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

Of for sure. Be wary of all the narratives. If you're willing to listen to they NY Times coverage of Hamas (which I was) you should probably listen for yourself and come to your own conclusions. I think broadening your sources to include Palestinian voices is one way.

It's very hard to hear Palestinian voices under the rubble

and with the collapse of their infrastructure.

I've ilxmailed you back too felicity. Apologies for the delay

i think he might need to workshop these a little

Are you pro-Palestine? Have any plans to participate in a Gaza demonstration soon? Please consider these 2 slogans:

1. No Abbas, no Hamas; Palestinians need some serious brass

2. Stop this war for your people; Hamas must go because it's evil#no_abbas_no_hamas

— Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) March 14, 2024

People are platforming voices from all angles. Feel free to read whatever you want or not.

It's already been commented on how vigorously certain claims are fact checked, while others are put forth without scrutiny.

I just don’t think people who work for pro-Israel think
tanks should be platformed at the moment! I know we differ there, probably, which is fine.

Regardless of what you think of his political views, it was interesting to hear of what it was like to move to Gaza at age 10, and how that differed from Amira's experience being from Jerusalem and Ibrahim's being from Nazareth. I don't know how anyone can hear his story of losing so many family members without compassion and wanting an end to the violence.

We all want an end to the violence. I don’t think Hamas is doing a good job at that, but the guy works for a pro-Israel think tank— ngl, when I think of a Palestinian working for a pro-Israel think tank, the first words that come to my mind are “Stockholm Syndrome.”

You can think that, and I'm willing to hear you out. I was listening to that podcast before they even had Alkatib on as a guest. I've listened to or read most things that people have linked here. Some things people have debunked, some nobody comments on or bothers.

If you have a source for why your opinion invalidates some of his life experiences (which I don't think you're saying, but some of the replies on Twitter literally cannot accept that he is a real person who lost family), I am willing to read that.

I was interested in what Alkatib would say about UNRWA schools, as I suspected the UNRWA defunding hearing presented an exaggerated cartoon-villain version of UNRWA curriculum. His account was nothing like that. He described there is some resentment internally within Gaza because only the 70% considered refugees are allowed to attend UNRWA schools. But the UNRWA schools are generally very good according to him, and the population of Gaza according to him is very well educated and has high literacy rates.

If you want to discredit these ideas as pro-Israel, that's fine. I'm interested in whatever accounts people want to put forth and make up my own mind. There is so much bickering and disagreement over sources, I think more information is better.

I'm sure he has an interesting life story, and it's terrible that he's lost so many family members. Just from looking at his social media, he seems to be a believer in technocratic, development-based solutions to the conflict, which seems really doubtful in terms of gaining any kind of popular support, but I'm no expert. I just get the impression from the replies to his posts that he is most valuable to allies of Israel as a Reasonable Palestinian, who allows them to avoid listening to other voices who might have lived in Gaza/Palestine much more recently and might be a lot less fond of America. I don't think that's the way you view him, for the record.

Technocrats have their time and place, and were there to be any kind of resolution, they would be needed to hammer out the details. I don’t think they have much to offer in the current situation though.

Not sure what that means but I certainly have no standing to label anyone. Last I checked he was beefing with some NGO CEOs on Twitter about delivering food aid to starving people in Gaza. The point there was I think he was highlighting some problems of corruption and self-interest in the business of non profits. That's certainly been a flashpoint in the UN and UNRWA stories.

If there's a reason not to believe something he's written by all means point it out. He said the reason he's in the US is because he couldn't re-enter Gaza after his exchange program because the border was closed after Hamas kidnapped Gilad Shalit. Then he applied for asylum and hasn't been back since. Of course that probably has an influence on his view.

Maybe he's a total shill, I don't know. He talked about how groups wanted him to politicize his personal losses and hiw that made him feel. I'm equally wary of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy and confirmation bias.

I don't think he's in fundamental disagreement with anyone here as far as I can see, I think everyone as far as I've seen has been pretty negative about Hamas for the most part. They have been pretty poor by most metrics and haven't delivered anything of any note that anyone is going to point to or get behind.

And with his connections in Gaza, thats presumably where his feels his influence or leverage is best placed, which makes sense. I think as Westerners our leverage is more on our own governments, and by extension, Israel, which is I think where our efforts are better placed. Hamas are certainly bellends, and if anyone asks me to condemn Hamas I will say 'yes, they are bellends, this is true, of course", but that doesn't really achieve anything.

