If Antifa is designated a ‘terrorist’ organization, how could the US fight it?
US President Donald Trump has said the US will designate Antifa as a “terrorist organization.” This is after a week of protests and increasingly violent riots that the administration has blamed on the radical far Left. There has been pushback on Trump’s policy, with experts arguing that current US law generally deals with foreign terrorist organizations. There is no precedent for labeling a domestic terrorist group.
The US is not the only country to wrestle with domestic terrorism. Many countries have experience fighting terrorist groups that are either homegrown or have locals who adhere to their ideology and acts. The UK fought the Irish Republican Army for years, while Spain fought ETA. Peru battled the Shining Path, and India has fought a plethora of terrorist groups.
What most examples have in common when it comes to fighting domestic terrorism is that the groups are rooted in a certain part of the country, either fighting a separatist conflict, or a religious extremist “jihad” or seeking to champion suppressed minorities.
There are more complex examples, such as the Front de liberation du Quebec, a radical-left group that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in Canada’s French-speaking Quebec
province. The Red Army Faction, or Baader-Meinhof, appeared in Germany in the same era.
The Tupamaros, another radical-left group, appeared in Uruguay, and the Red Brigades terrorized Italy. They even killed former prime minister Aldo Moro. There were a plethora of left-leaning groups that have been called insurgent or terrorist across Latin America, including the FARC and Zapatistas.
If we look back at these examples, it is entirely plausible that the US could go after domestic “terrorists” the way other states have.
History shows that democracies have not always succeeded in fighting these groups. For instance, the experiences of Germany or Italy against radical-left terrorism were complex. Most of the groups faded away as their small number of members were hunted down, jailed or died, or even retired and went into exile or became local celebrities. One of the Tupamaros went on to become president of Uruguay despite having been in prison for 12 years.
Generally, groups that are
the West Bank as a rejection of its desire for peace with Israel, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said.
“Continued Israeli talk of annexing Palestinian lands must stop,” he tweeted on Monday. “Any unilateral Israeli move will be a serious setback for the peace process, undermine Palestinian self-determination [and] constitute a rejection of the international [and] Arab consensus towards stability [and] peace.”
David Makovsky, of the US-based Washington Institute of Near East Policy, explained on Twitter the significance of Gargash’s statement.
“This comes from a leading Emirati official – Minister of State – who has been very supportive of close ties between Gulf states and Israel,” wrote Makovsky, who is an author on the Middle East peace process and former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
At the heart of one of the Israeli and American arguments that such a measure should move forward is the belief that the Jewish state can both annex and pursue relations with its Arab neighbors. This includes not only Jordan and Egypt, with whom it has peace deals, but also moderate countries such as the UAE, with whom it hopes to one day have normalized and formal diplomatic ties.
Moderate Arab countries have said they would only recognize diplomatic ties with Israel once a peace deal has been achieved with the Palestinians for a two-state solution based on the pre1967 lines.
The Arab League has twice endorsed the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which would offer Israel such ties with the Arab world in exchange for a negotiated two-state solution based on those lines.
Trump hopes to replace the idea of a two-state state solution on the pre-1967 lines with his own version of a peace deal that does not recognize that boundary and offers the Palestinians a demilitarized state on 70% of the West Bank territory.
On Monday, Gargash clarified that even talk of such annexation was harmful.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to chair a meeting of a “crisis cell” in Ramallah on Tuesday to discuss Israel’s intention to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.
At the meeting, the officials also will discuss the Palestinian response to the Israeli plan and mechanisms for implementing Abbas’s recent decision to renounce all agreements and understandings with Israel and the US, including security cooperation.
The Palestinian leadership was holding intensive discussions on the issue of “annexation,” in addition to ongoing contacts with international and Arab parties to foil the Israeli plan, said Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior PLO and Fatah official.
The “annexation issue is an Israeli-American scheme,” he told the PA’s Voice of Palestine radio station.
Ahmed accused the US administration of “destroying any prospect for peace or the resumption of [Israeli-Palestinian] negotiations” through its plan for Mideast peace, also known as the Deal of the Century.
