In response to the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and senior Hamas official Mohammed Deif, the Center for International Policy’s executive vice president Matt Duss issued the following statement:
“We welcome the ICC’s issuance of these arrest warrants as a substantial step toward justice and accountability for the war crimes perpetrated against civilians in Israel and Palestine.
“As we said when the ICC prosecutor applied for these warrants in May, international law protecting civilians in conflict must be applied consistently and impartially. Enforcement of these rules is even more necessary today as we face the certainty that the growing assault on international norms and the rule of law will intensify upon Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency.
“We call upon all countries, including the United States, to appropriately assist the ICC in this matter – and in no case to hinder or obstruct it, including by helping those subject to arrest evade justice. We reiterate that while countries are free to argue any disagreements they may have with this move on the merits through appropriate channels, attempts to defame, delegitimize or penalize the ICC or its staff would be utterly inappropriate and must be condemned.
“We also reiterate our warning and call on the United States government to ensure it adheres to its own obligations under international law by halting the supply of offensive arms to Netanyahu’s government which have enabled the grave violations of human rights and the law of war alleged by the ICC.”
Center for International Policy executive vice president Matt Duss issued the following statement after a series of Senate votes on joint resolutions of disapproval to block certain specified arms transfers to Israel:
“CIP commends the 19 Senators who voted for one or more measures to disapprove of new transfers of specific offensive weapons to Israel. These Senators had the courage to stand up for U.S. law, the rights of civilians in conflict, and basic decency.
“Coming on the same day that international relief agencies reported that virtually no humanitarian aid has entered northern Gaza in 40 days, the resolutions introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would have had the effect of beginning to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act, which prohibits U.S. security assistance to recipient countries that restrict such aid. Today’s votes in favor of the resolutions are a stark rejection of the Biden administration’s repeated refusal to uphold this and other U.S. arms laws consistently and impartially when it comes to Israel. From Palestinian rights groups to labor unions to center-left pro-Israel organizations, the resolutions were widely endorsed by civil society and align with popular opinion that shows Americans want to stop the unconditional supply of arms to Israel.
“Israel’s right to respond to the Hamas-led atrocities of October 7, 2023 and seek the return of its hostages is well established in international law – as is its obligation to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm. In more than thirteen months of war, Israel’s government has openly ignored that obligation, obstructed diplomacy toward a ceasefire and hostage release agreement, and repeatedly violated US law and red lines.
Yet, as civilian deaths, displacement and disease among Palestinians in Gaza mount alongside open calls for ethnic cleansing by Israeli officials, the Biden Administration is not merely failing to act – it is actively enabling the Netanyahu government’s war crimes. Rather than taking steps to bolster democracy, rights and rule of law at home and abroad in advance of the Donald Trump’s second term, President Biden and his top officials are spending their precious last days in office lobbying against measures to protect U.S. interests and vetoing otherwise unanimously-supported resolutions in the United Nations Security Council that reflect its own stated policies.
“The lawmakers who stood on the right side of history today will be remembered for their leadership and humanity. The same cannot be said about President Biden and those who help him abet starvation and slaughter in Gaza.”
After Tuesday’s sweeping electoral victory by former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, Politico asked 10 thinkers about what the defeated Democratic party needs right now.
Matt Duss, CIP’s executive vice president, says to listen to voters when they say that they’re hurting. Writes Duss:
It’s clear that, whatever experts might tell them about how great the economy is doing, a huge number of Americans are not feeling it in their own lives and communities. Joe Biden successfully adopted a unifying economic populist message from the party’s left in 2020, and as president took important steps to start building a more worker-centered American economy. Democrats really need to lean into that work with a vision that meets Americans from across the political spectrum where they are, and helps them see how policies often labeled “progressive” actually address the needs of workers and communities, including from purple and deep-red areas that have been passed over by globalization and corporatization of our entire economy. In the absence of that vision of shared American prosperity and security, many voters will continue to respond to demagogues who claim to feel their pain and pin the blame for it on immigrants, minorities and foreign enemies while doing nothing to actually make their lives better.
