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

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

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.

I have also been finding the discourse polarized online - less so in person - but I think the first position you gave is actually an in-between position. I think the two poles of the discourse are actually "I stand with Israel no matter what", versus "Israel should not exist, and any conversation about Israel needs to go back to the fundamental problem of it existing in the first place."

My position is that Israel is not, at this point, fundamentally different from the US or Canada or Australia or any other country that was created by settling already occupied land. It should not have been created, but now that it exists, we aren't going to wind time backwards and expel the Jews from Israel any more than we're going to expel white people from the US. I do agree that it's a brutal apartheid state that uses the Holocaust as an excuse to commit atrocities. But I would like to be able to have conversations on the left about what to do about this that don't start from the implicit premise that Jews should just clear out, as if Jewish settlement is somehow different and more reversible than the Christian settlement our entire country is built on.

While I'm at it, I would absolutely love to be able to jump into discussions about Israel and Palestine that are not filled with coded and not-so-coded antisemitism from people I fundamentally agree with. I would like it if people didn't have to dismiss the Israeli victims in order to show sympathy for the Palestinian victims, or the other way around. It would also be very nice if the New York Times didn't publish bullshit articles about how Jews in New York have put aside their political differences to come together in their shared grief for Israel, as if to confirm every anti-Semite's conviction that when the chips are down all Jews are Zionists at heart. I would like to stop reading about the Hamas attacks as "pogroms" and "the biggest attacks on Jews since the Holocaust," like, no, dude, Israel is a country, you can't frame attacks on your country as an attack on The Jews. It's a horrific mass murder but it's not a pogrom.

Maybe none of this makes any sense. I don't really feel I know enough about any of this, and maybe I've gotten it all wrong. But it's been a hard week. I don't mean to ask for special sympathy for myself as a Jew, because many people are suffering more here, but do please consider that your Jewish posters are under a lot of stress. Some of us (not me, but people I know) have friends and family in Israel, so we may be dealing with worry for them, or with having family members whose political opinions we find abhorrent, or both. We're having to navigate liberal spaces where the justified anti-Israel sentiment gets mixed in with a lot of stray antisemitism. I know I feel a lot more visible as a minority right now than I'm used to being in the US. And for people like me, who are descended from Holocaust survivors, there's also a particularly helpless horror and grief at seeing Israel do things to the Palestinians that were done to us in the Holocaust. I've never felt any sense of identification with Israel, I don't rationally think that being Jewish connects me to the Israelis, and yet the idea of Jews being the ones to create the ghettos and the death marches is viscerally appalling to me and I can't help feeling an irrational sense of guilt and responsibility. But at the same time I don't want the Holocaust and its after-effects minimized. I think there's a willingness to forget that Israel was founded by people who were terrified and traumatized to an extraordinary level, and much as I oppose Israel and its actions, that's something I can't mentally take out of the empathy equation because it's a trauma that's also embedded in my family.

Sorry about the long post, which kind of went all over the place. I just wanted to convey that I feel like I'm being pulled in a million emotional directions at once even if my politics are pretty aligned with ilx, and that this is likely the case for a lot of Jewish people you know. So just keep this in mind, folks, if you find yourself putting pressure on Jews you know to say the right thing in the right way.

<3

<3

appreciate the post, lily

Yeah great post Lily.

But I would like to be able to have conversations on the left about what to do about this that don't start from the implicit premise that Jews should just clear out, as if Jewish settlement is somehow different and more reversible than the Christian settlement our entire country is built on.

the serious position i encounter most commonly on the left (and support myself) is for a one-state solution - a single, secular democratic state, with civil rights for all, right of return for palestinian refugees and some form of reparations. a two-state solution may be nice in theory but most on the left would tend to agree it's a dead prospect these days - israel has done everything it can with the settlements to make it logistically impossible, and the prospect of a lasting peace from it seems like it would be even less likely. "jews should just clear out" is just more ethnic cleansing, it is not a serious or just position.

That’s an amazing post Lily, thank you for posting.

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.

i think viborg was just calling reddit a nazi site in a particularly oblique way there but i wouldn't blame anyone for taking it at face value

Oh wait, it was a parody. Ignore that. Sorry viborg.

Lily Dale, I understand your point of view and you don’t have to apologise for it, or for having complicated feelings, or anything. I don’t think anyone should be asking anything of their Jewish friends about Israel anyway, like you have to prove your views are the right ones. I would very much like to hope that this is widely understood but I know that it isn’t.

