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

Any posts on this thread that are not clearly intending to express a desire for an immediate cessation of the destruction of Gazan infrastructure and and execution of Gazans, my eyes glaze over and I have no kind words for you on this topic

Also let us not assume that all Israelis are the enemy, thanks

This thread is about Israel too.

Seamus' tweet is pretty reasonable. It's an observation of the size of a protest, and what people are protesting on.

If there had been consistently large protests in Israel against IDF action in Gaza I am sure there would've been reports bought in here every time it happened.

And the only reason I see any protests at all on this is due to twitter.

whenever me and my boyfriend watch the ICJ proceedings we sing 'all those beautiful girls' from follies whenever it gets to the bit where the judges file in and out of the chamber.

(I'm watching the ICJ proceedings while at work)

Can't fully focus for reasons of employment so I can't fully speak to the context etc but it was funny that they quoted Barack Obama writing in his post WH memoirs that pretty much every diplomat around the world that the US was in contact with felt that Israel was clearly acting illegaly and that the US had to defend actions they didn't agree with.

The other striking moment so far has been the PA foreing minister showing the familiar image of the maps of Palestine before and after partition, Nakba and but concluding with the image of Netenyahu holding up a map of 'Israel' encompassing the whole river to sea area at the general assembly last year.

SA currently presenting the legal case that Israel is guilty of Apartheid

I know that there has been great deal of legal scholarship in SA on this topic but surprised that this is part of proceedings as I assumed it would hew close to Genocide convention.

I have no idea how one is supposed to cede their privilege of existing aside from suicide but weaponizing American genocide in defense of Israel is a bad look IMO.

oh i'm an idiot, i didn't realise this was a separate case from the SA case

I have no idea how one is supposed to cede their privilege of existing aside from suicide but weaponizing American genocide in defense of Israel is a bad look IMO.

I'm probably admitting total ignorance here, but I thought early relations between the US and Israel were rather distant in the beginning couple decades? It definitely makes sense, though that we'd be interested in Israel in the 50s and 60s as a supposed bulwark against Arab nationalism and Marxism.

It was “distant” but the US was the first to recognize Israel as a state— Truman was an evangelical Christian, no surprise there— and it wasn’t as if the US was unhappy with a Western-backed presence in the middle east, and the young state of Israel received plenty of aid from the US. This was, in essence, forced diplomacy that many strategists didn’t endorse. JFK began the “special relationship” that exists to this day.

American Jews perceived Eisenhower and Dulles as unfriendly to Israel.

Eisenhower sided with Egypt against Britain, France and Israel in the Suez Crisis.

iirc Republicans as a party were much more stand-offish with Israel than Democrats, both cause and effect of Jewish voters swinging Democratic by huge margins. A lot of U.S. postwar foreign policy in the Middle East was built around friendly Arab (or Persian) states, so Israel's centrality as a U.S. military-economic ally was maybe less pronounced?

Soviet Russia also supported Israel in 1948, politically and militarily. Maybe another reason for the GOP's position then

It was a socialist state to begin with.

JFK started the security relationship with Israel (over the objections of State who were still more interested in maintaining relations with the Arab world because of oil IIRC).

Truman wasn't an evangelical Christian. He supported a Jewish state from of a combination of WWII guilt and imperialism.

The most anti-Israel president in modern times was....George H.W. Bush. James Baker had a few choice words to say about them.

And it was Reagan who more or less ordered Begin to stop murdering indiscriminately in Lebanon (whereupon Reagan ordered Marines into Lebanon then watched die a year later).

lol crocodile tears:

NEW YORK -- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin said Sunday President Reagan 'hurt me very deeply' when he described a massive Israeli airstrike on Beirut as a 'holocaust' during an angry phone call.

Begin, in an interview published Sunday, said he later told Reagan 'I know what is a holocaust.' He described the phone call as 'one great misunderstanding.'

In an interview with The New York Times, Begin also said the PLO is a 'beaten organization' and expected U.S. help in negotiating a withdrawal of Syrian and Israeli forces from Lebanon 'on a certain date.'

Fierce Israeli bombing Aug. 12 of West Beirut prompted a phone call hours into the raid from an angry American president to the Israeli prime minister.

Begin said he returned the call later to affirm that all the bombing and shelling had ended.

'The president said 'It's a holocaust' in the first conversation. He hurt me very deeply, and I answered him in my answer to his letter. I said to him, 'Mr. President, I know what is a holocaust.'' The letter Begin referred to was one in an exchange between the United States and Israel regarding the air strike.

lol at not considering Truman an evangelical Christian, the guy was a Bible-beating wad

I mean ffs articles like this exist and are believed by many people: https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-704006#google_vignette

iirc Reagan was completely checked out on Beirut until several of his high level staff threatened to resign if he didn't tell Israel to stop bombing.

iirc Reagan was completely checked out on Beirut until several of his high level staff threatened to resign if he didn't tell Israel to stop bombing.

iirc Reagan was completely checked out on Beirut until several of his high level staff threatened to resign if he didn't tell Israel to stop bombing.

