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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

I’m glad that someone else on here watched it, Tracer. It’s a powerful film.

omg, that rock climbing film. As a devout non-sporty person, I begrudgingly started it and quickly shifted from "I don't care about this" to holding back tears. Everybody should watch that, it's incredibly moving. It's one thing to read news reports about atrocities, but this shows the character of some people there and... man, I hate to be like this but it made the people relatable to me and so the injustice of life there stung so much more.

I think Gaza resettlement is extremely unlikely in the near future, but I would be concerned about people trying to shift the Overton window in that direction for the future

I feel like there’s too much to even post. Like I’m a kid saying “omg go outside and look at the moon” except it’s “holy shit just look at the news”

Ghassan Abu Sitta
@GhassanAbuSitt1
·
2h
Shifa hospital has collapsed. Wounded and staff leaving in droves. Missile attacks this morning on outpatient dept. which housed internally displaced.

listened to a radio interview with NYT correspondent and it was so disturbing in its bland presentation of the reality and future for gaza i could barely function. "there will be nothing there but rubble." like documenting horrific atrocities and then concluding "what a pity, really." xp

The head of "HonestReporting," whose report led Israeli politicians to call for the extermination of Palestinian journalists, now says they were just "raising questions" without evidence and, despite their name, "we don’t claim to be a news organization" https://t.co/JHdRaJWzjp

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) November 10, 2023

Jfc

was this the "photojournalists knew about the 10/7 attack ahead of time" thing?

yup

this is too fucked up, humans are monsters

The Israeli govt. has also been really leaning into the "Pallywood" thing too, which is revolting beyond words.

Got a whole series of tweets about "pallywood" that I couldn't bring myself to post.

saw a gop congress member spouting this BS

for awhile I was legit wondering what Adam Pally had to do with this mess

The Palestinian-American writer Fady Joudah has lost 50 members of his extended family since October 7.

https://lithub.com/israel-has-killed-over-50-members-of-this-poets-family/

https://cdn.subsplash.com/documents/J7TGX3/_source/44d5112a-5b66-44d2-b97e-0f3cc6efbc1e/document.pdf

worth a read imho

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Thousands of Palestinians sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war at Gaza City’s main hospital fled south Friday after several reported strikes in and around the compound overnight. They joined a growing exodus of people escaping intense urban fighting in the north — including near other hospitals — as Gaza officials said the territory’s death toll surpassed 11,000.
...The Israel army says Hamas’ military infrastructure is based amid Gaza City’s hospitals and neighborhoods, and that it has set up its main command center in and under the largest hospital, Shifa — claims the militant group and Shifa staff deny.
...More than 100,000 Palestinians have fled south over the past two days, according to Israel, but they still face bombardment and dire conditions. Reported strikes on or near at least four hospitals in northern Gaza overnight underscored the danger for tens of thousands more who had crowded into the facilities, believing they would be safe.

BATTLES AROUND HOSPITALS
Early Friday, at least three strikes over several hours hit the courtyard and the obstetrics department of Shifa Hospital, according to Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson at the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
A video of the courtyard recorded the sound of incoming fire waking people in makeshift shelters, followed by shouts for an ambulance. In the blood-spattered courtyard, one man writhed, screaming on the ground, his leg apparently severed.

Al-Qidra blamed the attack on Israel, a claim that could not be independently verified. The Israeli army said one strike at Shifa was the result of a misfire by militants targeting its troops nearby.

For weeks, tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians — reaching as many 60,000 this week, according to the Health Ministry — have been sheltering in the Shifa complex.

The overnight strikes triggered a mass exodus of the displaced. About 10 a.m., large numbers packed up their belongings and began walking toward the south, five people who were among those who left told The Associated Press.

Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Hamas-run Health Ministry, told the Qatar-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera that more than 30,000 displaced people, medical workers and patients remain in the hospital.

...At the same time, Shifa has been overwhelmed by thousands of wounded, even as it operates with minimal power and medical supplies.

...The director of Shifa, Mohammed Abu Selmia, said Israel demanded the facility be evacuated, but he said there was nowhere for such a large number of patients to go.

