Firefighters in Gaza tackled in 2014 a fire caused by an Israeli missile strike on an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East storehouse / credit: Ashraf Amra / APA images
Kamel Arafa’s family is in constant fear that something bad could happen to him. Relatives of the firefighter from the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza City have therefore decided to try to stay in constant touch with him during emergencies.
It doesn’t quite suit Arafa, 38, even if he appreciates the concern.
“It is better not to call. I’ve asked my family to calm down. They just can’t. They are right as well. What we go through is brutal.”
The father of four has been an emergency responder for 15 years. He joined rescue crews during all recent major Israeli aggressions against Gaza, starting in 2008.
“Every time I hear my phone ringing during escalations, I instantly understand it is work with a new emergency and probably more casualties,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
He answers such calls with mixed feelings.
“We throw ourselves into dangerous situations to rescue people from death but we know we might be dead ourselves at any moment.”
During Israeli offensives, Arafa works from early morning until late night to rescue people and their belongings, especially those buried under rubble. He sometimes does not return to his house for five or more consecutive nights.
“Once we get a chance to rest before heading to a new task, we nap anywhere. Anywhere. On any piece of cloth, on the sidewalk, in the car.”
Despite all the challenges, he said, they will continue to work. No matter the danger, every first responder will only work harder when they hear people crying for help from under rubble, he said.
2014 Trauma
During challenging times, Arafa wants to be next to his children, aged between 6 and 12, and wife to reassure them. “I sometimes hug them so hard before leaving home, a goodbye hug as if I might not return.”
First responders usually carry traumatic memories around with them. Arafa has his share.
The 2014 massacre which Israel carried out in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City proved particularly harrowing.
“In 2014, we were able to enter Shujaiya after Israel declared a humanitarian truce. The truce was violated immediately by the Israeli forces. The whole scene was awful. Many bodies were strewn on the ground. Some were fully burnt. There were also the bodies of animals.”
During the same assault, he still vividly remembers the aftermath of the Wahdan family massacre in the northern Gaza town Beit Hanoun. Israeli soldiers had kept the family inside and used their home as a military base.
Twelve people died there, and Arafa vividly remembers specifically how the women’s bodies were burnt.
“I cannot forget at all. It was horrifying,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
“We saw women besides their children, all dead under the rubble. I sometimes think of their last moments, what they were thinking of, and how they felt. It is a bad ending.”
Like Arafa, Mohammad Abu Shaqfa worked throughout all Israel’s wars on the Gaza Strip. He remembers them all simply as bloody conflicts filled with people in need of his help, except for 2014, when it got more personal, and he lost two of his closest colleagues in front of his eyes.
Abu Shaqfa, 34, and five of his colleagues had been called to the Shujaiya neighborhood, and thought at first that the shelling had stopped.
“All of a sudden, a series of heavy explosive tank shells were fired directly at us. Our colleagues Rami Thaher and Ahed Dahduh were killed in front of my eyes,” said Abu Shaqfa.
He took a small pause to collect himself before he continued.
“It was a shock. I was in disbelief,” Abu Shaqfa told The Electronic Intifada. “It was a huge loss for me.”
No Protection
For Abu Shaqfa, the job is just that, a job.
“I have no difficulty rescuing people I don’t know.”
But it was different with his colleagues. “It was much harder,” he said. “We were six on that mission. Only four came back.”
He had done his best to deal with the situation and continue working. But he concedes that “I did not give myself enough time” to process what he had just seen.
There were other people to rescue, he said. “Under pressure, I returned to reality and started to work again.”
With limited staff and equipment, Gaza’s civil defence sometimes calls on volunteers to assist in a rescue operation, like in the Wihda Street massacre in Gaza City last year, where residential buildings belonging to the Abu al-Ouf and al-Qawlaq families were bombed at nearly the same time.
“Calling more people to join us was important as the destruction was massive, and we needed to avoid a high rate of civilian casualties,” Abu Shaqfa said.
