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

i know this is dumb and unhelpful, but to illustrate the kinds of things i’m seeing regular jewish folks share these days: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyZO9L8sM01/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

That’s depressing

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.

I have also been finding the discourse polarized online - less so in person - but I think the first position you gave is actually an in-between position. I think the two poles of the discourse are actually "I stand with Israel no matter what", versus "Israel should not exist, and any conversation about Israel needs to go back to the fundamental problem of it existing in the first place."

My position is that Israel is not, at this point, fundamentally different from the US or Canada or Australia or any other country that was created by settling already occupied land. It should not have been created, but now that it exists, we aren't going to wind time backwards and expel the Jews from Israel any more than we're going to expel white people from the US. I do agree that it's a brutal apartheid state that uses the Holocaust as an excuse to commit atrocities. But I would like to be able to have conversations on the left about what to do about this that don't start from the implicit premise that Jews should just clear out, as if Jewish settlement is somehow different and more reversible than the Christian settlement our entire country is built on.

While I'm at it, I would absolutely love to be able to jump into discussions about Israel and Palestine that are not filled with coded and not-so-coded antisemitism from people I fundamentally agree with. I would like it if people didn't have to dismiss the Israeli victims in order to show sympathy for the Palestinian victims, or the other way around. It would also be very nice if the New York Times didn't publish bullshit articles about how Jews in New York have put aside their political differences to come together in their shared grief for Israel, as if to confirm every anti-Semite's conviction that when the chips are down all Jews are Zionists at heart. I would like to stop reading about the Hamas attacks as "pogroms" and "the biggest attacks on Jews since the Holocaust," like, no, dude, Israel is a country, you can't frame attacks on your country as an attack on The Jews. It's a horrific mass murder but it's not a pogrom.

Maybe none of this makes any sense. I don't really feel I know enough about any of this, and maybe I've gotten it all wrong. But it's been a hard week. I don't mean to ask for special sympathy for myself as a Jew, because many people are suffering more here, but do please consider that your Jewish posters are under a lot of stress. Some of us (not me, but people I know) have friends and family in Israel, so we may be dealing with worry for them, or with having family members whose political opinions we find abhorrent, or both. We're having to navigate liberal spaces where the justified anti-Israel sentiment gets mixed in with a lot of stray antisemitism. I know I feel a lot more visible as a minority right now than I'm used to being in the US. And for people like me, who are descended from Holocaust survivors, there's also a particularly helpless horror and grief at seeing Israel do things to the Palestinians that were done to us in the Holocaust. I've never felt any sense of identification with Israel, I don't rationally think that being Jewish connects me to the Israelis, and yet the idea of Jews being the ones to create the ghettos and the death marches is viscerally appalling to me and I can't help feeling an irrational sense of guilt and responsibility. But at the same time I don't want the Holocaust and its after-effects minimized. I think there's a willingness to forget that Israel was founded by people who were terrified and traumatized to an extraordinary level, and much as I oppose Israel and its actions, that's something I can't mentally take out of the empathy equation because it's a trauma that's also embedded in my family.

Sorry about the long post, which kind of went all over the place. I just wanted to convey that I feel like I'm being pulled in a million emotional directions at once even if my politics are pretty aligned with ilx, and that this is likely the case for a lot of Jewish people you know. So just keep this in mind, folks, if you find yourself putting pressure on Jews you know to say the right thing in the right way.

<3

<3

appreciate the post, lily

Yeah great post Lily.

But I would like to be able to have conversations on the left about what to do about this that don't start from the implicit premise that Jews should just clear out, as if Jewish settlement is somehow different and more reversible than the Christian settlement our entire country is built on.

the serious position i encounter most commonly on the left (and support myself) is for a one-state solution - a single, secular democratic state, with civil rights for all, right of return for palestinian refugees and some form of reparations. a two-state solution may be nice in theory but most on the left would tend to agree it's a dead prospect these days - israel has done everything it can with the settlements to make it logistically impossible, and the prospect of a lasting peace from it seems like it would be even less likely. "jews should just clear out" is just more ethnic cleansing, it is not a serious or just position.

That’s an amazing post Lily, thank you for posting.

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.

i think viborg was just calling reddit a nazi site in a particularly oblique way there but i wouldn't blame anyone for taking it at face value

Oh wait, it was a parody. Ignore that. Sorry viborg.

Lily Dale, I understand your point of view and you don’t have to apologise for it, or for having complicated feelings, or anything. I don’t think anyone should be asking anything of their Jewish friends about Israel anyway, like you have to prove your views are the right ones. I would very much like to hope that this is widely understood but I know that it isn’t.

In any case, the situation you describe where people may have family over there is complicated and people are being really short sighted and tbh dismissive when saying it’s happening “over there”. The relationship with the diaspora is pretty unique in many ways, which you’ve mentioned. I don’t have to think that anything Bibi’s government does or did is justified or right to feel sorrow for the hostages or the victims of the massacres, some of whom were literal Holocaust survivors.

xp yeah that’s my fault I’m not very awake

Lily, that was an amazing post. It resonates with me because (in the words of a progressive friend with hawkish family members) ‘your Jewish friends are not OK right now’ and I’m trying to make sure I say that I love them and acknowledge their feelings, whatever I may think about the actions of our/their elected officials, lobby groups and militaries. Same goes for friends who have connections to Palestinians (and those who advocate for them).

I’m really valuing ILX right now as a place where we can discuss the current situation with the candour, respect and seriousness it requires.

xp i didn't even notice it was a parody actually lol

good posts Lily, gyac and suzy

xp it's not very good parody, that's why

Wow, Reddit is not a nazi site, and comparing it to a few is abhorrently combative and reductive. Reddit, like fewer and fewer places online, has a variety of views and communities, but honestly even reading some of the threads posted in subs as large as /r/worldnews have been enlightening, empathetic, and nuanced in ways I haven't seen in places like Instagram and especially X, the latter being much closer to an actual nazi site these days.

I'm also Jewish, and battling complicated feelings about this as well (excellent post, Lily! Thank you for sharing), though fortunately I don't have family in Israel. I've already come out and shared this background in the Noname thread when I was confronted with the reality that one of my favorite rappers allowed some blatantly antisemitic raps on her new record. I also support a secular, one state solution as ufo describes above. I am really not looking forward to the heightened Islamophobia and antisemitism that will inevitably surge from all of this. The general upward trend of hate coupled with these events of the last two weeks have me feeling very concerned for a lot of people, both near and far.

xp ok I was wrong, we didn't get it.

Good post octobeard.

Yes I found that too re: reddit. There are people posting from Gaza and Israel in the r/worldnews daily megathreads.

Drawing comparisons between things that are not Nazis and actual Nazis violates the rules of several subreddits, including, I believe, the one devoted to discussing the Israel-Palestine situation.

One could say such comparisons demonstrates a refusal to engage in the actual conversation being had while also stoking the anger, prejudice, hatred, and vengeful thinking, behind the actions causing the cycle of violence and retribution in the first place. If people doing this are also willing to engage in the actual conversations being had, then it shouldn't matter, but sadly I find this is often not the case.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/17/spain-rejects-israeli-claims-of-its-officials-aligning-with-hamas

Just wanting to point out that Palestinians and others who have been subject to unjust and international war on their homelands are also feeling pretty traumatized at the moment.

What Lily Dale’s post speaks to is what a Jewish friend wrote a few days ago about what’s going on, and that is that despite the mentions of the Shoah, the overwhelming majority of Israeli and mainstream Jewish reaction to these events speaks to a complete and utter lack of connection with Jewish ancestors, who were a diasporic, hated, and perpetually exiled people. This is the pain and history that comes before the Shoah, and which the Israeli state is now enforcing on another group of people. To what end?

Thanks Lily. I've shared your post with my wife whose views and conflicts sound very similar to yours. She's Jewish and trying to navigate being pushed and pulled by people around her, talking with our kids about it who are getting views pushed on them by our temple, and her best friend who is coming down more pro-Israel than her.

Just wanting to point out that Palestinians and others who have been subject to unjust and international war on their homelands are also feeling pretty traumatized at the moment.

xposts

Yes, Lily, many thanks for that terrific post, I'm Jewish and it really helped me clarify my thoughts (it didn't go "all over the place" at all!). Literally everything you said resonates with me.

Not everyone seems to understand, which is why I posted it.

If you mean specific people itt, then by all means quote them. Otherwise it comes across like you’re taking issue with Lily’s post and replies to it.

I’d also point out that discussion not taking place on this thread doesn’t mean they’re not happening.

Thanks for your post, Lily.

I think my post was pretty clear, and wasn’t meant to denigrate Lily’s post. Not sure why I need to clarify for your sake only, since it seems what you’re looking for is a fight.

FWIW (and with respect!) I don't like that "mainstream Jewish reaction", feels reductive to me, a mainstream Jew who doesn't think that way

Got it— I could have been more specific, in that what I meant was “the reaction of Jewish people as portrayed in the mainstream press.” Apologies for that.

That this reductive portrayal in the mainstream media speaks to what Lily and others have been saying— that these narratives are harmful and
antisemitic— is pretty clear! Obviously, I’m not trying to parrot them, as both irl and on here, I have many many Jewish friends who are against the occupation and ongoing state violence.

Right now, in Gaza, the situation is horrific and catastrophic.
Those hospitals and clinics that have not been evacuated are overwhelmed and are barely functioning. No electricity, no medical supplies. Surgeons in Al-Shifa hospital are now operating without painkillers.

— Christos Christou (@DrChristou) October 16, 2023

the serious position i encounter most commonly on the left (and support myself) is for a one-state solution - a single, secular democratic state, with civil rights for all, right of return for palestinian refugees and some form of reparations. a two-state solution may be nice in theory but most on the left would tend to agree it's a dead prospect these days - israel has done everything it can with the settlements to make it logistically impossible, and the prospect of a lasting peace from it seems like it would be even less likely. "jews should just clear out" is just more ethnic cleansing, it is not a serious or just position.

― ufo, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Yes. This seems to tie a little bit with the Land back movement which goes on with the odd, small success.

I think the question is working it through to a one state solution and what to do with people who aren't prepared to accept it. People who think it was theirs all along.

In the meantime more displacement, and right this minute, is the order of the day.

This has got to be stopped.

settlers and the idf have killed 55 palestinians in the west bank and wounded 1100 since saturday. https://t.co/FBNOx9nhTi

— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) October 17, 2023

By the standards of how much support Israel usually polls at this is a total public relations collapse. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen them with minority support in polling before. https://t.co/rVsWkq3C1p

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) October 17, 2023

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

Following up on this: UPenn's Palestinian students staged a walkout yesterday and held a 7 hour demonstration on campus.

Ben Gvir is such a goon. What he's doing is both murderous and idiotic.

“I’m Israeli Jewish, American as well. My partner is Palestinian. And I can do things that he can’t do.”@saribashi describes how Israel’s apartheid system affects everyday life in Israel and Palestine. pic.twitter.com/WevhmhMofJ

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 17, 2023

Obviously, I’m not trying to parrot them, as both irl and on here, I have many many Jewish friends who are against the occupation and ongoing state violence.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, October 17, 2023 5:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

Eh... this may seem a petty point to pick up in this moment, but this is not obvious at all. Can we please get away from the idea that having Jewish friends somehow insulates a person from (intentionally or unintentionally) broadcasting harmful antisemitic ideas or tropes? I assure you that both things can be true at once.

I know you don’t like me, felicity, but perhaps you could not try to smear me at any chance you get.

BREAKING: Reports now of a massive massacre in Gaza after an Israeli strike hits a hospital in Gaza where hundreds were sheltered. Initial reports fear the worst.

