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

Holy shit that hospital strike is fucking awful

We are seeing unconfirmed reports from Hamas that Israeli warplanes have struck the Baptist Hospital in central Gaza.

A health spokesman is quoted estimating that hundreds of people were killed.

immediate ceasefire based on this

i do like table, but I agree that statement was a little to close to 'some of my best friends are jewish' for my liking.

I don't have a lot of constructive thoughts to offer up wrt the current crisis, but I would respectfully ask that we don't go down the path of questioning how much of a connection this or that Jewish person has to their ancestors, their history, the diaspora, the holocaust, etc or how much the Israeli occupation is or isn't like the holocaust. There are plenty of ways to talk about this stuff without indulging in those lines of thinking.

Israeli air strikes have hit Al Ahli hospital in Gaza. More than 500 people - patients, doctors & those sheltering - have been killed.

What unspeakable horror. We will mourn their loss forever.

Our leaders could have spoken up for peace. They chose to cheer on war instead.…

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) October 17, 2023

BREAKING: the number of Palestinians killed in the hospital bombing have now risen to 1,000.

First aiders say they can’t find any injured survivors. Only burnt body parts. https://t.co/CLrV5XO5QX

— Marwa Fatafta مروة فطافطة (@marwasf) October 17, 2023

I gotta wonder at what point will the Israeli opposition parties deeply regret taking part in the current "national unity" government while Bibi is still running the whole show and doing shit like this?

Moodles, for what it’s worth, I was paraphrasing a friend in the post you mention, but obviously won’t continue down that line of thinking itt because it seems fraught.

Alfred and others, I believe that most people in Israel-Palestine, regardless of religion or ethnicity, want peace within their communities and also with those outside their communities. Hamas and the State of Israel’s violence make this peace impossible, and the occupation makes this peace impossible. It’s an awful situation.

I mostly post about Palestine and the plight of those in the occupied territories because what has been going on there is a horror, tho that horror certainly would never justify horrors of terrorism committed by Hamas or other organizations. Given the lopsided, racist, and antisemitic coverage given by western media outlets, I simply feel it’s necessary to continue supporting the plight of Palestinian people as fully as possible.

Those tweets are to say the number isn't certain just yet xxp

So what's the game here? Is Biden expected to rubber stamp this massacre tomorrow?

Israel claiming that the explosion was due to a failed hamas rocket launch

occam's razor makes mincemeat of that cover story

the hospital attack is difficult to even think about; this is also harrowing:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/17/fears-grow-people-are-dehydrating-to-death-in-gaza-as-clean-water-runs-out

xxp BBC is unambiguous that it was an Israeli strike

Al Ahli hospital is funded by the Anglican Church, and Richard Sewell, Dean of St George’s College – one of the church's top figures in Jerusalem – has posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the hospital in Gaza took “a direct hit from an Israeli missile”.

Just feel sick right now. Can't even really organize my thoughts.

Here we go:

One hour ago: we know nothing about the hospital being bombed
30 minutes ago: sounds like it was a misfired Hamas rocket
10 minutes ago: well we told them to evacuate https://t.co/ovP96WXXCW

— πατέρας raver (@mathaiaus) October 17, 2023

People in hospitals are often in no shape to evacuate, jfc

horrifying, disgusting, shameful

and this is less important, obviously, but it's fucking stupid too! how does proving that you are exactly what hamas says you are hurt their cause, exactly?

Israel have also bombed a school earlier today.

This is what it's leaders say:

this is the kind of shit you say after bombing a hospital full well knowing you're backed to the hilt by the US and britain: https://t.co/N18qhQ66bH pic.twitter.com/PcGGrPLicO

— pez (@periuspb) October 17, 2023

“this tweet has been deleted” hall of fame submission pic.twitter.com/2fWWE2LrW1

— canha girl (@thefouchoe) October 17, 2023

Israel is a killing machine.

Protests happening now across the West Bank. People are outraged at the bombing of the hospital in Gaza. A general strike and three days of mourning have already been announced.

— Yumna (@yumna_patel) October 17, 2023

And our biggest most beautiful aircraft carrier is there to oversee the slaughter.

Sarcasm feels ugly and wrong right now . My apologies

Abbas cancels tomorrow's meeting with Biden in protest over the hospital strike

And our biggest most beautiful aircraft carrier is there to oversee the slaughter.

Apparently one of my wife's cousins is stationed on that aircraft carrier...

levelling a hospital is up there with the vilest, most unforgivable of all war crimes. Whoever made this call should be should be put on trial, with death penalty on the the table.

