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

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.

pretty good summation of where things are: https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospital-blast-visual-investigation

Berlin police just removed me from a public square for standing alone with a sign reading STOP GENOCIDE. No free speech in Germany. I’m in their custody now.

— Tracy Fuad (@tracyfuad) October 18, 2023

Getting common mistake about the hospital explosion/attack. Hospital was more of a safe space gathering point that people were sleeping outside en masse.
So significant damage could be done to people without it bei8ng significantly reflected in structural damage. Certainly sounds like it would be reflected in structural damage from initial hearing which is misguiding. Think that has been mentioned in passing in some reports but if the reason for disbelief of damage is little damage to buildings full picture doesn't seem to be getting across.

Ok everyone time to move on from discussing the hospital bombing. Now let’s consider whether children gathering water at the mosque in which they’ve taken refuge may have inadvertently detonated themselves https://t.co/QXPNnWezKF

— Max Fox (@mxwfx) October 18, 2023

This level of bombardment is insane by any standard!

Israel is now flattening Tal Al-Hawa; one of Gaza's affluent areas with most high-rise residential buildings & least Hamas presence.

Israel has now destroyed over 121,000 housing units (partially & completely). pic.twitter.com/slgC7tb2bv

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) October 19, 2023

are we sure they're not all just misfiring Hamas missiles?

I think the dominant theory is Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, not Hamas. But again the jury is out.

The Israeli government comes out with so much hysterical garbage.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/19/israel-accuses-bbc-of-modern-blood-libel-over-reporting-of-hospital-strike

I think “irresponsible reporting” would be sufficient. Atrocities, misreporting of atrocities, propagandistic usage of, exaggeration of, or even invention of atrocities, and mere fog of war confusion about atrocities, none of these things are unique to Israel/Palestine. I only object to the idea that Hamas isn’t somehow equally capable of any of these. As though only Israel does propaganda and Hamas (and the states actively supporting it) is just pure authentic expression of oppression with no sophistication.

The reporting from Sky was pretty much identical but the Israeli regime are well aware that the BBC is under constant attack from (fellow) right wing scumbags in the UK. It's also worth pointing out that the BBC was under attack from pro-Palestinian groups a couple of days earlier.

and under attack from the Lords for not using the word “terrorist” with enough brio

You forfeit the right to condemn media for getting the facts wrong when they can't travel there to get the scoop because you're conducting a siege.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/middleeast/idf-apology-shireen-abu-akleh-intl/index.html

Israeli PM Bennett was tweeting within days of the death that this journalist was likely killed by Palestinians. One year later:

The Israel Defense Forces has apologized for the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a year to the day after she was killed by a bullet to the back of the head while covering an Israeli military operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

It is the first time the IDF has apologized for the killing of the well-known correspondent, after conceding last year that there was a “high possibility” she was shot by an Israeli soldier.

The apology came from the IDF’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in an interview with CNN’s Eleni Giokos on Connect the World on Thursday.

“I think it’s an opportunity for me to say here that we are very sorry of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh,” he said.

“She was a journalist, a very established journalist. In Israel we value our democracy and in a democracy we see high value in journalism and in a free press. We want journalists to feel safe in Israel, especially in war time, even if they criticize us,” he said.

The apology comes days after The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a report that said it had found no accountability was taken by the Israeli military over its killings of at least 20 journalists over the past two decades.

The press advocacy group said it had documented at least 20 journalists killed by Israeli military fire since 2001, adding 18 of those killed were Palestinian. “No one has ever been charged or held accountable for these deaths,” it said in the press release.

The CPJ said its report – titled ‘Deadly Pattern’ – found a “routine sequence” that takes place when a journalist is killed at the hands of the IDF.

Israeli military took no accountability for journalists it killed over past 20 years, press freedom group says
“Israeli officials discount evidence and witness claims, often appearing to clear soldiers for the killings while inquiries are still in progress,” the CPJ said, describing the IDF’s procedure for examining military killings of civilians such as journalists as a “black box,” with the results of any such probe kept confidential.

“When probes do take place, the Israeli military often takes months or years to investigate killings and families of the mostly Palestinian journalists have little recourse inside Israel to pursue justice,” the CPJ said.

Israeli police are demanding that East Jerusalem Arabs now hand over their cell phones instead of merely present their ID cards https://t.co/F70iDbJqCc

— noah kulwin (@nkulw) October 19, 2023

You forfeit the right to condemn media for getting the facts wrong when they can't travel there to get the scoop because you're conducting a siege.

― Chyiv Kyiv (Fetchboy), Thursday, October 19, 2023 10:58 AM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm conducting a siege?

he admit it

xp, That was in reference to Israel's whining abt the BBC, but yes, you're conducting a siege of my heart.

(I'm sorry if this has already been discussed, but is Israel calling for the evacuation of northern Gaza because they want to let settlers move there and will they use that toehold to take over Gaza? Is that what the Palestinians think?)

I don't think the exact rationale is clear, but the north is where the actual city of Gaza is. I have no idea how distributed the group is, but presumably that's where the administrative base would be

Yeah, I had assumed to prepare for ground invasion of Gaza City, although I have no particular insight.

I think it's unlikely Israel already has some kind of full Gaza long-term re-occupation plan ready to go (if it even wants to do that) but I have no particular insight. I would just think that the army is not prepared for and doesn't have the manpower that the re-occupation and settlement of Gaza would require even if that was the intention or hope. IDF is only about 170,000 active troops, the rest reserves. Reservists can't really be used for long-term occupation as the country's economy needs to function.

I have been concerned from the beginning that Israel doesn't have much of a plan, which is a nightmare for everyone. Although you would think that they wargame this kind of scenario, but then you would think a lot of things that haven't turned out to be true. If this doesn't devolve into a wider regional war, I think some kind of "regime change" situation in Gaza is more likely than re-occupation.

Biden asked Netanyahu and his war cabinet what was their plan for Gaza on the day after the war. They said they still don't have one. My story on @axios https://t.co/zit04eTbwe

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) October 18, 2023