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

Caitlyn Jenner's dead name is also trending there today, which says it all

sorry meant to post on the "is this anti-semitism?" thread

I thought this was pretty good:

You are criticizing Israel wrong. Here’s how to do it correctly. pic.twitter.com/DiwBTJOuiG

— Matt Lieb?? (@mattlieb) October 28, 2023

nice to finally see a video of Van Horn Street

in the larger world, the anti-semitism is probably largely being driven by people who care less about the plight of the Palestinian people and care more about being anti-semitic, and seeing an opportunity for an opening to be a bit more free with their bigotry.

― omar little, Thursday, November 2, 2023 12:29 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is upsetting me a lot right now. I know it sounds naïve but I was genuinely surprised at how fast people seized the opportunity to be flat out anti-Semitic. I grew up spending 1/2 the year in a mostly Jewish community in NY where I as a gentile was often the odd one out. 3 of my 5 lifelong close friends are Jewish. I said to one of them yesterday that I think I grew up in this little bubble were I didn't realize how much anti-semitism there still was out there and he was like yeah no shit you're from NY. Anyway - there are a million upsetting things (upsetting isn't anywhere near strong enough) happening right now but I have been thinking a lot about exactly this, OL. :/

it's not good. i have a friend who was indulging in some "deep thoughts" about judaism around the time kanye was on one about jewish people, and i had an instagram convo w/him re: a couple of his posts. i don't know that i reached him, but i tried. another friend (no longer a friend) started to get very alt-right and was an associate of ow3n b3njamin for awhile, a podcast comedian type guy who started to get into some anti-semitic and racist stuff a few years ago. that particular friend is long gone. he was at my wedding. he probably helped hold me up high in my chair during the hora. he just wound up being a particularly "bad actor" in life. and a pernicious influence on others.

i live in a bubble in Los Angeles obv, but shit does happen here. threats against synagogues, anti-semitic graffiti on a famous local deli last night, etc...

the Poetry Foundation shelved a 3500-word review of a poetry book that discusses the book's criticisms of Israel...the poet author of the book is, of course, Jewish, and so is the reviewer.

The donor pocketbook is where artistic freedom hits a wall

This is where stuff like "It would be insensitive to publish this book about Soviet dissidents at this time" leads to.

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes)

yeah that is obviously ridiculous

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

Reflexive censorship of art always seems to crop up when wars begin and wartime propaganda cranks up the red hot rhetoric. Even as recently as the invasion of Ukraine there were ridiculous people calling for cancellation of symphonies by Russian composers as a sign of solidarity with Ukrainians.

O rly

If a HAMAS sympathizer or a HAMAS-adjacent amateur lone wolf carries out a gun attack in the USA killing more than 10 people in the name is Palestine … this poll will flip like a flapjack. https://t.co/NkWdyaliV7

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) November 2, 2023

and if my granny had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. I like the specificity of ten or more people, it shows a vigorous imagination.

Reflexive censorship of art always seems to crop up when wars begin and wartime propaganda cranks up the red hot rhetoric. Even as recently as the invasion of Ukraine there were ridiculous people calling for cancellation of symphonies by Russian composers as a sign of solidarity with Ukrainians.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, November 2, 2023 1:41 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
My kid’s teacher canceled their Russia unit. Like I really don’t think it matters to Ukrainian lives whether our kids are learning about faberge eggs and Baryshnikov

re: that poll.. I'm not really sure that Israel needs much military support anyway... they're a major arms manufacturer/exporter, inventors of the Uzi submachine gun. And they seemed to have no issues selling arms to South Africa's white minority government

and yet the House just approved 14.5 billion in aide to Israel for some reason

$4 billion for the Iron Dome, which kind of seems like locking the gate after the dog gets out.

Wake Forest professor resigns after backlash due to tweet

https://journalnow.com/news/local/wake-professor-resigns-following-backlash-of-social-media-post-on-israeli-hamas-war/article_4e1022a4-78ea-11ee-a828-ffa8e334019a.html

(She’s a really good poet, fwiw!)

14.5 billion in aide to Israel for some reason

er, mm, by long tradition all those billions can only be spent on armaments produced by US-based death merchants military-industrial complex manufacturers.