I imagine there's a chance that this was an especially rogue fighter pilot who made an executive decision, perhaps one of personal vengeance... but I don't think their 'we warned them' shit is gonna fly this time

"They hide in hospitals"

Never forget our government gave the green light to these war crimes, and the opposition agreed. pic.twitter.com/XXPt8woKE7

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) October 17, 2023

Interesting piece about the notion of the civilian:
https://www.madamasr.com/en/2023/10/14/opinion/politics/to-say-and-think-a-life-beyond-what-settler-colonialism-has-made/

There, behind the green line, Israel has conducted the “conflict.” The more settler-military violence there is in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the more civilian normalcy there is in Israel, and the more the notion of civilian normalcy can be weaponized to justify more violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the purifying and normalizing operations of the green line did not always go unchallenged. Palestinians have always understood that the condition of possibility for this civilian normalcy, inside the green line, was the destruction of Palestinian existence on the land and the ban on their return to the land. Hence, there have always been breaches of the enclosure and operations to undo the frontier: what Palestinians call “return.”

Meanwhile, a Palestinian claim for civilian status or civilian normalcy has met many challenges. Palestinian society was destroyed in 1948. The territories occupied in 1967 have been purposefully fragmented, disconnected, and separated by settlements. There is no state form, standing military, depth of territory, or civilian posture. Instead, there are many refugee camps, dispossessed families, and subjects-in-struggle. Everything that could cultivate civilian normalcy is already targeted by the Israeli Occupation, from homes and schools to NGOs, cultural centers, and universities. When compared to the other side of the green line, life in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the containers of Israel’s violence against Palestinians, cannot manifest civilian normalcy.

But there is more. The civilian ethos, as a matter of liberal sensibility, requires innocence, political passivity, lack of movement, and fixity. In the eyes of the liberal, civilized West, the civilian must be pacified, passive, and blameless and must reject rebellion. The Palestinians, as refugees, as politically engaged resistant subjects, as subjects who look in the direction of the land from which they were expelled and aspire to move in its direction, and as persons who wish not to settle in an enclosure, do not pass the test of this ethos. Their just refusal of confinement, steadfast rejection of enclosure, and non-despairing hope to return to the land from which they were expelled violates this liberal ethos. Their dreams and aspirations render them, in the eyes of those who value civilian normalcy despite its heavy toll on others, obliterable. Therefore, no emotion can be allowed to arise in the face of their extermination. Quite to the contrary. In the name of civilian normalcy, the a-civilian must be obliterated.

Israel claiming that the explosion was due to a failed hamas rocket launch

Islamic Jihad rather than Hamas. I'm listening to Mark Regev on Sky claiming it's all Hamas propaganda but that you can't believe any casualty figures from Hamas anyway, how many of the dead were Hamas combatants etc.

Anyway, Sleepy Joe will be there tomorrow to make it all better.

xpost - and that "they hide in hospitals" line is absolutely working! I just had to unfollow a few longtime social media folks who's content I've typically enjoyed because of how enthusiastically they've repeated that stuff. just had two in the last twenty minutes parroting the, "Hamas routinely base their operations out of hospitals, so let's calm the outrage" shit.

I've got to say the Israeli PR effort on this whole conflict is not only offensive it's also absurd and completely inept - they've totally lost it. Hamas is ISIS, civilians died in Mosul to defeat ISIS but you didn't mind that (though of course Israel doesn't kill civilians anyway) Then the Nazis bombed the UK you bombed Dresden in return (though of course Israel wouldn't do anything like that) and nobody called that a war crime (er, yes they did). Etcetera.

We don't target children like our enemies, but this is a battle against the children of darkness

hamas soldiers could be lining the walls of the hospital, it would still be reprehensible

Islamic Jihad categorically denying involvement, so is IDF, according to MSNBC.

Shocker

(100% believe it was IDF)

At this point they know everyone will believe them when they say it wasn't them

At this point they know everyone will believe them shrug and say "Whaddya gonna do?" when they say it wasn't them

at this point they don't care that everybody knows it was them

You can’t square the circle of “It was a Hamas rocket” and “Israel warned them to evacuate the hospital”. The images that I’ve seen are appalling.

this is truly insane I mean you knew Israel was gonna get away with some shit but this might be one of the most evil acts I've ever seen in my life

The West and Russia both bombed hospitals in Syria with a similar lack of fucks.

Otm. It’s not unique by any means. How many hospitals, schools, and residential buildings were destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Or in the US-supported attacks on Yemen (over 100 health care facilities targeted)?

yea true I guess seeing the IDF gloating about it immediately while Israel is simultaneously denying it and blaming them for not evacuating, while at the same time publicly calling them subhuman is just truly ghoulish. idk this shit just sucks so much

Even if Hamas did hide in hospitals, how on earth would that be a justification to bomb a hospital? If a bunch of Hamas fighters were holed up in a hospital in Tel Aviv, somehow I don't think they'd bomb it.

Spontaneous gathering in the center of Brussels for Palestine pic.twitter.com/xzEq10y4OS

— فيروز (@Fayrouz_yousfi) October 17, 2023

The odds that any of the hostages are alive is pretty low, considering that Israel is just bombing the fuck out of Gaza. Weren't they once proud of stuff like the raid on Entebbe?