Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

Thanks, gyac.

Chotiner and Sari Bashi, the program director at Human Rights Watch:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-humanitarian-catastrophe-in-gaza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W43C8xhh5E

Sam & Emma interviewing Omar Shakir, Israel & Palestine Director at HRW this morning

looks like David Dayen in there too

Yes, but trying to ask a question of the guest when Sam is in interview mode is a tall order

Why is our political class so invested in suppressing criticism of the apartheid regime? The answer is obvious. Western states support Israel in order to maintain their power at a crucial crossroads of world trade. Challenging that power is impermissible, because any attempt to hold Israel accountable for its crimes is – by definition – an attempt to hold our own states accountable for their involvement in them. Not only are our rulers prepared to let Israel level Gaza; they will even provide it with diplomatic cover and military supplies.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/impending-genocide

As noted, I know numerous IRL people with Israeli flag avatars saying that they stand with Israel no matter what.

Plus I know IlXorz and others who almost uniformly condemn Israel as a brutal apartheid state that continues to use "but the Holocaust" as a laminated carte blanche for every atrocity the IDF wishes to commit. (There is a bit of a strawman in there but that's another topic for another time.)

I have met exactly zero people in between. I know it is not about me and/or my feelz. And I don't love "both sides"ing US politics either. The discourse is polarized and will remain so.

Absolutely no-one has talked about this situation at work, there's been no conversation about it at all, maybe people don't talk about it at work in the US either I don't know.

No offence Tom but that was a post I was hoping could be left behind in the old thread

xp, thank you for that gyac, incredibly moving. I also recommend the NYTimes Daily from today on the situation on the ground in gaza from the perspective of people caught in it, difficult listening:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/podcasts/the-daily/gaza-israel.html

(the ep labeled "Voices from Gaza")

I’m just going to say that I am not in-between on this issue, but that should be obvious by now.

xp I know people are all about bearing witness but I find this stuff incredibly upsetting.

I don’t think it was mentioned but Humza Yousuf who is Scotland’s first minister has family trapped in Gaza. I am linking this video as I find this content extremely upsetting.

Bernard's mother and family went out of their way to tell me that they would be praying for my family in Gaza. We hugged, we cried, and we promised to re-dedicate ourselves to peace and to be unequivocal; no innocent man, woman, or child should pay the price of another's actions. https://t.co/Vv1fz9gXqJ

— Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) October 13, 2023

Also, for context on the Kibbutz Be'eri post and those less familiar with the situation of the past 15-20 years (and again disclaimer I am hardly an expert myself): from Ariel Sharon onward, Israeli policy has been increasingly tilted toward a phony sort of "disengagement." In my mind, it traces back to the building of the West Bank wall although that could be simplistic take. But Netanyahu has turbo-charged this idea, basically that Israel could just kind of ignore the territories (at least other than soldiers stationed in the West Bank) rather than engage in any more ongoing negotiations, that the West Bank could continue to develop economically even without full agency or freedom, and that Gaza would be the kind of counterexample (i.e. life would be worse than in the West Bank) as long as Hamas was there. That terrorism could simply be prevented or minimized through "security," the settlements in the West Bank could continue quietly, and most Israelis would just live their lives and not worry.

Netanyahu is also notoriously corrupt and venal, and he has maintained power through a coalition with right-wing settler and religious parties, giving both more power (which also angers the more secular wings of Israeli politics as Israel gradually takes on additional trappings of theocracy, though it is hardly a full theocracy).

Netanyahu also favors his voters. The kibbutzes near Gaza tend actually to be center-liberal to left. They are not Netanyahu voters. There is a strong sense that Netanyahu "neglected" these areas as the girl expressed in her video, and that is also reflected in the sense that he neglected security near the Gaza border. I genuinely do not know whether Netanyahu "allowed" the attack but I seriously doubt it for reasons I stated in the prior thread. I think this was more hubris and stupidity and myopia.

"I don’t think it was mentioned but Humza Yousuf who is Scotland’s first minister has family trapped in Gaza. I am linking this video as I find this content extremely upsetting."

Mentioned this in the last Israel thread.

You can count on one hand the number of European leaders who have talked about Palestinians as human beings

And they’re all backpedaling now given protests and public pushback.

