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

Agreed.

I also agree but it’s a sign of how intractable the discourse on this is that even on these ilx threads — which are in general thoughtful and nuanced — we’re still circling back to those points.

It’s just exhausting and dispiriting. (Not the ilx threads, the whole thing.)

We keep getting told about this stuff by various ILXors but, if you're not actually on Twitter 24/7, you'll be completely unaware it even exists.

I'm on FB and I've never seen any of it. The only person who posts about the current conflict at all is my sister-in-law, who grew up on a kibbutz.

I have East Coast Jewish friends from college, one of whom is a Rabbi. As well as a lot of Leftist friends from here, some of whom are basically sharing propaganda from groups supported by the Iranian government… which makes me just feel like an old hippie saying “Can’t we all just get along and stop the violence?”

Table and I have some of the same Leftist friends tbh

Which gets into the awkward territory of whose Palestinian liberation memes are ok to share and whose aren’t, even if the messages are almost identical?

Brief thread on today's Palestine march.

The doggedness & steadfastness of huge numbers of people coming out week on week - I think we're at six now - for Palestine is quite something & really ought to be recognised.

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) December 9, 2023

which makes me just feel like an old hippie saying “Can’t we all just get along and stop the violence?”

I see sarah and I are turning into the same person

Magill goes down

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/09/penn-president-magill-antisemitism-harvard-mit/

one of the things i've been struggling is that the people who are most actively pushing the most horrific stories of sexual violence on social media were also pushing the extreme stories of atrocities like babies in ovens, beheaded babies, etc - which as far as i can tell were simply false. It all seemed very reminiscent of WWI propaganda about German soldiers killing babies with bayonets, to spread the message that Palestinians are monsters with no regard for human decency. And there seemed to be this sudden media push right as the ceasefire ended and people started seeing the horrors in Gaza filling their feeds again, with the implicit message of "stop talking about what the IDF is doing, you need to focus on the awful things that Hamas did." So I think there's an instinct to react to this with "these are dehumanizing bullshit talking points," but obviously it isn't just that, atrocities did occur, shouldn't be dismissed outright, and Israel's war crimes don't negate the experiences of the victims of Hamas. It feels irresponsible and dangerous to either accept everything at face value or dismiss it as propaganda, and god knows I don't want to spend hours digging through the layers of messaging around horrific stories of sexual violence to decide what to believe. I was sort of reluctant to write anything here because i don't want to come across as saying that victims of horrifying trauma are lying. There's just something really sickening about this pattern of posts about dead Gazan children being responded to with lavishly detailed descriptions of sexual violence against Israeli women.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-rape-israeli-women-oct-7-rcna128221

This appears to be a pretty well-reported article that states:

Over the last several weeks, NBC News has reviewed five interrogations of captured Hamas fighters, an Arabic-language document that instructed Hamas how to pronounce “Take off your pants” in Hebrew, six images of naked or partially naked deceased female bodies, seven eyewitness accounts of sexual violence including both rape and mutilation, 11 testimonies of first responders, and two accounts from workers in morgues who handled the bodies of women after they were recovered from the massacre.

Frankly, deriding the accounts as "lavishly detailed descriptions of sexual violence against Israeli women" is gross, but I'm not here to yell at people, and overall your post wasn't unreasonable. The fog of war is very powerful in a situation like 10/7, and it takes a long time to sort it all out, to the extent it even can be sorted out. People misinterpret what they see, there are telephone games, and there can be exaggerators or fibbers even in an otherwise true scenario. But the implication that Israel is busy fabricating some elaborate web of false rape evidence (which I don't think you are saying), I just don't buy that.

"40 beheaded babies" was disavowed fairly early on, but continues to be invoked primarily by those seeking to discredit other 10/7 atrocities against Israelis. You're not going to get much direct testimony from rape victims right now - it's common for the victim to be killed in this situation (and that's exactly what eyewitnesses claimed in some cases), and any surviving victims are likely to be heavily traumatized and afraid to speak, especially so soon after the event. The day of the attack, police and rescue services were stretched way too thin to do the kind of normal evidence collection one might do in the case of a suspected rape. Many of the bodies were mangled or burned. Like when people say "where are the rape kits" or "where are the victim testimonies" I assume they either have no comprehension of the nature of the events that day, or are being disingenuous, or just don't want to believe that the glorious resistance that they support would do such a thing, the same way many pro-Israeli people go into denial about Israeli atrocities.

