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

As requested. WmC do you want to close the other thread?

Yair Wallach, who is an Israeli academic at SOAS very much not sympathetic to Likud/Bibi, is a good source on twitter atm, but like all the content out there atm, proceed at your own risk.

He retweeted this video of a young woman from one of the kibbutzes (kibbutzim?) that was attacked earlier:

By far the most powerful Israeli response I have seen.

This 19 year old girl survived the horrific massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri.

This is her message to her fellow Israelis and to the world.

Watch the whole thing.pic.twitter.com/qSPKZX4pzg

— Benzi Sanders (@BenzionSanders) October 14, 2023

Thanks, gyac.

Chotiner and Sari Bashi, the program director at Human Rights Watch:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-humanitarian-catastrophe-in-gaza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W43C8xhh5E

Sam & Emma interviewing Omar Shakir, Israel & Palestine Director at HRW this morning

looks like David Dayen in there too

Yes, but trying to ask a question of the guest when Sam is in interview mode is a tall order

Why is our political class so invested in suppressing criticism of the apartheid regime? The answer is obvious. Western states support Israel in order to maintain their power at a crucial crossroads of world trade. Challenging that power is impermissible, because any attempt to hold Israel accountable for its crimes is – by definition – an attempt to hold our own states accountable for their involvement in them. Not only are our rulers prepared to let Israel level Gaza; they will even provide it with diplomatic cover and military supplies.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/impending-genocide

As noted, I know numerous IRL people with Israeli flag avatars saying that they stand with Israel no matter what.

Plus I know IlXorz and others who almost uniformly condemn Israel as a brutal apartheid state that continues to use "but the Holocaust" as a laminated carte blanche for every atrocity the IDF wishes to commit. (There is a bit of a strawman in there but that's another topic for another time.)

I have met exactly zero people in between. I know it is not about me and/or my feelz. And I don't love "both sides"ing US politics either. The discourse is polarized and will remain so.

Absolutely no-one has talked about this situation at work, there's been no conversation about it at all, maybe people don't talk about it at work in the US either I don't know.

No offence Tom but that was a post I was hoping could be left behind in the old thread

xp, thank you for that gyac, incredibly moving. I also recommend the NYTimes Daily from today on the situation on the ground in gaza from the perspective of people caught in it, difficult listening:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/podcasts/the-daily/gaza-israel.html

(the ep labeled "Voices from Gaza")

I’m just going to say that I am not in-between on this issue, but that should be obvious by now.

xp I know people are all about bearing witness but I find this stuff incredibly upsetting.

I don’t think it was mentioned but Humza Yousuf who is Scotland’s first minister has family trapped in Gaza. I am linking this video as I find this content extremely upsetting.

Bernard's mother and family went out of their way to tell me that they would be praying for my family in Gaza. We hugged, we cried, and we promised to re-dedicate ourselves to peace and to be unequivocal; no innocent man, woman, or child should pay the price of another's actions. https://t.co/Vv1fz9gXqJ

— Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) October 13, 2023

Also, for context on the Kibbutz Be'eri post and those less familiar with the situation of the past 15-20 years (and again disclaimer I am hardly an expert myself): from Ariel Sharon onward, Israeli policy has been increasingly tilted toward a phony sort of "disengagement." In my mind, it traces back to the building of the West Bank wall although that could be simplistic take. But Netanyahu has turbo-charged this idea, basically that Israel could just kind of ignore the territories (at least other than soldiers stationed in the West Bank) rather than engage in any more ongoing negotiations, that the West Bank could continue to develop economically even without full agency or freedom, and that Gaza would be the kind of counterexample (i.e. life would be worse than in the West Bank) as long as Hamas was there. That terrorism could simply be prevented or minimized through "security," the settlements in the West Bank could continue quietly, and most Israelis would just live their lives and not worry.

Netanyahu is also notoriously corrupt and venal, and he has maintained power through a coalition with right-wing settler and religious parties, giving both more power (which also angers the more secular wings of Israeli politics as Israel gradually takes on additional trappings of theocracy, though it is hardly a full theocracy).

