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

Who is making this argument, that Israel is being unfairly singled out for criticism? What are their biases?

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Sunday, December 17, 2023 11:03 AM bookmarkflaglink

I think one example was #metoounless youareaJew. You can look up who brought it.

I think it is best to look at specifc examples. Then you can look up who is bringing them.

So where does the vast majority of this criticism of bias against Israel by UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International originate?

Well, this was published last week.

I don't really know about HRW or Amnesty, but it's commonly raised that in many years (if not all years?) the UN passes far more resolutions against Israel than against all other nations combined. E.g. here's an article from Al Jazeera, which is certainly not a pro-Israel source.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/24/un-condemns-israel-most-in-2020-almost-three-times-rest-of-world

This goes back to my point above: given that Israel acts as it does:

a) does it matter?
b) is the argument that these actions aren’t worthy of criticism?

In the sense of being worthy of criticism, it doesn't matter. It matters to the geopolitical situation, and UNRWA's alleged role in Gaza also seems to matter.

If I regularly do 100 on the highway I should probably expect to receive more tickets than other drivers.

Won't these ineffectual orgs give little plucky Israel a break?

I think the door was opened to the UN in the discussion of the apartheid label and its inclusion of "racism" in the definition.

There were allegations that an UNRWA teacher participated in holding hostages.

You can look into that and we can discuss. Or not.

When you say "whatever works" - there have definitely been reasoned and civil discussions that have genuinely moved the needle on how I think about this, and hopefully others. To me, that is what works.

Wasn't really looking at what works for you. I was talking about events, whether that's the UN's actions, or other goings on that can stop Israel's massacre.

But I am glad it's working out for you, Felicity.

a) does it matter?
b) is the argument that these actions aren’t worthy of criticism?

a) I think it matters depending on whether the goal is for Israel to cease its occupations of those territories, or whether the goal is in regards to what it does within its borders, potentially whether it should continue to exist. These are two different questions, with potentially very different answers, but are kind of being conflated

b) I don't believe so. Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank are abhorrent and should be stopped

Yeah tbh some of this conversation is veering into “let’s fight over the semantics of what to call Israel while it is starving people, bombing them to hell, and otherwise engaging in war crimes with little to no consequence.”

(b) is a strawman that absolutely no one has raised.

Wasn't really looking at what works for you. I was talking about events, whether that's the UN's actions, or other goings on that can stop Israel's massacre.

But I am glad it's working out for you, Felicity.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, December 17, 2023 12:34 PM bookmarkflaglink

I too am interested in stopping Israel's massacre. That is why I think criticisms are fair and understanding what is going on and how we got here is important.

Responding with sarcasm, mockery, and the strong implication that people who want to discuss the situation are somehow committing a moral offense and should be ostracized and placed out of the realm of the "good" as enemies of Palestian - I think that is part of how wer got here. And it certainly is something I am hearing a lot from left-leaning or liberal people feeling alienated from the Left in the US.

I am going to make the controversial statement that if you are unquestioningly pro-Israel, you are neither Liberal not Left.

(Not that you are unquestioning, felicity)

Thank you. I have learned a lot from you, too (when we are not bickering)

But I think it’s also that at this point, if one can’t say that what Israel is doing is wrong, then that means that the person is not worth taking seriously

I am sympathetic, and was saying that Israel was doing things wrong by killing journalists and creating a humanitarian disaster in South Gaza and bombing there while others were debating the first hospital explosion.

There's a study that says dictatorships get stronger the more you attack the leader. Because it feeds into the narrative that the people are weak and need protection from the enemy. I personally don't subscribe to the "this person shouldn't be taken seriously" because I feel that is how we got Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green and people like that in the US.

"Responding with sarcasm, mockery, and the strong implication that people who want to discuss the situation are somehow committing a moral offense and should be ostracized"

I am hardly the person who should be making any calls on who should be ostracised lol.

I think the questions, starting with what people chant at marches, UN resolutions, "Apartheid", BDS, all add up to semantic arguments and deflections around either Israel's actions, or the little bits of actions that people over in the West can carry out. The tone is off to me but nevermind.

It's just a little discussion, after all.

Do you have a specific example of me calling for someone to be ostracized?

Please quote paste if so.

So you can post tweets of an MIT postdoc in neurosurgery spreading vicious "ant-Zionist" conspiracies and I am not allowed to read the Tweet you invited us to examine and post something in reply. Is that the kind of ostracism you are saying I am calling for?

I realize that was sarcastic. There is nothing I am more allowed to do.

I'm confused by that first response of yours but I am saying that no one should be ostracised by whatever they are doing on here. There is an FP system.

I am pretty clear on how I am reading your questions and how that comes off.

Perhaps it's more of a reflection on where you go for your news and how you source it than any true disagreement between us.

