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

Do people think that the weapons etc that the IDF claim to have found were planted there by them prior to the cameras rolling for the express purpose of justifying their actions? That was my immediate reaction when I saw the footage on TV last night but ho idea whether this makes me cynic or realist.

some of the weapons in that footage were in the mri room, which means they absolutely were not there while the hospital still had power.

The BBC reports on what appears to be an attempt by the IDF to rearrange guns and equipment they found in al-Shifa Hospital for embedded media.
pic.twitter.com/4uhMElsndz

— Richard Hall (@_RichardHall) November 17, 2023

bbc also noticed that the weapons in the idf's footage differed from what the idf let bbc reporters see hours later.

The thing is, Israel has been claiming there was a Hamas bunker under Shifa hospital for many years, and there actually is a documented history of Hamas militant activity within the hospital, including a 2014 Amnesty report that described its use as a Hamas torture facility. I have no idea if they planted the guns or not. I have no idea if there is still a functioning Hamas command center or not.

the amnesty report referred to a disused outpatient clinic within the hospital grounds being used for torture, which is a categorically different claim to the idea of a secret underground hamas hq beneath the the hospital. there's been absolutely no evidence of a current hamas command centre there and israel is now downplaying the idea that it was hamas hq.

I could see there being bad intelligence, or a changed situation, or maybe the bunker was but is no longer in use, no longer exists, or was even abandoned recently. I find it hard to believe Israel would focus so much attention on this particular hospital just to set itself up to look stupid, or that Israel has just been dying to get its hands on this one particular hospital for 15 years.

I could believe incompetence or being fooled. I’m reserving judgment, it seems premature to conclude there’s nothing there.

israeli's propaganda efforts have really not been very sophisticated during this war and they don't seem to care about looking stupid. i guess ultimately it doesn't matter to them because they know they can act with near-impunity until the usa loses its patience, they only need to provide the flimsiest cover. the claim of the secret underground hamas hq beneath the hospital is useful to the israelis regardless of how accurate it is - it provides cover to significantly destroy civilian infrastructure (which seems to be the most concrete goal of the offensive), and if they find any actual evidence that hamas was there then that's a bonus.

if hamas ever did use the hospital basement as a base, i highly doubt they were still using it recently given that israel has been very publicly declaring it as a hamas base of operations for ages (even targeting it in the 2021 bombing campaign, claiming to have collapsed tunnels beneath the hospital) and hamas was preparing for a ground invasion.

I am mostly now less concerned about this and more horrified by the humanitarian catastrophe I believe Israel has created with no immediately apparent plan to deal with it, suggesting the govt either want it, didn’t consider it, or don’t care either way, all of which are hard to contemplate.

they want it, don't care, and don't seem to have any real plan for dealing with it beyond some vague, unworkable idea of being able to force the entire population of gaza into egypt. it isn't surprising at all.

when IDF propaganda vids are so ridiculously faked that even the bbc are debunking them, perhaps Biden ought to stop parroting the same propaganda and lying he has seen the intelligence reports to back it up.

I note the Israel hawks are coming for Jeremy Bowen now, ugh.

They've never liked him.

I hate how it's not enough for Israeli government/IDF spokespeople to say what a humane and conscientious army the IDF is for warning civilians about forthcoming attacks and allowing them to evacuate (as if), but they have to say the IDF is the most humane and conscientious army in the world or history.

This hospital "Hamas command" thing is such a load of bullshit. It's ethnic cleansing, and the old and sick and injured will not be spared.