It is the ever-present danger of Israeli aggression, and the high price such aggression exacts, that makes the work of first responders in Gaza so demanding and dangerous. Add to this, an Israeli-imposed siege on Gaza prevents necessary equipment from helping the civil defense forces modernize.
Thus, Gaza’s firefighters are unable to secure vital items like fire hoses, firefighter lights or spears under Israel’s so-called dual-use lists of banned products.
The poor resources available to Gaza’s firefighters were briefly noted by Western media last month.
The New York Times reported, for example, that the first two fire trucks which reached the scene of a major fire in Jabaliya refugee camp did not even have a ladder between them. That was despite how the building where the fire occurred had a number of floors.
A total of 21 people were killed in the Jabaliya fire.
Better equipment could allow first responders in Gaza to “save thousands of lives,” Samir al-Khatib, deputy director of Gaza’s civil defense, said.
“We have not been able to keep pace with developments abroad. “
In all, according to al-Khatib, Gaza has between 450 and 500 emergency responders, including firefighters.
First responders are supposed to be protected under the Geneva Conventions. However, according to al-Khatib, 34 have been killed during Israel’s aggressions against Gaza since 2008.
“We have been targeted multiple times even though we always wear our uniforms. Our cars are known to the Israeli side,” said al-Khatib. But, “we cannot trust the Israeli soldiers. We fear the treachery of the occupation forces.”
The Armenian Quarter in occupied East Jerusalem, where attacks by Jewish extremists have occurred / credit: Jessica Buxbaum
EAST JERUSALEM—Last month, a Jewish tourist toppled a wooden statue of Jesus in a church in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem. This was the fifth attack against Christians in five weeks.
Following the act of vandalism at the Church of Flagellation, Father Nikodemus Schnabel of the Dormition Abbey, just outside the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem, tweeted, “Welcome to the new Christian-hating Israel, encouraged and supported by the current government!”
Violence against Christians isn’t a new phenomenon in Jerusalem. But since Israel’s most far-right government in its history has taken over, the problem has significantly swelled.
Dr. Amnon Ramon, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and an expert on Christians in Jerusalem, explained how Jewish extremists attacking Christians run in the same circles as members of the Israeli government’s coalition. That’s the case with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who’s a disciple of Meir Kahane, a Jewish supremacist rabbi who was assassinated in 1990.
“[The perpetrators] feel quite safe because they think that, in a way, the state is with them,” Ramon told Toward Freedom.
According to Protecting Holy Land Christians, a campaign Christian leaders in Jerusalem have organized to raise awareness about the plight of the religious community, hate crimes against Christians vary. They include spitting on clergy and on religious items, as well as verbal abuse, seizure of properties and vandalism of holy sites.
In December, the campaign emphasized that 2022 was “one of the worst years for Christians in Jerusalem to date.”
Attacks Against ‘Non-Jews’
Miran Krikorian experienced this anti-Christian violence first-hand in January when his restaurant, Taboon & Wine, located in the Old City’s Christian Quarter, was attacked by people wearing clothes indicating Jewish identity. The group of about 30 ransacked the bar, breaking chairs, tables and glasses, as well as pepper-spraying employees and terrifying customers.
“There’s a systematic rise against non-Jewish institutions, people and places,” Krikorian said, noting the harassment isn’t directed toward Christians specifically, but rather against all non-Jews.
Krikorian said he wasn’t surprised by the attack, having grown up in the Armenian Quarter, where violence against Christians is a common occurrence.
“After that we saw these kinds of incidents started [to happen] twice a day, even in the Armenian Quarter,” said Father Aghan Gogchyan, chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
Gogchyan said he didn’t want to blame Israel’s new government for the stark rise in violence against Christians, but rather suggested the culture of impunity is responsible.
“We are complaining about anarchy,” Gogchyan said. “That everybody can and does whatever [they] want and nobody will be punished.
Lack of Protection from Police
Krikorian called the police during the assault on his business, but said law enforcement didn’t arrive immediately.
“Once the police came, they didn’t do anything,” Krikorian said. “They just pushed back the settlers and that’s it.”