And lots of defence contracting

Protests are being planned for Armistice Day. Looks like the match will be lit on the tiniest pretence

"They died for your freedom, but don't you dare think about exercising it." https://t.co/xyCICKV35j

— James B (@piercepenniless) November 3, 2023

Clare Hymer
@ClareHymer
HAPPENING NOW: Another peaceful sit-in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, this time at Kings Cross Station.

the only additional freedoms that came because of GB participation in the world wars was the bankrupting and partial destruction of an evil global empire and the resultant decline arguably sped up the process of decolonisation that followed. "Protect our freedoms" my fucking arsehole, it was a warfare state that forced conscripts onto the battlefield, which is the absolute opposite of freedom.

David Adler
@davidrkadler
New bill in the French 🇫🇷 Senate : 'An insult committed against the State of Israel is punishable by two years of imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros.'

I don't even want to paste in what Germany are doing, just utterly disgusting

Belgian transport workers saved the lives of thousands of Jews in the 1940s by unlocking the doors of trains headed for the extermination camps. Now, they're refusing to load weapons onto ships headed to Israel. This is a meaningful & timeless solidarity with humanity. pic.twitter.com/kvcUMcnJd7

— Amro Ali (@_amroali) November 3, 2023

Wokeness run amok

Scoop: Blinken told Israeli war cabinet humanitarian pause will buy Israel time for Gaza operation. My story on @axioshttps://t.co/PkpZ8vrk5H

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) November 4, 2023

Sorry, I blocked the Nazi social media website but it seems as if somebody is accusing Biden in being “complicit” in Palestinian massacre? What a concept

Quite an interesting set of remarks by this father (terrible headline), on his daughter's who have torn up those Israeli hostage fliers.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/03/news/father-of-aya-and-dana-bakaret-who-tore-israeli-posters-insists-they-are-good-girls/

“What happened in Manhattan with my daughters, I believe them. The lady provoke them, stole from their hand a picture of the baby and told her ‘this is going to keep happening to you as long as you support these people.’”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/11/04/nyt-jazmine-hughes-resigns/

Central London blocked. Charing Cross station occupied.

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Georgie Robertson
@_GeorgieBlaise
·
2h
🚨 HAPPENING NOW: huge sit in at Charring Cross station. Police have closed every entrance so hundreds more outside can’t join us. #CeasefireForGazaNOW #FreePalestine

The New York Times
@nytimes
Jazmine Hughes, an award-winning New York Times Magazine staff writer, resigned from the publication on Friday after she signed a letter that voiced support for Palestinians and protested Israel’s siege in Gaza.

These new twitter links are hella annoying

psa for all you can paste x links into ilx and then just erase the x in the url and type in twitter and the tweet will embed like the old days

There are issues with tweets embeds as outlined here.

Is this anti-semitism?

While that's to do with threads and not individual tweets I am trying to just link tweets as it makes some people mad that I am just linking to twitter at all (I am not going to stop, though I am having a go at defusing the issue).

But right now I think we're past that, because a lot of the messaging that causes people to link together Israel and The Jews In General is coming direct from Israel and pro-Israel Jewish groups, on purpose, with no concern for how they are setting up Jews around the world for a rise in antisemitism. The corollary to "Israel = The Jews; if you are anti-Israel you are anti-Semitic" is "If Israel does something you have to take a stance against, then you may as well embrace antisemitism in general." And right now Israel is committing atrocities and the world is not going to forgive the Jews for that. It's been 2000 years and people are still saying "The Jews killed Jesus" - how long will "The Jews carried out an ethnic cleansing" be used as a weapon against the world's Jewish population? I was talking to my dad about this, and he pointed out that an explosion in global antisemitism means more Jews seeing Israel as the only safe place to live, which means more settlers, which is what Netanyahu wants, so why would he care about the safety of Jews worldwide?

I don't mean this to suggest that I'm looking at this whole conflict through the lens of "Is this good for the Jews?" My primary concern is for Gaza. But when I do take a moment to look through that lens, it is undoubtedly very bad for the Jews.

― Lily Dale, Sunday, 5 November 2023 17:11 (six hours ago) link

I understand this line of thinking, but will never accept it, it's just excusing antisemitism. No one is saying "well Islamophobia is mainly the fault of Muslim groups that associate Islam with radicalization" Plenty of people are just happy to have an excuse to be antisemitic. Antisemitism quite obviously did not start with the founding of Israel. Whatever Bibi does, it shouldn't change that we don't have to prove we are "one of the good ones" before being afforded basic respect and dignity. I apply the same standard to all groups of people.

Yes, it's sometimes difficult to discuss how it feels to experience this as an American Jewish person without others getting weirdly defensive about the mere suggestion that they may have a slight bias or blind spot.

