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

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

Adalah
@AdalahEnglish
1/ BREAKING: The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has amended the Counter-Terrorism Law to criminalize the "consumption of terrorist publications," which is passive social media use, with a penalty of up to one year's imprisonment

^^^

Wait, what?

(Which is my reaction to a lot of the news in these threads tbh but this leapt out at me in a different way)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/knesset-passes-law-making-it-illegal-to-watch-pro-terror-content/

Don’t dare ask what “pro-terrorist” content is? I have a feeling it’s like Moms For Liberty’s definition of “pornography “.

I haven't read the law myself obvs, but even that summary makes it seem like a ready-made justification to target whoever the govt has already decided to target

they claim it is to avoid lone wolf incidents. what laws have been shown to reduce the efficacy of stochastic terrorism and agitation?

i actually wondering about it a while ago and like found a "project" at planck institute about it but couldn't reach any output i think this is the page i found

https://csl.mpg.de/en/projects/philosophical-and-public-security-law-implications-of-stochastic-terrorism

“tHe oNlY dEmOcRaCy iN tHe mIdDlE eAsT”

I’m glad you’re here table, I feel like you’re keeping my own convictions in check, lest I start screaming “sorry you read something that hurt your feelings; here are 100 videos of people collecting the remains of their children into grocery bags”

fgti, i'm glad you're here, too, for similar reasons....and also beyond those reasons <3

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House: Israel agrees to 4-hour daily 'humanitarian pauses' in fighting in Northern Gaza to allow civilians to flee.

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 9, 2023

woeful

it's going to be "I told you there were no civilians" isn't it

I can't see how this is not going to be permanent expulsion from the area.

The plan seems to be for a 2nd Nakba and a continuation of encouraging settlers to claim lands in the West Bank while turning the strip into an even more nightmarish carceral landscape.

https://x.com/YairWallach/status/1722726146452734321?s=20

whoops, anyway, a left-wing jewish activist was arrested for "intent to commit treason" for some palestinian-sympathetic instagram posts (literally just pictures of palestinian children)

Shameful to call that four hour pause "humanitarian".

2/3 weeks ago we were doing hospital discourse now no one can be fucked.

https://x.com/atyanibaker/status/1722653871166619813?s=20

It is with deep sadness that @ThePCRF learned of the bombing deaths of Farid, 12, and Qossay, 14, Salout, in Khan Younis yesterday. Their father, brother, and others were also killed. We sent boys to Shreveport in 2016 for craniofacial surgery. This was their last photo in #Gaza pic.twitter.com/FZz5JlfBhv

— Steve Sosebee (@Stevesosebee) November 9, 2023

Thread is pretty unbelievably devastating tbh.

absolutely heartbreaking

stop fucking bombing civilians, for god's sake

Guardian is reporting dire but predictable revelations regarding Netanyahu’s hostage non-negotiation, based on anonymous sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/netanyahu-rejected-ceasefire-for-hostages-deal-in-gaza-sources-say

He is a monster. I don’t even know how to process what I am seeing in Gaza. It feels dystopian, senseless, nihilistic. I don’t even believe there is some hidden master plan, or at least not one that could be achieved. Just destruction.

Over the last three years, settler violence steadily increased day after day. Those of us who live in villages near the settlements know these settlers, especially the violent ones who assault and try to expel us. Four days ago, they came to my village at night. They forcibly entered my neighbor’s home and detained all the men and held them at gunpoint. Then they took them outside the house, and with an M16 gun pointed to the head of the house owner, they told him he had two options, and there wasn’t a third: “Leave or die.”

Netanyahu's disregard for the hostages' safety is really disgusting.

Israelis in my feed are also saying that he shows no empathy for any of the victims' or hostages' families when he meets them, and that he tries to avoid them.

I mean, caring about the hostages would mean admitting that he was in the wrong. Fascists never admit being wrong, they simply divert attention from their own failures via violence or threats of violence

Or, as is mentioned, ignoring the glaring quality of their failures when it’s right in front of them

“I like people who weren’t kidnapped.”

On this topic, I posted about the hostage peace activist Vivian Silver and her son Yonatan Zeigen before. This article from a couple days ago about their families fight to get through to the government is excellent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/07/israel-war-peace-activist-sons/

Tomorrow would be another day in what felt increasingly like a hopeless campaign. They would repeat the same stories to journalists about their mother — that she grew up in Winnipeg and moved to Israel in 1974 to start a new kibbutz and devote her life to regional peace initiatives. That she had fought against the blockade of Gaza. That she baked decorative cakes for her grandchildren’s birthdays.

They would hold posters with her face under the word “KIDNAPPED” and reread their last text messages with her, looking for clues they had missed the first or the 15th time. They would attend funerals of those killed at the kibbutz. They would ask survivors if they had seen Vivian on the morning of the attack.

