Last spring, Justice Samuel Alito had drafted an opinion dropping federal charges against many of the January 6 insurrectionists who violently stormed the Capitol. The ruling in Fischer v. United States had not yet been released. Then The New York Times published a startling story: Alito himself had flown the flag of insurrection at his home. (He briefly blamed it on his wife: “She is fond of flying flags.”) Days later, it was reported that he had flown such flags at his vacation home as well.

Awkward! Grounds for recusal? Time to rethink the ruling? Nah. Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts quietly took Alito’s embarrassing name off the opinion and slipped his own name onto it instead.

That is just one of the gobsmacking revelations from a story by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak that appeared in The New York Times last weekend. The lurid news of the day quickly overwhelmed it—the gunman arrested outside Donald Trump’s golf course, the continued smear campaign by former President Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) against the Haitian immigrant community in a small city in Ohio, and more.

Throughout American history, overreach by the Supreme Court has provoked a response.

But we must not let these revelations fade from view. They paint a damning and indelible picture of how John Roberts, for all his vaunted “institutionalism” and piety about calling “balls and strikes,” steered the court to shield Trump from accountability for his misdeeds.

Call me naïve. At the beginning of this year, I thought I had few illusions about the court. I had just published a harshly critical book, The Supermajority. But I felt confident in asserting that the court was a conservative court, a Federalist Society court, even a Republican court—but not a MAGA court. It had not yet shown an appetite for excusing Trump from the reach of the law.

So I, along with most legal observers, assumed that the justices would let Trump’s trial proceed. I thought there was a good chance it would be unanimous, that Roberts would work behind the scenes to ensure that the court spoke with one voice on major issues of presidential power and constitutional law. That’s what other chief justices did, most notably Warren Burger in United States v. Nixon, the Watergate tapes case and the closest analogue to the Trump trial ruling.

After all, we all thought, Trump v. United States was legally easy. Indeed, the possibility of criminal charges was the stated reason why Republican senators did not vote to convict him of the January 6 charges in Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Many of us, too, sensed there was a deal afoot—a unanimous ruling that Trump could not be thrown off the ballot by one state under the 14th Amendment and a principled ruling on the criminal trial.

Behind the velvet curtain of the court, though, there was no deal. Roberts wrote a memo in February—before the court had even announced that it would hear Trump’s appeal—declaring that the court would give the former president a huge win. “I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he wrote. As Kantor and Liptak summarized, “In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.”

They detailed myriad other ways that Roberts steered rulings Trump’s way. He froze out Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The ruling was sloppy and immunized vast areas of potential presidential wrongdoing. The Times noted that NYU Law professor Trevor Morrison had discovered that Roberts selectively edited a quote from a key earlier ruling to help Trump.

The resulting ruling tells future presidents that they can break the law, plainly and flagrantly. As long as they conspire with other government officials, it will be effectively immunized. (Order your White House counsel to pay hush money, as Richard Nixon did, not your campaign manager, and you’ll be off the hook.)

The opinion has widely and correctly been scorned as one of the worst in American history—a rip in the constitutional fabric. The Times’ tick-tock makes clear that this was not a baffling anomaly. Rather, it is the biggest, most visible, and perhaps most consequential in a series of actions taken by a corrupted court. It follows Citizens United, Shelby County, and other rulings that systematically undid key democratic protections.

Throughout American history, overreach by the Supreme Court has provoked a response. Dred Scott did in the 1850s—it helped lead to a civil war. Reactionary rulings such as Lochner did in the early 20th century. Trump v. United States should join with the Dobbs abortion rights ruling to spur a similar backlash today.

We’ve argued for an 18-year term limit for Supreme Court justices, because nobody should have too much public power for too long. And we’ve urged a binding code of ethics, which would have forced Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas to step out of these key cases. These reforms are widely popular. Most recently, a Fox News poll this summer found that 78% support term limits.

The court is a broken institution. It’s time to fix it. The latest revelations remind us that otherwise, the fix is in.

There are now 801 billionaires based in the United States with a combined wealth totaling $6.22 trillion, according to an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of the Forbes Real Time Billionaire List.

The total number of billionaires is down 11 people as of September 13, 2024 from April when Forbes published their 38th annual World’s Billionaire List. Despite that decline in the number of billionaires, the total wealth of the exclusive nine-figure-club grew by $500 billion over the last five months.

