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

UK and US strikes are likely tonight on Houthi missile sites in Yemen. As I understand it, Starmer - who has been briefed by Downing St - accepts the PM’s right to take military action without securing prior parliamentary approval, though Labour would expect a statement on…

— Robert Peston (@Peston) January 11, 2024

The basic (colonial) double standard of the Israel Palestine "conflict" is that any Palestinian violence justifies any Israeli violence, but no Israeli violence ever justifies any Palestinian violence, and once you see it, you'll never stop seeing it.

— Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) November 6, 2023

That's an all time great little tweet. See it pop up every now and then over the last three months.

I guess that’s true, but I think most people see Israel’s actions, no matter what they do, as never the instigators of violence, but rather always the victims of it.

“Perpetrators” of violence might have been more accurate of me to say.

This statistic. pic.twitter.com/ueHssWYCV8

— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) January 7, 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/it-is-a-time-of-witch-hunts-in-israel-teacher-held-in-solitary-confinement-for-posting-concern-about-gaza-deaths

The evidence compiled by police who handcuffed him, then drove to his apartment and ransacked it as he watched, was a series of Facebook posts he’d made, mourning the civilians killed in Gaza, criticising the Israeli military, and warning against wars of revenge.

“Horrific images are pouring in from Gaza. Entire families were wiped out. I don’t usually upload pictures like this, but look what we do in revenge,” said a message on 8 October, below a picture of the family of Abu Daqqa, killed in one of the first airstrikes on Gaza. “Anyone who thinks this is justified because of what happened yesterday, should unfriend themselves. I ask everyone else to do everything possible to stop this madness. Stop it now. Not later, Now!!!”

...

He was interrogated again before a second judge ordered his release. Questioners told him his posts were like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, among the most famously antisemitic documents in the world. “I’m a history teacher, so I asked, ‘Did you ever read them?’ They didn’t respond.”

When his name is clear, Baruchin plans to sue Israeli media who reported police charges without asking for his response or looking for evidence, and accused him of justifying and legitimising Hamas.

He says he has not been traumatised by the experience, as for him the fate of Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages in Gaza is much more disturbing. He still follows what is happening there closely, and flicks on his phone through images of the recent dead, a journalist, a violinist, a baby.

His latest post before the Observer interview was an image of an improvised grave marker, that looks like part of a broken piece of furniture. “Unknown martyr, green jacket and trainers,” the inscription reads.

“The whole story in one picture,” he says. “The Israeli mainstream media don’t broadcast this picture. They don’t get this picture, and don’t want to get this picture.”

good messaging i think

We will restore security to both the south and the north. Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) January 13, 2024

seems legit

I embrace the families of the hostages, with whom I and my wife meet all the time. These are personal, heart-rending meetings. We embrace them and listen to them.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) January 13, 2024

Very Trump-like

Two friends - one in Israel, the other in Mexico - have been working diligently on behalf of a Mexican hostage and his family, both saying that BN is only paying lip service to hostages’ families, most of whom are getting angrier and angrier with him.

Pretty much every Israeli in my FB feed has been screaming about Bibi's awful response to the hostages and their families from the outset.

This -- from that thread -- is quite the tweet.

In the murder tunnels of Gaza, our forces have found copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf. In a home in Gaza, they found a child's tablet with a picture of Hitler as the screensaver.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) January 13, 2024

Well that clinches it then, bomb away IDF.

We found upside down crosses doodled in school notebooks and some Ozzy Osbourne albums.

An interesting story of civilian dissent in Israel.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/it-is-a-time-of-witch-hunts-in-israel-teacher-held-in-solitary-confinement-for-posting-concern-about-gaza-deaths

posted that yesterday lol

Oops, apologies.

I guess that’s true, but I think most people see Israel’s actions, no matter what they do, as never the instigators of violence, but rather always the victims of it.

― B. Amato (Boring, Maryland), Friday, 12 January 2024 21:27 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

im gonna ask for your workings here on "most people" tbh

Most people who support Israel, I meant

Two Palestinians kill woman, injure 12 in Israel car-rammings, police say
Two Palestinians carried out coordinated car-rammings in central Israel on Monday, killing a woman and injuring 12 other people, police and medical officials said, as tensions soared over the more than three-month-old war in the Gaza Strip.

