Israel's Jamal Khashoggis

By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin

06 March 19

According to the UN, Israeli forces deliberately killed two journalists in Gaza. But don't expect the same establishment that rightly fumed over Jamal Khashoggi's murder to call out Israel.

here are certain acts considered so shocking, so beyond the pale on the world stage, that they unite people across the political spectrum in condemnation. The murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi crown prince was one such act.

As absurd as it seemed to critics of the Saudi regime — who had long pointed to its medieval treatment of women, gay people, and dissenters, and assailed its genocidal war in Yemen — the Khashoggi killing appears to have genuinely hit a nerve among the foreign policy establishment of both DC and the wider world. The revulsion was swift and bipartisan.

Aghast, media companies like the New York Times and various tycoons quickly distanced themselves from the country out of shame. Five lobbying firms dropped it as a client. Loyal Saudi allies in Congress who typically covered for its government’s every depravity suddenly had an attack of conscience, with Lindsey Graham promising “there would be hell to pay.” The killing had “unmasked [the crown prince] as a reckless, dangerous, thuggish autocrat,” charged one of the luminaries of the amoral foreign policy blob, with even the war criminal Elliott Abrams calling it a “a great crime and a great mistake.” The kingdom’s media allies received unflinching scorn and derision in the mainstream press. The incident dominated the headlines for weeks, inspiring unsparing criticism from Khashoggi’s friends in the media.

Arguably none were more emphatic than the Washington Post, Khashoggi’s employer and previously a reliable carrier of pro-Saudi messaging. Its publisher and CEO called the killing an “atrocity” and vowed to focus on the story “until meaningful action is taken,” while its editorial page editor deemed it “a monstrous and unfathomable act” and asked Americans on the Saudi payroll: “Will you work for a murderer?” The paper printed a full-page ad with Khashoggi’s image declaring “the principles of free expression endure,” and published a torrent of editorials lamenting his killing, arguing that “Saudi Arabia and its regime should be treated as outlaws by all who value human rights and free expression,” urging possible sanctions over its “vicious and reckless” murder of a journalist and calling for “a thorough reevaluation of U.S.-Saudi relations.”

Meanwhile, Trump received withering criticism from the press for what the Post alleged amounted to “conspiring with Saudi officials to cover up the murder of a distinguished journalist.” His support for the Saudi government in the wake of the killing signaled a loss of US “moral leadership,” wrote the Boston Globe, adding that “to attack [members of the press] is to attack a central pillar of democracy.” Another columnist placed it in the context of “the collapse of the liberal world order,” Trump’s “incitements against journalists,” and his “cringe-worthy embrace of autocrats and tyrants.” Perhaps most significantly, the episode inspired an unprecedented public debate about the United States’ friendly relationship with the country’s homicidal government, and extraordinary, ongoing efforts in Congress to end US support for the Saudi campaign in Yemen.

But will any similar furor follow Israel’s recent actions in Gaza?

According to a report released yesterday by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which was tasked with investigating alleged violations of human rights during the Palestinian protests from March to December of last year, Israeli forces killed two journalists and wounded thirty-nine more with “unlawful” live rounds during this time span. Both of the murdered reporters were wearing blue helmets and blue bulletproof vests that were, the report states, “very clearly” marked “Press.” So were two of the other, surviving journalists named in the report, one of whom was taking a break and standing around when he was shot.

“The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot journalists intentionally, despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such,” it concludes.

Of course, there are other appalling things that Israeli soldiers did, including killing people in wheelchairs and crutches, three clearly marked paramedics, and thirty-five children, as well as maiming an eleven-year-old boy who was playing football. Unfortunately, we also know from the case of Saudi Arabia that such murder of children and other civilians is not enough to arouse the fury of the foreign policy establishment.

But for better or worse, politicians, executives, and the press have made abundantly clear that what they do consider a red line is the concerted, intentional murder of a reporter. So will Israel’s killing of two clearly marked journalists receive the same disgust as Saudi Arabia’s killing of Khashoggi? From the looks of things so far, no.

While the report and its findings have been covered by a variety of mainstream news outlets, these murders don’t seem to have shaken the world’s pundits in the same way. The Post has covered the report’s findings, but its editors did not swiftly publish an op-ed connecting them to the Israeli government’s increasing hostility to dissent and the media, as they did with Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi’s suspected murder.

Perhaps this is because Khashoggi’s death was particularly gruesome and shocking. He was, after all, killed inside an embassy, with his corpse sliced up and dissolved in acid. But this shouldn’t matter; the pundits who erupted in outrage over Khashoggi’s murder made clear they weren’t just appalled at how he was killed, but that he was killed at all. Besides, what kind of standard is that: choking a journalist to death in an embassy is an attack on “a central pillar of democracy,” but shooting one from hundreds of meters away is fine?

