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

I listened through the Blowback series on Iraq recently, pretty horrifying even as someone who was generally paying attention to what the US was doing both between the two wars and during the second Iraq war. xp

I think the truth of the matter here is that this is not really a war. Hamas had an offensive 6 months ago, but since then it's just been the occupying power getting revenge by killing as many civilians and destroying as many buildings as possible.

― President Keyes, Thursday, March 21, 2024 2:32 PM (twenty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, Hamas has an armed militia of tens of thousands in Gaza, it's not like there's no one fighting. It's certainly not an even fight, but there has been fighting.

It’s similar to Vietnam in that Hamas is somewhat a spectre where civilians can be portrayed as possible members or sympathizers, giving Israel the “excuse” to kill and destroy

No idea if there's fighting going on or not because Israel won't let any reporters in and they're incapable of telling the truth.

Hamas itself posts combat footage, although IDK what's going on currently

I think the truth of the matter here is that this is not really a war. Hamas had an offensive 6 months ago, but since then it's just been the occupying power getting revenge by killing as many civilians and destroying as many buildings as possible.

― President Keyes, Thursday, March 21, 2024 3:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

this is what I was admittedly clumsily getting at, my 'friend' wasn't saying "lots of civilians die in war", he was saying in war, soldiers die, it's expected, and he's treating civilians and Hamas fighters interchangably, when it's not a war, it's one country basically assaulting the Gaza strip with a litter of bombs and attacking unarmed civilians directly and have made the land unlivable already.

even if his point was "civilian casualties are an inevitability of war", the point wouldn't scan because they aren't even collateral damage, they're being targeted.

even the battle with Hamas and Israel I hardly consider a war.

or at least...not now.

According to Israel (lol) they've killed 12,000 Hamas fighters, so I'vw no idea how many that leaves.

“It’s war people die so what” is the ingrained response of an American who has lived with “collateral damage” their entire life as the phrase that differentiates between us killing innocent people and the bad guys who do it on purpose.

more tellingly, his opinion about the Iraq war and the number of innocent people killed was decidedly different

I think the “so what” part is the problem. I think that people who are the most outspoken protesting against the atrocities are assuming that those who are less visibly outraged are saying “so what” when that isn’t entirely true

Whereas at least for most people I know it’s not “so what” it’s “that’s fucked up”

Didn't we just see civilians in Ukraine targeted yesterday? I don't understand where 'Americans haven't seen this before' is coming from when we were seeing it on the news every day already.

I don't think civilians in wars are always targeted, (and it can be to varying degrees), but we don't have to go back very far to see examples of it all over TV even in the week or so before Oct 7.

Assad definitely targeted civilians in Syria

Good point!

One clear point of difference at present between Gaza and some of these other situations is the use of starvation as a weapon against civilians (plus the razing of 35% of Gaza's buildings). It's obviously not unprecedented historically, but it does make expressions of indifference or cynical "it is what it is" type sentiments even more repellent imo

Well, not unprecedented with respect to Syria.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2017/11/syria-surrender-or-starve-strategy-displacing-thousands-amounts-to-crimes-against-humanity/

sure, but until recently most people likely wouldn't have thought of Israel as obviously similar to Syria. If the point is that any nation that goes to war will inevitably commit atrocities and descend into barbarism, I might actually agree with you, but I think it's safe to say that previously Western attitudes to Israel considered it to be on a higher moral plane than the Syrias of the world

One clear point of difference at present between Gaza and some of these other situations is the use of starvation as a weapon against civilians (plus the razing of 35% of Gaza's buildings). It's obviously not unprecedented historically, but it does make expressions of indifference or cynical "it is what it is" type sentiments even more repellent imo

He did say "obviously not unprecedented historically".

Well yeah, but he said "these other situations," and the other situation I had just mentioned was Syria

ah no my post was in response to WWII St Petersburg example

ah gotcha, nm

Starvation as a function of siege warfare (ie Leningrad) or total war (all the way back to the chevauchees of late medieval warfare) merits a pretty strong distinction from starving a captive national population (which is, uh, genocide).

