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

It is pertinent I think, to point out that there are some very stark and objectively fair comparisons to be made between Ukraine and Gaza, particularly wrt more brutal Russian operations like the Siege of Mariupol.

For example, 500 children have been killed in total in Ukraine since the start of the war nearly 2 years ago, but over 4000 kids have been killed in Gaza in just one month.

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-soldiers-kill-ukraine-children-documentary-war/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/5/true-massacre-gaza-children-death-toll-crosses-4000-as-raids-intensify

I went to the march in DC yesterday. Of course the day after sees the most horrendous day of bombing yet. Things are changing fast but not nearly fast enough.

I would love for this newfound sympathy and focus on the oppressed to be actually consistent across all the world's situations, regardless of the connections to the West.

Here's the thing: the point of protest is to sway public opinion and put pressure on elected leaders. It is not just a manifestation of feeling sad for victims, it's supposed to achieve something. And so "regardless of the connections of the West", that's v much missing the point imo - the more tenous a situation's connection with the West is, the less likely it is that protests in the West will help in any way.

Chimene Suleyman
@chimenesuleyman
·
1h
Thing is, some of us never had the luxury of being surprised by how many look away from genocide, or jump through hoops to justify it. My parents barely survived ethnic cleansing in the Levant, not far from Palestine. My granddad didn’t survive it. People still don’t give a fuck.
---
Chimene Suleyman
@chimenesuleyman
We spent a long time watching tourists in party towns on the other side of the border, that we couldn’t even cross to go visit my grandads (mass) grave. No passports, direct flights, even to this day. And we still get told we dont have a legitimate claim to centuries of homeland

Heba Farouk Mahfouz
@HebaFarooq
·
2h
Medical source at Shifa:”“Don’t bother yourself. It is ending. Total collapse. A total collapse for the medical system. We can not do anything. Electricity is now limited to only one building, major centers only there. There is no food, not even for medical staff".

Malaka
@MalakaShwaikh
·
40m
I just read a human rights report in Arabic (from
@EuroMedHRAr
) which clearly states that the massacre that Israel committed over night in Gaza is the deadliest since 1948. Report of 1500 Palestinians killed & injured. All while Gaza has been cut off from the world. I’m shattered

Chimene Suleyman
@chimenesuleyman
·
1h
Thing is, some of us never had the luxury of being surprised by how many look away from genocide, or jump through hoops to justify it. My parents barely survived ethnic cleansing in the Levant, not far from Palestine. My granddad didn’t survive it. People still don’t give a fuck.
---
Chimene Suleyman
@chimenesuleyman
We spent a long time watching tourists in party towns on the other side of the border, that we couldn’t even cross to go visit my grandads (mass) grave. No passports, direct flights, even to this day. And we still get told we dont have a legitimate claim to centuries of homeland

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 6 November 2023 13:22 (two hours ago) link

Where is she referring to?

Doesn't say, that's a long time twitter account that I've come across many times over the years though.

embracing their role as chief propagandists

CNN's @FareedZakaria on journalists who have embedded with the IDF in Gaza:

"As a condition to enter Gaza under IDF air support, outlets have to submit all materials and footage to the Israeli military for review prior to publication. CNN has agreed to these terms...." pic.twitter.com/r4GGPiCtmJ

— Arif Rafiq (@ArifCRafiq) November 5, 2023

I feel like I’m doomed to spectate the Iraq War helplessly over and over. Embedded with the troops! It has a familiar, hollow ring.

thank you for marching, J0rdan. The images of massive numbers of people marching worldwide for Palestinians this weekend made me feel less alone.

I would love for this newfound sympathy and focus on the oppressed to be actually consistent across all the world's situations, regardless of the connections to the West.

Here's the thing: the point of protest is to sway public opinion and put pressure on elected leaders. It is not just a manifestation of feeling sad for victims, it's supposed to achieve something. And so "regardless of the connections of the West", that's v much missing the point imo - the more tenous a situation's connection with the West is, the less likely it is that protests in the West will help in any way.

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, November 6, 2023 4:58 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflagli

I have complex feelings about this notion, some of which I don’t feel comfortable posting on a public forum. To some extent, I think peaceful public protests are for the public, not necessarily the power structure. Certainly Netanyahu is unreachable through such means and Biden I think only by means of his vanity and desperation to win re-election.

I will just say, the George Floyd summer made me rethink my knee-jerk discomfort with political violence. Sometimes it works.

It also begs the question "what is called violence," but this isn't the thread for that discussion, obv.

10.000 names on the front page of Watan Amroz. pic.twitter.com/BOIzqSr7du

— Hanine Hassan حنين (@Hanine09) November 7, 2023

horseshoe, I'm certainly not holding my breath that protests will influence Netanyahu or Biden or Sunak - was just saying it's conceptually more possible than ppl marching in the US or UK influecing Xi Jinping or Putin.

