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

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?

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

totally. and the fact that it's happened before shouldn't diminish the shock.

Animals.

This is real. At first I didn’t believe it was because it’s so cartoonishly evil. But I’ve confirmed that it is real. https://t.co/pmAprHg4XM

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) October 17, 2023

This conflict is getting to me like nothing else, the video of the doctor holding up the dead baby just floored me.

Israeli officials edited this tweet to remove the video, which it implied was proof that the Gaza hospital was struck by Islamic terrorists, after it was pointed out that the footage was time-stamped at least 40 minutes after the strike took place. pic.twitter.com/d4a4rUvrhJ

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) October 17, 2023

More lies.

pentagon spokeswoman sabrina singh: “hamas is the one putting palestinians, those in gaza, at great risk. they are putting command and control units inside hospitals.” https://t.co/O9w8uqRmHq pic.twitter.com/8T8TzWHnCJ

— assistant inspector (@housetrotter) October 17, 2023

I have a feeling that those who are in any way defending this action are going to find themselves very solidly on the wrong side of history. I don't see how you spin this as anything but monstrous with anyone who hasn't already divested themselves of their basic humanity.

If you had stood resolutely with Israel, you can still change you mind. You can see the bombing of a hospital and realize you’ve been misled. I was taught Zionism my whole childhood, until I learned more and changed my mind. You do not need to condone unspeakable atrocities.

— Stop Cop City (@JoshuaPHilll) October 17, 2023

Really fucking vile

Brutal terror. The execution of defenseless civilians. Murdered infants, abducted children. Humiliated Holocaust survivors. It makes our blood run cold.

Israel has the right to defend itself against this. A state has a duty to protect its citizens. pic.twitter.com/TjQMcAkXQI

— Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz (@Bundeskanzler) October 17, 2023

I'm not sure of how the logistics work but I'm told this is a good place to donate:

https://support.anera.org/a/palestine-emergency

My friend shared this with me: http://bit.ly/StopGazaGenocide

If anybody wants to know what an actual level-headed mainstream media report on this should look like. It's physically possible. https://t.co/E3dAuhHoTs

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) October 17, 2023

For a couple of seconds my brain made me think Scholz was condemning the hospital bombing and I thought maybe Israel really had gone too far now.

Sky has been good and the BBC has been good too from what I’ve seen. Al-Jazeera is difficult for me because of how graphic their videos are but usually they are excellent.

I mentioned upthread but a lot of posts since then: Yair Wallach has been a good voice on the area for a while for me, though his timeline atm is sharing accounts of the devastation, so obvious caveats apply. He also translates sources in Hebrew and is extremely critical of the government. I will always check his timeline if I’m unsure on something.

xp ehhhhh one of those is definitely not true lol

Well now I’m watching the BBC and what was shocking on Al-J on Sunday is now run of the mill background “colour” footage on the BBC on Tuesday.

IDF military saying on TV now they will produce evidence that the hospital bomb was Islamic Jihad

Christian Fraser just abysmal helming rolling news - this IDF dude is handing him his own balls in front of an international audience

Let Fraser host a game show, wtf is he doing here