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes),

otm

I mean ffs articles like this exist and are believed by many people: https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-704006#google_vignette

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

Having faith and preaching hellfire aren't the same but ymmv. I would not accept insider snake Clark Clifford's word on most things either. It's enough to say Truman wanted Israel to exist and did all he can to collaborate with Israel on making Palestinians as miserable as possible over the coming years.

Yeah, the Suez Crisis is one of the those key bits that is always overlooked in the history of this stuff for a buncha reasons

I have no idea how one is supposed to cede their privilege of existing aside from suicide

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, 19 February 2024 11:07 (eleven hours ago) link

Yes, we know.

I was agreeing with xyzzz's second point, which I could have clarified.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Sunday, February 18, 2024 2:57 PM bookmarkflaglink

Which is what, that xyzzz sees all, and that I am trying to fool people but failing?

Just say what you are trying to say, xyzzzz. I really want to know what it is you feel you speak for all of ILX about me.

Agreed. It also fails to make the connection between the colonization of the US and the role of the US in colonizing Palestine for Israel, not just as a means of dealing with what was then antisemitically termed “the Jewish problem” but also as a means of creating a proxy “democracy” in the Middle East when secularist and Leninist countries like Egypt were threatening to the anti-communist goals of the State Department.

The other element of this weaponization, however, is that it tacitly acknowledges that what Israel is doing is genocidal settler colonialism. It’s just that some people think that one can’t have an opinion on something unless it relates directly to their identity, which is utter liberal hogwash.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Monday, February 19, 2024 5:43 AM bookmarkflaglink

You were insisting a few paragraphs above that Israel is a "white supremacist" racist state. There are a lot of legitimate criticisms of Israel, Netanyahu, the IDF, Likud, etc. But as has been pointed out to you, your insistence on erasing people of color as part of "Israel" is both stupid and hypocritical and seems like projection, because you (and mookie, I don't know milo) are very white and male.

But sure, instead of remembering that there are also women and children and old people - some of whom may have a connection to people on this board through no accident of their own - who were raped, mutilated and tortured and are still being held, that if you insist only Gazans deserve sympathy, and fly into a rage in anyone suggests that all people deserve sympathy and this war sucks for a variety of reasons, and furthermore that you are just the white guy to make this call, then yeah maybe I will say something to you.

I guess I am expected to behave like a paladin. But at the slightest hint that you may be posting like a douchebag (on here, on USPolitics when it came to the E. Jean Carroll rape trial, on the US Politics when Roe v. Wade was overturned), you insist that it is your voice only that deserves to be heard, and that you can just insist that everyone be as pure as you, and at the slightest pushback you clutch your pearls and step up the DARVO like clockwork.

Sure, "zing."

A white supremacist society can have non-white people within it. See: the United States, Canada, Israel, Brasil, etc . This is not controversial? And neither is the idea that non-white people can act in white supremacist ways, a point which has an easy analog to a point you made months ago about Jewish people being anti-semitic.

It’s funny that you keep hinting that I am racist, when you insist on not-so-subtly stanning for a society that has recently murdered 30,000 people of mostly Arab origin, and before that has a long track record of racism against Arabic peoples and Beta Israel (including Israel’s admittance that it forcefully sterilized Ethiopian migrant women). Haaretz recently published an article about the trend of soldiers cooking with food taken from Palestinian kitchens (while Palestinians are starved), IDF soldiers post memes about knocking on doors to houses that don’t exist, politicians call for flattening of a civilian population, children sign bombs which are then used to flatten neighborhoods, 71% of Israelis support expanding the war to Lebanon, there is an active daily civilian blockade of relief supplies, and I could go on. To call Israel a depraved, religious ethno-fascist society is to simply live in objective reality. The same could be said for the United States. I don’t support either, and saying, “Then move!” isn’t the zing you think it might be.

In an ideal world, there would be a one-state solution in the area now known as Israel-Palestine, and in an ideal world, stewardship of the US would be returned to Indigenous peoples. Neither is going to happen, and the reasons for that are pretty clear, to me at least.

Finally, I don’t believe people deserve to be given respect based solely on their identity formations, because this results in classic tokenism and epistemic
deference, which are both antithetical to ideas of justice and liberation.

I brought up race because you really, really seem to want Israelis to be white supremacists for some reason.

many Israelis appear to be Israeli supremacists which is bad enough

I hadn’t thought of it much until I read this article back in 2019.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/1/9/the-zionist-fallacy-of-jewish-supremacy

When I say I hadn’t thought of it much, I mean “I hadn’t thought about white supremacy and Israel that much,” as I had previously thought of it as Jewish supremacy.

Yes and many Americans are white supremacists which is very bad too.

I don't see table insisting that every single American is depraved or needs to be made uncomfortable at his hand.

I agree the the ideas of justice and liberty should be pursued. I don't agree when table posts in a violently authoritative and dictatorial way to people and strawmans their positions.

I actually do believe that every American is depraved , tho. Myself included!

We have a regularly updated rolling dystopia thread, one for mass shootings and a third for police abuse, not sure “America is a depraved society” would be super controversial around here.

