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

my wife is probably in a state of feeling frozen about what's happening over there, this feeling of anger and sadness at much of what's being directed at jewish people, even more anger and sadness about what's being unleashed on Gaza, the previous lure to visit Israel (really a feeling i don't think anyone who's not jewish can understand, myself included tbh) now canceled out by feeling that she never can and maybe never should go there. plus our son having his bar mitzvah scheduled, and her saying she's glad it's at a private non-denominational venue vs being at a temple, and feeling guilty about being afraid, and worried that she'll have to be afraid forever but also worried about the kid and his future, the future that's being perhaps partially affected by what Israel is doing.

and being surrounded by those who are callous on all sides. not just anti-semites using this as a moment to pop their heads up, realizing it's their time to shine a bit. as i said in another thread, someone we know just popped over there for an instagrammable visit to have a full course meal and some chat with other visiting influencer types, plenty of smiling faces in photos, while you've got 12k+ dead children in gaza. then he left to head right to SXSW.

i think she kinda wants to keep her head down and offer zero takes.

"we're trying our hardest to accurately hit terrorists" https://t.co/RVM6EY0UFu pic.twitter.com/UnMhaijavc

— πατέρας raver (@mathaiaus) April 2, 2024

So it seems that two former soldiers were among the British aid workers killed by the IDF. That changes things, even the right wing rags (which is most of them) are up in arms over this.

I think this might be the first time since Oct 7 that even Bibi said they fucked up. It actually might be the first time I've ever seen him apologize for anything, in fact.

horrifying on so many levels that's this is what it takes for Israel to take responsibility

heart goes out to you and your families, Omar and MA

Haaretz Lead Editorial:

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2024-04-03/ty-article-opinion/israel-must-end-its-war-in-gaza-now/0000018e-a07c-d4c8-adce-f77c39e90000

Bibi also said something like 'this is war' implying that strafing aid convoys is just an inevitable fact of life

That's typical Bibi language

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/idf-sources-gaza-aid-workers-killed-because-officers-on-the-ground-do-what-they-want/0000018e-a06e-d9c2-afbe-a8fe319b0000

I mean, if you "remove all restraints" and give commanders autonomy, this kind of thing is pretty much bound to happen.

When it's a few Western aid workers who are the collateral damage, there's outrage. When it's tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, who gives a fuck.

Archived version of the Haaretz editorial calling for an end to the war, which I think is a meaningful development:
https://archive.ph/HEin2

The editorial is not solely about the aid worker killings but also refers to their recent investigative report on IDF "kill zones" in Gaza (archived version here):
https://archive.ph/WV5ba

Hard to find words. It's really stomach turning and soul-darkening.

Flagrant war crimes

I mean, more of them

This week's incident cannot be distanced from the ease with which the IDF kills Palestinians in Gaza, as Yaniv Kubovich's March 31 report shows. His investigation casts doubt on the IDF's estimate that 9,000 of the 32,000 Gazans who have been killed in the war are in fact terrorists. Many of the reserve and career officers Kubovich interviewed say that the definition of terrorist is often a matter of wide interpretation. "In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate," said a reserve officer who has served in Gaza.

The report found that the terrorist designation is not based on what the individual was doing at the time he was targeted but on whether he entered the "kill zone" established by the local IDF commander. "As soon as people enter it, mainly adult males, orders are to shoot and kill, even if that person is unarmed," the officer said.

unspeakable

A terrorist is anyone we kill, and we kill everyone who enters a zone that remains totally undefined/undemarcated. Struggling not to make some comparisons here...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war

IDF snipers deliberately targeting children

They managed to kill one Palestinian among the seven aid workers so they'll be pleased about that at least.

ZZ, gyac, rob, Boring otm - it's both enraging and deadening that this is what gets the slaughter on the front of all of the papers over here, it makes it so clear that the "us to them" humanity ratio isn't 1 to 10, or 100, or 1000, it's literally zero.

Am I the only one seeing Matthew Miller smiling as he spews lie after lie in every sentence that comes from his mouth?? His face basically betrays "this is line I gotta* go with even though we all know its bogus, evil, and continues to enable these daily unspeakable evils".

