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

Palestine continues to win the PR battle on 0.1% of the budget or probably less pic.twitter.com/h0lqNj6jXH

— ‏تمار 🌴 Тама́р 🌴 תמר (@tamars) November 17, 2023

I see the Biden admin's wordings as a continuation of domestic policy by being really anemic, late and ineffective on policy and communication.

it's worse than that really, it's that they're fundamentally not interested in applying pressure on israel beyond the bare minimum needed for pr purposes - "you have to let at least a little bit of aid in so you don't look too monstrous" etc.

i think 20 year-old self-described communists on twitter are aware of at least some of reagan and ghwb's (i'm assuming that's the bush you mean because i haven't seen much gwb praise) many other failings and if anything them seeming better than biden re: israel is just an indictment of biden and a sign of just how far things have shifted for the worse

i do think gwhb having done more to try to force a resolution to the situation than any other president in the last few decades is worthy of praise and is one of the few positive parts of his legacy

― ufo,

GHWB's secretary of state James Baker was the last to tell the Israelis to fuck off.

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/11/18/23966137/us-weapons-israel-biden-package-explained

there are a lot of interesting/depressing details in this article, including:

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is a former board member of Raytheon, the major military contractor that co-produces Iron Dome receptors with the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. RTX, as Raytheon has been renamed, is one of the most significant providers to Israel. Austin and many other senior appointees to the Pentagon bring a depth of experience working for the arms industry. Even if they aren’t directly involved in the day-to-day — Austin has had to recuse himself from the Department of Defense’s dealings with Raytheon — the heft these appointments bring shows the seriousness with which the Biden administration takes the defense industrial base.

As Austin told the Senate, “We are flowing security assistance to Israel at the speed of war.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken co-founded WestExec Advisors in 2017, which has worked for military contractors, new military-tech startups, and Israeli companies. Blinken, for his part, advised the defense contractor Boeing, according to his financial disclosure. Last month, Boeing rushed the transfer of 1,000 smart bombs and 1,800 GPS-guidance bomb kits to Israel.

Much of the team that worked to get Israel the $38 billion Obama package over 10 years is leading the way. Other key State Department officials include Daniel Shapiro, who also worked for the Israel spyware maker NSO Group when he was out of government. Intelligence leaders, too, bring vast experience. Avril Haines, the director of the Office of National Intelligence, has worked as an adviser to the data-processing powerhouse Palantir, which has been a staunch supporter of Israel and apparently provides advanced tech to the Israeli military.

Saw some talk of the polls on the US threads but this seems Ike an overreach to me. There is more than a year to go and as awful as the genocidal actions are by the Israeli government people forget.

Biden is destroying his presidency (and possibly American democracy) on behalf of a government of fanatics that is carrying on war of retribution that his own military says has no coherent strategy and endgame. https://t.co/pdiwRqgqRL

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 19, 2023

second half of the sentence is bang on tho

NYT reporting on Israel’s video of the Al-Shifa tunnels demonstrates a marked change in tone for the paper

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/19/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news/israel-hamas-al-shifa-hospital-gaza-video-tunnel?smid=url-share

wasn't sure what you meant by that - how so?

some xposts but it is not surprising that the ghouls in Biden’s administration make bank off of ethnic cleansing. Shameful shit.

So is the U.S. looking forward to more Trump or ersatz Trump?
Shame there isn't more alternative to govt than the 2 parties.

@tamars
·
1h
IAF bombing of Indonesian Hospital injured Head of Orthopedics Dr. Adnan Al-Barash

🎥 Staff at Indonesian Hospital unable to evacuate patients and wounded from ICU due to critical condition
🎥 Martyrs from IAF bombing in courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah

Yes to this in the UK too. Everyone on the left is mostly marching, at the least.

Fracturing?? I’ve never seen the left more unified than it is now. YIMBYs, NIMBYs, socdems, commies, anarchists all marching and organizing together for Palestinian liberation. It’s genuinely beautiful pic.twitter.com/O2ymQ8CoaB

— dylan saba (@shaabiranks) November 20, 2023

Imagine being the official account for the Auschwitz Memorial and tweeting this out at this time.

https://x.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1726517498088931617?s=20

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/11/20/an-open-letter-on-the-misuse-of-holocaust-memory/

BREAKING: South Africa’s parliament votes (248 vs 91) to close the Israeli embassy in South Africa, send the Israeli ambassador home, and suspend diplomatic relations with Israel.

— Shailja Patel (@shailjapatel) November 21, 2023

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-11-20/ty-article/.premium/deep-faked-soldiers-and-spoofed-websites-russian-campaign-pushes-gaza-disinformation/0000018b-ed5c-d36e-a3cb-fd5fadd90000

I’m kind of surprised by how subtle a lot of the examples are.

pretty rich for Israel to be talking disinfo and false propaganda

Sorry if this was posted before, someone I know shared this on Facebook as the gospel truth and it seems like the most insane thing, like straight up fiction.

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/365220/the-inside-story-of-how-palestinians-took-over-the-world

People of color, particularly antisemitic Black groups like BLM

oh fuuuuuuuuuuuck you

Just like you were a Zionist campus activist, we will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists.