Hamas will be defeated by Israel learning they have to win the peace, not a war. Attacking civilians is a strategic mistake for Israels own security. We should all want Hamas gone, of course, and the best way to achieve that is for Israel to not to continue giving the impression to people in Gaza that they want to kill them

Or really, to move the conversation away from the ethical to the logistical. If your goal was to eradicate Hamas, how would you go about it?

my own sense is that Hamas is happier being the leaders of a popular resistance movement in an IDF-occupied Gaza than doing the mundane work of running a government. Which is why the Israeli response has played into their hands. I wonder if Israel's reacted to Oct 7 exactly as Hamas predicted they would.

I think there is a position between the centuries-old vile conspiracy theories of blame the Jewish people/zionists/israel for whatever is currently wrong in society and "10/7 was done by UNRWA graduates".

When I mentioned the No True Scotsman fallacy I was thinking of the claim advanced here from time to time that violence inevitably creates more Islamists or inevitably makes the religious Zionist party in Israel stronger. I think we've seen it with younger people in the US today, they don't really care about the conflict or history the way oldeer generations do. They are worried about mental health and global warming. They seem able to think in different ways. So my point is this guy doesn't seem to agree that killing more Gazans only makes more Hamas at least if you can accept he is some sort of Gazan. It may be worth being open minded as to why he thinks that way as time is not on our side as a species.

I wonder if Israel's reacted to Oct 7 exactly as Hamas predicted they would.

We've only conjecture on that, I think the response is probably larger than expected, maybe even more than they hoped, but thats a question of scale. They will have known about Netanyahu's somewhat precarious personal position and that there was a good chance he might ramp up the response, but whether they were counting on that is difficult to say.

Israel has kind of backed themselves into a corner by not responding with proportionality. People always say proportionality is an ethical consideration, which isnt entirely true, proportionality is in order to give yourself as much flexibility as possible in increasing or decreasing your actions more easily instead of boxing yourself in to a particular set of actions. But then could make the argument Netanyahu has boxed Israel in intentionally, for personal reasons, as he has troubles of his own he is looking to avoid. I presume Hamas factored that in too

So my point is this guy doesn't seem to agree that killing more Gazans only makes more Hamas at least if you can accept he is some sort of Gazan

I don't think this is specific to Gaza, I think for the most part killing people turns them against you, often radicalising them in the process, which is why insurgencies continue long after victories in many cases, and only really tend to fade away when there's more of a move away from violence. Its just usually an unreliable approach

Meanwhile..

1 in 3 children under 2 years of age are today acutely malnourished in the north, according to nutrition screenings conducted by UNICEF and partners. https://t.co/ribVLUCy3L

— Maryam Aldossari (@maryam_dh) March 17, 2024

Maybe he's a total shill

afaic, that ends any discussion as to whether the guy is worth listening to or not. his primary job is working for an arm of AIPAC, and he was educated at one of our military universities.

if i get pushback for posting polemics from Salaita, then one should expect pushback for posting hasbara-infected junk from a guy who lends his ethnic heritage to cover for the state that is killing his people.

What's happening on the ground may take a long time to uncover, if ever.

I just had a long distressing call with a friend from #Gaza What's happening now is much worse than anything we are told by the media. In the North the situation is one of "manhunting" where the residents who remained are chased after by #IDF home by home like "rats", he said 1/3

— chantal melonì (@chamelons) March 19, 2024

Wait where are you getting that his primary job is working for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy? Wiki and his LinkedIn bio both list him as executive director of something called Project Unified Assisitance. The institute’s website appears to have published a total of three pieces by him over the course of seven years, and I’m not finding anything saying he’s employed by them or officially affiliated with them. He may in fact be a shill but I am missing where you’re getting that an arm of AIPAC is paying his bills.

Go to the PUA website and check it out, then do a little investigating— it seems like the organization’s 501c3 status has been revoked by the IRS, and the website simply reprints excerpts or articles reiterating western and Israeli talking points. If he is a consultant, that’s whatever, but consider that the man has never written for a single Palestinian or Middle Eastern publication, just outfits like the Washington Institute, the right-libertarian Liberty Fund, and so on.

That said, it isn’t clear that he works for the Washington Institute, so my apologies for stating as much. But it is clear that he is a shill— I mean, the Liberty Fund has been credited with paving the way for Reagan’s election in 1980. If the guy wasn’t Palestinian, no one on this board would give him or his opinions the time of day, and he would be totally excoriated. He should still be totally excoriated, though!