— Yousef Munayyer (@YousefMunayyer) October 17, 2023

god this is so awful :(

would like to mention that i was on a small group zoom the other morning with some Israeli families who are understandably shaken up by all the events, all of whom were (surprising to me) sympathetic to Palestinians (while also understandably not feeling very generous towards Hamas), so there is some nuance in the feelings over there. I don't doubt all of those we spoke to want peace, they were not expressing hate or anger or feelings of vengeance, they were just expressing fear and sadness. and much like us in the United States when our country goes off on military adventures/interventions/insertions/overthrows, we're not all the same opinion.

More children have been killed in Gaza than Ukraine. One child every 15 minutes.

tabes, I think posters are responding to you because this was your first post and you haven't ceded an inch:

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

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Monday, October 16, 2023 1:31 PM

Indeed. It would be nice to have a thread where people could be assumed to feel horror at horrific things. Banning VHS was a good first step, and generally given the horrific events unfolding this thread has been full of thoughtful and well considered posts for the most part. Knock it off.

table I don't dislike you. I don't even know you. As far as I know you've apologized to me at least twice. I do not want to escalate this again to the point where you get upset and then say sorry only to repeat the cycle in a few days, months or years.

A lot of people are upset. Can we make peace just between you and me?

Holy shit that hospital strike is fucking awful

We are seeing unconfirmed reports from Hamas that Israeli warplanes have struck the Baptist Hospital in central Gaza.

A health spokesman is quoted estimating that hundreds of people were killed.

immediate ceasefire based on this

i do like table, but I agree that statement was a little to close to 'some of my best friends are jewish' for my liking.

I don't have a lot of constructive thoughts to offer up wrt the current crisis, but I would respectfully ask that we don't go down the path of questioning how much of a connection this or that Jewish person has to their ancestors, their history, the diaspora, the holocaust, etc or how much the Israeli occupation is or isn't like the holocaust. There are plenty of ways to talk about this stuff without indulging in those lines of thinking.

Israeli air strikes have hit Al Ahli hospital in Gaza. More than 500 people - patients, doctors & those sheltering - have been killed.

What unspeakable horror. We will mourn their loss forever.

Our leaders could have spoken up for peace. They chose to cheer on war instead.…

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) October 17, 2023

BREAKING: the number of Palestinians killed in the hospital bombing have now risen to 1,000.

First aiders say they can’t find any injured survivors. Only burnt body parts. https://t.co/CLrV5XO5QX

— Marwa Fatafta مروة فطافطة (@marwasf) October 17, 2023

I gotta wonder at what point will the Israeli opposition parties deeply regret taking part in the current "national unity" government while Bibi is still running the whole show and doing shit like this?

Moodles, for what it’s worth, I was paraphrasing a friend in the post you mention, but obviously won’t continue down that line of thinking itt because it seems fraught.

Alfred and others, I believe that most people in Israel-Palestine, regardless of religion or ethnicity, want peace within their communities and also with those outside their communities. Hamas and the State of Israel’s violence make this peace impossible, and the occupation makes this peace impossible. It’s an awful situation.

I mostly post about Palestine and the plight of those in the occupied territories because what has been going on there is a horror, tho that horror certainly would never justify horrors of terrorism committed by Hamas or other organizations. Given the lopsided, racist, and antisemitic coverage given by western media outlets, I simply feel it’s necessary to continue supporting the plight of Palestinian people as fully as possible.

Those tweets are to say the number isn't certain just yet xxp

So what's the game here? Is Biden expected to rubber stamp this massacre tomorrow?

Israel claiming that the explosion was due to a failed hamas rocket launch

occam's razor makes mincemeat of that cover story

the hospital attack is difficult to even think about; this is also harrowing:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/17/fears-grow-people-are-dehydrating-to-death-in-gaza-as-clean-water-runs-out

xxp BBC is unambiguous that it was an Israeli strike

Al Ahli hospital is funded by the Anglican Church, and Richard Sewell, Dean of St George’s College – one of the church's top figures in Jerusalem – has posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the hospital in Gaza took “a direct hit from an Israeli missile”.

Just feel sick right now. Can't even really organize my thoughts.

Here we go:

One hour ago: we know nothing about the hospital being bombed
30 minutes ago: sounds like it was a misfired Hamas rocket
10 minutes ago: well we told them to evacuate https://t.co/ovP96WXXCW

— πατέρας raver (@mathaiaus) October 17, 2023

People in hospitals are often in no shape to evacuate, jfc

horrifying, disgusting, shameful

and this is less important, obviously, but it's fucking stupid too! how does proving that you are exactly what hamas says you are hurt their cause, exactly?

Israel have also bombed a school earlier today.

This is what it's leaders say:

this is the kind of shit you say after bombing a hospital full well knowing you're backed to the hilt by the US and britain: https://t.co/N18qhQ66bH pic.twitter.com/PcGGrPLicO

— pez (@periuspb) October 17, 2023

“this tweet has been deleted” hall of fame submission pic.twitter.com/2fWWE2LrW1

— canha girl (@thefouchoe) October 17, 2023

Israel is a killing machine.

Protests happening now across the West Bank. People are outraged at the bombing of the hospital in Gaza. A general strike and three days of mourning have already been announced.

— Yumna (@yumna_patel) October 17, 2023

And our biggest most beautiful aircraft carrier is there to oversee the slaughter.

Sarcasm feels ugly and wrong right now . My apologies

Abbas cancels tomorrow's meeting with Biden in protest over the hospital strike

And our biggest most beautiful aircraft carrier is there to oversee the slaughter.

Apparently one of my wife's cousins is stationed on that aircraft carrier...

levelling a hospital is up there with the vilest, most unforgivable of all war crimes. Whoever made this call should be should be put on trial, with death penalty on the the table.

I imagine there's a chance that this was an especially rogue fighter pilot who made an executive decision, perhaps one of personal vengeance... but I don't think their 'we warned them' shit is gonna fly this time

"They hide in hospitals"

Never forget our government gave the green light to these war crimes, and the opposition agreed. pic.twitter.com/XXPt8woKE7

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) October 17, 2023

Interesting piece about the notion of the civilian:
https://www.madamasr.com/en/2023/10/14/opinion/politics/to-say-and-think-a-life-beyond-what-settler-colonialism-has-made/

There, behind the green line, Israel has conducted the “conflict.” The more settler-military violence there is in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the more civilian normalcy there is in Israel, and the more the notion of civilian normalcy can be weaponized to justify more violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the purifying and normalizing operations of the green line did not always go unchallenged. Palestinians have always understood that the condition of possibility for this civilian normalcy, inside the green line, was the destruction of Palestinian existence on the land and the ban on their return to the land. Hence, there have always been breaches of the enclosure and operations to undo the frontier: what Palestinians call “return.”

Meanwhile, a Palestinian claim for civilian status or civilian normalcy has met many challenges. Palestinian society was destroyed in 1948. The territories occupied in 1967 have been purposefully fragmented, disconnected, and separated by settlements. There is no state form, standing military, depth of territory, or civilian posture. Instead, there are many refugee camps, dispossessed families, and subjects-in-struggle. Everything that could cultivate civilian normalcy is already targeted by the Israeli Occupation, from homes and schools to NGOs, cultural centers, and universities. When compared to the other side of the green line, life in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the containers of Israel’s violence against Palestinians, cannot manifest civilian normalcy.

But there is more. The civilian ethos, as a matter of liberal sensibility, requires innocence, political passivity, lack of movement, and fixity. In the eyes of the liberal, civilized West, the civilian must be pacified, passive, and blameless and must reject rebellion. The Palestinians, as refugees, as politically engaged resistant subjects, as subjects who look in the direction of the land from which they were expelled and aspire to move in its direction, and as persons who wish not to settle in an enclosure, do not pass the test of this ethos. Their just refusal of confinement, steadfast rejection of enclosure, and non-despairing hope to return to the land from which they were expelled violates this liberal ethos. Their dreams and aspirations render them, in the eyes of those who value civilian normalcy despite its heavy toll on others, obliterable. Therefore, no emotion can be allowed to arise in the face of their extermination. Quite to the contrary. In the name of civilian normalcy, the a-civilian must be obliterated.

Israel claiming that the explosion was due to a failed hamas rocket launch

Islamic Jihad rather than Hamas. I'm listening to Mark Regev on Sky claiming it's all Hamas propaganda but that you can't believe any casualty figures from Hamas anyway, how many of the dead were Hamas combatants etc.

Anyway, Sleepy Joe will be there tomorrow to make it all better.

xpost - and that "they hide in hospitals" line is absolutely working! I just had to unfollow a few longtime social media folks who's content I've typically enjoyed because of how enthusiastically they've repeated that stuff. just had two in the last twenty minutes parroting the, "Hamas routinely base their operations out of hospitals, so let's calm the outrage" shit.

I've got to say the Israeli PR effort on this whole conflict is not only offensive it's also absurd and completely inept - they've totally lost it. Hamas is ISIS, civilians died in Mosul to defeat ISIS but you didn't mind that (though of course Israel doesn't kill civilians anyway) Then the Nazis bombed the UK you bombed Dresden in return (though of course Israel wouldn't do anything like that) and nobody called that a war crime (er, yes they did). Etcetera.

We don't target children like our enemies, but this is a battle against the children of darkness

hamas soldiers could be lining the walls of the hospital, it would still be reprehensible

Islamic Jihad categorically denying involvement, so is IDF, according to MSNBC.

Shocker

(100% believe it was IDF)

At this point they know everyone will believe them when they say it wasn't them

At this point they know everyone will believe them shrug and say "Whaddya gonna do?" when they say it wasn't them

at this point they don't care that everybody knows it was them

You can’t square the circle of “It was a Hamas rocket” and “Israel warned them to evacuate the hospital”. The images that I’ve seen are appalling.

this is truly insane I mean you knew Israel was gonna get away with some shit but this might be one of the most evil acts I've ever seen in my life

The West and Russia both bombed hospitals in Syria with a similar lack of fucks.

Otm. It’s not unique by any means. How many hospitals, schools, and residential buildings were destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Or in the US-supported attacks on Yemen (over 100 health care facilities targeted)?

yea true I guess seeing the IDF gloating about it immediately while Israel is simultaneously denying it and blaming them for not evacuating, while at the same time publicly calling them subhuman is just truly ghoulish. idk this shit just sucks so much

Even if Hamas did hide in hospitals, how on earth would that be a justification to bomb a hospital? If a bunch of Hamas fighters were holed up in a hospital in Tel Aviv, somehow I don't think they'd bomb it.

Spontaneous gathering in the center of Brussels for Palestine pic.twitter.com/xzEq10y4OS

— فيروز (@Fayrouz_yousfi) October 17, 2023

The odds that any of the hostages are alive is pretty low, considering that Israel is just bombing the fuck out of Gaza. Weren't they once proud of stuff like the raid on Entebbe?

yea true I guess seeing the IDF gloating about it immediately while Israel is simultaneously denying it and blaming them for not evacuating, while at the same time publicly calling them subhuman is just truly ghoulish. idk this shit just sucks so much

totally. and the fact that it's happened before shouldn't diminish the shock.

Animals.

This is real. At first I didn’t believe it was because it’s so cartoonishly evil. But I’ve confirmed that it is real. https://t.co/pmAprHg4XM

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) October 17, 2023

This conflict is getting to me like nothing else, the video of the doctor holding up the dead baby just floored me.

Israeli officials edited this tweet to remove the video, which it implied was proof that the Gaza hospital was struck by Islamic terrorists, after it was pointed out that the footage was time-stamped at least 40 minutes after the strike took place. pic.twitter.com/d4a4rUvrhJ

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) October 17, 2023

More lies.

pentagon spokeswoman sabrina singh: “hamas is the one putting palestinians, those in gaza, at great risk. they are putting command and control units inside hospitals.” https://t.co/O9w8uqRmHq pic.twitter.com/8T8TzWHnCJ

— assistant inspector (@housetrotter) October 17, 2023

I have a feeling that those who are in any way defending this action are going to find themselves very solidly on the wrong side of history. I don't see how you spin this as anything but monstrous with anyone who hasn't already divested themselves of their basic humanity.