I do wonder if you are aware of the allegations that UNRWA held hostages, and claims of how they were treated. It seemed unperson was hinting at something on this, but never answered.

As I said upthread I support pro-Palestinian protest and am in favor of it. Some of it does cross a line. To ask questions on that doesn't make me an enemy of Palestine. I am not the only one noting this.

Nuanced discussion of the situation is great on an individual level and I'll certainly agree I also have learned lots from ppl on this thread.

What I do get suspicious about though is any strategy or message that gains popular traction instantly being critiqued as not the right way to do things or being held to imo impossible standards - slogans are un-nuanced by nature, march with enough ppl and there'll invariably be some along whose views you don't endorse (haven't yet been to a protest in London where the swp don't attend, for example).

Tbc I'm not saying these movements should go unquestioned and certainly a message board is a great place for discussing that stuff. But on a pragmatic level I think at times you have to throw your lot in to say something is unacceptable. Waiting for the entirely unproblematic stance risks permanent inaction.

A lot of anti-semantics in this thread ...

anti-semanticism has been on the rise lately

"Perhaps it's more of a reflection on where you go for your news and how you source it than any true disagreement between us."

Posting on how disinformation is identified one day, and then talking about how disinformation like 10/7 denialism should be posted the next tells me you I am not the only one who should be looking at sources.

Sorry, what are you saying is disinformation?

10/7 denialism was explained to you as fringe material. It isn't taken seriously.

Posting xitter links admittedly without commentary to "watch the chaos unfold" and discussing the disinformation that others post are 2 different things.

The first is a poor fit for these threads imho

10/7 denialism was explained to you as fringe material. It isn't taken seriously.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, December 17, 2023 2:12 PM bookmarkflaglink

Sort of a "false consciousness" that I need to be saved from.

That was a joke and I've mostly added commentary.

Posting disinformation for 'discussion' thankfully wasn't taken up for long.

Yes, lucky for you others quickly stepped up to confirm that we do not suddenly need independent verification to believe allegations of sexual assault as warfare just because of who the victims were.

I'v posted a piece about the work down in that area.

Don't worry Felicity, people are answering your questions.

Much is being learnt.

Yes and I am answering people's questions too.

Well, this was published last week.

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Sunday, December 17, 2023 11:15 AM bookmarkflaglink

I see what you did. Yeah that is not the example I would have chosen, nor did I.

In my experience this argument is usually propagated by the right wing, and not the moderates either, and existed far before 7/10. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the argument made by a moderate source or human rights organisations within Israel itself, such as Bt’Selem, that human rights organisations are overly focused on Israel. In fact, the opposite is true. The article I linked is just the latest of a very long chain of similar arguments that are made by Murray and his ilk. That’s why I asked what the source was. What result is this criticism meant to achieve?

* B’Tselem, autocorrect fought me on that

Yes. The legitimising of a lot of what would previously been considered hard or far right attitudes is pretty dangerous.

I mean it's happening all over but this conflict isn't helping.

Making my way through this conversation, where people in the West are doing the little they can.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/17/israel-palestine-conflict-sally-rooney-isabella-hammad

This conversation got away from me and sorry for long post and feel free to disregard, though I feel that almost every post I made here yesterday has been taken to mean something I didn't intend so this is a final attempt at clarifying, though ultimately I think 'clarity' is an impossible and likely insane aspiration.

In response to the discussion of some of the material I linked above, there is a key distinction between a semantic argument and explaining the documented legal case (that Israel’s laws and practices in both Israel and the oPt, which has been a position of the UN since the publication of the report I linked above). It is not my belief or view that the crime of apartheid is based on racial distinctions, it is the definition included in the 1973 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1976/07/19760718%2003-04%20AM/Ch_IV_7p.pdf) which defines apartheid for the purposes of international law. Similarly, I quoted the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda, which determined that the ‘definition of (a) racial group is based on the hereditary physical traits often identified with a geographical region, irrespective of linguistic, cultural, national or religious factors.’ These are not my views they are the recognised legal definitions of these concepts. The report from ESCWA I linked above was the first by a UN agency to apply the term apartheid to Israeli actions and gives a detailed but readable legal analysis of that position. This report first established a concept that has subsequently formed the basis of much work in this area carried out by e.g. the Special rapporteur for the oPt. The report isbased on much prior legal scholarship, which began analysing the legal basis for this claim in the previous decade.

As the work of UN institutions, these reports shape the work of committees overseeing the implementation of human rights conventions and which are uniquely privileged to shape the normative substantive definition of concepts such as ‘apartheid’ and ‘race’ within their applicability to international human rights law (and the work of courts in ruling on this).

