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

gyac as Valued Poster so great as to deserve its own thread IMO

Gyac, this may surprise you but I have actually thought about your comments to these threads a lot recently and they have been helpful to me in hanging onto some sense of humanity and hope.

longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)
Posted: 29 November 2023 at 14:43:09
I am trying to be forgiving of people's in-the-moment reactions. I can even see how maybe, before the extent of the carnage was appreciated, some people might have gotten excited to see bulldozers tearing through the border fence and paragliders sailing over it and the like. The question I keep trying to ask myself is "Am I just using this person's behavior or statements as an excuse to wall myself off emotionally, because it's easier?"

Gyac otm

My dear friend renounced her Israeli citizenship last week and made a video about it that has been making the rounds:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0NbMSkhxlb/?igshid=ZWI2YzEzYmMxYg==

thanks for sharing that FGTI

I often feel very torn between defensive and critical postures because so much completely batshit and covertly antisemitic stuff gets said about Israel and at the same time there is enough actually bad stuff to criticise. E.g. I just saw a college activist claim that the Israeli military killed its own civilians on 10/7 because it has a "doctrine" that it will kill anyone who comes into contact with Hamas. This was an extremely wild telephone game distortion of something called the Hannibal doctrine which actually was just a concept proposed with respect to military hostages and it's not clear it's ever actually been applied (the prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit would suggest otherwise).

Even the tenor of posts on the other thread occasionally veers not quite into conspiracy theory territory but "here is another bad thing said or done by an Israeli" with the implied collective effect of "Israelis are irredeemably bad people."

I appreciated and fully understood everything said by FGTI's friend, and at the same time I think there are *some* aspects of what she said that would be true of any society - the poor have less power than the rich, the poor get the shitty jobs in the military, hierarchy plays a major role in society, there is racism, the nation does not live up to its national mythology, etc. In the context of actual atrocities and her childhood experience, I can see how those other things take on a different significance. I have certainly had the thought cross my mind a bunch of times that I'd like to just never visit Israel again, dissociate myself from it, etc (I don't have citizenship nor have I ever intended to get it). At the same time I retain a certain feeling of "Jews are a small people in the world, and however imperfect, we have to stick together, no one else will come for us if we don't help ourselves." That remains my eternal internal conflict. Today I feel less like dissociating myself and more like advocating for some kind of political solution that will mean that Israel's existence (in some form or other) does not have to require the occupation and domination of another people or the deprivation of their rights. I don't know what it is, and I think whatever it is will have to be imperfect and messy and not a socialist utopia, but at least something with full rights for Palestinians (whether within a single state, two states, a federation, etc.) that doesn't cause so much death and humiliation and doesn't require so much of its youth to serve as an occupation force.

I often feel very torn between defensive and critical postures because so much completely batshit and covertly antisemitic stuff gets said about Israel and at the same time there is enough actually bad stuff to criticise. E.g. I just saw a college activist claim that the Israeli military killed its own civilians on 10/7 because it has a "doctrine" that it will kill anyone who comes into contact with Hamas. This was an extremely wild telephone game distortion of something called the Hannibal doctrine which actually was just a concept proposed with respect to military hostages and it's not clear it's ever actually been applied (the prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit would suggest otherwise).

Your post is thought provoking as well.

The thing is, I am psychically and emotionally attached to Israel in a way I can't fully explain, and that I don't think can be reduced to *only* a rational idea (I could go there if shit hit the fan) or solely to nationalist mythmaking/propaganda, and certainly partially though not solely being married to an Israeli. Like when Israelis are attacked, I feel attacked, and when Israel does something terribly wrong, I feel as though I am responsible for it in some way, to the point that it haunts me day and night. And I'm sure it is partially from generational trauma and partially from the mythology and partially from the role of the idea of Israel (not necessarily the modern nation state, but Israel) in Jewish liturgy and theology that I grew up with, and partially some complex I have about strength, weakness, masculinity and victimhood, and partially fear of death/non-existence. So I don't know how to answer the good question you ask about conflating Israeli, Israelis, and Jews more generally, because I feel this identification with the state I can't let go of, even though it's very much not of a piece with people who attend Israel rallies and wave flags.

Like when Israelis are attacked, I feel attacked, and when Israel does something terribly wrong, I feel as though I am responsible for it in some way, to the point that it haunts me day and night.

Yeah, intellectually of course I know that’s true. I have an obsessive personality. I don’t want to exaggerate either but the current situation is very much haunting me, as though I have an obligation to find an answer.

