an outrage ” that is “ delegitimizing our electoral process and American democracy.
” The public should not wait for Democratic leaders to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight back .
Anyone who still kind of likes the idea of votes counting for something — regardless of who they voted for or even if they voted this election — should consider taking some time to make their voices heard to legislators in those Republican-controlled houses .
This is an organizing challenge , and for understandable reasons .
Many of the progressive organizations that ran massive voter education and mobilization campaigns during the election have closely studied the lessons of Bush v. Gore and were prepared to stay mobilized to defend the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough to steal .
In truth , the election is much closer than it should have been given Trump ’ s murderous reign ( a subject as I have discussed elsewhere ) , but it ’ s hardly a nail-biter coming down to a few hanging chads .
For this reason , most organizers have concluded that , this time around , they don ’ t need to focus their energies on avoiding a repeat of the Bush v. Gore-style Democratic Party dumpster fire .
Instead , most progressive organizations are working hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ variety of Democratic Party debacle : the one that unfolded in 2008-2009 , in the months between Barrack Obama ’ s euphoric election win in November and his inauguration in January .
That ’ s when Obama surrounded himself with a team of hardcore neoliberal economists and Wall Street bankers .
And so , despite campaign promises to “ rebuild Main Street , ” address structural market failures , and arrest the climate crisis , they spent the transition mapping out a maddeningly inadequate response to the raging financing crisis , one that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As the new cabinet was being assembled and its agenda set in stone , anyone who raised concerns about where this train was obviously headed was promptly told to pipe down and “ Give the guy a chance ” — the mantra of those fateful months .
Months that were wasted with fantastical narratives about the president ’ s imagined long game , stories that cast Obama as a progressive hero who was only temporarily appeasing the hungry gods of the market in order to buy time for his transformational popular agenda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It never came .
The political window ( and Federal Reserve faucet ) opened up by Wall Street ’ s collapse eventually closed , and the logic of austerity soon bore down once again .
The racial wealth gap widened .
The planet burned .
The architects of these crimes faced no consequences .
Not until a new wave of far more independent and confrontational movements rose up in Obama ’ s second term — Occupy Wall Street , Black Lives Matters , the Dreamers , fossil fuel divestment , No Keystone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start to see some actual progress .
But nothing that administration did matched the scale of the crises it faced , and which have only deepened since .
I take heart in the fact that the militant movements born in Obama ’ s second term , and which deepened during the Trump years , have clearly learned from the mistakes made in the 2008-2009 transition period .
Since Election Day , the reigning attitude toward Biden among groups organizing for racial , economic , and climate justice has been “ this guy gets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relentlessly for months to turn out the vote for Biden did not even take a weekend off to celebrate .
Instead , they immediately unveiled detailed plans outlining all the executive actions a Biden-Harris administration could take within its first 100 days : from immediate student debt relief , to generous “ people ’ s bailouts ” as part of its Covid-19 response , to the highly detailed “ Frontlines Climate Justice Executive Action Platform , ” backed by a coalition of powerful groups and published by the think tank Demos .
been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Movement and Justice Democrats , which focusses not only on what the new administration can do , but also who should be appointed to do it .
Quoting the president-elect ’ s accurate assertion that voters had “ given us a mandate for action on Covid , the economy , on climate change , on systemic racism , ” the groups laid out their own vision of what it would mean for Biden to actually live up to this high-stakes mandate and solve these overlapping crises .
It begins , they argue , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Office of Climate Mobilization , ” modeled after the society-wide mobilizations of World War II .
The person leading this office would have broad powers to put the entire administration on emergency footing and coordinate action across the different agencies so that every part of the government — from housing to health care — was advancing rapid , justice-based decarbonization .
Rather than treating climate action as the narrow purview of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy , “ the Office of Climate Mobilization will deeply embed this mission into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policies , and actions.
” Seeking to avoid Obama-era setbacks , they also call for the Cabinet to be made up of a diverse group of fighters , with “ no ties to fossil fuel companies or corporate lobbyists.
” They even released their picks for a dream Biden Cabinet , complete with a slick video imagining their favorite candidates being sworn in .
The full list is here but highlights include : Sanders for labor secretary , Sen. Elizabeth Warren for Treasury secretary , Rep. Barbara Lee as secretary of state , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for Justice Department , Rep. Rashida Tlaib for Housing and Urban Development , Rep. Pramila Jayapal for Health and Human Services , and economist Joseph Stiglitz for director of the National Economic Council .
On one level , the whole exercise is a heartbreak — a tortuous glimpse of the government we could have had under a Sanders presidency .
In a best-case scenario , maybe two of these movement picks stand a chance of making it through the Beltway gatekeepers running the Biden-Harris transition — and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t make this aggressive attempt to move the benchmarks a waste of time .
The fact that Sunrise and Justice Democrats were so quick to capitalize on record youth turn out in the elections and go on the offense with their vision for a transformational administration speaks to just how different this moment is from 2008 .
The groups that mobilized to defeat Trump have every intention of staying mobilized and pushing Biden at every stage .
That ’ s a very good thing .
And though it won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it is already yielding some modest results .
Every Cabinet-level appointment will be heavily scrutinized for their industry ties , which is already happening to Biden ’ s transition teams and was far from the case for Obama .
And though Biden will likely never use the term “ Green New Deal , ” there are clear indications that the vision of a holistic , government-wide approach to the climate crisis is already shaping the outlines of the new administration .
Tackling our era of overlapping crises demands this kind of focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the government in the urgent mission of simultaneously bending the curve on Covid-19 cases and on greenhouse gas emissions , all while systematically closing racial and gender inequalities and creating millions of family-supporting low-carbon jobs .
An added bonus : a government that can give people that kind of soaring common purpose , one that is expansive enough to have a meaningful role for everyone who wants it , is also best positioned to begin to heal the political ruptures that are ripping apart the country .
Joining people in life-saving , job-creating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I would argue , than the various suggestions that we all go out and engage in active listening with a pissed-off Trump voter .
But what of the persistent rumblings of seamless transition to a “ second Trump term , ” most recently from top trade adviser Peter Navarro ?
Unfortunately , we can not pretend it ’ s not happening .
After posting about the need for Biden to be pushed by both the growing Squad inside Congress and by movements on the outside , Will Dana , former managing editor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ongoing ( and escalating ) attempts to delegalize the election itself and responded : “ Let ’ s focus on making sure we have a President Biden to be disappointed in.
” The truth , as usual , is we have to do it all : Stop the Republicans from stealing an election they lost and stop the Democrats from blowing a mandate they won .