The top five billionaires and by individual wealth are:

1. Elon Musk of Tesla/X and SpaceX with $252.5 billion
2. Jeff Bezos of Amazon with $204.8 billion
3. Larry Ellison of Oracle fame moving into number three spot with $197 billion, surpassing Marc Zuckerberg
4. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta with $182 billion
5. Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway with $141 billion

There are now a total of 12 billionaires with more than $100 billion each. For context, the first person to cross the $100 billion personal wealth threshold—Jeff Bezos—only did so in 2018.

When Forbes started tracking wealth in 1982 there were only 13 billionaires on the Forbes 400 list and it took $75 million to join the list. Today, a person needs have a minimum of $3.2 billion to make the cut.

Among the wealthiest families on the Forbes list:

• Walton: Six members of the Walton Family have a combined wealth of $349.3 billion
• Mars: Six members of Mars family have combined wealth of $142.7 billion
• Koch: Two members of Koch family have a combined wealth of $141.6 billion

Many top billionaires have seen their wealth surge since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On March 18, 2020, Elon Musk had wealth valued just under $25 billion. By the start of the next year he became the richest person in the world with a net worth of $185 billion.

After a decline of his assets from the acquisition of Twitter (now X) and falling Tesla valuations, Musk’s wealth has almost reached its 2022 peak with $252 billion.

Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise from $113 billion on March 18, 2020 to $204 billion in the September 13, 2024 survey.

Three Walton family members—Jim, Alice, and Rob—saw their combined assets increase from $161.1 billion on March 18, 2020 to $286 billion this September.

In late 2020, a report titled Saving Gaza Begins With Its Water stated:

The water crisis in Gaza is a problem of daunting proportions, with grave implications for the more than 2 million inhabitants of the Palestinian enclave... The Coastal Aquifer from which Gaza pumps water is diminishing; but more dangerously, it is experiencing significant deterioration from seawater and highly saline groundwater intrusion, as well as sewage pollution.

Fast forward to 2024: Gaza’s water scarcity pollution is severely worsened by its forced closure of water and wastewater treatment plants due to Israel’s blockade of fuel to Gaza to run the plants in its 2023-2024 war.

The authors of Saving Gaza Begins With Its Water end on a cautiously positive note. “The crisis of water in Gaza also holds promise,” they wrote, ...“because Gaza’s water problem will require cooperation between antagonists, to their mutual benefit. There is no solution that can be achieved by Gaza or Israel in isolation” because one of Israel’s water sources is the same Coastal Aquifer.

But this affirmative conclusion presumes that the people of Gaza have not been annihilated by Israeli bombing, inflicting a daily death rate greater than any major war of the 21st century, combined with the induced famine across all of Gaza by Israel’s blockades of food aid, and rampant disease including the recent polio virus. At the current rate of killing and death, 15-20% of Gaza’s people could be dead by the end of the year, a United Nations expert stated and almost entirely exterminated within a few years.

What can be done? Nothing without Israel and the United States agreeing to end their totalistic war.

Prior to the current war, Gaza had more than 150 small-scale desalination plants to produce potable water. By mid-October 2023, Israeli missile attacks destroyed the drinking water desalination plants; and its almost total blockade cut off fuel to run the other water treatment plants, as well as metal parts to repair them. Gaza’s drinking water production capacity dropped to just 5% of typical levels.

With no power to run Gaza’s five wastewater treatment plants, sewage has flowed freely through the streets, causing a record increase in cases of diarrheal illnesses. By December 2023, cases of diarrhea among children under five in Gaza jumped 2,000%, because of which children under five are over 20 times more likely to die from the illness than from Israeli military violence.

More than three-quarters of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are internally displaced to southern Gaza and, even there, continually forced to re-locate because of Israeli bombing. In some of the most overcrowded shelters in southern Gaza, there is one toilet per 600 internally displaced persons and little to no running water.

Every human being in Gaza suffers soul-shattering existence from this war variably described as genocide, ecocide, domicide (destruction of homes), and scholasticide (destruction of schools and universities). Indeed, two American trauma surgeons, who have volunteered for surgical missions in crisis situations all over the world, stated that they have never seen cruelty like Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Women and their children are its gravest victims. Daily in Gaza children are having one of both legs amputated without anesthesia. More than 25,000 children have lost one or both parents.