(Very unusually for me) I wrote my congressperson today to call for the release of Anas Abu Srour, who runs a youth center in the Aida Refugee Camp that people from my church visited last year.

https://english.pnn.ps/news/46607

I think I need to retreat from Big Thoughts and just try to focus my energy into these kinds of small daily exertions, following the lead of people who have been at it for longer when they tell me "Just do this with me, it will help."

appreciate your posts Man Alive. You really articulate a lot of the same thoughts and conflicts I've been feeling

I had an Israeli passport as a child and I guess I just assume my citizenship has somehow lapsed...definitely not planning to take any steps to reup.

One reason why Vivian Silver and her story have haunted me is that she represents a model of an Israeli who stayed and fought against the apartheid state...it's very hard to have any influence on Israel from Vancouver or Toronto (especially since Israel only allows absentee voting for active duty soldiers or for settlers). I feel some element of guilt about my own powerlessness, but the reality is that just as Israel's responded aggressively to many non-violent forms of resistance from Palestinians and their allies, there are not many choices for Israelis who want to end the occupation.

I think gyac points to the crucial challenge of assessing the appropriateness of the tweets by Bevins (and other similar types of comments/responses).

On the one hand there is an important moral assessment, which is what gyac discusses and what I would argue is most pressing. People may vary in how they assess this and I think the way that moral discussion is so easily derailed into moralising makes this kind of discussion fairly undesirable in a public realm saturated with bad faith. I'm totally in agreement what you said there gyac about how easy it is to substitute compassion with a self-serving calculous of one-upmanship in this context. On an individual level this is so imnportant to hold onto and so difficult when the natural response to such ongoing horror everywhere you look is to become steely, resolved and correct.

That said, I think when you think about it in the context of Bevins being cancelled, the comment needs to be considered in a different way. Would a similar comment, where the author had expressed support for the ongoing military actions by Israel in the oPt, resulted in a similar censure. Even without the excuse that the scale of brutality is not yet known, many 'respectable' figures have continued to argue that Israel's ongoing actions are justified by the events of October 7th. This is not just uncontroversial, its practically mandated in some sections of media and politics.

I think its important to separate these two ways of thinking about (in this case) Bevins tweet. I feel like in the first way of thinking about it he's in the wrong, but in the second way he's in the right and that both of these framings co-exist and are important but shouldn't be confused.

Sorry for meandering 'moral calculation' post. The tweet not being "smart" nor "cool" seems a weird and beside the point criticism though.

It doesn’t really seem weird to me for the reasons I said: the two are aware of and peers of each other, Bevins more left wing than Wallach but both on a continuum, YW is no doubt pulling his punches. I’ve read a lot from him over the years and he’s written a lot about Israel and his family and was devastated by the attacks - it seems pointless to litigate a single snide comment that clearly comes from a place of pain and disappointment if you are aware of him and his background.

But then I would - and have! - made similarly pointed remarks to people like that myself, usually with the aim of registering my own disappointment without wanting to fully litigate it at that point, so I get it.

i didn't mean it so much directed at YW (who I don't know), i guess i'm just consistently surprised at the language academic experts will now use publicly to discuss their field of expertise though that is a separate issue and one muddied here by the factors you mentioned.

I've only followed Wallach properly since October. Any hint of Israeli lives being in anyway -- as he sees it -- cheapened for anti-colonialism's sake gets a response. I think that can easily slide into what he sees as some kind of student-y leftism. Hence seeing Bevins as going for something "cool" and "smart" which isn't what Bevins was going for.

xp he’s probably not even that old

xp yeah, it shows.

I think it being his field of expertise probably less relevant than him being from Israel and having friends and family there. Where’s the academic distance there, and why should it even be requested in such circumstances? The majority killed were civilians. They were innocent. It might be abstract to Bevins and therefore he was thoughtless, but it wasn’t to him. That’s how I see it.

Sarah_Woolley
@Sarah_Woolley
·
17m
A friend who carries Shane MacGowan’s music deep in his heart told me today that the first time he ever encountered anything to do with Palestine solidarity was The Pogues fundraising in the Brixton foyer in front of an enormous Palestine flag

I would argue that it wasn’t abstract to Bevins. It also begs the question of how the daily violence of occupation is abstracted.

I would argue that policing a tweet of a few words of an Israeli man to this extent is extremely weird and not remotely smart and cool.

I don’t care.

Yeah, I can tell.

Even the tenor of posts on the other thread occasionally veers not quite into conspiracy theory territory but "here is another bad thing said or done by an Israeli" with the implied collective effect of "Israelis are irredeemably bad people."

