Day: May 19, 2021

Background Briefing: May 19, 2021

 

Biden Leans on Netanyahu to End the Latest War With Hamas

We begin with President Biden’s call today to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu in which Biden expected a significant de-escalation by the day’s end and a move toward the path to a ceasefire in the latest war between Israel and Hamas. Joining us is Dov Waxman, Professor and Chair of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles who has been a visiting fellow at Tel Aviv University and Oxford University and is the author of Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know. With Jewish and Palestinian vigilantes battling it out in the streets of Israeli cities, we discuss the delusions that both Hamas and the Israeli right wing settlers have, with the former believing that Israel could become a Palestinian state ruled by Hamas while the latter wants the Palestinian territories to be annexed by Israel and somehow the Palestinians would accept being subjects not citizens.

 

The State Department List of Corrupt Government Officials in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras

Then we speak with Adriana Beltran, the director of the Citizen Security Program at the Washington Office on Latin America who is the co-author of a ground-breaking study, “Hidden Powers”, that documents the rise and impact of clandestine criminal organizations in Guatemala. She joins us to discuss the report released by the State Department on Tuesday which names corrupt government officials in the Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, but does not include the President of Honduras on that list.

 

The Author of America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

Then finally we speak with Elizabeth Hinton, a professor of African American Studies at Yale University and a professor of law at Yale Law School about her new book America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s. She joins us to discuss how LBJ’s War on Poverty was sidelined by his War on Crime which opened the door for militarized policing and how the recommendations in the Kerner Commission have yet to be implemented while militarized police, as we saw in the killing of Andrew Brown, are able to use deadly military-style force in issuing an arrest warrant.