In any case, the situation you describe where people may have family over there is complicated and people are being really short sighted and tbh dismissive when saying it’s happening “over there”. The relationship with the diaspora is pretty unique in many ways, which you’ve mentioned. I don’t have to think that anything Bibi’s government does or did is justified or right to feel sorrow for the hostages or the victims of the massacres, some of whom were literal Holocaust survivors.

xp yeah that’s my fault I’m not very awake

xpost Against the Wakanda-Atlantis accords

Impressment (basically kidnapping) of American sailors by the Royal Navy was a contributing cause for the War of 1812

isn't it blatantly against international law to kidnap people from the ocean?

― encino morricone (majorairbro), Wednesday, October 8, 2025 9:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

No no no, it's Israel, international law doesn't exist for Israel or the US.

the new Sun City

Leonardo DiCaprio is co-financing a luxury hotel to be built in Israel

a million times worse than Sun City imo - where the hell is cancel culture these days? Hopefully DiCaprio's hotel get's cancelled by a shahed drone.

No thoughts on the big beautiful peace deal huh

if it really involves Blair being installed as the grand mufti of Gaza then it is absolutely vile and completely doomed. The only positive I can think of at this moment is that at least it could be a temporary pause of a hideously evil bullets and famine genocide.

having Tony Blair involved in anywhere across the Middle East is like having a convicted serial killer running a victim support group. It's fucking demented.

Yes, Trump and Netanyahu, two guys you can really trust.

calzino otm. Ending the bombing, shooting, and starvation is urgently necessary, but my read of the 20-pt plan is deeply pessimistic. And among other, longer-term concerns Israel obviously does not respect ceasefires, so the shooting will prob continue, the imprisoning obvs will, the occupation will, no change in the WB afaics, etc

Also extremely bad that Israel and even Netanyahu personally will pay no price for carrying out a genocide

If this holds there would be elections in Israel next year?

No Peace Prize for Donnie, that's something at least.

I presume the winner is some ghoulish Western backed stooge who has melt-lib hero status for repeatedly failing to coup Venezuela

LOL Trump you're fine, we like you, but we don't want Tony Blair.

https://news.sky.com/story/hamas-official-thanks-donald-trump-for-peace-deal-but-warns-tony-blair-not-welcome-13448166

The scene in the Knesset with Trump is like watching the inverse of a war crimes tribunal. The leaders and facilitators of the Gaza genocide are congratulating each other and applauding their crimes.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) October 13, 2025

There was an Egyptian plan for Gaza that did not include Tony Blair, but alas it did not get Trump and Netanyahu support

Trump talking about Netanyahu asking him for weapons and Trump giving him them to him and bragging about how he gave them to him . Ugh

https://www.tiktok.com/@cnn/video/7560709437334310157

Jared Kushner praising Israel with nonsensical speech

https://www.tiktok.com/@codepinkalert/video/7560407037306260750

While some killings still happening-

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/12/palestinian-journalist-saleh-aljafarawi-shot-dead-in-gaza-city-clashes

Palestinian sources said clashes were taking place between Hamas security forces and fighters from the Doghmush clan in Sabra on Sunday, although this has not been confirmed by local authorities.

A senior source in Gaza’s Ministry of Interior told Al Jazeera Arabic that the clashes in Gaza City involved “an armed militia affiliated with the [Israeli] occupation”.

The source said security forces imposed a siege on the militia, adding that “militia members” killed displaced people as they were returning from southern Gaza to Gaza City.

Trump talking about Netanyahu asking him for weapons and Trump giving him them to him and bragging about how he gave them to him . Ugh

https://www.tiktok.com/@cnn/video/7560709437334310157🕸

Can’t understand why he won’t get the Peace Prize

I'm very glad hostages on both sides are freed, and honestly surprised there were that many still alive. I'm not even cautiously optimistic that the future will be ok for Palestinians though.

An Israeli official told Haaretz that Hamas would release the bodies of more hostages on Tuesday night, after the group failed to fulfil its obligation to return all deceased hostages within 72 hours, according to the cease-fire agreement. Israel announced it would close the Rafah border crossing and reduce humanitarian aid in response to Hamas returning only four deceased hostages. Israeli officials said the IDF had not identified any significant efforts by Hamas to locate the remaining bodies. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum wrote to U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, saying, "What we feared is now happening before our eyes." Gaza's Health Ministry reported that six Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, with Hamas saying Israel violated the cease-fire. Violent clashes occurred in Gaza City between Hamas members and local militias.

Oh nice, Israel is starving and killing more Palestinian civilians because Hamas hasn't pulled dead bodies out of the rubble quick enough.