The chorus of Republican voices echoing manufactured claims of mass election fraud hasn’t petered out yet. So, is it:
A grift to raise cash for Donald Trump? A ploy to goose aggrieved Republican turnout in Georgia’s high-stakes Senate runoffs? An elaborate scheme to flatter a nuclear-armed narcissist into gradually accepting the reality that he is what he most fears: a loser? An attempt to preemptively drain the Biden-Harris administration of perceived legitimacy, in an effort to clip its wings and then use its ineffectiveness to secure big Republican wins in the midterms? An actual, thought-through, coordinated plot for Republican-controlled state legislatures to use the pretext of public concerns over voter fraud — concerns methodically manufactured out of thin air through sheer force of repetition by Trump and his minions — to claim a constitutional “duty” to override their states’ certified election results and instead directly appoint Republican presidential electors? In short, is what we are witnessing the prelude to an Electoral College coup? As David Sirota first reported, a harrowing paper by Ohio State constitutional law expert Edward Foley warned about this precise scenario last year, explaining how state legislatures could attempt to claim this kind of constitutional cover in order to override certified election results.
My take? A through D are definitely happening, while the risk of E being a real threat is very slim. But slim isn’t nil and given the stakes, that’s makes it enough to deserve some attention.
To be clear, the reason a tin-pot coup attempt remains highly unlikely has nothing to do with the laughable idea that Republican lawmakers have too much respect for core democratic principles to engage is such a brazen power grab. These are people who owe their holds on state power, and in many cases their entire careers, to openly anti-democratic redistricting schemes and other wily tools of suppressing, at all costs, the terrifying prospect of majority rule. They keep finding new ways to tell us that they don’t actually believe in representative democracy, and we should believe them.
Moreover, the tactic of taking minor voting irregularities and outlandishly inflating them to the level of election-stealing, thereby justifying a very real coup d’etat, has been the go-to tactic in countless U.S.-backed “regime-change” operations around the world — schemes supported, it must be said, by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Do not tell yourself they are above bringing the tactic home. If the Republican Party refrains, and I believe it will, it won’t be out of fealty to democracy but rather out of loyalty to market and empire. If multiple state governments were to openly override the express will of their electorates, the result would be massive protest and unrest, as well it should be. In the face of this kind of uncertainty in the world’s largest economy, markets would crash and U.S. global power would further erode. That’s why Rupert Murdoch and other corporate titans are rumored to be trying to talk Trump off the cliff.
Democrats should be out there forcefully defending the integrity of the votes and condemning coup-plotting for what it is.
Still, given the kind of profitable chaos Republicans and their donors have grown accustomed to under Trump, nothing can be ruled out. And as Sirota reported, these are not abstract fears: “Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating that the results may be fraudulent, even though they haven’t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.”
Given this reality, Joe Biden’s “Come on, man” approach of brushing off Republican election denialism as an “embarrassment,” rather than a serious threat, is probably a poor one. The Republican strategy, if they do go down this road, relies on state legislators appealing to a perception — not a reality — that the public has lost faith in the election results. That’s a lot easier to claim if the only people screaming outside your offices and bombarding you with phone calls and emails are Trump supporters shouting conspiracy theories about voter fraud, while the people who would see a challenge to certified results as a straight-up coup have already moved on, convinced that Republicans wouldn’t dare cross yet another democratic red line so they aren’t even bothering to make the point.
Crowds of George W. Bush supporters celebrate the decision to stop the vote recount on Dec. 9, 2000 at the Leon County Public Library in Tallahassee, Fla. Photo: Robert King/Getty Images
To be absolutely clear: The point shouldn’t have to be made. There is zero evidence of widespread fraud, and ratifying certified results should be a formality. But if there is one core lesson to take from the Republican victory in Florida in 2000, when the Bush campaign staged astroturf riots and the Gore campaign told supporters to stay home and trust the process, it is that partisan decision-makers are swayed by street-level messaging wars. If Republican state lawmakers are inclined toward flagrantly overriding the will of the people, the ability to claim that the overwhelming majority of the people they are hearing from have lost faith in the elections may be excuse enough. Remember: they would not be looking for the truth, which they obviously already know, but rather a marginally plausible cover story. One-sided protests could provide that.
It is in this context that Democrats should be out there forcefully defending the integrity of the votes and condemning coup-plotting for what it is. That means not waving it away as “embarrassing,” but, as Sen. Bernie Sanders had done, denouncing it as “an outrage” that is “delegitimizing our electoral process and American democracy.” The public should not wait for Democratic leaders to tell them it’s time to fight back. Anyone who still kind of likes the idea of votes counting for something — regardless of who they voted for or even if they voted this election — should consider taking some time to make their voices heard to legislators in those Republican-controlled houses.
This is an organizing challenge, and for understandable reasons. Many of the progressive organizations that ran massive voter education and mobilization campaigns during the election have closely studied the lessons of Bush v. Gore and were prepared to stay mobilized to defend the vote if it ended up being close enough to steal. In truth, the election is much closer than it should have been given Trump’s murderous reign (a subject as I have discussed elsewhere), but it’s hardly a nail-biter coming down to a few hanging chads. For this reason, most organizers have concluded that, this time around, they don’t need to focus their energies on avoiding a repeat of the Bush v. Gore-style Democratic Party dumpster fire.
Instead, most progressive organizations are working hard to avoid a repeat of a different variety of Democratic Party debacle: the one that unfolded in 2008-2009, in the months between Barack Obama’s euphoric election win in November and his inauguration in January. That’s when Obama surrounded himself with a team of hardcore neoliberal economists and Wall Street bankers. And so, despite campaign promises to “rebuild Main Street,” address structural market failures, and arrest the climate crisis, they spent the transition mapping out a maddeningly inadequate response to the raging financing crisis, one that grossly failed working people and the planet.
As the new cabinet was being assembled and its agenda set in stone, anyone who raised concerns about where this train was obviously headed was promptly told to pipe down and “Give the guy a chance” — the mantra of those fateful months. Months that were wasted with fantastical narratives about the president’s imagined long game, stories that cast Obama as a progressive hero who was only temporarily appeasing the hungry gods of the market in order to buy time for his transformational popular agenda that was always just around the corner.
Since Election Day, the reigning attitude toward Biden among groups organizing for racial, economic, and climate justice has been “this guy gets zero chances.”
It never came. The political window (and Federal Reserve faucet) opened up by Wall Street’s collapse eventually closed, and the logic of austerity soon bore down once again. The racial wealth gap widened. The planet burned. The architects of these crimes faced no consequences. Not until a new wave of far more independent and confrontational movements rose up in Obama’s second term — Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matters, the Dreamers, fossil fuel divestment, No Keystone XL, Standing Rock — did we start to see some actual progress. But nothing that administration did matched the scale of the crises it faced, and which have only deepened since.