If you had stood resolutely with Israel, you can still change you mind. You can see the bombing of a hospital and realize you’ve been misled. I was taught Zionism my whole childhood, until I learned more and changed my mind. You do not need to condone unspeakable atrocities.

— Stop Cop City (@JoshuaPHilll) October 17, 2023

Really fucking vile

Brutal terror. The execution of defenseless civilians. Murdered infants, abducted children. Humiliated Holocaust survivors. It makes our blood run cold.

Israel has the right to defend itself against this. A state has a duty to protect its citizens. pic.twitter.com/TjQMcAkXQI

— Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz (@Bundeskanzler) October 17, 2023

I'm not sure of how the logistics work but I'm told this is a good place to donate:

https://support.anera.org/a/palestine-emergency

My friend shared this with me: http://bit.ly/StopGazaGenocide

If anybody wants to know what an actual level-headed mainstream media report on this should look like. It's physically possible. https://t.co/E3dAuhHoTs

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) October 17, 2023

For a couple of seconds my brain made me think Scholz was condemning the hospital bombing and I thought maybe Israel really had gone too far now.

Sky has been good and the BBC has been good too from what I’ve seen. Al-Jazeera is difficult for me because of how graphic their videos are but usually they are excellent.

I mentioned upthread but a lot of posts since then: Yair Wallach has been a good voice on the area for a while for me, though his timeline atm is sharing accounts of the devastation, so obvious caveats apply. He also translates sources in Hebrew and is extremely critical of the government. I will always check his timeline if I’m unsure on something.

xp ehhhhh one of those is definitely not true lol

Well now I’m watching the BBC and what was shocking on Al-J on Sunday is now run of the mill background “colour” footage on the BBC on Tuesday.

IDF military saying on TV now they will produce evidence that the hospital bomb was Islamic Jihad

Christian Fraser just abysmal helming rolling news - this IDF dude is handing him his own balls in front of an international audience

Let Fraser host a game show, wtf is he doing here

IDF military saying on TV now they will produce evidence that the hospital bomb was Islamic Jihad

Assuming they mean "produce" in the Hollywood sense.

Fraser now grovelling for praise from the Israeli military after this humiliation, really sickening

That’s not true, your dad fought a war with the Vietnamese and one with a tumor, and God didn’t let him win either of them. https://t.co/Lvf9kXtKYL

— Gayest Tone (@gayest_tone) October 16, 2023

That ^^^^ MSNBC footage echoes what I was thinking earlier today... Israel is fucking peppered with rocket attacks from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah for years now, and they seem to be at most inconvenience or causing minor damage... this one destroyed an entire hospital, and that, to me, is much more in line with a U.S. made fighter jet firing U.S. made munitions

I am a few hours too late but Lily Dale's post is a very good post

Alex Wagner gently guided Sen. Chris Murphy into paying tepid lip service to “minimizing” civilian casualties.

MSNBC: there to straighten your blood-stained tie.

The blast killing hundreds at a hospital in Gaza is deeply wrong. I grieve for each person lost. There’s no excuse for the deaths of people seeking care and those who treated them. International law is clear: Innocent civilians must be protected & have access to humanitarian aid.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 18, 2023

a blast is wrong

What was a blast doing there

Israel, the cops of the Middle East

stop it, blasts!

Many x posts: thanks to Tracer Hand and Neanderthal for those links. Very helpful.

Just catching up, but yes, absolutely great post by Lily Dale. My partner is teaching a class this school term with many students who are Jewish, and though I have never seen or met any of them, it's been conveyed to me how this has been traumatizing twice over for them for very similar reasons.

so wrong of your hand to just hit your sister like that

recently started playing this baseball game on my ipad, which is not something i normally do, but whatever. not gonna pay actual money, so i can view ads to earn gems to make my team better. generally these ads have been for other shitty games of varying complication/sexism . . . but now half of them are ISRAEL UNDER ATTACK

It does look like Warren is saying the equivalent of guns don't kill people the impact of bullets does. Taking the agency out of the person who fired on the building. Do hope I'm reading that wrong, would hope for better from her.
Atomistic thought like that doesn't help.
There was intentionality from someone in firing on the hospital.

It's weasely cop speak, an Israeli-involved bombing.

Israeli spokespeople using the term Hamas/ISIS reminds me of when Unionist politicians in Northern Ireland used to constantly refer to Sinn Fein as Sinn Fein/IRA.

"An explosion" has cancelled Biden's visit.

BREAKING: Biden cancels his planned trip to Jordan after the summit with Arab leaders was cancelled

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) October 17, 2023

Guessing this was possibly the intent with the strike.

At least 17 journalists have been killed already

https://cpj.org/2023/10/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/

For context that's more than in the entire Ukraine war so far

Really hearing this in Trump's voice

Biden has said Hamas has “committed evil atrocities that make Isis look somewhat rational.”

He said “We have to also bear in mind that Hamas does not represent all the Palestinian people, and has brought them only suffering.”

The US president also said “I’m deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you. But there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we have to overcome a lot of things.”

FFS

He's not going to do shit.

Nuseirat RC |

Israeli warplanes bombed Al-Hajj Bakery. The bakery, one of the largest and among the remaining few providing essential bread to residents, had recently extended its hours to operate 24/7, to provide access to bread for the community

2 murdered & others injured pic.twitter.com/hzKimtddr0

— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) October 18, 2023

"the other team" just a disgusting way to put it, what a jolly game war is

The Israeli Air Force bombed dozens of buildings yesterday, as they themselves declare. Debating one building for the next week will keep people occupied so they don’t notice anything else going on, not only in Gaza but in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Hebron, Amman, Beirut, South Lebanon https://t.co/AIBnkFNd9t pic.twitter.com/ZIwdZrBWmR

— ‏تمار 🌴 Тама́р 🌴 תמר (@tamars) October 18, 2023

"the other team" just a disgusting way to put it, what a jolly game war is

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 18 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

The senile cunt is embracing Zionist scum, and cheering next week's ground war

President Biden appears to endorse Israel’s denial of responsibility for the explosion at the Gaza hospital. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” he said. “But there’s a lot of people out there not sure.” Israel has blamed Palestinian militants. Palestinian officials said Israel was responsible. Neither claim has been independently verified.

The Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was sheltering thousands of displaced people when it was bombed last night, killing hundreds of innocent Palestinians.

Following the airstrike, media outlets including the BBC pointed the finger at the Israeli Air Force.🧵1/5 https://t.co/kFFCd1OazW

— Andy McDonald MP (@AndyMcDonaldMP) October 18, 2023

a brief history of the IDF lying about stuff

So Starmer's death squad has their next target, Andy McDonald MP.

A little cold fury from Ezra Klein.

https://the-ezra-klein-show.simplecast.com/episodes/israel-palestine-column-read

Ok.

BREAKING: 🇮🇱 IDF spokesman says an investigation has been opened into the bombing of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, adding that Islamic Jihad is responsible and death tolls were exaggerated.

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) October 18, 2023

brb going to open an investigation into the JFK shooting, by the way Oswald acted alone

"It wasn't us and also it wasn't that bad" an interesting stance to go for.

It’s the only stance they can go for. If the destruction was as bad as reported, it can only have been Israel.

Not sure either why if Hamas/Islamic Jihad accidentally bombed their own people they'd exaggerate the numbers who died?

In for a penny in for a pound? Let's blame the Israelis and, while we're at it, bump up the numbers of dead.

I'm not an military expert, but assume the type of combatants the IDF are trying to blame here haven't the hardware capability to level a thousand plus capacity hospital in one accidental strike, unless maybe they were throwing everything they had at it in a sustained barrage of multiple "friendly fire" strikes - which stretches credibility.

Provisionally this image does not look consistent with an airstrike. In daylight it’s clear that the hospital building itself was not leveled but rather the cars in the parking lot may have ignited. https://t.co/Tty30VtA8i

— Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain) October 18, 2023

it’s a great thing that we all get our news from a worldwide game of social media telephone.

🧵Now that day has broken, and we're getting better evidence, I'm willing to share some PRELIMINARY thoughts on the al-Ahli hospital explosion. The photos of the scene are, to me, not consistent with an airstrike and are not consistent with claims that 500+ people were killed. pic.twitter.com/dzA3Bx71hr

— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) October 18, 2023

i mean luckily the professional media are there to remind us to be healthily suspicious of what anybody reports

to be very clear, none of this changes my opinion that the excessive air strikes of civilian targets and swift tactics are completely reprehensible, but i’m gonna use this example to remind myself to let all initial reports from the ground to breathe for a bit

*siege tactics

i agree with that, for sure, but the breathless guessing/misreporting isn't restricted to randos on social media, sadly

I'd rather wait than go to another twitter account. It's not only social media but multiple sources across media have reported this, with protests and rallies in many countries and diplomatic repercussions on the back of this.

Very good to see.

S.I Cobas, a major rank-and-file union in the #logistics sector in #Italy, declares that its #workers “will oppose any shipping of weapons to Israel which they become aware of.”

Trade unions, your action makes a material difference on the ground! #StopArmingIsrael
#Palestine pic.twitter.com/RxWemzdVLL

— Workers in Palestine (@WorkersinPales1) October 18, 2023

xp fair enough

Yeah I was gonna say, my source for this so far wasn't social media telephone but the BBC! Who of course also gets things wrong, to put it lightly, but I dunno if this would have played out differently in a pre-social media, post-24 hour news cycle era.

xpost

When the President of the US is acknowledging an explosion and loss of life and invoking international law I'm assuming he is not just watching TV or looking at twitter.

But maybe I'm wrong about that.

depends which president, to be fair

I don't want to get too hung up on the hospital story, but this is on WSJ right now and it really looks clear the explosion was in the parking lot. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-biden/card/watch-footage-shows-destruction-after-deadly-gaza-hospital-compound-blast-mmFVg7Pa5PkKxZyHbtRX

I don't really understand why Israel would just randomly strike a hospital parking lot while not targeting anything else in the vicinity.

TBC, I also don't know if Palestinian officials were "lying" or if it was just fog of war/quick reactivity (I imagine communications aren't at their best in Gaza right now), just as I'm not entirely sure what happened with the 40 beheaded babies claim - could just as easily have been fog of war/telephone game as propaganda. Taking a deep breath and waiting a day or two is always a good idea.

on ILX?!

the old racist one I think xps

"It wasn't us and also it wasn't that bad"

aka the national motto of the Turkish republic - regardless of the facts in this specific case it's horrifying on multiple levels to see it being rehearsed so soon and so blatantly in Israel

A counter-argument against the rocket explanation:

About the #Gaza #hospital blast,

The version saying it would have been caused by Palestinian rocket (mis)fire is gaining traction online and among #OSINT communities.

A thread showing weaknesses in this version, and why an Israeli bombing is highly more plausible.⬇️ 1/x

— Francesco Sebregondi 🔎 (@FSBRG) October 18, 2023

It seems like that guy's argument is "you can't conclusively prove that there wasn't also an IDF strike (on a hospital parking lot) at the same time as the rocket misfire." Can we not post any more speculative twitter threads please? Who is this guy?

otm

I don't think we can really know what happened until Seymour Hersh comes out with a piece asserting that Biden ordered the CIA to do it.

There's no way 500+ patients were killed without structural damage to the hospital, so evidence has to surface beyond individual people / doctors reporting it and footage of burnt cars (if that's all there is atm). Even graphic footage that can't be shown on TV but that could be verified. Waiting and exercising prudent skepticism is probably the best course of action for now.

