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

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?

This article is absolutely pummeling. It made me weep and shake.

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/no-human-being-can-exist/

Aimless and flamboyant goon otm re critiquing my invocation of the Holocaust.

Biden’s statement belongs to a particular category of rhetorical moves that combine three sentiments: “they’re lying”, “shit happens (civilians die in wars)”, and “this war is justified”…. ergo, however many are dying , it’s justified.

this is why turkey is maybe a better reference than germany if we have to be comparing genocides because turkey mastered that approach quite early on while the genocide was still happening and has more or less stuck to it for a century

This article is absolutely pummeling. It made me weep and shake.

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/no-human-being-can-exist/

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, October 26, 2023 7:53 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

me too. thanks for sharing

that was real difficult to read, but yeah, everyone should see that

thanks for that, incredible essay.

Thank you for that n+1 article

great post Roz and sorry for what you're dealing with

fgti OTM about how apartheid isn't an illuminating term. An indefinite military occupation isn't merely a form of apartheid.

I find virtually all the arguments from analogy that have been around in the last few weeks really unhelpful (Russia-Ukraine, 9/11, Isis, etc etc etc)

To be clear, my argument for “changing the terms” is based on a desire for a clearer and more effective description of “what is happening”, one that won’t allow for obfuscation based on misapplication of terms. The best litigators know they cannot win a “pro-genocide” argument on facts and figures, they can only stall by debating semantics of the language used in the “anti-genocide” arguments. Meanwhile the death toll keeps rising.

Every morning I see new numbers of the dead and wounded, and I ask myself, “what did I do yesterday, in my limited capacity, to stop this? Went to the rally? Posted something online?” and the deaths haven’t stopped.

The n+1 article draws a parallel to Azerbaijan’s recent massacre, and the massacres in Former Yugoslavia in the 90s; these seem to me to be more accurately applied analogies

great post Roz

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!)

The n+1 article draws a parallel to Azerbaijan’s recent massacre, and the massacres in Former Yugoslavia in the 90s; these seem to me to be more accurately applied analogies

I agree about the greater accuracy.

The challenge I see is that those parallels will only be more accurate to those who know a certain amount about those events. So then we have to start asking, what are the purposes of drawing parallels (or analogies)? And who is the target audience?

Azerbaijan barely made the headlines, and the massacres in the Balkans seemed confusing to many. So if drawing parallels is an attempt to make the unfamiliar or "complicated" seem clearer by likening the event at hand with one the 'average reader' is likely to be have at least some familiarity with, then you end up with parallels to South African apartheid, 9/11, and so on.

I don't have an answer to this. I'm just thinking aloud, and wondering if there isn't often some sort of devilish inverse relationship between the accuracy of an analogy and its rhetorical efficacy.

horseshoe and Roz: thanks for stepping out and sharing.

I don't believe there were massacres in Azerbaijan? It was more like some kind of mass exodus. It probably wasn't reported much because of Armenia's closer relationship with Russia (the baddies).