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

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/05/nine-arrested-over-pro-palestinian-banner-in-london

felicity, your post doesn’t address the heart of my post, and willfully misreads me as another effort to smear me. i won’t be interacting with you or your bad-faith arguments on this site any longer.

Maybe a weird question, but is anyone familiar with Nissim Black? He's coming to perform at a Jewish solidarity rally here next week. I'd never heard of him, on first glance he seems like kind of a religious kook. But I have no idea what his standing is culturally in Israel or elsewhere.

Israeli officials justify bombing Gaza by recalling the Allied bombing of Dresden.

2 problems with that argument:
1 The Geneva Convention was brought in after WW2 to prevent such mass killings of civilians.
2 The destruction in Gaza is already comparable after just 2 months. pic.twitter.com/0HVbuc38SC

— James Schneider (@schneiderhome) December 7, 2023

The bombing of Dresden was two days.

I believe the point is that the destruction is still ongoing in Gaza

yeah I'm not sure what he's trying to convey in that post. that said both situations are deplorable and no one should positively compare their actions to the bombing of dresden as though that were some kind of good thing. maybe Israel needs to read Slaughterhouse Five.

They've been using that analogy since the start of the bombing campaign.

Sorry, James Schneider is "Israel"? Why do people provide these Twix posts without source or attribution.

Bombing is bad, sexual assault as warfare is bad, hostage taking is bad. What source are we discussing.

The tweet is discussing what Israel have said and why that's a problem. I don't know who is saying "bombing etc. is good here".

Here is more on what's unique here.
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@joolsd
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43m
and i think uniquely among these kinds of campaigns there are no air raid shelters in gaza, unlike north vietnam, germany, britain, etc

Sorry, James Schneider is "Israel"?

uh, James Schneider was not in any way trying to identify himself as "Israel". Nor did he attribute the argument to "Israel" as a whole, but to "Israeli authorities", unspecified, but the implication is the people with some sort of governmental authority. Both of those are quite clear if you take a moment to read it slowly.

What are you saying then.

His tweet uses a PDF with no link to source. Not to say that it's misinformation, but a PDF rather than link where the source can be verified is often a giveaway for misinformation.

It's basically hearsay. So fine, discuss this guy's take. But's that's what it is.

I recognised that graph from the FT

https://www.ft.com/content/7b407c2e-8149-4d83-be01-72dcae8aee7b

What I was saying was that your response, as quoted, made no sense when compared to what you were responding to.

Fine, let's discuss the graph from FT then.

Aimless, there are weeks of misinformation and conspiracy being posted here gullibly from Xitter for weeks, and the takes here further distort the truth.

Why don't you take a primer in recognizing and counteracting misinformation instead of thread policing one of ILX's few women immediately after I just mentioned the #metoo unless you are Jew protests about the 10/7 sexual assaults that were all over the news this week.

"Fine, let's discuss the graph from FT then."

Happy with that take from JS, hence posting it. It's hardly conspiracist.

The war has been going on for two months. Numerous ilxors have discussed their deep upset and fear about the war itself, their relationship to Israel and numerous other topics. I’ve seen people in these threads show patience and kindness to and actually try to discuss stuff with others like adults, if you don’t feel that’s something you can do, Aimless, find a way to block felicity, or stop posting itt. We can do without your “contributions”. It’s pretty easy to see when someone is posting from a place of upset and not goad them like a spiteful pos.

Yes, it's a take you are happy with. But people have complained about you doing this before. Post what you want, but don't expect people to go wading through the cesspool of Xitter to rely on or trust your sources.

The other day you were posting the MIT graduate advisor who was spreading anti-Zionist conspiracy theories, in response to the hearing if it was unreasonable that an American student would not want to be advised by him. And his citation to the video did not support the claims in the tweet you reposrted. But his thread was full of the "Z word" in the way you agreed not to use. He posted "Is Zionism a mental illness?" This is a graduate student and faculty advisor in neuroscience at MIT.

So yes, when you post tweets from people like that approvingly and without comment you are very much spreading conspiracy.

xp thank you gyac

Here is a basic article on recognizing misinformation.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media

There's nothing wrong with your posts, xyzzz

table is the one who posted

Still, completely absurd that this is happening at all IMHO. Just goes to show that Islamic students don’t matter to politicians or on college campuses.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 11:27 AM bookmarkflaglink

in reference to the House hearing on antisemitisim and then said I missed the heart of his post.