There could be reasons for alleging a huge civilian massacre. It's clear the information war is absolutely key and that Palestinians need to instill doubt in the hardliners / West since everything else that was unleashed on them hasn't been "enough" (to every sane person's dismay) to shift positions.

It's disheartening how everything about the conflict is funneled through ideology and politics: all the suffering is co-opted, discourse asphyxiated, there's no space, war just unfolds in all its unstoppable irrationality.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wDxkDDOmuMoqTRTYeoBcM?si=2b7e9da9c8114d69
Alexei Sayle's podcast new episode from today is a Palestine special

My Bangladeshi neighbour and her sisters - who never usually go on demonstrations - are off to Whitehall to protest the treatment of Palestinians. We are all Starmer constituents…

I'm not qualified to get into the guessing game re: the hospital but I don't see how you get around telling a million people in Gaza to move south and then doing air strikes over the Rafah Crossing while aid piles up on the Egypt side. I know I am just plucking out a moment here but this seems to be something the world agrees is happening and the scale of the horror is hard to comprehend.

this is the guardian's analysis of the hospital explosion:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/al-ahli-arab-hospital-piecing-together-what-happened-as-israel-insists-militant-rocket-to-blame

who the fuck knows the truth of all that, but tbh i would rather live in a world where israel aren't deliberately targeting hospitals, and as much as i despise the idf, i hope this wasn't their doing

I am pretty skeptical that the IDF did it at this point and not seeing new evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile the media’s quickness to report the claim is having grave global consequences.

why did they ask 22 hospitals in Gaza to evacuate all their patients and staff? If there isn't any suspicion here that they wouldn't target them, then I'd rather do speculation or read speculation by *nobodies* on twitter than give the IDF any benefit of the doubt with their track record of outright lying about atrocities they commit.

whole lotta, "who knows you guys>? hospitals just blow themselves up each and every day" brain out there today.

again, I'm no expert even remotely, but the images of the site the day after showing a very shallow crater at the impact site seem to indicate a smaller explosive device than one that would have been dropped by Israel.

I'm not qualified to get into the guessing game re: the hospital but I don't see how you get around telling a million people in Gaza to move south and then doing air strikes over the Rafah Crossing while aid piles up on the Egypt side. I know I am just plucking out a moment here but this seems to be something the world agrees is happening and the scale of the horror is hard to comprehend.

― felicity, Wednesday, October 18, 2023 2:25 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, it’s weird that that fell out of the news so quickly. Just as egregious as a hospital bombing.

Worst thing is the Hospital atrocity will be forgotten next week if Israel goes into a ground assault.

Or, if not exactly forgotten, there will be a fresh set of atrocities to occupy minds

looking for the truth through the fog of war and sorting through the predictable lies is always uncertain work. my own take is that at a time when Israel is dropping tons of high explosives on Gaza by the hour, the weight of presumption - by far - is that any particular large explosion in Gaza will have been caused by Israel. the burden of proof to the contrary is theirs and the standard of that proof must overcome the high probability it was their doing. iow, it had better not be a patchwork of inconclusive evidence and advancing several entirely different scenarios to explain what happened.

whole lotta, "who knows you guys>? hospitals just blow themselves up each and every day" brain out there today.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, October 18, 2023 3:05 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

From the footage it does not appear that the hospital was actually blown up. The explosion was in the parking lot. The hospital stands.

yeah, the hospital is made up of like 7 buildings and there is a courtyard in the middle and a parking lot and that's where the explosion happened; but I believe some of those buildings were heavily damaged. there is video of the day after floating around. sounds like there were lots of people taking refuge in that courtyard sadly

US vetoes Security Council resolution that would have called for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver lifesaving aid to millions in Gaza

Favor: 12 (Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland,UAE)
Against: 1 (US)
Abstain: 2 Russia, UK pic.twitter.com/y4tiAbRMUQ

— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) October 18, 2023

vile. the UK too.

Really hope this cunt does during the election campaign

Biden says Hamas’ attack on Israel was like “fifteen 9/11s.”

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/ziJQTgKzIl

— AF Post (@AFpost) October 18, 2023

This is like 10k JFK assassinations lol

There's a lot going on in that speech.

Biden: I caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the US. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes… The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. pic.twitter.com/n9nun6ves6

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 18, 2023

I nearly likened the Warren blast comment to JFK finding a foreign body passing through him in Dallas in my post this morning, so keep noticing mention of JFK as it occurs through the thread today.

article is paywalled :/

Hamas co-founder acknowledges "mistakes" were made in Oct. 7 attacks, says group willing to release women, children and foreigners its holding hostage if Israel agrees to 24-hour pause. My interview with Hassan Yousef, head of Hamas in the West Bank https://t.co/pv9LogSOow

— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) October 18, 2023

HAPPENING NOW: Hundreds of American Jews are holding a sit-in at Congress — and we won’t leave until Congress calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. As thousands of U.S. Jews protest outside, over 350 are inside, including two dozen rabbis, holding prayerful resistance. pic.twitter.com/H0b2ort6fa

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 18, 2023

London stands with Palestine tonight. pic.twitter.com/FlhXicPVS2

— Wolfie. 💙🧡💚 (@Tpopularfront) October 18, 2023

There is a Tel Aviv review of books and this piece is very good. Have found the voices of internal critics of Israel the most illuminating, and angry, and just fearless.

On the failures of the IDF:

Saturday’s savage attack was instantly compared to the October 1973 surprise offensive, which also met an Israel that was delusional about its military might and invincibility, but this time, it also met a deeply fractured and divided society ruled by a clique of Jewish supremacists and messianic settlers led by a smug, corrupt politician who, by this stage, looks like a caricature of himself. October 7 exposed the twisted priorities of a military that sent no less than 26 battalions to protect settlers in the West Bank during the Simhat Torah holiday, including five battalions stationed at Joseph’s Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a racist settler who demanded the separation of Arab and Jewish patients in hospitals, already called at a cabinet meeting to “hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the hostages into serious consideration,” concluding his brief remarks with a quote from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: “If you want to shoot, shoot, don’t talk!” Smotrich never served in a combat unit.

At such times, they do not need a hysterical speech from an incompetent defense minister, ordering a complete siege on the Gaza Strip with no electricity, food or water that would create a humanitarian disaster because “we are fighting human animals”; nor do they deserve a president who embodies the Peter Principle, climbing the ladder by failing every previous job he had, incapable of saying a single sentence that does not contain an overused phrase. Israelis cling to stories of the incredible bravery of ordinary citizens who found themselves in impossible situations, like Rachel Edri, a working-class Moroccan-born woman from Ofakim, who did not lose her cool and conversed with her kidnappers in Arabic, offering them coffee and cookies, while the police SWAT teams surrounded the house.

I wonder about the fissures in a society where the most fanatical racists are exempt from military service while a secular military (full of people on compulsory service) is required to cater to their whims.

again, I'm no expert even remotely, but the images of the site the day after showing a very shallow crater at the impact site seem to indicate a smaller explosive device than one that would have been dropped by Israel.

Fwiw, I was responding more to the idiotic comments I’ve see elsewhere to the effect of, “for all we know it could have been an unfortunate accident or a gas tank explosion, why would we assume attack?”

I wonder about the fissures in a society where the most fanatical racists are exempt from military service while a secular military (full of people on compulsory service) is required to cater to their whims.

― deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 18 October 2023 22:30 (three minutes ago) link

Every Israeli in my Facebook feed is raging over this or some variation on it right now.

A fair number of “you called me a leftist traitor for protesting Bibi and now I’m the one who is showing up for reserve duty where I may die to protect you” type statements

article is paywalled :/

Hamas political leader in West Bank says he believes some hostages could be released if Israel agrees to ceasefire

'I Couldn't Shift Anything': Senior State Department Official Resigns Over Biden's Gaza Policy

Paul’s public announcement of his resignation sent shockwaves through the State Department on Wednesday. He said he was struck by how colleagues across the government and in Congress received his internal message: “I’ve been surprised by how many have said, ‘We absolutely understand where you’re coming from, we feel similarly and understand.’”

Paul told HuffPost he had been on leave last week, adding: “It was pretty fortunate because I think if I hadn’t been I would have been fired rather than have the time to think it over and resign.”

good stuff

Brave man

there we go. Josh Paul for president.

A Chicago police supporter has joined the protest, stating he visited Gaza or the West Bank after a trip to Turkey, and thought it was a lovely place. pic.twitter.com/r2n4iMPSvc

— Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere (@TylerLaRiviere) October 18, 2023

(Other flag is a thin blue line flag)

If that was a Hamas rocket, it will just make documenting and getting people to believe other atrocities that much harder. Mostly I hope the fatality count really is grossly inflated. Fewer dead people would be good.

pretty good summation of where things are: https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospital-blast-visual-investigation

Berlin police just removed me from a public square for standing alone with a sign reading STOP GENOCIDE. No free speech in Germany. I’m in their custody now.

— Tracy Fuad (@tracyfuad) October 18, 2023

Getting common mistake about the hospital explosion/attack. Hospital was more of a safe space gathering point that people were sleeping outside en masse.
So significant damage could be done to people without it bei8ng significantly reflected in structural damage. Certainly sounds like it would be reflected in structural damage from initial hearing which is misguiding. Think that has been mentioned in passing in some reports but if the reason for disbelief of damage is little damage to buildings full picture doesn't seem to be getting across.

Ok everyone time to move on from discussing the hospital bombing. Now let’s consider whether children gathering water at the mosque in which they’ve taken refuge may have inadvertently detonated themselves https://t.co/QXPNnWezKF

— Max Fox (@mxwfx) October 18, 2023

This level of bombardment is insane by any standard!

Israel is now flattening Tal Al-Hawa; one of Gaza's affluent areas with most high-rise residential buildings & least Hamas presence.

Israel has now destroyed over 121,000 housing units (partially & completely). pic.twitter.com/slgC7tb2bv

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) October 19, 2023

are we sure they're not all just misfiring Hamas missiles?

I think the dominant theory is Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, not Hamas. But again the jury is out.

The Israeli government comes out with so much hysterical garbage.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/19/israel-accuses-bbc-of-modern-blood-libel-over-reporting-of-hospital-strike

I think “irresponsible reporting” would be sufficient. Atrocities, misreporting of atrocities, propagandistic usage of, exaggeration of, or even invention of atrocities, and mere fog of war confusion about atrocities, none of these things are unique to Israel/Palestine. I only object to the idea that Hamas isn’t somehow equally capable of any of these. As though only Israel does propaganda and Hamas (and the states actively supporting it) is just pure authentic expression of oppression with no sophistication.

The reporting from Sky was pretty much identical but the Israeli regime are well aware that the BBC is under constant attack from (fellow) right wing scumbags in the UK. It's also worth pointing out that the BBC was under attack from pro-Palestinian groups a couple of days earlier.

and under attack from the Lords for not using the word “terrorist” with enough brio

You forfeit the right to condemn media for getting the facts wrong when they can't travel there to get the scoop because you're conducting a siege.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/middleeast/idf-apology-shireen-abu-akleh-intl/index.html

Israeli PM Bennett was tweeting within days of the death that this journalist was likely killed by Palestinians. One year later:

The Israel Defense Forces has apologized for the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a year to the day after she was killed by a bullet to the back of the head while covering an Israeli military operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

It is the first time the IDF has apologized for the killing of the well-known correspondent, after conceding last year that there was a “high possibility” she was shot by an Israeli soldier.

The apology came from the IDF’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in an interview with CNN’s Eleni Giokos on Connect the World on Thursday.

“I think it’s an opportunity for me to say here that we are very sorry of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh,” he said.

“She was a journalist, a very established journalist. In Israel we value our democracy and in a democracy we see high value in journalism and in a free press. We want journalists to feel safe in Israel, especially in war time, even if they criticize us,” he said.