The President of the University of Pennsylvania has released her 3rd or 4th public statement apologizing for letting a Palestinian writers conference take place last month

The President of the University of Pennsylvania has released her 3rd or 4th public statement apologizing for letting a Palestinian writers conference take place last month

people are so fucking gross

Public statements issued by university presidents are generally tailored to a narrow and specific segment of the public, mainly anyone with influence over university revenues or endowments. They are paid to know how to read that room.

Aimless, we know. No offense.

Well, yeah. When you've got Dick Wolf threatening your donations because you let Palestinians into a building named after him...

a name like Dick Wolf must never be besmirched

Always guarantee the BBC will always be fucked.

The BBC admits that it misled the public about pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the UK. pic.twitter.com/oi4nVf5DN7

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) October 16, 2023

i think about this poem by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish all the time pic.twitter.com/jv5WOOjobb

— هستی hasti (@youarehasti) October 16, 2023

xp - That retraction was also poorly phrased and could be misleading.

This is @GhassanAbuSitt1, a surgeon who is currently saving the lives of Palestinians in a hospital in Gaza. He's just reported that counter terrorism police have showed up at his house in the UK and harrased his family.pic.twitter.com/GOvl5aQLHG https://t.co/bugmmZPAMM

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 16, 2023

That retraction was also poorly phrased and could be misleading.

glad i'm not the only one who thought this

OTM

I know this is old news, but it still blows my mind that the range of Acceptable Opinions on Israel is narrower in the West than it is in Israel.

That Darwish poem is great. Notable that Armenians were just cleansed from Artsakh by Azerbaijan and absolutely no-one in the west cared.

Yup. Armenia could be invaded in the next few weeks btw.

xxp two words: Social Media.

Nuanced discussions are often lacking in the echo chambers of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. The only place where I've seen nuanced discussions about the topic are on platforms that favor more nuanced discussion, such as ILX and (yes, believe it or not) Reddit.

I do wonder if the "outrage economy" of clickbait extremism online and the 24 hours news cycle will finally hit a limit of societal acceptability in western democracies, but I'm not holding my breath, they still make $$$

"We called a pro-palestinian march pro-Hamas. We accept that this was a thing that we said". WTF.

Now here's the weather.

True, I understand in theory how misinformation supposedly works. But I'm finding it extremely challenging to trust some of the news sources being cited and finding myself turning to reddit, and other news sources that I don't normally consult trying to see what areas of dispute exist over even just the factual reporting.

xp

Interestingly enough, a private forum I participate in is completely avoiding talking about this, and honestly it might be for the best.

The ukpolitics sub is overall fanatically pro-occupation and pro-genocide, and they are gradually losing their shit as they observe the public becoming turned off by this stance. Also they are usually witheringly critical of the Tories but have suddenly become staunchly supportive of Sunak and Braverman.

Are you taking about Reddit or something

I have met exactly zero people in between.

To the extent I've talked to people about this, almost everybody I know IRL is "in between" the two positions you describe.

Reddit is a paragon of “nuanced discussion” now. We are truly fucked.

Actually was just thinking about this specific issue in non-Reddit terms which still definitely apply to Reddit. How this conflict is a godsend for the extreme right (and whatever apologists they may have claiming to be “leftist”). Because it so thoroughly divides actual leftists from liberals steeped in realpolitik or whatever they’re on.

a name like Dick Wolf must never be besmirched

There's nothing decent to besmirch. The Law & Order "franchise" is a formulaic, sensationalist pile of shit. All 1,316 episodes of it.

Also pretty depressing how my social media feed was blissfully Ben Shapiro-free until various people decided his thick-headed, one-dimensional take on the Middle East was the voice of reason this past week.

xxp two words: Social Media.

Nuanced discussions are often lacking in the echo chambers of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. The only place where I've seen nuanced discussions about the topic are on platforms that favor more nuanced discussion, such as 4chan and (yes, believe it or not) Stormfront.

We get it. You don't like Reddit.

