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

I'd rather wait than go to another twitter account. It's not only social media but multiple sources across media have reported this, with protests and rallies in many countries and diplomatic repercussions on the back of this.

Very good to see.

S.I Cobas, a major rank-and-file union in the #logistics sector in #Italy, declares that its #workers “will oppose any shipping of weapons to Israel which they become aware of.”

Trade unions, your action makes a material difference on the ground! #StopArmingIsrael
#Palestine pic.twitter.com/RxWemzdVLL

— Workers in Palestine (@WorkersinPales1) October 18, 2023

xp fair enough

Yeah I was gonna say, my source for this so far wasn't social media telephone but the BBC! Who of course also gets things wrong, to put it lightly, but I dunno if this would have played out differently in a pre-social media, post-24 hour news cycle era.

xpost

When the President of the US is acknowledging an explosion and loss of life and invoking international law I'm assuming he is not just watching TV or looking at twitter.

But maybe I'm wrong about that.

depends which president, to be fair

I don't want to get too hung up on the hospital story, but this is on WSJ right now and it really looks clear the explosion was in the parking lot. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-biden/card/watch-footage-shows-destruction-after-deadly-gaza-hospital-compound-blast-mmFVg7Pa5PkKxZyHbtRX

I don't really understand why Israel would just randomly strike a hospital parking lot while not targeting anything else in the vicinity.

TBC, I also don't know if Palestinian officials were "lying" or if it was just fog of war/quick reactivity (I imagine communications aren't at their best in Gaza right now), just as I'm not entirely sure what happened with the 40 beheaded babies claim - could just as easily have been fog of war/telephone game as propaganda. Taking a deep breath and waiting a day or two is always a good idea.

on ILX?!

the old racist one I think xps

"It wasn't us and also it wasn't that bad"

aka the national motto of the Turkish republic - regardless of the facts in this specific case it's horrifying on multiple levels to see it being rehearsed so soon and so blatantly in Israel

A counter-argument against the rocket explanation:

About the #Gaza #hospital blast,

The version saying it would have been caused by Palestinian rocket (mis)fire is gaining traction online and among #OSINT communities.

A thread showing weaknesses in this version, and why an Israeli bombing is highly more plausible.⬇️ 1/x

— Francesco Sebregondi 🔎 (@FSBRG) October 18, 2023

It seems like that guy's argument is "you can't conclusively prove that there wasn't also an IDF strike (on a hospital parking lot) at the same time as the rocket misfire." Can we not post any more speculative twitter threads please? Who is this guy?

otm

I don't think we can really know what happened until Seymour Hersh comes out with a piece asserting that Biden ordered the CIA to do it.

There's no way 500+ patients were killed without structural damage to the hospital, so evidence has to surface beyond individual people / doctors reporting it and footage of burnt cars (if that's all there is atm). Even graphic footage that can't be shown on TV but that could be verified. Waiting and exercising prudent skepticism is probably the best course of action for now.

There could be reasons for alleging a huge civilian massacre. It's clear the information war is absolutely key and that Palestinians need to instill doubt in the hardliners / West since everything else that was unleashed on them hasn't been "enough" (to every sane person's dismay) to shift positions.

It's disheartening how everything about the conflict is funneled through ideology and politics: all the suffering is co-opted, discourse asphyxiated, there's no space, war just unfolds in all its unstoppable irrationality.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wDxkDDOmuMoqTRTYeoBcM?si=2b7e9da9c8114d69
Alexei Sayle's podcast new episode from today is a Palestine special

My Bangladeshi neighbour and her sisters - who never usually go on demonstrations - are off to Whitehall to protest the treatment of Palestinians. We are all Starmer constituents…

I'm not qualified to get into the guessing game re: the hospital but I don't see how you get around telling a million people in Gaza to move south and then doing air strikes over the Rafah Crossing while aid piles up on the Egypt side. I know I am just plucking out a moment here but this seems to be something the world agrees is happening and the scale of the horror is hard to comprehend.