Protests in early 2022 may not have influenced Putin but its arguable that they influenced Western leaders when it came to their response. I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath on protests influencing Sunak or Biden on this either, but it isn't impossible

One thing to note is that even tho they might not work, the shows of solidarity with Palestinians are appreciated by them.

It covers events before the current war, but this documentary about rock climbing in Palestine is incredibly moving and doesn’t mince words. Very glad I watched it…. I am now hoping that the people in the film are still alive.

https://watch.reelrocktour.com/videos/rr17-resistanceclimbing

Palestinian poet Fady Joudah, ‘A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation’

https://lithub.com/a-palestinian-meditation-in-a-time-of-annihilation/

Husam Zomlot
@hzomlot
Invading Israeli tanks are in #Gaza to force the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. We have warned repeatedly that Israel is planning for and implementing a 2nd #Nakba. And the world is still debating whether to call for a #CeasefireForGaza?

There is a video within the tweet

however you're pasting things in now only shows the text and no longer embeds the tweet

people keep complaining when it's embedded, people are complaining when it's copy/pasted. pick a side.

Don't want to bombard non-twitter users here with one embed after another so I am using a bit more judgement.

I embed the front cover iny prev post as I don't know how to post a picture.

Perhaps xyzzz could personally come to everyone's house with a laptop and browse/curate ilx/the internet for us while we feebly point at the screen where they should click?

one of my Arab friends who used to live in Israel frequently is sharing #freePalestine comment but she's doing it via Facebook Stories rather than posts, or occasionally sneaking in the hashtag into posts, and the sad reason I realized she's having to do it this way is that she makes her living as an actress and knows if she puts it more front and center, she'll lose work or be dismissed from projects. how fucking sad is that.

(like she does national projects, she's been on shows on BET, films, etc, so these types of gigs are the type you can lose when you post something people "don't like" on social media)

the only issue with twitter embeds for non twitter users are threads, because you cannot read twitter threads without an account. but an embed with a video in it is fine.

I know but I also get the sense linking from twitter angers people who are not on the platform, but it is the aggregation of news, has Palestinians posting on it so ignoring it is a no no but I hope this is a way of defusing the issue a bit.

(I see copying is also creating this argument now but I think it might be better this way as users can just go look up a tweet if interested)

Xyzzzz - if I haven’t said so, thank you for posting these delinked tweets, or Xs, or whatever we call them now. They’re appreciated.

Cool

C+p all day, xyzzzz, I try to avoid Twitter except for “a daily examination” so your info gathering is appreciated

the link stripping is appreciated by me at least, thanks

I'm certainly not holding my breath that protests will influence Netanyahu or Biden or Sunak

as far as biden goes -- i am! hundreds of thousands of people all over america who largely voted for him in the last election are protesting against him in what is now easily the most public and contentious policy fight of his presidency, a year before the election. polling shows that he's bleeding support among arab americans across the country and specifically in michigan, which could outright lose him the election. i'm very confident there's a number of democratic operative types & ppl w/in his administration sounding the alarm over fractures in his constituency that could prove fatal, so even if it's purely cynical self-preservation on biden's end, i am retaining optimism that he is going to listen to his base. 100k of them just marched right up to his doorstep, after all.

hamilton nolan wrote a great piece last week about how biden has a number of domestic policy accomplishments to his name that liberals can be proud of but that he's risking all of it in order to support israel bombing children.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/it-would-be-a-shame-if-you-sacrificed

what I don't understand here is that Trump is even more rabidly pro-Israel? I know it's hard to be worse on this than Biden has been, but I think Trump would in fact be worse.

Can't afford abstention

Well, this sounds pretty awful: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/07/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza#netanyahu-says-israel-could-hold-overall-security-responsibility-over-gaza-for-some-time-after-the-war

As the Israeli military campaign against Hamas entered its second month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered the clearest indication to date about what Israel has planned for the war’s aftermath, warning that Israel will need to oversee the security of the Gaza Strip once the fighting is over to prevent future attacks.

His plan, if enacted, would appear to stop short of a full reoccupation of Gaza — a move that the United States and others have warned against. He provided few details about the post-war plan and said the security situation would be “for an indefinite period,” in an interview with ABC News that aired on Monday.

Mr. Netanyahu did not say who he thought should govern the enclave after Hamas, which now governs it, is gone. But asked specifically, Mr. Netanyahu responded only that he thought Israel would “have the overall security responsibility” over the territory indefinitely.

“We’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” the prime minister told ABC’s David Muir. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale we couldn’t imagine.”