Recently members of the Uncommitted National Movement spoke at a press conference during the Democratic National Convention and accused the Biden administration of “hypocritical action” in saying they are working on cease-fire while providing the weapons massacring Palestinians in Gazan. At the same conference, American doctors who had volunteered in Gaza pleaded with Kamala Harris to “embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.” The doctors attested that the killing and suffering is on “an entirely unprecedented scale.” None has seen anything “so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane.”

Impacts of War on Women

As of early 2024, The U.N. estimated that some 700,000 women and girls in Gaza experience menstrual cycles but lack adequate access to basic hygiene products like pads, toilet paper, soap, running water, and toilets because of the war nor privacy to manage menstrual hygiene. These conditions put women and girls in Gaza at grave risk of reproductive and urinary tract infections. The challenge of trying to find an available bathroom is especially difficult for pregnant women who have pressure on their bladder, and women who have just given birth and are going through weeks of postpartum bleeding.

By early March 2024 Relief/Web reported: There has been a steep rise in malnutrition among the more than 155,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women. Every day about 180 women give birth in unimaginable conditions, no longer having health-care facilities to deliver their babies. Many mothers who have given birth since the beginning of Israel’s war are too malnourished to produce milk for their newborns.

Although mothers and adult women are tasked with sourcing food, they are the ones who eat last, less, and least.

What can be done? Nothing without Israel and the United States agreeing to end their totalistic war. Dima Nazzal, a systems engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that while rebuilding Gaza is “a daunting prospect,” with “cooperation, coordination, and courage, it is not unachievable.” But first the war must be ended.

Israel has sought security through militaristic means since its founding: expelling 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 (the Nakba—“catastrophe” in Arabic), claiming Palestinian land by force, enforcing apartheid conditions for Palestinians in Israel, establishing colonizing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and now omnicide in Gaza. The only way for Israel to live in security is through a political compromise, in the spirit of Isaiah 59:8, that guarantees the human and political rights of the Palestinians who have lived on the land of Palestine for thousands of years. Without justice—the U.S. ending its criminal trafficking of weapons to Israel, a permanent cease-fire, the U.N. recognizing Palestine as a state and then organizing the rebuilding of Gaza with supportive countries—there can be no peace.

Pat Hynes gave a talk on the plight of women in water-starved Gaza during a conference on Memorial Day weekend sponsored by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom entitled Water on the Frontlines for Peace. This piece is a much abbreviated and updated version.

I stand, mesmerized by the landscape. Distant mountains are cloaked in every shade of green, and a clear, still lake reflects the sky. The deep amber sunset lights the golden script carved into the wooden sign: Kaeng Krachan National Park.

Nearby, a young couple captures the moment in a selfie—a postcard from paradise, one of Thailand’s World Heritage Sites.

“Not there... there!” Kai, our guide, tugs my arm, and points to a spot by the river. “That’s where they found part of Billy’s body.” And, just like that, my reverie breaks.

For many Indigenous people, their lands declared as World Heritage Sites morph into alien territories, belonging not to them, but to “all the peoples of the world”—especially the fee-paying tourists.

Pholachi “Billy” Rakchongcharoen was an Indigenous Karen activist. He was collecting honey when he was arrested by park officials and vanished. Five years later, pieces of his skull surfaced in a drum under a bridge—right here in paradise. Billy was just 30, about the same age as those young selfie takers.

Later, we meet Menor, his widow. Her eyes heavy with sorrow, she says, “Why do we need a World Heritage Site on our ancestral land? It never gives the community any benefits. It just takes things away from us.”

This landscape, hailed by UNESCO for its “outstanding value to all humanity,” is home to a tragedy. And the Karen people, its true custodians, are its victims. The Karen practice rotational agriculture—where different plots of land are used over successive years and then left fallow for up to a decade. Essentially, they prepare a new area for planting by using controlled fires, which enrich the soil and enhance biodiversity. All of this is accompanied by rituals and ceremonies to honor the Earth, their food provider. Since colonial times, conservationists, blind to this harmony, branded it pejoratively as “slash and burn.”

In 1996, the Karen of Bang Kloi village were evicted by the government under the guise of protecting the park. They resisted. Billy was one of them—until his voice was silenced.

