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

Jabalya blast: Massive Crater Left after Israeli strike on Gaza refugee camp causes casualties- CNN https://t.co/XofSK3srzj

— cosmic (@Wheresdamachine) October 31, 2023

Jfc

God forgive me I read that as “Jambalya blast”

also this seems like a good sign the WH needs to reverse course

seeing so many #resistance types living out the Dril racism dial tweet over this. "It's actually good to lose Muslim voters completely, we'll just pick up more Israeli flag twitter bios instead."

Likewise support for the Labour Party among the Muslim community in the UK had plummeted. There's also been a spate of resignations from Muslim local councillors... but that's fine because...

...a senior Labour source had been quoted as saying the resignations of Labour councillors was a sign the party was “shaking off the fleas”.

.

Houthis in Yemen are now claiming responsibility for three separate missile strikes on Israel over the past two weeks. This fills me with such despair

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yemens-houthis-enter-mideast-fray-hardening-spillover-fears-2023-10-31/

the distance between seemingly all govt and many non govt parties across the west and actual polled citizens opinion is a complete puzzle to me and if anyone has any kind of explanation for it (even in a specific country) id appreciate a pointer

the unity of political establishment on this is staggering, even having watched iraq and many other instances since where a "we didnt know" ten years later to an inquiry is accepted and everyone carries on.

its a weak link but i can only think back to what a formal uk invasion across the border as a response to IRA campaign in (say) 1974 would have led to worldwide and ofc the immediate thought is that it couldnt have happened- we are too white and christian for the US to have allowed it

isn't what happened in Jabalya a clear war crime

I'll be heading to the march in DC on Saturday. I have zero expectation US leaders will care/pay attention but I've seen some Palestinians say the support of the world's citizens helps boost their spirits somewhat, so I can at least contribute to that.

Xxp I’m pretty sure that in the US where unlimited untraceable money flows into the political system a few billionaires can pretty much dictate their preferred extremist policies, no matter what the public actually thinks (see: prospects for even the most modest gun control in USA, for example, which polls show very well even among Republicans).

I feel that it is overwhelmingly clear to me that the October 7 attack is being used by Israel as a pretext for the destruction of Gaza, the expulsion of its population, and a full Israeli takeover of the region.

I haven't been in this thread for a while but Israel's recent actions have re-activated in my mind the question I had when this first happened, which was basically, why doesn't Israel just bomb the entirety of Gaza into a parking lot, kill everyone there, and seize the territory and rebuild afterwards? Everyone else told me I was insane, that Israel was not about committing genocide and/or war crimes, and that most importantly the rest of the world would not stand for that.

Well...it seems pretty clear at this point that Israel does not give a fuck what the rest of the world thinks, that they are absolutely going to commit war crimes up to and including genocide and lie in the world's face about it, and that they will suffer no political consequences. The US money faucet will stay on, the UN will say "Gee, wish you hadn't done that" and close the matter, and the other countries in the region will invest in the eventual real estate boom in what was once referred to as Gaza.

I mean, where is the evidence for any other outcome?

The imperial apparatus isn't really subject to the desires of the citizens of the metropole.

ime evidence for future events is generally hard to find

ime evidence for future events is generally hard to find

Nice dodge. I'm gonna depart the thread again, because this whole thing is too depressing to think about in any depth, but I really do think we're gonna see full-on eradication. I mean, what other choice do they have at this point? They've already killed enough people that there's no turning back. At this point, every Palestinian left alive will be an enemy of Israel until the day they die. So the smart move, abandoning any question of "right" or "wrong," is to kill them all, as quickly as possible.

Thanks for the consulation.

Nice dodge.

Dodge? Rly? As conjectures about the future go, yours is somewhat justified, but asking people for hard evidence that you are wrong, as if their inability to produce it proves you are right is just weird thinking.

Yeah, unperson, I share your views on this matter, but I don't share your conviction that it is "the only outcome"

I hate to ask a grim and ignorant question, but is there a practical difference between a "refugee camp" with houses and any other arrangement of houses in Gaza being struck? I don't know what the distinction "refugee camp" signifies. A lot of refugee camps in the area are decades old and have permanent structures.

The refugee camps are much more densely populated.

Around 50 thousand people in 1.4 square kilometers

3,542 Palestinian children killed so far. That’s about one every ten minutes.

Btw, the Jabalya strike is not the first refugee camp that has been targeted by Israeli air strikes. The Al-Shati refugee camp was targeted on Oct 9 and 12, destroying four mosques and killing at 13 people by one report, 15+ people by another

they also destroyed that ancient church, which was being used as a house for refugees

If you mean the Orthodox Church, it was not destroyed l, that was a false or misunderstood report.

https://orthodoxtimes.com/divine-liturgy-was-celebrated-at-church-of-st-porphyrios-in-gaza-in-midst-of-war/

they did strike the church, but the old building wasn’t destroyed. either way, killed 18 people sheltering there

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/20/gaza-church-strike-saint-porphyrius/

Thank you to everyone who’s going to marches, or donating, or doing anything at all at this moment.

My heart is breaking.

What organizations are you all donating to? Trying to figure out what's going to be most useful.