Police described the incident in Raanana, north of Tel Aviv, as a terrorist attack and said two suspects were under arrest. The two are from the same family in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank, and entered Israel illegally, police said.

“They went out together and in parallel, to two different locations, took two cars and launched a series of rammings,” the central district police chief, Avi Biton, told reporters in Raanana.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, Reuters reported.

At least one of the vehicles had been stolen, police said earlier.

Israeli TV showed scattered personal items on a pavement and said several children were among the injured.

Horrific

A small thing but it shows good outcomes from negotiation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/17/israel-hamas-war-gaza-hostages-aid-medicine-approved

it's remarkable that the attacks have so far succeeded in rescuing zero hostages

Given the scale and indiscriminate nature I don’t think anyone would be surprised if they killed a few

from the Guardian's liveblog thing (which doesn't do links very well):

IDF chief says likelihood of war in Lebanon is ‘higher than before’

The likelihood of a war in Lebanon is “higher than before”, the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.

Speaking to troops in northern Israel, IDF chief of staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said Israel’s military is “increasing readiness for fighting in Lebanon, we have a lot of lessons from the fighting in Gaza, many of them are very relevant to fighting in Lebanon, and there are some that must be adjusted”, the Times of Israel reported.

He noted Israel’s goal to return displaced Israelis to their homes in the north, adding:

I don’t know when the war in the north [will happen]. I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past.

it's remarkable that the attacks have so far succeeded in rescuing zero hostages

― symsymsym, Wednesday, 17 January 2024 18:34 (three hours ago) link

TBH, I find this extremely unremarkable. Finding hostages among two million people in a dense urban area with a network of 150 miles of tunnels underneath it is just extremely difficult, particularly when the hostage takers know where israeli troops are.

I thought they did retrieve Ori Megidish, who had been abducted on 10/7 early on. She was an IDF member so I don't know if that makes her not a hostage.

yeah they only rescued a single hostage but are confirmed to have killed at least a few

you're right, I must have missed the story: https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/31/middleeast/idf-ori-megidish-rescue-hamas-hostage-intl-hnk/index.html

there was some confusion in the original press release apparently:

An Israeli soldier who was abducted by Hamas has been rescued in a special joint operation, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN, the first successful hostage extrication since the militant group’s October 7 rampage.

In its initial announcement, the IDF said Pvt. Ori Megidish was “released.” But that was a translation error, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.

by remarkable I guess I meant that it was remarkable how unsuccessful this operation has been at one of its stated goals.

Our favourite phrase.

NOW - Netanyahu: "In the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea."pic.twitter.com/M0uyN4SOzW

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 18, 2024

The IDF has been too busy to rescue hostages.

The Israeli military just blew up the University of Palestine in Gaza City with 315 mines. All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. We need a full academic boycott. pic.twitter.com/nNStUTBc9e

— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) January 17, 2024

18-year-old Israeli Tal Mitnick, who refused mandatory military service last month in objection to Israel's war on Gaza, describes his time so far in Israeli military prison and the culture of warmaking in Israel. pic.twitter.com/JRIiUmdNiL

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 19, 2024

??

700 Israeli @Tesla drivers came together to create a first of its kind lightshow in support of the more than 100 Israeli hostages being held captive in Gaza. #BringThemHomeNow 🎗️ pic.twitter.com/EtVNXHSqGJ

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) January 21, 2024

IDF increases soldier death toll to 21 in past 24 hours
Israel’s army has revised up its death toll and says a total of 21 soldiers were killed in an attack in central Gaza in the last 24 hours.

It makes it the largest single loss of life for the Israeli military since the war began.

Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesperson, made the announcement on Tuesday, updating an earlier toll.

He said the soldiers were preparing explosives to demolish two buildings on Monday when a militant fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a tank nearby, setting off the explosion prematurely. The buildings collapsed on the soldiers.

Heartbreaking: After commenting on the deplorable conditions for pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza - the 20,000 babies born in the last 100 days, caesareans being performed w/out anesthetics, & increased numbers of still borns, UNICEF spokeswoman says: pic.twitter.com/k98f2BNbWv

— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) January 22, 2024

V interesting explainer.

