Maybe the Palestinians have just been screaming without words in the wrong language. Hmmm.
posted by cendawanita at 10:33 AM on August 8, 2024 [9 favorites]

Thank you for this thread!
posted by darkstar at 10:34 AM on August 8, 2024 [10 favorites]

Yeah just yesterday I was thinking how we've all mentally blocked out all the [CW: Violence] weird shit we did at Abu Ghraib.
posted by torokunai at 10:37 AM on August 8, 2024 [17 favorites]

In extremely good job news, Israel's assassination (in a third country no less) of Ismail Haniyeh has led to Hamas appointing Yahya Sinwar as its top leader. You did it Joe. Economist: Hamas¡¯s pick of Yahya Sinwar as leader makes a ceasefire less likely
The appointment is technically only a temporary one until an internal election can be held next year. Yet with the war in Gaza still raging, many Hamas leaders believe the poll will not take place as planned, which would leave Mr Sinwar unchallenged for some time. It means Hamas is becoming more of an underground guerilla movement with a leader hiding in a tunnel beneath Gaza, instead of shuttling between the capitals of the region. In recent months, the Qataris threatened Hamas¡¯s leaders with eviction from Doha unless they show more flexibility in the ceasefire talks. Such a threat will have less of an effect on Mr Sinwar.

In messages passed via couriers from Gaza, Mr Sinwar had insisted that the new leader would need to be on good terms with both Iran and Syria¡ªtwo of Hamas¡¯s key backers. ¡°Sinwar got much closer to Iran than anyone else in the movement in the past few years,¡± says Azzam Tamimi, a writer with close links to Hamas¡¯s leadership. This essentially amounted to a veto on the appointment of Mr Meshaal.

Yet Hamas has long had an uneasy relationship with Iran. The Islamic republic was its main state sponsor, a regular source of arms and money. But a Sunni Islamist group and a revolutionary Shia regime made for uneasy bedfellows. When Syria slid into civil war in 2011, Iran propped up Bashar al-Assad¡¯s regime, while Hamas sided with his mostly Sunni opposition. Mr Meshaal, who was the leader of Hamas at the time, closed the group¡¯s headquarters in Damascus in 2012. He spent the next few years trying to cultivate ties with the Sunni Arab powers: in 2015, for example, he made a rare visit to Saudi Arabia to meet King Salman. Some Hamas leaders backed his effort, hoping the Gulf would provide them with investment and political legitimacy. Others preferred to patch up their relations with Iran.

In 2017, Mr Meshaal spearheaded efforts to revise the group¡¯s charter to a document that softened its stance on Israel and appeared to nudge Hamas towards accepting a two state solution. Yet Mr Sinwar did all he could to undermine Mr Meshaal¡¯s reforms, a move that fuelled great personal enmity between the two.

Had Mr Meshaal been named the group¡¯s new leader¡ªan appointment that Turkey and Qatar had been pushing for¡ªit would have been a blow to the pro-Iranian faction within Hamas. The choice of Mr Sinwar means that Gulf states will keep their distance from the group: they view him as a dangerous ideologue aligned with their main regional foe. Moreover, Mr Sinwar¡¯s appointment will further marginalise the group¡¯s external political leaders, who are generally seen as more moderate and interested in diplomacy than Mr Sinwar is.

If there is indeed a part of Hamas that is interested in diplomacy, then it has been weakened by this move: whereas Mr Haniyeh had been pushing for a ceasefire with Israel, Mr Sinwar has instead tried to prolong the conflict. With Mr Sinwar cementing his control of both Gaza and Hamas¡¯s political bureau, the chances of a ceasefire and the release of hostages look more remote.

Makes sense - if they stop fighting you, how are you gonna find all the fresh candidates to rape? Systematically?
posted by cendawanita at 10:51 AM on August 8, 2024 [8 favorites]

It¡¯s been questioned in another thread, so I¡¯m going to restate it here: people who excuse this? Utter ghouls
People who in as many words say that Israel can only exist if it does shit like this? Likewise ghouls and antisemitic too.
posted by Artw at 10:53 AM on August 8, 2024 [38 favorites]

The aftermath of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was a big green light to allow and encourage this shit.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:58 AM on August 8, 2024 [11 favorites]

I honestly don¡¯t know that the timelines on that would work out. May actually go the other way.
posted by Artw at 11:00 AM on August 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

Guantanamo is still operating. 22 years.
posted by gwint at 11:02 AM on August 8, 2024 [9 favorites]

psst darkstar - wrong thread
posted by cendawanita at 11:02 AM on August 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

I honestly don¡¯t know that the timelines on that would work out. May actually go the other way

If you go way back you can probably blame the Brits. Usually a safe course of action.
posted by Artw at 11:05 AM on August 8, 2024 [8 favorites]

Wikipedia editors held a successful vote to change the article titled "Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza" to "Gaza Genocide"
posted by Lanark at 11:08 AM on August 8, 2024 [36 favorites]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/8/gaza-toll-could-exceed-186000-lancet-study-says

I missed this when it came out last month.


"After applying a ¡°conservative estimate¡± of four indirect deaths per one direct death, ¡°it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable¡± to the Gaza war, the study found.

Such a number would represent almost 8 percent of Gaza¡¯s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

The Lancet study noted that Israeli intelligence services, the UN and the World Health Organization all agree that claims of data fabrication levelled against the Palestinian authorities in Gaza over its death toll are ¡°implausible¡±.¡±
posted by constraint at 11:09 AM on August 8, 2024 [16 favorites]

The NYT in June: ¡°Inside the Base Where Israel Has Detained Thousands of Gazans¡±
posted by Going To Maine at 11:25 AM on August 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

It's really something that at this point our best case scenario is that the Palestinian Genocide is limited to a mere literal decimation of the entire population of Gaza.
posted by stet at 11:36 AM on August 8, 2024 [11 favorites]

The aftermath of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was a big green light to allow and encourage this shit.

This has been going on waayyyyy before the US was materially involved in the region. The British used to tie Palestinians to the front of trains as human shields.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:36 AM on August 8, 2024 [10 favorites]

Makes sense - if they stop fighting you, how are you gonna find all the fresh candidates to rape? Systematically?

This is entirely about Bibi. He's not going to let his far-right fascist coalition fall apart so the carnage cannot end. Ever. Because if the carnage ends and the coalition falls apart Bibi could very well go to jail.

There are plenty of collaborators and co-conspirators who are happy to move the slaughter along but Bibi is the lynchpin of this entire clusterfuck. He's a fucking evil man.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:37 AM on August 8, 2024 [19 favorites]

When the Gaza genocide comes up, I like to remind people that the median age of the population of Gaza is just under 20 years old. So, yes, we're talking about killing one hundred and eighty six thousand people. Conservatively. But also, roughly eighty thousand of them are children.
posted by penduluum at 11:53 AM on August 8, 2024 [32 favorites]

What, did Netanyahu cause the Nakba too? He's committed to this course of action for reasons of personal gain of course, but he has massive support within Israel, and he's a centrist by their standards. The right wants to start using nukes and the left wants a peaceful, sustainable occupation where you only drag Palestinians from their homes in the night and lock them in a cell if they're a terrorist or related to a terrorist or the same race as a terrorist.
posted by jy4m at 11:56 AM on August 8, 2024 [16 favorites]

This has been going on waayyyyy before the US was materially involved in the region. The British used to tie Palestinians to the front of trains as human shields

So noted, but I somehow doubt they boasted so honestly about their violence the way we are now witnessing.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 11:58 AM on August 8, 2024 [2 favorites]

This doesn't surprise me in the least.

The relationship between Israel and Palestine isn't going to be settled by Washington, London or anyone else outside the country. It's going to take a bunch of Israelies and Palestinians standing up and saying "We're not going to do this anymore" and making it stick. It's going to take a large majority on both sides getting rid of the old guys and getting some new people who are just fed up with war and fighting and bullshit. Yes, some people are going to have to open up wounds by laying out, in grim detail, the horrible shit that both sides did. That's how you clean wounds - you expose them, clean them up and put a bandage on them.

And then, wait 50 years, so that they're one generation separated from war and violence. Some sort of peace would be the normal. Not the "new normal"; by that time, it would just be normal.

And everyone would be better off just letting this happen. But we (the West) won't. Because, just like over there, religion and politics and no one is able to separate the two.

Still, I can dream of a day when the headlines are about Israelis and Palestinians doing something boring, like opening yet another school or dedicating a hospital. Maybe something exciting, like opening an amusement park (The Hottest Rides! No, seriously, we're in a desert - trust me, they are hot AF).