The next U.S. president will have big impact both on America and Ukraine’s future. Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump have offered different visions and the election outcome could pave the way for rising authoritarianism and a potential abandonment of Ukraine.
In this live-streamed podcast / Twitter Space, Vermont State Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky and Center for International Policy executive vice president Matt Duss, both of Ukrainian-American descent, discuss the intersection of U.S. politics, progressivism, and solidarity with Ukraine, as well as the challenges the election and its aftermath may bring.
Ukraine Mentionedis a weekly live stream from Kyiv featuring in-depth interviews and discussions about Ukraine and its supporters with a focus on civil society, history, culture, music, and journalism, primarily highlighting voices from Ukraine. Learn more and connect at Patreon and Twitter/X.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is headed to the Middle East this week, following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by the Israel Defence Forces, and as Israel continues its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Michele Kelemen of NPR interviewed CIP’s Executive Vice President Matt Duss about Blinken’s upcoming trip.
For hawks inside Washington, this is a moment for Israel to press the advantage against Hamas and Hezbollah, both seen as Iranian proxies. Says Duss:
“There are people in the Biden administration who are buying this. They see what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in Lebanon, possible strikes elsewhere in the region including Iran, essentially as a way to reshuffle the regional security deck. We have seen historically this kind of hubris and overreach does not deliver peace, it does not deliver stability, it has a whole set of unintended consequences, they may not happen right now but they will come. I think the United States looks more powerless with every successive trip [Blinken] takes there and comes back with nothing.”
CIP executive vice president Matt Duss tells CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the death of Hamas leader and architect of the October 7, 2023 attacks, Yahya Sinwar, can and should provide a new opening to push for a ceasefire and hostage release in the Gaza War.
Duss explains:
“The Biden Administration, the United States has leverage it’s not choosing to use. We provide an enormous amount of ammunition for a start: arms, bombs, all kinds of ammunition, intelligence support, and of course diplomatic support in multilateral fora like the United Nations. And so withholding, or at least beginning to withhold some of that support as a way to change Netanyahu’s behavior here and push him to accept a ceasefire I think is something that should have been done long ago.”
On October 17, the Israeli military confirmed that it had killed Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader and mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attacks, in a military operation in southern Gaza.
With him no longer commanding Hamas, there is a new opening for the U.S. to push for a ceasefire and hostage release in the Gaza War and move toward de-escalation and enhancing human security in the region, argues CIP Executive Vice President Matt Duss in a new essay in The New York Times:
If Mr. Sinwar truly was the obstacle to a cease-fire agreement that U.S. officials — including President Biden — have claimed, that obstacle is now gone. The United States and its partners have a window to halt the downward spiral to regional conflagration. The Biden administration must press the Netanyahu government and remaining Hamas officials to end the war in Gaza, return hostages to their families, surge humanitarian aid into the territory and urgently take other steps to ensure that Gazans have adequate shelter, supplies and security as winter approaches.
The Biden administration declared in May that Israel had already achieved the stated desire of military degradation of Hamas, ensuring the organization would not be able to launch another attack on the scale of October 7. Those conditions are only more true today, but getting Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to the negotiation table will take more than just a statement of facts, it will take the exercise of leverage. Duss continues:
All of that will require fresh diplomatic pressure on both sides, including a willingness for the Biden administration to withhold offensive arms to Israel if it does not cooperate. The United States should simultaneously renew its abandoned push for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon that allows civilians to safely return to their homes on both sides of the border. In furtherance of those aims, the Biden administration should also urge Israel to refrain from potentially escalatory strikes on Iran.
Last week, CIP Executive Vice President Matt Duss published “Joe Biden Chose This Catastrophic Path Every Step of the Way” in the New Republic , offering a clear indictment of how specific US policy choices made in response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel have led to unrelenting tragedy in Gaza and Israel’s expanded war with its neighbors.
On Al Jazeera’s The Bottom Line, host Steve Clemons interviewed Duss about the piece, about the response of Middle Eastern autocracies, and about what US support for Israel’s war means in terms of democratic politics and the 2024 elections.