Netanyahu also favors his voters. The kibbutzes near Gaza tend actually to be center-liberal to left. They are not Netanyahu voters. There is a strong sense that Netanyahu "neglected" these areas as the girl expressed in her video, and that is also reflected in the sense that he neglected security near the Gaza border. I genuinely do not know whether Netanyahu "allowed" the attack but I seriously doubt it for reasons I stated in the prior thread. I think this was more hubris and stupidity and myopia.

"I don’t think it was mentioned but Humza Yousuf who is Scotland’s first minister has family trapped in Gaza. I am linking this video as I find this content extremely upsetting."

Mentioned this in the last Israel thread.

You can count on one hand the number of European leaders who have talked about Palestinians as human beings

And they’re all backpedaling now given protests and public pushback.

The President of the University of Pennsylvania has released her 3rd or 4th public statement apologizing for letting a Palestinian writers conference take place last month

The President of the University of Pennsylvania has released her 3rd or 4th public statement apologizing for letting a Palestinian writers conference take place last month

people are so fucking gross

Public statements issued by university presidents are generally tailored to a narrow and specific segment of the public, mainly anyone with influence over university revenues or endowments. They are paid to know how to read that room.

Aimless, we know. No offense.

Well, yeah. When you've got Dick Wolf threatening your donations because you let Palestinians into a building named after him...

a name like Dick Wolf must never be besmirched

Always guarantee the BBC will always be fucked.

The BBC admits that it misled the public about pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the UK. pic.twitter.com/oi4nVf5DN7

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) October 16, 2023

i think about this poem by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish all the time pic.twitter.com/jv5WOOjobb

— هستی hasti (@youarehasti) October 16, 2023

xp - That retraction was also poorly phrased and could be misleading.

This is @GhassanAbuSitt1, a surgeon who is currently saving the lives of Palestinians in a hospital in Gaza. He's just reported that counter terrorism police have showed up at his house in the UK and harrased his family.pic.twitter.com/GOvl5aQLHG https://t.co/bugmmZPAMM

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 16, 2023

That retraction was also poorly phrased and could be misleading.

glad i'm not the only one who thought this

OTM

I know this is old news, but it still blows my mind that the range of Acceptable Opinions on Israel is narrower in the West than it is in Israel.

That Darwish poem is great. Notable that Armenians were just cleansed from Artsakh by Azerbaijan and absolutely no-one in the west cared.

Yup. Armenia could be invaded in the next few weeks btw.

xxp two words: Social Media.

Nuanced discussions are often lacking in the echo chambers of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. The only place where I've seen nuanced discussions about the topic are on platforms that favor more nuanced discussion, such as ILX and (yes, believe it or not) Reddit.

I do wonder if the "outrage economy" of clickbait extremism online and the 24 hours news cycle will finally hit a limit of societal acceptability in western democracies, but I'm not holding my breath, they still make $$$

"We called a pro-palestinian march pro-Hamas. We accept that this was a thing that we said". WTF.

Now here's the weather.

True, I understand in theory how misinformation supposedly works. But I'm finding it extremely challenging to trust some of the news sources being cited and finding myself turning to reddit, and other news sources that I don't normally consult trying to see what areas of dispute exist over even just the factual reporting.

xp

Interestingly enough, a private forum I participate in is completely avoiding talking about this, and honestly it might be for the best.

The ukpolitics sub is overall fanatically pro-occupation and pro-genocide, and they are gradually losing their shit as they observe the public becoming turned off by this stance. Also they are usually witheringly critical of the Tories but have suddenly become staunchly supportive of Sunak and Braverman.

Are you taking about Reddit or something

I have met exactly zero people in between.

To the extent I've talked to people about this, almost everybody I know IRL is "in between" the two positions you describe.

Reddit is a paragon of “nuanced discussion” now. We are truly fucked.

Actually was just thinking about this specific issue in non-Reddit terms which still definitely apply to Reddit. How this conflict is a godsend for the extreme right (and whatever apologists they may have claiming to be “leftist”). Because it so thoroughly divides actual leftists from liberals steeped in realpolitik or whatever they’re on.

a name like Dick Wolf must never be besmirched

There's nothing decent to besmirch. The Law & Order "franchise" is a formulaic, sensationalist pile of shit. All 1,316 episodes of it.