After the attack, Krikorian filed an official report at the police station. He added that three suspects were arrested, but no charges have been filed. Israel Police would not comment to Toward Freedom, citing the pending investigation.
The police station is located next to the Armenian Quarter, yet Christians in Jerusalem have often accused law enforcement of inaction when dealing with anti-Christian violence.
“The biggest problem is no one is feeling safe by the police or by the authorities,” Krikorian said.
From Gogchyan’s perspective, the police are easily deceived by Jewish assailants.
“These extremists know how to behave during the attacks in order to make the police back them and support them,” Gogchyan said. “And the police, without realizing, are tricked.”
Gogchyan described how, in one example, after Jewish radicals spat on the Armenian convent and tried to tear down the Armenian flag there, they ran to the nearby police station and began shouting “violence.
By doing so, the police thought the Armenians were attacking the perpetrators.
The Armenian Patriarchate met with police in February to address heightened tensions, especially considering the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Jewish feast of Passover and the Christian holiday of Easter will occur in April.
Gogchyan said police told the patriarchate that law enforcement will try to prevent atrocities from happening. But Gogchyan remains concerned, as police have implied they don’t have full control.
“In a way, they said ‘such crimes will happen, and we cannot prevent them because we don’t know if [Jewish fanatics] are going to do it or not. But when something happens, we will try to protect you,’” Gogchyan said.
Christian Presence in Decline
Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, is rapidly seeing the population’s erasure from its land.
According to Protecting Holy Land Christians, Christians are estimated as making up less than 1 percent of Jerusalem’s population.
Not only does the community feel it doesn’t have police protection, but Christians have also lost representation in the government, as well.
“There is no address in the high level of the Israeli establishment for the Christian factions of Jerusalem,” said researcher Ramon, explaining how the Christian affairs department in Israel’s now-defunct Religious Affairs Ministry was once a powerful unit.
But, in 2003, when the Religious Affairs Ministry was dissolved and its duties absorbed by the Interior Ministry, Christian representation dwindled. Today, the department is run by one person.
Amid a loss of power against intensifying Jewish hegemony, Christians—and other minorities—see the state as working for only one people.
Krikorian feels this discrimination—and hatred of non-Jews—is legitimized through Israel’s current leadership.
“The extremists got the backing of the government and now they’re attacking all the time.”
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based freelance journalist reporting on Palestine and the Israeli occupation. You can follow her on Twitter at @jess_buxbaum.
Cuban medical brigade doctors in 2020 holding a portrait of Fidel Castro
Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to the United States government about the blockade. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the U.S. government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” The special rapporteurs noted the “risks to the right to life, health and other critical rights of the most vulnerable sections of the Cuban population.”
On July 12, 2021, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel told a press conference that Cuba is facing serious shortages of food and medicine. “What is the origin of all these issues?” he asked. The answer, he said, “is the blockade.” If the U.S.-imposed blockade ended, many of the great challenges facing Cuba would lift. Of course, there are other challenges, such as the collapse of the crucial tourism sector due to the pandemic. Both problems—the pandemic and the blockade—have increased the challenges for the Cuban people. The pandemic is a problem that people all over the world now face; the U.S.-imposed blockade is a problem unique to Cuba (as well as about 30 other countries struck by unilateral U.S. sanctions).
Origin of the Protests
On July 11, people in several parts of Cuba—such as San Antonio de los Baños—took to the streets to protest the social crisis. Frustration about the lack of goods in shops and an uptick in COVID-19 infections seemed to motivate the protests. President Díaz-Canel said of the people that most of them are “dissatisfied,” but that their dissatisfaction is fueled by “confusion, misunderstandings, lack of information and the desire to express a particular situation.”
On the morning of July 12, U.S. President Joe Biden hastily put out a statement that reeked of hypocrisy. “We stand with the Cuban people,” Biden said, “and their clarion call for freedom.” If the U.S. government actually cared about the Cuban people, then the Biden administration would at the very least withdraw the 243 unilateral coercive measures implemented by the presidency of Donald Trump before he left office in January 2021; Biden—contrary to his own campaign promises—has not started the process to reverse Trump’s designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” On March 9, 2021, Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” Rather, the Trump “maximum pressure” policy intended to overthrow the Cuban government remains intact.
