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

They banned Palestinian solidarity demonstrations in France - but in Paris this evening people turned out anyway, and forced the cops to leave pic.twitter.com/xjkPOTKQ1N

— Steven Methven (@StevenJMethven) October 19, 2023

On the IDF's invincibility myth

I just keep finding these old threads where I repeatedly pointed out that the IDF is not capable of preventing infiltration from multiple borders 😮‍💨 while y’all were talking about some superpower force you made up in your heads… https://t.co/avfDrmxS8Z

— ‏تمار 🌴 Тама́р 🌴 תמר (@tamars) October 19, 2023

I've been staying away from social media and just catching up on events via Jonathan Katz's Substack page. It's been excellent at putting everything in a historical context (Katz studied history before moving into journalism) but it's also mightily depressing. This in particular:

It’s notable to me that in his Tel Aviv speech, Biden again name-checked the “two-state solution”—the old dream of the 1990s that envisioned a Jewish state and a Muslim-majority Arab state living side by side, or in a sort of checkerboard, within the borders of the old British Mandate (plus or minus the Golan Heights). Anyone who has actually been paying attention to the situation on the ground for the past 20 years knows that dream is completely dead; it was killed by an explosion of Religious Zionist settlement activity in the West Bank that, as Netanyahu intended, has stripped the Palestinian Authority of even more of its potential land and rendered any possibility of drawing a border impossible. Biden doesn’t know this, or feels he has to say he doesn’t know this, because most Americans don’t know it; for most of those 20 years it has been in neither the government, nor media, nor either political party’s interest to look at those facts or communicate them. “Confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” as the resigned State Department official Josh Paul said.

The problem is that a one-state solution is even less likely.

I think you could at least make the case that a one state solution is possible in the far future whereas I don’t know what a serious proposal for a two state solution could look like at this point. Anyone who is serious about a single binational state (I kind of dislike the word “solution”) would I think have to be playing a long game and thinking about how to lay groundwork.

Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes continued across the territory overnight and Palestinian militants continued firing rockets into Israel.

the news will talk about "Israeli civilians" or "the Israeli people" but will then talk about "Palestinians" without ever using words like "civilians" or even "people."

I don't see this, I just googled "Palestinian civilians" site:nytimes.com and got page after page of hits, same for "Israeli civilians," e.g. in the first article that came up, which is from yesterday:

"Thousands of protesters marched in grief, fury and solidarity across the Middle East on Tuesday night and Wednesday, after hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza."

Ny sister-in-law has completely lost her mind over this BBC reporting of the hospital explosion controversy and is posting all sorts of dubious stuff on Facebook, including the accusation about "blood libel" - for context, she did literally grow up on a kibbutz. The ironic thing is my brother used to work at the BBC and, during the Scottish Independence referendum, was constantly mocking nationalists accusing the BBC of bias.

Bet you're looking forward to Christmas.

Believe me I go nowhere near this subject with my brother and his family. Corbyn was bad enough.

Apparently the BBC is to blame for the cancellation of Biden's trip to Jordan etc., the worsening relations in the Middle East as a whole and making Jews the world over feel less safe. Who knew the BBC was so powerful?

Public opinion, pt 1.

58% of Britons think there should be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

18% think there should probably be.

Just 3% think definitely not.

That 3% is the position of Labour, the Tories and most newspapers.

Totally out of touch with public opinion.

Ceasefire now! @YouGov pic.twitter.com/IwGnyRXlLc

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 19, 2023

pt2

Holy shit pic.twitter.com/THcVzvTol0

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) October 20, 2023

35% not supporting is higher than I would've thought.

Do you support or oppose a large-scale ground operation in Gaza?

Support: 65%
Oppose: 21%
Don't Know: 14%

via Lazar#Israel

— Israel Elects (@israel_elects) October 20, 2023

Pakistan is also making 155M shells for Ukraine for the US so this could get awkward https://t.co/MCJ2LiLqV9

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 19, 2023

A miracle saved us from Israeli missiles.

Israel hit our building of 7 floors and 21 flats with two missiles penetrating floors 5 & 4 where they exploded killing a mother who was preparing food for her kids & two of her daughters

I had 30 civilians in my 3rd floor #gazagenocide https://t.co/6uPFi6PSIg pic.twitter.com/lrEbdeaTFF

— Refaat in Gaza 🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) October 20, 2023

Really don't see Netanyahu surviving this..

Just really rotten stuff.https://t.co/SAOL6okPxA pic.twitter.com/2lC3Dr3one

— Abe Silberstein (@abesilbe) October 19, 2023

I hadn't been previously aware but apparently he's a lame duck and not planning to run for anything again. I would say those associated with him are tainted now though. I hope they are.

where did you see that?

actually a friend told me so it may be wrong, not sure the source and can't find anything now

At least 18 people are reported to have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Greek Orthodox church compound in Gaza on Thursday. Palestinian officials said at least 500 Muslims and Christians had taken shelter in the church from Israeli bombardments.