*you don't gotta

Sorry I realise that post should be in the other Israel thread

Yeah mine too, sorry.

it's both enraging and deadening that this is what gets the slaughter on the front of all of the papers

That wasn’t my point tbf, it was about the parallels of prolonged starvation on the civilian populace & the murder of people trying to alleviate entirely preventable suffering

It's enraging but unsurprising that this is what gets the greatest attention. At the same time, I have some hope that it will be a crystalizing moment and that it will open people's eyes to the way the IDF has been operating in Gaza.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.

"You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people – it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” one intelligence officer said."

That wasn’t my point tbf

Yeah fair point - I wrote something connecting to your point but took it out, and left in that you were otm because you were

I'm trying to read the +972 report that that Guardian article is based on, and it is extremely difficult to get through (https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/). I was going to post a quote but it's honestly too disturbing.

oops I just posted this in the AI thread.

oops I just posted this in the AI thread.

That piece is just AI providing cover for the IDF. Not finished the piece but I'm not sure why 972 is entertaining it.

It doesn't read that way to me at all, but maybe because I've read a lot about machine learning and automated systems, so the idea that deciding to use AI could ever be exculpatory is a non-starter

Yeah it doesn’t strike me as remotely exculpatory.

AI churning out a list that no-one cares to check through is the IDF telling themselves a tale about these "terrorists", to me.

Must repeat I like what 972 do.

Struggling to see how the IDF comes out of that article anything other than very very very badly.

To bring in a first year law school term, it shows what you'd call reckless indifference to human life. I mean I guess it's one half notch better than literally just saying "Hey, let's bomb the shit out of as many civilians as we possibly can," but I never assumed that was how the decision making process went.

Interesting side story about military conscription in Israel:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/04/israel-ultra-orthodox-jews-haredim-benjamin-netanyahu-court-military-conscription-gaza-war

It's definitely an interesting and complex flashpoint in Israeli politics. I think I said upthread there's a chance it could undo the current governing coalition. The more secular side of society perceives the haredim as kind of like religious welfare queens. However there's a minority among them who consider themselves against zionism for religious reasons, don't take money from the government, and don't accept the state, and some of them descend from pre-Israel communities. Service in the army would radically change a lot of these communities, which are often fairly closed off from the rest of the country.

yeah, I just heard an NPR story about anti-zionist haredim living in Israel.. they consider themselves residents of Palestine based on some obscure religious texts. This was news to me

The role of haredim and orthodox judaism in the state have been controversial from the outset. I've heard some experts claim that it was just assumed in early zionism that they'd remain a small community and not that significant, so concessions could be made, but now their demographics have grown a lot and they are also more prone to voting than they used to be

(although I don't think the anti-zionist minority vote, tbc)

I have a buddy from Tel Aviv and he claims that the worst and most violent of the settlers are all from Brooklyn and LA

I can't claim to know but it wouldn't surprise me. Being born there vs moving there for purely ideological reasons.

I've never been to a settlement or to my knowledge met a west bank settler.

I definitely have frequent disturbing thoughts about the thought of some of those settlers being in the army and probably being the ones most likely to commit atrocities in Gaza. However those are typically what you call religious nationalists, which is different from the Haredi.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-04/ty-article/.premium/doctor-at-idf-field-hospital-for-detained-gazans-we-are-all-complicit-in-breaking-law/0000018e-a59c-dfed-ad9f-afdfb5ce0000

UK isn't a big arms exporter anyway but it's mildly interesting to see this talked about openly.

"I think it's the right time to make that move."

Former National Security Advisor Lord Darroch tells @KirstyWark he believes the UK should halt arms exports to Israel: "As a symbol of what we think about things and how we assess the Israeli action" #Newsnight pic.twitter.com/SLzoAPBmBB

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) April 4, 2024

but don’t expect any acknowledgment that the people who were saying this five months ago were right

Of course it's mostly demob happy Tories who are speaking up now - the Starmer Party are keeping schtum.