The apology comes days after The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a report that said it had found no accountability was taken by the Israeli military over its killings of at least 20 journalists over the past two decades.

The press advocacy group said it had documented at least 20 journalists killed by Israeli military fire since 2001, adding 18 of those killed were Palestinian. “No one has ever been charged or held accountable for these deaths,” it said in the press release.

The CPJ said its report – titled ‘Deadly Pattern’ – found a “routine sequence” that takes place when a journalist is killed at the hands of the IDF.

Israeli military took no accountability for journalists it killed over past 20 years, press freedom group says
“Israeli officials discount evidence and witness claims, often appearing to clear soldiers for the killings while inquiries are still in progress,” the CPJ said, describing the IDF’s procedure for examining military killings of civilians such as journalists as a “black box,” with the results of any such probe kept confidential.

“When probes do take place, the Israeli military often takes months or years to investigate killings and families of the mostly Palestinian journalists have little recourse inside Israel to pursue justice,” the CPJ said.

Israeli police are demanding that East Jerusalem Arabs now hand over their cell phones instead of merely present their ID cards https://t.co/F70iDbJqCc

— noah kulwin (@nkulw) October 19, 2023

You forfeit the right to condemn media for getting the facts wrong when they can't travel there to get the scoop because you're conducting a siege.

― Chyiv Kyiv (Fetchboy), Thursday, October 19, 2023 10:58 AM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm conducting a siege?

he admit it

xp, That was in reference to Israel's whining abt the BBC, but yes, you're conducting a siege of my heart.

(I'm sorry if this has already been discussed, but is Israel calling for the evacuation of northern Gaza because they want to let settlers move there and will they use that toehold to take over Gaza? Is that what the Palestinians think?)

I don't think the exact rationale is clear, but the north is where the actual city of Gaza is. I have no idea how distributed the group is, but presumably that's where the administrative base would be

Yeah, I had assumed to prepare for ground invasion of Gaza City, although I have no particular insight.

I think it's unlikely Israel already has some kind of full Gaza long-term re-occupation plan ready to go (if it even wants to do that) but I have no particular insight. I would just think that the army is not prepared for and doesn't have the manpower that the re-occupation and settlement of Gaza would require even if that was the intention or hope. IDF is only about 170,000 active troops, the rest reserves. Reservists can't really be used for long-term occupation as the country's economy needs to function.

I have been concerned from the beginning that Israel doesn't have much of a plan, which is a nightmare for everyone. Although you would think that they wargame this kind of scenario, but then you would think a lot of things that haven't turned out to be true. If this doesn't devolve into a wider regional war, I think some kind of "regime change" situation in Gaza is more likely than re-occupation.

Biden asked Netanyahu and his war cabinet what was their plan for Gaza on the day after the war. They said they still don't have one. My story on @axios https://t.co/zit04eTbwe

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) October 18, 2023

is Israel calling for the evacuation of northern Gaza because they want to let settlers move there and will they use that toehold to take over Gaza? Is that what the Palestinians think?

haven't heard anyone floating this as a possibility. One (very understandable) fear is that Gazans who leave to Egypt or elsewhere will never be allowed to return

Forcing Palestinians to live in Sinai permanently is definitely a plan that would be popular with the current Israeli administration and their supporters.

“The New State Solution” as I’ve heard it called

Iirc the “new state solution” was one in which both Israel (to a degree) and Egypt (to a much greater degree) ceded some land to Gaza and encouraged their autonomy as an independent state

So Fetterman's tweet about Congress rushing to blame Israel for the hospital tragedy has gotten big-upped by... checks notes... Meghan McCain, Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro so far.

From Steven Salaita:
https://stevesalaita.com/a-practical-appraisal-of-palestinian-violence/

In corporate media of the anglophone world, siding with Palestinians, even haltingly, wasn’t an option. Quashing pro-Palestine sentiment has always been the norm in these environs, but the suppression in this case was harsher than usual. Politicians on both sides of the aisle rushed to condemn Palestinian terrorism. Corporations performed their usual gestures of anguish and concern. And in a type of pandering that came across more as cruel than vapid, a long list of celebrities pledged support for Israel.

Had this embargo on sympathy for Palestinians not existed, then more Americans might have learned useful context and considered some of the meaningful questions arising from Palestinian resistance.

Useful context begins with the nature of the Israeli state, an avatar of belligerence and inequality. Beyond its role as a force of extraction in the global nexus of U.S. imperialism, Israel was founded by conquest which has yet to be rectified. That conquest included mass displacement of Palestinian Arabs, theft of land, murder of entire villages, appropriation of resources, and destruction of the natural environment.

Given this context, the notion of “self-defense,” the Zionist’s discursive go-to, becomes more complicated. How can an occupying power be in a position of subjection or helplessness? Only in unusual circumstances does the historical oppressor get to claim self-defense. This isn’t one of those circumstances: Israel’s hostility as an occupying power is entirely routine. Checkpoints are aggressive. Border crossings are aggressive. Military patrols are aggressive. Embargoes are aggressive. Home demolition is aggressive. Settlement construction is aggressive. Extraction of land and water is aggressive. One cannot invoke self-defense as a counterpoint to nonstop aggression.

In short, there is no such thing as Israeli self-defense. It is a categorical impossibility.

Then again, maybe the problem with Americans isn’t ignorance or lack of information. Maybe they know damn well that Israel kills in great numbers and are glad of it. Maybe they’re acclimated to the spectacle of colonial violence. Maybe they see it as a benefit to humanity. Maybe they perceive in bloodshed the world as it ought to be. Maybe they know all they need to know about Israel, which is that it acts as a mirror for their own fantasies of heroism and probity.

....

Whenever Palestinian resistance threatens to gum up imperialism, cities throughout the democratic West readily enact fascist policies, shutting down protests, firing or arresting dissenters, doing away with civil liberties, and demanding obedience. In the immediate aftermath of the Palestinian operation, media outlets across the spectrum deployed a vocabulary that would facilitate Israeli genocide. The little bits of sympathetic coverage took the form of Jews talking to other Jews about Israel, which further consigned Palestine to a place of foreignness and unfamiliarity (the conditions for genocide in the first place). Boardrooms enacted swift discipline. University presidents made clear that Palestinian students and employees were prohibited from speaking.

The real conflict doesn’t exist between civility and terrorism; it exists between Palestinian fortitude and Western anxiety.

One of the many reasons that Irish people as a whole are largely sympathetic towards the plight of the Palestinians is due to our shared history of occupation and oppression. We are also extremely well versed in being called terrorist sympathisers (and less charming epithets) for pointing out that violent oppression and inevitably violent suppression of peaceful movements leads to inevitable results. Many of which are not going to even breathe on the notion of respectability politics, let exist in the same sphere as it. I’m putting the rest behind a hide tag cos long and not directly related.

So this is to say, as someone whose family has been directly affected by violence of the sort I describe upthread, at the hands of an occupying class upheld by state and military power - I’m absolutely sick and tired of seeing these takes posted here. Yes, states have a monopoly on violence. But I could not read about the suffering of the Israelis kidnapped and tortured and feel anything except immense sadness for them, personally. What did they do to deserve that? To cast that in the same view as militant resistance which usually goes against police or the military, the very people who usually inflict the most damage on behalf of a state? I read about the children killed in Coventry by IRA bombings and I thought, blood doesn’t pay for blood. The IRA killing those children and robbing any of their futures doesn’t bring back the dead of Bloody Sunday, or any of the countless millions the British killed or exiled or starved.

Which is really just to say: as comforting as it might be to imagine that everyone who posts here is a generic white American and that their lives or families might never have been touched by the violence so sweetly codified in that article and that therefore we all need telling, it’s wrong, it’s inaccurate, and it speaks over everyone who doesn’t want civilians to suffer in their name. Fuck that.

my first and last post itt: great post gyac

Oh fuck. Wishing I hadn’t said that now.

Lol.

But seriously, thank you for saying that gyac.

I don’t even know what Netanyahu and company thought the outcome of their short term plan that became the status quo was going to be. Occasional rockets from Gaza -> Iron Dome blocks most of it -> retaliatory strikes and conditions get progressively worse in Gaza, rinse and repeat… forever?

I feel like there’s a lack of interest in the material conditions of everyone in the region from his government, just a consolidation and expansion of power riding on everyone’s shared misery. And I don’t think we’ve seen the end of that yet. It hurts.

gyac, I know that not everyone needs telling— my mom and her sister were born in a demilitarized zone after their families were liberated from Oflag X C Lübeck. My mother doesn't have a birth certificate. They arrived in the US with nothing because of Nazi terror. Perhaps you could take a fucking step back every once in a while and think that other people have reasons behind their opinions, too. You don't have a monopoly on being correct.

It's curious that when mentioning civilians, often, only Israeli civilians are mentioned. This again fits a pattern wherein there are pleas for "humanity" but the Arab and the Palestinian are left out of that equation, for reasons that are pretty easily identifiable.

With that, I'm not going to post anymore in this thread or the antisemitism thread. I hope that this current conflict ends with as little further bloodshed as possible on both sides, and that there might emerge a peaceful, one-state solution in our lifetimes that allows Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, and others in the Levant the dignity they deserve.

For everyone else, I hope that our ideological differences don't make any of you think I'm a monster. I certainly care about many of you and wish you and yours peace and safety.

It's curious that when mentioning civilians, often, only Israeli civilians are mentioned. This again fits a pattern wherein there are pleas for "humanity" but the Arab and the Palestinian are left out of that equation, for reasons that are pretty easily identifiable.

Is that really true today? It's certainly not true in this thread. Is it true on NPR or CNN or in the NYTimes or Wall Street Journal? That's certainly not what I've seen.

Is that really true today? It's certainly not true in this thread. Is it true on NPR or CNN or in the NYTimes or Wall Street Journal? That's certainly not what I've seen.

It's absolutely been true in my experience — I mentioned upthread that the news will talk about "Israeli civilians" or "the Israeli people" but will then talk about "Palestinians" without ever using words like "civilians" or even "people." It's (relatively) subtle but it's absolutely rhetorical dehumanization in action.

It's curious that when mentioning civilians, often, only Israeli civilians are mentioned. This again fits a pattern wherein there are pleas for "humanity" but the Arab and the Palestinian are left out of that equation, for reasons that are pretty easily identifiable.

and that there might emerge a peaceful, one-state solution in our lifetimes that allows Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, and others in the Levant the dignity they deserve.

From that piece above:

"Whenever Palestinian resistance threatens to gum up imperialism, cities throughout the democratic West readily enact fascist policies, shutting down protests, firing or arresting dissenters, doing away with civil liberties, and demanding obedience."

They may have demanded obedience but governments haven't got it. There have been many demonstrations across Europe and the US. I can see a further shift of public opinion over time, which could lead to policy shift on Israel in the next decade.

While things look very bleak for Palestinians now it's a long game...

This stuff is just not going to work:

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/a-surge-in-suppression/

They banned Palestinian solidarity demonstrations in France - but in Paris this evening people turned out anyway, and forced the cops to leave pic.twitter.com/xjkPOTKQ1N

— Steven Methven (@StevenJMethven) October 19, 2023

On the IDF's invincibility myth

I just keep finding these old threads where I repeatedly pointed out that the IDF is not capable of preventing infiltration from multiple borders 😮‍💨 while y’all were talking about some superpower force you made up in your heads… https://t.co/avfDrmxS8Z

— ‏تمار 🌴 Тама́р 🌴 תמר (@tamars) October 19, 2023

I've been staying away from social media and just catching up on events via Jonathan Katz's Substack page. It's been excellent at putting everything in a historical context (Katz studied history before moving into journalism) but it's also mightily depressing. This in particular:

It’s notable to me that in his Tel Aviv speech, Biden again name-checked the “two-state solution”—the old dream of the 1990s that envisioned a Jewish state and a Muslim-majority Arab state living side by side, or in a sort of checkerboard, within the borders of the old British Mandate (plus or minus the Golan Heights). Anyone who has actually been paying attention to the situation on the ground for the past 20 years knows that dream is completely dead; it was killed by an explosion of Religious Zionist settlement activity in the West Bank that, as Netanyahu intended, has stripped the Palestinian Authority of even more of its potential land and rendered any possibility of drawing a border impossible. Biden doesn’t know this, or feels he has to say he doesn’t know this, because most Americans don’t know it; for most of those 20 years it has been in neither the government, nor media, nor either political party’s interest to look at those facts or communicate them. “Confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” as the resigned State Department official Josh Paul said.