Waiting for a long Twitter rant from the IDF against The Guardian on this one

Likud guy Amir Weitmann going in two footed on RT, saying Russia will pay

Okay this is important: the University of London's @ForensicArchi team, and veteran war crimes investigator @CobbSmith, are suggesting, not definitively yet, that the Gaza hospital attack was "more consistent w/ the impact marks from an artillery shell" fired by the Israelis. https://t.co/54UYcJR1dH

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 20, 2023

It was on Channel 4 News earlier - not the murderous blood stained BBC - also the recorded message from Hamas members discussing the attack appears to have been "heavily edited".

So maybe Twitter sleuths didn't solve this after all

Got an absolutely worthless response from my rep touting this letter that he sent Biden - https://adamsmith.house.gov/_cache/files/a/3/a31a0979-6c28-4285-992d-94b513f3ad33/2251B35EAC0D7ACC5F1EA362BFF46DD7.quill---letter-l13380---letter-to-president-biden-on-israel---signed.pdf

Okay this is important: the University of London's @ForensicArchi team, and veteran war crimes investigator @CobbSmith, are suggesting, not definitively yet, that the Gaza hospital attack was "more consistent w/ the impact marks from an artillery shell" fired by the Israelis. https://t.co/54UYcJR1dH
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 20, 2023
― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, 20 October 2023 19:37 (two hours ago) link

An artillery shell... from where? A stealth mode tank that entered gaza in the middle of the night?

Meanwhile, these are not "twitter sleuths"

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231020-gaza-hospital-blast-was-caused-by-misfired-rocket-says-european-military-source
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-biden/card/u-s-signals-intelligence-shows-gaza-militants-behind-hospital-blast-VwW5ysaxHfggbrnHgY0e

A stealth mode tank that entered gaza in the middle of the night?

Command and Conquer in the hizzouse

(xp) Is that what Forensic Architecture are? Twitter sleuths?

Modern artillery is famously only used at close range.

This feels like one of those events where we'll see competing narratives for years to come and not being a military/detonation expert nor feeling the slightest inclination to trust American intelligence or unnamed European military sources I kinda just have to accept that my answer will be "I don't know who did it" for the foreseeable.

Is that what Forensic Architecture are? Twitter sleuths?

I don't know if they are twitter sleuths, but they're hardly neutral in this.

yeah I raise my eyebrow a bit at these new 'OSINT' and "forensic architecture" experts that have arisen from....somewhere.

Forensic Architecture appears to have been around for 13 years and not even vaguely focused on Israel.

A conclusive investigation into this attack requires full access to the site and munition fragments, as well as witness interviews. We continue our work on this case, and reaffirm our solidarity with Palestinian people under attack, including our friends & colleagues.

— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) October 20, 2023

being objective and being neutral are separate things

For sure, which is why confirmation bias is a thing.

"aha! You are registered to vote for the DemoRAT party, therefore you're (Len) bias"

in all seriousness though, I mean, the other intelligence agencies determining it was Islamic Jihad are pro-Israel, one of which is Israel themselves so....

and it also does feel a lil gross (not that I'm against sharing these updates itt) for all of the people spending their time speculating on whose fault it is with Substack level data when a lot of people in that building or the lot surrounding it died in fairly grisly, traumatic fashion. and when others are still being bombed as we speak

may I just recall to mind the sterling work done by our US intelligence agencies in the runup to the Iraq War?

I’m done discussing it. You guys believe what you want to believe. There’s no way Hamas would lie.

I have not drawn any conclusion since the latest info over the last few days emerged, but was supporting what Tracer said in that the Forensic Architecture account's take on the matter isn't invalidated by their supporting of Palestinians. (it might be invalidated by simply having insufficient data or drawing questionable conclusions, but you can't expect people examining data not to be human beings and have formed an opinion on the matter).

There’s no way Hamas would lie.

This is patently untrue, but the easily divined thought behind it is curiously unhelpful to reaching any kind of useful conclusion.

in the end, innocent civilians pay the price

4000 (Palestinians) and counting

“forensic architecture” pop-science accounts are giving me covid flashbacks

xxp Also Israeli civilians, although usually a lot more Palestinians in previous situations, so probably the current conflict as well. Terror is terror, and governments, no matter how culpable, no matter how out of their depth, have to respond very quickly, which is the point of terror. The release of two American hostages may be a good sign, but who knows how significant.

FYI: if it's the same Forensic Architecture led by Eyal Weizman at Goldsmiths a serious, long-standing and award-winning research outfit that's done a lot of work documenting human rights abuses, discrediting official lies, etc., in various contexts. Not to say they could never be wrong about anything --- but they're not random Twitter sleuths. Worth Googling IMHO.