---

Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
Gérard Araud, former French ambassador to Israel and to the U.S.:

"Ce qui se passe à l'heure actuelle en Cisjordanie est absolument scandaleux. En réalité, ce que les colons sont en train de faire, c'est un nettoyage ethnique", Gérard Araud, ancien ambassadeur de France en Israël pic.twitter.com/zYs8DFwMGD

— LCI (@LCI) November 14, 2023

"What is currently happening in the West Bank is absolutely scandalous. What the settlers are doing amounts to retail ethnic cleansing. They are taking advantage of the current tragedy to harass the Palestinians, even more than they usually do, in order to get rid of certain communities, certain villages. And I find it absolutely scandalous that Europe is not speaking out very loudly. In reality, these settlers are doing this to make the two-state solution impossible. Because if Palestinians are expelled and colonization progresses, it will make a territorial compromise to create a viable and contiguous Palestinian state almost impossible. What is happening is extremely serious and I think European states should react with much more firmness and strength"

perhaps Biden ought to stop parroting the same propaganda and lying he has seen the intelligence reports to back it up.

unfortunately the most the us government seems to be interested in doing is forcing israel to let a little more aid through, seemingly just for pr purposes more than anything else

@yaraeid_
A new massacre at the UNRWA school of Al Fakhoura in Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza. At least 200 displaced civilians between killed and injured. Horrific scenes of bodies everywhere. Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Say it as it is. Israel is a war criminal. Carnage everywhere, children, women and elderly cut into pieces. I cannot believe this is still continuing for 43 days. More massacres every day. Gaza is being wiped out!

washington post reporting tentative agreement to "pause conflict and free hostages"

From Reuters:

HAN YOUNIS, Gaza/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel prepared on Sunday to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to southern Gaza after air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reported to be sheltering at two schools.
...Elsewhere in the north, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of UNRWA, the U.N. aid organization for Palestinian refugees, said on social media platform X that Israel bombarded two agency schools. More than 4,000 civilians were sheltered at one of them, he said.

"Dozens reported killed including children," he said. "Second time in less than 24 hours schools are not spared. ENOUGH, these horrors must stop."

A spokesperson for Gaza's Hamas authorities said 200 people had been killed or injured at the school. Israel's military did not comment.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Saturday said "hundreds of forcibly displaced people were killed" at the two schools in Gaza.

As As the conflict entered its seventh week, authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip raised their death toll to 12,300, including 5,000 children.

...An Israeli offensive in the south could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.

The conflict has already displaced around two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2.3 million.

An advance into southern Gaza may prove more complicated and deadlier than in the north, however, with Hamas militants dug into the Khan Younis region, a senior Israeli source and two top ex-officials said.

AIR STRIKES

Early Saturday, an air strike in a busy residential district of Khan Younis killed 26 Palestinians and wounded 23, health officials said.

Eyad Al-Zaeem told Reuters he lost his aunt, her children and her grandchildren in the air strike in Khan Younis. They all had evacuated from northern Gaza on Israeli army orders only to die where the army told them they could be safe, he said.

"All of them were martyred. They had nothing to do with the (Hamas) resistance," said Zaeem, standing outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital, where the 26 bodies were laid out before they were to be carried by loved ones to burials.

A few miles (kms) to the north, six Palestinians were killed when a house was bombed from the air in the town of Deir Al-Balah, health authorities said.

A third Israeli air strike on Saturday afternoon killed 15 Palestinians in a house west of Khan Younis, close to a shelter for displaced people, witnesses and medics said.

Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, James Mackenzie Henriette Chacar and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Another Reuters report:

Palestinian detainees report Israeli beatings, mistreatment as West Bank arrests surge

...Sticking points include how many days a potential pause in fighting would last, the number of hostages that would be released, and Hamas’ demand that Israel stop flying surveillance drones over Gaza, according to several sources familiar with the talks.

Gestures to relieve pressure on the besieged enclave’s civilian population have already drawn the ire of Netanyahu’s unruly governing cabinet – the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

After Israel’s war cabinet on Friday approved two fuel tankers to enter Gaza per day to support water and sewage systems, far-right members of his governing coalition raged over what they saw as concessions to Hamas in the absence of a deal to release hostages.

In a letter to Netanyahu posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the decision went against the views of the governing cabinet, which is separate to the war cabinet.

His colleague, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, posted on social media around the same time saying that “as long as our abductees (hostages) are not even visited by the Red Cross, there is no sense in giving the enemy ‘humanitarian gifts,’” while calling it an insult to soldiers, the bereaved and families of the missing and kidnapped.

Netanyahu defended the decision in an address late Saturday, saying that the tankers are a minimal emergency amount to operate water and sewage pumps in Gaza, and denied there had been any change of policy.