Has anyone measured these new activists?

pretty rich for Israel to be talking disinfo and false propaganda

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, 21 November 2023 19:50 (one hour ago) link

Haaretz is not "Israel" and the article is not only about anti-Israel disinformation, but your reflexive responses continue to be boring and bot-like.

point taken about the article.

My responses might be boring and bot-like, but perhaps that's the price of not seeing an issue as "complex."

My responses might be boring and bot-like, but perhaps that's the price of not seeing an issue as "complex."

In this instance no one could accuse you of not being fully self-aware.

Some of the most evil shit I’ve ever heard. Of course coming from a guy from the Obama admin.

A lobbying group has severed connections with Stuart Seldowitz, a former adviser to ex-President Barack Obama after videos where he made Islamophobic remarks and issued threats to a New York City food cart employee surfaced online.

The footage, shared on Twitter by a Columbia… pic.twitter.com/jyAYhxZgU5

— AHMED | أحمد (@ASE) November 21, 2023

From the looks of it, he makes a point to return to that cart on different days just to harass the guy with racist taunts and threats, all for his own bemusement. What a piece of shit.

After a ceasefire has been agreed as a wording this fucking shit of a man calls it a humanitarian pause to save face

Keir Starmer
@Keir_Starmer
I welcome the news of an agreement to release the first hostages and to have a substantial humanitarian pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/should-us-aid-to-israel-be-contingent-on-human-rights

Every one of these interviews with mainstream democrats - "yes i recognize that awful things are being done by Israel and Palestinians have a reason to be angry as well, but you have to understand, i'm trying to avoid thinking about that."

The Israeli propaganda operation in the US just isn’t hitting the same these days.

https://x.com/mbueckert/status/1727440702123204927?s=46&t=z1egexpHAtHcPPxgbp4Hrw

Yeah the propaganda effort elsewhere has been mostly embarrassing too e.g. this transparent attempt at pitting Malaysians and Singaporeans against each other over their differing approaches to Israel (Malaysia = pro-Palestine, no diplomatic relations with Israel; Singapore = neutral, receives military support from Israel). Backfired very quickly:

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3242483/malaysia-singapore-users-x-slam-israeli-activists-bid-sow-discord-between-neighbours-were

March in London this Saturday.

🚨The route for the March for Palestine on Saturday 25 November has now been confirmed. 🇵🇸

It will be assembling on Park Lane at 12:30PM and marching to Whitehall.#CeasefireNOW #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/iStUNeB25L

— PSC (@PSCupdates) November 23, 2023

BREAKING: Several pro-Palestine activists were arrested for staging a sit-in on the march route of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City pic.twitter.com/kv9pUQgO77

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) November 23, 2023

some dear friends among those arrested

HARVARD LAW REVIEW EDITORS VOTE TO KILL ARTICLE ABOUT GENOCIDE IN GAZA

You can read the article here

Seldowitz arrested!

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/22/us/seldowitz-ex-obama-official-islamophobic-comments/index.html

Excellent! what a shitbag!

Israelis have “children”, while Palestinians have “people aged 18 and younger”. https://t.co/5nmLPc0VKN pic.twitter.com/gsoSs9HE8N

— Karl Hansen (@karl_fh) November 23, 2023

https://www.972mag.com/october-7-families-victims-hostages-peace/

This is a very good article

They made a fake Hamas website that's literally just "hello we are evil please give us money to kill Israel and take over ze vorld muhahha" https://t.co/NyZtNla8Dw pic.twitter.com/PNQ7sd5qyi

— Hbomberguy (@Hbomberguy) November 24, 2023

Cal CS lecturer apparently being investigated for giving this talk at the end of a lecture

https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/181vkym/peyrin_kao_after_lecture_transcript_about/

Its not just that the hamas.com site is so ill-thought out, its also why did it take Israel 38 days to create it? In fact, why did it take them any days to create it, why wasn't this built and registered beforehand, years ago ready. to update whenever necessary. The PR and propaganda for western markets has been so basic and lackadaisical, its unathomable

if they ever got called on that site directly, in a press conference or something, what would be the answer? "the site is meant to show the evil of Hamas, ppl aren't meant to believe that it was actually created by Hamas but it shows what they stand for" or something like that?

Also why are they the ones tweeting it out directly, instead of either using a major western personality to do it, or a smaller niche one and letting it bubble up from there. It feels like they haven't built any of that out

I’m not sure “Israel’s propaganda ops aren’t robust enough!” is the lesson we should be garnering.

It's an observation not a lesson. Anyway on top of the myth of the allseeing ominpotence of the Israeli intelligence services going down the toilet, they are coming out of this looking like rank amateurs on the PR and propaganda front.

oh absolutely.

On top of the bragging about being the only democracy in the Middle East, Israeli governments like to present an image of being sleekly professional, efficient and effective in the midst of dreadful chaotic Arab states who couldn't organize the proverbial piss up in a brewery.

I didn't previously have much of an opinion either way on the attempted interference in UK elections thing (kind of presume all states do this to some extent), but it seems less likely now