But unless we are an Israeli or Palestinian, there ain't shit we can do for this except make it worse.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:14 PM on August 8, 2024 [13 favorites]

The US can absolutely stop sending money and bombs and providing diplomatic cover. We can push for that.
posted by Artw at 12:19 PM on August 8, 2024 [65 favorites]

USA-based people: remember to vote as well as to campaign and protest! Palestine will be down 2 advocates what with the primary losses of Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, both due to AiPac support for their pro-Israel opponent per the BBC link. These changes at the USA governmental level risk adversely impacting negotiations with the incoming USA administration, especially if it's Trump/Vance.
posted by beaning at 12:20 PM on August 8, 2024 [11 favorites]

But unless we are an Israeli or Palestinian, there ain't shit we can do for this except make it worse

What is this based on? Pure vibes?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:23 PM on August 8, 2024 [10 favorites]

And everyone would be better off just letting this happen.

What, exactly, does that mean? That we should let people publish about this kind of abuse, or that it should be more visible in the media (I agree.). Or do you mean that investigating this, since we're not Palestinian or Israeli, is making it worse (I do not agree)?
posted by sagc at 12:27 PM on August 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

AIPAC wouldn¡¯t be making the effort if it didn¡¯t matter, we can take that as a slightly grim silver lining.
posted by Artw at 12:28 PM on August 8, 2024 [16 favorites]

It's going to take a large majority on both sides getting rid of the old guys and getting some new people who are just fed up...

When someone makes this argument that "both sides are just the same" all it does is tell me that you don't understand the 100 years of history or the current situation.
posted by Lanark at 12:36 PM on August 8, 2024 [21 favorites]

Yes, some people are going to have to open up wounds by laying out, in grim detail, the horrible shit that both sides did.

I highly recommend the John Oliver episode from last week.

Both sides have done horrible shit, but one side has always had the military resources, the political opportunity, and the diplomatic cover to inflict way worse shit than they receive.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:51 PM on August 8, 2024 [22 favorites]

But unless we are an Israeli or Palestinian, there ain't shit we can do for this except make it worse.

This is extremely not true.
posted by dry white toast at 1:08 PM on August 8, 2024 [27 favorites]

Sde Teiman Doctor Who Saw Abused Gazan Detainee: 'I Couldn't Believe an Israeli Prison Guard Could Do Such a Thing
unblocked link
Guardian story
posted by Ideefixe at 1:31 PM on August 8, 2024 [6 favorites]

It's going to take a large majority on both sides

Did you just both sides genocide?
posted by iamck at 1:40 PM on August 8, 2024 [19 favorites]

I thought the segment on CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago (Children of Gaza) might have sparked... something in the discourse.

Instead, House votes to ban State Department from citing Gaza Health Ministry death toll statistics and County in New York bans wearing masks to hide identity of Gaza war protesters.
posted by armacy at 1:48 PM on August 8, 2024 [11 favorites]

^ "but lawmakers in the Republican-controlled county"

don't expect any sanity from the GOP, yaknow?
posted by torokunai at 1:58 PM on August 8, 2024 [2 favorites]

Bookmarked to cite whenever anyone tries to convince me that the oppressor / oppressed divide stems from anything other than historical opportunity. ¡°Never again¡± in any language should always be interpreted as ¡°just as soon as we get the chance¡±.
posted by reedbird_hill at 2:10 PM on August 8, 2024 [10 favorites]

> But unless we are an Israeli or Palestinian, there ain't shit we can do for this except make it worse.

This specifically is the thing that is killing my friends and their family. The people saying this, in various forms.
posted by constraint at 2:56 PM on August 8, 2024 [23 favorites]

¡°Never again¡± in any language should always be interpreted as ¡°just as soon as we get the chance¡±.


The idea that a state can have a racial or religious character that exempts it from the possibility of engaging in state violence is obviously delusional. But numerous people, Jewish and otherwise, have said "never again" and aren't responsible for the violence of the Israeli state. Many anti-genocide activists speaking out on behalf of Palestine are Jewish or even Israeli. Just like some Americans are trying to oppose the genocide while their state actively contributes to it.
posted by pattern juggler at 3:00 PM on August 8, 2024 [27 favorites]

USA-based people: remember to vote

Vote for whom? Serious question.
posted by supercres at 3:26 PM on August 8, 2024 [6 favorites]

Ilhan Omar, if you can.
posted by Artw at 3:30 PM on August 8, 2024 [12 favorites]

.
posted by nicolas.bray at 4:03 PM on August 8, 2024

USA-based people: remember to vote

Vote for whom? Serious question.

So my info is USA based but I'd love to hear if/how other countries and their elections are going re this.

Ceasefireaction.com lists 89 of the 536 members of Congress as fully supporting a ceasefire and has filters for the other stances, your voting address, and breakdown by House and Senate. Remember the House gets completely re-elected every 2 yrs as does a rotation of 1/3 of the Senate. Ballotpedia, among other voter info sites, has various search functions for who in your area could be of interest.

Rep Ilham Omar has a contested primary coming up for those in Minnesota, and her advocacy has been a speaking point for her opponent. While Omar is currently favored, every vote helps push the message of supporting her and her policies.

Rep Rashida Tlaib is the only Palestinian-American in Congress and was censured in Nov 2023 for her advocacy. She was uncontested in her Michigan primary but has an ultra-conservative Republican opponent in the fall.

And as for the USA presidential candidates, Harris has not yet put forth an official stance on Palestine and Israel but is widely expected to be more amenable to talking points and pressure than Trump would be.
posted by beaning at 4:33 PM on August 8, 2024 [13 favorites]

But unless we are an Israeli or Palestinian, there ain't shit we can do for this except make it worse.

this is false. we mostly can't take individual actions that will have noticeable effects; we have to coordinate in most cases. but international pressure is important here. there's applying pressure to ones own government where they are complicit; there is applying pressure to the Israeli state via boycotts and direct action to interrupt the supply of weapons (organised dockworkers a while back). there is helping to maintain visibility of the genocide in the countries where people most need to do the preceding things, keeping the temperature up so that people who aren't directly affected except at the moral level don't all abandon their efforts (i don't think cendawanita is Israeli or Palestinian but is nonetheless providing an amazing example of this last one with these posts, for instance). also there is debunking hasbarist-adjacent talking points (or, more charitably, defeatist errors) on the internet.

also like obviously formal international institutions have important roles to play especially if imperial powers stop undermining them.

(a standalone post on how to join collective action against the occupation and genocide (as opposed to one with a newsier angle) is likely to get memory-holed (?) but if folks have links, memail them to me and I could combine with a list of my own and give it a try. was there already a post with that focus that I missed?)
posted by busted_crayons at 4:36 PM on August 8, 2024 [12 favorites]

a standalone post on how to join collective action against the occupation and genocide

That's a great idea, busted_crayons!
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 4:53 PM on August 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

The claim "there's nothing we can do" should always be met with closer examination than you'd levy at the average claim of capability. Because it's so convenient, it's so selfish, and it's potentially so poisonous.
posted by penduluum at 5:24 PM on August 8, 2024 [10 favorites]

But unless we are an Israeli or Palestinian, there ain't shit we can do for this except make it worse.

The International Court of Justice recently clarified in an advisory opinion that Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) is illegal and must be brought to an end "as rapidly as possible." One important thing we can do is pressure governments to fulfill their legal obligations in relation to to this situation, which the Court found included "an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel¡¯s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory." This means things like arms embargoes, for one.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 5:57 PM on August 8, 2024 [11 favorites]

How to end a spiralling Middle East crisis - "A ceasefire deal in Gaza is the only way to put a stop to the region's cycle of violence."

The fate of the region is the hands of the hardliners: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government; Hizbollah¡¯s Hassan Nasrallah; Iran¡¯s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and Yahya Sinwar, the brutal Hamas leader who began it all by masterminding the October 7 attack...

Both attacks [Israeli strikes killing Hizbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran, respectively] dealt humiliating blows to Israel¡¯s foes. It has left them in a bind: respond and risk all out war with Israel, or show restraint and appear impotent. Their own rhetoric suggests they will act, perhaps in concert. The scale of the retaliation will matter and determine Israel¡¯s next act, which in turn will shape counter-responses from Hizbollah and Iran.

There is, however, a way out: US-led efforts to broker a multiphase deal to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza and end the Israel-Hamas war. That is key to unlocking a separate US-mediated agreement to end the clashes between Hizbollah and Israel. If a ceasefire is announced, it may allow Iran to save face and reconsider its response.

