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

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

Lily, that was an amazing post. It resonates with me because (in the words of a progressive friend with hawkish family members) ‘your Jewish friends are not OK right now’ and I’m trying to make sure I say that I love them and acknowledge their feelings, whatever I may think about the actions of our/their elected officials, lobby groups and militaries. Same goes for friends who have connections to Palestinians (and those who advocate for them).

I’m really valuing ILX right now as a place where we can discuss the current situation with the candour, respect and seriousness it requires.

xp i didn't even notice it was a parody actually lol

good posts Lily, gyac and suzy

xp it's not very good parody, that's why

Wow, Reddit is not a nazi site, and comparing it to a few is abhorrently combative and reductive. Reddit, like fewer and fewer places online, has a variety of views and communities, but honestly even reading some of the threads posted in subs as large as /r/worldnews have been enlightening, empathetic, and nuanced in ways I haven't seen in places like Instagram and especially X, the latter being much closer to an actual nazi site these days.

I'm also Jewish, and battling complicated feelings about this as well (excellent post, Lily! Thank you for sharing), though fortunately I don't have family in Israel. I've already come out and shared this background in the Noname thread when I was confronted with the reality that one of my favorite rappers allowed some blatantly antisemitic raps on her new record. I also support a secular, one state solution as ufo describes above. I am really not looking forward to the heightened Islamophobia and antisemitism that will inevitably surge from all of this. The general upward trend of hate coupled with these events of the last two weeks have me feeling very concerned for a lot of people, both near and far.

xp ok I was wrong, we didn't get it.

Good post octobeard.

Yes I found that too re: reddit. There are people posting from Gaza and Israel in the r/worldnews daily megathreads.

Drawing comparisons between things that are not Nazis and actual Nazis violates the rules of several subreddits, including, I believe, the one devoted to discussing the Israel-Palestine situation.

One could say such comparisons demonstrates a refusal to engage in the actual conversation being had while also stoking the anger, prejudice, hatred, and vengeful thinking, behind the actions causing the cycle of violence and retribution in the first place. If people doing this are also willing to engage in the actual conversations being had, then it shouldn't matter, but sadly I find this is often not the case.

thx for the clarification

Just wonder why some people were unmoved before Rafah, despite it being the same scorched earth tactics they have used all along. Why were you unmoved by dead kids in Gaza City or Khan Younis?

― Are you addicted to struggling with your horse? (Boring, Maryland), Monday, May 27, 2024 10:11 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Like what’s different now?

― Are you addicted to struggling with your horse? (Boring, Maryland), Monday, May 27, 2024 10:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think it's underestimated how much the PR war aspects of this are like ... indirectly related to the facts on the ground

that one particular hospital being bombed was met with a totally different PR reaction than all the other hospitals that get bombed

that Rafah became a "Tragic accident"

these all feel like reactions to *the mass behavior of people on social media* and the entire PR crisis aspect of this is constantly being managed to prevent the kind of spikes that led to IE 2020 george floyd protests...that the goal is to disrupt righteous anger from the public

in other words, the question isn't 'why are people more mad now' its more like ... there was an 'organic' spike of anger now and attempts are made to defuse the potency of that mass anger ... that these organic spikes come from real events but are 'managed' into having less of an effect and so it seems weird because the spikes dont accomplish what they should and instead lead to this feeling of 'why is everyone a little madder than they were last time'. that they've done an alarmingly good job of preventing what should be tipping-point moments where public sentiment overwhelms

I asked my mother, this morning, the same question— she replied that she felt that Israel had exhausted its number of “oops, that was a mistake” excuses, that there was no mistaking the intentionality, any more

I think its actually still somewhat effective—just less so

trying not to let my filter bubble convince me I know what everyone's thinking

I somehow chanced across this recent doc investigating IDF and settler actions in the West Bank over the last few months and it's fucking incredible

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001ytzd/the-other-war

This journalist just heads into refugee camps, settlements, meets up with militants in back alleys. Astonishing stuff, I can't believe it's not being talked about more.

