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

I feel like I lost the plot on this argument, but I did see a poll of Palestinians recently (trying to find it, but it was by a Palestinian polling operation) where the option of a "binational state" was fairly unpopular, but "armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine" was popular. You could read that as "the liberation of Palestine" meaning something other than a binational state. OTOH, I think polling is of really limited value in situations like this, as it only gives you a sense of how people are feeling in a brief snapshot in time, based on recent events, influenced by strong emotions/frustration/lack of hope about other options, etc. I think when an option seems within reach, it is more popular than when it does not seem within reach.

And because of this, I try to remind myself to be generous in my interpretation of Palestinian opinion polls, because Israel has the power and the upper hand, and annihilation of Israel isn't actually on the table right now. And I think I posted a quote upthread from a Fatah politician who said that when he was a teenager he wanted "From The River To The Sea," yet the second it looked like a two-state solution was actually possible, he and a lot of others he knew rejoiced. To a certain extent, the same is also true of Israeli opinion polls, but I don't want to "both sides" this, because Israelis get to remain comfortable with or without a political solution, and that makes their position different.

Good posts man alive.

I wonder how the Palestinian citizens of Israel would view this question (also something that polling is not conclusive about)

most of my point of view has been colored by walking home to my college housing apartment circa september 2000 and encountering my temporary roommate (his building was under construction and opening the next month) watching Frontline on PBS. he remarked “I’m supposed to be in this episode!” and sure enough, partway in he is there in tel aviv at a government office waving a land deed at the door, along with dozens of others

it was a time where right of return was a dream people believed in. his family had been refugees and eventually fled, but always held on with their hearts. I wish I’d asked him so many more things about it but it stuck with me. his family members that lived there, some of their peers are still around in gaza and the west bank

I don’t think I realized how brave that was at the time, either

I wonder how the Palestinian citizens of Israel would view this question (also something that polling is not conclusive about)

― symsymsym, Thursday, 6 June 2024 02:05 (one hour ago) link

The hosts of the Third Narrative podcast (Ibrahim and Amira, one is a '48er Palestinian-Israeli citizen and the other a '67er Palestinian-Israeli citizen) and their guests talk about this often, the diversity of views, how each of them view Palestinian-Israeli citizens who came from other regions, their experience of the Nakba, and the cultural stereotypes and myths within their own subgroups. They often don't agree with each other or their guests from episode to episode. It's pretty eye-opening when they have diaspora guests on from the rest of the world.

And because of this, I try to remind myself to be generous in my interpretation of Palestinian opinion polls, because Israel has the power and the upper hand, and annihilation of Israel isn't actually on the table right now. And I think I posted a quote upthread from a Fatah politician who said that when he was a teenager he wanted "From The River To The Sea," yet the second it looked like a two-state solution was actually possible, he and a lot of others he knew rejoiced. To a certain extent, the same is also true of Israeli opinion polls, but I don't want to "both sides" this, because Israelis get to remain comfortable with or without a political solution, and that makes their position different.

Man I made some post months ago where I talked about how ugly peace actually is because of what’s got to be compromised and set aside and I can’t find it. That’s basically the point I’m getting at.

I'm so confused but I thought that D-40's point was similar: that it is unrealistic to attempt to portray the Palestinians as completely devoid of anti-Israeli sentiment or require them to be before acknowledging their right to self-determination, which is what the West (or at least the US) seems to do/expect.

I'll stop now.

My point is that introducing such a point to the thread, when Palestinians have watched tens of thousands of them die in a matter of months is, honestly, suspicious. Are they supposed to turn the other cheek and not feel a way about it?

It’s especially strange as a response to that excellent man alive post which discusses the cycle of hatred and inherent difficulty in resolving the conflict.

Gyac: I just happened to listen to this interview which I think is very much in line with what you’re saying. It’s too short and I wish there was more detail on the book (which, unfortunately, is a $125 academic book). But she touched on Bosnia and Northern Ireland as models and emphasizes that any peace will be “not ideal.” She also says that we need to accept that a solution may not look 100% like the kind of secular liberal democracy we prefer in North America and Europe because of the constituencies that actually exist in Israel and Palestine. She claims to have a different model for a two state solution based on equality and cooperation rather than just separation, but there wasn’t really enough detail on that in the interview (maybe she means more like the “federation” model).