Again, there's nothing wrong with anything I posted, or anything that you have posted, xyzzz.

"The other day you were posting the MIT graduate advisor who was spreading anti-Zionist conspiracy theories"

He hasn't been sacked by MIT. Besides all that the tweet is very clear in terms of the point made and the double standard he was arguing about, which is what I wanted to put across.

So I've got no problem with that either.

I think it's debatable whether "Israeli officials" did this, but there is this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/the-gaza-diplomacy-of-biden-sunak-and-co-seems-to-be-heading-for-failure

Blinken’s bigger US goal to establish safe zones in Gaza’s war zone was never easy, and may ultimately prove a mirage. Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, pointed to the bombing of Dresden in the second world war, as she insisted civilian casualties were inevitable in wars.

I'm not sure if that's a reference to this interview in particular or further comments made elsewhere: https://www.mediaite.com/uk/israeli-official-evokes-dresden/

Which is also what my earlier post was about, which felicity declined to actually address in any kind of way, instead opting to smear me by saying that I don't care about antisemitism. This was my post:

Except only one seems to be a real priority on campuses at the moment?

I think that one of the reasons I am so frustrated with current conversations about college campus environments is that there is an execrable rise in hatred toward both Jewish students and Muslim students, but the institutions seem to be really addressing only the former while presuming that the latter is just business-as-usual.

This is to say: the amount of latent, even blatant, antisemitism on college campuses before 10/7 was awful and real, and so was the amount of Islamophobia. I have taught students who told me that they didn’t wear their hijab because of Islamophobic harassment, and that’s in a city like Philly with a huge (and racialized) Muslim population.

I guess this is all to say that I really want people to feel safe, yet I become really frustrated when it feels like one group’s safety is privileged over another’s, in an almost exact mirror image of how things are playing out in the larger conflict.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 6:40 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

rob, a recent report from CNN has intimated that Israeli officials initially wanted to "flatten" Gaza, and had to be walked back by US officials. That said, it seems like they're getting their wish.

oh I don't need convincing about the derangement of Israel's military campaign; the numbers speak for themselves while also being incomprehensible. 1 out of 150 Gazan children have been killed according to an otherwise typically iffy Kristof column in today's nyt, and the current evacuation & bombing policy in the south (widely reported in lots of mainstream media) is astonishingly cruel. The 10/7 attack was also abhorrent if I need to make my perspective on that clear.

Anyway, I am sorry to pile on felicity, but I was wary of the misinformation characterization when the specific Dresden comparison rang a bell with things I'd seen earlier. Obviously other tweets posted in the past may have been misinfo--I'm not sure what the MIT discussion refers to.

It’s interesting to read the NYT and see a particular trend emerging: a multimedia story today about “life for people trapped in Gaza”, with reference links to three other stories that also claim people as being “trapped” there. Prepping readers for a feeling of relief when surviving Gazans are inevitably permanently evacuated: this wasn’t their home, it was a trap they were caught in

"But his thread was full of the "Z word" in the way you agreed not to use. He posted "Is Zionism a mental illness"

Zionism is far too much in the discourse, there have been things posted by other posters that use the word and discuss Zionism, so it can't be entirely avoided.

The point I took from our discussion wasn't to use the Z word in an aggressive manner myself, but ofc I will bring in other perspectives where needed. I want to see Palestinian voices on here.

Otherwise I do some checking of what I post (like I know who James Schneider is in UK politics) but in the end I am often posting a take, discourse for people to talk about if they wish. It's a take I am often agreeing with but it's fine if it's not perfect or sourced. Like, I know this.

felicity declined to actually address in any kind of way

First of all, I am not obligated to focus on what you deem important. You're not a tyrant.

instead opting to smear me by saying that I don't care about antisemitism.

You'd better quote paste where I did that.

What you may have been taking personally is saying that there is something wrong with people who do not identify as either who constantly feel the need to play Muslim students in the US against Jewish students in the US. Maybe this is you.

in an almost exact mirror image of how things are playing out in the larger conflict.

Do you understand that you are dragging Muslim students and Jewish students studying in US universities, who have nothing to do with foreign policy, into a discussion about "the larger conflict" and it's extremely offensive. Please stop playing with groups of people in your mind in this way.