Here’s Matt Duss on the disconnect between Biden’s language and actions:
We have a policy and this goes back a long time, but it’s far worse now. By upholding Israeli impunity and essentially enforcing Palestinian homelessness, we have affirmed and supported the worst, most hardline elements in all of these societies. And I think that is exactly what we’re seeing now: this idea that Israel is just going to move kind of like Michael Corleone at the end of Godfather and settle all family business. We know how that ultimately ended, okay? It did not end well for Corleone or anyone. But I’ll also say we saw exactly this back in the early 1980s when Israel decided, well we’re going to take out our enemies in Lebanon, tried to take out the PLO leadership and deal with family business then. And what happened ? Well one thing that happened is the rise of Hezbollah. So my concern is what comes next, what is going to arise in the wake of this catastrophe that the United States and Israel have been cooperating to inflict on this region.
On the US reaction to Israel’s geographic expansion of its military offensive:
Over the past few weeks, in the wake of the strikes on Lebanon, the assassination of [Hassan] Nasrallah, the decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership and the incursion into Lebanon basically after the proposed ceasefire agreement President Biden saying I hope I expect we’re about to get a ceasefire in Lebanon and then Netanyahu said nope, gonna kill all of Hezbollah’s leaders and invade Lebanon instead.
Since that time, the US posture seems to have changed and basically Biden seems to be just riding this war down like Slim Pickens in Doctor Strangelove. Even the statement that came out, the readout of the call between Netanyahu and Biden made no mention of a ceasefire in Lebanon. They have completely dropped that.
And I’m really concerned that there does seem to be – there’s clearly a sense in Washington like this sense of exaltation that is just dangerously and terrifyingly reminiscent of the leadup to the Iraq War, this sense that by dint of our enormous power or Israel’s enormous military power, we’re essentially going to reshuffle the deck in the Middle East and kind of rearrange …the security arrangement in the Middle East in a way that’s more beneficial to us. And it’s really kind of staggering for those of us who lived through that. That we would have to relearn this lesson. It will not work.
Israel clearly has enormous capabilities, they’ve scored a number of very, very impressive tactical victories. I don’t think anyone could deny that. But what we’ve seen year after year, decade after decade in that region is that both the United States and Israel have utterly failed to turn these tactical victories into strategic wins. And that is what we still have yet to see from either the US or Israel is any explanation of how this ends.
One year into the devastating conflict that began with the Hamas-led invasion into southern Israel followed by a devastating assault in Gaza and beyond, hostages remain in captivity, violence and instability have devastated the region with no end in sight. Even as the conflict expands beyond Gaza and into Lebanon and possibly Iran, the U.S. remains committed to backing Israel and supplying it with weapons. Today in The New Republic, Matt Duss outlines how we got to this grim anniversary, following President Biden’s unwavering commitment to an Israeli prime minister willing to take him for all he’s worth.
Writes Matt Duss:
By taking the option of suspending military aid off the table, Biden signaled from the outset that his red lines were meaningless. His stubborn refusal to impose any costs on Netanyahu (except for a token suspension of a few shipments of bombs that was quickly superseded by massive deliveries of new weapons) is what all but ensured that his May cease-fire proposal would wither and die. The story that is now being crafted through friendly journalists is that Biden tried his best but his effort to bring the war to an end was ultimately frustrated by Netanyahu’s shenanigans. But Biden wasn’t hoodwinked by Netanyahu any more than he was by George W. Bush when he chose to back the Iraq War. He chose this path, and stayed on it despite constant warnings of exactly where it was leading. Having done so, when he exits the White House, he and his team will leave this world a more dangerous and lawless place, America’s credibility more broken, the so-called “rules-based order” even more “so-called” than when he entered.
One year since the Hamas-led invasion into southern Israel, the conflict has expanded to not just Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, but an expansion of hostilities to include attacks against diplomats and the Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Lebanon. To understand how we got here, despite President Joe Biden’s adamant insistence that the US was working with Israel towards a ceasefire, Matt Duss joins Jeet Heer’s The Time Of Monsters podcast to discuss the conflict and also the prospect for change under a Kamala Harris presidency.
