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

xIsn't it a non-majority, not terribly representative cobbled together right wing coalition? I don't really know how Israeli elections work or don't work.

A plurality is not un-democratic. Given the return of right wing governments over and over it takes some work to pretend that the Israeli state and its actions doesn’t represent the overall will of the Israeli electorate.

^^^

OTM. Netanyahu has had a very long career in Israeli politics. Trying to defend this rn is a terrible look.

Or wave it aside with a but Hamas / Gaza 'state' democracy or whatever contortions are being made here.

Don't know if you're addressing me, I'm not trying to defend anything. I think there was some discussion of parallels or whatever. Israel's government has leaned right, or right enough, for a long time. And Gaza voted for Hamas (which is genocidal and fascist - too, if that makes anyone feel more righteous) before Hamas did away with elections entirely. For sure Israel made that situation worse. Yet here we are. I don't see how anything positive happens until Israel gets a new government and Gaza gets a new government.

No, I agree with Josh In Chicago on this point: I absolutely do not think this Likud/Otzma Mehudit alliance is in any way representative of “Israel” as a whole, and I resist generalizing the Israeli populace as much as I resist the same for Palestinians re: Hamas

But I do think Netanyahu and his entire cabinet deserve something for which I’ll invent a word: a massassination. Anybody got any connects at CIA? I can think of nothing this world needs more than immediate death of these racist world-ending fucks

We are trying to tell you Gaza isn't a state, and that Gaza last held any sort of vote in 2006, and that Hamas is propped up by the Israelis.

And I am telling you that Israel's government are in favour of genocide, and that it's people have constantly voted for this in large enough numbers. The situation to Gaza is not in any shape or form comparable.

And that therefore I disagree with this 'both sides' assessment xp

In the UK Conservative governments are voted in over and again. Now I can say it's the press twisting voters, or a lack of democracy or what have you and that there are many nice people here but in the end a lot of this country is conservative and terrible. This is what we face.

also, why is it every other time the conversation is (rightfully) "Civilians don't deserve to die based on who was elected their leaders", like we didn't sit around saying "serves them right" when poor Brazilians (many of whom likely hated Bolsonaro) were dying of COVID due to Jair not even attempting to combat the disease. we said Iraqis didn't deserve to die due to Hussein and his Ba'ath parties actions.

so why would "they elected Hamas as their government fuck em" fly here? not that anybody has outright said that here, but the ship shouldn't sail anywhere near that shore (esp since plenty of influential people ARE saying that)

Maybe Israel should stop funding Hamas through proxies and we could find out about a new government for Gaza, but Israel needs Hamas to continue to justify its ethnofacist takeover of the Strip and the West Bank.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Wednesday, November 22, 2023 2:27 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think this is kind of a distortion of what was still a terrible policy. If Israel had wanted to take over Gaza, it could simply have stepped up settlement and occupation of Gaza, instead of forcibly removing settlers and withdrawing troops, which is what Israel did in the mid 00's. Bibi did favor Hamas as a counterweight to the PA, because he did not want a unified Palestinian government, however I do not think this was done in order to justify a takeover of Gaza, rather he arrogantly hoped he could maintain a kind of uneasy, quasi-peace with Gaza. Allowing funding to go to Hamas was with the intention that it could be governed and kept quiet, not to arm Hamas so they could attack Israel in order to create some kind of false flag justification to invade Gaza, that just doesn't make any sense to me. Since 10/7 Hamas leadership has openly bragged about its strategy for the last several years of pretending to be willing to maintain this "peace" while actually building up its capacity to attack. Historically, Israel has not been as interested in Gaza as the West Bank, both for "religious" reasons and because it probably has less military strategic value.

I have also seen vague claims that this somehow relates to offshore gas, but I haven't seen any explanation of why Israel would need to reoccupy gaza to access that offshore gas.

If there's evidence to the contrary, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it doesn't make much sense to me as a theory.

Thousands and thousands of Israelis had been protesting the Netanyahu judicial 'overhaul' almost nonstop for months, they only stopped to show national unity, but his gov't was already circling the drain before Oct 7th

man alive, I think the difference between us is that we agree that what is going on is terrible, but history forces me believe that the intentions of the Israeli state are always bent toward the elimination of the Palestinian people. Ben-Gurion famously said that the Arab peoples in the area will never forgive the state of Israel and with good reason— which is why the state of Israel continuously punishes the Palestinians, whether Israeli citizens want that or not.