Israel has said its aim is to destroy Hamas and eliminate the possibility of it repeating an attack like the one on Oct. 7 in southern Israel.

There appeared to be broad political support for Mr. Netanyahu’s stance in Israel. Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader, said he agreed with the prime minister, speaking in an interview on Tuesday on Kan, Israel’s public radio. But he, too, cautioned against taking over Gaza’s government.

“We don’t want to finance schools for the children of Gaza and their hospitals,” he said. “It’s in Israel’s interest to return the Palestinian Authority.” The Western-backed Palestinian Authority exercises partial control over parts of the occupied West Bank and was forced out of Gaza by Hamas in 2007 in a violent struggle, after Hamas won elections the previous year.

“But,” Mr. Lapid added, “the prime minister is right. The security control has to be ours."

There have already been indications that if Hamas is defeated, the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, could have a part in governing Gaza.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has made it clear that the Palestinian Authority should play a central role in the enclave’s future, according to a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Abbas, who has for years had a contentious relationship with Hamas, has not publicly condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, as he tries to strike a balance with Palestinians, who have struggled under an Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and with whom he is largely unpopular.

President Biden has warned that it would be “a big mistake” for Israel to reoccupy Gaza, which it withdrew from in 2005, and U.S. officials have said Israel has been “very clear” that it does not want to do so.

Mr. Netanyahu did not elaborate in the ABC interview on what “overall security responsibility” over Gaza would entail but said, “Those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas” should be in charge.

Military analysts have said Israel faces a tough choice between reoccupying Gaza and withdrawing, warning that the mass displacement and civilian suffering caused by Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion could risk the emergence of another militant organization promoting violent resistance to Israel.

Mr. Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv last week that the United States was in talks with Israel and other regional leaders on what comes “the day after,” and that two things were clear: Hamas cannot remain in power, and Israel has no desire to reoccupy Gaza.

I don't believe any of that for a second, tbh

True, I suppose it's not worth thinking about too much right now. Just struck by "security responsibility" + "“We don’t want to finance schools for the children of Gaza and their hospitals" = essentially we want Gaza to be more miserable than ever

I like that Hamilton Nolan piece, though, thanks J0rdan

what I don't understand here is that Trump is even more rabidly pro-Israel? I know it's hard to be worse on this than Biden has been, but I think Trump would in fact be worse.

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Tuesday, November 7, 2023 11:57 AM (thirty-one minutes ago)

i don't think he is risking people migrating to trump. what he is risking is people saying "i can't in good conscience vote for someone who is funding and supporting the systematic bombing of children, and thus i am sitting this one out/voting for the green party." the result of that may be a trump win! but that's a different discussion than what it means on a personal moral level to cast a vote for joe biden

i'll also just paste the end of article i posted

Biden is sickening people. Biden is making people who voted for him in the last election despise him. For good reason. Thousands of innocent civilians, dead, thanks to us. That is a substantive reason. The feeling of disgust that that provokes will, I assure you, cause some number of people to resolve never to cast a ballot for Joe Biden again. If the Democratic Party’s plan for this is “lecture voters more,” they will lose the election. This is a substantive issue that can only be solved by substantive change. A ceasefire, not a lecture, is what is necessary. As soon as possible. Followed by a whole lot of work to show us that the administration understands the scale of the mistake that they just made.

That’s simply not going to happen.

I'm really not positive that Biden can force a ceasefire. they could start more forcefully advocating for it though, and stop shipping weapons over there.

It’s possible (cut off aid to Israel, sanctions) but not realistic.

Biden doesn’t really have a move here - he got on board 110% with the Israeli response initially, extra funding, etc. and is left in a spot where he can’t actually influence events and there’s no way to backtrack from that initial support.

The leverage that the US theoretically holds over Israel has very seldom been seriously invoked by any president or party leader, even as a remote possibility. It is no wonder that Netanyahu understands that he has essentially a blank check from the US government. But the speed with which Biden instantly granted his full-throated approval of Netanyahu's coalition government's actions in Gaza and that he has not budged an inch from that line frankly has shocked me. And not much about US politics shocks me.

I'm really not positive that Biden can force a ceasefire. they could start more forcefully advocating for it though, and stop shipping weapons over there.

I mean, Biden's "suggestions" effected the ceasefire in the 2021 crisis. It's interesting, reading this summary, to see such a familiar escalatory pattern, statements made by political leaders, UN resolutions going a particular way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel–Palestine_crisis

dunia 🫒
@missfalasteenia
I’m shocked they actually aired this on CNN
---
Interview with an American nurse who was in Gaza...no words.

I saw that, sharing the link because it didn't come through in your post, it should be heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk7iWgCk14U