US Calls for Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Aug. 15 With Qatar, Egypt - "The US, Qatar and Egypt are calling for a new round of cease-fire talks on Aug. 15, the latest attempt by the Biden administration to end the war in Gaza even as the region braces for an expected Iranian attack on Israel."

also btw...
Turkey submits official request to join ICJ genocide case against Israel - "Israel has repeatedly dismissed the case's accusations of genocide as baseless, arguing in court that its operations in Gaza are self-defence and targeted Hamas militants who attacked Israel on Oct. 7 last year and killed 1,200 Israelis and foreigners in a single day. In 10 months of subsequent warfare, more than 39,600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, hundreds of thousands displaced, and most of the enclave laid to waste as a humanitarian crisis has unfolded."
posted by kliuless at 6:24 PM on August 8, 2024 [6 favorites]

Forgot to add one very important implication of the ICJ ruling: because the occupation is illegal, its end cannot be made conditional on Israel agreeing to a peace deal (in the broad sense; a Gaza ceasefire is a separate issue). This point was highlighted in a joint statement by independent human rights experts (appointed by the UN Human Rights Council):

"The Court refuted the notion that Palestinian self-determination must be achieved solely through bilateral negotiations with Israel ¨C a requirement that has subjected Palestinians to violence, dispossession and rights violations for 30 years.

¡° 'The Court has finally reaffirmed a principle that seemed unclear, even to the United Nations: Freedom from foreign military occupation, racial segregation and apartheid is absolutely non-negotiable,' the experts said."
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 6:36 PM on August 8, 2024 [14 favorites]

For my personal but fanciful take, the ICJ AO should've been a come-to-Jesus moment to the media too, but... Well, I did say it was fanciful.

Yanyway.

Great look, don't go to the Nagasaki event because you're all-in on Rape Camp Country: (Nikkei) U.S., Europe aired concern over no Israel at Nagasaki A-bomb event - Envoys pulling out say Israel shouldn't be put on same level as Russia, Belarus

I suppose that's true. Russian soldiers have been reported to do sexual abuse but idk if we've got a CCTV recording of them huddling over their raping comrade and covering them with US-made shields so there won't be no identification. Brother in arms, amirite.

The envoys of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United States and the European Union said it "would result in placing Israel on the same level as countries such as Russia and Belarus," which have not been invited to the ceremony for a third consecutive year.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel will no longer attend the Nagasaki peace ceremony on Friday in response to the city not inviting Israel, a source familiar with the matter said the same day.

British Ambassador to Japan Julia Longbottom also announced the previous day that she would be absent from the ceremony, as she disagreed with the decision by the southwestern city. (also MEE reporting on the same and MEMO)

It wasn't just the disinvitation - Palestine was also invited as well.

On the media: (Semafor) Journal still can¡¯t confirm January story about UN agency for Palestinians (the UNRWA is Hamas and Oct 7 story)
But months later, the paper¡¯s top editor overseeing standards privately made an admission: The paper didn¡¯t know ¡ª and still doesn¡¯t know ¡ªwhether the allegation, based on Israeli intelligence reports, was true.

¡°The fact that the Israeli claims haven¡¯t been backed up by solid evidence doesn¡¯t mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have walked it back or that there is a correctable error here,¡± Elena Cherney, the chief news editor, wrote in an email earlier this year seen by Semafor.

You expect actual intelligence from Rape Camp(S) Country? Maybe I'm being too harsh on Americans. After all, Abu Ghraib.

There were also broader concerns about the paper¡¯s coverage of the war. In a telephone call with Middle East staff in December, then-standards editor Richard Boudreaux said the paper had examined a sample of its coverage over several weeks and found that it leaned too heavily on Israeli voices and did not include enough Arab perspectives or expert sources. According to one person familiar with the move, the paper subsequently created a master list with dozens of sources to address the imbalance.

But the internal friction within the Journal came to a head over the paper¡¯s coverage of UNRWA.

(...) Inside the Journal, some were wondering the same thing. After the story was published in January, other journalists failed to confirm its central claim. According to two people familiar with the reporting, the Journal¡¯s Israeli intelligence sources had not provided a verifiable list of names of UNRWA workers alleged to have ties to Hamas that the paper could follow up on.

One investigative journalist for the Journal in Washington at one point tried to verify UNRWA staffers¡¯ Hamas affiliations through cell phone data, but was unsuccessful. So did national security beat reporters Nancy Youssef and Jared Malsin, who found that US intelligence also could not substantiate that part of the claim, and they filed a story in late February noting some of the gaps. But according to two sources with knowledge of the situation, the reporters were not pleased when the story was initially published with the headline: ¡°U.S. Finds Claims That U.N. Aid Agency Staff Took Part in Hamas Attack ¡®Credible.¡¯¡± After internal complaints, the paper later updated the headline to reflect the ambiguity: ¡°U.S. Finds Some Israeli Claims on U.N. Staff Likely, Others Not.¡±

(...) The Journal isn¡¯t alone in facing scrutiny over its reporting on the war in Gaza, which has proved deeply divisive within many US newsrooms.

The New York Times has had its own raft of issues. The Intercept, an unabashedly pro-Palestinian digital media outlet, reported on internal fissures within the Times over its coverage of the war, which slowed down the publication of a piece in flagship podcast The Daily.

The publication has also faced issues similar to the ones at the Journal: One of the reporters on its controversial story about sexual violence had previously liked offensive tweets critical of Palestinians. Early in the war, the paper offered a rare apology for its coverage of an explosion at a Gaza hospital, noting that it relied too heavily on unsubstantiated claims from Hamas. The paper has essentially resorted to operating a split newsroom, with one side covering from the Palestinian perspective and the other covering from the Israeli one.

Conversely, allies of Israel have pushed to have journalists at major publications taken off the beat who they see as as too aggressively pro-Palestinian. I reported earlier this year on how pro-Israel groups were putting together opposition-style research on reporters at the Washington Post, digging up pro-Palestinian tweets and pointing out alleged biases and mistakes. The Post has offered only a mild defense of its own reporters covering the war.

I love how when US politicians say they care for all Americans or institutions say similar about their staff there's a huge asterisk that's apparently rude to point out.
posted by cendawanita at 7:13 PM on August 8, 2024 [16 favorites]

Is Rahms dumb ass fired yet?
posted by Artw at 7:21 PM on August 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

I know it was in the other thread, but the idea that the moment the US stops selling weapons to Israel, Iran will invade is completely out of touch with the reality of the situation.. And if the Israelis were actually that hard up for weapons, maybe they could stop dropping them on schools and hospitals.
posted by pattern juggler at 7:28 PM on August 8, 2024 [18 favorites]

Apologies if someone linked this already but it's not just that we have all these reports of sexual abuse, all of a sudden....

There were violent riots last week by Israeli soldiers after nine of them were arrested on charges of sexually abusing a Palestinian man in prison. The rioting soldiers broke into the facilities where the arrested soldiers were being kept before the trial.

Members of the Israeli government were at the 'protests' and said the rioting soldiers were 'heroes,' and then lawmakers argued whether sexual assault should be allowed as a torture tactic, and then some of them concluded that 'everything' should be allowed against members of Hamas.

https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-militants-riot-over-investigation-into-torture-of-palestinian-prisoner/

Like the rot. It goes. SO deep.
posted by subdee at 8:15 PM on August 8, 2024 [26 favorites]

The fear is more likely what batshit insane thing Bibi will do next if he starts running low on conventional weapons. It ain't like his defense or intelligence ministers are going to push back in the least on whatever pops into his head, they are more unhinged than he is.

I don't agree with the kid gloves approach, but given the context of Israel definitely being a nuclear power and Iran very likely having at least rudimentary nuclear weapons and a delivery system capable of getting them to Israel I can understand the reticence many governments are having.

Sadly, a long series of poor past choices going all the way back to the mid-1960s are severely constraining the universe of what the people in power consider to be realistic possibilities. Fixing those mistakes would require a Nixonian madman level play.
posted by wierdo at 8:22 PM on August 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

There were violent riots last week by Israeli soldiers after nine of them were arrested on charges of sexually abusing a Palestinian man in prison. The rioting soldiers broke into the facilities where the arrested soldiers were being kept before the trial.

And that investigation itself was one of those expected to be sham ones (per B'tselem in that DN interview) in order to provide some justification to argue that as the principle of complementarity is in place, Israeli leaders shouldn't be subject to ICC warrants. And yet. The rot.
posted by cendawanita at 8:30 PM on August 8, 2024 [11 favorites]

> 89 of the 536 members of Congress as fully supporting a ceasefire
God, that is such a fucking depressing ratio
posted by blendor at 8:54 PM on August 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

The fear is more likely what batshit insane thing Bibi will do next if he starts running low on conventional weapons. It ain't like his defense or intelligence ministers are going to push back in the least on whatever pops into his head, they are more unhinged than he is.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how this logic works. This guy is so violent and unpredictable we have to keep arming him? He might do something crazy if he has less military resources, so we need to keep giving him weapons to carry out genocide? If Israel is unable to carry out mass murder on a defenseless population due to lack of armaments, how are they going to plausibly attack a state capable of fighting back as a response to their desperation.