Also pretty depressing how my social media feed was blissfully Ben Shapiro-free until various people decided his thick-headed, one-dimensional take on the Middle East was the voice of reason this past week.

xxp two words: Social Media.

Nuanced discussions are often lacking in the echo chambers of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. The only place where I've seen nuanced discussions about the topic are on platforms that favor more nuanced discussion, such as 4chan and (yes, believe it or not) Stormfront.

We get it. You don't like Reddit.

I don’t like social media illiterates upholding a literal right wing extremist-captured disinformation service as their go-to for balanced discussion.

lol what

Lol hey i wasnt even posting here viborg

Yes, the famously extremist platform, reddit

Extremely milquetoast maybe

american methodist clergy harrassed at the border

https://www.umnews.org/en/news/united-methodists-denied-entry-to-israel

Gadi Eisenkot, the former Israeli military chief of staff now leading in polls to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu in the October 27 election, declared on Saturday there will be no Palestinian state under a government he forms. “There is no Palestinian state, and in the government we will form, no Palestinian state will arise,” he wrote on X.

A recent New Yorker profile by editor David Remnick cast him as the “anti-Bibi” in “manner and character,” a humble soldier fighting for a “Jewish, democratic, progressive, and liberal state.”

So, a fascist

Yeah, but he makes the planes bombs on time.

this was likely the plan all along

Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime.

Israel Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration” during a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He said the Israeli government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”.

Trump discussed a US takeover of the Gaza Strip in early 2025 that would have involved removing Palestinians from the territory, but has since pulled back from the idea. A 20-point peace plan the White House drew up last year did not call for Palestinians’ deportation, an act that would be widely seen as ethnic cleansing.

would widely be seen as

"migration", that's one way to put it huh

as is "no real solution in the end"

one always looks for solutions that aren't temporary, or to put it another way, final solutions

I read this article a few days ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/world/middleeast/west-bank-israel.html

Israeli retired generals going on west bank tours and being shocked by settler violence.

Some of the retired officials contend that the campaign against Palestinians in the West Bank is reminiscent of Nazism — an extraordinarily contentious assertion, especially in Israel, where many Jews found sanctuary after their families were eradicated in Europe.

Moshe Ya’alon, the former army chief of staff who served as defense minister under Mr. Netanyahu until 2016, recently likened the ideology of extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank to that of World War II Germany.

“What is Jewish supremacy?” Mr. Ya’alon, long considered a security hawk, recently said on Ynet, an Israeli news site. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, ‘Mein Kampf’ in reverse. The master race is us.”

Ya'alon's own record is full of genocidal and dehumanizing language about Palestinians. I wonder if people like this are capable of seeing their own role in creating today's Israel.

it’s cool though that here we have the freedom to enthusiastically support it, or mournfully support it

fucking monsters

Far-right Israeli minister outlines plan for removal of all Palestinians from Gaza
Itamar Ben-Gvir claims proposal for illegal forced displacement of 2 million people is ‘realistic’ and ‘concrete’

interesting that this is coming out now

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was directly warned by the president of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a major offensive just days before the militant group led an attack on Oct. 7, 2023 , according to an Israeli newspaper.

U.A.E. President Mohammed bin Zayed spoke with Netanyahu 10 days before the attack and said Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza at the time, was planning an operation, the Haaretz daily said.

Bin Zayed said it would lead to bloodshed and could destabilize the region and undermine the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority nations, the newspaper reported.

But Netanyahu "reacted with relative calm," according to Haaretz, which said he assured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any scenario and a possible attack was more likely to come from the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu still trying to deny this and even threatening a defamation action against Haaretz

I have to think Haaretz would have their story nailed down solid before they printed that. Netanyahu's defamation threat is purely for show, a futile sandbag thrown into the breach.

From a Haaretz editorial about the film Naza today.

https://i.ibb.co/tp2XcdFS/HSLV-Lxa8-AArtvj.jpg

Is the editorial about the threat to strip the filmmakers of citizenship?

this is grim:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/14/animated-map-shows-spread-of-illegal-israeli-settlements-across-palestine

Looks like a pox.

