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

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).

there weren't massacres, but it was ethnic cleansing in that all armenians were told to get out or they would be killed.

also a blockade of critical points of entry for food, medicine, etc, to Nagorno-Karabakh, and sabotage of infrastructure (gas, electricity, internet).

right. similar situation, that fortunately did not end with tens of thousands dead, but only because they fled.

http://www.thedriftmag.com/a-desperate-situation-getting-more-desperate/

An interview with Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi:

Ethnic cleansing has been underway at a very low boil level, not high enough for the world to pay any attention. And burying the Palestine question, burying a political horizon for Palestinians, seemed to be the primary endeavor of Western countries and Israel, as well as some of Israel’s Arab allies. As far as the Israelis were concerned, this was the best of all possible worlds. We were going to have railway lines running from Mecca to Haifa; we were going to have Israeli raves in the Saudi desert; we were going to have love, friendship, peace and security arrangements forever and ever. And all of this was going to be done with the Palestinians under the boot of an Israeli occupation that would continue indefinitely. Palestinians, all of them, saw that. Not everybody reacted the way Hamas did, obviously. But everybody saw that this was a desperate situation getting more desperate, and that their interests and rights were being completely ignored by all and sundry — not just Israel or the United States or its western client-allies, but also by Arab countries.

Ethnic cleansing has been underway at a very low boil level, not high enough for the world to pay any attention.

Which brings to mind: the NYT is very keen on data visualization and maps, and produce impressive work, but as far as data viz of Palestinian space over time, they have limited themselves to documentation of the "high boil" points (and the short-term):

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-maps.html

For mapping of the "low boil" (and over the longer-term) the best mapping project I've found is this collaboration between Forensic Architecture and B'Tselem:

https://conquer-and-divide.btselem.org/

the official Israel account on X just spread the Pallywood conspiracy theory, a claim i'm seeing more & more that Palestinians are actors, faking what's going on in Gaza

they deleted it but the damage is done, its spreading via others

these are two completely different people pic.twitter.com/yCiY6kqYQE

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) October 26, 2023

well when the President of the United States says that Gaza is exaggerating or falsifying the casualties anything fucking goes I guess

There's something really hellish about Israel's official Twitter account shitposting through all this

Yep that twitter is an absolute hell scape

Posting memes while bombing children

Just in case it’s needed

Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

Thx for creating that. Better than calling it "World to Middle East: Suck it"

The nplusone essay posted upthread is really good. The points it makes about the emergence of violence in cycles are not new but depressingly true and as known now as they ever were. From the essay:

Such people seem not to see or to recognize Palestinian suffering because they literally do not see or recognize it. They are far too intent, far too focused, on the suffering of people with whom they can more readily identify, people they understand to be just like themselves.

War is easy to talk about; there are not many people left of the generation which remembers it. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup served with distinction in the last war. I never killed anyone but I wore uniform. I was in London during the blitz in 1940, living where the Millbank tower now stands, where I was born. Some different ideas have come in there since. Every night, I went to the shelter in Thames house. Every morning, I saw docklands burning. Five hundred people were killed in Westminster one night by a land mine. It was terrifying. Are not Arabs and Iraqis terrified? Do not Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die? Does not bombing strengthen their determination? What fools we are to live as if war is a computer game for our children or just an interesting little Channel 4 news item.

Every Member of Parliament who votes for the Government motion will be consciously and deliberately accepting responsibility for the deaths of innocent people if the war begins, as I fear it will. That decision isfor every hon. Member to take. In my parliamentary experience, this a unique debate. We are being asked to share responsibility for a decision that we will not really be taking but which will have consequences for people who have no part to play in the brutality of the regime with which we are dealing.

Seeing lots of reports on X that cell and internet service has been shut off to Gaza. Bleak.