Man carrying child’s body in Gaza. Fars Media Corporation.  Attribution 4.0 International license.

The Israeli regime has lost its multi-front war in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Yes, really. It may not look like it, but the defeat is real and  baked into Israel’s future.

Let me first make the case for Israeli “victory”:

Since its 2023 invasion of Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces report fewer than 800 troops killed, while in turn killing tens — maybe hundreds — of thousands of mostly civilian Palestinian Arabs (and 250 or more inconvenient journalists).

Since the beginning, they’ve established their ability to attack any point in Gaza at will, driving a displaced, hungry population back and forth over piles of bodies, while seizing more land in the West Bank and Syria, liquidating Hezbollah’s Lebanese strongholds, trading missile strikes with Yemen’s Houthis, and even emerging relatively unscathed, if not particularly successful, in an intermittent war with Iran.

Top Israeli regime officials confidently assert that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and annexation of the West Bank are inevitable.

Yes, that sounds rather like multiple “victories,” accomplished and pending.

But those victories didn’t come from nowhere. They were enabled by decades of massive financial, military, and diplomatic support from the United States.

Yes, other regimes too, but most of those “allies” are moving in the other direction already — cutting off arms sales, recognizing a Palestinian state, and sanctioning Israeli war criminals.

It’s quickly coming down to the “no daylight between us” US/Israel relationship under which the former annually shovels billions of dollars, and when requested direct military assistance, at the latter, no questions asked (US law “guarantees” Israel a “Qualitative Military Edge”), while using its own sanctions power and veto on the UN Security Council to protect Benjamin Netanyahu and Friends from the consequences of their actions.

That relationship is nearing its end.

In late August, a Quinnipiac poll found that 50% of Americans now classify Israel’s operations in Gaza as genocidal, and that 60% — 37% of Republicans, 75% of Democrats, and 66% of independents — oppose continued military aid to Israel, at least while the genocide continues.

The effects of changing American attitudes toward Israel may not make themselves felt immediately, but the outcome is more “inevitable” than the fantasies of expansionist Israeli politicians.

In domestic politics, Social Security is sometimes called a political “third rail” — you touch it, you die.

The “special relationship” with Israel enjoyed the same status in foreign affairs for decades due to a well-funded lobby. American politicians who didn’t want to lose their re-election primaries to lobby-funded opponents dutifully voted for every Israeli aid demand (usually after ritual photo opportunities at occupied Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall).

That third rail is losing voltage, fast. President Donald Trump may remain bought off by the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on his behalf by Israeli interests, but sitting and future members of Congress are beginning to grok that a loyalty oath to a foreign power is no longer the absolute requirement it used to be.

And without Big Bully unquestioningly backing its every play, Little Bully’s expansionist plans will quickly come to naught.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“District attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries,” retired judge Sol Wachtler told the New York Daily News in 1985, “that, by and large, they could get them to indict a ham sandwich.”

I’ve yet to see any public comment from Wachtler, now 95 years old, on a grand jury’s August 26 refusal to indict one Sean C. Dunn for THROWING a sandwich (maybe even a ham sandwich) at federal occupation troops in Washington, DC after giving them a well-deserved, if maybe a little alcohol-driven, verbal dressing down.

“Grand jury nullification” seems to be having a moment.  Earlier in August, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro tried and failed no fewer than three times to convince a grand jury to indict Sydney Lori Reid for “assaulting or impeding federal officers” after an FBI agent scraped his hand on a cement wall as he assaulted her when she tried to get video of ICE thugs abducting an immigrant.

“Jury nullification” usually involves a “petit” jury acquitting a defendant at trial, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “in the teeth of both law and facts.”

The jury may unanimously believe that the defendant did some particular thing, and unanimously know that thing is against the law, but also unanimously dismisses the law itself as immoral or badly applied.

The practice pre-dates American jurisprudence, and the constitutional prohibition on “double jeopardy” means that the defendant can’t be re-tried. “Not guilty” is forever.

Well, sort of. Disappointed prosecutors often  find other charges to file, or hand the same facts over to other levels of government for different framing (“he was found not guilty of murder, but now we’re charging him with violating the civil rights of the person he murdered”).

And unfortunately, as noted above, prosecutors can bring the same case before a grand jury (or more than one grand jury) over and over until they finally find enough servile citizens in one place to get the indictment they want … or just “re-charge” the same allegation as a misdemeanor if grand jurors won’t indict for it as a felony.

That seems to me to violate the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on “any person be[ing] subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”

The whole purpose of the jury system, including grand juries, is to constrain the power of government instead of just letting prosecutors and police throw people in the slammer at will.

When a government actor wants to deprive someone of freedom — or even of life itself — that government actor should get one, and only one “bite at the apple.” As soon as a jury (petit or grand) says “no,” it should be the end of the matter.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Camera One: “When you burn the American Flag, you’re not making a statement — you’re inciting chaos. It’s not ‘free speech,’ it’s a provocation. One year in jail, NO exceptions.” That’s US president Donald Trump, talking to reporters about his executive order on flag-burning.

Camera Two: “In cases where the Department of Justice or another executive department or agency (agency) determines that an instance of American Flag desecration may violate an applicable State or local law, such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws, or destruction of property laws, the agency shall refer the matter to the appropriate State or local authority for potential action.” That’s from the actual executive order.

In other words, Trump isn’t REALLY claiming the ability to unilaterally, and formally, repeal the First Amendment, as he sometimes does.

He’s just throwing a public “find something else to charge them with!” tantrum, presumably by way of distracting attention from the ongoing inquiries into his long, close personal association with the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, his embarrassment at still failing to deliver on his “first day in office” promise of ending the war in Ukraine, the bad economic news associated with his idiotic trade and tariff policies, etc.

Dog bites man story? Well, yeah.

But free speech is always worth defending, even when an attack on it is indirect and pretextual.

Yes, free speech, or at least “expressive conduct.”  It’s not just me saying that, it’s the US Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson (1989):

“Johnson’s conviction for flag desecration is inconsistent with the First Amendment. Johnson’s burning of the flag constituted expressive conduct, permitting him to invoke the First Amendment.”

Property rights are also worth defending. If you burn someone else’s flag without permission, that’s theft and destruction of property. If you burn a flag you own, well, you own it and you’re entitled by right to do anything with it you darn well please, so long as you don’t damage other people or other people’s property.

And by “damage other people,” I don’t mean “hurt someone’s feelings.”

According to Trump, “[o]ur great American Flag is the most sacred and cherished symbol of the United States of America, and of American freedom.”

Whether something is “sacred” is a matter of opinion. Whether you “cherish” the flag, or don’t, is entirely up to you to decide.

As for Trump, he routinely — if metaphorically — defecates on everything he claims the flag stands for, then wipes his posterior with it … while also wrapping himself in it. Sorry not sorry if you have trouble un-seeing THAT image. I hope it lives rent-free in your brain for years.

I’m not generally inclined toward flag-burning, if for no other reason than that I have relatives who “cherished” it, considered it “sacred,” and had it draped over their coffins,  folded, and presented to their loved ones when they died.

But Trump’s latest attempt to use the flag as, essentially, kitty litter to cover up his messes, tempts me to a “smoke’em if you got’em” attitude.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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