...Tens of thousands of new evacuees from the north, some from Shifa, flowed down Salah al-Din road — the central spine running the length of the Gaza Strip — and reached the central city of Deir al-Balah on Friday. With no fuel for vehicles, the crowds walked for hours as explosions echoed a short distance away. Among them were wounded and older people.

They arrived hungry, exhausted and with a stew of emotions: relief, rage, and despair.

Reem Asant, 50, described seeing bodies on the streets as he and others made their way out of Gaza City, trying to avoid shelling.

“We’re talking about children killed in a hospital,” shouted one man, Abu Yousef. “Hundreds of women killed every day. Houses collapsing on the heads of civilians. … Where are human rights? Where is the United Nations? Where is the United States? Where is the International Criminal Court? Where is the entire world?”

The Israeli military announced an expanded six-hour window Friday for civilians to escape northern Gaza along Salah al-Din, the route used since last weekend. It also announced the opening of a second route, along the coastal road, after an agreement announced by the White House a day earlier.

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began. Israel estimates that more than 850,000 of the 1.1 million people in northern Gaza have left, according to military spokesman Jonathan Conricus.

https://cdn.subsplash.com/documents/J7TGX3/_source/44d5112a-5b66-44d2-b97e-0f3cc6efbc1e/document.pdf

worth a read imho

Do you agree with this? I read it and thought it was trash thinking. He says no one should argue for a cease fire because 1) Israel and Hamas will ignore it so why bother 2) Calling for a cease fire will increase antisemitism; not sure how you weigh the lives of thousands of dead children and noncombatants against "antisemitism" but whatever 3) A cease fire will mean Hamas reasserts control over Gaza.. which I guess is somehow worse than hundreds of people dying every day 4) Hamas wants to destroy Israel. so.. I guess Israel needs to just keep killing kids.

The author keeps agonizing over apparently irresolvable moral choices. He says "the clarity for which we hunger is a mere illusion." No. On the question of war and killing of Gazans there is clarity. The students at Brown articulated it very simply:

Our Torah commands:

“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” - Exodus 23:9

And we must heed. Palestinians are our cousins, our peers at Brown, natives of the land, human beings whose lives matter. You shall not oppress a stranger.

We write these words from the diaspora, and it is from here that we wish to better our world. As we grapple with millennia of Jewish struggle and survival, we will not abandon our Palestinian cousins and peers, or let them stand alone. This genocide cannot continue.

Not in our names. With or without our names: Never.

Stop the killing. Then you can worry over Hamas and antisemitism and everything else.

In fact I think we should let Israel say they won. You win! You really did it. You fuckin killed soooo many people. Probably got a ton of militants. Several thousand children. Nobody can say you didn't go the extra mile. Take the W. Stop fucking killing people.

Oh but tracer... *shakes head* You're so naive... It's actually quite complex....

Let's suppose that happens. Let me first say there is strong evidence of crimes against humanity by Israel and Gaza and that I assume we all want the killing to stop. And for those crimes to be held to justice.

Given that Hamas has stated that its goal is a permanent state of war (“I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The Times), suppose Israel does at this time heed to call for a total cease fire.

How would you have Israel respond when Hamas then launches the first rocket into Israel?

With compassion and utmost respect for the people of Gaza

And what does that look like after the first rocket is launched? The second?

I read that Hamas fired a couple of rockets into Tel Aviv today actually. Two women were sent to a Tel Aviv hospital and treated for shrapnel injuries.

I don't know what to tell you Felicity. The killing has to stop. Israel controls that right now. We can sort the rest out later.

I agree the killing has to stop and I also believe that Hamas should be treated as if it has agency.

I also believe that treating Palestinian people with respect includes being interested in what the people of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank want.

From what I read, the Palestinian Authority is willing to consider a two state solution.

How would you have Israel respond when Hamas then launches the first rocket into Israel?

Stop funding them maybe?

As long as Israel kills and controls Palestinians there will be rockets. The only way to achieve security is to work towards peace immediately.