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

Israel has announced they are moving ahead with assaulting Rafah.

In light of that, this 14-year-old's personal account is harrowing but worth reading if you feel up for it:
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/the-bulldozer-kept-coming-a-girl-stares-down-death-in-gaza/

Of course, one objective of such a protest is often to direct public attention in exactly the opposite direction. A protest demands that we look toward it, but only so that it can reroute our gaze to the thing being protested. The two-step hypostatizes the dynamic speech act of protest, dissevering it from its referential function so that it cannot achieve its goal.

DAMN. Mind expanded.

Sorry that was for other thread now that I think about it.

700 bodies now discovered at Nasser hospital alone (1,500 uncovered at Al Shifa), patients, some with catheters still attached, children, with hands still bound, doctors and nurses, still wearing their scrubs, many shot in the back of the head at point blank range execution-style https://t.co/d9SjVKtOu9

— ashok kumar 🇵🇸 (@broseph_stalin) April 25, 2024

Saw one of those arrogant belligerent ghouls who are wheeled out to defend Israel's actions talking about this on Sky TV, "They were probably all terrorists".

Interestingly this morning I saw another one of these arseholes - there seems to be an endless supply of them - favourably comparing the actions of the IDF (in terms of death and destruction unleashed) to the Americans after Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

Good piece.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/26/cost-of-living-crisis-uk-prices

Though this but is hilarious.

"The government sometimes encourages this misunderstanding. Last July, Rishi Sunak told the radio station LBC: “If we bring inflation down, people will have more money to spend.” For a former chancellor, someone supposed to understand the economy better than almost anyone, it seemed a weirdly over-optimistic prediction."

Bet you anything Sunak is a thick fucker and doesn't actually get it.

Wrong thread oops

maybe this is fixating over details because I can’t take in the magnitude of what’s being done to Palestinians, but surely we don’t have accurate death counts? Feels like the number has been between 30 and 40,000 for weeks. Are there journalists left to document? Is the Gaza Health Ministry still functional?

I think it's only the roughest of estimates - they really have no idea how many bodies are buried in rubble until they begin to excavate the ruins, whenever that happens

yes, it's unclear to me whether, e.g., the recently discovered mass graves at hospitals are included. also unclear: deaths from starvation or dehydration or disease, etc.

over 100 journalists have been killed so far, so that's a fair question too

Survived unfortunately.

https://news.sky.com/story/controversial-far-right-israeli-minister-itamar-ben-gvir-taken-to-hospital-after-car-accident-13123462

would serve that vile fucker right

yBen-Gvir's disdain of any peace with the Palestinians is also clear in his hostility towards former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Rabin was killed while getting into his car in 1995, by a Jewish extremist at a rally in Tel Aviv - retaliation for signing a peace agreement two years earlier with Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu and other rightwing figures who stood against the peace agreement organised a rally in Jerusalem's Zion Square a month before Rabin's killing, during which protesters shouted "Death to Rabin".

A photo of Ben-Gvir carrying an emblem from Rabin's car was republished recently. Ben-Gvir reportedly said, "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too."

Ben-Gvir's hatred of Rabin, who won the Nobel Peace prize alongside Arafat and Shimon Peres for the peace deal, extended to his family. Ben-Gvir, identified as only a "right-wing activist" by an Israeli TV report, was filmed in August 2012 harassing Rabin's granddaughter and demanding she ask Israelis for "forgiveness".

was googling to find that story and came upon Ben-Gvir's disturbingly mundane and prolific posts on a Ferrari forum in 2004:

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/countach-reliable-or-not.37478/

Ben-Gvir’s party was until relatively recently literally banned from government. I know that for some Israeli history is flat and it’s all the same shit, but it is still a dark turn in Israeli politics that he has any power in government.

yeah brought to power by Bibi's machinations, then made the Minister of National Security (which hasn't gone great all in all)

wonder if AIPAC still abides by this policy:

We agree with AJC. AIPAC has a longstanding policy not to meet with members of this racist and reprehensible party. https://t.co/WBkCScx4U3

— AIPAC (@AIPAC) February 22, 2019

there are so many times that Israel could have chosen a different path. I find it very painful tbh

Israel was founded on an ethnic cleansing— this is a fact. What “different path” do you refer to?

a lot has happened in 75 years

things that are bad can get better, believe it or not

Ah yes, there is that long history of ethnonationalist religious states tending toward freedom and liberation.

What “different path” do you refer to?

end of the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state

very plausible that if rabin had lived, there would be two states right now

Fair enough

my normal paywall evasion technique isn't working right now, but this sounds pretty insane: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-30/ty-article/.premium/smotrich-calls-for-no-half-measures-in-the-total-annihilation-of-gaza/0000018f-2f4c-d9c3-abcf-7f7d25460000

He is an absolute fucking psychopath. FWIW, he is not a part of the war cabinet and has no decision-making power in the war, but that's of limited comfort in light of some of the other people who are.