I don’t like social media illiterates upholding a literal right wing extremist-captured disinformation service as their go-to for balanced discussion.

lol what

Lol hey i wasnt even posting here viborg

Yes, the famously extremist platform, reddit

Extremely milquetoast maybe

i know this is dumb and unhelpful, but to illustrate the kinds of things i’m seeing regular jewish folks share these days: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyZO9L8sM01/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

That’s depressing

that's more hamas talk

I don’t really get what you’re arguing with here. My point was painting the logic as primarily abt revenge ignores the concrete political goals we see ppl express all the time, like sure a 2 state solution but also ppl who have more radical anti colonial goals. I think the citation needed would be for the person insisting this is not the case ..?

tl;dr Said:

really nothing has substantially changed in the discourse since Edward Said wrote this in 1979. pic.twitter.com/Lj6P51G1RW

— michael (@Sisyphusa) June 4, 2024

I think you're both trying to say the similar things but it's hard to tell.

Seemed obvious to me. Gyacs not interested in finding that out though

to my eyes, D-40, there's a very substantial shift between the two posts gyac quoted - "the dissolution of the Israeli state" and "the state free of Israeli rule" are two different things. given the history of the conflict and the discourse around it, and the way the Palestinian cause is often framed as a desire for "the destruction of Israel," people can be very attentive to what may appear to be rhetorical elisions tending in that direction. at least, that's my read on this conversation.

not imputing any particular position to you - just trying to identify where the disconnect may be happening.

I am shocked that "the Palestinians don't want Israeli rule over them or an Israeli state generally" is a controversial opinion......

I know this is cynical and not how it is/how anyone is trying to say it.... but this feels like liberal pandering, where we rob Palestinians of their right to seek justice by assuring ourselves and the rest of the world that they are so kind and meek as to not want recompense or restitution. Hence, denying the Palistinian desire for a state/land free from Israeli rule feels far more offensive and oppressive than the opposite.

Are we just scared to say it because it could slippery-slope it's way down to anti-semitism? Fair enough to be aware of a slippery slope, not fair enough to police correct statements that haven't yet travelled downbeat direction while saying something truthful

*its, down that. I hate this samsung keyboard

I feel like I lost the plot on this argument, but I did see a poll of Palestinians recently (trying to find it, but it was by a Palestinian polling operation) where the option of a "binational state" was fairly unpopular, but "armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine" was popular. You could read that as "the liberation of Palestine" meaning something other than a binational state. OTOH, I think polling is of really limited value in situations like this, as it only gives you a sense of how people are feeling in a brief snapshot in time, based on recent events, influenced by strong emotions/frustration/lack of hope about other options, etc. I think when an option seems within reach, it is more popular than when it does not seem within reach.

And because of this, I try to remind myself to be generous in my interpretation of Palestinian opinion polls, because Israel has the power and the upper hand, and annihilation of Israel isn't actually on the table right now. And I think I posted a quote upthread from a Fatah politician who said that when he was a teenager he wanted "From The River To The Sea," yet the second it looked like a two-state solution was actually possible, he and a lot of others he knew rejoiced. To a certain extent, the same is also true of Israeli opinion polls, but I don't want to "both sides" this, because Israelis get to remain comfortable with or without a political solution, and that makes their position different.

Good posts man alive.

I wonder how the Palestinian citizens of Israel would view this question (also something that polling is not conclusive about)

most of my point of view has been colored by walking home to my college housing apartment circa september 2000 and encountering my temporary roommate (his building was under construction and opening the next month) watching Frontline on PBS. he remarked “I’m supposed to be in this episode!” and sure enough, partway in he is there in tel aviv at a government office waving a land deed at the door, along with dozens of others

it was a time where right of return was a dream people believed in. his family had been refugees and eventually fled, but always held on with their hearts. I wish I’d asked him so many more things about it but it stuck with me. his family members that lived there, some of their peers are still around in gaza and the west bank

I don’t think I realized how brave that was at the time, either

I wonder how the Palestinian citizens of Israel would view this question (also something that polling is not conclusive about)

― symsymsym, Thursday, 6 June 2024 02:05 (one hour ago) link

The hosts of the Third Narrative podcast (Ibrahim and Amira, one is a '48er Palestinian-Israeli citizen and the other a '67er Palestinian-Israeli citizen) and their guests talk about this often, the diversity of views, how each of them view Palestinian-Israeli citizens who came from other regions, their experience of the Nakba, and the cultural stereotypes and myths within their own subgroups. They often don't agree with each other or their guests from episode to episode. It's pretty eye-opening when they have diaspora guests on from the rest of the world.