I also feel like I need a better understanding of the distinctions between a binational state and a single secular democratic state, which is a distinction mentions but doesn’t have time to elaborate on.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tel-aviv-review/id913491428?i=1000638935400

Excerpt here. Reading.
https://read.amazon.com/sample/B0BZJCPX9M?f=1&l=en_US&r=d68710e8&rid=SA4G7QQZ74PVH75W814H&sid=136-0770471-4189601&ref_=litb_m

Thanks so much, I’ll check that out & let you know what I think.

The latest atrocity is just relegated to the bottom of the news now.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/06/israel-gaza-war-idf-strike-un-school-al-nuseirat-death-toll-hamas

xxpost I was able to skim some parts of that book, man alive. It sounds like she has in mind a geographic state in which there are two citizenries, who each have the right of movement through the entire space.

It's offered as "non-ideal" solution to get around the problems caused by settlers and to stop people from ending up on the wrong side of a partition.

Seeing tweets saying 200 Palestinians were killed to get to these four hostages

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/08/israel-rescues-four-hostages-in-gaza-taken-from-nova-music-festival

My point is that introducing such a point to the thread, when Palestinians have watched tens of thousands of them die in a matter of months is, honestly, suspicious. Are they supposed to turn the other cheek and not feel a way about it?

― Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Thursday, 6 June 2024 11:52 (three days ago) link

Where did you read I was saying turn the other cheek? I think you’re misinterpreting my post here. I’m suggesting there are political end games here that don’t necessarily involve violent retribution in theory if not practice

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/09/moderate-politician-benny-gantz-resigns-israeli-war-cabinet

At this point the big question in my mind is whether the majority in Israel will ever be capable of accepting peace with a free and autonomous Palestinian state on their border, as opposed to seeking complete Palestinian capitulation, subjugation, or genocide - because Israel is demonstrably the only party to this war who can negotiate an enduring peace through offering meaningful concessions. the Palestinians have nothing left to bargain with but their lives and they have no motivation to sell them cheaply.

Times of London investigation: https://www.thetimes.com/magazines/the-times-magazine/article/israel-hamas-rape-investigation-evidence-october-7-6kzphszsj

Paywalled.

I found an archived version. If you just want to know what evidence there is, albeit this is two months old so possibly out of date, I thought this was a much better and more streamlined piece, free of the endless contextualization and meditation and chin-scratching under which any actual information is buried in these rape thinkpieces. I am tired of reading these long windups in which the already-debunked early, fog-of-war/telephone game type claims are debunked yet again so that we don't get to what actually happened until paragraph 20, at which point we are already primed not to believe them by insinuation that this is all just sexualized fear of Arab men.

https://www.haaretz.com/search-results?q=rape

Mass clearly occurred, some rapes almost certainly occurred, and there probably isn't a Hamas pamphlet that says "rape as many women as possible." Is this satisfactory yet? I certainly don't see any of the claims about abuse of Palestinian women in the LRB piece (I think it was in the other thread) subject to this kind of endless scrutiny.

Sorry, this is the haaretz piece I meant to link
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-18/ty-article-magazine/witnesses-confessions-naked-dead-bodies-all-the-evidence-of-hamas-rape-on-oct-7/0000018e-f114-d92e-abfe-f77f7e3f0000

I was just going to link the archive, fuck the Times (in general, not related to this piece): https://archive.is/NS2g0

Most articles (and discussion itt) touch on but don’t actually focus on a big part of the racialising of Muslim men, which is a trope that no doubt goes back centuries (the uncivilised savages targeting OUR women) and which you still see leaned on heavily today by Serb nationalists (re the Bosnian war) both in reference to the Ottomans and to the events of the war. Certainly Serb and Croat women were raped and assaulted in numbers, but the scale of the Serb camps for Bosnian women were of a different degree of both intent and execution. I think some of the degree of exaggeration deliberately mirror and reference this trope.