Stopping arming and giving political cover to Israel might not be sufficient to stop genocide, but it is definitely a necessary first step, and one I don't think would be at all controversial if so many people weren't left trying to justify the actions of the American government.
posted by pattern juggler at 4:06 AM on August 9, 2024 [12 favorites]

I ran across a video clip (CW: discussion of rape, expletives) yesterday on Twixxer, of a panel on Israel's Channel 12 discussing this rape of prisoners. One panelist not only defended the violations, but insisted that it should be official government policy to violate all captives in that manner as a deterrent for its enemies, and that another panelist speaking out against those violations was "weakening the nation."

The panelist, a journalist, later retracted his endorsement of systemic rape on a radio show, acknowledging "legitimate criticism" of his commentary and advocating "just" the death penalty for terror offenses instead.
posted by delfin at 5:19 AM on August 9, 2024 [11 favorites]

We're having a discussion about arms embargoes, when a truly just society would be talking about military intervention to remove Bibi from power by force. But he's our genocidal ally.
posted by iamck at 7:13 AM on August 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how this logic works.

By nature, all international contracts are unenforceable, so they are designed from the ground up to make it extremely painful for either party to renege on their commitments.

For example, Israeli companies manufacture critical components of the F-35 jet, including the cutting edge helmet mounted display system. So the US can't easily disentangle itself from Israel, and neither can Israel disentangle itself from the US, or the rest of the Western alliance (UK, Australia, Germany, etc).

These jets are typically sold as whole-of-life sustainment contracts - like Australia spent $300mil per EA-18G jet (versus the $125 mil unit cost) - the US is committing to Australia that it will do whatever it takes to ensure Australia is able to fly those jets for the next 20 years, making their alliance almost impossible to break. You can see this not so much as an exchange of money for services, but akin to tribute that Australia pays to the US to be under its protection.

If the Western alliance chose to cut Israel off, then this would impair the West's use of F-35 jets as their own supply of certain components and access to IP would be compromised, at least temporarily. Worse, if the aim of this is to prevent Israel from using their F-35 jets... and they truly halted all trade with Israel - then what does Israel have to lose?

Since the US broke their commitments then Israel would just say they're entitled to sell the useless F-35 jets to Russia to reverse engineer, and in return Russia would be their new security partner - maybe in return, Russia would send them a squadron of SU-34s, SU-35s, maybe a battalion or two of TOS-1 Heavy Flamethrowers, and a few hundred thousand artillery shells. Actually, China would probably be a more interested buyer right now given Russia's present entanglement in Ukraine, but you get the point. This would be a devastating strategic blow to all West aligned nations.

Now sponsored by Russia or China and no longer held in check by a Western ally, Israel is free to completely purge then annex as much land as it likes similar to Russia taking Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, or follow China's lead in running mass "re-education" camps for several million Palestinians similar to what took (is taking?) place in Xinjiang. Unlike Ukraine, there is no way the US is going to be sending weapons to support Hamas or Hezbollah.

If you think things are dire now, they could be much much worse.

I'd bet good money Israel isn't invited to be a partner on the NGAD as a result of the last 9 months, and this is likely to be a watershed moment which will lead to Israel's isolation from the West over the next decade or so.
posted by xdvesper at 7:15 AM on August 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

¡°Never again¡± in any language should always be interpreted as ¡°just as soon as we get the chance¡±

There are two interpretations of "Never Again."

1) "We, the Jewish people, must make sure this never happens again, to anyone."
2) "We must make sure this never happens again to us, the Jewish people."

There are plenty of people, many of us Jewish, who stand firmly with the first. But it's pretty fucking clear which one Bibi and his lackeys mean.
posted by Frayed Knot at 8:16 AM on August 9, 2024 [17 favorites]

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how this logic works. This guy is so violent and unpredictable we have to keep arming him? He might do something crazy if he has less military resources, so we need to keep giving him weapons to carry out genocide?

The nightmare scenario is we stop supplying weapons completely, stocks run low, some combination of Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and Hamas decide it's a good time to start throwing bodies at the border, Israel finds itself in a position where its very existence is threatened and Bibi makes use of the trump card that nobody has been willing to use since 1945.

This is not as outlandish a scenario as you might think. The order was already given once in 1967, but was not carried out because the tide turned as preparations were being made. This is a large part of why the US has been so chummy with Israel since, in a way it had not been in the previous 20 years.

The wingnut milleniarians have their own reasons and take the Israel "love" to a whole new extreme any time they are in power, but they aren't at the moment, so I'll not get into that whole thing again. Suffice it to say they're even more dangerous than the people in charge of Israel's government.
posted by wierdo at 8:35 AM on August 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

The only way to solve the Middle East is to get rid of genocidal religious nuts of all flavours, they are all as bad as each other.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:58 AM on August 9, 2024

So anyway, it's always been very interesting to me to learn that one of America's main strategy to counter communism in the cold war was to foment support for rightwing religious conservatives which previously barely had any toehold in their societies, not until you pair it up with nationalism and anticolonial rhetoric. I'm still trying to figure out how much that was playing with fire especially as Israel became more captured by the right.
posted by cendawanita at 9:04 AM on August 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

The only way to solve the Middle East is to get rid of genocidal religious nuts of all flavours, they are all as bad as each other.


a) some of the participants are definitely worse than each other! this kind of statement is a moral and intellectual abdication of the grossest kind - it would be better to say nothing at all.

b)Guess what: many of the enthusiastic participants in this particular set of atrocities are secular! and many of the opponents of continuing atrocities are religious!

while much of the origins of this conflict lie in religious belief.....even if you could magically erase religion (and its associated nuts) it would not fix this situation.


I say this as an atheist.
posted by lalochezia at 9:09 AM on August 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

The nightmare scenario is we stop supplying weapons completely, stocks run low, some combination of Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and Hamas decide it's a good time to start throwing bodies at the border, Israel finds itself in a position where its very existence is threatened and Bibi makes use of the trump card that nobody has been willing to use since 1945.

If that's a genuine concern (and I very much don't think it is), perhaps that vulnerability would lead to Israel saving its munitions instead of using them to kill children. This involves the Israelis being so bloodthirsty they continue to use up dwindling resources so quickly they exhaust their military stockpiles despite Gaza being no threat to them, and unable to source any arms from anywhere else in the world, such that they cease to function as a modern military, and the Iranians being vicious enough to engage in mass slaughter at a huge cost to their own citizens welfare (including provoking an existential threat in a nuclear state) just to shed Israeli blood, and everyone believing the US will just not intervene to protect Israeli civilians and interests. I could buy a couple of those, but all of them at once seem pretty far fetched.

This feels to me like an attempt to make the policies of the US comprehensible on a moral, rather than electoral or geopolitical level. The idea that something must be tying the hands of American leaders for this to be happening. But I think the situation is explainable solely by reference to the interests of US leaders.

If Netanyahu was a genuine threat to US interests in the area (and if he were as trigger happy as he would have to be for this scenario to work, he would be) the US would have no qualms about removing him. We've backed coups, undermined elections, assassinated leaders, and invaded nations to produce "regime change".

If the threat is genuinely "we let him kill hundreds of thousands, or else he'll kill millions", the answer isn't to arm him so he can keep murdering Palestinians.
posted by pattern juggler at 9:55 AM on August 9, 2024 [17 favorites]

If you think things are dire now, they could be much much worse.

Something like 1 in 12 Palestinians is already dead. The Israelis are taking anything they want and running rape camps. The idea that Israel is holding back because the US wouldn't put up with behavior that Russia or China would accept doesn't seem easy to support based on the evidence we have in front of us.
posted by pattern juggler at 10:07 AM on August 9, 2024 [20 favorites]

Israel is dropping bombs at teh rate they can get ahold of bombs. I don¡¯t see any way in which reducing the flow of bombs doesn¡¯t reduces the rate of bombing.
posted by Artw at 10:21 AM on August 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

If you think things are dire now, they could be much much worse.

This is like arguing that we should all be voting for Trump in 2024, because if we don't, conservatives are going to get more extreme. I've seen some ridiculous arguments around metafilter, but this one takes the cake.
posted by iamck at 11:13 AM on August 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

Israeli strike kills senior Hamas figure in south Lebanon - "An Israeli airstrike on a car deep inside Lebanon killed a senior figure from Palestinian armed group Hamas on Friday evening, a Hamas source and two other security sources told Reuters. The strike, on the southern edges of the Lebanese port city of Sidon some 60 kilometres (nearly 40 miles) from the frontier, killed Samer al-Hajj, a Hamas security official who works in the nearby refugee camp for Palestinians, Ain al-Hilweh. His bodyguard was critically wounded, the three sources said."

no exit...
-Families flee new Israeli assault in Gaza's Khan Younis
-As war drums beat, those in Beirut suburb have nowhere to flee
posted by kliuless at 11:27 AM on August 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

Now sponsored by Russia or China and no longer held in check by a Western ally, Israel is free to completely purge then annex as much land as it likes similar to Russia taking Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, or follow China's lead in running mass "re-education" camps for several million Palestinians similar to what took (is taking?) place in Xinjiang. Unlike Ukraine, there is no way the US is going to be sending weapons to support Hamas or Hezbollah.