I take heart in the fact that the militant movements born in Obama’s second term, and which deepened during the Trump years, have clearly learned from the mistakes made in the 2008-2009 transition period. Since Election Day, the reigning attitude toward Biden among groups organizing for racial, economic, and climate justice has been “this guy gets zero chances.” Organizations that have worked relentlessly for months to turn out the vote for Biden did not even take a weekend off to celebrate. Instead, they immediately unveiled detailed plans outlining all the executive actions a Biden-Harris administration could take within its first 100 days: from immediate student debt relief, to generous “people’s bailouts” as part of its Covid-19 response, to the highly detailed “Frontlines Climate Justice Executive Action Platform,” backed by a coalition of powerful groups and published by the think tank Demos.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden arrives to speak about his plans for combating the coronavirus pandemic at The Queen theater on Oct. 23, 2020 in Wilmington, Del. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Most ambitious has been a campaign just launched by the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats, which focusses not only on what the new administration can do, but also who should be appointed to do it. Quoting the president-elect’s accurate assertion that voters had “given us a mandate for action on Covid, the economy, on climate change, on systemic racism,” the groups laid out their own vision of what it would mean for Biden to actually live up to this high-stakes mandate and solve these overlapping crises.
It begins, they argue, with creating a new “White House Office of Climate Mobilization,” modeled after the society-wide mobilizations of World War II. The person leading this office would have broad powers to put the entire administration on emergency footing and coordinate action across the different agencies so that every part of the government — from housing to health care — was advancing rapid, justice-based decarbonization. Rather than treating climate action as the narrow purview of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, “the Office of Climate Mobilization will deeply embed this mission into all of our spending, regulations, policies, and actions.”
Seeking to avoid Obama-era setbacks, they also call for the Cabinet to be made up of a diverse group of fighters, with “no ties to fossil fuel companies or corporate lobbyists.” They even released their picks for a dream Biden Cabinet, complete with a slick video imagining their favorite candidates being sworn in. The full list is here but highlights include: Sanders for labor secretary, Sen. Elizabeth Warren for Treasury secretary, Rep. Barbara Lee as secretary of state, Rep. Deb Haaland for interior secretary, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for Justice Department, Rep. Rashida Tlaib for Housing and Urban Development, Rep. Pramila Jayapal for Health and Human Services, and economist Joseph Stiglitz for director of the National Economic Council.
On one level, the whole exercise is a heartbreak — a tortuous glimpse of the government we could have had under a Sanders presidency. In a best-case scenario, maybe two of these movement picks stand a chance of making it through the Beltway gatekeepers running the Biden-Harris transition — and even that is highly unlikely.
But that doesn’t make this aggressive attempt to move the benchmarks a waste of time. The fact that Sunrise and Justice Democrats were so quick to capitalize on record youth turn out in the elections and go on the offense with their vision for a transformational administration speaks to just how different this moment is from 2008. The groups that mobilized to defeat Trump have every intention of staying mobilized and pushing Biden at every stage.
That’s a very good thing. And though it won’t give us Bernie’s would-be Cabinet, it is already yielding some modest results. Every Cabinet-level appointment will be heavily scrutinized for their industry ties, which is already happening to Biden’s transition teams and was far from the case for Obama. And though Biden will likely never use the term “Green New Deal,” there are clear indications that the vision of a holistic, government-wide approach to the climate crisis is already shaping the outlines of the new administration.
Tackling our era of overlapping crises demands this kind of focus, one that aligns every part of the government in the urgent mission of simultaneously bending the curve on Covid-19 cases and on greenhouse gas emissions, all while systematically closing racial and gender inequalities and creating millions of family-supporting low-carbon jobs. An added bonus: a government that can give people that kind of soaring common purpose, one that is expansive enough to have a meaningful role for everyone who wants it, is also best positioned to begin to heal the political ruptures that are ripping apart the country. Joining people in life-saving, job-creating common cause might even be more effective, I would argue, than the various suggestions that we all go out and engage in active listening with a pissed-off Trump voter.
But what of the persistent rumblings of seamless transition to a “second Trump term,” most recently from top trade adviser Peter Navarro? Unfortunately, we cannot pretend it’s not happening. After posting about the need for Biden to be pushed by both the growing Squad inside Congress and by movements on the outside, Will Dana, former managing editor of Rolling Stone, pointed to the ongoing (and escalating) attempts to delegalize the election itself and responded: “Let’s focus on making sure we have a President Biden to be disappointed in.”
The truth, as usual, is we have to do it all: Stop the Republicans from stealing an election they lost and stop the Democrats from blowing a mandate they won.


theintercept--2020-11-13--What Went Wrong in the House?

What Went Wrong in the House?

When all the votes are counted , Joe Biden may wind up winning the White House by as many as five or six million votes .
But everywhere else , the performance of Democrats was abysmal .
Republicans will control at least 50 Senate seats ( pending a pair of runoffs in Georgia ) and have made gains in the House of Representatives .
And as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found out quickly , Democratic leaders have already found the culprit : It was the left , they argue , that scared voters with talk of socialism .
There are a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at that argument .
One is to look at each race , look at what each specific candidate ran on , look at what attacks they faced , and how they fared .
We ’ ll do a little of that , but it ’ s more important to zoom way out if you want to see what ’ s going on .
Too much election analysis suffers from a focus on tactics and the most immediate news cycle , so that analysts miss the big sweeping realignments underway until it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Deconstructed podcast , we talk to Pennsylvania organizer Jonathan Smucker and Chuck Rocha , the head of Solidarity Strategies , to get a sense of that .
We arrived at this populist moment thanks to 30 or 40 years of wage stagnation , a period in which the assets of the American middle class were essentially stripped and sold overseas , with the rewards flowing to the very top .
This was a bipartisan project , and both voters and nonvoters have punished political leaders either by disengaging from the political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ status quo .
In this cycle , one party fully tapped into the fear , anger , and resentment of the public .
The other argued for a return to normalcy — which we could achieve by rejecting Trump .
The result was a Trump loss up top and Republican wins down below .
Democrats ran on basically two themes .
One , Trump is bad and must go .
Two , we ’ ll protect your health care by keeping down drug prices and protecting people with preexisting conditions .
Now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They did indeed prefer lower drug prices to higher drug prices .
And they agreed that people shouldn ’ t be condemned to die for having a preexisting medical condition .
So far , so good .
But those issues resonated most with strong Democrats and people who leaned Democratic .
The problem was that they offered nothing to really inspire an independent voter , or a soft Republican , or somebody who hadn ’ t voted before .
( Mike Siegel explained this in an interview on Deconstructed last week .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican strategists I spoke to this week mostly agreed with Siegel , even if they might think that he ’ s a raging commie .
The problem was that Democrats didn ’ t have anything convincing to offer people when it came to the issue so many cared about most : jobs and the economy .