However, I refer to my previous points: nothing can justify the actions of the Israeli government. And there are women who have been assaulted, which I don’t think people itt dispute. I just don’t get the degree of constant fascination with this; because there have been so many lies by the Israeli government that have fallen apart. Israeli women still suffered, and it really makes me very uncomfortable that some seem incapable of threading the needle of the truth of what happened and the fact that women are and were suffering. They’re not the majority victims of this conflict, but they don’t have to be for their suffering to be meaningful, and it’s completely unnecessary to repeat the kind of talking points you see on the internet everywhere regarding discussion of rape.

otm

The Israeli army burning down the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, one of the largest in the area. Healthcare has been completely destroyed in Gaza in order to maximise Palestinian deaths. War of elimination. pic.twitter.com/4CzobecOSE

— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) June 15, 2024

In a Single Hour, Israeli Snipers Killed Seven Bystanders at the Jenin Refugee Camp (Haaretz article): https://archive.ph/rHAkE

Jenin has endured plenty of rough days lately, but May 21 outdid them all. In the course of one hour in the morning, snipers killed seven of the city's residents, all of them innocent passersby, even though the streets were quiet and the soldiers had no cause to open fire. They shot from high up in two buildings, called Rabia and A-Rein, just outside the camp, and the dead included two teenagers and the director of the surgical ward at the Jenin Governmental Hospital, who was just getting out of his car in the hospital's parking lot.

It’s like a horror movie that just keeps going.

https://archive.is/6ZFjn

It’s like a horror movie that just keeps going.

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Saturday, June 15, 2024 12:13 PM (one hour ago)

otm. adding to that feeling (for this useless spectator) is how the continual crackdown on recognizing this as a genocide is simultaneous with Israeli soldiers posting enthusiastically about how they're committing genocide: https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-israel-genocide-soldier-rhetoric-instagram

It's so obvious the Israeli army is deliberately killing leaders, professionals, and intellectuals, like a slow motion Katyn Forest massacre.

some more unapologetic genocide confessing: https://www.commondreams.org/news/moshe-feiglin-hitler

Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."

Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel's next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel's Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.

"We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it..." Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."

that said I would invite Feiglin to think about how that worked out for Hitler

That quote is actually shocking even in a continually shocking situation

tbf, I don't know how much political clout Feiglin has other than just being known for saying outrageous things. He served in Knesset for only two years, his weird libertarian party is defunct, and he is not currently in government in any capacity afaik.

yeah I was just about to post that I don't know anything about this guy or Zehut

Tom Friedman as voice of reason? (Gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/18/opinion/netanyahu-gaza-congress.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0k0.Nm7B.u4H9kaDFZc--&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

From the Haaretz email yesterday --

In the coming weeks, the IDF is expected to present its achievements since the beginning of the war in Gaza in an attempt to convince the public that it has succeeded in defeating Hamas' military wing. The IDF said that two of the four battalions of the Rafah Brigade have been defeated, and that the other two are nearing defeat in the coming weeks.

x-post - Friedman's thoughts on rebuilding Gaza after a ceasefire make one go hmmmm

And to Israelis who would ask, “Friedman, are you crazy, you would let Sinwar run Gaza again?” my answer would again be — yes, for now. The alternatives — Israel running Gaza or Gaza becoming another Somalia — are far worse. Netanyahu’s idea that some perfect Palestinians — who are neither members of Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority — will run the place for Israel is a fantasy.

The only people who can defeat Hamas are the Palestinians of Gaza. They, too, need better leadership, and if they find it, we should help them rebuild. But until then, Israel would be crazy to want to stay in Gaza and be responsible for its reconstruction. That honor should go to Sinwar.

Eminently fair to call Israel a rogue state at this point:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/20/idf-transfers-powers-in-occupied-west-bank-to-pro-settler-civil-servants

The Israeli military has quietly handed over significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for the far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich.

An order posted by the Israel Defense Forces on its website on 29 May transfers responsibility for dozens of bylaws at the Civil Administration – the Israeli body governing in the West Bank – from the military to officials led by Smotrich at the defence ministry.

Smotrich and his allies have long seen control of the Civil Administration, or significant parts of it, as a means of extending Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. Their ultimate goal is direct control by central government and its ministries. The transfer reduces the likelihood of legal checks on settlement expansion and development.

​Israeli politicians have long sought to​ find ways to permanently seize, or annex, the occupied West Bank​, which it captured in 1967 and where millions of Palestinians live.

and then there's this: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/politics/us-concerns-israel-iron-dome-hezbollah

Translation: “we need air support please k thx bye”