Israel has already begun implementing the “annexation” plan by removing signs that warn Israeli citizens from entering certain areas in the Jordan Valley and distributing electricity bills to village councils there, he said.
Ahmed urged Palestinians to pursue “peaceful and popular” protests against the Israeli plan.
PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday said his government was working to complete plans regarding the Palestinian leadership’s decision to end all agreements with Israel. He, too, claimed that Israel has already begun implementing “some measures of annexation of Palestinian territories.”
Shtayyeh called on the international community to stand against the Israeli plan and prevent its implementation, warning that it would have “grave consequences on Palestinians and their land and liberation project, as well as regional security.”
Omri Nahmias contributed to this report. •
Soviet missiles from Lebanon, that was the least violent response Israel could make to Syria’s creeping annexation of Lebanon and buildup of the PLO there.”
Then-prime minister Menachem Begin, confined to a wheelchair after falling and breaking his hip, cited in his address to the Knesset an interview with Assad published the day before, in which he said he would not recognize Israel even if the PLO does.
“How many times did we call for the rulers of Syria to open negotiations for peace with us?” Begin said, according to the Knesset’s protocols from that day. “I repeatedly said that I invite President Assad to Jerusalem, or I am willing to go to Damascus to open peace negotiations... The Syrians rejected our outstretched hand with a total rejection of our right to exist as the Jewish State.”
“The Syrians made the lives of tens of thousands of civilians hell... They would open fire from the [Golan] Heights toward our towns... Could anyone think that Israel would ever agree to renew this situation?”
Begin cited Jewish history in the area, saying: “You will not find anyone in our land or outside it a serious person who learned the history of the Land of Israel who will try to deny that, for many generations, the Golan Heights were an inseparable part of the land... After the Great War, known today as WWI, [the victors] decided otherwise and set the border of the Land of Israel about 10 meters from the shore of the Kinneret. This fact only proves the arbitrariness of the colonial rules at the time that passed. This arbitrariness does not obligate us.”
In a later part of the debate, Begin took issue with his opponents calling the move “annexation,” saying he does not use that word and that the bill calls for an application of law.
“The vast majority of the public is in favor of applying the law to the Golan Heights... We express the will of the public, the will of the majority,” Begin said.
Another reason for the timing, Menachem Begin Heritage Center director Herzl Makov explained on Monday, was due to an ongoing crisis between Poland and the Soviet Union. Warsaw Pact defense ministers held a meeting on the same day that the Knesset vote took place in which they discussed suppressing mass protests and strikes associated with the emerging Solidarity Movement.
Begin hoped the Golan Heights vote “would go quickly and quietly while the world was busy with Poland,” Makov said. “He was in the hospital because he broke his hip, and when he left the hospital, he called a cabinet meeting and then went to the Knesset to pass it in three readings in one day.”
Overall, Makov said, the plan worked: “There was [international] opposition and threats, but it passed very quickly.”
As Safire put it: “World reaction had been ritualistic but mild: France’s [president Francois] Mitterrand did not cancel his plans to visit Israel, and even [UK prime minister Peter] Carrington of Arabia kept cool.”
But the reaction from Washington was so harsh that Safire said then-president Ronald Reagan “vented his spleen on our minipower ally,” after his administration suspended a recent strategic cooperation agreement with Israel.
Yehuda Avner, who served as an adviser to five Israeli prime ministers, wrote in The Jerusalem Post in 2008 about how Begin responded to the agreement’s suspension in a meeting with then US ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis.
“What kind of language is this – punishing Israel? Are we a vassal state? Are we a banana republic? Are we 14-year-old boys that have to have knuckles slapped if they misbehave?” Begin asked. “You cannot and will not frighten us with punishments, Mr. Ambassador. Threats will fall on deaf ears... We shall not allow a sword of Damocles to hang over our heads. The people of Israel have lived for 3,700 years without a strategic agreement with America, and it will continue to live without it for another 3,700 years!”