this is the guardian's analysis of the hospital explosion:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/al-ahli-arab-hospital-piecing-together-what-happened-as-israel-insists-militant-rocket-to-blame

who the fuck knows the truth of all that, but tbh i would rather live in a world where israel aren't deliberately targeting hospitals, and as much as i despise the idf, i hope this wasn't their doing

I am pretty skeptical that the IDF did it at this point and not seeing new evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile the media’s quickness to report the claim is having grave global consequences.

why did they ask 22 hospitals in Gaza to evacuate all their patients and staff? If there isn't any suspicion here that they wouldn't target them, then I'd rather do speculation or read speculation by *nobodies* on twitter than give the IDF any benefit of the doubt with their track record of outright lying about atrocities they commit.

whole lotta, "who knows you guys>? hospitals just blow themselves up each and every day" brain out there today.

again, I'm no expert even remotely, but the images of the site the day after showing a very shallow crater at the impact site seem to indicate a smaller explosive device than one that would have been dropped by Israel.

I'm not qualified to get into the guessing game re: the hospital but I don't see how you get around telling a million people in Gaza to move south and then doing air strikes over the Rafah Crossing while aid piles up on the Egypt side. I know I am just plucking out a moment here but this seems to be something the world agrees is happening and the scale of the horror is hard to comprehend.

― felicity, Wednesday, October 18, 2023 2:25 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, it’s weird that that fell out of the news so quickly. Just as egregious as a hospital bombing.

Worst thing is the Hospital atrocity will be forgotten next week if Israel goes into a ground assault.

Or, if not exactly forgotten, there will be a fresh set of atrocities to occupy minds

looking for the truth through the fog of war and sorting through the predictable lies is always uncertain work. my own take is that at a time when Israel is dropping tons of high explosives on Gaza by the hour, the weight of presumption - by far - is that any particular large explosion in Gaza will have been caused by Israel. the burden of proof to the contrary is theirs and the standard of that proof must overcome the high probability it was their doing. iow, it had better not be a patchwork of inconclusive evidence and advancing several entirely different scenarios to explain what happened.

whole lotta, "who knows you guys>? hospitals just blow themselves up each and every day" brain out there today.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, October 18, 2023 3:05 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

From the footage it does not appear that the hospital was actually blown up. The explosion was in the parking lot. The hospital stands.

yeah, the hospital is made up of like 7 buildings and there is a courtyard in the middle and a parking lot and that's where the explosion happened; but I believe some of those buildings were heavily damaged. there is video of the day after floating around. sounds like there were lots of people taking refuge in that courtyard sadly

US vetoes Security Council resolution that would have called for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver lifesaving aid to millions in Gaza

Favor: 12 (Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland,UAE)
Against: 1 (US)
Abstain: 2 Russia, UK pic.twitter.com/y4tiAbRMUQ

— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) October 18, 2023

vile. the UK too.

Really hope this cunt does during the election campaign

Biden says Hamas’ attack on Israel was like “fifteen 9/11s.”

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/ziJQTgKzIl

— AF Post (@AFpost) October 18, 2023

This is like 10k JFK assassinations lol

There's a lot going on in that speech.

Biden: I caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the US. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes… The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. pic.twitter.com/n9nun6ves6

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 18, 2023

I nearly likened the Warren blast comment to JFK finding a foreign body passing through him in Dallas in my post this morning, so keep noticing mention of JFK as it occurs through the thread today.

article is paywalled :/

Hamas co-founder acknowledges "mistakes" were made in Oct. 7 attacks, says group willing to release women, children and foreigners its holding hostage if Israel agrees to 24-hour pause. My interview with Hassan Yousef, head of Hamas in the West Bank https://t.co/pv9LogSOow

— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) October 18, 2023

HAPPENING NOW: Hundreds of American Jews are holding a sit-in at Congress — and we won’t leave until Congress calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. As thousands of U.S. Jews protest outside, over 350 are inside, including two dozen rabbis, holding prayerful resistance. pic.twitter.com/H0b2ort6fa

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 18, 2023

London stands with Palestine tonight. pic.twitter.com/FlhXicPVS2

— Wolfie. 💙🧡💚 (@Tpopularfront) October 18, 2023

There is a Tel Aviv review of books and this piece is very good. Have found the voices of internal critics of Israel the most illuminating, and angry, and just fearless.