When you think about the Republican message on the economy , whether you agree with it or not , you know what it is : Cut taxes , get rid of regulations , get the government out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will grow .
That ’ s their message , and so when the economy is growing under a Republican , voters are quick to give Republicans credit for it , even if that laissez-faire approach really just makes the economy unstable while producing frequent crashes and mass inequality .
That ’ s all beside the point ; their message is clear .
What ’ s the Democratic message on the economy ?
The first thing that comes to mind is that Democrats believe the economy is unfair : The rich get richer and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be true , and under Trump , the rich have gotten quite a bit richer .
But wages have also gone up .
Retirement accounts have gone up .
And so Trump won handily among voters whose top concern was the economy , and that was the top issue for many voters .
Republicans I spoke with said the most effective argument they landed on was that Democrats will raise your taxes and Republicans will keep you safe — which is more or less the message they ’ ve been running on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaders , meanwhile , are convinced that the slogan “ Defund the Police ” did them in .
What you always have to remember about politics is that it ’ s happening on different levels for different people .
In Washington and among political junkies , and for most of the people listening to this podcast , we experience politics as a contest of factions and ideas .
Candidates and voters , meanwhile , experience it as an unrelenting flood of negative TV advertising , and it ’ s important to remember that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ James Clyburn lash out .
This is the kind of thing they ’ ve been marinating in for the last year .
The problem with ads this bland is that there ’ s nothing stopping Republicans from matching them note for note , arguing that the Democrats ’ alleged radicalism makes them unacceptable in much the same way .
Republicans claimed that Democrats would do away with your private insurance , hike your taxes , and tank your 401k .
If you ’ re trying to win over voters in well-to-do suburbs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s how Kara Eastman got hit in Omaha : Eastman lost by nearly 5 percentage points in a district that Biden carried .
Don Bacon , the incumbent Republican , is well liked locally , and he had the support of the area ’ s former Democratic congressman , Brad Ashford , who Eastman beat in a 2018 primary .
If the Democratic theory of the case was that Trump is bad while some Republicans are good , voters in Omaha made the rational choice : Throw out Trump but keep the good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even the Democratic congressman liked him , and he ’ s not gon na raise your taxes like that socialist .
What ties together the Republican messaging together isn ’ t just its consistency , it ’ s the emotional wallop it packs .
You can hate the substance of those ads , but they do what they set out to do .
The Democratic ads , meanwhile , just leave you kind of — meh .
For somebody like Eastman to be able to beat a popular Republican , Democrats would have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ however nice he might be , is part of a corrupt , out-of-touch party in the pocket of special interests that needs to be repudiated top to bottom .
And they ’ d have to convince them that not only is Eastman the opposite , but so is the entire Democratic Party .
We know what Republicans are capable of : They can drive out their base and juice turnout , and they can smear even the most moderate Democrat in the suburbs as a wild-eyed radical .
There ’ s not much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ All they can do is counter it — both with better messaging , but , importantly , by actually governing and delivering for people .
Subscribe to Deconstructed to hear a discussion with Chuck Rocha , the head of Solidarity Strategies , and Jonathan Smucker , founder of Pennsylvania Stands Up .

When all the votes are counted, Joe Biden may wind up winning the White House by as many as five or six million votes. But everywhere else, the performance of Democrats was abysmal. Republicans will control at least 50 Senate seats (pending a pair of runoffs in Georgia) and have made gains in the House of Representatives. And as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found out quickly, Democratic leaders have already found the culprit: It was the left, they argue, that scared voters with talk of socialism.
There are a few ways to take a deep look at that argument. One is to look at each race, look at what each specific candidate ran on, look at what attacks they faced, and how they fared. We’ll do a little of that, but it’s more important to zoom way out if you want to see what’s going on. Too much election analysis suffers from a focus on tactics and the most immediate news cycle, so that analysts miss the big sweeping realignments underway until it’s way too late. For this week’s Deconstructed podcast, we talk to Pennsylvania organizer Jonathan Smucker and Chuck Rocha, the head of Solidarity Strategies, to get a sense of that.
We arrived at this populist moment thanks to 30 or 40 years of wage stagnation, a period in which the assets of the American middle class were essentially stripped and sold overseas, with the rewards flowing to the very top. This was a bipartisan project, and both voters and nonvoters have punished political leaders either by disengaging from the political process or backing people who challenged the status quo.
In this cycle, one party fully tapped into the fear, anger, and resentment of the public. The other argued for a return to normalcy — which we could achieve by rejecting Trump. The result was a Trump loss up top and Republican wins down below.
Democrats ran on basically two themes. One, Trump is bad and must go. Two, we’ll protect your health care by keeping down drug prices and protecting people with preexisting conditions. Now, voters were indeed fed up with Trump. They did indeed prefer lower drug prices to higher drug prices. And they agreed that people shouldn’t be condemned to die for having a preexisting medical condition. So far, so good. But those issues resonated most with strong Democrats and people who leaned Democratic. The problem was that they offered nothing to really inspire an independent voter, or a soft Republican, or somebody who hadn’t voted before. (Mike Siegel explained this in an interview on Deconstructed last week.)
Read Our Complete Coverage Election 2020
What’s interesting is that Republican strategists I spoke to this week mostly agreed with Siegel, even if they might think that he’s a raging commie. The problem was that Democrats didn’t have anything convincing to offer people when it came to the issue so many cared about most: jobs and the economy.
When you think about the Republican message on the economy, whether you agree with it or not, you know what it is: Cut taxes, get rid of regulations, get the government out of the way, and the economy will grow. That’s their message, and so when the economy is growing under a Republican, voters are quick to give Republicans credit for it, even if that laissez-faire approach really just makes the economy unstable while producing frequent crashes and mass inequality. That’s all beside the point; their message is clear.
What’s the Democratic message on the economy? The first thing that comes to mind is that Democrats believe the economy is unfair: The rich get richer and everybody else falls behind. That happens to be true, and under Trump, the rich have gotten quite a bit richer. But wages have also gone up. Retirement accounts have gone up. And so Trump won handily among voters whose top concern was the economy, and that was the top issue for many voters.
What you always have to remember about politics is that it’s happening on different levels for different people.
Republicans I spoke with said the most effective argument they landed on was that Democrats will raise your taxes and Republicans will keep you safe — which is more or less the message they’ve been running on without fail since the 1960s. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, are convinced that the slogan “Defund the Police” did them in.
What you always have to remember about politics is that it’s happening on different levels for different people. In Washington and among political junkies, and for most of the people listening to this podcast, we experience politics as a contest of factions and ideas. Candidates and voters, meanwhile, experience it as an unrelenting flood of negative TV advertising, and it’s important to remember that when hearing somebody like House Majority Whip James Clyburn lash out. This is the kind of thing they’ve been marinating in for the last year.