They would try to ignore the social media posts from hawkish Israelis who suggested that their mother deserved to be killed for her activism, and the other posts from around the world that seemed to legitimize the Hamas attack as a form of resistance. They would try to forget that her release depended largely on an Israeli government that they — and she — despised.

They would channel their mother, who had believed in a diplomatic solution when no one else did. Maybe she would have some idea of how to end this.

Two days later, Yonatan and Chen were walking across central Tel Aviv holding posters of their mother. In the photo, Vivian is smiling, her gray hair swept across her forehead, looking just to the left of the camera. “Bring her home now,” the poster said.

A group of a few hundred demonstrators and family members had gathered to pressure the Israeli government to push harder for the release of the hostages.

“Right now!” the group chanted in Hebrew and English. Yonatan and Chen listened but did not say the words. Aside from wanting the hostages to be released, the crowd didn’t agree on anything.

The night before, the Israeli government had escalated its war in Gaza, which had already killed thousands of Palestinians. Many of the hostage families supported the offensive — the airstrikes and the siege and the ground troops that were starting to move in. Some circulated the same statement: “There will be no cease-fire until everyone is returned.”

The brothers were sure their mother would oppose all of it. Her politics had been unwavering. She had worked to arrange a solidarity bike ride on both sides of the Gaza border fence. Her friends from Gaza called her on Jewish holidays. Even after her sons had given up on the prospect of peace, she persevered.

“I would tell her, ‘Israel is dead. It’s hopeless,’ and she would say, ‘Peace could come tomorrow,’” Yonatan said.

He tried to imagine the role she might be playing in captivity, reasoning with her abductors.

It was a Monday — Day 17 — when Yonatan left Tel Aviv for a meeting in Jerusalem with Eli Cohen, the country’s foreign minister, and Gal Hirsch, the head of its hostage rescue team.

It was meant to serve as an update for the hostage families. The government had said little about its efforts to secure the release of the 242. By its own count, Israel had dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza since Oct. 7. No one had explained what precautions were being taken to avoid killing the hostages.

Yonatan, in a T-shirt and shorts, walked into the Foreign Ministry in downtown Jerusalem. Neatly dressed government officials had been assigned to greet and accompany every hostage family inside the meeting hall.

He saw other families from Beeri and sat down at their table.

There were Cohen and Hirsch, both men his mother had demonstrated against. They walked around the room as they spoke.

“This is our top priority,” Yonatan recalled Hirsch saying. Military pressure, he said, would give Israel leverage in a hostage negotiation.

“What about a cease-fire?” Yonatan asked.

“He was flabbergasted,” Yonatan recalled. “He said, ‘That’s a present for Hamas.’”

“So you’re doing everything to get the hostages out except for presents,” Yonatan responded.

Then Cohen addressed the group, speaking vaguely about the plan to free the hostages. He said he needed to be careful about what he shared so details didn’t leak to the press, Yonatan remembered.

Does anyone have questions, he asked after his remarks.

Yonatan raised his hand and took the microphone.

“When you talk about annihilating Hamas, it feels like a propaganda line because you didn’t do it in the past 15 years and you’re not going to do it now,” he said. “And if you do it, it’s going to kill the hostages.”

We will win the war, Cohen responded.

Just today my wife and I met with one of her friends, who is related to Vivian Silver by marriage. She said that her apartment was basically a charred black box after the attack, and that the only hope that she’s alive is because there were no bones in the ruins.

With the hostages, I've been thinking about the successful resolution of the Trabzon hostage incident of 1996, and how Turkiye handled it vs how Russia wanted them to handle it

In the article it mentions her phone was geolocated in Gaza a few hours after the attack

Thank you for sharing that Vivian Silver story. I will be so, so relieved if she is alive and recovered

About 69 mosques have been destroyed. This one is apparently older than Israel.

---
Alan MacLeod
@AlanRMacLeod
Watch this absolutely insane footage of Israel wiping out the Khalid bin al-Walid Mosque in Gaza yesterday.

Arab protestors in Israel are being arrested.

---

It appears we are under undeclared military rule. The arrest of Mohammad Barakeh, head of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, is an attack on the entire Arab population. We won't give up our right to protest and oppose the war.

https://x.com/AidaTuma/status/1722560059190788146?s=20

Thanks for linking this letter above. https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2023/11/an-open-letter-from-jewish-students

When you realise that the signatories haven't even graduated from university but are more thoughtful and articulate than 99% of what passes for discourse in this benighted world.. ffs it's humbling

Going to also link to this again. Yes I rolled my eyes too but give it a chance. Very moving and powerful. I watched with my boys and it was a good way into understanding the emotional reality of the history of this situation

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

Commenting on a rally for Occupation within Israel.

---

Yair Wallach
@YairWallach
Only a handful of people came to this demo. There is very little appetite among the Jewish Israeli public to re-establish the settlements in the Gaza Strip. But those who support this vision have disproportional influence inside the coalition