Milo otm. Also comparing and contrasting civilian murder, genocide, mass-starvation, mass-infrastructural elimination…. I don’t want to live in a world where we have to rank these “oh well see it was different and slightly better in Vietnam but slightly worse in Syria”. None of these things need and defence as being “not as bad” or “different” from that other time it happened. Absolutely ghastly way to approach war

Maybe I’m too hot headed about this, but I really don’t see an analytical distance as being helpful in approaching what is happening in Gaza right now. I don’t want to objectify the suffering, I don’t want it to be a moral math equation in my head and I don’t want it to be so for people in the world.

I've lost count of the number of Israeli spokespeople and supporters of Israel who have brought up the flattening of Dresden by the Allies in WW2. I'm not entirely sure what the reasoning behind this particular bit of whataboutery is beyond "Well, no-one complained about that". Except they did even at the time and it's pretty much considered a war crime now. At least they haven't brought up Hiroshima... yet

Well yeah, but he said "these other situations," and the other situation I had just mentioned was Syria

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, March 21, 2024 5:52 PM (yesterday)

If you're going to quote me directly, could you at least include that I said "*some of* these other situations"? But ok, fair point about the post sequencing — while I wasn't responding directly to you, I can see why you thought I was overlooking your example.

Anyway, I don't even disagree with you here man alive, afaict. That Amnesty International wrote a report on Syria's use of starvation as a weapon indicates to me that doing so is *egregious* i.e., not a "normal" military practice (as horrific as those can be ofc) but a deliberate atrocity that cannot possibly be justified.

H.P.: I don't think I get what you're saying. You otm'd milo for pointing out there is a distinction between war-related starvation and genocide, but you also don't see the need for "analytical distance" — how do you draw such a distinction without analysis and comparison? Is your objection because the genocide in Gaza is ongoing rather than in the past? I don't really see anyone ranking anything, just trying to make sense of what's happening by situating it historically, as in milo's post.

Sorry, you are right, I wasn't very clear. You got the gist of it, and directly hit my hypocrisy in otm'ing Milo and then making that complaint.

https://archive.is/2XCWL

Non-paywalled version of the piece Alfred posted to the other thread that I thought made more sense to discuss here (Beinart on the "rupture" in American Judaism over Israel).

It makes more sense here. Thanks.

The Haaretz podcast had two guests relevant to this topic recently: Franklin Foer and Tony Kushner
https://www.haaretz.com/ty-WRITER/0000017f-da28-d249-ab7f-fbe8df7b0000

I listened to both, and Tony Kushner's politics on Israel seem to align pretty closely with mine. Foer's views on antisemitism in America still seem slightly hyperbolic to me - I think he is sincere, but I think he is viewing things as worse than they are. I do think there is a lot of unresolved tension in the relationship between American Jews, Israel, zionism, anti-zionism, and antisemitism, and there isn't really an easy formula for addressing it.

Thanks for posting both of those. The idea that there can't be a formula is hard to accept, as Foer described on the Hararetz podcast that Jewishness itself is hard to define as it not a race, nationality, religion or ethicity - it is a "people." And this frustrates the world and breaks the world's brain (as it has for millenia) when trying to even describe and understand the situation, often leading to anger, misunderstandings, accusations and hurt feelings.

Foer's personal anecdotes mentioned that he was dismayed at teachers in the US trying to simplify the I/P situation into "good" and "bad" and placing the Jewish 80% of Israel in the "bad," so children in America are looking around and seeing their Jewish classmates (who have nothing to do with Israel, let alone influence on what the Knesset or IDF do) as the closest "Jewish" person and thinking that child is "bad" - and leading to bullying and violence. Maybe that's the part you think is hyperbolic. I think he said that's scariest thing he's seen -- to be clear, in America, not in the world. I took it to mean it's scary in his lifetime in the context of America where, to be fair, half of the remaining Jewish people in the world currently live.

Read the Beinart article just now. It is a good look at where things stand at present, and I think asks some difficult questions of American Jews who identify as Zionists— namely, why break bread with fascists, white supremacists, and virulent anti-semites?