"While Iran has offered material support to the non-state actors within the axis, such assistance has not translated into the kind of exercise of power that characterises sponsor-proxy relationships. This view is shared by the US intelligence official Brian Katz, who has argued that Iran’s non-state allies “are no longer simply Iranian proxies. Rather, they have become a collection of ideologically aligned, militarily interdependent, mature political-military actors committed to mutual defence”. In essence, the nature of this alliance is organic and symbiotic, as opposed to transactional and hierarchical."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/23/houthis-hamas-israel-iran-axis-resistance

So much about resilience. But this is important too.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/january/against-resilience

"Our loved ones in Gaza have not chosen this violence. No one chooses to be treated this unjustly. The reality is that many Palestinians in Gaza are trying to leave, to find safety wherever they can."

Update: Tal Mitnick was just sentenced to 30 more days in prison.
Photo by @OrenZiv_ pic.twitter.com/1EsaXinzMc

— Nimrod Flaschenberg (@Nimrod_Flash) January 23, 2024

Found this interview of Ami Ayalon interesting and certainly lucid from a former head of the Israel security services. It was in FRE in LeMonde so all you get is DeepL.

Some Israeli troops are beginning to disengage from Gaza, while the government promises a new, lower-intensity operational phase. Is this a turning point in the war against Hamas in Gaza, the beginning of its end?
I think this question goes far beyond the details of this military campaign. Basically, what's the situation? Our problem lies in the tension between terror and human rights. All liberal democracies are confronted with a conflict between terrorist violence and fundamental rights, compounded by fear. When a person or a community feels fear, it will prioritize security over rights, especially when the rights are not its own, but those of others, those of a minority. So we give up the rights of a minority in the belief that we're going to fight terrorism. And we don't understand that one day, no doubt, we'll congratulate ourselves on having killed bad guys, but that we'll have lost our identity.

Is that what's happening right now in the war in Gaza?
It's happening all the time, in Europe and the United States as well as in Israel. It's a worldwide phenomenon in liberal democracies. But let's talk about the Israeli case. What I'm trying to analyze is the concept of victory. When a democracy faces a terrorist group, it induces a different kind of victory. Today, most wars pit states not against other states, but against "organizations" (movements, rebellions, guerrillas, etc.). This means conflicts in which it is impossible to win as before, by obtaining a better political deal through military action.

What, then, is a victory in this context?
A "terrorist organization" is never going to surrender by raising a white flag. You can kill Al-Qaeda members, but you can't make them disappear. In Gaza, it's the same: we're not fighting a state, we're fighting a terrorist organization. But we're not waging war on the Palestinians. There are Palestinians who support Hamas. They do so not because they adhere to the movement's religious ideology, but because they see Hamas as the only organization fighting for their freedom and an end to the Israeli occupation [in the occupied territories]. That's what's important to understand in order to imagine what's coming next.

The Israeli government refuses to envisage a clear solution for the "day after", in Gaza, the political order that will prevail after the war...
The government's objectives are essentially military. In essence, the aim is to dismantle Hamas's military capabilities and remove the movement's political leadership. These are two objectives that the Israeli army is capable of achieving. But we are not masters of time. If the generals think it will take two years to achieve this, because it's a very complex type of war, will we have that much time?

Were there other ways of waging war?
Yes, we can imagine other scenarios, but I think it's important to understand the need to have a project for the "day after". Without political objectives, war becomes an end in itself, not a means to an end. When war becomes its own end, it becomes war without end. If you can't develop political goals, you can't define what victory can be.

Are we approaching the "day after"?
It's impossible to say. And, if there are no political goals, it's pointless.

What could be the basis for a political solution?
We have only two options. Either one state for everyone, but that will never work. Islam and Judaism don't separate religion from statehood, that's part of our identity. I'm Jewish, and I want to live in a place that's in line with my rules of life, my traditions, my calendar and so on. The other solution is to have two states, in two distinct territories.