He also said he had invited representatives of the hostages’ families to a meeting with his war cabinet later this week.

Hold the phone! WaPo sez actually close to a deal---not paywalled, even:

Israel and Hamas are close to agreement on a U.S.-brokered deal that would free dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting, say people familiar with the emerging terms.

Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
The release, which could begin within the next several days — barring last-minute hitches — could lead to the first sustained pause in conflict in Gaza.

A detailed, six-page set of written terms would require all parties to the conflict to freeze combat operations for at least five days while an initial 50 or more hostages are released in smaller batches every 24 hours. It was not immediately clear how many of the 239 people believed to be in captivity in Gaza would be released under the deal. Overhead surveillance would monitor movement on the ground to police the pause.

The stop in fighting is also intended to allow a significant increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance, including fuel, to enter the besieged enclave from Egypt.
...After this article was initially published, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson tweeted that there was “no deal yet but we continue to work hard to get a deal.”

The outline of a deal was put together during weeks of talks in Doha, Qatar, among Israel, the United States and Hamas, indirectly represented by Qatari mediators, according to Arab and other diplomats. But it remained unclear until now that Israel would agree to temporarily pause its offensive in Gaza, provided the conditions were right.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington said late Saturday that “we are not going to comment” on any aspect of the hostage situation.

Just heartbreaking interview with a doctor who has been forced to leave Gaza.

https://mediaview.aljazeera.com/video/e4rcAkHs5A

13,000 Palestinians, including 5,500 children, have been slaughtered by Israel as of yesterday.

Hanno Hauenstein
@hahauenstein
Israeli general Giora Eiland in today's Yediot Ahronot: “The international community is warning us against a severe humanitarian disaster and severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this. After all, severe epidemics in the south of Gaza will bring victory closer (…)” /1

💥Sickening disgrace at Knesset, where NatSecMin Itamar Ben Gvir, a smirking racial supremacist & ex terrorist (& his minions) are screaming at families of Israeli hostages "You don't have a monopoly on pain!" and worse. @KarivGilad tries &fails to calm it pic.twitter.com/dBnCpCGu0t

— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي💙 (@NTarnopolsky) November 20, 2023

What an utter scumbag. Still, carry on supporting him, Biden, Starmer etc.

The IDF has reportedly kidnapped award-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha, also the founder of Gaza’s first English-language library.

https://lithub.com/reports-suggest-palestinian-poet-mosab-abu-toha-has-been-kidnapped-by-israeli-forces/

The future is bright:

Haaretz.com
@haaretzcom
U.S. President Joe Biden's energy security advisor is visiting Israel to discuss potential economic revitalization plans for Gaza centered around undeveloped offshore natural gas fields

Many leased have already been signed— this happened in late October.

https://newrepublic.com/article/176917/fossil-fuel-companies-plowing-ahead-profit-israeli-gas

Necropolitics at its most stark and vulgar

Well, whaddya know: a decent summary of what happened b/w Israel and Palestine in the goddamn NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html

looks like we've got a deal: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bkjolhqva

Knesset votes on it today, with the Ben Gvir gang voting against releasing Israeli hostage women and children, just to once again demonstrate how deeply sincere their concern was

"...and attempt to release 20 more."

I heard this is because Hamas is not actually holding all the hostages.. they've been dispersed among other militant groups, and even some private citizens

Saw earlier that South Africa has passed a resolution to close the Israeli embassy, expel the ambassador, and suspend diplomatic relations with Israel. I mean, granted, they're not the South Africa of old, but still, that's gotta hurt. "As a former apartheid state, trust us when we tell you, you're fucking up."

Séamus Malekafzali
@Seamus_Malek
Israel's Minister of Communications calls on the IDF to cut off the foreskins of Hamas fighters as revenge, as David did with the Philistines in the Tanakh.

I am not joking.

This is a real post by a verified account of an Israeli cabinet minister

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/11/20/israeli-children-singing-annihilate-gaza/

Is This a Real Video of Israeli Children Singing ‘We Will Annihilate Everyone’ in Gaza?