I think the problem in discussing your definition of "Zionism" is that last we checked you were what symsymsym described as an "anti-Zionist Zionist," meaning, you want a safe place for Jewish people to live, yet you also want to dismantle Israel as it is currently constituted.

And I don't mean that negatively, I was going to comment that Beinhart's profuse usage of "Zionism" is confusing to me, as Israel already exists, so I wouldn't know exactly what sense he is using it in.

I thought there was a commonly agreed upon definition of Zionism?

I thought we discussed this extensively in the antisemitism thread. What is it?

there are a lot of zionisms but he seems to be using it to mean support for a state of israel that depends on the subjugation (or worse) of palestinians which seems to be the closest thing to a mutually understood definition these days although supporters of the genocide wouldn't phrase it like that

if there are other better zionisms they are currently either too marginal or too hypothetical to be relevant to his point

otm

yep

Ok fair enough in this context.

I told my wife recently that I feel like a lot of American Jews (and even a fair number of Israelis) have an Israel of the Mind that is fairly different than the Israel that exists, and they don't realize how much bigger the chasm has become in recent years. I guess tbf you could say the same of Americans about America when it comes to our foreign policy, it's just that American foreign policy feels a lot more remote from every day American life.

I'm not one of those people who thinks the death of liberal zionism is/was inevitable - although it is pretty clearly dead now, or at least in a coma. Yes it's full of seemingly impossible contradictions, but life is full of situations that are marked by impossible contradictions and yet manage to survive and navigate those contradictions, in fact I don't think there are nation states on earth that aren't constantly bumping up against contradictions. Clearly liberal zionism is not one of those things right now, but I think it came closer to being able to in the 90s than a lot of the left gives credit.

there is still a pretty strong liberal american nationalist tradition even if it has passed its peak and was always full of irreconcilable contradictions (and it might even end up breaking with and surviving liberal zionism - I assume it depends what happens with the democratic party in the medium term). the reactionary right in israel seems to want to make even a superficially progressive israel almost impossible to imagine and everyone I know who believed such a thing could exist feels compelled to move rapidly either left or right in recent months with painful personal consequences esp if they're jewish (presumably if they're palestinian but sadly I don't know anyone). you would have thought that this could have been avoided or at least postponed with a less openly racist state and less inflexible institutions in support overseas but that hasn't happened and they're doubling down so hard - do they even care that they're losing a couple of generations of supporters? do they know it's too late to win them back so they feel they have nothing to lose? do they think it's good or necessary to separate the ideological wheat from the chaff regardless of the fallout?

While the president has been ousted for not being fascist enough for Elise Stefanik, a UPenn-Wharton stats professor has been accusing the Gaza Health Ministry of lies in the service of Israeli propaganda.

Wyner article here:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers

Mathematical rebuttal here:
https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2024/03/08/a-note-on-how-the-gaza-ministry-of-health-fakes-casualty-numbers/

ThreadReader app explainer here:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770226449116430688.html

So it's apparently wrong and bad on to advocate for Palestinian liberation on university campuses because it could make Jewish students feel "uncomfortable," but tenured profs can spread lies and hasbara-inflected articles like the one above without any institutional pushback. Infuriating.

my son's high school is currently being sued by a group of Jewish parents. There was one (maybe two) accusations of kids being subjects of bigoted attacks (not by teachers), but most of this stuff is frankly absurd and anti-historical. The curriculum being discussed got broken down in this article and it's the most even-handed thing I can conceive of.

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/03/21/berkeley-unified-israel-palestine-curriculum-debate

In the meantime, a smattering of teachers have left, or have announced they are leaving over this entire thing. Way to go, stupid school district!

(more backstory: https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/03/08/berkeley-unified-federal-civil-rights-complaint-antisemitism)

More on the man who has done a great deal to conflate anti-Zionism and antisemitism:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/us/politics/kenneth-marcus-college-antisemitism-complaints.html

(His org is the one leading the obviously inflated and outrageous complaints against your son's high school)