In the days before the election, the House GOP flooded key races w/ads about how Dems would defund the police. Here are a few though there are many many more. https://t.co/Z2nRyuqlCx https://t.co/dvmWsdNu8u https://t.co/3VyoVMwwea https://t.co/b9C2WtF9qa https://t.co/ghzJZY2Nc5 — Lee Fang (@lhfang) November 10, 2020
And while AOC and Rep. Ilhan Omar showed up in ads, so did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
The last stretch of Republican attack ads against swing district Democrats like Spanberger had a lot more to do with Nancy Pelosi than @AOC, @IlhanMN, and progressives. pic.twitter.com/D3zNm8eN0D — Waleed Shahid ? (@_waleedshahid) November 9, 2020
The Democratic message was squarely about health care. Here’s a good example from Hillary Scholten, an impressive Democratic challenger who was trying to unseat incumbent Republican Peter Meijer in Michigan:
Republicans told me that while the phrase “Defund the Police” was helpful, and deployed it in a lot of different ads, they were more broadly running against protests generally, using unrest to stoke fear of riots, chaos, and crime.
Here’s how they used that theme to hit Scholten:
In some races, Democrats argued that Trump had broken with all that was good about the Republican Party, and that therefore good Republicans in the suburbs ought to vote Democratic this time. Here’s how Scholten messaged that:
The problem with ads this bland is that there’s nothing stopping Republicans from matching them note for note, arguing that the Democrats’ alleged radicalism makes them unacceptable in much the same way. Republicans claimed that Democrats would do away with your private insurance, hike your taxes, and tank your 401k. If you’re trying to win over voters in well-to-do suburbs, that punch can land. Here’s how Kara Eastman got hit in Omaha:
Eastman lost by nearly 5 percentage points in a district that Biden carried.
Don Bacon, the incumbent Republican, is well liked locally, and he had the support of the area’s former Democratic congressman, Brad Ashford, who Eastman beat in a 2018 primary. If the Democratic theory of the case was that Trump is bad while some Republicans are good, voters in Omaha made the rational choice: Throw out Trump but keep the good Republican. I mean, hey, even the Democratic congressman liked him, and he’s not gonna raise your taxes like that socialist.
What ties together the Republican messaging together isn’t just its consistency, it’s the emotional wallop it packs. You can hate the substance of those ads, but they do what they set out to do. The Democratic ads, meanwhile, just leave you kind of — meh.
For somebody like Eastman to be able to beat a popular Republican, Democrats would have to persuade voters that the Republican, however nice he might be, is part of a corrupt, out-of-touch party in the pocket of special interests that needs to be repudiated top to bottom. And they’d have to convince them that not only is Eastman the opposite, but so is the entire Democratic Party.
We know what Republicans are capable of: They can drive out their base and juice turnout, and they can smear even the most moderate Democrat in the suburbs as a wild-eyed radical. There’s not much Democrats can do to change that. All they can do is counter it — both with better messaging, but, importantly, by actually governing and delivering for people.
Subscribe to Deconstructed to hear a discussion with Chuck Rocha, the head of Solidarity Strategies, and Jonathan Smucker, founder of Pennsylvania Stands Up.


theintercept--2020-11-14--Israelis Take on Netanyahu and Coronavirus Restrictions in Wave of Civil Disobedience

Friday evening in late June , 67-year old Amir Haskel , a retired 32-year career air force pilot in the Israel Defense Forces with the rank of brigadier general , found himself inside of a jail cell for the first time in his life .
Haskel was arrested while protesting in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’ s official residence on Balfour Street in West Jerusalem .
He and a handful of others had been camping out on the sidewalk for two weeks , engaging in a sit-in to demand that Netanyahu resign .
That Friday , hundreds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrested Haskel , who said cops took him in because he was leading a protest that violated police terms , even though no such terms or permit were required .
They tried to strike a deal with him to sign a restraining order that would prevent him from entering Jerusalem for 15 days , but he refused and spent the night in jail until being released by a judge .
“ It was clear to me that the change can only happen at Balfour .
It can ’ t happen in Tel Aviv @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down his neck , ” said Haskel , who sees Netanyahu ’ s ouster as the first and necessary step in a process .
“ The biggest threat to Israel is not Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas .
It is our society ’ s internal divisions , ” he added .
Netanyahu is Israel ’ s longest-serving prime minister , having been at the helm for over 11 consecutive years .
He is also the first sitting prime minister to be indicted , currently on trial in three cases of bribery , fraud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from abusing his authority to grant favors for , among other things , favorable media coverage .
While there have been small but stubborn protests against Netanyahu since investigations into his corruption first opened in late 2016 , it was not until the coronavirus paralyzed Israel ’ s economy that people — many of them in their 20s and 30s — starting coming out in droves .
For more than 20 weeks now , tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call on Netanyahu to recuse himself for corruption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and for what many describe as his megalomania — doing whatever it takes to evade trial .
They have been convening in massive numbers in front of his official residence , many carrying homemade signs , chanting in unison “ Go !
” and “ We won ’ t leave till Bibi resigns.
” There have also been protests in front of Netanyahu ’ s private home in Caesarea ( just north of Tel Aviv ) , in front of Defense Minister Benny Gantz ’ s home in the central suburb of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tel Aviv — where the city ’ s septuagenarian mayor , Ron Huldai , was injured during a protest last month — and at over 1,000 locations across the country , including a few towns considered to be right-wing strongholds .
Carmi Gillon , a former head of the Shin Bet , Israel ’ s internal security service , was arrested after chaining himself to a roadblock in Jerusalem .
According to some protest organizers , the number of people protesting throughout Israel in a single day has exceeded 250,000 Israelis , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The prime minister and his loyalists have called the protesters “ anarchists ” and “ disease spreaders , ” and recently also accused them of being funded by Iran .
Protests that historically bring out large numbers of Jewish Israelis have long been dominated by Israel ’ s left-leaning peace camp , and a decade ago , others drawing attention to the high cost of living .
What is happening now is different : With over a million people unemployed in a country of 9 million , culture and nightlife all but dead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ability to travel outside the country severely restricted , a nationwide movement of disgruntled Israelis , spanning ages and to an extent sociocultural backgrounds , is practicing civil disobedience .
Israel has been led by right-wing governments for the last 20 years , and as its political parties continue to tack to the right , many of its citizens are warning about the country ’ s democratic decline .
The government has responded with relative force against a segment of the Jewish population that is largely unfamiliar with police brutality and has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At the same time , the government has all but ignored incitement and incidents of violence against the protesters .
The official response is giving Jewish Israelis a tiny window into what it has always been like for Palestinians , both in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza , whose protests are , prima facie , treated as suspect .