This is a delicate subject to discuss, because I don't want atrocities against Israelis to be used as an excuse for or distraction from atrocities against Palestinians, but I don't think that's the only reason people are still talking about them -- this just happened two months ago, and the aftermath is still being untangled. I obviously caveat this with the fact that Gazans have it even worse right now, but entire communities were destroyed on 10/7, people lost multiple family members and friends in one day, lost their homes, etc. Over 100 hostages are still in Gaza. It's normal and human that people who experienced it are still reeling from this and still talking about it.

Making my way through this.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-hamas-used-sexual-violence-on-october-7th

I've been excoriated for posting Salaita before, but I think it is important to keep up with his thoughts, as he is a Palestinian-American, an academic whose job was rescinded for his politics on Palestine, and a great polemicist— it is a genre of writing that isn't taken seriously by many people in this day and age, and with good reason in many cases, but I think he is one of the best even when I quibble with some of his turns of phrase.

Warning that there is a fair number of uses of the word Zionist in the article, linked here and excerpted below:

What does it tell us that the Zionist entity can conduct this genocide in high definition, with no credible deniability and amid condemnation from all corners of the world?

...

More than anything, it tells us that in the benighted West there is no democracy, no free speech, no legislative remedy, no human rights, no right even to be human. These are illusions people repeat in an effort to survive pervasive depravity, or myths they cynically invoke to gather the crumbs of deprivation. There is a ruling class and various iterations of the dispossessed and the dispossessed exist only to serve ruling class gluttony.

That’s why countless people can deplore a genocide zoomed into our personal devices without being able to stop it. We are not simply ineffectual in the world of policymaking; policymakers are taunting us with their depravity.

What can we do, then? It’s important to start by recognizing that the entire political class, from presidents to online pundits, has no regard for us—detests us, in fact—and is therefore never a reliable source of empathy or relief. Denizens of this class do not want our feedback; they want us to scroll through the debris of their malevolence.

I also am moving through this Edward Said essay from the LRB nearly 40 years ago— how little has changed.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n03/edward-said/permission-to-narrate

Read the first of what you shared, it was brilliant and terrible to read, thank you for sharing it. Reading the second one now

Thanks for that, Table. And don't apologise for bringing the language used. It was part of his work.

I saw a clip of Said talking the other day. Didn't ever read him as I was coming across "Orientalism" through a literature lense so kept putting that off.

Might watch this video lecture later:

https://vimeo.com/887954478

Bipartisanship isn’t dead!

https://x.com/govkathyhochul/status/1733529147912155425?s=46&t=z1egexpHAtHcPPxgbp4Hrw

"Ignoring these developments also assumes that all information on TikTok is bad, self-generated and highly manipulable garbage. The reality is that news reports about Gaza from mainstream media are frequently clipped and circulated on TikTok, extending their window of relevance and consumption. Over the past few days the most-watched clip on CNN’s TikTok account, which has more than 3 million followers, is one of its news anchor Jake Tapper taking Mark Regev, senior adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, to task over the killing of the family of one of CNN’s producers in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes. On the Guardian’s TikTok account, the most-watched video of the past six weeks, with more than 7m views, is of a protester interrupting the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and calling for a ceasefire"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/11/tiktok-social-media-young-people-moral-panic

I saw a clip of Said talking the other day. Didn't ever read him as I was coming across "Orientalism" through a literature lense so kept putting that off.

― xyzzzz__

I recommend him, especially his memoir and general writing on Palestine.

infuriating

In the past few days:
- The UN said half of Gaza is starving
- WaPo found that the IDF used U.S.-supplied white phosphorus in Lebanon
- U.S. bypassed Congress to sell tank munitions to the IDF

Meanwhile, this is the homepage of the New York Times. Journalistic malpractice. pic.twitter.com/K4ney15pc9

— Jeremy Slevin (@jeremyslevin) December 11, 2023

This is where twitter and tik too come in and amplify the things that aren't making it to the front pages.

or rather what makes the front pages

Yes, as per that tweet, in judgement of it

The march for Palestinian liberation through Manhattan tonight feels endless. pic.twitter.com/kgniBfJj3R

— Talia Jane ❤️‍🔥 (@taliaotg) December 9, 2023

Fine thread on the visa ban against settlers.

---

Mouin Rabbani
@MouinRabbani
THREAD: More on visa bans. It seems the new fad among Western governments is to denounce settler violence and adopt measures against individual settlers. Following the US, the European Union and United Kingdom are now also considering the nuclear option

Matthew Miller

@StateDeptSpox
.
@SecBlinken
reiterated in a call today with Israeli Minister
@gantzbe
that Israel must take all possible measures to avoid civilian harm and discussed efforts to increase levels of humanitarian assistance to Gaza

---

Just saw a video of the IDF blowing up a school literally a tweet or two from the above.