I thought he worked at something called GiveWell.

Project Unified Assistance seems to have ended in 2022.

Washington Institute does seem to have a lot of conservatives on its board.

This caught my eye in the Wiki for Washington Institute:

Dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi participated in an institute forum in November 2016 in which he stated that Saudi Arabia should be "rightfully nervous about the Trump presidency," according to The Economist.[22] The magazine reported that Saudi authorities asked Khashoggi to stop writing after the institute appearance but the journalist chose to live in exile instead. He was assassinated in Istanbul in 2018 while visiting the Saudi consulate.

I mean I don't mind if people want to take issue with his ideas. I think he's against purity politics, as he thinks it is not pragmatic and you only need to read what I paraphrased on to know that as well.

Taking issue with facts or statements or ideas is not the same saying we should be "excoriating" certain people ad hominem though. It seems like the paradox of tolerance.

Pointing out bias is also fine. I've seen people saying Al-Jazeera is Qatar state media, and there's a risk in taking their reporting at face value. Same as the Guardian, the BBC, all these sources. I still look at them though. Not sure what "pro-Israel" means to you. Is Ilhan Omar "pro-Israel" to you because she said she'll obviously still support Biden this November despite strongly criticizing US policy?

Sorry, how is the BBC biased?

All media have a bias. I think the BBC are considered to have a center bias in general. On certain issues, they are rated as having other biases.

What issues?

Some people do say the BBC is biased, true.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/14/bbc-building-red-paint-protest-israel-hamas-coverage

I think it depends who you ask. There are user rating websites that rate for bias on different issues.

Here are some results:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/

https://www.allsides.com/search?search=bbc

There are some more links to general media bias and fact checking sites here.

https://library.csi.cuny.edu/c.php?g=619342&p=4310783

Exactly, the idea that the BBC has left-centre bias is laughable.

Ben-Dror Yemini, in no way a man of the left, goes off on Netanyahu in Yediot Aharonot:

https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra13846370

The gist: Netanyahu has no plan for the end of the war, is handing Hamas a huge victory and is pissing away Israel's standing in the United States, is surrendering to Ben Gvir and Smotrich, needs to accept that long-term control of Gaza would be a disaster for Israel and needs to go along with the Biden - Saudi Arabia recipe of unified PA governance in Gaza and the West Bank

Netanyahu has to go. If only Schumer could call for an election in Israel. Maybe the UK would like an election as long as he's handing them out too, I don't know.

Wait are we equating the website of a lobbying org with the BBC and the Guardian?

The BBC, the NYTimes, nor the Washington Post have a left-center bias. They are thoroughly, and utterly, center-right at best. They also are in no way equivalent to the Washington Institute, which is an explicitly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist think tank.

Taking issue with facts or statements or ideas is not the same saying we should be "excoriating" certain people ad hominem though. It seems like the paradox of tolerance.

Sorry, when people are shilling for fascist ideologies and US military hegemony, I tend to not really give a fuck whether I am giving them a fair shake because they're in the business of getting people killed.

actually, whom amongst us IS a trustworthy source of info, makes u think

Or really, to move the conversation away from the ethical to the logistical. If your goal was to eradicate Hamas, how would you go about it?

― anvil, Monday, March 18, 2024 9:39 PM bookmarkflaglink

I have absolutely no idea. I'd probably listen to people that know about the area and the culture and the history and try to understand what the obstacles are.

I think the uncomfortable issue this raises, and nobody seems to really want to discuss, is how this works where the US and other countries donate billions of dollars to UNRWA and the UN which are seen one side as perpetuating the generational refugee status of displaced Palestinian people - not just within Gaza but also in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan - and supporting a Hamas regime that teaches children that they will one day reclaim the land that is now Israel as their birthright. That doesn't seem realistic, any more than encouraging someone to violently resist a nuclear power like Pakistan. I don't know, is it? And also on the other side selling billions of dollars of weapons to Israel that are used to kill innocent people in Gaza, and which Hamas and Netanyahu are just ramping up for political reasons. It's horrific. Even if you want to discard this week's guest as a "shill" part of the point I'm listening to is what Palestinian-Arab residents in Jerusalem and Nazareth have said, what it's like for them.