“ You could tell something was different here from the start , ” said photojournalist Oren Ziv , who has been covering protests large and small , left and right , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over 15 years .
“ In a country where Netanyahu has ruled for so many years , and so many were born into a Netanyahu reality , protesters are changing the agenda by putting the spotlight on how Netanyahu is the problem .
And as opposed to protests in the past , like the 2011 protests ” — which were focused on high cost of living and social issues and saw even higher turnouts — “ here demonstrators came out unabashedly saying , this is political , ” Ziv said .
“ Because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first demand is that he must go.
” in September , as Israel experienced a second wave of Covid-19 cases — with some of the highest infection rates in the world — leading to a rigid second national lockdown .
In addition to fining people for not wearing masks and tracking cellphones for contact tracing , for two weeks , Israel ’ s government enacted emergency regulations that restricted any gathering to up to 20 people and up to a half-mile from one ’ s home .
That measure , which was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outdoor protests have contributed to rising infections , effectively stopped the mass protests in front of Netanyahu ’ s residence .
Over half the Israeli public believes this second lockdown was motivated by politics rather than health , according to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute .
The restrictions backfired , leading to hundreds of small protests mushrooming across the country , making it nearly impossible for the police to contain .
It led the police , in early October , to inflict some of the worst police violence on the protesters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quelling the protests have at times been unexpectedly harsh , including spraying water cannons directly at protesters ’ bodies , resulting in numerous injuries , as well as mounted police and violent arrests — measures that have been historically used against minorities in Israel like Palestinian citizens , Ethiopian Jews , and Orthodox Jews .
Protesters have sat down on the street and refused to heed police calls to leave , initiated spontaneous marches to evade police barricades , refused to provide their ID numbers , and refused to pay the $ 250 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instead to take it to court .
“ People have undergone a quick politicization process , driven by a discourse focused on government corruption .
People don ’ t have work , so they have time , and they have reached their limit , ” said Ori Givati , an activist and staffer at the anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence , who has been arrested several times during the protests .
“ I no longer believe that the police is protecting me .
I haven ’ t believed this for a long time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bank .
But until you yourself experience it and are targeted , you don ’ t feel it , ” he said , pointing to the stark difference between anti-occupation activism and this protest .
“ When I ’ m arrested in the West Bank , there aren ’ t thousands of people who support me .
In Balfour , when you ’ re arrested , you ’ re a hero.
” Following a July 14 protest , numerous people testified that they were cornered by cops into an area and sprayed deliberately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the cops that they wanted to go home .
Among the 50 people who were arrested that night was 25-year old student Maayan Ferziger , who had traveled to Jerusalem to join the protest and ended up with a hurt arm from the water cannon and a black eye from all the police shoving .
“ It was scary and painful but also very exhilarating , ” she said .
“ I felt like I was in a movie .
A woman next to me got sprayed directly in her face.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single one of the protesters has been indicted .
The arrests are the police ’ s way of crushing the protests , said Israeli human rights attorney Gaby Lasky , who has been defending the right to protest of both Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists for years .
There have been over 500 arrests since July , according to Lasky , who said most arrestees are asked to sign a restraining order distancing them from the protest location for up to 15 days , and some are even put under house arrest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so means spending the night in jail until they can see a judge — who , in most cases , annuls the police orders .
Police have also applied the “ kettling ” technique a few times , closing protesters off in a specific area and not letting them out for an extended period of time .
“ It ’ s a new tactic , ” Lasky said .
“ It not only goes against the corona guidelines since you are supposed to maintain two meters of distance , but it is also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lasky , police have been confiscating people ’ s phones upon arrest , and several activists say they are being surveilled by plainclothes cops .
In recent weeks , undercover cops have been operating inside the protests , picking out those they deem to be the leaders and arresting them .
This is a mainstay of Israeli military tactics in the occupied West Bank .
“ It ’ s called the ‘ main inciter , ’ a military term , ” said Givati .
“ You grab the Palestinian with the megaphone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take the leading activists out , the protests lose steam .
The police have also employed officers from its organized crimes unit to investigate the protesters .
Ferziger , who was arrested for a second time in October , said that while she was interrogated , officers accused her of being part of a criminal organization that planned to destroy public property , injure police , and spread the virus .
“ They were trying to get more names of activists , ” she said .
“ They are trained to catch mafia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sitting there in my tie-dye shirt , smiling in disbelief behind my mask.
” The segment of Israeli society most familiar with state repression — Palestinian citizens of Israel , who make up over 20 percent of the population — has been noticeably absent from the protests .
That ’ s in part because they find protesters ’ talk of saving or restoring Israeli democracy to be off base ; in their experience , full democracy has yet to be established .
Ayman Odeh , a Palestinian Israeli politician who heads the Joint @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s main Arab parties , has been to the protests and supports them , but understands his constituency ’ s reluctance .
He said Palestinian citizens see protesters fighting to save a democracy that they themselves never had and lamenting a breakdown of trust with the state that they never experienced .
“ An entire generation of Jews is being confronted , for the first time , with police brutality , ” he said , “ even if it is much softer than what Arab citizens face.
” police has not had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the movement has no official leaders , nor have any politicians or political parties been able to monopolize it to their advantage .
This is by design .
“ There are no decision-makers .
It ’ s really authentic , that ’ s what is beautiful , ” said Yishai Hadas , a 65-year-old demonstrator active with a protest group called “ Crime Minister , ” dedicated to forcing Netanyahu out of office due to his corruption trial .
In stark difference to the types of demonstrations that Israel ’ s peace camp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with preapproved speeches and songs , or even the 2011 social protests , which had more of a Woodstock feel — these protests have an active , spontaneous , and dynamic nature .
While there are both ideological and tactical differences between the older protesters , like Haskel , who seek to remain on good terms with authorities , and the younger protesters who are willing to challenge the police and get arrested repeatedly , both camps agree the potency of the protests is that they are diverse and decentralized , with no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ character .
For the younger crowd , the appeal of the protests is that they go beyond calling for Netanyahu ’ s ouster .
“ Our discourse talks about equality , individual rights , welfare , peace , occupation , distributive justice , ” said Maayan Amran , who is 37 years old .
“ I also want Bibi to go , but just getting him out isn ’ t enough.
” When she began protesting in July , she was pleasantly surprised that one of the first chants she heard was “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iyad al-Hallaq , an autistic Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem shot and killed by border police in May while walking to school .
“ Youth are starting to make the connections between forms of police brutality , against the Ethiopian community as well , which many were not aware of , ” said Amran , who is from a family of Iraqi descent that has always voted for Netanyahu ’ s Likud party and who herself did in the past .
The reality of the coronavirus pandemic and its ensuing economic crisis also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to engage in acts of dissent and normalize acts of resistance against government policy .