Inspired by Billy and his grandfather, the indomitable Ko-ee who died aged 107 after a lifetime of resistance, the Karen of Bang Kloi reclaimed their territory in 2020, only to be violently expelled again. Despite this grim history, despite the pleas of three United Nations special rapporteurs to address human rights concerns before the designation, UNESCO assigned the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex (KKFC) World Heritage Site (WHS) status in 2021. The accolade was in the category “natural criteria,” defined as a “significant natural habitat for in-situ conservation of biological diversity.”

But despite the beliefs of UNESCO experts and tourists, the Kaeng Krachan habitat did not occur naturally. The landscape was sculpted and nurtured by Indigenous people for generations. As one Karen man pointed out, “The WHS staff only see the forest and animals; they don’t see the people. They don’t see us. It’s a kind of blindness.”

Another Karen voice added bluntly, “KKFC becoming a WHS is a serious violation of human rights.”

Since its designation as a World Heritage Site there’s been an increase in harassment and arrests, and a tightening of restrictions. Karen people said that the World Heritage status meant that attempts to force everyone out of the forest “have got worse”.

This isn’t just a Thai tragedy. It’s a global one. Human rights investigations have documented torture, rape, and killings of Indigenous people in “natural” World Heritage Sites—especially in Asia and Africa. These sites, celebrated for their beauty and ecological importance, become war zones for the locals. Governments and NGOs, armed with UNESCO’s blessing, push the Indigenous people out and blame them for the degradation of what they have long protected.

Countries crave UNESCO’s nod. It brings prestige, tourists, funding. But for those evicted, it’s a nightmare.

In my travels with Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous peoples’ rights, I’ve seen these “wonders of the world.” The Serengeti’s vast plains, Odzala’s shadowy Congo forests, India’s tiger reserves, Yosemite’s grandeur—all share a dark secret. The pristine wilderness tourists adore is soaked with Indigenous blood, sweat, and tears. These landscapes were their homes, sustained by their knowledge and practices until outsiders decided they were “wild nature,” needing protection from the very people who understood them best. It’s colonialism masquerading as conservation.

For many Indigenous people, their lands declared as World Heritage Sites morph into alien territories, belonging not to them, but to “all the peoples of the world”—especially the fee-paying tourists.

We need to put this conservation model on trial, just as we did with other unjust, outdated, and harmful ideas—racial segregation, gender inequality. The true protectors of our shared natural heritage are Indigenous peoples. Their ways of life are sustainable, rooted in providing for future generations. For them, nature is home, the foundation of life and survival. They are the best stewards of the natural world. As one group of Karen declared, defiant despite the years of oppression: “If we don’t fight today, there will be no future for our children.”

UNESCO must abandon its support for a conservation model that annihilates Indigenous peoples. It should begin by de-listing sites where human rights abuses occur. Only then can it begin to decolonize itself—and genuinely protect our planet.

Today, Marguerite Casey Foundation welcomes the 2024 Freedom Scholar cohort. This year we are celebrating visionary scholar-activists at the forefront of transformative social change as well as a total of $9.5 million in awards to 38 scholars over the last five years—a powerful investment in ideas that accompany movements for collective well-being and social change.

Our Freedom Scholar awards, launched in 2020, are a testament to the critical role scholarship plays in supporting social movements. By awarding $250,000 in unrestricted funds to each scholar, Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) is supporting research, writing, and teaching that bolsters our collective belief in a better, more just world.

Freedom Scholars: Bridging Scholarship and Social Movements

The Freedom Scholar awards are more than simply an acknowledgment of academic excellence—they are part of MCF’s mission to build a country where our government prioritizes the needs of excluded and underrepresented people. These scholars play a vital role in bridging the gap between academic theory and grassroots organizing.

Consider the recent surge in student-led protests on campuses across the U.S. From Princeton to UCLA, Freedom Scholars have been key supporters of student-led efforts to demand divestment and win a cease-fire, bringing with them years of research and strategic thinking to help activists push for transformative demands and envision systemic change. Their work is fundamental to contesting power and developing new models of governance that serve the many, rather than the few.

The 2024 Freedom Scholars continue this tradition. These are no ordinary academics—they are change-makers who understand that the work of liberation doesn’t begin and end in the classroom.

Meet the 2024 Cohort: Visionaries for Justice and Equity

This year’s Freedom Scholar cohort reflects extensive expertise across disciplines and is united by their collective commitment to a more just world.