Perhaps the next few days and weeks will, after all, see an outcry to match the sustained repugnance that followed the Khashoggi killing. But don’t count it. The Israeli government has long been allowed to get away with the kinds of things that would (and do) trigger declarations of war if committed by others: from aggressively spying on the US government to meddling in elections and domestic politics more broadly. Israeli soldiers have killed and maimed multiple US citizens over the years, and the government and establishment media’s response has been the sound of crickets; compare that with the fury just yesterday over Trump absolving Kim Jong-Un for the death of Otto Warmbier, who is far from certain to have actually been physically mistreated in North Korean custody at all.

Under Trump, the political establishment has made clear they’ll no longer tolerate US policymakers’ coddling of violent governments; that they see “moral leadership” as an uncompromisable element of US foreign policy. That’s good. But this is meaningless if they can’t muster the same outrage when it comes to one of the Beltway’s oldest sacred cows. Perhaps Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, speaking of Saudi Arabia, put it best four months ago: “Could its supposed friendship be worth shrugging off the ensnaring and killing of a critic whose only offense was to tell the truth?

Is that the country we want to be?”

Republicans Are Wrong. Transparency Is Possible in the Mueller Investigation.

By James Comey, The Washington Post

05 March 19

James Comey is a former director of the FBI and a former deputy attorney general.

ttorney General William P. Barr will decide how much of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings and conclusions to share with Congress and the American people. Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would try to be as transparent as possible while abiding by the Justice Department’s long-standing tradition of protecting the privacy rights of the innocent. That makes sense, but past departmental practices suggest he can release far more details than many people may now realize.

Providing detailed information about a completed investigation of intense public interest has long been a part of Justice Department practice. It doesn’t happen often, because ordinarily nothing outweighs the privacy interests of the subject of an investigation that ends without public charges. But department tradition recognizes that transparency is especially important where polarized politics and baseless attacks challenge law enforcement’s credibility. In critical matters of national importance, a straightforward report of what facts have been learned and how judgment has been exercised may be the only way to advance the public interest.

The Justice Department shared detailed information with the public after the FBI’s investigation of the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. His death at the hands of a white police officer touched off unrest around the country. The Justice Department responded to calls for a federal investigation, sending dozens of FBI special agents into Ferguson. After months of careful work, the department declined to bring a federal criminal prosecution. But the Justice Department didn’t just put the boxes in storage. Because there was intense, legitimate public interest — and significant doubt about law enforcement independence — the department publicly released an 86-page report in March 2015 detailing the entire investigation — what was done, what was found and how the evidence compared to governing legal standards, including an evaluation of the conduct and statements of individuals.

In October 2015, the Justice Department again shared information about a case involving corrosive doubts. For years, Republicans claimed that the Internal Revenue Service had illegally targeted tea party groups because of their political beliefs. In response to the allegations, the department did an extensive investigation, which ended with no charges being brought. But it didn’t stop there. Because the case posed a significant challenge to public confidence in the institution, the Justice Department provided Congress with an eight-page, single-spaced public report that laid out the investigation, the evidence found and a legal assessment. The department not only explained why no charges were appropriate but also discussed, by name, the conduct of a key subject of the criminal investigation — IRS supervisor Lois Lerner — writing that she had used “poor judgment” but that “ineffective management is not a crime. . . . What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action — but does not warrant criminal prosecution.”

These cases represent the way the Justice Department has always approached its mission — speak only in prosecuted cases, unless the public really needs to know. In 2004, during the George W. Bush administration, the public needed to know more about José Padilla, an American citizen captured in the United States and held by presidential order as an enemy combatant in a Navy brig. It was a breathtaking exercise of presidential power, one that generated intense and legitimate concern across the political spectrum.

The department had concluded a prosecution was not legally possible, but still told the American people what it knew about Padilla. To do that, the Justice Department provided Congress with a written report and laid out in a news conference detailed information about Padilla’s terrorist connections, his murderous plans and his confession. It was an extraordinary amount of information in an uncharged case. I know a lot about that announcement because I made it, in my role as deputy attorney general, after first being assured by the department’s career lawyers that speaking was consistent with law, policy and department tradition.

Like those examples, and many others, the Hillary Clinton case was one where the public interest required that we speak. Angry voices in July 2016 said we should have said nothing. But we were ending a criminal investigation of a candidate for president, one overseen by Justice Department political appointees from the candidate’s political party. The decision to decline prosecution would have been far less credible without those details, causing lasting damage to the department’s reservoir of trust with the American people. Democrats were wrong about transparency then.

But Republicans are wrong now, when they claim Justice Department rules forbid transparency about the completed work of the special counsel. It is difficult to imagine a case of greater public interest than one focused on the efforts of a foreign adversary to damage our democracy, and in which the president of the United States is a subject. I don’t know all the considerations that will go into deciding precisely what to say about the completion of the special counsel’s work and when to say it. It’s always important to consider guidelines and routines. But don’t listen to those who tell you transparency is impossible. Every American should want a Justice Department guided first and always by the public interest. Sometimes transparency is not a hard call.