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

OK it was hyperbole but I feel like it's taken up a bigger amount of the public discussion than usual — and to be clear, a lot of that is coming from the "stand with Israel" side, a lot of policing of acceptable speech etc. But even getting drawn into debates about the specifics of any given statement or lack of statement feels like mostly a waste of time to me.

tbh I basically agreed with your post. But I also feel like there has been a stronger-than-usual degree of thread policing itt, and some of it (so it seems to me) stems from people assuming we're all experiencing this event in similar ways or that we all silently agree on the thread's purpose and norms of participation.

Anyway, ftr, I agree the push to get institutions to ~release statements~ is a waste of time and displays an almost touching degree of faith in the power of rhetoric

But I also feel like there has been a stronger-than-usual degree of thread policing itt, and some of it (so it seems to me) stems from people assuming we're all experiencing this event in similar ways or that we all silently agree on the thread's purpose and norms of participation.

surreal to me to see eisen’s case being so widely disseminated.

This is a truly bizarre one, in that it's not like Eisen was dropping paraglider memes or stumping for mass murder of Israeli ravers as a liberatory act, his action was... approvingly sharing an Onion article about how some people think the value of a Palestinian person's life is contingent on whether they're on record condemning Hamas forcefully enough. Distinctions need to be drawn!

kinda wish there was one thread for what's happening to people in Gaza, Israel, and Palestine and another for how the conflict is playing out in all our countries

I think that would be a good idea

anyway this shit really should stop:

A NYC Democratic councilman is trying to defund a homeless-services nonprofit because a staffer showed up to a Palestine rally https://t.co/3gMWfbvLf0

— Michael Arria (@michaelarria) October 24, 2023

yes this mccarthyite crap is intolerable.

Ugh yes it is, and dovetails very nicely with the current surge in assaults on free speech by the U.S. right. Suddenly everyone wants to punish people for having opinions on things. (But also right, I get that that discussion is better elsewhere than on this thread.)

kinda wish there was one thread for what's happening to people in Gaza, Israel, and Palestine and another for how the conflict is playing out in all our countries

― symsymsym, Tuesday, October 24, 2023 11:21 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I agree, and I kind of instantly regret posting that Eisen thing now, it sucks but I'm with tipsy that the pain and peril is in the Middle East and there's something kind of weak about me focusing on things I'm more used to and thus more comfortable talking about like "who's cancelling whom in academia"

We have the Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism thread

"why did you shake the hands of the Hamas fighter?"

- "Because they treated us *very* nicely." https://t.co/38cKovNxRv pic.twitter.com/0DaeP34UQy

— روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) October 24, 2023

Just to give some context for those comments, from CBC:

An elderly Israeli hostage who was released by Hamas overnight said she was beaten by militants as she was taken into Gaza on Oct. 7, as her husband's whereabouts remain unknown.

Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, was freed late Monday along with 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, leaving around 220 hostages still in the hands of Hamas.

She was the first of four released hostages so far to speak publicly.

Seated in a wheelchair, a frail looking Lifshitz told reporters that her captors hit her with sticks as they took her by motorcycle into Gaza. There, they walked for a couple of kilometres in what Lifshitz described as a "spider web" of underground tunnels.

"I've been through hell," she said, assisted by her daughter, who translated her remarks from Hebrew to English.

Rutie Mizrahi, the niece of Yocheved Lifshitz, says she's happy and relieved that her aunt was freed by Hamas, but she is still thinking of others who are being held hostage — including her uncle, Oded Lifshitz, who she hopes will be released soon.
Lifshitz and her 83-year old husband, Oded, were kidnapped from their home at the Nir Oz kibbutz, close to the border with Gaza in southern Israel, the Israeli prime minister's office said Monday. Oded remained captive, it added.

"They stormed into our homes. They beat people. They kidnapped others, the old and the young without distinction," she said, adding that her watch and jewelry were stolen.

A group of five people from her kibbutz were held together, each with an individual guard who stayed with them 24 hours a day. Lifshitz said a doctor visited them every other day and brought them the medicines they needed.

Video of her release on Monday showed her turning around to shake the hand of a masked captor. Asked why she had done that, she replied: "They treated us gently and met all our needs."

I kind of instantly regret posting that Eisen thing now

Your post about that was great! Utterly inexplicable firing.

I think both discussions are really important tbc.

Thanks for posting the report, re: Lifshitz.

I have a lot to say about the Eisen situation but he’s dumb and the situation is dumb so it doesn’t seem worthwhile to distract from real issues.

Moved to Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

I signed this clear eyed statement on the 7th Oct attack and bombing of Gaza, calling for de-escalation. The signatories are morally consistent analysts and scholars, not known for hyperboles. https://t.co/J4CpIReMil

— Yair Wallach (@YairWallach) October 24, 2023

a very grim read: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/24/gaza-hospitals-ceasing-to-function-as-water-and-fuel-run-out

Sickening

“Twitter sleuths” back at it.

Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials believe that a projectile captured on videos shortly before the Ahli Arab Hospital explosion was a Palestinian rocket.@nytimes Visual Investigations found that this object was launched from Israel, and likely unrelated to the deadly blast. pic.twitter.com/zW35bLQBt0

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) October 25, 2023

The only thread on the geopolitics in the region that -- while you may disagree with some of it -- is packed with interesting detail.

this was a good read. i am still very unsure how israel will manage to thread the needle of invading enough to be able to declare victory over hamas in some fashion, while avoiding escalation with hezbollah at the very least. maybe they will find some excuse to never launch the ground invasion properly at all but i don't know what.

Thanks for posting the report, re: Lifshitz.

She's the first released hostage to speak about the experience and it's genuinely reassuring she's reporting hostages are being treated with a minimal level of humanity, but I don't want to draw too many conclusions from it yet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hostages.html

Her and her husband are also kibbutznik peace activists, and are angry that they weren't protected:

On Tuesday, Ms. Lifshitz was critical of the military and Shin Bet, the domestic security service, who she said had ignored warning signs of the threat to towns near Gaza. The Israeli military’s chief of staff acknowledged after the attack that the military had failed to live up to its mission to protect Israel’s citizens.

Weeks before the assault, Palestinians had rioted and fired explosive balloons near the sophisticated border fence separating Israel from Gaza.

The military, she concluded, “didn’t take this seriously.”

She told it as it was: woman was beaten up, she was also treated fine while captive. The gesture to the Hamas soldier was incredible.

Who determines the next steps of the Gaza war?

The US: 42%
Israel: 40%

via Lazar poll of Israeli Jews, October 23#Israel

— Israel Elects (@israel_elects) October 24, 2023

Not specifically aimed at anyone in this thread nor on ILX generally, I just found this piece moving:

Why Must Palestinians Audition for Your Empathy?

that’s a hell of an article

Also note that colleagues at the university where my friend works— the friend who was hit by a car driven by a pro-Israel fanatic this past weekend— are having their profiles removed from faculty websites and facing discipline from the university for signing the aforementioned pro-Palestine statement. Great country we have here.

Today, October 24th, at least 700 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by airstrikes funded by the US, Canada, UK, and the EU. Today was the deadliest recorded 24 hours for Palestinians since 1948.

— tara (@taraxrh) October 25, 2023

This is my father Nasri, 75. He was born in 1948 during the first Nakba.

Israel killed him a few days ago during the second Nakba.

My father was an eye witness to every single atrocity Israel committed against us since its establishment. pic.twitter.com/TCsqk1gbeE

— Ahmed Alnaouq (@AlnaouqA) October 25, 2023

that piece is great

Yes, the Hala Alyan essay was good. Thanks for sharing that.

That essay - man. I shared it around.

Erdoğan:

"Israel can view Hamas as a terrorist organisation along with the west. The west owes you a lot. But Turkey does not owe you anything. Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, mujahideen, defending their lands.”

At this point, the numbers of the dead I read every morning are more a barometer for "is this genocide accelerating? slowing down? or staying the same"

Erdoğan can fuck himself

yeah I have to say people like erdogan and the queen of jordan trying to position themselves as some sort of moral authorities isn’t the most convincing thing in the world

they're well positioned to pick up a few "I guess this erdogan guy isn't so bad" friends by issuing statements though

Turkey, a member of NATO remember, are increasingly important in this region, what Erdoğan says has some significance.

This dance Erdoğan does where he can refer to Turkey as being separate from the West, while at the same time being a member of NATO and trying very hard to get into the EU is interesting.

i am so nauseated by Biden's public statements and actions. i used to just take for granted that American politicians were going to lie about Palestinians and support Israel at all costs, but it's becoming impossible to tolerate.

Very few nations can claim to be moral authorities.

Bhutan, possibly.

the queen of jordan is quite a bit better than erdogan though, I wouldn't lump them together

but Biden’s the one I voted for!

it’s hard not to feel like the leaders of Western powers are thrilled with the opportunity to have the pesky inconvenience of Palestinians’ existence solved for them.

Like, fuck you so hard for this, dude:

https://x.com/sabrinasiddiqui/status/1717246677487174028?s=46&t=2NNQdG3rZOt0GL5CIWufiA

and I’m sure that’s true of a bunch of Arab rulers, too; lord knows they’re corrupt as fuck and kowtowing to the West is the price of participation in the global economy, but I still get to be pissed at what my country is doing, and the contempt with which my president regards…people like me if he feels like he can SAY THAT SHIT in public.

that's got to hurt, horseshoe. I'm so sorry.

thank you! sorry to rant. honestly, I feel like it should hurt more than it does; I lead an incredibly comfortable existence by the accident of birth.