It feels a bit like being a woman and trying to discuss sexism with someone who gets angry and then mansplains to you how he's one of the good ones.

I find it most discouraging when people try to rationalize by explaining there has always been antisemitism, and surely we need to admit this, as if it's just a natural feature of the landscape that we should just be expected to tolerate.

Luckily, I did not grow up to believe that. I had very idealistic and accepting friends and supportive family. I just tune people out that try to explain my own experience back to me in a negative way. We do not just experience history. We also make it.

man alive, I didn't mean to say that antisemitism was mainly the fault of Israel, or that Israel's messaging is an excuse for antisemitism. I just meant that I think any message that represents Jews as a monolithic group is its own form of antisemitism, and one that I find very dangerous right now.

I think the analogy man alive makes in your previous post is quite a good one. Regardless of whether or not one thinks that all Muslims bear responsibility for the actions of groups who purport that atrocities they commit are in the name of Islam (and, to be clear, this is similarly a horrible and racist idea) it is clear that to do so is common and, based on a quick skim of British newspapers, respectable in many quarters. In this equation I think its pretty clear that there are a range of actors linked by an interest in making Islam and violence synonymous, regardless of the extreme divergence of their motivations. Both are culpable for forging this slanderous connection.

The wholesale commandeering of identities by fringe or conservative elements within them, motivated by deep animus, is common and tends to be enthusiastically embraced by the sensible, measured bigots that populate the opinion columns of the world. I think also of the, often unchallenged, framing of transphobia as the protection of women's or "LGB" rights. The spectacle of swivel-eyed right-wing thugs 'standing up for "LGB" rights' is not a reassuring or comforting development, and I feel a deep but difficult to articulate resonance with the images of the Jewish protesters being arrested in NYC with 'Not in my name' t-shirts. The horror and nauseating feeling of being implicated and used in such a cynical way. It seems especially galling given that apportioning blame for the state of Israel to jewish people everywhere is recognised as a fundamental expression and vector of antisemitism.

Nicholas Courtman
@CourtmanNick
German MP from the liberal party (!) calling for the parliament to eliminate foreigners’ right to organise protests and deny their right to association as a response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations, I see

dunno what that ! is about - the liberal party is the FDP, i.e. libertarian cranks, no surprise they'd be into this

Have seen a strong reaction to protests in Germany (and ofc the UK), across the pol class. But yes it's to be seen whether something is ratified in Parliament...just something to keep an eye on.

I could imagine it going through yeah, and it is v scary

wouldn't put it past the german left either tbh

Interesting thread on why the US having no red lines is bad foreign policy.

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Jeet Heer
@HeerJeet
·
1h
1. I want to suggest that Biden shouldn't be guided by domestic politics on this but by what is in the foreign policy interest of the USA. Biden is giving de facto unequivocal support (with a few rhetorical cautions) to a massacre. That is bad for America. Period

the thing about this copy paste technique is that there's no way for us to click to the rest of the thread

I prefer it

I know, it's responding to something else so the embed would be an issue here.

People who are on twitter can seek it out.

People who hate the platform can ignore it.

xp

8. What you have right now is a State Dept filled with people who know the policies they are executing are bad for America and for the world, in addition to being morally revolting. The domestic politics of this seem secondary to me compared to that.

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 6, 2023

would his endorsement count for anything? Or maybe hurt? I don't know how he's perceived in Israel

President Donald Trump is reportedly holding open the possibility of endorsing a candidate in Israel's Oct. 27 election as his administration presses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to advance a U.S.-backed plan for Gaza.

Trump said that it would be "appropriate" for him to stay out of the Israeli election but added, "I may endorse somebody," reports The Hill on Wednesday.

I think he's pretty unpopular there at the moment, since he fumbled the Iran war so badly. But who knows.

still pretty popular there among Jewish Israelis as of late June: https://www.mandatory.com/news/1800561-donald-trump-negative-review-international-poll-israel

scary to think of who he'll endorse if not Bibi, is this how we finally get the PM Ben-Gvir that we all deserve

if your primary concern wrt Israel is the fate of Palestinians then there's virtually no reason to even pay attention to the election afaict

yeah, it's kinda like the US in that respect

I'm somewhat optimistic that by the time we get a pres election in the US the Dems might have finally concluded they have more to lose than gain backing Israel, but yeah we'll see. though on that note, I am worried that Bibi losing the election will give a lot of cynics the excuse to claim we're talking about a different Israel now