I think I say this every thread: We have TWO (2) carrier groups in the Med plus every fighter and bomber in Europe with range to get over Gaza and back that could enforce a no-fly zone and run counter-genocide campaigns via naval missile strikes on IDF forces in the strip and in Israel. And this is not farfetched bullshit posturing we have quite literally done this for this less.

We ran Operation Deliberate Force in the 90s after "just" 10,000 Bosnians had been killed in that genocide.

Israel is not surrounded by historically friendly states.

The McFucking Nanosecond we tell them it's over and rattle a saber, it's over.
posted by Slackermagee at 12:10 PM on August 9, 2024 [12 favorites]

No sanctions for the Netzah Yehuda unit that killed a Palestinian American man.

Apparently Israel did not have the foresight to predict Hezbollah's growing drone power.

US will lift ban on offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

Hamas is demanding the release of Marwhan Barghouti as part of hostage exchange deal; US apparently supports this.

3 Israeli army refusers: Refusal is like holding up a mirror to Israeli society, first of all to show that it is possible to resist the militaristic death machine and the cycle of bloodshed. We don¡¯t have to take part in it. It¡¯s also a kind of platform that makes it possible to show Israeli society what¡¯s happening beyond what you see in the media, which doesn¡¯t really reveal what¡¯s happening in Gaza and the West Bank.

The radicalization of Israel's army: And all these testimonies are coming out about the abuse of detainees. This gets out in CNN, and the New York Times, and all over the world, and there¡¯s pressure to actually investigate and look into this. So the Military Advocate General sent the military police, to go and detain a few soldiers for questioning. And right away the call on the networks of the Israeli right is, ¡°They¡¯re coming after our soldiers.¡±

Everybody comes out. It¡¯s the rank and file, it¡¯s the base of the Likud and the national-religious ideologues. They want to change what¡¯s acceptable in the I.D.F. And you can see it from October onwards with the amount of videos of soldiers talking about rebuilding settlements. All this kind of stuff, right? The erosion of discipline within the I.D.F. is very strong. And suddenly there is this real clash between rule of law, or the story the institution wants to tell the world, versus where the rank and file is. And you get what you saw, which is hundreds of people breaking into military bases in Israel, led by politicians. Ministers supporting them. You could barely find ministers here who are actually criticizing it.
posted by toastyk at 1:20 PM on August 9, 2024 [15 favorites]

I really need someone to explain to me the disconnect that American politicians, even the more "nicer" ones, have when it comes to Palestine:

Minnesota activists criticize Tim Walz for refusing to meet with Palestinian families:

So there¡¯s that. Also, in 2019, Walz approved a $1.3 million Minnesota state taxpayer-funded grant to construct a Lockheed Martin facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, and didn¡¯t just construct it quietly and shut up about it. He boasted about it and said that this was good news for Minnesota. He¡¯s done that repeatedly despite the fact that we have packed his state investments meeting over and over for years on end.

People have testified. Like the staffers wanted at that meeting, they have cried all the sob stories, shared all the data, and shared all the human rights reports to prove how these investments are detrimental to Walz¡¯s constituents. He¡¯s done nothing about it. He has offered no sympathy for it and every single time when we come to that State Board of Investments meeting and we testify about these investments, there¡¯s a blank look on his face and he calls up the next speaker. That¡¯s it. There¡¯s absolutely no engagement or empathy whatsoever.

And...that's the guy that taught his students enough about genocide to predict the Rwandan genocide.

Kamala Harris and Uncommitted - A Harris campaign spokesperson said the vice president has prioritized engagement with Arab, Muslim and Palestinian community members since Oct. 7. And in the brief interaction with members of the ¡°Uncommitted¡± group on Wednesday, ¡°she affirmed that her campaign will continue to engage with those communities.¡±

¡°The Vice President has been clear: she will always work to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. The Vice President is focused on securing the ceasefire and hostage deal currently on the table. As she has said, it is time for this war to end in a way where: Israel is secure, hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinian civilians ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, and self-determination,¡± the Harris campaign said in a statement.

While unclear how prevalent the pro-Palestianian protests will be in the run-up to November, tens of thousands are still planning to demonstrate outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this month, where Harris will make her acceptance speech. College students will also return to campus in the weeks ahead ¡ª potentially bringing a return to the pro-Palestinian encampments and protests that rocked the nation this spring.

Vibe Shift Won't Save Gaza - But look at that NBC quote again: ¡°Bringing Gaza back into the foreground would just be awful.¡± In other words, Gaza was once in the foreground, but¡ªthanks, presumably, to both Joe Biden¡¯s exit from the 2024 race and Walz¡¯s elevation over Shapiro¡ªit has receded as an issue, leaving Harris with a much more united front going into November.

The quote highlights a risk from the wave of euphoria washing over parts of the left: that it will accelerate Gaza¡¯s fade from the political agenda. This fading has occurred even though the genocide shows no signs of slowing and, just as crucially, even as Harris has provided no signs that she intends to meaningfully depart from Joe Biden¡¯s approach to Gaza.

There has been discussion about Harris¡¯s supposedly different ¡°tone¡± when it comes to Gaza. But, as I have written elsewhere, this idea barely squares with the facts. Harris has occasionally sounded more critical notes than Biden, but if you look at the recent statements that the two have made about Gaza, you will find that the sentiments, and even many of the words, are identical. Both Biden and Harris talk about the ¡°suffering¡± of Palestinians. Both have said that they want a ceasefire in Gaza. The notion of some deep split between their language is more fantasy than reality.
posted by toastyk at 4:53 PM on August 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

there¡¯s a blank look on his face and he calls up the next speaker

People sympathetic to why Israel needed to exist really really really need to square with why the consequences of that position need to conclude with the dehumanisation of Palestinians. You don't even have to pingpong to a position then that calls for the reversal of the state's formation as a remedy even. But it's so goddamn difficult that people would rather spend the time in some kind of 5D chess fantasy or conspiracy thinking.

At least this isn't even unique. Americans specifically have a similar blind spot when it comes to Liberia but 'at least' in this point of history it's a fairly settled moral matter enough it's receded into ignorance.

ETA: anyway, my foolish hope is that if our global civilization survives, we'd take the lesson that exporting our minorities to create other colonies as a fix for our prejudice would cease to be a policy position.
posted by cendawanita at 5:52 PM on August 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

Iran Is Better Positioned to Launch Nuclear-Weapons Program, New U.S. Intelligence Assessment Says - "Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal has enabled Iran to speed up its nuclear activities."
posted by kliuless at 6:09 PM on August 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Israel bombs a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, kills ~100 Palestinians
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 11:02 AM on August 10, 2024 [5 favorites]

naval missile strikes on IDF forces

I've explained why even the relatively minor step of reneging on military commitments would be deeply harmful to the entire Western sphere of influence, and as a counter-point you go straight to naval strikes on IDF forces to end the conflict?

You might as well say "the nanosecond we nuke Tel Aviv the war is over" - technically true, but about the same realm of speculation as "aliens invade earth and end all conflict".

Interesting that the Bosnia intervention gets brought up (and not Rwanda? doesn't fit the narrative I guess) - I think Israel would actually support it. UNPROFOR put boots on the ground to enforce the borders and ceasefire conditions, and they were the ones putting in formal requests for NATO air-strikes against belligerents.

A reminder of what happened with UNSC Resolution 1701 (2006) - intended to resolve the Lebanon War. All parties signed up to the agreement - Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah.

1. Israel would withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
2. Hezbollah (as a non-government militia) would disarm.
3. Lebanese and UNIFIL forces would control the border.

Guess which was the only thing that happened... Israel withdrew from Lebanon.

Hezbollah signed it then vastly increased their military capabilities and continued firing rockets at Israel.

Lebanon was meant to police and disarm Hezbollah. Nope, not our problem anymore, they said. Suckers.

UNIFIL isn't doing anything.

The only nation that gets to say the war stops is a nation that is willing to send its young men and women to defend Israel's borders. If NATO and US are willing to put 60,000 troops (similar to Bosnia) on the borders of Israel and Palestine / Syria for the next 20 years and can convincingly stop incoming mortar and rocket fire, only then would it be rational to tell Israel to stand down and withdraw from Gaza, West Bank and Golan Heights.