As for your student who feels intimidated to wear hijab, that is terrible and I hope you exercised your obligation as faculty to report it and do what you can to make the school a safe place for her. If more teachers would do that instead of posting hate online maybe we wouldnt be here.

xyzzzz, as you know I like you and am not trying to stifle you. Just take care with who you spread if you can.

i won’t be interacting with you or your bad-faith arguments on this site any longer.

Though ultimately I will keep posting as I am I would just add that I am only explaining this at length because I like you too Felicity.

Take care.

And table - thanks!

felicity, I'm a little confused about invoking the House hearing. I didn't watch it, but I read a bit about it and got the impression it was a GOP-led opportunity for grandstanding and berating the presidents of three elite northeastern private universities (all three were women, notably I thought), but not in any way a genuine attempt to address antisemitism on college campuses, especially across the US and in other kinds of institutions. Am I wrong? Did you find it to be a serious effort? I'm genuinely asking as like I said I didn't watch it, but people I broadly trust dismissed it so I assumed I didn't miss anything worthwhile. Plus, the chances we'll see a similar hearing on anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic sentiment is nil imo, so I was pretty cynical about the hearing itself (not the issue of antisemitism).

This is a much more eloquent way of saying what I was trying to say in my original posts

i won’t be interacting with you or your bad-faith arguments on this site any longer.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 7 December 2023 19:26 (forty-four minutes ago) link

You said that yesterday.

instead opting to smear me by saying that I don't care about antisemitism.

You didn't quote paste where I said that. Because I didn't.

felicity, I'm a little confused about invoking the House hearing. I didn't watch it, but I read a bit about it and got the impression it was a GOP-led opportunity for grandstanding and berating the presidents of three elite northeastern private universities (all three were women, notably I thought), but not in any way a genuine attempt to address antisemitism on college campuses, especially across the US and in other kinds of institutions. Am I wrong? Did you find it to be a serious effort? I'm genuinely asking as like I said I didn't watch it, but people I broadly trust dismissed it so I assumed I didn't miss anything worthwhile. Plus, the chances we'll see a similar hearing on anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic sentiment is nil imo, so I was pretty cynical about the hearing itself (not the issue of antisemitism).

― rob, Thursday, December 7, 2023 11:35 AM bookmarkflaglink

Keyes invoked it. I am in favor of people watching primary sources and drawing their own conclusions.

I would be very interested in discussing specific portions. There were House members using their allotted time to discuss incidents of Islamaphobia on campus. There were statements from House members about race segregated dorms at MIT. There was also grandstanding and bullying and poorly advised college presidents stammering and issuing Tweets revising their statements the next day.

What I did not see was what Keyes called:

Right now there's a House Hearing on Antisemitism on College Campuses and Congressmen are calling out UPenn Professors by name and saying they are members of terrorist organizations.

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 8:15 AM bookmarkflaglink

Specifically, I did not see any Congresspeople calling Professors "terrorists." Perhaps Keyes can point to who said that in the hearing.

The point I am making is that accuracy is not a left-right issue. And asking people not to brainlessly repeat whatever paraphrasing of hearsay sources of political events they feel like unless they are willing to discuss and correct as needed. History shows this kind of rumor mongering leads to bad things and I would hope ILX does not want to pour gasoline on the fire.

I think the hearing was definitely political grandstanding. It’s kinda absurd to see Republicans concerned about anti-semitism tbh considering stuff like Charlottesville. The MIT president had the best response with stating she had not heard any calls for genocide. It all seemed to hinge on the semantics of the term “intifada” which is definitely fraught for sure, but I think a lot of people on the Left are using it not to advocate for genocide against Jews. It is unfortunate imo that a lot of younger American leftists don’t have the most solid grasp of history and I feel like they are actually ignorant of how others interpret some of their terms and slogans.

The NYT article about the Students for Justice in Palestine is worth reading

rob, the testimony will go in the Congressional record. Like the January 6 hearings, it may not be immediately clear where this leads.

But a number of these schools are being investgated for civil rights violations under Title VI. So one way this might work is the testimony triggers an "actual knowledge" of discrimination or harassment that could lead to the school's defunding from federal grants and nonprofit tax exemptions if not satisfactorily addressed. These tax preferences are in the billions or tens of billions of dollars and contribute to the elite ranking of these schools along with their multibillion dollar endowments.

