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

Not read this yet. In the latest LRB you have this piece on the arms industry and it's exports to Israel.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n22/james-butler/up-in-arms

_There is a close relationship between Netanyahu and Modi._

Yes, they both hate Muslims.

... and they both hate Muslims and prefer them dead.

yes

There is a close relationship between Netanyahu and Modi.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, November 9, 2023 5:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

hating muslims really brings people together

lol sorry i'm the 70th person to say that but narendra modi is my bete noir

Indian elections next year, not sure how he is doing with the polling (or what the BJP are doing to get the system to work for them, e.g. cheat).

I haven't been following Indian politics as much lately, but thus far the problem with ejecting Modi has been the lack of credible opposition. Would love to have missed something on that front though

Same, don't think Congress are up to scratch but like to be wrong.

Modi is more popular than ever afaict.

the thing is, in a multi-ethnic or multi-religious state where there's a supremacist majority...it's hard to vote in tolerance! Indian Hindus, particularly upper-caste Hindus, are like, he makes the trains run on time!

xp not quite, but he is remarkably popular for having been in power for 9 years: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/inflation-hurting-modi-still-likely-win-indias-2024-polls-survey-2023-08-25/

and yes horseshoe otm, he's legitimately popular, though no doubt the BJP cheat frequently as well

and hating Muslims is like popping champagne together on New Year's Eve

xp

Seems like we are seeing more and more of these "coalitions" against popular incumbents. A coalition has won in Poland but iirc lost in Hungary.

Looks like economics (inflation) will dictate whether Modi wins. Definitely looks like it rn.

Probably under recognised how much the BJP interfered in the last UK election in certain marginal seats.

This article is better actually.

When I clicked the link, there was nothing there.

Sorry that’s my fault, I deleted the amp part of the link but didn’t see the alternative url at the bottom of the article

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/25/uk/bjp-kashmir-tory-uk-election-ge19-intl-gbr/index.html

I don't really have a good sense of how well effective the "anti-hindutva = hinduphobia" line has been playing internationally but it has been pretty infuriating how poorly the british media has covered this development, often just repeating the accusations uncritically because of who the targets are

man arrested in Calgary and charged with a hate crime for chanting....From the river to the sea. Legal scholars appear to be unimpressed

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-protest-arrest-palestinian-chant-1.7024279

Saba Amro, an organizer with Justice for Palestinians, said she was at the meeting before the protest with Cooley, as well as another organizer from her group, a CPS community liaison officer and another officer from CPS.

Amro says her group was told by police before the protest began that the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" was being looked at by the Crown prosecutor as potential hate speech.

"We asked the question directly, would anyone be charged on that particular day, Sunday, Nov. 5, for saying and chanting the phrase … and the answer we received was no," Amro told CBC News in an interview.

Richard Moon, a professor in the faculty of law at the University of Windsor, researches freedom of expression and says the charge of causing a disturbance with hate motivation applied to it is "surprising."

"It seems like a way of trying to bring about charges in a case like this where it seems unlikely that the requirements of the hate speech law could be satisfied," he said in an interview.

"Because the speech does not, clearly or obviously, count as sufficiently extreme to be regarded as hate speech under the Criminal Code, it appears the police may have used this roundabout way to bring charges against this individual."

When asked if the phrase in question meets the definition of hate speech, Moon said, "Certainly not. Its meaning is far too open-ended."

There’s some absolute horrific stuff being published in the UK atm

Can’t believe JC published this antisemitic filth. I had relatives murdered in the camps. It matters not whether their murderers had regrets. Are there worse people than Nazis - no there are not!

We should see resignations at the JC but we won’t. https://t.co/5b2vKu9mhe pic.twitter.com/SXeHk4ffYP

— Alex Sobel MP 🟣 (@alexsobel) November 10, 2023

Oh it's by Douglas Murray, that explains the pro-Nazi tone.