This is certainly not a perfect comparison - I hope it's not an offensive one! - but I've often been reminded of how I felt during the Iraq war, as a terminally online kid with a lot of US friends. I was obv opposed to it, but found the way it was discussed amongst a lot of ppl I knew irl very bothersome, just all these assumptions about Dumb, Arrogant Americans and v little acknowledgement of the popular opposition to it in the US. ppl on holidays getting roped into being asked to justify political decisions they didn't agree with in the first place, that kind of thing.

anyway in retrospect I don't know if I had my priorities right - international outrage over the conflict was justified and correct, the fact that it trickled down into a kind of boorish chauvinism perhaps inevitable with any movement that garners widespread public support. obv it wasn't cool my friends were set upon by so many ppl eager to treat them as official representatives of the US government, obv also this shouldn't even register on the list of injustices surrounding the conflict (goes without saying that muslims around the world were experiencing something similar at the same time to a far more extreme extent). but yeah it sucks to be viewed as a representative for your country's shitty political decisions, and it sucks that many ppl can't look at conflicts without a tribalist "everyone living in this nation is a baddie" lens.

I would argue that policing a tweet of a few words of an Israeli man to this extent is extremely weird and not remotely smart and cool.

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Thursday, 30 November 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Doing direct feedback on his posting might be, but unless YW posts in this corner of the web.

Bevins losing speaking engagements over that tweet is clearly ridiculous, and Germany's threats to criminalize pro-Palestine sentiment are egregious.

I do find it disingenuous for Bevins, who wrote a book on the effectiveness of mass protest movements, to say he couldn't possibly know enough to comment on the strategic effectiveness of the Hamas attack.

On the march against semitism that took place in London.

https://vashtimedia.com/2023/12/01/formats/opinion/a-long-way-from-cable-street-antisemitism-march-palestine/

surprise surprise meme

all these assumptions about Dumb, Arrogant Americans and v little acknowledgement of the popular opposition to it in the US.

Still understandable when you recall that at the start of the Iraq war polls showed the U.S. opposition to be very scant, with a huge majority in favor.

I met more Americans that were in favour than not at the time, though this says more about Americans on holiday in European cities than the population as a whole.

1. Remaining quiet is not the same as consent, given the extremely small chance of one's opposition even getting recognized, let alone having it affect the outcome.

2. I was actually there, on the Mall, and we made a lot of noise, and it made exactly no difference.

Someone should ask Joe Biden, Kier Starmer, Rishi Sunak etc if they’re pleased by the resumption of bombing, given their earlier opposition to a cease fire.

well my point wasn't that the Iraq war was opposed by the majority of Americans, it's that if you have a personal connection to a place, know actual people from there, it's natural to feel a certain defensiveness when these kind of blithe categorical statements about countries come up, even when those countries are objectively fucking up

I say "natural" as opposed to "correct" or "important" because yeah I don't know to what extent it's justified to focus on that when actual atrocities are happening, man alive's post just hit on some stuff that made me remember those times tho as I said the situations aren't analogous

also see: thinking everyone who lives in a Red State is a conservative

we are, we all converted the moment the election results told us to

americans should get over it imo

there was widespread support for the Iraq war in official media channels. Journalists like Pankaj Mishra have written about how it was incredibly difficult to get published if you wanted to critique what Bush was doing. pretty much out and out censorship of dissenting opinions.

there was a great deal of popular protest, but it was covered as though it was fringe, as though dissenting was tantamount to terrorism.

anecdotally, as an American Muslim who opposed the war, i was surprised by how many acquaintances on the left supported it even though they had been critical of American military ventures in the past.

part of why i am having a hard time shutting up in my critiques of Biden, Blinken, et al, these days is because i feel guilty about how relatively quietist i was then.

your culture is so dominant that even the dissident parts of it are well known internationally - people saying americans do this or that know they're making sweeping statements but american feelings aren't their priority xp

people saying americans do this or that know they're making sweeping statements but american feelings aren't their priority

Nah that wasn't true at all for the situation I was talking about, because opposition to the Iraq war in Europe was mainstreamed to an extent where every pub bore was at it - which was ofc good because it was 100% the right position.

Not an American obviously.

Ok, then do we get to blame England for Tony Blair

President keyes you are not ever gonna get any blowback from left or indeed most ukilx posters for attacking England for any reason at all, have you seen our threads

Ok, then do we get to blame England for Tony Blair

The UK not England. Personally I have no problem with, for instance, Europeans thinking the British are a bunch of Brexit-voting xenophobes, I know I'm not so why should I care?

personally I blame britain for america

and england for britain for that matter

That was a Scotsman's idea though.

How central is Joe Biden to the US's continued support for Israel?

Listen to the analysis of Rachel Maddow, broadcaster and author, on the latest #Americast

— BBC Sounds (@BBCSounds) December 1, 2023

Maddow going full on fan fic here

This is encouraging, at least:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/01/uaw-ceasefire-gaza

Jennifer Hodgson
@jenniferhodgson
·
2h
We saw police arrest 3 children at the sweet and peaceful Palestine rally in Brixton today