I have listened to other voices that people think are more current or authentic and would listen to more. I don't speak Arabic or Hebrew, so I would rely on translation if they are not in English.

you are so profoundly disingenuous, it's really something to behold

literally none of your posting is in remotely good faith

Let's not pls

whatever felicity has been telling you offboard, I suggest you ignore it

treating "the extermination of Hamas" as a serious topic of discussion is beyond the pale, but we can thank reliable concern trolls anvil and felicity for that

She's been telling me nothing, I'm just not a fan of antagonising for antagonising sake. It's clear she is outnumbered here, no need to keep punching

Ben-Dror Yemini OTM

treating "the extermination of Hamas" as a serious topic of discussion

you put quotation marks around a misquotation and while the alteration you made may seem small to you, the different connotations of "eradication" and "extermination" are significant enough to change the meaning.

Even if you want to discard this week's guest as a "shill"

I haven't discarded the guest as a shill. I listened to the full episode posted and addressed it accordingly. I don't disagree with the gist of what he is saying, that Hamas is a net negative. But what I'm not seeing is any kind of indication that Israel's current plan is a good one or likely to have any kind of success (or even really that there is a long term plan). Attacking civilians has just never really worked, its generally better to for people to have alternatives to joining things like Hamas, and destroying everything just removes a lot of alternatives that people might have

I can sit here and say, well I'd never join Hamas, I'd prefer to work in a local bakery instead. But if the bakery has gone, then Hamas starts to look a better bet, not just from an emotional point of view because I'm annoyed about the bakery, but also objectively. Unemployment is high, Hamas is telling me "hey Israel bombed that bakery you're ok with that?"

Even here in the west if it turned out there were some bad guys in my apartment block, I'm more than happy for the police to come and arrest them and take them away, of course. But if they just started opening fire on the building, I wouldn't be ok with that - even if they gave me notice of when it would be so I could leave and come back later. Sure the bad guys are gone, but the price would be too high for me, I would be blaming the police more than the bad guys . Thats something for the most part we wouldn't accept, it makes no sense

btw that shill comment wasn't addressed to you. In the first of the two episodes (maybe you only listened to the second) he talked about the fact that he doesn't agree in any way in the way in which the IDF is prosecuting this conflict. I don't think that's a point of difference with the bakery example you just gave.

People have been saying in this thread from the beginning (and there is obviously tons of disagreement within Israel, so their individual views shouldn't be treated as a monolith) that Israel doesn't have a good plan, or any plan at all. And I don't think this guest had disagreed with the idea that Israel is handling this poorly. Maybe there's some confusion with other posts sort of attributing positions to that guest.

I think what he was talking about with a political off-ramps for Hamas and reform of UNRWA mentioned upthread is consistent with alternative jobs or future similar to what you are saying. If there is no alternative and there is a blockade why wouldn't you get a job with UNRWA or Hamas.

I do get why people would misconstrue the topic of whether replacing Hamas is desirable or off-topic to bring up in a discussion. Hamas is nominally the current government of Gaza. If there is no government at all, the responsibility of the welfare of the people falls to the occupying force aiui. With no government at all, you get complete lawlessness and imminent starvation and lack of medical care like what's going on Port-au-Prince. If you criticize Hamas it could sound to some people like support for Israel's current government. I think the idea of trying not to reduce the discussion to a binary could be useful, though I understand it goes against the grain of what people are used to.

I think you've highlighted the difference between a military question and a political question. Removing Hamas by military means leads to a vacuum, the kind of vacuum in which an organisation similar to Hamas might emerge from. But removing by political means doesn't lead to this, and a better term would be replace rather than remove

But this isn't something that can be imposed from outside, it can only be done by the people who live there. I think this is the problem with Israels lack of a plan, there's no focus on this at all.

Fwiw I don't disagree with your guy that Gaza would be better off without Hamas, which will be a large part of why Hamas decided against any subsequent elections or political means to remove them. I probably didn't disagree with much of what he said, and thats where his leverage probably is. It isn't where our leverage is though.

Exactly, the idea that the BBC has left-centre bias is laughable

Not necessarily disputing you here (though I think the BBC's bias is establishment or institutionalist more than anything), but what media outlets do you consider as left-centre?

My cousin thinks the BBC are far-left woke ideologues but he may be in a minority I find it difficult to tell

BBC news coverage is centre/lean right but like most broadcasters also lacks accuracy over the most basic party political shite; BBC arts and entertainment coverage leans left.