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

"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.

I feel like I slipped through some weird loophole and don’t have to suffer the consequences of being regarded the way Muslims in mainstream American (and French) discourse by virtue of having assimilated somewhat into American life (and lots of economic privilege) and then war breaks out overseas, and I can’t avoid headlines that strike me as INSANE, and it’s like, oh right, people hate us. Only I’m fine, and a bunch of Palestinian kids are dead. anyway this is what I meant when I said my feelings right now are not edifying. Just personal. Lots of cognitive dissonance.

It feels a lot like when the Iraq war broke out, except Iraqis had a state, however broken, and I’m a lot older now and a lot more jaded about my country’s work in the world (partially because of the Iraq war!)

and I feel ashamed of what a nice, polite liberal I was back then and how careful I was in critiquing America declaring war and how I assumed the best of intentions on the part of the voices I heard supporting the war even though I disagreed with them, and I just can’t stomach it this time around.

Biden questioning the number of Gazan deaths is fucking awful

that Biden statement is fucking sickening - hey who knows what the true numbers are, just be careful with the mass slaughter, we'll count them up once you're done.

A new term would have to be coined for what Biden does in that quote…

It carries more than a whiff of the scent that can be detected in Holocaust denialism. It’s less brazen and grandiose , of course, but clothed in the garb of mid-Atlantic centrism, it feels all the more surreptitious and dangerous.

more than a whiff of the scent that can be detected in Holocaust denialism.

not to say that Biden's statement was in any way justifiable or not grossly ugly, but tbf a comparison to holocaust denialism is awfully premature, unless you meant to compare it to the denialism evident among the allied powers before 1945 and the liberation of the death camps.

I similarly dislike the application of “Holocaust denialism”, because it gives Israeli-genocide-apologists a discursive easy-in for accusations of malapropism. Let’s call in “genocide denialism”, as it remains accurate, and removes any potential rhetorical obfuscation.

Similarly I dislike “Israeli apartheid”, and always have; despite the accuracy of the term by definition, drawing a connection between Israel and South Africa creates dissonance. Settlers of Israel in the 40s (not now) were European refugees; white oppressors in South Africa were “just some white guys”, the analog is flawed and is thus assailable. What could “Israeli apartheid” be re-defined as? we need new terms, ones that are accurate and specific and remove themselves from any discursive weakness. An atrocity, for sure.

All reputable sources put Palestinian general causalities at over 6000 as of earlier today, of which at least 2400 were children. At this rate of killing, we will collectively surpass Srebenica by the weekend

I feel like I slipped through some weird loophole and don’t have to suffer the consequences of being regarded the way Muslims in mainstream American (and French) discourse by virtue of having assimilated somewhat into American life (and lots of economic privilege) and then war breaks out overseas, and I can’t avoid headlines that strike me as INSANE, and it’s like, oh right, people hate us. Only I’m fine, and a bunch of Palestinian kids are dead. anyway this is what I meant when I said my feelings right now are not edifying. Just personal. Lots of cognitive dissonance.

<3 horseshoe. commiserations and v similar feelings here, though I have somewhat the opposite problem, living in a non-Arab Muslim country. over here, you get attacked for not being sufficiently supportive of the Palestinian cause or even expressing sentiments along the lines of "hey, maybe it's not a good idea to go around killing Jewish civilians if you want to get people on your side"

there's also being really heartened by seeing people rally around Palestine but also saddened by the fact that we don't see the same kind of energy for when Muslims are under attack in large numbers elsewhere and in closer proximity (e.g. Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar). Not that it's a competition, and I know the reasons for it, it's just... frustrating in a different way.

(keeping this bit under hidden tags because of real job risks) And on the opposite end and on a more personal level, there's the demoralisation that comes with being a Muslim woman working for a global company that won't even acknowledge when its own Muslim staff when they're killed by an Israeli airstrike. "missile from the direction of Israel". ffs. is there anyone else other than israel firing missiles from israel?

this swiftly followed by "if you had any integrity, you should quit your job." fuck you too, if you think it's that simple.

so yeah, lots of conflicting feelings all around, none of them particularly useful, and why i generally haven't been posting on these threads.

guhh typos under the spoiler tag

Bhutan, possibly.

are you aware of the ethnic cleansing history there?