Does the war that began with the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 allow us to envisage this prospect?
We've reached a pivotal moment. Either we try for a two-state solution, trying to understand why we haven't achieved it so far, and bearing in mind that each side has its own reading of the events of the last thirty years. The Israelis say that they were ready to give up part of the land, with the idea of obtaining security in exchange, but that instead there was an Intifada [the second, in 2000, after the Oslo agreements of 1993], attacks, etc. The Palestinians, on the other hand, consider that they were ready to give up part of the land, with the idea of obtaining security in exchange, but that instead there was an Intifada [the second, in 2000, after the Oslo agreements of 1993], attacks, etc., etc. The Palestinians, on the other hand, feel that they aspired to have their own state, and that instead they have seen the creation of more settlements [in the occupied West Bank], more violence against them, more restrictions on their movements, etc. Both sides have felt betrayed by the Israeli government. Both sides felt betrayed, and convinced themselves of the need to fight all the time.

What would make a two-state solution more likely to succeed?
Because, from now on, the only other solution is an explosion of violence. Today, most Israelis think that the path I advocate - that of peace - is impossible, that it won't work. I'm trying to explain to all those who say I'm wrong that, if we refuse peace, what lies ahead will be even more violent than on October 7.

Were you surprised by the Hamas attack that day?
Two weeks before October 7, I gave a TV interview and told them: we're heading straight for a great wave of violence. The energy is there, you can feel it. You can see the rise in attacks on the West Bank. You can feel it in the speeches, the declarations. It's in the air. Instead of understanding what our enemies are telling us, our politicians are working to divide the Israelis, just to get elected. I hadn't imagined this attack, with its particularities, but I was certain, on the other hand, that we were heading for a major sequence of violence.

Can Israeli society hear what you're saying?
I'm optimistic about civil society. I saw the way it demonstrated for ten months before the war, when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was trying to destroy our democracy with his justice reform. This is what we're going to see happening again as soon as the fighting stops, in the "day after". We have over 300,000 civilians in the army right now. When they come back, they'll be out in the streets.

What do you think they'll be demanding?
When the Israelis return to the streets, I hope they will take up the three pillars of the demand for a real solution: security, democracy and an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. The three are inseparable. We have to fight for a Palestinian state, not because we love the Palestinians, but for our security and to save our identity.

Israel isn’t a democracy nor a civil society, and that man’s accounts of the recent events is heavily skewed toward thinking of Israel in the most positive light.

Surely it's the privilege of having been in power that you can then spend your time answering interviews and advocating for values, but I thought it's a sign of what you could reasonably expect from an Israeli standpoint if things ever open up. Which I'm not optimistic about, as there are plenty of ways a deadlock can resolve in the worse direction, but if a former Shin Bet can imagine it, I'm happy to try to do too.

Confirmed: The International Court of Justice will deliver its ruling on the provisional measures requested by South Africa 🇿🇦 against Israel 🇮🇱 on Friday, 1:00 p.m. CET (2:00 pm Jerusalem, 7 a.m. eastern for US, etc).

— Law for Palestine | القانون من أجل فلسطين (@Law4Palestine) January 24, 2024

“In memory of the 21 fallen, we blow up 21 terrorist houses”.

Israeli soldiers filmed the moment twenty-one houses were destroyed in Gaza.

Israel’s military said on Tuesday that at least 21 of its soldiers were killed in a single attack in the Gaza Strip, the deadliest day for… pic.twitter.com/CoHNM1Jnt0

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) January 25, 2024

Israel isn’t a democracy nor a civil society,

I'm not sure on civil society but its surely a democracy? A flawed one but still a democracy, Netanyahu can surely and easily lose an election just as much as he can win one. Who is disenfranchised in Israel compared to Belgium, Latvia, the US or Italy?

Unless you mean people in the occupied territories don't get to vote? I get that, but those places aren't Israel they're occupied territories and countries that occupy territories never give the people there access to democracy or rights (one of the many reasons why occupations are a bad idea and should be opposed)

I say this not to be argumentative, but because it matters because it makes Netanyahu removable that isn't true of a Putin. He can lose an election. I think this matters. It means different things are possible in terms of changing who is in power.

That brings up a different problem potentially, that what if the population continues to choose someone that does bad things, but thats not due to a lack of democracy, thats the manifestation of the democratic process in action

I’m sorry but “people in occupied territories never get full rights or a vote” isn’t the rousing defense of Israel as a democracy that you seem to think it is.

Also some people in those territories very much do get full rights and a vote

Yes, but we know who those people are.