The United States has a six-decade history of trying to overthrow the Cuban government, including using assassinations and invasions as policy. In recent years, the U.S. government has increased its financial support of people inside Cuba and in the Cuban émigré community in Miami, Florida; some of this money comes directly from the National Endowment for Democracy and from USAID. Their mandate is to accelerate any dissatisfaction inside Cuba into a political challenge to the Cuban Revolution.
On June 23, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said that the Trump “measures remain very much in place.” They shape the “conduct of the current U.S. administration precisely during the months in which Cuba has experienced the highest infection rates, the highest death toll and a higher economic cost associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Costs of the Pandemic
On July 12, Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s minister of economy and planning, told the press about the expenses of the pandemic. In 2020, he said, the government spent $102 million on reagents, medical equipment, protective equipment and other material; in the first half of 2021, the government spent $82 million on these kinds of materials. This is money that Cuba did not anticipate spending—money that it does not have as a consequence of the collapsed tourism sector.
“We have not spared resources to face COVID-19,” Fernández said. Those with COVID-19 are put in hospitals, where their treatment costs the country $180 per day; if the patient needs intensive care, the cost per day is $550. “No one is charged a penny for their treatment,” Fernández reported.
The socialist government in Cuba shoulders the responsibility of medical care and of social insurance. Despite the severe challenges to the economy, the government guarantees salaries, purchases medicines and distributes food as well as electricity and piped water. That is the reason why the government added $2.4 billion to its already considerable debt overhang. In June, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas Ruíz met with French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire to discuss the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. France, which manages Cuba’s debt to the public creditors in the Paris Club, led the effort to ameliorate the debt servicing demands on Havana.
Costs of the Blockade
On June 23, 184 countries in the UN General Assembly voted to end the U.S.-imposed blockade on Cuba. During the discussion over the vote, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Rodríguez reported that between April 2019 and December 2020, the government lost $9.1 billion due to the blockade ($436 million per month). “At current prices,” he said, “the accumulated damages in six decades amount to over $147.8 billion, and against the price of gold, it amounts to over $1.3 trillion.”
If the blockade were to be lifted, Cuba would be able to fix its great financial challenges and use the resources to pivot away from its reliance upon tourism. “We stand with the Cuban people,” says Biden; in Havana, the phrase is heard differently, since it sounds like Biden is saying, “We stand on the Cuban people.”
Cuba’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said that those who took to the streets on July 11 “called for foreign intervention and said that the [Cuban] Revolution was falling. They will never enjoy that hope,” he said. In response to those anti-government protests, the streets of Cuba filled with tens of thousands of people who carried Cuban flags and the flags of the Cuban Revolution’s 26th of July Movement. Cruz said, “The people responded and defended the revolution.”
Manolo De Los Santos is a researcher and a political activist. For 10 years, he worked in the organization of solidarity and education programs to challenge the United States’ regime of illegal sanctions and blockades. Based out of Cuba for many years, Manolo has worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations. In 2018, he became the founding director of the People’s Forum in New York City, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. He also collaborates as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is a Globetrotter/Peoples Dispatch fellow.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky (left) with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Background: Israeli flag / credit: Toward Freedom photo illustration
Editor’s Note: This article was first published in The Grayzone.
Just forty days after Russia’s military campaign began inside Ukraine, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky told reporters that in the future, his country would be like “a big Israel.” The following day, one of Israel’s top promoters in the Democratic Party published an op-ed in NATO’s official think tank exploring how that could be executed.
Zelensky made his prediction while speaking to reporters on April 5, rejecting the idea that Kiev would remain neutral in future conflicts between NATO, the European Union, and Russia. According to Zelensky, his country would never be like Switzerland (which coincidentally abandoned its Napoleon-era tradition of nonalignment by sanctioning Russia in response to its February invasion).