“ The lockdown turned every citizen into a lawbreaker , ” said Ohad Nevo , a 33-year-old activist from Jerusalem who is part of a burgeoning group of artists , students , and activists who have become known for wearing pink bandanas to the protests .
“ The most basic act of going outside your house became civil disobedience .
The situation has allowed for popular awakening as people see how the state can take away basic rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the ultra-Orthodox , Palestinians , and Ethiopians.
” There are signs that the protesters are succeeding at getting under Netanyahu ’ s skin .
“ He ’ s going mad .
The Likud party is obsessed over these protests .
Ministers are describing meetings in which they are focused solely on how to put a stop to them , ” said Akiva Novick , a right-wing journalist with Israel ’ s public broadcaster .
“ But Netanyahu is still the most popular figure in Israel .
If there is an alternative , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Israeli public is only moving further right .
Whoever thought disaffection with Bibi would make Israel go left is imagining things.
” While what may come next for Israel remains an open question , activists have been galvanized by Joe Biden ’ s presidential victory in the U.S. Their message since the election has been : “ Trump ’ s out , Bibi you ’ re next .
”

On a Friday evening in late June, 67-year old Amir Haskel, a retired 32-year career air force pilot in the Israel Defense Forces with the rank of brigadier general, found himself inside of a jail cell for the first time in his life. Haskel was arrested while protesting in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence on Balfour Street in West Jerusalem. He and a handful of others had been camping out on the sidewalk for two weeks, engaging in a sit-in to demand that Netanyahu resign.
That Friday, hundreds of people unexpectedly showed up. The police arrested Haskel, who said cops took him in because he was leading a protest that violated police terms, even though no such terms or permit were required. They tried to strike a deal with him to sign a restraining order that would prevent him from entering Jerusalem for 15 days, but he refused and spent the night in jail until being released by a judge. “It was clear to me that the change can only happen at Balfour. It can’t happen in Tel Aviv. He has to feel us breathing down his neck,” said Haskel, who sees Netanyahu’s ouster as the first and necessary step in a process. “The biggest threat to Israel is not Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas. It is our society’s internal divisions,” he added.
Photo: Ariel Schalit/AP
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having been at the helm for over 11 consecutive years. He is also the first sitting prime minister to be indicted, currently on trial in three cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, arising from abusing his authority to grant favors for, among other things, favorable media coverage. While there have been small but stubborn protests against Netanyahu since investigations into his corruption first opened in late 2016, it was not until the coronavirus paralyzed Israel’s economy that people — many of them in their 20s and 30s — starting coming out in droves.
For more than 20 weeks now, tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call on Netanyahu to recuse himself for corruption, for failing to manage the pandemic, and for what many describe as his megalomania — doing whatever it takes to evade trial. They have been convening in massive numbers in front of his official residence, many carrying homemade signs, chanting in unison “Go!” and “We won’t leave till Bibi resigns.”
Israeli protesters gather in protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding his resignation over corruption cases and his failure to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, in West Jerusalem on Oct. 31, 2020. Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
There have also been protests in front of Netanyahu’s private home in Caesarea (just north of Tel Aviv), in front of Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s home in the central suburb of Rosh Haayin, in the streets of Tel Aviv — where the city’s septuagenarian mayor, Ron Huldai, was injured during a protest last month — and at over 1,000 locations across the country, including a few towns considered to be right-wing strongholds. Carmi Gillon, a former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, was arrested after chaining himself to a roadblock in Jerusalem. According to some protest organizers, the number of people protesting throughout Israel in a single day has exceeded 250,000 Israelis, with more than 20,000 in Jerusalem alone.
The prime minister and his loyalists have called the protesters “anarchists” and “disease spreaders,” and recently also accused them of being funded by Iran.
Protests that historically bring out large numbers of Jewish Israelis have long been dominated by Israel’s left-leaning peace camp, and a decade ago, others drawing attention to the high cost of living. What is happening now is different: With over a million people unemployed in a country of 9 million, culture and nightlife all but dead amid the pandemic, and people’s ability to travel outside the country severely restricted, a nationwide movement of disgruntled Israelis, spanning ages and to an extent sociocultural backgrounds, is practicing civil disobedience. Israel has been led by right-wing governments for the last 20 years, and as its political parties continue to tack to the right, many of its citizens are warning about the country’s democratic decline.
The government has responded with relative force against a segment of the Jewish population that is largely unfamiliar with police brutality and has not had their individual rights violated. At the same time, the government has all but ignored incitement and incidents of violence against the protesters. The official response is giving Jewish Israelis a tiny window into what it has always been like for Palestinians, both in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza, whose protests are, prima facie, treated as suspect.
“You could tell something was different here from the start,” said photojournalist Oren Ziv, who has been covering protests large and small, left and right, throughout Israel and the West Bank for over 15 years. “In a country where Netanyahu has ruled for so many years, and so many were born into a Netanyahu reality, protesters are changing the agenda by putting the spotlight on how Netanyahu is the problem. And as opposed to protests in the past, like the 2011 protests” — which were focused on high cost of living and social issues and saw even higher turnouts — “here demonstrators came out unabashedly saying, this is political,” Ziv said. “Because no matter what you stand for, the first demand is that he must go.”
Protesters, mask-clad due to the Covid-19 pandemic, gather for a demonstration against the Israeli government near the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem on Aug. 1, 2020. Photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images
The protests intensified in September, as Israel experienced a second wave of Covid-19 cases — with some of the highest infection rates in the world — leading to a rigid second national lockdown. In addition to fining people for not wearing masks and tracking cellphones for contact tracing, for two weeks, Israel’s government enacted emergency regulations that restricted any gathering to up to 20 people and up to a half-mile from one’s home. That measure, which was taken despite there being no evidence that outdoor protests have contributed to rising infections, effectively stopped the mass protests in front of Netanyahu’s residence. Over half the Israeli public believes this second lockdown was motivated by politics rather than health, according to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute.
“When I’m arrested in the West Bank, there aren’t thousands of people who support me. In Balfour, when you’re arrested, you’re a hero.”
The restrictions backfired, leading to hundreds of small protests mushrooming across the country, making it nearly impossible for the police to contain. It led the police, in early October, to inflict some of the worst police violence on the protesters yet. Police tactics for containing and quelling the protests have at times been unexpectedly harsh, including spraying water cannons directly at protesters’ bodies, resulting in numerous injuries, as well as mounted police and violent arrests — measures that have been historically used against minorities in Israel like Palestinian citizens, Ethiopian Jews, and Orthodox Jews. Protesters have sat down on the street and refused to heed police calls to leave, initiated spontaneous marches to evade police barricades, refused to provide their ID numbers, and refused to pay the $250 fines police have handed out, preferring instead to take it to court.