And because of this, I try to remind myself to be generous in my interpretation of Palestinian opinion polls, because Israel has the power and the upper hand, and annihilation of Israel isn't actually on the table right now. And I think I posted a quote upthread from a Fatah politician who said that when he was a teenager he wanted "From The River To The Sea," yet the second it looked like a two-state solution was actually possible, he and a lot of others he knew rejoiced. To a certain extent, the same is also true of Israeli opinion polls, but I don't want to "both sides" this, because Israelis get to remain comfortable with or without a political solution, and that makes their position different.

Man I made some post months ago where I talked about how ugly peace actually is because of what’s got to be compromised and set aside and I can’t find it. That’s basically the point I’m getting at.

I'm so confused but I thought that D-40's point was similar: that it is unrealistic to attempt to portray the Palestinians as completely devoid of anti-Israeli sentiment or require them to be before acknowledging their right to self-determination, which is what the West (or at least the US) seems to do/expect.

I'll stop now.

My point is that introducing such a point to the thread, when Palestinians have watched tens of thousands of them die in a matter of months is, honestly, suspicious. Are they supposed to turn the other cheek and not feel a way about it?

It’s especially strange as a response to that excellent man alive post which discusses the cycle of hatred and inherent difficulty in resolving the conflict.

Gyac: I just happened to listen to this interview which I think is very much in line with what you’re saying. It’s too short and I wish there was more detail on the book (which, unfortunately, is a $125 academic book). But she touched on Bosnia and Northern Ireland as models and emphasizes that any peace will be “not ideal.” She also says that we need to accept that a solution may not look 100% like the kind of secular liberal democracy we prefer in North America and Europe because of the constituencies that actually exist in Israel and Palestine. She claims to have a different model for a two state solution based on equality and cooperation rather than just separation, but there wasn’t really enough detail on that in the interview (maybe she means more like the “federation” model).

I also feel like I need a better understanding of the distinctions between a binational state and a single secular democratic state, which is a distinction mentions but doesn’t have time to elaborate on.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tel-aviv-review/id913491428?i=1000638935400

Excerpt here. Reading.
https://read.amazon.com/sample/B0BZJCPX9M?f=1&l=en_US&r=d68710e8&rid=SA4G7QQZ74PVH75W814H&sid=136-0770471-4189601&ref_=litb_m

Thanks so much, I’ll check that out & let you know what I think.

The latest atrocity is just relegated to the bottom of the news now.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/06/israel-gaza-war-idf-strike-un-school-al-nuseirat-death-toll-hamas

xxpost I was able to skim some parts of that book, man alive. It sounds like she has in mind a geographic state in which there are two citizenries, who each have the right of movement through the entire space.

It's offered as "non-ideal" solution to get around the problems caused by settlers and to stop people from ending up on the wrong side of a partition.

Seeing tweets saying 200 Palestinians were killed to get to these four hostages

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/08/israel-rescues-four-hostages-in-gaza-taken-from-nova-music-festival

My point is that introducing such a point to the thread, when Palestinians have watched tens of thousands of them die in a matter of months is, honestly, suspicious. Are they supposed to turn the other cheek and not feel a way about it?

― Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Thursday, 6 June 2024 11:52 (three days ago) link

Where did you read I was saying turn the other cheek? I think you’re misinterpreting my post here. I’m suggesting there are political end games here that don’t necessarily involve violent retribution in theory if not practice

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/09/moderate-politician-benny-gantz-resigns-israeli-war-cabinet

At this point the big question in my mind is whether the majority in Israel will ever be capable of accepting peace with a free and autonomous Palestinian state on their border, as opposed to seeking complete Palestinian capitulation, subjugation, or genocide - because Israel is demonstrably the only party to this war who can negotiate an enduring peace through offering meaningful concessions. the Palestinians have nothing left to bargain with but their lives and they have no motivation to sell them cheaply.

Times of London investigation: https://www.thetimes.com/magazines/the-times-magazine/article/israel-hamas-rape-investigation-evidence-october-7-6kzphszsj

Paywalled.