It isn't about the citizenship threat, no.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-09-14/ty-article-opinion/.premium/watching-naza-shocked-me-so-did-what-its-creators-left-out/000001a0-9eac-df9d-a9aa-beecf9960000?taid=6aa7b4266a20e500010346a4

yikes

but he's right really, if I'm not reminded of Hamas's role in these events on a daily basis I forget it instantly and suddenly the mass slaughter of children starts to trouble me

It's kind of a joy-kill.

both sides now

On Tuesday, Sheeran responded with a lengthy Instagram post captioned: “It’s important that I set out some facts.”

“I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine,” he wrote in the first of several bullet-point statements. “The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy. There are too many wars across the world causing immeasurable pain, none of which should be tolerated.”

on one hand there's an ongoing genocide - on the other hand there's the financial wellbeing of ed sheeran and his financers

that fact that he characterizes it as an ongoing 'conflict'.. is Hamas even fighting anymore? Hezbollah still flinging rockets but that's not Palestine

hardly the point, the point is to always say “it’s complicated” and then throw pocket sand in your interlocutor’s eyes like Dale Gribble

Well his band and all of the openers for his tour have quit, so kind of hard to tell whether he has a tour or not anymore. Maybe he should have tried having a fucking backbone instead of being a spineless genocide apologist

It's a lot to ask a non-sentient muppet like Ed Sheeran to have ethics/morals.

Guys there are too many wars. We're not sure what the optimal number is, but this is definitely too many.

Sheeran has expressed support for Ukraine, so the whole "I don't pick sides, war is bad period" stance is bullshit anyway. He just doesn't pick sides when it could affect his finances.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/16/building-gaza-city-damaged-israeli-strikes-collapses-killed

It's gotten a lot harder to get a sense of life on the ground in Gaza from afar

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/16/threats-against-israeli-directors-gaza-documentary-naza?fbclid=IwZnRzaAUYSS1wZG9mBWZkaWQWUOnh4VDUgW9Zw6FVzo7g9VV7xVvN4WV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR4KWMNoUC0FY0LPxwBpCVk1P8hFkdHFgRGnnyk5MzLtytDB4uLW3sllb2F2rA_aem_-5DktoU2NM7uEsOEbLVDfA

Threats against directors of Naza documentary

Threats are coming from Israeli citizens and Netanyahu and other Israeli government officials

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he would seek new laws allowing Israel to strip citizenship from people who “smear” Israeli soldiers, escalating the campaign against the Oscar-winning film-makers behind the Gaza documentary NAZA, who have faced threats from senior government and military officials and groups of far-right Israelis gathering outside their families’ homes.

those people are going to be killed before too long and then blamed for their own deaths

much like everything else israel does

Israeli committee bars leading Arab party from next month’s election https://t.co/qgQxHHjwAg

— Financial Times (@FT) September 23, 2026

They will take this to the courts (and may not win there)

can't get past the FT paywall, this article has more detail:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/election-panel-votes-to-bar-balad-chief-abu-shehadeh-over-alleged-support-for-terror/

they expect the court to allow the two Arab parties to run but to disallow one politician. and they will allow Netanyahu's coalition allies who explicitly and repeatedly call for genocide to participate.

The CEC accepted both grounds cited in the petition to ban Abou Shahadeh from running: supporting armed struggle by an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel, and negating Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state.

Sohlberg took part in the vote — the first time in decades that a committee chairman has done so — saying Abou Shahadeh had failed to adequately answer allegations that he expressed support for Hamas’s armed struggle against Israel in an article he published a day after the October 7, 2023, massacre.

The decision stands out among the numerous disqualification petitions before the CEC this week for the unusually broad political and legal support behind it, potentially setting up a less predictable Supreme Court review than is typical for such decisions.

The petition, filed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, centered on an Arabic-language article Abou Shahadeh published on October 8, 2023, in which he described the assault a day earlier as “an important historic event militarily, politically and strategically” and wrote that others could learn from Hamas’s success in surprising Israel.

All opposition parties — Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, Yair Golan’s Democrats, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White — backed the petition.

The petition is the only challenge before the committee this week to receive the backing of Baharav-Miara, who penned an opinion Tuesday supporting Abou Shahadeh’s disqualification while concluding that the other petitions lacked sufficient grounds.