The problem is that a one-state solution is even less likely.

I think you could at least make the case that a one state solution is possible in the far future whereas I don’t know what a serious proposal for a two state solution could look like at this point. Anyone who is serious about a single binational state (I kind of dislike the word “solution”) would I think have to be playing a long game and thinking about how to lay groundwork.

Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes continued across the territory overnight and Palestinian militants continued firing rockets into Israel.

the news will talk about "Israeli civilians" or "the Israeli people" but will then talk about "Palestinians" without ever using words like "civilians" or even "people."

I don't see this, I just googled "Palestinian civilians" site:nytimes.com and got page after page of hits, same for "Israeli civilians," e.g. in the first article that came up, which is from yesterday:

"Thousands of protesters marched in grief, fury and solidarity across the Middle East on Tuesday night and Wednesday, after hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza."

Ny sister-in-law has completely lost her mind over this BBC reporting of the hospital explosion controversy and is posting all sorts of dubious stuff on Facebook, including the accusation about "blood libel" - for context, she did literally grow up on a kibbutz. The ironic thing is my brother used to work at the BBC and, during the Scottish Independence referendum, was constantly mocking nationalists accusing the BBC of bias.

Bet you're looking forward to Christmas.

Believe me I go nowhere near this subject with my brother and his family. Corbyn was bad enough.

Apparently the BBC is to blame for the cancellation of Biden's trip to Jordan etc., the worsening relations in the Middle East as a whole and making Jews the world over feel less safe. Who knew the BBC was so powerful?

Public opinion, pt 1.

58% of Britons think there should be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

18% think there should probably be.

Just 3% think definitely not.

That 3% is the position of Labour, the Tories and most newspapers.

Totally out of touch with public opinion.

Ceasefire now! @YouGov pic.twitter.com/IwGnyRXlLc

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 19, 2023

pt2

Holy shit pic.twitter.com/THcVzvTol0

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) October 20, 2023

35% not supporting is higher than I would've thought.

Do you support or oppose a large-scale ground operation in Gaza?

Support: 65%
Oppose: 21%
Don't Know: 14%

via Lazar#Israel

— Israel Elects (@israel_elects) October 20, 2023

Pakistan is also making 155M shells for Ukraine for the US so this could get awkward https://t.co/MCJ2LiLqV9

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 19, 2023

A miracle saved us from Israeli missiles.

Israel hit our building of 7 floors and 21 flats with two missiles penetrating floors 5 & 4 where they exploded killing a mother who was preparing food for her kids & two of her daughters

I had 30 civilians in my 3rd floor #gazagenocide https://t.co/6uPFi6PSIg pic.twitter.com/lrEbdeaTFF

— Refaat in Gaza 🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) October 20, 2023

Really don't see Netanyahu surviving this..

Just really rotten stuff.https://t.co/SAOL6okPxA pic.twitter.com/2lC3Dr3one

— Abe Silberstein (@abesilbe) October 19, 2023

I hadn't been previously aware but apparently he's a lame duck and not planning to run for anything again. I would say those associated with him are tainted now though. I hope they are.

where did you see that?

actually a friend told me so it may be wrong, not sure the source and can't find anything now

At least 18 people are reported to have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Greek Orthodox church compound in Gaza on Thursday. Palestinian officials said at least 500 Muslims and Christians had taken shelter in the church from Israeli bombardments.

Waiting for a long Twitter rant from the IDF against The Guardian on this one

Likud guy Amir Weitmann going in two footed on RT, saying Russia will pay

Okay this is important: the University of London's @ForensicArchi team, and veteran war crimes investigator @CobbSmith, are suggesting, not definitively yet, that the Gaza hospital attack was "more consistent w/ the impact marks from an artillery shell" fired by the Israelis. https://t.co/54UYcJR1dH

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 20, 2023

It was on Channel 4 News earlier - not the murderous blood stained BBC - also the recorded message from Hamas members discussing the attack appears to have been "heavily edited".

So maybe Twitter sleuths didn't solve this after all

Got an absolutely worthless response from my rep touting this letter that he sent Biden - https://adamsmith.house.gov/_cache/files/a/3/a31a0979-6c28-4285-992d-94b513f3ad33/2251B35EAC0D7ACC5F1EA362BFF46DD7.quill---letter-l13380---letter-to-president-biden-on-israel---signed.pdf

Okay this is important: the University of London's @ForensicArchi team, and veteran war crimes investigator @CobbSmith, are suggesting, not definitively yet, that the Gaza hospital attack was "more consistent w/ the impact marks from an artillery shell" fired by the Israelis. https://t.co/54UYcJR1dH
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 20, 2023
― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, 20 October 2023 19:37 (two hours ago) link

An artillery shell... from where? A stealth mode tank that entered gaza in the middle of the night?

Meanwhile, these are not "twitter sleuths"

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231020-gaza-hospital-blast-was-caused-by-misfired-rocket-says-european-military-source
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-biden/card/u-s-signals-intelligence-shows-gaza-militants-behind-hospital-blast-VwW5ysaxHfggbrnHgY0e

A stealth mode tank that entered gaza in the middle of the night?

Command and Conquer in the hizzouse

(xp) Is that what Forensic Architecture are? Twitter sleuths?

Modern artillery is famously only used at close range.

This feels like one of those events where we'll see competing narratives for years to come and not being a military/detonation expert nor feeling the slightest inclination to trust American intelligence or unnamed European military sources I kinda just have to accept that my answer will be "I don't know who did it" for the foreseeable.

Is that what Forensic Architecture are? Twitter sleuths?

I don't know if they are twitter sleuths, but they're hardly neutral in this.

yeah I raise my eyebrow a bit at these new 'OSINT' and "forensic architecture" experts that have arisen from....somewhere.

Forensic Architecture appears to have been around for 13 years and not even vaguely focused on Israel.

A conclusive investigation into this attack requires full access to the site and munition fragments, as well as witness interviews. We continue our work on this case, and reaffirm our solidarity with Palestinian people under attack, including our friends & colleagues.

— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) October 20, 2023

being objective and being neutral are separate things

For sure, which is why confirmation bias is a thing.

"aha! You are registered to vote for the DemoRAT party, therefore you're (Len) bias"

in all seriousness though, I mean, the other intelligence agencies determining it was Islamic Jihad are pro-Israel, one of which is Israel themselves so....

and it also does feel a lil gross (not that I'm against sharing these updates itt) for all of the people spending their time speculating on whose fault it is with Substack level data when a lot of people in that building or the lot surrounding it died in fairly grisly, traumatic fashion. and when others are still being bombed as we speak

may I just recall to mind the sterling work done by our US intelligence agencies in the runup to the Iraq War?

I’m done discussing it. You guys believe what you want to believe. There’s no way Hamas would lie.

I have not drawn any conclusion since the latest info over the last few days emerged, but was supporting what Tracer said in that the Forensic Architecture account's take on the matter isn't invalidated by their supporting of Palestinians. (it might be invalidated by simply having insufficient data or drawing questionable conclusions, but you can't expect people examining data not to be human beings and have formed an opinion on the matter).

There’s no way Hamas would lie.

This is patently untrue, but the easily divined thought behind it is curiously unhelpful to reaching any kind of useful conclusion.

in the end, innocent civilians pay the price

4000 (Palestinians) and counting

“forensic architecture” pop-science accounts are giving me covid flashbacks

xxp Also Israeli civilians, although usually a lot more Palestinians in previous situations, so probably the current conflict as well. Terror is terror, and governments, no matter how culpable, no matter how out of their depth, have to respond very quickly, which is the point of terror. The release of two American hostages may be a good sign, but who knows how significant.

FYI: if it's the same Forensic Architecture led by Eyal Weizman at Goldsmiths a serious, long-standing and award-winning research outfit that's done a lot of work documenting human rights abuses, discrediting official lies, etc., in various contexts. Not to say they could never be wrong about anything --- but they're not random Twitter sleuths. Worth Googling IMHO.

Oops, missing an ", then it's."

I’m done discussing it. You guys believe what you want to believe. There’s no way Hamas would lie.

Well, that's a reasonable response I must say. Some pretty respectable research group casts doubt on the IDF's claims - they don't actually say The Israelis Did It btw - and it's reported on this thread, because it's interesting and where else would you put it? And that's it, what's the big deal?

The story was covered on the national news on British television, that's where I heard about it. Admittedly I am expecting some mouthpiece of the Israeli government to pop up any minute and accuse Channel 4 of blood libel alongside the BBC.

Just caught a couple of minutes of a CBS reporter talking about witnessing IDF snipers shoot eight West Bank protesters and then dismissed it as tempers flaring on both sides, super cool media we’ve got here.

has this reporter ever heard of combat units operating under 'rules of engagement'? if so, then a clever reporter might have asked whether killing protestors fell within those rules. "tempers flaring" is either a wrong interpretation of an official; policy or else he was describing a war crime and court martial offense.

7 influential accounts are warping Israel-Hamas news on X, researchers find
The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public said that the most popular posts about the crisis revealed how news on the platform is “faster, more disorienting, and potentially more shaped by Musk himself.”

Forensic Architecture does extremely good and serious work and its founder/lead Eyal Weizman is an Israeli.

It's even more interesting when you go directly to the study, which is linked in that article - as expected, it goes into detail re: their methodology:

https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/10/20/new-elites-twitter-x-most-influential-accounts-hamas-israel/

eyal weizman of forensic architecture is also from israel

Conrad, are you capable of reading two posts above?

I am but I don't

WTF! Sons of Satan!

Israeli military throw warning papers over Gaza city declaring that any civilian in North Gaza strip is liable for death.

Adding a clear genocidal statement “Anyone who chose to remain in North Gaza would be considered a partner of a terrorist organization” pic.twitter.com/BBwdx1JeBW

— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) October 21, 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/the-most-successful-land-grab-strategy-since-1967-as-settlers-push-bedouins-off-west-bank-territory

maybe this doesn't need saying, but ^that is why I believe it is accurate to call Israel a settler colony (not because of its founding as a nation), and why posts rhetorically q'ing if white people should vacate North America miss the point imo

It is unfortunate that this article fails to mention that large numbers of Israeli people are beyond upset with the settlers, livid with the government's failure to stop these illegal settlements, and terrified that the settlers are giving Israeli people a bad name worldwide.

It is a point that has been made countless times in this thread and in reporting all over the world.

I don't think that's an entirely fair read. There are several Israeli activists interviewed and quoted in the piece (e.g., the quote in the headline is from an Israeli), and the story of one activist being assaulted by settlers is told. That said, I have no expertise on this issue and would be curious to know more about public sentiment in Israel if you know of anything I could read.

And if we die, speak for us:
here were people who dreamt of travel, love, life and other things

— Hiba Abu Al Nada
Gaza https://t.co/kdxQ9BMkjt

— sough (@Vorfrreude) October 21, 2023

There has been a fair bit of discussion on the "Is this anti-semitism?" thread on ILE lately.