It is of course true that concepts such as ‘race’ are deep and multi-valent concepts that can and should be thought about well beyond the scope of law. The work of activists, academics and ordinary people in their everyday lives contributes far more to the understanding of the concept of race than any legally applicable version emerging from a court ever can. It is also true that these are concepts that can never be settled in the illusory way imagined by jurisprudence, they are historical (and thus in flux), interpersonal (criss-crossed by contradictory embodiments), material, psychological, etc, etc, etc.

Neither is it my intention to suggest that these definitions should be ‘accepted’ or stand in for the social, political or ethical understandings simply because the UN is ‘good’, or rejected because the UN is ‘bad’. The UN is deeply flawed for many reasons listed here and elsewhere, and it is also true that attempts to undermine the UN’s work in this area are often motivated by partisan or malicious intent. Fundamentally, struggles for justice and humanity would be doomed if they rested solely on legal instruments and institutions - nevertheless their powers and the willingness of states to enforce international law are the basis of ‘human rights’ as an operable human endeavour, whether we like it or not. ‘War crime’, ‘genocide’, ‘apartheid’, are all primarily legal concepts (though with other ways of being addressed, discussed and analysed.

My view is that we should not confuse these legal designations with ethical or political ones (though they are strongly linked to both, in terms of their content and effects). I think we need to be clear on how this works so that we can maintain these distinct spheres of understanding in reading these concepts. To be honest I don’t think describing Israel’s actions as apartheid is ‘shocking’, I don’t think the designation of apartheid in and of itself is sufficient to describe the debasement and cruelty of the violence exercised legally, socially, militarily, politically and culturally against the Palestinian people by the state of Israel and many of its representatives, institutions and citizens and the ways this is enabled by us around the globe through our actions or inactions. It is simply a legal definition. Considered as a moral disaster, I am similarly deeply resistant to ‘semantic’ arguments or even reasoned debate (which can feel like distraction or abstraction from the intolerable and unimaginable reality). I see the news and have to scroll quickly past autoplaying videos filled with unspeakable horror and can’t believe that the same denials, equivocations and justifications remain intact. There is something impossible at the core of this, impossible to imagine. I don’t know how people can endure it and I don’t know how people can pursue it.

I appreciate that long post, plax (ico).

I read more about this on my own trying to construct the best answer from your point of view. Two examples of legal actions seem to be eviction and immigration policy. Those were within Israel's borders.

They seem recent, and ongoing, and trending. I have read there had been a movement to take over the courts. And also why so many Israeli citizens vehemently protested.

To be honest I don’t think describing Israel’s actions as apartheid is ‘shocking’, I don’t think the designation of apartheid in and of itself is sufficient to describe the debasement and cruelty of the violence exercised legally, socially, militarily, politically and culturally against the Palestinian people by the state of Israel and many of its representatives,

This is otm; I’ve been trying to find the words to express precisely this.

There is something impossible at the core of this, impossible to imagine. I don’t know how people can endure it and I don’t know how people can pursue it.

― plax (ico), Monday, December 18, 2023 3:50 AM bookmarkflaglink

I agree, and sympathize. It is intolerable, and I interpret people's strong posts here often as an expression of that.

Layla Moran, a Lib Dem MP from a Palestinian Christian background, has been relaying info from her family members trapped in a church in Gaza. Been pretty hard to see her tweeting stuff like this to near complete indifference from her colleagues, ngl.

Update. Yesterday the Father got a call from the IDF saying between 2-4pm they would not fire on them. This meant they could move around to check on each other. That’s 2hrs where civilians in a church could use the toilets without being killed. Please make this stop. Please. https://t.co/DJUlVro5gH

— Layla Moran 🔶 (@LaylaMoran) December 18, 2023

Protest in inner London borough of Lambeth. It's a Lab run council and one of their MPs abstained on the ceasefire motion.

Live nearby but couldn't join. Looks like a solid turnout.

Brilliant turnout this evening demanding Lambeth Council and councillors listen represent constituents and @LambethUNISON workers and demand a full and immediate #ceasefireNow, an end to the illegal occupation, and a #FreePalestine🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/JXtVK3Hgc7

— Lambeth Solidarity (@LambSolidarity) December 18, 2023

I hadn’t really followed the whole Masha Gessen situation but their* piece about historical comparisons and the reaction to/critiques of touches on some points discussed on ilx. This piece btw is on two pages so you have to click nachste seite:

Two recurrent phrases are: "If there is something, then what’s it like?" - a plea for a reference, a comparison - and another: "Something always precedes that which follows." When we compare, we are also comparing contexts and histories, and making predictions. This is, of course, part of what makes Holocaust comparisons so fraught: they predict the worst. One important objection I have heard to comparing Gaza to the ghetto: but there are no death marches out of Gaza and no death camps waiting for its inhabitants.

And this is why we compare. To prevent what we know can happen from happening. To make "Never Again" a political project rather than a magic spell. And if we compare compellingly and bravely, then, in the best case scenario, the comparison is proven wrong.