سماح
@samah_fadil
·
13h
a palestinian owned burger joint was burned down in melbourne. the owner has been vocal at pro-palestinian protests. pls check out the gofundme and help if you can

People protesting the slaughter in Gaza are sometimes asked why they don't protest about other atrocities, or why they're protesting here in Britain, far away. Part of the answer is that the UK directly arms Israel. I wrote about it for the new @LRB. https://t.co/p9SsVPJl8d

— James B (@piercepenniless) November 11, 2023

yeah also I feel like if your response to mass slaughter as we speak is whataboutism, you have some self examination to do.

The reality of people killing people in Congo or Sudan doesn’t erase dead Palestinian babies

Whataboutism is the very core of the Israeli government's approach to PR.

The UK is a bigger arms exporter to to Turkiye than to Israel so I don't think thats the reason per se. That being said, perception is more of a factor than actuality, and the UK govts are more vocally supportive of Israel than they are of Turkiye. I don't think there's any single reason behind why some protests are larger than others

🐦[People protesting the slaughter in Gaza are sometimes asked why they don’t protest about other atrocities, or why they’re protesting here in Britain, far away. Part of the answer is that the UK directly arms Israel. I wrote about it for the new @LRB🕸. https://t.co/p9SsVPJl8d🕸
— James B (@piercepenniless) November 11, 2023🕸]🐦

Higgins is more contemplative than angry, however. He has just returned from a state visit to Vietnam and Laos, and as he recounts his trip he remembers an encounter he once had with Henry Kissinger when the old cold war warrior was visiting Trinity College Dublin several years ago. “I remember I asked him if he regretted the illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia (during the Vietnam war). He said: ‘I don’t think, Mr Higgins, I could ever find the regret that you would find sufficient’.”

who has actually heard of Western Sahara, West Papua

I had a realization the other day while I was having this same discussion about caring about one atrocity vs another, and it hit me that *I* care about Palestinians more than Rohingya because I care about and have connections to Israel. I can’t speak to what motivates other people. My views don’t fully square with most of the Free Palestine movement and I can’t pretend to be a part of it. But that’s why I have been spending probably 1/4 of my waking hours for the last month thinking and agonizing and reading and listening about these deaths, and not some other deaths.

For the people who demonstrated for us in London, thank you from Gaza. pic.twitter.com/MhBF4rBwNv

— Muhammad Smiry 🇵🇸 (@MuhammadSmiry) November 11, 2023

*I* care about Palestinians more than Rohingya because I care about and have connections to Israel

this is how I feel too

i have not been to any of the protests in my city up until now because i don't like flag waving and i don't want to participate in that from the river to the sea chant. i decided today that was not enough of a reason not to show up.

so, i went today. there was a bit of from the river to the sea chanting so i stood mute while that was happening, but that was just a tiny minority.

i listened to a much loved local actor recite 3 beautiful poems written by people from Gaza who have all been killed in the last 4 weeks. one was 9 years old and hers included the line Hands are for shaking with friends, not for shooting guns.

the turnout was quite overwhelming. i'd guesstimate that at least 75% of the people there had never been on a demo before in their lives. lots of families. lots of children. there were so many people there that the vast majority were unable to hear any of the speakers yet they stood there for hours, peacefully, in solidarity.

i heard someone say this is our Vietnam but that is too simplistic. i think it's bigger than that. i have been on hundreds of demos in my life for myriad causes but have never felt what i felt today. the sadness was almost too much.

i think these gatherings are going to get bigger by the week and at some point our overlords are going to get the fear, or at least i hope so. i'll be there every week i can.

Israel playing in Pristina tonight, pro-palestine march banned by the authorities

Man the replies to this tweet are so ghoulish and racist. Thankfully her mother (who is an amazing person Ash has posted many times about) is ok.