“People have undergone a quick politicization process, driven by a discourse focused on government corruption. People don’t have work, so they have time, and they have reached their limit,” said Ori Givati, an activist and staffer at the anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence, who has been arrested several times during the protests. “I no longer believe that the police is protecting me. I haven’t believed this for a long time because of my experiences in the West Bank. But until you yourself experience it and are targeted, you don’t feel it,” he said, pointing to the stark difference between anti-occupation activism and this protest. “When I’m arrested in the West Bank, there aren’t thousands of people who support me. In Balfour, when you’re arrested, you’re a hero.”
Left/Top: Israeli security forces use water cannons to disperse demonstrators as protesters gather against the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Western Jerusalem, on July 18, 2020. Right/Bottom: Israeli protesters clash with police officers during a demonstration against Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Israel, on Aug. 22, 2020. Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images; Amir Levy/Getty Images
Following a July 14 protest, numerous people testified that they were cornered by cops into an area and sprayed deliberately with a water cannon, despite pleading with the cops that they wanted to go home. Among the 50 people who were arrested that night was 25-year old student Merav Ferziger, who had traveled to Jerusalem to join the protest and ended up with a hurt arm from the water cannon and a black eye from all the police shoving. “It was scary and painful but also very exhilarating,” she said. “I felt like I was in a movie. A woman next to me got sprayed directly in her face.” Despite the mass arrests, not a single one of the protesters has been indicted.
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The arrests are the police’s way of crushing the protests, said Israeli human rights attorney Gaby Lasky, who has been defending the right to protest of both Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists for years. There have been over 500 arrests since July, according to Lasky, who said most arrestees are asked to sign a restraining order distancing them from the protest location for up to 15 days, and some are even put under house arrest. Most people sign because not doing so means spending the night in jail until they can see a judge — who, in most cases, annuls the police orders.
Police have also applied the “kettling” technique a few times, closing protesters off in a specific area and not letting them out for an extended period of time. “It’s a new tactic,” Lasky said. “It not only goes against the corona guidelines since you are supposed to maintain two meters of distance, but it is also traumatic and damaging mentally.”
Photo: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images
According to Lasky, police have been confiscating people’s phones upon arrest, and several activists say they are being surveilled by plainclothes cops. In recent weeks, undercover cops have been operating inside the protests, picking out those they deem to be the leaders and arresting them. This is a mainstay of Israeli military tactics in the occupied West Bank. “It’s called the ‘main inciter,’ a military term,” said Givati. “You grab the Palestinian with the megaphone,” the idea being that if you take the leading activists out, the protests lose steam.
The police have also employed officers from its organized crimes unit to investigate the protesters. Ferziger, who was arrested for a second time in October, said that while she was interrogated, officers accused her of being part of a criminal organization that planned to destroy public property, injure police, and spread the virus. “They were trying to get more names of activists,” she said. “They are trained to catch mafia guys and drug dealers. I was sitting there in my tie-dye shirt, smiling in disbelief behind my mask.”
The segment of Israeli society most familiar with state repression — Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up over 20 percent of the population — has been noticeably absent from the protests. That’s in part because they find protesters’ talk of saving or restoring Israeli democracy to be off base; in their experience, full democracy has yet to be established.
Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian Israeli politician who heads the Joint List, the political alliance of Israel’s main Arab parties, has been to the protests and supports them, but understands his constituency’s reluctance. He said Palestinian citizens see protesters fighting to save a democracy that they themselves never had and lamenting a breakdown of trust with the state that they never experienced. “An entire generation of Jews is being confronted, for the first time, with police brutality,” he said, “even if it is much softer than what Arab citizens face.”
Israeli protesters hold signs and chant slogans during a demonstration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Aug. 27, 2020. Photo: Sebastian Scheiner/AP
The crackdown by police has not had the intended deterrent effect, largely because the movement has no official leaders, nor have any politicians or political parties been able to monopolize it to their advantage. This is by design. “There are no decision-makers. It’s really authentic, that’s what is beautiful,” said Yishai Hadas, a 65-year-old demonstrator active with a protest group called “Crime Minister,” dedicated to forcing Netanyahu out of office due to his corruption trial.
In stark difference to the types of demonstrations that Israel’s peace camp has traditionally partaken in — static rallies with preapproved speeches and songs, or even the 2011 social protests, which had more of a Woodstock feel — these protests have an active, spontaneous, and dynamic nature. While there are both ideological and tactical differences between the older protesters, like Haskel, who seek to remain on good terms with authorities, and the younger protesters who are willing to challenge the police and get arrested repeatedly, both camps agree the potency of the protests is that they are diverse and decentralized, with no one claiming ownership over their messaging or character.
“The lockdown turned every citizen into a lawbreaker. The most basic act of going outside your house became civil disobedience.”
For the younger crowd, the appeal of the protests is that they go beyond calling for Netanyahu’s ouster. “Our discourse talks about equality, individual rights, welfare, peace, occupation, distributive justice,” said Maayan Amran, who is 37 years old. “I also want Bibi to go, but just getting him out isn’t enough.” When she began protesting in July, she was pleasantly surprised that one of the first chants she heard was “Justice for Iyad,” referring to Iyad al-Hallaq, an autistic Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem shot and killed by border police in May while walking to school. “Youth are starting to make the connections between forms of police brutality, against the Ethiopian community as well, which many were not aware of,” said Amran, who is from a family of Iraqi descent that has always voted for Netanyahu’s Likud party and who herself did in the past.
The reality of the coronavirus pandemic and its ensuing economic crisis also played a role in prompting more Israelis to engage in acts of dissent and normalize acts of resistance against government policy. “The lockdown turned every citizen into a lawbreaker,” said Ohad Nevo, a 33-year-old activist from Jerusalem who is part of a burgeoning group of artists, students, and activists who have become known for wearing pink bandanas to the protests. “The most basic act of going outside your house became civil disobedience. The situation has allowed for popular awakening as people see how the state can take away basic rights, placing us on more similar footing with the ultra-Orthodox, Palestinians, and Ethiopians.”
There are signs that the protesters are succeeding at getting under Netanyahu’s skin. “He’s going mad. The Likud party is obsessed over these protests. Ministers are describing meetings in which they are focused solely on how to put a stop to them,” said Akiva Novick, a right-wing journalist with Israel’s public broadcaster. “But Netanyahu is still the most popular figure in Israel. If there is an alternative, it’s to the right. The Israeli public is only moving further right. Whoever thought disaffection with Bibi would make Israel go left is imagining things.”
While what may come next for Israel remains an open question, activists have been galvanized by Joe Biden’s presidential victory in the U.S. Their message since the election has been: “Trump’s out, Bibi you’re next.”
Correction: Nov. 18, 2020
A previous version of this article referred to Merav Ferziger by the incorrect first name.