“We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future,’” the president informed reporters. “But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
For those wondering what a “big Israel” would actually look like, Zelensky quickly elaborated on his disturbing prophecy.
“We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas—there will be people with weapons,” Ukraine’s president said, predicting a bleak existence for his citizens. “I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”
Though the web post was based on comments Zelensky made to reporters, the president’s office mysteriously excised a section of his remarks in which he declared a future Ukraine would not be “absolutely liberal, European.” Instead, along with his vision for a heavily militarized Ukraine, the post emphasized Zelensky’s readiness to join NATO “already tomorrow.”
For NATO’s power brokers, however, Zelensky’s intimated willingness to join the military alliance was perhaps the least remarkable aspect of his statement. Instead, within 48 hours of his comments, the Atlantic Council—NATO’s semi-official think tank in Washington—published a “road map” exploring how to transform Ukraine into “a big Israel.”
Authored by Daniel B. Shapiro, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, the document posited that “the two embattled countries share more than you might think.”
Just as former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig presented Israel as “the largest American air craft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,” Shapiro put forward a vision of Ukraine as a hyper-militarized NATO bastion whose national identity would be defined by its ability to project U.S. power against Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem, January 2020
Israel and Ukraine: “Old, Loyal Friends”
Despite Israel’s reluctance to join the Western sanctions campaign against Russia, it has aided Ukraine’s militarily, sending two large shipments of defensive equipment since February of this year. In the past, however, Israel’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia has been more than defensive.
Back in 2018, over 40 human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to stop arming Ukraine after members of the neo-nazi Azov Battalion were caught brandishing Israeli-made weapons. As Israel’s Ha’aretz noted at the time, “The militia’s [Azov] emblems are well-known national socialist ones. Its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias… One militia member said in an interview that he was fighting Russia since Putin was a Jew.”
Zelensky, a Ukrainian Jew, was apparently unperturbed by Israel’s alleged arming of Nazi elements in his country. One year after his 2019 election, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to launch what he called a “prayer for peace,” and to attend an event titled, “Remember the Holocaust to fight anti-Semitism.” Ahead of the junket, Zelensky heaped praise on Israeli society, remarking in an interview that “Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains,” and that Israelis are a “united, strong, powerful people. And despite being under the threat of war, they enjoy every day. I’ve seen it.”
Happy Birthday, @netanyahu! I wish you and all the Jewish people good health and the strength to face all the challenges of the rapidly-changing world. At a time like this, old loyal friends are more valuable than ever. #Ukraine and #Israel have a friendship such as this. pic.twitter.com/jhonXgiqAl
“There are many countries in the world that can protect themselves, but Israel, such a small country, can not only protect itself, but facing external threats, can respond,” Zelensky said, adding that he had visited the country “many times.”
In a birthday message later that year to Israel’s then-Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Zelensky commented that “old loyal friends are more valuable than ever. Ukraine and Israel have a friendship such as this.”
Since the escalation in fighting between Kiev and Moscow in February of this year, dozens of Israelis have traveled to Ukraine to join the country’s Foreign Legion.
More and more Israeli soldiers are showing up in Ukraine, ready to fight against the Russian Army.
In August, the Canadian government-backed Kyiv Independent published an investigation which accused Ukraine’s Foreign Legion of stealing arms and goods as well as carrying out sexual harassment and other forms of abuse.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has continually heaped praise on Tel Aviv, especially after an Israeli Supreme Court decision to lift restrictions on citizens traveling to Ukraine.
“The rule of law and respect for human rights is exactly what distinguishes a true, developed democracy!” the Ukrainian President tweeted following the July ruling.
I commend the decision of the Supreme Court of the State of Israel, which obliges the government of 🇮🇱 to abolish any additional restrictions on the entry of citizens of 🇺🇦. The rule of law and respect for human rights is exactly what distinguishes a true, developed democracy!