but note that former IDF general and chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose coalition is leading the polls, served in Bibi's war cabinet after 10/7, is against Palestinian statehood, supports settlement in the West Bank, thinks the IDF was too restrained in Lebanon, and so on and so on. There would be effectively zero change in Gaza, the West Bank, or to the apartheid system within Israel

excuse to claim we're talking about a different Israel

that excuse would have some validity if, say, there was a sharp turn in Israel's policies in regard to such matters as arresting and prosecuting settlers who engage in KKK-like mob actions against Palestinians, initiating a withdrawal from Gaza while observing a genuine cease-fire, and seriously investigating the IDF for war crimes. that would be a different Israel. it's clear that's not an Israel we will see after this election.

Eizenkot is also the creator or public advocate of the Dahiya Doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine

a justification for large scale destruction of civilan infrastructure, ie war crimes

I just finished this article about the State Dept complicity: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/07/27/how-biden-emboldened-israels-aggression-toward-gaza-and-iran

There's a subtext that Netanyahu's desperation to stay in power and avoid jail time enabled some of the worst atrocities of the war:

Blinken flew to Israel a few days later. He met with Netanyahu and Gallant, and, according to people present, told them that letting in food was not only “a moral responsibility” but also “a strategic imperative and a legal imperative.” Yet Netanyahu wouldn’t budge until Blinken threatened to cancel a planned visit by Biden. Even then, Netanyahu agreed to let in only a small amount of supplies, which would have to come through Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt; he also asked that this minor concession remain secret. He feared a domestic backlash for not starving Gaza’s women, children, and other civilians. Biden made his visit, and as he left Netanyahu bragged publicly that he’d defied the President. He declared that Israel “will not allow humanitarian assistance” from “our territory into the Gaza Strip.”

I think there could have been a hostage deal and ceasefire much earlier under a different PM who didn't have Bibi's lifelong commitment to being a sneaky piece of shit. But everyone with power in the govt or military supports the same broad outline of eternal occupation.

yeah and Rubio's recent attacks on the ICC seem totally about protecting Israel from accountability for overt war crimes

https://www.humanite.fr/politique/armee-israelienne/le-festival-de-photo-de-sport-de-deauville-cede-aux-pressions-pro-israeliennes-et-retire-une-photo-prise-a-gaza

well that's some garbage

this is some fucking bullshit

The Spanish government has decided to allow the Trump administration’s controversial extradition request to extradite wealthy activist James “Fergie” Chambers to continue in the country’s courts.

Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects, is currently imprisoned in Madrid. It is the first known case of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas, an accusation tied to money Chambers has donated to support Palestinians, including the Sameer Project, in Gaza.

I wasn't sure whether to post this here, the Canadian politics thread, or somewhere else, but this is deranged: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/yoni-goldstein-jewish-law-tells-us-how-to-deal-with-avi-lewis

For non-Canadians: Avi Lewis is the leader of the NDP, our most viable though currently very diminished leftist party.

Yoni Goldstein: Jewish law tells us how to deal with Avi Lewis
His Yom Kippur message was indefensible

By Yoni Goldstein, Special to National Post

The Jews were well into their desert journey when Korach, a member of the privileged Levite clan, openly questioned Moses’ leadership. Two-hundred-and-fifty people, a tiny fraction of the nation that then comprised hundreds of thousands of adults, sided with him. Korach and his leadership group refused Moses’s summons, accusing him of leading the Jews out of Egypt for his own glory. Suddenly, God caused the earth to open up, and Korach and his family were swallowed alive. The 250 admirers were consumed by fire.

The biblical story of Korach presents a stark lesson in how Jews think about internal dissent, when it escalates to become a threat to the continued viability of the community itself. It is indeed an extreme consequence for eliciting communal harm, but then Jewish law is fairly clear on the subject: when a Jew endangers the Jewish community, the community is obligated to stop them.

Such is the case with NDP Leader Avi Lewis. Critics have accused him of laying blame for the deaths in Gaza at the feet of all Jews in a pre-Yom Kippur social media message. “Tonight Yom Kippur begins,” he wrote. “It’s a time of atonement — a time to grieve those who have been lost, a time to acknowledge and take responsibility for harms we have caused, individually and collectively.”

“For Jewish people,” Lewis continued, “the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name.”

Around an hour earlier, a gunman shot up a synagogue in Belleville, Ont., grievously injuring a police officer on Judaism’s holiest day of the year. It’s not clear to me that you can draw a straight line from Lewis’ post to the Belleville shooting, but, on their own merit, Lewis’ comments endanger Jews everywhere in Canada.

