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

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/17/spain-rejects-israeli-claims-of-its-officials-aligning-with-hamas

Just wanting to point out that Palestinians and others who have been subject to unjust and international war on their homelands are also feeling pretty traumatized at the moment.

What Lily Dale’s post speaks to is what a Jewish friend wrote a few days ago about what’s going on, and that is that despite the mentions of the Shoah, the overwhelming majority of Israeli and mainstream Jewish reaction to these events speaks to a complete and utter lack of connection with Jewish ancestors, who were a diasporic, hated, and perpetually exiled people. This is the pain and history that comes before the Shoah, and which the Israeli state is now enforcing on another group of people. To what end?

Thanks Lily. I've shared your post with my wife whose views and conflicts sound very similar to yours. She's Jewish and trying to navigate being pushed and pulled by people around her, talking with our kids about it who are getting views pushed on them by our temple, and her best friend who is coming down more pro-Israel than her.

Just wanting to point out that Palestinians and others who have been subject to unjust and international war on their homelands are also feeling pretty traumatized at the moment.

xposts

Yes, Lily, many thanks for that terrific post, I'm Jewish and it really helped me clarify my thoughts (it didn't go "all over the place" at all!). Literally everything you said resonates with me.

Not everyone seems to understand, which is why I posted it.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/lebanese-maronite-catholic-priest-killed-israeli-tank-fire-southern-lebanon

Israel seized southern Lebanon and then killed a Maronite Catholic priest with tank fire after he was providing aid to others

More genocidal depravity: https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-war-palestinians-prison-abuse-b11e5f0639b7fe51c5ea101f4b320f56

Israeli military drops charges against soldiers accused of sexually assaulting Palestinian detainee

Pairs well with this: https://bsky.app/profile/geofffhughes.bsky.social/post/3mgtzd6a4jk2n

they had those fuckers on video tape assaulting that man. There were also shitty protesters that stormed the base trying to defend the crimes of these solders.

It's sickening but also profoundly disturbing

Here's what Defence Minister Israel Katz had to say about the charges being dropped while he's also busy expanding the invasion of Lebanon:

Justice has been done.

I welcome the decision of the Chief Military Prosecutor, Major General Itai Ofir, to close the Sde Teiman cases against IDF soldiers and to cancel the indictment against them.

This trial was born in sin by the previous Military Advocate General, using a blood libel against IDF soldiers and criminal investigation methods, and I am glad that justice has been done and the trial has been canceled.

The role of the IDF's legal system is to protect and safeguard IDF soldiers who engage heroically in war against cruel monsters, and not the rights of the terrorists of Hamas.

I am convinced that the decision will lead to a new path.

It’s very depressing how the definition of “blood libel” has shifted to mean “presenting evidence that specific people committed an awful crime.”

the most humane etc. etc.

If, like me, you weren't quite sure what was up with Israel recognizing Somaliland a few months ago, the answer is all too obvious in hindsight: https://archive.ph/Ab2ZA

Israel Plans New Foothold on the Red Sea to Fight the Houthis

Amid the Iran war, Israel is quietly planning for a potential base at the mouth of the Red Sea that would allow it to target one of Tehran’s last-remaining proxies.

While the Iran war rages, Israel is quietly planning for a potential base at the mouth of the Red Sea from which to strike one of the Islamic Republic's last proxies still operating at full strength: the Houthis of Yemen.

That’s thanks to Somaliland, the breakaway territory on the Gulf of Aden that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government recognized in December — a move that handed Israel its first diplomatic presence across from Yemen. Now, the Jewish state will follow up with a strategic security partnership that may involve Israel building a base – possibly covert – on its pristine coast, despite widespread regional criticism, according to Khadar Hussein Abdi, Somaliland’s minister of the presidency.

https://www.channel4.com/news/over-100-children-among-nearly-800-killed-by-israeli-strikes-on-lebanon

Israel has killed over 100 kids in their recent attacks on Lebanon

It is what they do best.

Israel has destroyed a bridge in southern Lebanon and dropped leaflets over Beirut warning the country faces the same scale of destruction visited upon Gaza, as its military campaign against Hezbollah enters a devastating new phase.

The Zrarieh Bridge spanning the Litani River was struck early on Friday, with the Israeli military claiming Hezbollah fighters were using it to move between the country’s north and south, though it offered no evidence to support this.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/13/israel-destroys-bridge-in-lebanon-and-threatens-gaza-scale-devastation

fucking hell.

wtf!? what they doing is heartbreaking and inhumane.