Take Natalie Diaz, for example, a poet and professor at Arizona State University whose work examines the intersections of Indigeneity, language, and power. She invites us to rethink how language can either perpetuate violence or reclaim histories. In a time when Indigenous languages and cultures are under threat, Diaz’s scholarship is particularly urgent, illuminating the vital role language plays in advancing collective liberation.

Then there’s Dr. Daniel Martinez HoSang from Yale University, whose research unpacks the politics of multicultural right-wing extremism. Dr. HoSang’s work sharpens our understanding of how racist dynamics operate within seemingly inclusive frameworks, highlighting the deep-rooted systems of inequality that continue to shape society. His work is not just a critique but a call to action, urging movements to confront these structures wherever we see them.

The Freedom Scholars of 2024 are not just theorists—they are strategists, organizers, and visionaries.

Dr. Nadine Naber from the University of Illinois Chicago brings to the cohort a community-engaged scholarship that draws important connections between global struggles for liberation, with a particular focus on Palestinian freedom. Dr. Naber’s work in solidarity movements teaches us the power of linking our struggles—showing that the fight for justice is always interconnected, whether it’s in Chicago, Gaza, or beyond.

Finally, Dr. K. Sabeel Rahman, a legal scholar at Cornell Law School, has been instrumental in helping policymakers and organizers engage more critically with the concept of public goods. His research explores how we must rethink public goods—such as healthcare, education, and housing—not as commodities, but as essential components of a thriving, equitable society. By leveraging legal theory for practical policy solutions, Dr. Sabeel’s work helps movements craft a vision for governance that prioritizes the well-being of our communities over corporate profits.

A Commitment to Transformative Change

The Freedom Scholars of 2024 are not just theorists—they are strategists, organizers, and visionaries. Their work represents the bold ideas and imaginative thinking essential for any social movement to succeed. And it’s precisely this kind of visionary work that Marguerite Casey Foundation is committed to supporting.

What sets the Freedom Scholar awards apart is the financial freedom they afford recipients. The $250,000 prize comes with no strings attached, allowing scholars to invest in the work that matters most to them. Some have used MCF funding to launch nonprofit organizations, while others focus on building movement infrastructure by supporting existing nonprofits, publishing movement-oriented literature, or opening retreat houses where organizers can strategize and recharge. This flexibility ensures that the scholars can meet their needs and goals in real time, without the bureaucratic constraints that often accompany traditional funding models for academics.

Looking Ahead: Building a Future of Justice and Liberation

As we celebrate the contributions of the 2024 Freedom Scholars, it’s clear that their work will have a lasting impact not just in academia, but in the communities they serve. Their scholarship is grounded in real-world struggles and solutions, and their commitment to justice is unwavering. They are the thinkers and doers helping to fuel the next generation of liberation movements.

I look forward to seeing the ongoing impact of the 2024 cohort and am proud that MCF remains steadfast in its commitment to amplifying transformative scholarship for meaningful change.

Together, with these visionary scholars, we are building a future where equity, justice, and liberation are not just ideals but lived realities for all.

At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: The Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a “rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel in return for investment and trade opportunities there and access to American weaponry and a U.S. security umbrella. Not only did Washington, however, fail to incorporate Saudi Arabia into that framework, but it has also faced increasing difficulty keeping the accords themselves in place given increasing anger and revulsion in the region over the high (and still ongoing) civilian death toll in Gaza. Typically, just the docking of an Israeli ship at the Moroccan port of Tangier this summer set off popular protests that spread to dozens of cities in that country. And that was just a taste of what could be coming.

Breathtaking Hypocrisy

Washington’s efforts in the Middle East have been profoundly undermined by its breathtaking hypocrisy. After all, the Biden team has gone blue in the face decrying the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine and its violations of international humanitarian law in killing so many innocent civilians there. In contrast, the administration let the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completely disregard international law when it comes to its treatment of the Palestinians. This summer, the International Court of Justice ruled that the entire Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal in international law and, in response, the U.S. and Israel both thumbed their noses at the finding. In part as a response to Washington’s Israeli policy, no country in the Middle East and very few nations in the Global South have joined in its attempt to ostracize Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Worse yet for the Biden administration, the most significant divide in the Arab world between secular nationalist governments and those that favor forms of political Islam has begun to heal in the face of the perceived Israeli threat. Turkey and Egypt, daggers long drawn over their differing views of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist movement that briefly came to power in Cairo in 2012-2013, have begun repairing their relationship, specifically citing the menace posed by Israeli expansionism.