I found an archived version. If you just want to know what evidence there is, albeit this is two months old so possibly out of date, I thought this was a much better and more streamlined piece, free of the endless contextualization and meditation and chin-scratching under which any actual information is buried in these rape thinkpieces. I am tired of reading these long windups in which the already-debunked early, fog-of-war/telephone game type claims are debunked yet again so that we don't get to what actually happened until paragraph 20, at which point we are already primed not to believe them by insinuation that this is all just sexualized fear of Arab men.

https://www.haaretz.com/search-results?q=rape

Mass clearly occurred, some rapes almost certainly occurred, and there probably isn't a Hamas pamphlet that says "rape as many women as possible." Is this satisfactory yet? I certainly don't see any of the claims about abuse of Palestinian women in the LRB piece (I think it was in the other thread) subject to this kind of endless scrutiny.

Sorry, this is the haaretz piece I meant to link
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-18/ty-article-magazine/witnesses-confessions-naked-dead-bodies-all-the-evidence-of-hamas-rape-on-oct-7/0000018e-f114-d92e-abfe-f77f7e3f0000

I was just going to link the archive, fuck the Times (in general, not related to this piece): https://archive.is/NS2g0

Most articles (and discussion itt) touch on but don’t actually focus on a big part of the racialising of Muslim men, which is a trope that no doubt goes back centuries (the uncivilised savages targeting OUR women) and which you still see leaned on heavily today by Serb nationalists (re the Bosnian war) both in reference to the Ottomans and to the events of the war. Certainly Serb and Croat women were raped and assaulted in numbers, but the scale of the Serb camps for Bosnian women were of a different degree of both intent and execution. I think some of the degree of exaggeration deliberately mirror and reference this trope.

However, I refer to my previous points: nothing can justify the actions of the Israeli government. And there are women who have been assaulted, which I don’t think people itt dispute. I just don’t get the degree of constant fascination with this; because there have been so many lies by the Israeli government that have fallen apart. Israeli women still suffered, and it really makes me very uncomfortable that some seem incapable of threading the needle of the truth of what happened and the fact that women are and were suffering. They’re not the majority victims of this conflict, but they don’t have to be for their suffering to be meaningful, and it’s completely unnecessary to repeat the kind of talking points you see on the internet everywhere regarding discussion of rape.

otm

The Israeli army burning down the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, one of the largest in the area. Healthcare has been completely destroyed in Gaza in order to maximise Palestinian deaths. War of elimination. pic.twitter.com/4CzobecOSE

— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) June 15, 2024

In a Single Hour, Israeli Snipers Killed Seven Bystanders at the Jenin Refugee Camp (Haaretz article): https://archive.ph/rHAkE

Jenin has endured plenty of rough days lately, but May 21 outdid them all. In the course of one hour in the morning, snipers killed seven of the city's residents, all of them innocent passersby, even though the streets were quiet and the soldiers had no cause to open fire. They shot from high up in two buildings, called Rabia and A-Rein, just outside the camp, and the dead included two teenagers and the director of the surgical ward at the Jenin Governmental Hospital, who was just getting out of his car in the hospital's parking lot.

It’s like a horror movie that just keeps going.

https://archive.is/6ZFjn

It’s like a horror movie that just keeps going.

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Saturday, June 15, 2024 12:13 PM (one hour ago)

otm. adding to that feeling (for this useless spectator) is how the continual crackdown on recognizing this as a genocide is simultaneous with Israeli soldiers posting enthusiastically about how they're committing genocide: https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-israel-genocide-soldier-rhetoric-instagram

It's so obvious the Israeli army is deliberately killing leaders, professionals, and intellectuals, like a slow motion Katyn Forest massacre.

some more unapologetic genocide confessing: https://www.commondreams.org/news/moshe-feiglin-hitler

Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."

Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel's next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel's Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.

"We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it..." Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."

that said I would invite Feiglin to think about how that worked out for Hitler

That quote is actually shocking even in a continually shocking situation

tbf, I don't know how much political clout Feiglin has other than just being known for saying outrageous things. He served in Knesset for only two years, his weird libertarian party is defunct, and he is not currently in government in any capacity afaik.