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 3, 2022
A Hyper-Militarized Apartheid State As a Model for Ukraine
By April of 2022, Zelensky’s admiration for the Israeli state had apparently reached new heights. Immediately following his declaration that Ukraine would soon become “a big Israel,” Washington’s former ambassador to Tel Aviv, Daniel B. Shapiro, published a blueprint for Zelensky to achieve that dream at the Washington D.C.-based, NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council.
“By adapting their country’s mindset to mirror aspects of Israel’s approach to chronic security challenges, Ukrainian officials can tackle critical national-security challenges with confidence and build a similarly resilient state,” Shapiro, an Atlantic Council “distinguished fellow,” wrote.
The nearly 900-word outline offered eight bullet points detailing how Ukraine can become more like Israel, a country recently described by Amnesty International as an “apartheid state.” The points included advice such as to place “security first,” maintain “Intelligence dominance,” and remember that “technology is key.”
According to Shapiro, a central component of Israel’s security strategy is that “the whole population plays a role.”
“Civilians recognize their responsibility to follow security protocols and contribute to the cause,” Shapiro wrote of the Israeli population. “Some even arm themselves (though under strict supervision) to do so. The widespread mobilization of Ukrainian society in collective defense suggests that the country has this potential.” These comments align directly with Zelensky’s prediction that in a future Ukraine, “people with weapons” will be present in nearly every aspect of civilian life.
Like the propaganda touting Israel’s “success” as a security state, Shapiro’s blueprint imagined Ukraine’s citizenry united by a “common purpose” with help from Tel Aviv’s “high-tech innovation” in the military and intelligence sectors. His game plan portrays Israel’s advancements in security to as an almost mythical achievement owing purely to the feisty, innovative spirit of its citizens, overlooking the single greatest material factor in its success: unprecedented levels of foreign military assistance, particularly from the United States. Indeed, without U.S. taxpayers virtually subsidizing its military through yearly aid packages amounting to untold billions of dollars, it is difficult to see how a country the size of New Jersey would have attained the status of the world’s leading surveillance technology hub.
Even as Shapiro urged Zelensky to maintain “active defense partnerships,” he simultaneously downplayed the role foreign aid has played in preserving Israel’s settler-colonial imperatives, arguing that the “single principle” informing Tel Aviv’s security doctrine is that “Israel will defend itself, by itself—and rely on no other country to fight its battles.”
Shapiro must have forgotten that principle when he tweeted, “Thank God Israel has Iron Dome”—a reference to Israel’s air defense system that U.S. taxpayers funded to the tune of $1 billion in 2021 alone, on top of $3.8 billion in military assistance earmarked for Tel Aviv that year.
Thank God Israel has Iron Dome to protect its citizens from Hamas rocket from Gaza. But Israel's ability to defend itself doesn't in any way lessen the outrage of a terrorist organization firing at civilians from within civilian areas.
In his advice to Zelensky, Shapiro also emphasized that “Ukraine will need to upgrade its intelligence services” in a similar manner to Israel, which “has invested deeply in its intelligence capabilities to ensure that it has the means to detect and deter its enemies—and, when needed, act proactively to strike them.”
Then-Amb. Daniel Shapiro speaking at the 2016 conference of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, which would later employ him.
A U.S. Diplomat Stays Behind in Israel, Goes to Bat for Its Top Spying Firm
Shapiro would know a thing or two about the Israeli intelligence apparatus. In mid-2017, after opting to remain with his family in Israel, rather than return to the country that had employed him as a diplomat, he joined the Israeli tech firm NSO hacking firm as an independent advisor. There, Shapiro helped evaluate potential clients for NSO’s notoriously invasive digital spyware, known as Pegasus. NSO’s many government clients include the Saudi Monarchy, which has used its Pegasus system to monitor and persecute human rights campaigners and journalists.
Shapiro has also enjoyed close ties with Israeli intelligence through the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think tank in Tel Aviv. During the better part of his four years as a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow” at the institute, its executive director was Amos Yadlin, the Israeli Defense Forces’ former chief of Military Intelligence. Yadlin helped devise the doctrine of disproportionate force employed by the Israeli military against Gaza in which civilians were redefined as the “terrorists’ neighbor,” and thereby stripped of protections under the Geneva Conventions.