This also comes up quite a bit on the r/worldnews discussions on Reddit. There's also a lot of snark, misinformation, and the usual internet noise in the comments, but the mods do a decent job of weeding out blatant hate speech and there is a premium on sourcing claims. And then debating the citations, etc.

Sometimes people come along on reddit and ask - Can someone please explain what is going on like I am 5? Which is a fair question given the state of domestic politics all over the world is exhausting just to keep up. I've seen those people sometimes directed to the Wikipedia page on the 2023 Israel-Hamas War I recommend you also look at the "Talk" page for that article to see all the nomenclature and facts that people are debating at any given time.

Those are just a few fairly arbitrarily selected places to look. I am sure others will suggest more.

xp to rob

The last pro-Palestine rally in London was described as "an intimidating mob" by Suella Braverman. How is she going to describe today's rally at which, according to the police, there were 100,000 people and no arrests - not a single one.

feel like she's been a lot quieter since Conference but never enough

As usual with police the world over any estimates of numbers at demonstrations and protests to be taken with a pinch of salt.

xps this is a study from 2016, but no reason why the numbers would be much different now:

A plurality of Israeli Jews (42%) say the settlements help the security of Israel, compared with 30% who say the settlements actually hurt Israel’s security and 25% who say building settlements does not make a difference either way.

Israeli Jews’ opinions about settlements are strongly tied to their political ideology. Only 13% of those on the left side of the ideological spectrum say the building of settlements helps the security of Israel. Among those on the right, 62% say the continued building of settlements helps the security of the country.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/the-peace-process-settlements-and-u-s-support/

Those are just a few fairly arbitrarily selected places to look. I am sure others will suggest more.

This was a good big-picture primer, I thought:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYZjOuUnlU

I haven't watched the more up to date follow-up videos yet.

xp to be fair, a lot of things have happened since 2016.

can't argue with that

thanks, symsymsym, that was what I was wondering about specifically (Israeli attitudes to the settlements). I do think 7 years is old for a poll though.

yeah my sense is that views on the settlements would be pretty baked in so the general proportions would be similar now.

I was at the London demo and people were saying more like 300,000. Always the same story with the count. It was very good natured. Tons of families and teenagers and old gents etc.

If “from the river to the sea / Palestine will be free” really were calling for the destruction of Israel you’d expect a lot more chants calling for, well, the destruction of Israel, but there was nothing like that. Probably the worst that was said - and it was said repeatedly - was “Israel is a terrorist state”.

What do you think "from the river to the sea / Palestine will be free” means?

what does it sound like

I'm sure "land back" also kind of sounds like "white genocide" if you've already decided that's what it has to mean

I thought this article on the different things meant by the phrase was illuminating, was planning to share it in the other thread where the topic was brought up:

https://forward.com/opinion/415250/from-the-river-to-the-sea-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/

Maybe it's a good discussion for that thread. That article raises a lot of questions.

In what way has Hamas distanced itself from the more extreme elements of its charter? That article, which makes that claim, merely links to Amazon and what looks like a self published book.

Citing only Hamas leaders’ use of the phrase, while disregarding the liberationist context in which other Palestinians understand it, shows a disturbing level of ignorance about Palestinians’ views at best, and a deliberate attempt to smear their legitimate aspirations at worst.

Even that article agrees that Hamas uses that slogan. The timing of large crowds chanting this Hamas slogan coming so soon after the Hamas October 7, 2023 massacres does raise some concerns.

I read about some demonstrators in Brighton pinning images of hang gliders to their backpacks. Serious question: are we saying this is fine because if people did want more massacring you'd expect the hang glider backpack people to say so?

I also believe in free speech and do not think people should be arrested for this. But it's kind of wtf.

it's fine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter

there is actual genocide happening right now by the way and it's perverse to fixate on an imagined genocide suggested by the most paranoid reading of a well understood phrase within the palestine liberation movement

Depends on your perspective and the context. Poster Keyes asked what it means on the "is this anti-semitism?" thread." To me this is an indicator that the phrase is not well understood. I'd suggest that thread might be a good place to continue that discussion?

The people carrying those photos could be talked to about those. As far as I'd go and absolutely never involve Police.

The slogan "from the river to the sea" I see it as fine. Its used within the wider Palestinian movement xp

That article, which makes that claim, merely links to Amazon and what looks like a self published book.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, October 21, 2023 1:04 PM (twenty-three minutes ago)

a minor point, but that isn't a self-published book. The publisher, Pluto Press, is listed on the page, and the author is "a Palestinian academic, a senior research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies and the co-ordinator of the Cambridge Arab Media Project (CAMP) at the University of Cambridge." (wiki)

xp Again, depends on the context and your perspective. I think the signal in Brighton may not be the same as how it is received at UC Davis California.

Yes Pluto is a commie press.

https://www.plutobooks.com/

the phrase well understood by palestinians and their allies and not so much by people who insist on assuming there is a secret genocidal agenda to everything palestinians do and say! xps

Ok! I still think the antisemitism thread is a good place to make this case. Since other posters have been asking there.

a minor point, but that isn't a self-published book.

My mistake. My point was mostly that he makes a bold claim, links to what I assumed would be evidence, or even a quote or something, but instead it's just an ebook being sold.

I generally think this is a poor line of critique. Just because something is e-published doesnt mean anything. Especially if you assume there is a reason dissidents don't have the same access to print publishing.

Heh, that's not what I mean, sorry for being unclear. Just that the citation is a link to a book, period. Not a phrase in the book or an interview in the book, or a chapter of a book, just a place to buy the book. It'd be like me saying "Blue Velvet" is a terrible movie, and linking to Roger Ebert's "Your Movie Sucks."

Or, you know, something like that.

A quotation or a page number would have been stronger evidence, but tbf referencing a whole book in an academic article is a totally normal citation practice

right, it was a widely reported shift in 2017: https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-hamas-charter-20170501-story.html

takes from 2017 or 2018 (like the Forward article) about this revision being evidence of a kinder gentler Hamas have not aged well clearly

Oh I see. The article was also behind a subscription wall that I had to give my email address to and be signed up on some sort of a list.

But hey, that's how committed I am to having these discussions in good faith.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/its-simply-a-call-for-freedom-marchers-defend-contentious-slogan-at-london-palestine-protest

jfc please stop entertaining this bullshit

directed @ the "free world" in general which is repulsively eager to paint a people undergoing genocide as the perpetrators

ime a lot of liberals are fucking desperate to find any excuse to withdraw any token acknowledgements of palestinian suffering and the flimsiest presence will do

*pretence

They are suffering. It's inhumane and fucked up to cut off water and electricity to millions of innocent people, shoot a bunch of journalists and then claim the news coverage is slanted. I already said this. Will say it again.

My mother grew up in occupied Manchuria, almost starved to death during multiple sieges and fled because the Chinese communists shot anyone on site that anyone claimed was a collaborator. Nobody here is in favor of forced migration or genocide and we don't all live in a white American bubble. Ok?

I don't either but OK. I'm sorry about what your family went through.

however I have learned not to expect that people - even people I have trusted in the past - are necessarily opposed to those things - in fact many seem eager to embrace them as once they're handed the right framings by the media (and the mere existence of that chant will be enough for some)

Anyone who's going to be actually influenced or change their opinion about the situation based on what some protesters somewhere chant on some march, or what they mean by that chant, is a deeply unserious person probably trying to mask their own repellent opinions and should stfu anyway.

Like, "I used to support Palestinian rights but then some kids at Harvard said some shit," shut up, just total bullshit.

sure but it happens and stuff like this does tend to sway wavering liberals unfortunately

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/its-simply-a-call-for-freedom-marchers-defend-contentious-slogan-at-london-palestine-protest

― The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Saturday, 21 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Lol.

"Teacher Philip Grayson seemed incredulous when told the slogan he had been singing moments earlier had been labelled antisemitic. “Really? I genuinely had no idea.” The 47-year-old added: “I hated Corbyn for how he behaved on this issue.”"

did he really or was he just told he should?

I once had lunch with Marek Edelman. He was the Labor Military Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A few hundred young Jews with pistols and gasoline bombs against the entire German army. And they held them off for a month.

The 50,000 starving people who remained after months of deportation and mass murder tried to hide in bunkers. The Germans decided they would rather not fight it out in the maze of buildings and tunnels and bunkers that the Jewish resistance had created and they simply ringed the ghetto with artillery and flattened it. Twenty-eight (28) fighters survived by crawling out through the sewers. Edelman was one. He escaped to the forests, joined the partisans there, and kept fighting.

In the 1980's, after a career as a heart surgeon, he became a labor activist again, in the Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc. A young Polish journalist asked him, "what does it mean to be a Jew?" He answered "To be a Jew is to be on the side of the weak."

In 2002, when Hamas was organizing suicide bombings in Israel and Israel was bombing apartment buildings in Gaza, Edelman wrote to the leadership of Hamas. Here is the full letter --

He wrote--

"To all leaders of Palestinian military, paramilitary and guerrilla organizations; to all soldiers of Palestinian militant groups:

My name is Marek Edelman. I am a former Deputy Commander of the Jewish Military Organization in Poland and one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In the memorable year of 1943 we fought for the survival of the Jewish community in Warsaw. We fought for mere life, not for territory, nor for a national identity. We fought with hopeless determination, but our weapons were never directed against the defenseless civilian population, we never killed women and children. In the world devoid of principles and values, despite a constant danger of death, we did remain faithful to these values and moral principles.

We were isolated in our fight, and yet the powerful opposing army was not able to destroy these barely armed boys and girls. Our fight in Warsaw lasted several weeks, and later we fought in the partisan groups and in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Yet nowhere in the world can urban guerrilla force bring a conclusive victory, but it cannot be defeated by well-armed armies either. And this war will not bring any resolution. Blood will be spilled in vain and lives will be lost on both sides."

He was trashed in the Israeli press for addressing the Palestinians armed groups respectfully, as people engaged in the same kind of struggle he had been. And yet he wrote to them to point out that NO CIRCUMSTANCE justified the mass murder of civilians.

To Marek Edelman "never again" meant "never again for anyone." It was a statement of human solidarity, not a license to commit mass murder of those you fear or wish to dispossess.

Marek Edelman remained in Poland all his life. He refused to leave the country of his birth and at his death the Polish military high command carried his coffin. I have read that the Israeli ambassador did not attend. I don't know if that is true or not but I do know that Marek Edelman would recognize what it means to cut 2 million people, most civilians and half under 18, off from food and water and bombard them with jets and artillery.

That is not how you be on the side of the weak.

And if you are young and Jewish and you don't feel right about what is being done in your name, but feel like you are all alone, you are not. Marek Edelman, the best of us, the bravest, he is with you.

-- Damon Silvers was formerly Policy Director of the AFL-CIO and is now a Visiting Professor of Practice at University College London and a Senior Advisor to labor unions in the US and the UK. The views expressed herein are his personal views alone.

I don’t really know if it matters, but just because I want people to know where I stand if I keep posting in this thread: I agree with everything felicity just said. Food, water, aid, shelter for Gazans should be the immediate priority, and nothing a random professor says is going to change my view that a just resolution is needed that fully respects the rights of Palestinians. Nor am I fundamentally opposed to the concept of a single binational state / the end of Israel as a “Jewish” state so long as it remains a state that fully respects the rights of Jews as well. Nor am I opposed to a two state solution if a more feasible path is found to that. How to get to either of those things from where we are is not something I feel much confidence in my ability to opine on.

I think debates over what the slogans “really” mean are kind of pointless. Different people mean different things. I don’t think it per se means ethnic cleansing of Jews, but nor do I think there is some unified idea of what it means in the “Free Palestine movement,” because I don’t think that what people are describing as the Free Palestine movement in this thread (essentially a leftist movement) necessarily speaks for the global majority of the people who advocate a Free Palestine.

Who are the majority? Do you just mean Muslims?