The persistence of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in pressing Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security partner, to recognize Israel at a moment when the Arab public is boiling with anger over what they see as a campaign of genocide in Gaza, is the closest thing since the Trump administration to pure idiocracy. Washington’s pressure on Riyadh elicited from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman the pitiful plea that he fears being assassinated were he to normalize relations with Tel Aviv now. And consider that ironic given his own past role in ordering the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In short, the ongoing inside-the-Beltway ambition to secure further Arab recognition of Israel amid the annihilation of Gaza has America’s security partners wondering if Washington is trying to get them killed—anything but a promising basis for a long-term alliance.

Global Delegitimization

The science-fiction-style nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East is starkly revealed when you consider the position of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel. In early September, its foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned that any attempt by the Israeli military or its squatter-settlers to expel Indigenous West Bank Palestinians to Jordan would be considered an “act of war.” While such anxieties might once have seemed overblown, the recent stunning (and stunningly destructive) Israeli military campaign on the Palestinian West Bank, including bombings of populated areas by fighter jets, has already begun to resemble the campaign in Gaza in its tactics. And keep in mind that, as August ended, Foreign Minister Israel Katz even urged the Israeli army to compel Palestinians to engage in a “voluntary evacuation” of the northern West Bank.

Not only is the expulsion of Palestinians from there now the stated policy of cabinet members like Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir; it’s the preference of 65% of Israelis polled. And mind you, when Israel and Jordan begin talking war you know something serious is going on, since the last time those two countries actively fought was in the 1973 October War during the administration of President Richard Nixon.

In short, Netanyahu and his extremist companions are in the process of undoing all the diplomatic progress their country achieved in the past half-century. Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic Shin Bet intelligence agency, warned in August that the brutal policies the extremists in the government were pursuing are “a stain on Judaism” and will lead to “global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies.”

The ligaments of American influence in the Middle East are now dissolving before our very eyes.

Turkey, a NATO ally with which the U.S. has mutual defense obligations, has become vociferous in its discontent with President Biden’s Middle Eastern policy. Although Turkey recognized Israel in 1949, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the pro-Islam Justice and Development Party interactions had grown rocky even before the Gaza nightmare. Still, until then their trade and military ties had survived occasional shouting matches between their politicians. The Gaza genocide, however, has changed all that. Erdogan even compared Netanyahu to Hitler, and then went further still, claiming that, in the Rafah offensive in southern Gaza in May, “Netanyahu has reached a level with his genocidal methods that would make Hitler jealous.”

Worse yet, the Turkish president, referred to by friend and foe as the “sultan” because of his vast power, has now gone beyond angry words. Since last October, he’s used Turkey’s position in NATO to prohibit that organization from cooperating in any way with Israel on the grounds that it’s violating the NATO principle that harm to civilians in war must be carefully minimized. The Justice and Development Party leader also imposed an economic boycott on Israel, interrupting bilateral trade that had reached $7 billion a year and sending the price of fruits and vegetables in Israel soaring, while leading to a shortage of automobiles in the Israeli market.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party represents the country’s small towns and rural areas and its Muslim businesses and entrepreneurs, constituencies that care deeply about the fate of Muslim Palestinians in Gaza. And while Erdogan’s high dudgeon has undoubtedly been sincere, he’s also pleasing his party’s stalwarts in the face of an increasing domestic challenge from the secular Republican People’s Party. In addition, he’s long played to a larger Arab public, which is apoplectic over the unending carnage in Gaza.

The Alliance of Muslim Countries

Although it was undoubtedly mere bluster, Erdogan even threatened a direct intervention on behalf of the beleaguered Palestinians. In early August, he said, “Just as we intervened in Karabakh [disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia], just as we intervened in Libya, we will do the same to them.” In early September, the Turkish president called for an Islamic alliance in the region to counter what he characterized as Israeli expansionism:

Yesterday, one of our own children, [Turkish-American human rights advocate] Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, was vilely slaughtered [on the West Bank]. Israel will not stop in Gaza. After occupying Ramallah [the de facto capital of that territory], they will look around elsewhere. They’ll fix their eyes on our homeland. They openly proclaim it with a map. We say Hamas is resisting for the Muslims. Standing against Israel’s state terror is an issue of importance to the nation and the country. Islamic countries must wake up as soon as possible and increase their cooperation. The only step that can be taken against Israel’s genocide is the alliance of Muslim countries.