Anyway, I found this piece by Jacqueline Rose worth reading: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/jacqueline-rose/you-made-me-do-it

thanks, I really liked that piece a lot

man alive, I think the difference between us is that we agree that what is going on is terrible, but history forces me believe that the intentions of the Israeli state are always bent toward the elimination of the Palestinian people. Ben-Gurion famously said that the Arab peoples in the area will never forgive the state of Israel and with good reason— which is why the state of Israel continuously punishes the Palestinians, whether Israeli citizens want that or not.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Wednesday, November 22, 2023 4:34 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflag link

I guess I would put it a little differently, and say that I think the Israeli state has always contained conflicting intentions within it - one to push the Palestinian people aside and one to coexist with them, but that the former has been winning. I don't know whether this was always inevitable or not. Ben Gurion said a lot of different things over the course of his life, and so did Herzl, and so did Jabotinsky, and so did some lesser Zionists whose ideology didn't prevail.

I happened to watch this today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgwtQlwK-hA

I didn't feel angry at anything anyone said, in fact I felt a strange affection and admiration for most of the people in the video, even those who said they simply wanted all the Israelis to "go back where they came from" (regardless of whether they are several or more generations in the land, or whether there is anywhere that they can safely go back to). I empathized with their aspirations to self-determination (although at least one man seemed more motivated by pan-Islamic control of the region vs Palestinian self-determination). I also think that maybe some of them would feel more moderately toward the idea of Israelis "staying" if the regime moderated and became less oppressive, and that their feeling of wanting the Israelis to simply leave was somewhat understandable under the circumstances. In fact, some kind of apology / truth and reconciliation might go a long way. But I don't know for sure.

I also fear that this is really the most important aspect and difficult to resolve aspect of the entire situation -- yes, the power dynamic matters, yes it matters that Israel is the stronger party, but why would the Palestinians want to even share power as equals with the people they experience only as their oppressors? And even if Israel is more in the wrong, why wouldn't Israelis say "well there are no circumstances under which they would share power with us anyway, so we continue." I mean, this is really why Hamas exists -- not because Bibi "supported" them, but because there is a demand for violent resistance of Israel. If Hamas weren't the vehicle for it, something else would be. And as long as there is violent resistance (which I am trying to suspend any value judgment about in this post), many Israelis will feel justified in occupation, expansion, etc. for "security" reasons. Hamas's goal is precisely to prevent "capitulation" to Israel, to resist anything less than complete Arab Muslim control over all of historic Palestine. The Israeli right's goal is the mirror image of this. And the rest of Israel is insufficiently resistant to the right because deep down it fears that being soft will just embolden those who want them gone from all of Palestine. And I imagine that Palestinians who might be more open to compromise may feel similarly toward Israel, any capitulation means giving it all up, etc. But there is no question that Hamas (in its pre-governing days) engaged in suicide bombings of buses and attacks on schools precisely to harden both Israelis and Palestinians against compromise. There is no question that Baruch Goldstein massacred Palestinians for the same reason, and that Rabin was assassinated for the same reason. And so far, they have succeeded. The peace negotiations died, Likkud came to power, the Israeli right has grown, the Israeli left has withered.

Long term where this goes, I have no idea. The only thing I can see changing anything now is a change in the balance of power. Perhaps the US gradually loses interest in Israel as it becomes strategically less important and more of a PR burden. For now, the US has aircraft carriers in the gulf threatening against any "wider regional war" that Hamas hoped to provoke.

Good to see some discussion here. You all are way too smart for me, I don't have any answers for what's going on over there.

If anyone needs to reread my post, copy paste what you don't understand and I'll try to clarify, correct or be persuaded. I didn't call this a bilateral genocide.

As for what prompted it, I was bothered by this post upthread:

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.)

I saw terrified children who are being offered up on ILX for people to laugh at or hate or something. People really don't like photos of their own children being posted online. Is there a good reason for this other than dehumanizing innocent children because they were born on the wrong side of something? And leaving it on ILX for some browser to find and think .... oh these people have good taste ... and also ...

Just, I'm disturbed that post and posts like it pass without comment.

I think a mod should delete that post. I want no part of this, whatever it is.

xp 972 magazine had a very good editorial that attempted to address that last question.

https://www.972mag.com/october-war-israelis-palestinians-historic/

"I saw terrified children who are being offered up on ILX for people to laugh at or hate or something."

I did neither. Saw it on twitter but that piece was pretty clear on that episode and provided a back story around it. It happened, don't see the point in deleting it xp

I didn't take it as offering children up for mockery. It's a chilling representation of the lengths adults are going to indoctrinate their young children with hate, which will help ensure that anti-Palestinian hatred will continue to endure.

That a mainstream broadcaster would run it is also terrifying. It really illustrates how the campaign by the IDF to dehumanize Palestinians and win the propaganda war that "Palestinians= Hamas", that genocide is necessary.

It's just depressing. The kids in the video are victims themselves

Did a mainstream broadcaster actually run that video? I thought it was just some social media content creator.

Oh I see, it looks like it was shared on their Twitter and website and then deleted. Not actually broadcast which I assume would take a little bit of a greater editorial decision.