If there is ever an outbreak of open war again with Hezbollah, there won't be a third party intervention or ceasefire this time, it will be fought until either Israel or Hezbollah surrenders - like what is happening in Gaza right now with Hamas. UNSC resolutions and directives are worth approximately nothing, as Lebanon proved.
posted by xdvesper at 7:59 PM on August 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

Interesting that the Bosnia intervention gets brought up (and not Rwanda? doesn't fit the narrative I guess)

The Rwandan genocide where the west did nothing while thousands of innocents died? It seems like an apt comparison. Though for a true parallel the US would have to be selling weapons to the Hutu death squads.

If NATO and US are willing to put 60,000 troops (similar to Bosnia) on the borders of Israel and Palestine / Syria for the next 20 years and can convincingly stop incoming mortar and rocket fire, only then would it be rational to tell Israel to stand down and withdraw from Gaza, West Bank and Golan Heights.

The reason Israel should end its illegal and immoral occupation is that it is an illegal and immoral occupation. Either Palestinians are citizens of Israel and entitled to all the rights of citizens, including full representation in the government, freedom of movement, and access to social programs, or they aren't, in which case Israel has no sovereignty over them. The thing where you say people are subject to your control but not given the rights of citizens is called apartheid.

Beyond that, Israel is committing genocide right now, murdering noncombatants and children by the thousands. They are not the people whose security needs to be worried about.
posted by pattern juggler at 9:11 PM on August 10, 2024 [14 favorites]

Interesting that the Bosnia intervention gets brought up (and not Rwanda? doesn't fit the narrative I guess) - I think Israel would actually support it

????????? Cite?????????

Same thing with the earlier claim that Israel is now likely out of the NGAD. Does this not involve the Navy because as far as things that civilians can see from our side of the world, they're very much part of cooperations like with the RIMPAC naval exercises. Maybe they're a lagging indicator just as the international calendar for defence trade expos - eta: so I'm projecting into what can be gleaned from the defence contracting side.

This isn't even me scoring a point, which side of Israel as well as the US DOD are you referring to?
posted by cendawanita at 10:23 PM on August 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

????????? Cite?????????

I thought it was pretty self-evident given the last 20 years or so - Israel doesn't mind UNIFIL's existence and believes it is performing (or trying to, at least) its function at de-escalating tensions and keeping the peace. There are the usual grumblings from both sides that UNIFIL is biased towards the other. If anything, Israel generally makes known that it wants UNIFIL to be more proactive at keeping Hezbollah from launching rockets across the border. Based on that, I think this is a reasonable opinion.

As for NGAD, it is also based on historical precedent.

Remember Iran? Only the second most important US military ally in the Middle East in the 1970s. The US sold 80 of their most advanced heavy interceptor (F-14s) to Iran... which then entered the Islamic and Russian sphere of influence and became a sworn enemy of the US. They're hoping not to do that again...

Recently, Turkey was frozen out from the F-35 program before the fighters were physically delivered due to their increasingly close Russian connections. The F-35 sale to UAE was also frozen due to their increasingly close Chinese connections.

The next available chance for the US extricate themselves from this debacle is the NGAD. Opinion is now 48% oppose / 42% in favour to the question of "Do you approve or disapprove of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza?" in the latest Gallup poll. I don't think it's controversial that this could deteriorate even further in the next 5 to 10 years, with Israel's increasingly radicalized population becoming fundamentally incompatible with Western style nations like the US, UK and Australia, and their isolation pushing them into the Russian or Chinese sphere of influence instead.

If Israel leaving the Western sphere of influence is inevitable, then the US will want to slow-walk it to minimize the harm - delay the move for 10-15 years by which time the technologies in the F-35 would be obsolete, and block Israel from any new weapon platforms and technology sharing to avoid an Iran-style debacle repeating itself.
posted by xdvesper at 8:35 AM on August 12, 2024 [1 favorite]

Not claiming any knowledge other than what people like tyler rogaway publish.

I would be shocked if there were ever even the remotest plans to have any foreign partners involved in the actual NGAD fighter. It and the B-21 will be the crown jewels. I haven't seen any talk about foreign involvement in NGAD that wasn't about the CCA (helper drones) and associated systems.

Does this not involve the Navy

It does not involve the navy. The navy's analog is f/a-xx. You can see them talking to each other about subsystems like engines (and one assumes other stuff like stealth coatings) but I haven't seen even hints about F-35 levels of commonality, much less old F-4 levels.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:07 AM on August 12, 2024 [2 favorites]

The navy's analog is f/a-xx. You can see them talking to each other about subsystems like engines (and one assumes other stuff like stealth coatings) but I haven't seen even hints about F-35 levels of commonality, much less old F-4 levels.

This explains some things I'm reading with vague understanding.

Also, I still don't see how Iran's example (or Turkey or UAE )being that of a state purchase of a foreign-made product means Israel is part of the development cycle. Part of America's contractor complex depends on these client states to depend on the afterservice as well, though maybe Israeli espionage is that much more invasive than Iran's in terms of hacking the blueprint stuff.
posted by cendawanita at 9:21 AM on August 12, 2024 [1 favorite]

Roughly, in reverse chronological order:

BBC: US sends submarine to Middle East as tensions grow
The Biden administration believes a ceasefire in Gaza that frees Israeli hostages would be the best way to calm tensions in the region, and has called for talks to resume on Thursday.

But on Sunday night, Hamas responded to US efforts to revive the ceasefire talks by saying Israel should be forced to implement the deal already on the table.

Hamas said that any resumption of ceasefire talks about the conflict in Gaza should be based on its previous position rather than holding new rounds of negotiations.

However its statement indicated an agreement in principle to participate.
Washington has previously blamed Hamas for the failure of negotiations.
But Israeli press reports say the US increasingly sees Israel¡¯s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as partly responsible ¨C because he is accused of appeasing far-right members of his coalition who are opposed to a deal.
Last week, for the first time the White House openly criticised one of these coalition leaders, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Al-Jazeera: Hamas urges return to existing Gaza ceasefire proposal - The group has said it wants a truce plan based on US President Joe Biden¡¯s May 31 ceasefire proposal
Sunday¡¯s Hamas statement added that ¡°the mediators should enforce this [May 6 proposal] on the occupation [Israel] instead of pursuing further rounds of negotiations or new proposals that would provide cover for the occupation¡¯s aggression and grant it more time to continue its genocide against our people¡±.

Reporting from Amman, Jordan, Al Jazeera¡¯s Hamdah Salhut said that Israeli media outlets are interpreting the Hamas statement as a rejection of the ceasefire talks altogether.

¡°But their [Hamas] statement did not say that. They¡¯re merely calling on mediators to put the original proposal that they had agreed to, on the table,¡± she said.
(Gershon Baskin agrees)

Haaretz: U.S. and Other Mediators Threaten to Call Out Israel, Hamas if Gaza Hostage Talks Fail - A diplomatic source told Haaretz that the Biden administration ¨C which until now has solely blamed Hamas for the talks' deadlock ¨C is reaching the point where PM Netanyahu's behavior would result in the U.S. publicly accusing him of harming the talks and preventing the release of the hostages

(I saw Noga Tornopolsky describe this as a coup d'etat: (Haaretz) Israeli Cabinet Votes to Enable Netanyahu to Handpick New Civil Service Chief; AG Warns Move Is Illegal - The attorney general warned ministers before the meeting that the prime minister's appointment of the commissioner is illegal and should not proceed. The proposal was unanimously approved)

Isn't this invoking some kind of antisemitic "dual loyalty" trope? JPost: Editor's Notes: Harris as president could be a disaster for Israel and the Jewish people
American Jews need to understand definitively that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and the allies they thought they had within the Democratic Party aren¡¯t as supportive as they once believed. If Jews care about the survival of Israel during this tumultuous period, they must recognize that voting for Harris is not an option.

This election is not just another political choice; it is a life or death decision that can literally affect the existence of the Jewish state. The stakes could not be higher. Harris¡¯s presidency could lead to policies that embolden Israel¡¯s enemies and weaken the US-Israel alliance, posing an existential threat to the Jewish state.

In stark contrast, while Donald Trump is unpredictable and controversial, his track record regarding Israel was consistently strong: he facilitated the Abraham Accords, acknowledged the Golan Heights as part of Israel, and moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. His actions have strengthened Israel¡¯s position and security in the region.

That's great, now we have both Arabs and Jews for Trump.

Masha Gessen in NYT: Kamala Harris Is Speaking. Is She Listening? (got a gift link; hope it still works)
When I watched a video of this scene, my heart sank. It reminded me of another interruption, at a Democratic fund-raiser at a nightclub in New York, 32 years ago. Bill Clinton was speaking when Bob Rafsky, a member of the AIDS activist group ACT UP, stood up to challenge him on his plans to deal with the AIDS epidemic. ¡°We¡¯re dying,¡± Rafsky said. Clinton engaged at first, saying he was running for president ¡°to do something about it.¡± Rafsky continued to shout. Clinton became angry. ¡°Would you just calm down?¡± he said.