In 2018, INSS paid Shapiro more than $20,000 to testify before Congress on its behalf, despite him not registering as a foreign agent. Like NSO Group, INSS maintains a veneer of independence from the Israeli government even though its founder, Aharon Yariv, also served as the head of Israel’s military intelligence.
In the US, Shapiro had a stint at WestExec Advisors, a consulting founded in 2017 by now-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and described by Politico as “Biden’s Cabinet in waiting.” Prior to the election of Joe Biden, Shapiro ran cover in the media after the Democratic Party’s platform removed language opposing further annexation of land in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
War—It’s Good for Atlantic Council Donors
It is likely no coincidence that Shapiro published his prescription for converting Ukraine into an Israeli-style security state in his capacity as a “distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council. If Ukraine is ever transformed into the permanent military fortress he and Zelensky imagine, the NATO think tank’s weapons industry donors stand to benefit immensely.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing were all listed among the Atlantic Council’s top benefactors in 2021. Raytheon Chairman and CEO Gregory J. Hayes also happens to sit on the think tank’s international advisory board. As Max Blumenthal reported for The Grayzone, the Atlantic Council has also served as a de facto laundromat for money from Ukrainian interests like Burisma to members of Biden’s inner circle.
The three aforementioned arms companies, which form the heart of Washington’s military industrial complex, have already reaped massive profits from the war in Ukraine. Boeing, which faced a public relations crisis after malfunctions in its 737 Max plane’s operating system resulted in two high profile crashes, could be on track to reclaiming its status as the world’s top aircraft manufacturer as a result of the conflict.
Though Boeing suffered two consecutive quarterly losses in 2022, by July it claimed to be “building momentum” for a recovery. In June, the aerospace giant secured a contract to supply heavy-lift helicopters to Germany’s government after Berlin created a $107 billion fund for military investment in direct response to the Ukraine war.
Meanwhile, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin both manufacture the Javelin anti-tank missile system that have been dubbed a “symbol of Ukraine’s resistance” on the battlefield.
During his visit to Lockheed Martin's Troy, Alabama plant, Joe Biden pushed for approval of his proposed $33 billion military aid package to Ukraine by claiming Ukrainians were naming their children "Javelin" and "Javelina" after the anti-tank missile the plant manufactured. pic.twitter.com/zNPiKRjSrw
“They’ve been so important, there’s even a story about Ukrainian parents naming their children—not a joke—their newborn child ‘Javelin’ or ‘Javelina,’” U.S. President Joe Biden gushed during a May visit to a Lockheed Martin plant in Troy, Alabama, underscoring the company’s vital role in the Ukraine war with absurdity.
The United States has sent more than 8,500 Javelin anti-tank systems to Ukraine since February at a cost of roughly $178,000 a pop, according to the Pentagon’s 2021 budget. Eager to keep the gravy train flowing, Lockheed Martin is seeking to double production, aiming to manufacture 4,000 Javelin systems a year. Lockheed’s 2022 stocks are up more than 20 percent over the previous year, reaching their height just two weeks after Russia’s military operation began.
With inspiration from Shapiro’s NATO-sponsored “road map” to success, Zelensky’s fantasy of a perpetual militarized, high-tech Sparta bolstered by a gun-toting civilian population will require a massive investment in weapons and surveillance technology on the part of the government in Kiev. If this war is any indication, Ukraine will likely look to the Atlantic Council’s donors once again as it ventures to fulfill Zelensky’s dream of establishing a “big Israel” on Russia’s border.
Alex Rubinstein is an independent reporter on Substack. You can subscribe to get free articles from him delivered to your inbox here. If you want to support his journalism, which is never put behind a paywall, you can give a one-time donation to him through PayPal or sustain his reporting through Patreon. He can be followed on Twitter at @RealAlexRubi.