I don't mean "the Muslims" since I obviously know plenty of Muslim leftists who favor a secular democratic binational state - the person who first introduced me to the concept years ago was Muslim. But the nations that show the most support for Palestine are not democratic or secular.

unlike israel or the US I guess

In any case, what I meant was that I don't care much about whether or not it is an "antisemitic" slogan in the pure sense, but I do think many of the people using it globally mean a muslim state, not a secular one.

I'm sure most people in gaza would take either right now

The US is relatively secular, in spite of some recent moves by the Supreme Court. Maybe not as secular as some European states, but relatively secular.

Israel is becoming increasingly theocratic. I think a lot of liberal-leaning American Jews who "stand with Israel" might be surprised to find out what some of the people in Bibi's governing coalition actually believe. Ben Gvir's party was actually outlawed years ago, but he was made minister of security. The thing is there are still plenty of areas that are liberal and secular like Tel Aviv so you can still go visit and have the experience of being in a relatively secular country and not notice what I think is creeping religious fascism not only toward Arabs but toward reform and secular Jews. I think Israel is on a trajectory to becoming a country a lot of American Jews will one day realize they don't "love" as much as they thought.

but I do think many of the people using it globally mean a muslim state, not a secular one.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, 21 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Who can control what is in the minds of people chanting that or any slogan?

No one obv. That's why I don't care that much about policing slogans.

But you are making assumptions about people chanting that slogan that are based on what, exactly?

It's a distraction. People are like "Do you support THIS THING someone chanted or THAT THING some associate professor at a state school said or THIS POSTER I saw a screenshot of," just complete bad faith. Nobody has to assume responsibility for every potentially objectionable take. And no matter what any protestor or academic is saying, they're not the ones dropping bombs on anyone, it's nearly irrelevant to the actual issues.

In any case, what I meant was that I don't care much about whether or not it is an "antisemitic" slogan in the pure sense, but I do think many of the people using it globally mean a muslim state, not a secular one.

I think a lot of liberal-leaning American Jews who "stand with Israel" might be surprised to find out what some of the people in Bibi's governing coalition actually believe

Liberal-leaning American Jews are extremely aware of this, have been ever since Netanyahu formed this government, and when they say they "support Israel" a big part of what they mean is that they have to save Israel from men like Smotrich and Ben Gvir and their expulsionist program. And by extension, from Bibi, who has hooked his carriage to those nutcases in order to save his own skin and thereby broken a national understanding that they were unfit to serve in government. Surely you don't think liberal-leaning (i.e. almost all non-Orthodox) Jews in America are rallying behind Netanyahu? He is seen as a failure, and it sounds like that's how he's seen by most Israelis, too.

No I don't think they're rallying behind Netanyahu at all, but I think they may not have fully come to grips with the politics that put him in power.

eephus, perhaps what you’re saying is true of your particular jewish community, but my nominally-liberal reform jewish community is full of folks who do not think so deeply about the issue. they’re likely aware that netanyahu is conservative, and aware of the protests, but they don’t care enough to, say, stop donating to aipac or stop buying israel treasury bonds.

my (hip, indie rock-listening) rabbi has been preaching that the “war against hamas” is a “just war,” and that any harm that comes as a result of warfare is unfortunate, but not necessarily immoral

what I’m saying, i guess, is that it doesn’t matter if they’re opposed to netanyahu or his cronies, lots of american jews are rallying around the israeli flag to a much greater extent than israelis are

Perfect

A reporter asks one woman on the march if the chant 'From the river to sea, Palestine will be free' is genocidal and antisemitic.

In less than 20 seconds the woman brilliantly explains why this is nonsense. pic.twitter.com/fSzPsYzCAk

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 21, 2023

Incredible turn out today, felt particularly powerful to join the queer bloc and condemn Israel's pinkwashing of violent occupation pic.twitter.com/CZ6rPIQPvP

— Aine Bennett (@_ainebennett) October 21, 2023

not really sure what to make of these discussions… seems pretty clear that there are plenty of people committed to the liberation of palestinians who use the phrase in question innocently, though whether the governing body of the gaza strip agrees on the particulars…I’d say is less clear

so the fuck what it is infuriating to see people are falling for this shit again and again

yeah it’s a challenging situation that doesn’t exactly lend itself to sloganeering…I fully support palestinian liberation though, personally, given the recent state-sponsored massacre of innocent jews by proud anti-semites I can certainly see the argument for finding different things to say than “from the river to the sea”, which despite that very feeble essay posted upthread has a pretty convincing antisemitic history. idk, simply asking that israel not respond in kind by massacring other innocents seems like a simple enough tact to take to me. others may feel differently though I’d caution that the chosen language might be loaded and potentially politically counterproductive…just my 2 cents

thanks I'll pass it on to hamas

idk, simply asking that israel not respond in kind by massacring other innocents seems like a simple enough tact to take to me.

https://themedialine.org/top-stories/evidence-on-display-at-israels-forensic-pathology-center-confirms-hamas-atrocities/

Just in case anyone doubts the very real, very brutal atrocities committed on October 7, including against children and babies. I frankly fail to understand this as a "resistance strategy." I am at a loss. Whether or not "other things didn't work." Is this working? What was Hamas expecting? Perhaps they did want to draw Israel into a wider war, which may happen and will be very brutal. Maybe in some long game struggle this is a brilliant chess move that will bring things one step closer to a beautiful, free, multi-ethnic secular democratic Palestine. But I struggle to see how that could possibly be. We always hear that airstrikes just turn Palestinians more radical, more militantly against Israel and I think that's probably true. But why wouldn't this do exactly the same thing - not to mention atrocities committed largely against liberal to left Israelis and their children. Few people in this world have the moral certainty and courage of the 19yo victim whose speech was posted upthread.

I feel very pessimistic and dark right now. After the attack I was equally horrified at the atrocities and afraid of what Israel's likely response would do to Gaza, and the response to the response, and the quagmire war that was likely to result, and it's only getting started. And I felt horrified at the seeming rush to celebrate. This is a fucking nightmare all around. I guess that's just a vent and not a helpful post, but that's where I'm at.

v. sorry but it's 'tack'

someone call the nobel committee for pedantic sub-editing to nominate me

Unfortunately I fear we are in for a long, bloody war and a lot more death. It is all very depressing.

Hugs to all.

xxp do you know anything about Themedialine as a trustworthy source? Not particularly doubting that atrocities were committed, I'm just very wary of all these media outfits that I've never heard of and can't find any information regarding their ownership, looking at their twitter account this is the most recent post:

https://x.com/TheMediaLine/status/1715851521579979241?s=20

ugh fucking twxtter

#Iran has already been found legally liable as a state sponsor of #Hamas terrorist attacks carried out during the #SecondIntifada. The #US should now rescind its recent $6 billion prisoner release deal with Iran.#liable I #accountabilityhttps://t.co/wWYH8mcMaJ

— The Media Line (@TheMediaLine) October 21, 2023

The "war with Iran" crowd is getting very excited again. I'm sure John Bolton's dopamine levels are soaring.

Xp: the staff and board looked legit but in any case there’s plenty of other coverage

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/17/hundreds-of-israeli-bodies-remain-unidentified-10-days-after-hamas-attack

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forensic-teams-describe-signs-torture-abuse-2023-10-15/

There’s more, it’s easy to google. There are videos taken by Hamas I won’t watch but that journalists have seen. I didn’t really want to dwell on it and it’s kind of nauseating but I just wanted to establish that there doesn’t seem to be real doubt that there was tons of intentional cruelty and brutality to civilians of the worst kind, since this initially kind of got lost in the beheaded babies controversy. I think the truth of this needs to be stated and not lost in the mix.

All I can say re: the Media Line is that I saw that the late Murray Fromson was on the board. Murray mentored a friend of mine at journalism school and had us over for dinner once. I didn't know he had died, actually until I looked at their website just now.

For Gaza — Ghassan Kanafani (1970) pic.twitter.com/XuNUjeoKmZ

— Farah-Silvana Kanaan (@farahkanaan) October 22, 2023

This will no doubt be forgotten in the news cycle. But Israelis won't forget the moment their government made it clear that killing Palestinians was more important than rescuing hostages. For the record, Hamas already agreed to release all hostages if the bombing ended. https://t.co/y2EFpZaKpd

— Saeed Taji Farouky (@saeedtaji) October 22, 2023

I just wanted to establish that there doesn’t seem to be real doubt that there was tons of intentional cruelty and brutality to civilians of the worst kind

Why are you establishing it on here though? Has anyone denied it on ILX?

Pretty much. The thread revive was to cheer it on. I am kind of excuse that because it was still happening and no one could have known the scope and nature. Then there was a lot of arguing with vhs and then I haven’t gone back through the entire thread but the only other discussion I recall was “40 babies weren’t actually beheaded.”

Which is not the same as saying cruelty and brutality didn't happen though is it?

I recognise that this is a very fraught and sensitive subject, it is wildly horrific to think and read much about but like…. Who, exactly was cheering on violence to civilians? At most I saw people post takes I disagreed with. Is it possible to not just toss out takes there like ilxors were celebrating attacks on (Israeli? Palestinian?) civilians without at least pasting the posts you mean if you’re still angry about them? Like I don’t think everyone agrees but please can we actually talk to each other. Thanks.

xp The Rivkah Brown tweet hasn't aged well (and is now very deleted), but was clarified to say that she supported the effort but not all of the actions. I realise this might seem like a minor clarification, but as Tom says, it's different from saying that things didn't happen.

I'd be very surprised if anyone thought Hamas actions were a good idea or justifiable in any way,. It feels like this is mostly hanging off the BLM Chicago tweet and some DSA types who thought they had seen some multipolarity decolonisation particles. Equating Palestine and Hamas would be a weird thing to do

Equating Palestine and Hamas would be a weird thing to do

Important to stress that most of the media and the political class in the UK are doing this, though

Obviously! Thats hardly a surprise. But it would be weird for anyone to go along with that and do their job for them

Who, exactly was cheering on violence to civilians?

not in this thread, but i have seen several activists types refer to the hamas attacks as liberatory and just, and others continue to assert that the brutality of the attacks were exaggerated. i can name names if you like, but would that really be productive?

man alive is using this thread to vent about those takes, which to me is totally fine, because these are friendlier confines (when people aren’t being weirdly defensive) than the broader internet at large.

obviously these takes are less prominent and less influential than many of the draconian anti-palestinian positions that dominate the western polity and media, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t hurt!

longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)
Posted: 22 October 2023 at 14:40:43
Pretty much. The thread revive was to cheer it on.

^ I was referring to that tbf, it kind of took me by surprise

I’m not debating in these threads any longer, but just to say that one of my dearest friends was purposefully struck by a car during a pro-Palestine march yesterday. He was shepherding people across the street and a guy with an Israel flag hanging from his rearview hit him.

My friend is okay— the guy wasn’t going very fast and he mostly has scrapes and bruises— but just want to note that it is also very dangerous to be for the liberation of Palestine in the US.

i think the one person here you could easily say was doing that is now gone.

it is also very dangerous to be for the liberation of Palestine in the US

and not just on a physical level now, but UPenn, the cancellation of Viet Nguyen's book talk in NY this weekend; I can see this support starting to have impacts on people's professional lives, which is absurd. Obv if you are like that Davis professor and calling for the murder of journalists and their children you should have some repurcusion. But taking a principaled political stance should not result in cancellation.

92Y lost an event with Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, and Saidiya Hartman as a result of their actions— just noting that to say that people are not taking this kind of censorious bullshit sitting down any longer.

Sorry, 92Y lost an event with those authors as a result of the cancellation of Nguyen's event, if that wasn't clear.

well if nguyen didn’t preface his comments about the gaza siege with a condemnation of hamas then we have to assume he’s in favour of chopping babies’ heads off. i don’t make the rules