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

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.

xpost (re gyac, Benn, cycles)Yeah---also, the Bush etc. thinking on some level was: the 9/11 bombers were Saudi, but we can't go there----Bin Laden is probably already in Pakistan, but we can't go there---so:surrogates---just as: here are all these people aboveground in Gaza, while Hamas has those tunnels, so bomb and then go in, mostly aboveground---worked out great in Vietnam.

Another difference between this ongoing situation and xxxxxpost Apartheid South Africa: the white South Africans leaders learned when to give it up however reluctantly in some cases---but then, they were eventually under a lot of international as well as internal pressure.
Not that there aren't attempts at the former in this case, of course---
from CNN today:

European Union leaders have stopped short of calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, instead appealing for humanitarian "pauses" to provide aid, as the UN warns its operations are being "paralyzed" by Israel’s bombardment of the enclave. A top UN official called current humanitarian aid levels in Gaza “nothing more than crumbs."
Here's how to help humanitarian efforts in Israel and Gaza.
...Impact Your World has gathered a list of vetted organizations that are on the ground responding. You can support their work by clicking HERE or using the form below.
https://www.cnn.com/world/how-to-help-humanitarian-efforts-in-israel-and-gaza

Israel is ramping up the killing machine tonight

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/27/us-asks-qatar-to-turn-down-the-volume-of-al-jazeera-news-coverage

Antony Blinken, has reportedly asked Qatar to moderate Al Jazeera’s coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas, amid concerns within the Biden administration that the channel is inflaming public opinion and heightening the risks of a wider conflict.

so it's the coverage that is inflaming opinion, not the death and destruction being rained down

So fucking bleak

if Israel and its allies do not want a wider conflict perhaps they should stop indiscriminately murdering children

I assume everyone here already heard about the Al-J journalist whose entire family was killed in Gaza, right?

anyway, I am sorry to post US politics itt, but I am both livid and rather alarmed at the developing political climate around opposing this genocide. (and of course the US mil is up to its neck in this now)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/27/biden-israel-palestine-muslim-americans-war/

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/last-time-i-saw-yaakov/

I came across this moving, completely arresting essay today, from 1995

Two things about leaving Israel had been a huge relief to me: the absence of any clear risk of getting my limbs blown off; and the freedom from the endless talk about Israeli and Arab politics. In time, the circular arguments — the Holocaust and the necessity of a Jewish State, Palestinian terrorism, Arab antisemitism, Arab manipulation of the Palestinians as a tool against Israel, the Zionist justification of Israel — faded from my mind. So much so that when, on a Paris metro, a young Palestinian man, seeing a Star of David around my neck, felt obliged to make the victory sign at me and say “Vive la Palestine,” I felt nothing but agreement and curiosity. “Je suis tout fait d’accord,” I told him, “but why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re a Jew.”

“Yeah, exactly. A Jew, not an Israeli.”

“But the two are like this,” he said, holding up two intertwined fingers, and was surprised when I began to laugh.

I regret laughing now. A Palestinian acquaintance said recently that in the occupied territories, no one can tell the difference between a Star of David — the same as appears on the Israeli flag; the same as appears on the Israeli Army jeeps throughout the territories — and a swastika. The comparison is simplistic, and he knew it, but I take his point. Is it even possible to ask young Gazans or Nazarenes to bring a historical perspective to the fact of their life-long terrorization by an occupying army, symbolized by the Star of David? Should they think about the Sykes-Picot agreement during their daily humiliation by heavily armed Israelis? Should they think about Kristalnacht? Rabin himself has spoken of the occupation as having corrupted the Jewish state, and the silver Star of David I wear around my neck, a deeply personal acknowledgement of continuity between myself and the generations of the Holocaust, has been stolen from me by the years of occupation.

u find the same questions everywhere — the local Arab grocery, Middle Eastern cab drivers, Israeli shopkeepers. Nothing ever changes: sometimes, through the Internet, I check in on Middle Eastern newsgroups, or join the Palestinian chat channel, and I hear the same kind of nonsense I heard nearly 20 years ago in Israel. Is Israel justified? Are Hamas members terrorists, or soldiers? Did the Holocaust occur? Can the Israeli forces be compared to Nazis? Is terrorism justified? The names change, and the level of brutality has certainly escalated, but everything else is the same — same circular righteousness, same absurd justifications, same unending violence.

Since knowing Yaakov, if it all seems just as tragic, or more so, the absurdity of all this is more apparent to me. New generations, from Brooklyn to Nazareth, grow into consciousness of the argument, but the same underlying assumptions remain unquestioned: assumptions of nationalism, of righteousness, of revenge.

But I no longer see the argument in the same light. When I see a young Hamas member talking about how proud he is of the tragic bombing of a bus full of Israelis in Tel Aviv, I remember Yaakov talking about his responsibility to kill Arabs; when I see a Jewish West Bank settler defending the fanatic mass murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein, I see Frank, lying in bed, in trauma. George Orwell wrote somewhere that all of his writing, no matter how personal the story, is always political. Yaakov taught me that no matter how political things seem, they’re invariably personal. I see that for the Hamas member, the West Bank Settler, and my old friend Yaakov, politics are not, as they believe, purely moral commitments to the cause of right, but answers to personal needs: needs for personal meaning, perhaps, or for righteousness — needs for identity. The Hamas member has been raised through a lifetime of what can only seem to him castrating political and cultural oppression; threatening his masculinity, imposing poverty and marginality. The West Bank settler lives in a world he imagines is out to destroy him and his birthright; he’s haunted by the specter of the Holocaust, unable to rise above the threat to his personal safety he sees around him. And Yaakov, born guilty and oppressed by his personal history, finds his meaning in religious observance and the desire to kill. Everything is personal, and yet Yaakov and his religious kind, working in what Amos Oz so correctly describes as a powerful alliance with the ultra-orthodox and nationalistic Muslims of Hamas and Islamic Holy War, may well undo the Oslo Accords and the Rabin-Arafat peace process.

And Yaakov, who justifies murder with a religious myopia that, in turn, conceals personal trauma, fails to see that he of all people — he with his legacy of guilt and reparation — has made a travesty of the Holocaust and withdrawn any possibility of meaning from the brutal torture and extermination of millions of Jews during the Third Reich: he trivializes their memory, he makes transcendence hopeless. Perhaps the heroic Rabin, Peres, and Arafat will effect some meaningful change in Israel, if they’re not undone by the world’s great scourge, identical in Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike: fundamentalism. And certainly the great suffering and political complication of the Mideast cannot be simplified. But in the end, I come back again and again to a quote I discovered a few years ago in the mouth of Patrick O’Brian’s Dr. Stephen Maturin:

I have such a sickening of men in masses and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. . . . And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have — for what they are — are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

I don’t know where Yaakov is now. I remember him often: his stories of his youth in a small town in Germany; the details of our lives as roommates; the utter absorption with which he mastered Hebrew and studied the violin. I think often of the way he comforted me after I had been disappointed in an infatuation, his faithful empathy and affectionate understanding. But when I think back to the friend I had, that year in Jerusalem, I must also think of the brittle, harsh ideologue I met years later in New York, a man who had by then killed for his religious and nationalistic beliefs, and then I feel the great and unheroic truth of Maturin’s words.

thanks for that