Lewis responded that the US was mainly disappointed that they were not told in advance about the Golan Heights Law, and Begin said: “We did not want to embarrass you by putting you in a predicament vis-a-vis the Arab capitals with which you have ties. Had we told you beforehand what we intended to do, you would have said no. We did not want you to have to say no and then proceed with the legislation, which is what we would have done under all circumstances.”
THIRTY-NINE years later, with Israel considering applying its laws to about 30% of the West Bank, there are many differences, both legal and geopolitical.
One major difference may be the international reaction.
“Now, in theory, the government is acting according to a plan the Americans authorized,” Makov pointed out. “There was no support at all in the world for applying sovereignty to the Golan.”
The world was distracted by the Cold War and the Poles’ struggle for freedom, so while they condemned the move, there were not serious consequences for Israel after it applied its laws to the Golan.
Now, the world may theoretically be very busy with the coronavirus crisis, but leaders from Beijing to Brussels have taken the time to condemn Israel. There is talk in the EU about sanctions against Israel should it take this move. Whether they will follow up with action remains to be seen.
Legally, when Israel won the West Bank and Golan Heights after the Six Day War in 1967, it didn’t consider both to have the same status.
“The Golan wasn’t part of the British Mandate, it belonged to Syria,” Makov explained, making an argument similar to one Begin made in the Knesset. “Judea and Samaria, like Jerusalem, don’t need a law, just a cabinet decision, because the territory is part of the Land of Israel according to international agreements [to establish the British Mandate]. That’s why Begin needed a law in the Knesset.”
Though there is a question of whether West Bank annexation needs a Knesset vote, it will likely go to one, because there is an easier majority for the move there. Another reason is that there will likely be more legal details needed to be worked out, because Israeli law will only apply to parts of the West Bank, which are not contiguous, and because there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli residents, with municipalities and businesses in the West Bank, as opposed to the sparsely populated Golan of 1981.
Domestically, Begin had broad support from the public for applying Israel’s laws to the Golan Heights, and even eight Labor MKs, from the opposition, voted in favor of the move. Today, the move in the West Bank has opponents on the Left and Right, though it seems it would easily get majority support in the Knesset.
When it comes to the Knesset debate, it is unlikely to be completed in one day, but there may be echoes of the kinds of arguments MKs had in 1981. Then Knesset speaker Menachem Savidor reprimanded far-left MK Charlie Biton for calling the opposing side “quislings” and had Hadash MK Tawfik Toubi removed from the plenum for repeated disruptions, including calling a Druse Likud MK a traitor. The Likudnik threw the same accusation back at Toubi.
But when it comes to the ideas behind applying Israeli law to the Golan Heights or parts of the West Bank, Makov posited that the rhetoric then and now are similar: “It’s the same principle of faith in the right of the People of Israel to the entire Land of Israel. The Golan Heights Law has the same ideological roots as what we say today about Judea and Samaria.” •
issue. These countries, according to the report, do not want to endanger ties with Washington or Jerusalem by going to battle over this issue.
On Monday morning, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki slammed theses states for not denying the report about their tacit approval of the plan. In an interview with the Voice of Palestine, he said that the PA reached out through both official and unofficial channels to the countries mentioned in the article for clear denials, but did not receive any response.
The tweet answers Maliki, as well as those like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who use fiery rhetoric in favor of the Palestinian cause to build up their stature in the Muslim world.
TRT World – the Turkish state international news channel broadcasting in English that has been described as “a propaganda arm” of Erdogan’s regime”– chided the moderate Sunni countries in a report on its website 10 days ago headlined “a deafening silence over Israeli annexation from Arab leaders.”
“Even as support for the Palestinian cause has remained high amongst the Arab populations of the Middle East, authoritarian leaders of the region have failed to reflect it,” the report read, taking a jab at Turkey’s Persian Gulf rivals like the UAE.