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Ash Sarkar
@AyoCaesar
Yesterday, after the demonstration, my mum was accosted by two men on the tube. One shoved her pro-Palestinian placard into her face, called her "disgusting" and an antisemite, told her to go back to where she comes from.

As for me I caught the fag end of the protest yesterday. All the chants were played. All hits.

“Rishi Sunak’s a wasteman” my personal favourite

^^^

A summary of events in Germany:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/13/germany-jewish-criticise-israel-tv-debate

"Some of the hostages held by Hamas have German citizenship, so when I asked a politician from Germany’s governing coalition what the government’s position was on those people, I was shocked when his response, in private, was: Das sind doch keine reinen Deutschen, which translates to: well, those aren’t pure Germans. He didn’t choose from a host of perfectly acceptable terms to refer to Germans with dual citizenship, he didn’t even use adjectives such as richtige or echte to refer to them not being full or proper Germans – instead, he used the old Nazi term to differentiate between Aryans and non-Aryans."

There is a D-Notice in place to stop UK media reporting on SAS role in Gaza.

But we know SAS has deployed to UK base on Cyprus. We also know 33 RAF transport flights have flown from Cyprus to Tel Aviv in past month.

All media acceding to the D-Notice are complicit. pic.twitter.com/HN95HMGmqC

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) November 12, 2023

Hamilton Nola has thoughts about how the political response in the U.S. has redrawn some lines for "the Left."

I have loved Bernie for years, and I am not writing this to relitigate anyone’s legacy, or to pose as some sort of moral arbiter. (I also know from long experience that there is nothing more foolish than purporting to Speak For The Left; I am only speaking for my own thoughts.) I am just making, I guess, a prediction, but even that would be overstating it. I’m just making an observation, of something that is already happening but maybe has not been fully digested yet. The Bernie Era of the American Left is over. I don’t know if another single most prominent hero will rise up behind him, or whether we’ll just have a period of many different people doing different things, but I am sure that the leaders who failed to find the moral clarity or courage to be in the right place on the issue of Gaza’s decimation have lost their credibility to a degree that will make it impossible for them to maintain their status as leaders on the Left.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-new-leaders-of-the-left

Nolan, obv.

Thread detailing a protest in Chicago today.

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Jinx Press
@JinxPress
·
6h
HAPPENING NOW: Hundreds of activists occupying Chicago's Ogilvie Transportation Center.

Escalators have been shut down, protesters sitting on them.

Chants of "CEASEFIRE NOW!" ringing through every level.

That thread:
https://nitter.net/JinxPress/status/1724077488559583700

I'm here with Jewish Voice For Peace (@jvplive) where hundreds of us rushed in and occupied the Federal Building in Oakland.

The govt of Israel does not act on behalf of, nor represent, Jewish people.#CeasefireNOW #LetGazaLive #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/KUorzUOaWl

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) November 14, 2023

Others will know better than me, but that JVP organization posted 'The Myth of "Civilian Israelis"' one their IG (albeit prior to October). I think they're like DSA or BLM in that they have different chapters so may not be representative of the whole thing (in this case it was Detroit)

Make own judgements on how much, or if, that matters, but worth mentioning at least

Layla 🪬
@itslaylas
first lawsuit is here for the doxxing truck at columbia university.
A student is filing a lawsuit for defamation, violation of civil rights, & intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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People starting to sue for being called "pro-Hamas" and anti-Semitic.

I have mixed feelings about JVP eg for reasons stated above, also because they do weird caricatured versions of Jewish prayers/rituals seemingly in order to lend themselves legitimacy, which bothers me on a gut level, like if you don't wear tefillin as part of your normal practice that's fine, neither do I, but don't get up on a national stage and put them on wrong just to look more "Jewish." I also have friends who very sincerely protest with them and I don't think it's a bad thing overall.

Tracy Fuad
@tracyfuad
A museum in Germany cancelled an Afrofuturism exhibition the day before installation citing that the curator's posts on Instagram

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You can guess the content of these posts.