On the failures of the IDF:

Saturday’s savage attack was instantly compared to the October 1973 surprise offensive, which also met an Israel that was delusional about its military might and invincibility, but this time, it also met a deeply fractured and divided society ruled by a clique of Jewish supremacists and messianic settlers led by a smug, corrupt politician who, by this stage, looks like a caricature of himself. October 7 exposed the twisted priorities of a military that sent no less than 26 battalions to protect settlers in the West Bank during the Simhat Torah holiday, including five battalions stationed at Joseph’s Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a racist settler who demanded the separation of Arab and Jewish patients in hospitals, already called at a cabinet meeting to “hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the hostages into serious consideration,” concluding his brief remarks with a quote from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: “If you want to shoot, shoot, don’t talk!” Smotrich never served in a combat unit.

At such times, they do not need a hysterical speech from an incompetent defense minister, ordering a complete siege on the Gaza Strip with no electricity, food or water that would create a humanitarian disaster because “we are fighting human animals”; nor do they deserve a president who embodies the Peter Principle, climbing the ladder by failing every previous job he had, incapable of saying a single sentence that does not contain an overused phrase. Israelis cling to stories of the incredible bravery of ordinary citizens who found themselves in impossible situations, like Rachel Edri, a working-class Moroccan-born woman from Ofakim, who did not lose her cool and conversed with her kidnappers in Arabic, offering them coffee and cookies, while the police SWAT teams surrounded the house.

I wonder about the fissures in a society where the most fanatical racists are exempt from military service while a secular military (full of people on compulsory service) is required to cater to their whims.

again, I'm no expert even remotely, but the images of the site the day after showing a very shallow crater at the impact site seem to indicate a smaller explosive device than one that would have been dropped by Israel.

Fwiw, I was responding more to the idiotic comments I’ve see elsewhere to the effect of, “for all we know it could have been an unfortunate accident or a gas tank explosion, why would we assume attack?”

I wonder about the fissures in a society where the most fanatical racists are exempt from military service while a secular military (full of people on compulsory service) is required to cater to their whims.

― deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 18 October 2023 22:30 (three minutes ago) link

Every Israeli in my Facebook feed is raging over this or some variation on it right now.

A fair number of “you called me a leftist traitor for protesting Bibi and now I’m the one who is showing up for reserve duty where I may die to protect you” type statements

article is paywalled :/

Hamas political leader in West Bank says he believes some hostages could be released if Israel agrees to ceasefire

'I Couldn't Shift Anything': Senior State Department Official Resigns Over Biden's Gaza Policy

Paul’s public announcement of his resignation sent shockwaves through the State Department on Wednesday. He said he was struck by how colleagues across the government and in Congress received his internal message: “I’ve been surprised by how many have said, ‘We absolutely understand where you’re coming from, we feel similarly and understand.’”

Paul told HuffPost he had been on leave last week, adding: “It was pretty fortunate because I think if I hadn’t been I would have been fired rather than have the time to think it over and resign.”

good stuff

Brave man

there we go. Josh Paul for president.

A Chicago police supporter has joined the protest, stating he visited Gaza or the West Bank after a trip to Turkey, and thought it was a lovely place. pic.twitter.com/r2n4iMPSvc

— Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere (@TylerLaRiviere) October 18, 2023

(Other flag is a thin blue line flag)

If that was a Hamas rocket, it will just make documenting and getting people to believe other atrocities that much harder. Mostly I hope the fatality count really is grossly inflated. Fewer dead people would be good.