(spoiler alert: It is.)

Words fail (again)

Mine haven't but I can't type them here.

really interesting article from 2014 about the rise of fascist sentiment in Israel and the political economy of the region in which Palestinians become “surplus population”

https://truthout.org/articles/the-political-economy-of-israeli-apartheid-and-the-specter-of-genocide/

Yeah..

https://x.com/sanasaeed/status/1727200823976087871

There is such a thing as a "bilateral genocide," where two groups are locked in a mutually lethal death spiral. Some genocide watch websites cite Rwanda as an example.

Last I checked, between the diaspora and the Levant, there are roughly the same millions of Palestine and Jewish people left in the world. Give or take a million. Not a lot.

Here are the 10 stages of genocide:

https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

Here are things that can be done to counteract the stages.

https://tolerance.tavaana.org/en/about

So idk, maybe this is a wacky idea, but ... maybe try to look at your own behaviour to see if you're contributing to any of these things?

Better yet, why not consciously work on counteracting genocide? Read a story from the folklore of the "other" group? Demand a ceasefire and release of the hostages at the same time? Try to understand the view most diametrically opposed to your own? Get comfortable saying "I don't know"? Admit that these two groups of people hate each other for many, many reasons, and not because one group is good and the other is evil?

I don't really know who that's aimed at here but the view most diametrically opposed to my own is that slaughtering thousands of children is good actually and that the US government should be supporting and paying for it. Really not super interested in understanding that view, tbh.

No group is ever "evil", but groups do evil things. As a point of example my reading of American and British folklore has not dissuaded me from believing those country's foreign policies are evil, nor does reading folklore of my own background make me question whether what Portugal did in Angola, Mozambique, etc. was evil. It was.

I can't claim to have read Israeli folklore but certainly the Israeli artists I follow in literature and cinema seem convinced that what Israel is doing right now is evil too.

Yair Wallach
@YairWallach
300 Palestinian prisoners are slated for release.
17 were convicted of attempted murder
283 for less serious, often far less serious charges
123 are under 18y old, most of them in prison for stone throwing.

This statement from the Colombian president back in October has come up on my feed again. Genocide as what's being carried out by several states in the global north against the global South population.

Palestine as the blueprint of what's to come if we don't keep marching in the streets, at the very least.

The barbarity of consumption based on the death of others leads us to an unprecedented rise of fascism, and therefore, to the death of democracy and freedom. It's barbarism, or global 1933, as I call it. 1933 was the year Hitler came to power.

What we see in Palestine will also be the suffering in the world of all the peoples of the south.

The West defends its excessive consumption and its standard of living based on destroying the atmosphere and climate, and to defend it, knowing that it will cause the exodus from the south to the north, and not only of the Palestinian people; he is ready to respond with death. It does not want to transform its economic system except as far as the market goes to decarbonize it. And he knows that the effort will be minuscule to save life on the planet. His policy seeks to defend the consumption bubble of the rich on the planet and not save humanity, whose majority is disposable, like the children of Gaza.

That's why the strong anti-immigration policies, the concentration camps for immigrants, the thousands of dead shipwrecks, that's why the Darién plug, that's why the economic blockades of rebel countries.

The right in the West sees the solution to the climate crisis as a "final solution", the right once again dreams of Hitler and conquers the majority of the rich and Aryan peoples of the West and our Latin American oligarchies, who do not see another world where live than that of the "malls" of Florida or Madrid.

The southern right uses violence, they break democracy, they feel, in the north, legitimized to do so. They believe they can kill and commit genocide, they just need the blessing of world power.

We are going to barbarism if we do not change power. The life of humanity, and especially of the people of the south, depends on the way in which humanity chooses the path to overcome the climate crisis produced by the wealth of the north. Gaza is just the first experiment in considering us all disposable.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/21/pressure-benjamin-netanyahu-potential-truce-gaza-hostages

"Netanyahu’s shift may have been critically influenced by his personal encounter with hostage families, after weeks during which he refused to meet them. Netanyahu and his Likud party have lost the trust and confidence of most voters, who blame them for 7 October lapses and complacency. Polls suggest they would lose an election if one were held now. As ever, calculation is mixed with compassion."