It's more the juvenile peer pressuring everyone to hate entire groups of people and thinking that making people uncomfortable because of their nation of origin that I find despotic and unworthy of ILX.

Israel and America are both rogue terrorist states. Feel better, Felicity?

fwiw, felicity, I remember having said only that proud Israelis and those who condone the violence of occupation and the current war deserve to made to feel uncomfortable. if i said otherwise anywhere, that is on me.

part of where our disagreement seems to come from is that we cannot agree on what “proud Israeli” and the “violence of occupation” and such entail, and perhaps in a larger way, we cannot see eye to eye on our opinions about Zionism.

if i have made people uncomfortable on here, i am sorry in some ways, but i am also not sorry in others. i am expressing an opinion, one that is held in some variation by a large percentage of the world outside of the western hegemon.

Thanks, I can state my own positions

Table I appreciate you owning your actions and hopefully acting less of a bully going forward. It's extremely frustrating because it incites this mob mentality and doesn't result in any exchange of ideas.

I do have things I would want to discuss such as Edward Said but also about this conflict. Such as the role of Hamas, what is the way forward to peace.

It's very frustrating (and probably very tedious to others) that we can't have these discussuons because so much time is spent deflecting these bullshit strawmen you are constabtly erecting. Here is a thought: try steelmanning the other person's position for a change, like I did for you with your abstention vote for Biden.

I would be interested in comparing notes and what you think should be done with Hamas and Israel going forward as well as the humanitarian crisis that obviously Palestinian civilians are paying the price for.

Especially from white American men living on stolen land who have no intention of ceding their own privileges.

Sure, "zing."

are you suggesting that only people whose families have owned the land they live on in perpetuity have standing to comment on gaza? whose land do you live on?

i'm pretty sure i haven't erased any people of color by posting news of gazan children being killed by sniper shots to the head?

i don't really understand why you've taken it upon yourself to defend genocide on technicalities!

gazans being straight-up murdered for being gazan is subtly different from israelis being 'blamed' for the actions of their government

i.e. the latter are still alive

― mookieproof, Saturday, February 17, 2024 9:54 PM bookmarkflaglink

This came off sounding like you do not see that Thai workers, Bedoins, Tanzanians, and Israelis of many races were killed by Hamas. And many more of the teenage girls are probably dead. So yes it feels like erasure and I don't appreciate accusations of "defending" genocide being weaponized against me when I have done no such thing.

The reference to "stolen land" is to the hypocrisy that akm referred to early on in the conflict. I don't go around accusing people of defending genocide and spitefully trolling people who are being targeted, Jewish or Muslim.

i apologize for not suitably acknowledging every single person who has suffered

yet the numbers i've seen indicate that thais, bedouins, tanzanians and israelis have been rather less affected than the 30,000 gazans who have been killed. whom it comes off sounding like you do not see

what hamas did was terrible! but that doesn't give israel free rein to snipe childrens' heads. there is no tit-for-tat in war crimes!

do you think all gazans are legitimate targets for attack? do you think denying food aid is warranted? these seem like important issues

sorry i don't mean to 'weaponize' anything against you, nor do i at all mean to accuse you of any sort of culpability! (pretty sure i have not accused any larger groups of doing so, either) it just seems like your concerns are awfully one-sided while gaza is being leveled

it just seems like your concerns are awfully one-sided while gaza is being leveled

can I get a fucking amen

btw I did not know any of the pre-JFK history brought up earlier, so thanks everyone! very informative.

I do not think all Gazans are legitimate targets for attack, nor do I think witholding food and aid is warranted. By Israel, Hamas or anyone.

I think the anti-Israel/anti-"Zionist" position is more than adequately represented here. I am occasionally critical of Israel and the IDF as well even if you do not see that.

I am very bothered by the accusations against UNRWA and I was disturbed by the textbooks and television shows allegedly teaching Palestinian children to hate Jews. I am disturbed that xyzzz supports the Houthis whose flag says "a curse to the Jews". I am upset that you do not see a problem with Hamas' genocidal charter to destroy Israel and then exterminate Jews worldwide.

I think food and aid should go to Gazans and also that all war criminals should be tried.

The ICJ ordered Hamas to release the hostages. I am bothered that no one has remarked on that or has remotely commented that it hasn't happened. And I do find it somewhat infantilizing and white colonial mindset to insist that the parties should ceasefire when Hamas has broken the previous ceasefire.

sleeve, mookie, maybe there is a private channel where you can go and discuss me or something.

Whatever the intentions are of the houthis, hamas, aliens from out of space, it's Israel that is currently acting out genocide. I think I could speak for mookie xyzzzz tables anyone on this forum that it doesn't matter who is committing the genocidal actions, they'd be condemning it regardless of the religious/cultural/whatever identity of the perpetrator/perpetrated

I get your concerns, but surely you've got to understand that when it's 13,000 children killed vs 14 children and your staning for the side on the right of that equation....... its just not a good look regardless of how philsophically right you may be!

exactly