In fact, the present nightmare in Gaza and the West Bank may indeed be changing political relationships in the region. After all, the Turkish president pointed to his rapprochement with Egypt as a building block in a new security edifice he envisions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made his first visit to Ankara on September 4 (following a February Erdogan trip to Cairo). And those visits represented the end of a more than decade-long cold war in the Sunni Muslim world over al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against elected Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, whom Erdogan had backed.

Despite its apparent embrace of democratic norms in 2012-2013, some Middle Eastern rulers charged the Brotherhood with having covert autocratic ambitions throughout the region and sought to crush it. For the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood and other forms of Sunni political Islam have been roundly defeated in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and the Persian Gulf region. Erdogan, a pragmatist despite his support for the Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, had been in the process of getting his country the best possible deal, given such a regional defeat, even before the Israelis struck Gaza.

Netanyahu’s Forever War in Gaza

For his part, Egypt’s al-Sisi is eager for greater leverage against Netanyahu’s apparent plan for a forever war in Gaza. After all, the Gaza campaign has already inflicted substantial damage on Egypt’s economy, since Yemen’s Houthis have supported the Gazans with attacks on container ships and oil tankers in the Red Sea. That has, in turn, diverted traffic away from it and from the Suez Canal, whose tolls normally earn significant foreign exchange for Egypt. In the first half of 2024, however, it took in only half the canal receipts of the previous year. Although tourism has held up reasonably well, any widening of the war could devastate that industry, too.

Egyptians are also reportedly furious over Netanyahu’s occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of the city of Rafah in Gaza and his blithe disregard of Cairo’s prerogatives under the Camp David agreement to patrol that corridor. The al-Sisi government, which, along with Qatar’s rulers and the Biden administration, has been heavily involved in hosting (so far fruitless) peace negotiations between Hamas and Israel, seems at the end of its tether, increasingly angered at the way the Israeli prime minister has constantly tacked new conditions onto any agreements being discussed, causing the talks to fail.

That things have come to such a pass in the Middle East is distinctly the fault of the Biden administration and its position—or lack of one—on Israel’s nightmare in Gaza (and now the West Bank, too).

For months, Cairo has also been seething over Netanyahu’s charge that Egypt allowed tunnels to be built under that corridor to supply Hamas with weaponry, insisting that the Egyptian army had diligently destroyed 1,500 such tunnels. Egypt’s position was given support recently by Nadav Argaman, a former head of Shin Bet, who said, “There is no connection between the weaponry found in Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor.” Of Netanyahu, he added, “He knows very well that no smuggling takes place over the Philadelphi Corridor. So, we are now relegated to living with this imaginary figment.”

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Al-Sisi insisted that he wanted to work with Erdogan to address “the humanitarian tragedy that our Palestinian brothers in Gaza are facing in an unprecedented disaster that has been going on for nearly a year.” He underscored that there was no daylight between Egypt and Turkey “regarding the demand for an immediate cease-fire, the rejection of the current Israeli escalation in the West Bank, and the call to start down a path that achieves the aspirations of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” He also pointed out that such positions are in accord with U.N. Security Council resolutions and pledged to work with Turkey to ensure that humanitarian aid was delivered to Gaza despite “the ongoing obstacles imposed by Israel.”

To sum up, the ligaments of American influence in the Middle East are now dissolving before our very eyes. Washington’s closest allies, like the Jordanian and Saudi royal families, are terrified that Biden’s bear hug of Netanyahu’s war crimes and the fury of their own people could, in the end, destabilize their rule. Countries that, not so long ago, had correct, if not warm, relations with Israel like Egypt and Turkey are increasingly denouncing that country and its policies. And the alliance of U.S. partners in the region with Israel against Iran that Washington has long worked for seems to be coming apart at the seams. Countries like Egypt and Turkey are instead exploring the possibility of forming a regional Sunni Muslim alliance against Netanyahu’s geopolitics of Jewish power that might, in the end, actually reduce tensions with Tehran.

That things have come to such a pass in the Middle East is distinctly the fault of the Biden administration and its position—or lack of one—on Israel’s nightmare in Gaza (and now the West Bank, too). Today, all too sadly, that administration is wearing the same kind of blinkers regarding the war in Gaza that President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top officials once sported when it came to the Vietnam War.