Sorry Felicity but that is a really bizarre take. The children clearly didn’t write those lyrics, film the clip or post it. They were used by monsters.

Xpost Nonetheless, Kan News is a state-owned television network and their Twitter and YouTube feeds reach tons of people. Which is how it was discovered

Also, I posted a link to the Snopes article, not the video itself. What is delete worthy about that?

Xp that 972 editorial was good, thanks.

On the Apartheid thing - If Israel were to end the blockade of Gaza and exit the West Bank, would that functionally end the apartheid or apartheid like system? Palestinians within Israel are able to vote (but they're called Israeli Arabs not Palestinians, is this correct?).

So if they ended the military occupation they would be a democracy?

This is just something I'm clearing up for myself in trying to understand all this better

Sorry Felicity but that is a really bizarre take. The children clearly didn’t write those lyrics, film the clip or post it. They were used by monsters.

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Wednesday, November 22, 2023 2:50 PM bookmarkflaglink

Monsters you say?

Yes

Yair Wallach
@YairWallach
The options I see:
1. Israel invades south Gaza, removes Hamas, mass loss of life
2. Israel withdraws from north Gaza, large prisoner swap deal, Hamas stays in power
3. Israel remains in north Gaza, Hamas, refugees, hostages remain in the south. Stalemate for months? years?

---

Wallach goes for 3, which is ofc unstable.

There is a fourth option, which I think is most likely: Israel continues to deepen the humanitarian crisis via blockades and bombardment, to a point where mass evacuation, first to Sinai, then to other places, is seen as merciful. Already the narrative is quickly shifting— people are expressing relief when those in Gaza are able to escape.

Even “just waiting” works in the favour of Smotrich and his policy of “letting Gaza collapse”; the living conditions are already such that contamination and disease will do a better job in “killing Gazans” over the next weeks than bombardment has done so far

contamination and disease will do a better job in “killing Gazans” over the next weeks than bombardment has done so far

The Iraq War can testify to that harsh reality.

On the Apartheid thing - If Israel were to end the blockade of Gaza and exit the West Bank, would that functionally end the apartheid or apartheid like system? Palestinians within Israel are able to vote (but they're called Israeli Arabs not Palestinians, is this correct?).

So if they ended the military occupation they would be a democracy?

there's still systematic racism against palestinian citizens of israel, it's just not as severe as the situation under occupation in the west bank. in your scenario (assuming this means a proper two-state solution), then yes israel would be a proper democracy but still a rather racist one without further reforms, those aren't contradictory.

There is a fourth option, which I think is most likely: Israel continues to deepen the humanitarian crisis via blockades and bombardment, to a point where mass evacuation, first to Sinai, then to other places, is seen as merciful. Already the narrative is quickly shifting— people are expressing relief when those in Gaza are able to escape.

this seems to be the preferred option of the israeli government but you have to hope it doesn't happen and could easily mean a wider war

1. Israel invades south Gaza, removes Hamas, mass loss of life
2. Israel withdraws from north Gaza, large prisoner swap deal, Hamas stays in power
3. Israel remains in north Gaza, Hamas, refugees, hostages remain in the south. Stalemate for months? years?

idk if 'removing hamas' is so certain if they do invade the south (which does seem likely enough still) but 'mass loss of life' is a given. i don't know how or why 3. would even happen. what reason would the idf have to just stick around in north gaza for months? years? doing nothing. that doesn't achieve anything much for them does it? the actual potential stalemate situation would be trying to invade south gaza but failing to actually score victories against hamas?

@ ufo, my “fourth option” wasn’t being presented as a preference, but as my interpretation of a most-likely outcome. Call it Overton window or call it manufactured consent, I’ve been arguing for weeks that this is Israel’s only intention and the most-likely outcome— and it’s even working on me. Personally, on Nov 21, I’d prefer to see 2m Gazan refugees than 15k more dead Gazans.

Man alive touched on this: I think too it is easy (and accurate) to scream at Biden for enabling genocide, but that his current policy is aimed toward one thing only: preventing other countries from entering the war. I don’t admire the decisions he’s making but I think it’s more complicated than pure complicity as people have argued. I reiterate that I wish he’d call the CIA and murder Netanyahu etc. right away for best results tho.

Oh shit it’s already Nov 23.

perhaps the US not giving Israel the funding and persisting with the no red lines policy towards their actions in Gaza (including a genocidal war of annihilation) would actually be a very effective way of preventing other Arabic countries from entering the war. That seems pretty obvious to me.

alas, the CIA only murder democratically elected left-wing leaders

"Preventing other countries from entering the war" rings hollow. What other Arab countries are poised to enter the war? Syria is a disaster, Jordan's certainly not going to, Egypt is barely holding its shit together, Iran/Hezbollah are already engaged in southern Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is pro-Israel, the UAE buys a lot of weapons FROM Israel.