Sorry no link for non-UK people

Ah hang on, it is available on something called "BBC Select" - https://www.bbcselect.com/watch/the-other-war/

And, uh, whoops in its entirety on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aJeCX_z-l8

From Reuters:

"We received distress calls from residents in Tel Al-Sultan where drones targeted displaced citizens as they moved from areas where they were staying toward the safe areas," the deputy director of ambulance and emergency services in Rafah, Haitham al Hams, said.
Palestinian health officials said 19 civilians had been killed in Israeli airstrikes and shelling across Gaza. Israel accuses Hamas militants of hiding among civilians, something Gaza's ruling Islamist group denies

Quite a round-up:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sends-tanks-into-rafah-raids-amid-gaza-wide-offensive-2024-05-29/

in the documentary I link above there’s an interview with a palestinian boy turning 18. he says that he and every one of his friends agree that what every single palestinian boy wants more than anything is a rifle. so they can take back what is theirs. so in a way i can understand the israeli point of view. it’s not paranoid to think of palestinian civilians as the enemy. they all really do hate you, and many of them have guns, and many of them really will try to kill you. i mean how else could it possibly be when you have harassed, demonized and murdered a people for decades? are they supposed to not be courageous? to not be brave? to not resist? to not fight? we’re saying the vichy french were examples now?

the reporter asks the boy what he wished for when he blew out the candles on his cake and he says, to be reunited with my friends who have been killed.

^^^ this is important to understand in any possible resolution. In fact this has shaped the situation since at least the 1920s if not earlier - the cycle of Palestinians resisting and hating the presence of Zionists and Zionists experiencing the hatred and violent resistance and fearing it, which often in turn entrenched them more against the Palestinians. Even Zionists who hoped to coexist with rather than displace Palestinian Arabs were often turned away from that hope by the cycle of violence that was beyond their control. An Israeli I know once told me "I think what Israel has done to the Palestinians is horrible. But given the chance, they do the same to us." Another Israeli told me he remembers serving in the West Bank and hearing "Iftach al Yahud!" ("slaughter the Jews") from mosque loudspeakers. Both were at least liberal politically and had supported the Oslo process. The Second Intifada was a huge factor in the rise of the far right. I say all this as analysis, not justification. Right or wrong, most people take violent threats against them as a bad thing, and people under violence or threat of violence tend to focus on the immediacy of the threat rather than its historical context/who was the first mover.

I think that hatred can be changed and calmed, but you can't just tear down the walls and assume everyone will run to hug each other.

hmm well whaddya know

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/30/stacy-gilbert-us-state-department-israel-gaza-aid

Xp

This is one problem that gets me in a little bit of a mental knot... I'm against United States - World Police Force on principle.... but how else will Israel and Palestine live in peace without a larger power enforcing it with VERY active involvement. <--- this being the case for (what I see as) the more practical and realisric two-state solution.

Realism and practicality also teaches us that the USA cannot be trusted to do this...... so what happens? What is to be done?

Realize that there will never be a two-state solution.

I do, but I don’t think that’s what HP was getting at

Honestly, all I'm getting at is for someone to give me some answers. Some hope.

Not implying I'm owed it or anything like that. I'm just sick of being outraged and dissapointed. I want to be able to point to a possible future. I want an idea to latch on to. I want hope for something better. But I don't know where to find it.

Realize that there will never be a two-state solution.

H.P.'s questions are equally valid with a one state solution tho?

An Israeli I know once told me "I think what Israel has done to the Palestinians is horrible. But given the chance, they do the same to us."

An interesting piece from a while back that I read earlier this year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/south-africa-apartheid-white-afrikaners-the-inheritors/670554/

"He just couldn’t forgive Black people for forgiving him. Paradoxically, being left undisturbed served as an ever-present reminder of his guilt, of how wrongly he had treated his maid and other Black people under apartheid. “The Bible was right about a thing or two,” he wrote. “It is infinitely worse to receive than to give, especially if … the gift is mercy.”"

We have a place where Apartheid was undone, where there was a serious attempt at reconcilliation and a democratic process.

so what is the deal with this pretty good ceasefire proposal Biden says Israel put forward? I honestly can't believe they proposed this and in fact today's response from netenyahu indicates he has no interest in it. Was this a political move by Biden to try to force Israel to accept these terms?

like this response does not seem in alignment with this proposal that apparently came from Israel: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/01/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah

the proposal wasn't in Israel's interests (never-ending war)

Never-ending war is decidedly not in Israel's interests (and not in anybody's interests in the entire region except maaaaaybe Iran) but not-ending-right-now war is in Netanyahu's interests. There is speculation that Biden is trying to deal directly with the non-Netanyahu part of the government. But who knows.

couldn't imagine being a hostage's family member and repeatedly being told to eat shit just because the Kahane coalition needs to stay together for another six months

Well there's a reason they're blocking the Ayalon highway

My friend in a wider hostage family has been saying for months that at this point, Netanyahu is holding the same hostages.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir just said explicitly that they'd topple the coalition if this deal was accepted

Well, now the question is whether Gantz, Gallant, or both will say they'll topple the coalition if it isn't accepted.