There was also a some weird evangelical stuff being said, and generally the politics of the GOP House are abhorrent. But focusing on that is to me like reading a gossip blog item in Gawker and thinking you know what's up. I believe it's wrong to use antisemiticsm in the US as a political football. A stopped clock, etc. Antisemitism is a problem on the left as well as the right. Attempts from eithet party to blame the other party while silently standing by and ignoring it disgust me equally.

It all seemed to hinge on the semantics of the term “intifada” which is definitely fraught for sure, but I think a lot of people on the Left are using it not to advocate for genocide against Jews. It is unfortunate imo that a lot of younger American leftists don’t have the most solid grasp of history and I feel like they are actually ignorant of how others interpret some of their terms and slogans.

― sarahell, Thursday, December 7, 2023 12:45 PM bookmarkflaglink

Thank you for this intellectually honest take. I agree.

Not sure what people on the left want to do with chants of "there is only one solution! Intifada revolution!" but a lot of them seem very naïve.

Nonprofit tax exemption is not governed by this issue. But yes, federal funding is definitely at risk, you are correct.

Im not going to debate the tax issue but I thought that under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that all institutions that receive federal money must comply with Title VI or lose their preference. I wasn't referring to the federal tax code.

Wrong man, wrong place, wrong time https://t.co/qgWuUbLgcX pic.twitter.com/7gs40pmh1E

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) December 7, 2023

thanks felicity, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts

fwiw I looked into a little, and I wonder if Keyes caught the last few seconds of this bit from Joe Wilson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucoyvcYQNXk

It's incoherent as hell, and I have no clue what Wilson is referring to myself, but it does sound like he's calling someone a terrorist.

I don’t think “intifada” is problematic in the way people are utilizing it. This again seems like a case where the rhetoric of an international solidarity movement against occupation and genocide is being unnecessarily policed because it calls out the lie at the heart of so-called “democracies” like Israel and the US, but that’s just my take.

xpost to sarahell

Ken White's substack on the House hearing is exceptional:

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that antisemitism is on the rise in America in the wake of October 7th. It’s on the rise on college campuses. Sometimes criticism of Israel or defense of Palestinians is explicitly antisemitic, sometimes it is implicitly antisemitic, and sometimes it incorporates classic antisemitic tropes. Sometimes people of bad faith take advantage of the ambiguity. (I think some people use “from the river to the sea” that way, as a deliberately ambiguous taunt, a big brother’s back-seat ha-ha-I’m-not-touching-you, but with an implicit allusion to genocide.) I don’t blame Jews who feel under siege in America or on campus, even if I sometimes disagree with their interpretation of criticisms of Israel. Feelings are not right or wrong, and in the face of so much overt Jew-hatred, I understand a tendency to interpret ambiguous statements in the worst way possible. I think we should feel compassion and empathy for people who feel that way.

None of that is solved by pretending hard questions are easy. None of that is solved by letting demagogues and hucksters take advantage of the moment to push their agenda. None of that is solved by contributing to what America is becoming — stupider and meaner."

https://popehat.substack.com/p/stop-demanding-dumb-answers-to-hard

xp

It all seemed to hinge on the semantics of the term “intifada” which is definitely fraught for sure, but I think a lot of people on the Left are using it not to advocate for genocide against Jews. It is unfortunate imo that a lot of younger American leftists don’t have the most solid grasp of history and I feel like they are actually ignorant of how others interpret some of their terms and slogans.

― sarahell, Thursday, December 7, 2023 3:45 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not sure what people on the left want to do with chants of "there is only one solution! Intifada revolution!" but a lot of them seem very naïve.

― felicity, Thursday, December 7, 2023 4:00 PM (forty-three minutes ago)

Would either of you mind elaborating? I guess I am one of the naive, as it's genuinely news to me that "intifada" could be interpreted in good faith to mean "genocide against Jews." Neither of the historical Palestinian intifadas could be described as genocides; if nothing else, both resulted in more Palestinian deaths than Israeli. It also has a literal meaning in Arabic, though I know literal definitions don't necessarily help in these situations (c.f. jihad).

Xp rob … akm touches on it with the “from the river to the sea” slogan part of his post