If you are going to stay away from twitter because of this then sure, I get it.

"Speaking to Democratic donors in Washington, Biden said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a “tough decision to make.”

“This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” Biden said, adding that the Israeli government “doesn’t want a two-state solution.”

Biden said Israel was beginning to lose support around the world, and argued Netanyahu “has to strengthen and change” the Israeli government to find an eventual long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/politics/biden-israel-losing-support-netanyahu/index.html

I highly doubt Israel will stop looking for these hostages or their remains, ever.

Haven't there already been news stories about Netanyahu and his henchmen basically expressing zero concern that Israeli hostages might be present in places he wants to bomb?

Probably, not looking for a fight here.

Nor am I. When I read about it it struck me as extremely fucked up, like "not the kind of thing a sane leader says out loud."

Netanyahu and his fascist goon supporters have shown outright contempt for families of the hostages.

After all they are probably the sort of liberal fake Jews who didn't vote for him.

It’s like the Raid on Entebbe, but instead they just nuked Uganda.

the US didn't invite families of American hostages to the Hanukkah celebration, which just seems like setting yourself up for criticism. Dumb, White House.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/politics/families-hostages-white-house-hanukkah/index.html

Why was your post deleted Felicity? I was about to reply to it.

I'll just post part of my reply, which is that I only posted that piece from The New Yorker because we happened to get talking about the nature of Hamas' violence back on the 10/7.

And then I was going to remind us all why we got to talking about Hamas' actions on the 10/7, and in response to what post. But I will leave that out.

I requested deletion because I was intending to hide text part of that post. It's ok.

Ok.

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UN News
@UN_News_Centre
BREAKING: UN General Assembly ADOPTS resolution demanding immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, as well as immediate and unconditional release of all hostages

FOR: 153
AGAINST: 10
ABSTAIN: 23

US still voted against even with the demand for hostage release? Jesus

The context is that the US and other countries voted against the resolution because the majority of member states would not vote to include the following two draft amendments to the language of the resolution:

Austria has proposed an amendment, that inserts the phrase, “held by Hamas and other groups” in relation to the hostages still being held by Palestinian militants in Gaza, as well as inserting the word “immediate” in reference to ensuring humanitarian access.

The first draft amendment has secured 89 for, 61 against and 20 abstentions. This means the Austrian amendment failed under the two-thirds rule.

The US amendment reflects its continued point of contention regarding Hamas, which it designates as a terrorist group, calling for wording to be inserted “unequivocally” rejecting and condemning “the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas that took place in Israel starting 7 October 2023 and the taking of hostages” as the first operative paragraph.

The second draft amendment from the US sees 84 in favour, 62 against and 25 abstaining. Again, the amendment failed.

UN resolutions are not legally binding but of moral weight only.

Not binding, but influential
Resolutions by the General Assembly, though not legally binding on nations, do carry immense moral weight, representing the collective resolve of the UN membership on a matter of grave importance.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144717

I've seen a lot of conflicting reporting on what UNRWA schools and hospitals have done or not done, but the above amendments are basically the source of contention.

Of course it would be great if the UN resolution did result in the release of hostages and ceasefire.

Last paragraph otm

"Do you condemn Hamas" gotcha question being used to greenlight this genocide and lengthen Netanyahu's career.

All of these resolutions are moral. This is about further isolating Israel. We need to see worldwide Boycotts of the country. It should be treated like Apartheid era South Africa.

Agreed.

Back on the university note, as was expected, the deep-pocketed donor who drove Magill’s ouster at UPenn seems to be trying to set the agenda for faculty hiring, retention, and classroom pedagogy. Or at least he has “questions.” This is where this always was going to go— donors dictating to schools what they should and shouldn’t do. https://www.inquirer.com/education/marc-rowan-university-pennsylvania-agenda-20231212.html

Israel next.
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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
@FCDOGovUK
🔴 SANCTIONED: leaders and financiers of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Working with our allies we are isolating Hamas and cutting off their funding.

Palestinian and Israeli citizens have a right to live in peace without the brutality of Hamas

Right.

BREAKING: Israeli ambassador @TzipiHotovely rejects the idea of a two-state solution

"The answer is absolutely no", she says.https://t.co/cjkJJFipKp

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/9z0fMWSSui

— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 13, 2023

shocked!

They probably wouldn’t give it to Hannah Arendt https://t.co/z0wh1zBQWR

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) December 13, 2023

speaking of that gessen essay