Lewis later tried to backtrack, saying he meant Gaza was the fault of “humanity,” not just the Jews — but the damage was done. And in any case, his original comments were completely in line with his other public remarks about Israel’s war with Hamas, and very much agreed upon within the ranks of the NDP, where Israel is seen as the enemy of all things right and good. In Lewis and his supporters’ construction, Israel and Jews are uniquely to blame for the bloodshed — and when there is blowback, that’s their fault, too.

Fortunately, the corpus of Jewish law and thought provides ample advice on what to do when one of their own threatens the safety of the community.

In Leviticus, God orders the Jewish people, “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart,” but rather to, “Reprove your kinsman.” The rabbis generally understood this to mean that the Jewish response to a disagreeable community member is to approach privately and attempt to convince them, through honest discussion, to change their ways. Maimonides later added that the confrontation is an essential element — not only to impress upon the subject the seriousness of the matter, but also to avoid holding the contempt in until it boiled over into something worse.

None of this applies, however, when a Jewish person presents a clear and present danger to the Jewish community. When that happens, Jewish thought is much more forceful: you must prevent the perpetrator from causing harm.

Jewish law developed two character sketches to describe such scenarios. The first is known as a “mosar” — a Jewish person who informs to oppressive authorities, potentially leading to the imprisonment, torture or death of community members. The second, called a “rodef,” refers to a Jew who is actively pursuing another with the intent to harm or kill them. In both scenarios, the law is clear that a Jew is duty-bound to step in. Protecting the community and its members is the most important thing.

Judaism has a robust history of debate, codified by the Mishnah, Talmud and centuries of textual disagreement. Perhaps most famously, Hillel and Shamai, two great sages of the first century who headed competing schools of Jewish learning, disagreed about pretty much everything. And that was great, because the foundation of their disagreement was “for the sake of heaven,” which Judaism highly encourages.

But all of that goes out the window when a Jew endangers another Jew. There is no real debate to be had — only rebuke and, in extreme situations, removal from the community. In March 1363, for example, the Jewish community of Tudela, the largest in the Navarre kingdom located in what are now parts of Spain and France, made a resolution that any Jew caught informing against the community was subject to excommunication from all the city’s synagogues for 50 years. Such a person’s presence was simply not tolerated in the city.

Avi Lewis is unlikely to be swallowed up by the earth or officially excommunicated, whatever that might entail, but the story of Korach still offers some metaphorical guidance for a modern-day response to internal threats. Jewish thought does not treat every critic as an enemy. But when the community is endangered from the inside, reasoned debate and private conversations are no longer options. We are left with no choice but to say, “this person does not represent us, they have no connection with us and we will not tolerate being made unsafe, even if it’s by one of our own.” The wellbeing of the community comes first.

It’s not clear to me that you can draw a straight line from Lewis’ post to the Belleville shooting

yeah no shit

esp. because from all available evidence the shooting had nothing to do with Israel, it was just the plain old fashioned anti-semitism that's cheered on by so many of the National Post's favourite world leaders

What's absurd about that bit about the Belleville shooting is it starts with "Around an hour earlier" so the only way to draw that line is via time travel.

there's an Israeli Satmar hasid being detained by ICE for protesting against Israel:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/nyregion/anti-israel-protest-ice-detention.html

Fair play to the Greens passing their 'Zionism is racism' motion at their conference.

Small step, as they are not anywhere near power, but reflects well on them

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/16/palestinians-us-journalist-attacked-in-west-bank-pogrom-what-we-know

Israeli settlers brutally attacked Palestinian olive pickers and a photojournalist working for The Washington Post in the occupied West Bank on Friday, beating villagers and setting olive groves ablaze.

The attack was among several targeting Palestinians trying to gather their olive harvest, with further assaults and arson reported in nearby communities as well.

A few juvenile delinquents

Yep. Netanyahu wouldn't lie. Added the above to this thread rather than the other one as the attack on the photjournalist working for the Washington Post (in addition to the standard attacks on Palestinians) has gotten this latest shameful attack more attention in the US

*chef's kiss*

El-Sayed on a Palestinian homeland: "Only on Gaza and the West Bank? ... the parts that have been like now annihilated, and the parts that are being encroached upon by settlers? ... It's like, 'Hey, listen, after I eat, then you can have my seconds.'" pic.twitter.com/rfca11CbBz

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) November 2, 2026