Dark lol

This is on Sudan but much of the below might be in store for the Palestinian people.

Israel will harden the blockade, with little to no reconstruction, work permits will be ended, a barely functioning healthcare system with the Israeli political system hardening their stance once all hostages are eventually released (even if Netanyahu is toast). What then?

Barry Malone
@malonebarry
Away from the headlines, the situation in Sudan is dire:

- More than half the population in need of aid
- Violence against civilians
- Outbreaks of cholera, dengue, malaria and measles
- More than 70% of health facilities in conflict areas out of service

Thanks for that from the Colombian president, xyzzz.

felicity, I appreciate your post, but perhaps acknowledging that Israel has acted on every stage of the ten stages of Genocide would be good. That the state was founded upon several actions related to genocide, partly as a reaction to the Shoah and previous oppression of Jews, is part of the biggest tragedy here. But neither the Shoah nor anything else excuses the crimes of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people, and claiming that the crimes of Hamas and other bad actors are equivalent to those of one of the most heavily militarized states in the world is not just inaccurate, it verges on ludicrous victim-blaming.

Or put another way, looking at “both sides” without acknowledging the vast power imbalance between the two is to engage in a kind of fantasy. Any analysis of politics or war has to also be an analysis of power.

Who are the sides in the both sides? Is Hamas one of them, or the Palestinians? Unless we're conflating, which doesn't feel right

Of course it isn’t right, but considering Israel seems to be able to find Hamas in the mouths of five year old Palestinian children, it might be worth considering who is creating the “sides” that Tracer Hand is speaking of.

https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5965

Geneva - Israel has deliberately destroyed archaeological monuments in the Gaza Strip as part of its ongoing bloody war in an explicit targeting of Palestinian cultural heritage, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a statement issued on Monday.

Israeli air and artillery attacks have targeted many prominent historical sites important to the cultural heritage of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, said Euro-Med Monitor. This has included archaeological sites, historical buildings, places of worship, and museums, and has caused great destruction.

Euro-Med Monitor stressed that international humanitarian law prohibits in all circumstances the deliberate targeting of cultural and religious sites, which do not constitute legitimate military objectives nor an imperative military necessity. The Geneva-based rights organisation cited the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict as well as the Second Protocol to the Convention of 1999.

The Israeli army targeted the historic Al-Omari Grand Mosque in the centre of Gaza City, destroying its minaret, which dated back 1,400 years. With a total area of roughly 4,100 square metres—including 1,800 square metres of covered area—Al-Omari Grand Mosque is the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip.

Three historic churches in the Gaza Strip were also attacked by the Israeli army, one of which being the long-standing Church of Saint Porphyrius. Built atop a wooden pagan temple, the church dates back to 407 AD. Israel’s army has also destroyed most of the Old City of Gaza City, Euro-Med Monitor added, which contains 146 old houses in addition to mosques, churches, markets, and historically significant schools.

I'm just wary of conflating the two, as it seems that what Israel wants us to do. They're not elected and have had at least indirect Israeli support in the past (albeit I guess a while ago)

obv the IDF has killed lots of children but we shouldn't pretend that Hamas didn't kill children as well.

Who is doing that?

I haven't seen anyone defend Hamas! But people seem to be conflating Hamas with Palestine, which may just be shorthand rather than intentional but still feels weird

yeah I'm confused. If these posts are in response to felicity's, she didn't say the word Hamas and instead implied that Jewish people and Palestinians "are locked in a mutually lethal death spiral" and that "these two groups of people hate each other for many, many reasons."

my response did not include the word Hamas, fwiw

perhaps acknowledging that Israel has acted on every stage of the ten stages of Genocide would be good.

table, I acknowledge what little I've seen indicates that many of the stages are there, if not all. I found it dismaying that none of the genocide watch sites I looked at seemed to mention the situation as a historical fact or current threat.

rob please don't explain what I implied.

If I misspoke I will correct it.