During Gaza negotiations, Israel understood it would take time to recover all bodies of deceased captives. A specific mechanism for recovering the bodies was agreed. Now Israel is pretending that didn’t happen so it can violate the deal and cut the agreed aid shipments in half.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) October 14, 2025

they bomb the place with more munitions than was used on Germany in ww2 and then expect corpses to be removed in a very fast timely fashion from the crumbling lunar surface that remains of Gaza. Their only mode is bad faith deception/lies, the whole world knows this now - as too late as it is for the hundreds of thousands murdered by them.

A specific mechanism for recovering the bodies was agreed.

Surely this stuff is, you know, written down somewhere?

It doesn't matter, they will violate any "agreement" they come to, partly because they know there will be no consequences, and partly because any agreement brokered will have been made with only the Israeli side's interests taken into consideration.

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/un-human-rights-occupied-palestinian-territory-1001-palestinians-killed-west-bank-7-october-2023-one-five-are-children-enar

The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is appalled by the killing of 9-year-old Mohammad Bahjat Al-Hallaq who was shot by Israeli security forces (ISF) while playing football in Ar-Rihiya, Hebron, on Thursday, 16 October.

The fatality brings the total number of Palestinian killed by ISF and settlers since 7 October 2023 in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to 1001. One in five of the victims is a child including 206 boys and 7 girls. The number also includes 20 women and at least 7 persons with disabilities. This does not include Palestinians who died in Israeli detention during the same period.

The figure represents 43 per cent of all Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank in the past 20 years.

Breaking🚨: The Israeli army committed a horrific massacre in Gaza after an Israeli tank shelled a vehicle carrying a Palestinian family as they were returning to their home in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, killing 11 people, including 7 children, three women, and the father.

— Abubaker Abed (@AbubakerAbedW) October 17, 2025

I've been trying to express this in a way that doesn't sound hopelessly naive, but I've been wondering what we can hope for, push for, in the short term. I've seen plenty on long term solutions, and understand everyone has to keep on pushing for that, but in the meantime what's the first step? Even on the left the answer to that until now was "ceasefire now", but it's clear Israel has no intentions of respecting that.

Would hope that momentum might be high enough that a further massacre like this might be seen as an international incident and prompt a lot more grassroots action at least. It probably would elsewhere. Actually get foreign governments to respond in a more than nominal way. Consciously wake up to the Israeli narrative being a fiction.

If Italian labour has already had the country at a temporary standstill in response to the Sumud flotilla has that card been played ? Is it one that can only been played once? Is there any likelihood of similar action happening elsewhere. Is that going to provide enough leverage for the situation to permanently change. Or is this just going to linger indefinitely?
Hoping that BDS is going to have some effect but until something like that can get through to US and UK govts etc one can only hope.

I see.

JUST IN - Israel says Hamas committed a serious violation of the ceasefire and, in response, the IDF is currently conducting strikes in Gaza.

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 19, 2025

I'm not sure there is an answer to Daniel's question. Israel is a fascist country where the governing consensus is that genocide should continue or, at least, they should be maintaining and amplifying an apartheid regime while killing, starving, and imprisoning as many Palestinians as they can. I'm not sure there are any tenable short-term goals for non-local activists to strive for in this context.

Just had a friend of mine who was in the Sumud Flotilla speaking at a rally. She said that the ports of Israel are still full of foreign trading vessels, maybe container vessels.
So would be good if that could be heavily reduced. If anybody could leverage widespread boycott it would be great.
I did hear about unions in various places trying to prompt goods for Israel not being handled through departure ports. Or at least armaments so far.
If that could be brought to a halt there might be some hope. But Zionists proliferate

Can only hope people continue to wake up to the Israeli narrative being a fiction. Did seem to be happening more and more

Murdered this week.

We have same upsetting news. Our wonderful vet Mu’ath Abj Rakba tried to go back to his house in Jabalia on Friday and nobody has heard from him since. We are in touch with his wife and parents and siblings. His brother tried to go there, but unfortunately everybody who reaches pic.twitter.com/OGojETpoJF

— Sulala Animal Rescue (@SulalaSociety) October 12, 2025

Update on Israel's forever war on Lebanon: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-gaza-ceasefire-new-normal-hezbollah-190eb8c2ec2d9fedc94c3fadfc1f41e2

Israel ordered the deportation of 32 foreign activists on Wednesday for their support to olive-harvesting Palestinians against settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

A statement by Interior Minister Yariv Levin and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the… pic.twitter.com/ovpnDpHGpy

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) October 22, 2025

Israel kicks out permanently supporters of West Bank olive farmers who have been getting attacked by settlers

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251022-israel-deports-32-foreign-activists-for-supporting-palestinian-farmers-against-settler-violence-in-west-bank/