Just as an aside - the standard rabbinic interpretation of the story of Amalek was that it applies to...Amalek. In other words, afaik, it is traditionally interpreted as applying only to an ancient people that has long since ceased to exist, and not to have any broader application. But, you know, theology is pretty easily bent to one's purposes.

Rafah is v much going too happen.

BREAKING: Netanyahu told Blinken during their meeting today he won't accept a deal that will include ending the war. He said if Hamas doesn't drop this demand there will be no deal and Israel will invade Rafah, per Israeli and U.S. officials

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) May 1, 2024

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-period-product-women-use-birth-control-to-skip-menstruation-1.7179069

Israel briefs US on plan to move Gazans ahead of Rafah invasion
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/03/israel-gazans-rafah-invasion-00156024

Don't do it, says former PM Ehud Olmert in Ha'aretz (sorry, this is paywalled, but the headline gives the gist)

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-05-03/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israelis-must-flood-the-streets-to-keep-the-idf-out-of-rafah/0000018f-3aac-d516-afbf-feeea9ff0000

(Olmert is no left-winger.)

Ben Dror Yemini, writing in Yediot Aharonot, firmly from the right, says too that Israel can't go into Rafah now, arguing that Israel can't afford the worldwide condemnation that would follow the inevitable destruction there. (sorry, this is in Hebrew, but Google Translate will gist you.)

https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra13898333#!/replace

I was listening to the relatively centrist Israel Policy Pod and they also seemed to think that it's probably time to just wrap up operations in exchange for the hostages and go home. Hard to say whether Bibi really wants to go in or is just holding it as a threat.

TBH I don't really understand the emphasis by the Israeli right on Rafah, as though it's some final boss of Hamas. What do they think they will finally achieve? A "we got him" moment with Sinwar or Daif? I mean that's probably the answer, but I doubt that achieves much other than a PR moment - red meat for the base.

Does anyone feel like they understand what's happening with the ceasefire deal? I'm p confused by what I'm reading

I'm confused too. To some extent it's inevitable: every actor (not just Israel and Hamas but the US and Qatar too) has incentive to leak assertions which they think will push the information environment their way, and which may not reflect reality. We are not going to know what's happening for sure until god willing the bombs stop falling and the hostages start coming home.

otm

a negotiated cease-fire agreement will mean the conflict hasn't ended in surrender by Hamas. Netanyahu made the complete defeat and abolition of Hamas the centerpiece of his rhetoric since day one. He now sees he can't follow through on that without the world dropping a hammer on Israel (and on him). All sides are jockeying like crazy to figure out how to craft the details to make the outcome appear to their own constituency in the most favorable light.

I don't understand it either, but one thing I have learned is that it's almost impossible to understand exactly what's going on in negotiations even as a party, so trying to figure it out from third party news outlets is always fraught.

yeah that makes sense, thanks all. Given the bleak state of the famine in the north and the (related) difficulty of imagining what's going on with the hostages, I'd like to be hopeful but just have to wait and see

Any truce Israel will accept will have to include Hamas out of power, at a minimum. I’m sure they’d demand the surrender of Hamas leaders. Those by themselves are going to be hard to get agreement to, but it’s hard to imagine not just the Israeli govt but the Israeli population accepting anything less.

All sides are jockeying like crazy to figure out how to craft the details to make the outcome appear to their own constituency in the most favorable light.

Which ... is good! If the killing stops and the aid comes through unimpeded and the hostages come home I couldn't give less of a half of a shit about who "gets to say they won." Let everybody say it, if that's what it takes.

I feel the same. But we aren't the ones at the table. Their priorities and calculations are not the same as ours.

Al Jazeera banned from Israel. Valedictory statement prerecorded by an old friend of mine:

https://x.com/ajenglish/status/1787116285912096811?s=46&t=Xety4ZUudTBKt4dxOZMmDw

that’s… not great news

This ban does nothing to protect the people of the state of Israel, but it does conveniently help to protect the current government of the state of Israel.

Depressed, I once again fell for optimistic reports that made a ceasefire sound hours away. The reporting is really weird. Do we just ... not *know* what's in the deal Hamas is rejecting?

If the negotiations are at a delicate stage then if any side leaks details it will probably be apparent who did it and may blow things up. But, really who knows?

This is going to be an unimaginable nightmare. The furtherance and culmination of a Genocide can be stopped and our government has the power to stop it. Their blood will be on all of our hands, but our leaders most of all. https://t.co/jjZ4jK5doG

— Nathan ' FOIA' Tankus (@NathanTankus) May 6, 2024

Depressed, I once again fell for optimistic reports that made a ceasefire sound hours away. The reporting is really weird. Do we just ... not *know* what's in the deal Hamas is rejecting?