"Fear that Arab and Muslim states might be forced by internal pressure to de-normalize relations with Israel" might be a more accurate way to put it but, uh, boo-hoo.

Which other Arabic countries would enter the war? I don't see any having either the appetite or the capacity to do anything, most only have palace guard militaries. Outside of that there's only really Iran that has both the capacity and the appetite, either directly or via Hezbollah. I guess Hezbollah is a de facto military being stronger than the Lebanese military

Even the thawing of relations is only paused not ended. Feels like most Arabic countries are making just enough movement to placate domestic audience, but not sure about anything beyond that

that was an xp, hence the overlap

also wouldn't all the US/UK military assistance deployed in the region be the reason other countries wouldn't really fancy it? I think to credit sleepy Joe when he sleepwalking through this on the US default setting towards Israel, with playing some nuanced diplomacy game is just pure projection.

https://t.co/kejiV1SUtq pic.twitter.com/Mu0ADkEQbo

— Austin Ahlman (@austinahlman) November 22, 2023

Sorry interview already posted in the correct thread. Just another amazing interview

alas, the CIA only murder democratically elected left-wing leaders

Oh I know, I’m just speaking wishfully; several of my friends are posting about how they’d like Netanyahu to take the ceasefire as an opportunity to step down; better that Yair Lapid et al organize some kind of gtfo plan with popular support

“Other nations entering the war” is literally giving me nightmares; if you guys think it’s unlikely it is relaxing to hear. I worry that Netanyahu’s intentions becoming more obviously ghastly will cause Biden to justifiably listen to his conscience and speak up, pull out, and suddenly it’s full-tilt Iran-Jordan-Lebanon declarations; but these are my nightmares! maybe not reality

@ ufo, my “fourth option” wasn’t being presented as a preference, but as my interpretation of a most-likely outcome. Call it Overton window or call it manufactured consent, I’ve been arguing for weeks that this is Israel’s only intention and the most-likely outcome— and it’s even working on me. Personally, on Nov 21, I’d prefer to see 2m Gazan refugees than 15k more dead Gazans.

oh i wasn't suggesting you preferred it, just agreeing with it as a possible outcome and likely what the israeli government prefers. i really don't know how likely it is though - the us was originally open to it, but egypt has seriously threatened war over it and the us of course really does not want a wider war. it would also really only happen if israel secures military victory over hamas which seems like a dubious prospect?

re: escalation - hezbollah is the main threat- there's obviously conflict there but it's still not really full-on, but if they did escalate there's all sorts of potential chaos that results - the usa has obviously threatened retaliation and there's all sorts of iranian-backed militias in iraq etc. that could get further involved. i figure that at this point it is probably unlikely unless hamas is seriously in trouble, or some wider chaos breaks out for other reasons? egypt also sees the possibility of having to deal with 2 million refugees who are ideologically hostile to it as an existential threat and has threatened war if that happens. the houthis in yemen are trying to get involved as they can be from where they are but don't have the means to get more directly involved.

Reading this piece on "from the river to the sea" and it lines up with our conversation yesterday on how Israeli democracy is enabling what might have been fringe ideas to take centre stage in an eliminationist turn.

"Between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty"

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/zionism-s-political-unconscious

"the central contradictions of this settler-nation have become ever harder to sustain: the state can be either Jewish or democratic, but it cannot be both. Unable to give up its commitment to the former, the need to change the demographic balance once again comes to the fore. For the radical right, that truth is easily spoken out loud. For Jewish-Israelis who consider themselves more centrist, liberal even, perhaps the opportunity offered by this war is the only way out: transfer in the name of humanitarian concern. Once out, as every Palestinian knows, they will never be allowed to return."

Following on from yesterday's discussion on Palestinian prisoner exchange.

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/11/22/23972908/palestinian-prisoners-israel-administrative-detention

"In 2022, Amnesty International released a comprehensive report pointing to the practice of administrative detention as just one example of how the Israeli state subjugates Palestinians and cracks down on dissent. Since 1967, Israel has issued over 1,000 military orders that criminalize a range of activities in Palestinians’ daily lives, including waving political symbols like flags, being in certain areas without permits, and any kind of speech that can fit into a loosely defined charge of “incitement.” Citing decades of evidence, the Amnesty report outlined an “intentional Israeli policy to detain individuals, including prisoners of conscience, solely for the non-violent exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association, and punish them for their views.”"

Exploring the once-familiar streets of my city, now barely recognizable in the Zs' destruction. Every step is a journey through memories, anger and nostalgia. https://t.co/l50FRoCDYy

— Dr. Mustafa Elmasri (@Gaza_Psych) November 24, 2023