I knew Rafsky. I was a member of ACT UP, and a journalist covering AIDS in the gay press. When Clinton said, ¡°Calm down,¡± I heard, Some things are more important than your life. In campaign math, this was probably true: Only a fraction of a percent of Americans were living with AIDS. Clinton had statistically bigger issues to address.

Yes, before her Detroit speech, Harris met very briefly with a group of pro-Palestinian activists. But at the rally, I heard the same steely political calculus in Harris¡¯s admonition to the protesters: She has to focus on beating Trump, not on a genocide occurring 6,000 miles away and affecting about two million people, some of whom are related to or have close ties with a small fraction of the American electorate for which the war in Gaza is a decisive issue in this election. And, like people confronting AIDS in 1992, Palestinian Americans and others who want an end to Israel¡¯s war should know that the other candidate would be even worse.

Such reasoning is as statistically sound as it is tone-deaf and emotionally blind. It appears that at least one of the protesters at the rally is of Palestinian descent. And given the demographics of the Detroit area, it is quite likely that others in the crowd were Palestinian Americans, very possibly with family and friends in Gaza who are at risk of being killed, whether by bombing, disease or starvation in the coming months, if they are not dead already.

(...) Most Democratic voters, even most voters who care about Israel-Palestine, can probably see themselves voting for Harris, knowing that her administration will not bring immediate relief to the Palestinian people, because they also know that on this and other issues, a Harris administration will be better than a Trump one. But some voters are like Rafsky: They cannot stand to live in a world in which Joe Biden¡¯s vice president, who has not voiced any disagreement with the administration¡¯s Middle East policies, wins the presidency. It¡¯s not that they want Trump to win; it¡¯s that the level of political cynicism they are being asked to adopt feels unbearable.

These voters are not choosing between Harris and Trump. They are choosing between their sense of themselves as moral beings if they vote for Harris and their sense of themselves if they vote for a third-party candidate or for no one at all. Some of them were among the more than 100,000 people who voted ¡°uncommitted¡± in Michigan¡¯s Democratic primary in February to send a message of opposition to Biden¡¯s support for Israel.

If they vote for Harris in November, what will that say to the people of Gaza ¡ª that they¡¯d held their noses while people died? What will they tell their children ¡ª that politics is the game of the possible, and sometimes it¡¯s just not possible to stop a genocide? What will they tell themselves to be able to sleep at night?

For these voters, the psychic price of voting for Harris ¡ª of voting at all ¡ª is extremely high. It is possible that they could be convinced to pay this price, because, of course, they know, just as I do, that a Harris Middle East policy would be infinitely preferable to a Trump one. But they have to be convinced, not dismissed.
posted by cendawanita at 10:02 AM on August 12, 2024 [10 favorites]

Still in rough reverse chronological order, third states obligations or lack thereof:

ToI: Borrell says EU must mull sanctions on Ben Gvir, Smotrich for ¡®incitement to war crimes¡¯

Mondoweiss: U.S. media downplays and ignores ICJ ruling declaring Israeli occupation illegal - The New York Times and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media downplayed, covered up, and even ignored the historic ICJ opinion declaring the Israeli occupation illegal.

RTE: World at 'precipice of horrific moment' - Taoiseach urges review of EU-Israel agreement

Zeteo: EXCLUSIVE: Biden Administration Sending 6,500 Munitions to Israel, Despite Ongoing Killing Of Civilians in Gaza - As demands for an arms embargo to Israel increase, U.S. approves $262 million sale of joint direct action munitions (JDAMs).
JDAMs are guidance kits used to convert non-targeted bombs into more precise ¡°smart¡± munitions. The order comes after the shipment, valued at $262 million, was reportedly delayed in May, as it was pending under review. Zeteo has learned that the sale will now go through.

The original review came as the U.S. sought to prevent Israeli forces from pursuing a major ground invasion in Rafah ¡ª where Israeli forces have nevertheless bombed multiple targets and had a large ground presence for months

(...) The Israeli government is also facing a string of horrifying allegations of sexual abuse against Palestinians in detention. While allegations have been fielded for months, recent leaked video shows Israeli soldiers escorting a Palestinian detainee behind a row of shields, where they allegedly sexually assaulted a prisoner, leading them to require severe medical treatment.

Also Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that he ended the investigation into Israel¡¯s "Netzah Yehuda" battalion for human rights violations ¡ª choosing to not impose sanctions on the unit. The State Department said the unit has been ¡°effectively remediated.¡± Among the human rights violations the unit is accused of is killing a 78-year-old Palestinian-American after they detained him then left him bound, gagged, blindfolded, and exposed to the cold night. He suffered a heart attack while still bound.

More on this in WaPo: U.S. will fund Israeli unit accused of gross human rights abuses - The determination ends a lengthy investigation of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, an ultra-Orthodox unit implicated in the death of a Palestinian American.
The finding amounts to a victory for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a stinging defeat for human rights experts inside the State Department and Pentagon who built a case over years that certain Israeli units should be barred from U.S. assistance under legislation known as the Leahy Laws.

Current and former officials said the decision by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to approve continued funding for the unit defied past practices of withholding assistance until serious accountability measures are taken such as criminal penalties for individuals accused of gross human rights violations.

¡°I have never seen a case where administrative measures such as the ones employed here were sufficient for remediation,¡± said Charles Blaha, a former State Department official in charge of the office that implements the Leahy Laws.

¡°This is especially troubling when one of the allegations against this unit is that the unit is responsible for the death of an American citizen, which really calls into question the value that the State Department places on Palestinian American lives,¡± he said.

(...) Blaha, who retired last year from the department and worked extensively on the case, said the consequences didn¡¯t match what amounts to a ¡°criminal homicide.¡±

¡°Just think about what they did: This was a 78-year-old man. They arrested him for no legitimate reason ¡ª he was never charged with anything, they gagged him, they bound him, they left him on the floor of a construction site in the middle of January. The man died of a stress-induced heart attack, according to the Israeli autopsy,¡± said Blaha.

¡°The autopsy, however, found no connection between what the soldiers did to him and his fatal heart attack. In what U.S. court would that be credible? How would that hold up?¡± he said.

On more recent news of Americans who American politics don't give a toss about: (MEE) Israeli forces shoot US citizen in occupied West Bank - Bullet fired by an Israeli soldier ripped through the thigh of a US citizen protesting against Israeli settler encroachment

AA: Palestine UN envoy makes 'urgent appeal' to international community amid 'Israel's genocidal war' - Failure to hold Israel accountable for grave breaches of international law has further emboldened its impunity, Palestine's envoy says

EU statement (following Israel's decision to revoke Norway's diplomat's diplomatic status): I strongly condemn this unwarranted decision, which contradicts the spirit of Oslo Accords and disproportionately disrupts the normal relations and cooperation with the Palestinian Authority

There's some rumblings over at the UNGA that may involve a resolution about Israel's status but until it's actually tabled (in the non-American sense), I'm just keeping an eye on that.

FT: Netanyahu is prepared to escalate in the Middle East (by John Sawers, former chief of MI6 and UK ambassador to the UN)
Netanyahu is now moving to a ¡°hold¡± strategy for Gaza, freeing up troops for the bigger clash he would like to provoke with Hizbollah. There¡¯s a decent Israeli case for doing so. Hizbollah poses a much greater threat to Israel with its arsenal of rockets and missiles and its claimed 100,000 strong militia. When his defence chiefs wanted to invade Lebanon shortly after October 7, Netanyahu held them back. But his thinking seems to have evolved. According to the unwritten rules that shape the low-level fighting between Israel and Hizbollah, the Shukr killing wasn¡¯t warranted by the stray missile that hit a Druze village in the Golan. It was a deliberate escalation by Israel.


(...) Which brings us to the Americans. Israel assumes a licence to interfere in American politics which no other ally would risk taking. But then Israel and the Palestine question is a factor in US politics, which countries such as Britain, France and Canada are not.

Trump was the most easily manipulated US President Israel has ever enjoyed. He recognised Israel¡¯s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, which no other country has done. He walked the US out of the Iran nuclear deal, encouraged by Netanyahu¡¯s lobbying of the US Congress and a direct snub to his predecessor Barack Obama. Trump¡¯s proposals for a solution on Palestine were largely written by the Israelis and laughed out of court by the Arab countries because they were so one-sided. After 15 years of bad blood with the Democratic party, Netanyahu wants Trump back in power, especially as the alternative, Kamala Harris, lacks Joe Biden¡¯s long engagement and heartfelt sympathy for Israel.

Netanyahu knows that the US would have to step in to support Israel if there was an open war with Iran or Hizbollah. That would reignite divisions within the Democratic party and could lead to Harris losing a major swing state like Michigan where two per cent of the population are Arab-American.

Hence the Biden administration¡¯s urgent efforts to avert the looming clash in Lebanon ¡ª the opposite of Netanyahu¡¯s goal.