We gave to Oxfam. It sounds like the amount of aid going through is starting to increase but still not enough. They work in the West Bank as well though.

Palestinian Medical Assistance & Anera are two I’ve donated to.

the distance between seemingly all govt and many non govt parties across the west and actual polled citizens opinion

Agreed. Among the exceptions to this would be some of the leftist governing parties in South America (e.g., Bolivia, Chile and Colombia are pulling their ambassadors to Israel).

I did World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders

aid money for Gaza going missing was a problem in my country a few years ago, so these days local activists recommend donating only to the red cross/red crescent

fwiw the UN says that so far there is no evidence that aid has been diverted to Hamas or criminal groups.

I’m interested in people’s news diets on this. It’s so overwhelming. I am doing a pretty good job of completely avoiding social media. Pretty much all day I focus on work.

- In the morning, the radio (World Service or Radio 4)
- links people send me. ILX.
- In the evening, Al-jazeera if I feel like I can handle it. I often can’t or won’t, avoiding the news completely, or tune in to a brief bit of Newsnight and/or rolling news.

I think what’s missing is… blogs? I’d be interested in reading niche specialists who can illuminate the web of alliances in the region for instance

I think Michael Walker most evenings on Novara Live has been valuable.

I've become a regular watcher because it has been the only bearable UK coverage of Palestine.

This kind of shit doesn't help either.

Hamas official promises: 'We'll repeat Oct. 7 massacre until Israel is annihilated'

I read Haaretz daily, and +972. I have Twitter alerts set up for key news sources on an old Wifi-only phone so I’m not inundated through the day. I have blocked three “pro-Palestinian but anti-Semitic” Twitter accounts that were popping up a lot in my feed

My diet consists of:
- Jewish Currents
- N+1
- Electronic Intifada (yes, very biased, I know)
- Al-Jazeera
- some occasional blogs
- one or two social media pages that I click on when I check in, which is rarely!!

This was a good read, some seemingly obvious concepts are sharply clarified

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/antisemitism-zionism-nikki-haley/

This conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism isn’t about protecting Jews. It is a way of isolating, shaming, and even ruining individuals who oppose the war agenda of the Israeli state. It is a way also to chill the actions of budding activists who are against racism, against apartheid, and against a logic that has brought us to the brink of a Palestinian genocide.

Similarly, to say that anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism is also a way of communicating the idea that Jews are by definition Zionists. This is dangerous and anti-Semitic, branding Jewish people as supporters of Israel’s war on Gaza no matter our personal politics. Its assertion also pours gasoline on the fires of anti-Semitism by creating a savagely unfair guilt by association.

This kind of shit doesn't help either.

That kind of rhetoric falls in line with Saddam Hussein promising the "Mother of All Wars" when it was apparent that the USA would invade. It may be tone deaf in terms of seeking western support, but the message isn't designed for that purpose. It tells Gazans "we are not helpless; we are fierce".

Just to note that Israel created Hamas and officials mostly agree on that history

I read most things people link here, including Forward, Guardian, Jewish Currents, CNN, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and the New York Times. I also seek out coverage from media outlets whose coverage on other issues diverges from mine or is opposite to mine, such as the Wall Street Journal.

Sometimes I look at Shayan Sardarizadeh's Xitter account (@Shayan86). He does a daily thread of Israel-Hamas war misinformation.

A lot of the above plus El País. For reasons I’ve yet to figure out, I suffer less when reading about all this in Spanish.

Just to note that Israel created Hamas and officials mostly agree on that history

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

can you go into more detail on this please?

Galit Distel Atbaryan, Likud party member, was Minister of Information until she resigned on Oct 12, now a member of Knesset, tweeted this a few hours ago:

https://x.com/galitdistel/status/1719689095230730656

Maybe something is lost with the “translate tweet” function, but:

Don't hate each other.
The monsters hate you enough.
Hate the enemy.
Hate the monsters.
Any vestige of internal bickering is a maddeningly stupid waste of energy.
Invest this energy in one thing;
Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth.
That the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory.
or they will die.
And their death is evil.
Gaza should be erased.
And fire and smoke on the heads of the Nazis in Judea and Samaria.
Haron is also a Jew who will shake the earth of the world.
A vengeful and cruel IDF is needed here.
Anything less is immoral.
Just unethical.

^complete mental derangement, but expressed very poetically

Definitely more poetic than Lindsay Graham, yes

crut, Mehdi Hasan has a good basic explanation here.

In essence, tho, Israel helped support the founding of Hamas as a reaction against Arafat and Fatah. Israeli authorities thought that by supporting a religious political and social organization like Hamas, the more secular and pan-Arabic inclinations of Arafat could be counteracted.

Obviously, this is not what has happened. This doesn’t excuse the horrible actions of Hamas, but is simply objective history in many ways.

A not totally perfect analog could be the way that the US armed Afghans against Russia in the 80s. Look how that turned out!

361 foreign nationals and 45 severely injured Palestinian people were permitted to leave the Gaza strip today, according to the NY Times (gift link)

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/01/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news?unlocked_article_code=1.7Ew.-9l7.qH_VsBrxETnT&smid=url-share