Gargash’s tweet needs to be seen within the context of this intra-Muslim struggle for dominance. •
An employee in the Prime Minister’s Office tested positive for coronavirus on Monday evening. He underwent epidemiological questioning, which will determine how close he got to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and how others in the PMO should behave.
The Prime Minister’s Office released a statement confirming that an employee has tested positive for the virus, adding that an epidemiological investigation is underway and that once it is complete, the appropriate instructions will be given to whoever came in contact with him.
Netanyahu went into quarantine in early April after being in contact with Housing and Construction Minister Ya’acov Litzman, who was health minister at the time and who tested positive for COVID-19. Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat also entered isolation for the same reason.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Israel Katz and Tourism Minister Asaf Zamir announced an aid plan of NIS 300 million for the Israeli tourism industry on Monday after meeting with its representatives.
“The entire tourism industry is in a severe crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic, and it is our job to act swiftly to bring it back on track and assist in its recovery,” Zamir said.
About 50% of all visitors to hotels are tourists, which means that without them, it is nearly impossible to maintain the everyday operational fees that hotels require. Moreover, the coronavirus pandemic has completely stopped the entry of tourists into Israel since mid-March, and the earliest tourism is expected to resume is mid-July.
“Tourism is an inseparable aspect of Israel’s economy, and an important one at that,” Katz said in a statement. “This step is another important step in recovering Israel’s economy.”
Lahav Harkov contributed to this report. • over the years. It singled out right-wing extremism in the 1990s. Then it looked more deeply at the Earth Liberation Front and environmental terrorism. The FBI in 2002 said these far-left groups had committed 600 criminal acts.
The problem with confronting Antifa is that US law enforcement seems to have a low-level understanding of the group and whether it is well coordinated or how it operates across state lines. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces reportedly has looked into acts of violence in Denver in relation to domestic terrorism. This may not be linked to Antifa though.
How could the US improve its knowledge about groups alleged to be “Antifa” to see if they are committing terrorist acts? It would need to conduct surveillance and infiltrate them and also monitor their communications. It would have to map out their networks and discover any messages or planning that are criminal in nature.
Often when people point to “Antifa,” they find a few social-media accounts online that are likely not even linked to the group and allege that they have found evidence of Antifa incitement. A real investigation would have to analyze who controls social-media accounts that claim to be “Antifa” and map out allege perpetrators.
Videos have surfaced showing people destroying property who are alleged to be the kind of mostly white, affluent, young men and women linked to Antifa. In a country that has vast amounts of security cameras, police would have to analyze riots and determine if, within the chaos, there are organized groups.
Identifying a criminal network, whether the mafia or a terrorist cell, can be done through means that law-enforcement agencies already possess. But this requires setting a target or looking at an incident and determining who to follow and who to conduct surveillance on and then rolling them up into their network and establishing that they have planned some sort of attack. It also requires identifying accounts and funding, including illicit finance, for the group.
It took years to try to understand al-Qaeda in the 1990s, when it was still seen as more of a law-enforcement problem, using FBI resources and then a global war on terrorism. Lack of coordination led to dropping the ball on al-Qaeda plots. Even after 9/11, the arch terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, who the US later killed in a drone strike, was allowed to recruit and radicalize people in the US, such as the Fort Hood shooter.
Given the mixed record of the US in tracking down domestic terrorist types, whether it is going after radical groups in the 1960s and 1970s, targeting the mafia and drug cartels or the KKK and right-wing extremists, militias and the far Left, it is not clear how it would mobilize resources to confront Antifa.
There are likely bureaucratic and institutional objections to Trump’s characterization of Antifa as “terrorists.” There will be pushback from high-level law-enforcement officials who already seem to have been nonplussed by the administration’s dealings with the FBI. How the administration would establish a task force and the resources to even find out if Antifa groups did anything during the last six days of riots is unclear.
The administration likely will use this to talk about fighting terrorism while not actually focusing on mapping Antifa and seeing what it may or may not be up to. Like the European method of dealing with farleft terrorism, which often involved letting the groups age and go away, Antifa may be a passing illusionary, or at least elusive, threat. •