The backing of Sohlberg and Baharav-Miara raises the prospect that the Supreme Court may uphold the decision, despite its historically high threshold for disqualifying candidates and its repeated overturning of such decisions by the committee.

Abou Shahadeh, who denies supporting the attack or political violence, called his disqualification an attempt to “silence” him and Arab society’s political voice. “I have never called for violence or terrorism. I oppose armed struggle, and remain committed to political and civil struggle for peace, justice and equality,” he said.

“The attempt to disqualify me is an attempt to undermine the representation and political voice of Arab society,” added Abou Shahadeh, who leads the hardline Balad party and holds the No. 3 spot on the Joint List slate.

Adalah, whose general director Hassan Jabareen represented Abou Shahadeh, condemned the decision.

“The article contains no direct call for violence, nor any statements that could amount to grounds for disqualification,” Jabareen said, arguing that the attorney general had relied in part on what Abou Shahadeh did not write — an explicit condemnation of the October 7 attack — as evidence against him.

He also accused the attorney general of applying a higher standard to Abou Shahadeh than to far-right candidates whom she opposed disqualifying, including overlooking those “who incited the gravest crimes against Palestinians,” specifically citing Ben Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization, and Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich.

Among other things, Ben Gvir said in August that Israel should kill “30 to 40” people in Gaza every night, including individuals who posed no immediate threat, saying some were “not worthy of life” and “not even people,” while Smotrich said last year that Gaza would be “totally destroyed,” previously called for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be “wiped out,” and said in 2024 that causing two million Gazan civilians to die of hunger unless the hostages were returned “might be justified and moral.”

Netanyahu speech to a UN hall where 77 delegations left was angry and full of lies and gross boasts

Netanyahu rejected allegations of genocide, saying "Israel prevented genocide" rather than committed it. "What genocidal regime gives a million polio vaccinations to the enemy's population?" he asked. Israel has not provided Palestinians with vaccines but has allowed international aid groups to conduct vaccination campaigns in Gaza. A few factchecks from Haaretz below and that’s barely touching the surface

The Israeli premier also downplayed settler violence, claiming that "maybe two or three" Palestinians are killed by settlers each year and reiterating his assertion that only around 150 "juvenile delinquents" are behind the violence. According to UN data, 26 Palestinians have been killed in such attacks since the beginning of the year

That is just a small part of a Haaretz article. Obviously others and even that article have even more items to address or did address

only around 150 "juvenile delinquents" are behind the violence

while IDF troops stand chuckling on the sidelines

putting two and two together, Netayahu thinks that murdering Palestinians amounts to juvenile delinquency

whoa

JERUSALEM, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The co-pilot of a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv is believed to have stabbed the captain in a possible attempted “terror attack” on Wednesday, forcing the plane to divert to Saudi Arabia where it landed safely, three Israeli officials said.

They said the cabin crew entered the cockpit and took control of flydubai flight FZ1073 from the United Arab Emirates to Israel, which diverted to Saudi Arabia as it flew over Jordanian airspace. One of the officials identified the attacker as an Omani national.

could also have been interpersonal

Israel did 09/30

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/18/guardian-reporter-filmed-masked-militants-seconds-before-west-bank-attack-on-french-mayor

https://apnews.com/article/israel-elections-extreme-speech-politicians-palestinians-d295dbceb6594a7315832a885f31c572

brief round-up of genocidal speech from Israeli politicians during the election. pretty banal if you've been following, but it is rare to see this presented so starkly

thought this update would be about Brad Lander getting detained:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/us-congressional-candidate-brad-lander-freed-after-west-bank-detention

read a sad article yesterday about the right-wing shift among younger voters in israel... a generational shift that does not bode well for the future. (Maybe the only place in the world where this is happening? outside of Louisiana or whatever)

the beliefs of young Israelis are extremely disturbing, but I think there have been many right-wing shifts among young voters around the world

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-election-may-change-its-leader-not-iran-war-policy-2026-10-21/

No matter who’s running Israel they will still be focused on the same approach basically with Palestinians, West Bank, Iran , and Lebanon