An Al Jazeera video regarding Israel attacks in Lebanon that don’t seem to be aimed at Hezbollah including this drone double tap strike on people at a beach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tt85WDrm0E

Israel had told folks to evacuate parts of Beirut so some set up refugee tents on the beach. Israel then bombed the folks there.

Per the BBC- Hezbollah launched the rocket barrage across the Israeli border on Wednesday evening in an apparently co-ordinated attack with Iran.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that the Israeli military had been instructed to prepare to broaden its operations in Lebanon in response.

The military subsequently expanded a blanket evacuation order for southern Lebanon, almost doubling the size of the zone it has said residents should leave for their safety.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gjq8qd09o

Insane Israeli logic thinks blowing up random folks on the beach is justified and is going to help stop Hezbollah

https://i.postimg.cc/2588J02s/adfjasd-lfkj.jpg

wtf!? what they doing is heartbreaking and inhumane.

the “country” was founded on ethnic cleansing, what do we expect ?

Iranian-Israeli activist and journalist Orly Noy has a new NYRB piece, which I'll link on the Iran thread---briefly interviewed by Democracy Now!, she talks about current suppression of antiwar demonstrations in Israel, and then, what I'm most struck by:

In the West Bank, the situation is beyond — I mean, it’s terrifying beyond anything that words can express. You mentioned in your opening the execution of the four members of the Bani Odeh family, including the two parents and two very young kids, in the village of Tammun. We published yesterday a heartbreaking, really disturbing, one of the most disturbing pieces I’ve edited in my entire career as a journalist, where in one of the villages in the north of the Jordan Valley, settlers gathered the entire inhabitants of this Palestinian little village in one tent and tormented them brutally, hit them, severely sexually abused one of the Palestinian men, and all the while forcing the children to watch them as they torture the older members of the community. These things turned almost into daily events. Palestinians are now really — I mean, you know, up until now, our worry was about the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Now it is just about executing Palestinians, both by the army and by the settlers. This is the reality now. They are just executing Palestinians in broad daylight, and nothing is being done about it.

Israeli police kill two young Palestinian boys and their parents in West Bank

Mother, father and brothers aged five and seven shot in the head as they returned from Ramadan shopping trip

Emma Graham-Harrison and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem

Sun 15 Mar 2026 15.20 EDT
First published on Sun 15 Mar 2026 09.28 EDT

Israeli police have killed two young Palestinian brothers and their parents in the occupied West Bank, shooting all four in the head and face as the family returned from a Ramadan shopping trip.

Mohammed, five, Othman, seven, who was blind and had special needs, their mother, Waad Bani Odeh, 35, and father, Ali Bani Odeh, 37, were driving through their home town of Tamoun late on Saturday when Israeli forces opened fire.

Israeli forces target Palestinians with near total impunity in the occupied West Bank, where the last attack that led to a homicide indictment was a 2019 shooting, according to legal data compiled by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.

Since then Israeli forces have killed more than 1,400 people, including more than 320 children and over 30 women, UN figures show. Israeli settlers killed at least 44 other Palestinians.

The Bani Odeh family were killed just hours after Israeli settlers shot and killed Amir Moatasem Odeh, 28, in Qusra south of Nablus. The attackers also stabbed his father, Moatasem Awda, who was taken to hospital in serious condition.

There has been a surge of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank since Israel and the US launched their war on Iran at the end of February.

Over two weeks Israeli settlers have shot six civilians dead during invasions of Palestinian olive groves, villages and grazing land, and one man died after inhaling military-grade teargas used by the Israeli army.
The attack on the Bani Odeh family brought the number of Palestinians killed to 11. Two brothers survived the shooting. Khaled, 11, the oldest of the siblings, said he had heard his mother crying and his father praying before they died.

After the gunfire stopped, Israeli border police dragged him out of the wreckage, taunted him about the murders of his family and attacked him. One of the Israelis said “we killed dogs”, he told Reuters.

probably not systematic orchestrated murder, but rather javier bardem's fault for making everything 'woke'

So is Netanyahu dead? Lots of people on Twitter seem to think so, and the videos do look weird and have definitely been manipulated in some way, but just deeply weary of anything conspiracy-flavoured whether it's true or not.

George Galloway is continually posting about it, which doesn't mean it's wrong but you know

Am seeing that stuff. However, Netanyahu posted a denial yesterday (or the day before..)

joke’s on us, he posted that denial from the deepest pit of hell

that vid he posted with the coffee cup was definitely suspicious