Al-Monitor: Iran says cease-fire in Gaza 'priority' as US sees deal 'closer than ever' - Iran's statement on a cease-fire comes as Washington intensifies its efforts to reach a deal that could avert Iranian retaliation against Israel and a potential regional war.

ToI: Hostage deal won¡¯t happen unless Biden squeezes Netanyahu harder, Arab officials say - Frustration among Qatari and Egyptian mediators now extending from Israel to US, after Hamas caved on key demand and PM added new conditions, ToI told

The JC: Arms export licences to Israel being suspended by UK civil service - Civil servants are understood to have stopped giving permission for weapons to be sold to the Jewish state
The British government has already begun to suspend arms export licences to Israel while ministers carry out a policy review, evidence seen by the JC confirms.

While Foreign Secretary David Lammy is yet to make a final decision on whether to halt weapons sales to the Jewish state, civil servants have already stopped granting permits.

One individual involved in arms exports to Israel, who was seeking permission, received a notice in response that stated: ¡°suspended pending policy review¡±.

Such a move would put Jerusalem alongside North Korea and Iran.
posted by cendawanita at 10:31 AM on August 12, 2024 [9 favorites]

I've explained why even the relatively minor step of reneging on military commitments would be deeply harmful to the entire Western sphere of influence, and as a counter-point you go straight to naval strikes on IDF forces to end the conflict?

You spun a geopolitical fanfiction scenario. Israel would not do such a thing because they depends on US backing far more than the other way around - both China and Russia support the Palestinian cause because the goodwill of the entire Arab and Islamic world is worth more than what Israel can offer. They are not restrained by the US, they are enabled by the US.

Israel might be involved in the international coproduction of the F-35 but they are in no way irreplaceable. If they they want to set their relationship with the US on fire, they get treated like apartheid South Africa or Iran. They're already a strategic millstone that the US constantly has to expend political currency on and the only reason they enjoy so much support is because like a third of the country believes supporting Israel is necessary to usher in the Rapture. It's taken decades of American armtwisting to get Israel's neighbors to the point they have something resembling a constructive relationship with Israel and even then they have to pretend to hate them in public. The US has the leverage to stop Israel's escalations by threatening to withhold support - it can and should reign them back.

One thing not well appreciated is that the Israeli intelligence establishment is generally to the left of the public on the issue of Palestine because they are pragmatists who actually have to come up with real solutions. They recognize the need for a political solution and are fearful of starting an all-out war with Hezbollah and/or Iran because they're aware once it's started, they have no way of forcing a favorable conclusion. It's the Israeli public that is pushing for war with Hezbollah and thinks they can just come out of it none the worse for wear.
posted by ndr at 5:10 PM on August 12, 2024 [7 favorites]

My assumption is they keep provoking war with Iran because think the US will fight it for them and it will stop us talking about not supporting the genocide. Probably not entirely a bad call.
posted by Artw at 5:28 PM on August 12, 2024 [5 favorites]

Except for the fact that Iranians seem to be refusing to play ball (of the racist stereotype confirmation bias), not to mention Hamas under YS, so I guess Israel is going to keep poking at anyone just so they can cry how they're under attack while Palestinians are killed fast and slow.
posted by cendawanita at 7:34 PM on August 12, 2024 [7 favorites]

This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history ¨C and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree
......By Omer Bartov

Today, across vast swaths of the Israeli public, including those who oppose the government, two sentiments reign supreme.

The first is a combination of rage and fear, a desire to re-establish security at any cost and a complete distrust of political solutions, negotiations and reconciliation. The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that war was the extension of politics by other means, and warned that without a defined political objective it would lead to limitless destruction. The sentiment that now prevails in Israel similarly threatens to make war into its own end. In this view, politics is an obstacle to achieving goals rather than a means to limit destruction. This is a view that can only ultimately lead to self-annihilation.

The second reigning sentiment ¨C or rather lack of sentiment ¨C is the flipside of the first. It is the utter inability of Israeli society today to feel any empathy for the population of Gaza. The majority, it seems, do not even want to know what is happening in Gaza, and this desire is reflected in TV coverage. Israeli television news these days usually begins with reports on the funerals of soldiers, invariably described as heroes, fallen in the fighting in Gaza, followed by estimates of how many Hamas fighters were ¡°liquidated¡±. References to Palestinian civilian deaths are rare and normally presented as part of enemy propaganda or as a cause for unwelcome international pressure. In the face of so much death, this deafening silence now seems like its own form of vengefulness.

Of course, the Israeli public long ago became inured to the brutal occupation that has characterised the country for 57 out of the 76 years of its existence. But the scale of what is being perpetrated in Gaza right now by the IDF is as unprecedented as the complete indifference of most Israelis to what is being done in their name. In 1982, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested against the massacre of the Palestinian population in the refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in western Beirut by Maronite Christian militias, facilitated by the IDF. Today, this kind of response is inconceivable. The way people¡¯s eyes glaze over whenever one mentions the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and the deaths of thousands of children and women and elderly people, is deeply unsettling.
posted by lalochezia at 4:45 AM on August 13, 2024 [17 favorites]

It's worth noting that Omer Bertov has been very clear at the start of this that he didn't consider what's happening in Gaza as genocide (but the risk is there). This piece shows that he's now changed his position. To wit:

But another part of my apprehension had to do with the fact that my view of what was happening in Gaza had shifted. On 10 November 2023, I wrote in the New York Times: ¡°As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is now taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening. [¡­] We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time.¡±

I no longer believe that.

(marking this because his hesitance provided some fodder for hasbara at the start of the current siege)
posted by cendawanita at 4:47 AM on August 14, 2024 [11 favorites]

Haaretz: Israeli Army Uses Palestinian Civilians to Inspect Potentially Booby-trapped Tunnels in Gaza (i.e., as "human shields")
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 4:54 AM on August 14, 2024 [10 favorites]

War halts IVF treatment in Gaza as parents mourn "miracle" children.

4 day old twins, mother, and grandmother killed in Israeli airstrike as father registered births.

Rashida Tlaib asks "Is this a joke?" when Anthony Blinken commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on Twitter. Blinken approved $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel.

Judge rules that UCLA can't allow pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students from campus. UCLA spent over $12 million on security and law enforcement on the protests and is considering collecting the money from the participants of the protest. You will recall that said law enforcement stood by as protesters were attacked by counterprotesters for hours.

CPJ denounces Israel's smearing of killed Palestinian journalists with unsubstantiated "terrorist" labeling. (If you spend any time on Israeli media, all Palestinians are identified as "Hamas terrorists" or "terrorists". It's not just the journalists.

I will be honest, the psychic toll of living in the US and having to pay taxes here that will result in murdering Palestinians, work with orgs and schools and corporations that don't believe my family are full humans is getting to be a bit much. That I need to hang my hopes on maybe Kamala Harris wins and she appoints people who maybe believe Palestinians are people while she works for the current administration as they continue to bomb more people, send more weapons and money to Israel even as they continue to indicate they want to erase Palestinian existence no matter the cost is just so demoralizing. I don't know what else to say.

And of that Omer Bertov article - I appreciate the honesty - but why is something real to him only if he has seen it up close? Why isn't Palestinian testimony, Palestinians live-streaming their deaths and suffering enough? He has expressed so much sympathy for the IDF soldiers who no doubt are committing the war crimes, murdering the Palestinian children, but I don't see any indication that he would give that same breadth of empathy and understanding to maybe someone who decided to join Hamas.
posted by toastyk at 6:41 AM on August 14, 2024 [14 favorites]

My assumption is they keep provoking war with Iran because think the US will fight it for them and it will stop us talking about not supporting the genocide. Probably not entirely a bad call.

It's because once Gaza is leveled and the place annexed the government will inevitably break apart as the extremes bitch at each other and there will probably be fresh elections. Polling predicts the opposition winning 61-63 seats. Without a majority his chance of securing immunity or derailing the trial by firing the AG or splitting the AG role into political appointments is nil.

Gotta keep the war on to keep the fascists on side. Common enemy and all that.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:16 AM on August 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar defeats Don Samuels by wide margin in DFL primary election rematch

No victory for AIPAC there at least.
posted by Artw at 8:20 AM on August 14, 2024 [12 favorites]

Some news roundup, but first I will acknowledge I haven't been sharing as much or as promptly news and stories of killed and abused Palestinians here, because I think I'm doing something, and then I'll go to a random thread here and realized, no one's mind is really being changed since it's all nicely contained here so what am I doing, it's just bloodthirsty rubbernecking? That was what I was thinking before the story of the days-old twins and their mother and grandmother being killed from an airstrike while their dad was getting their birth certificates sorted, even going through all that trouble of laminating those docs. And for what?

Haaretz: Israeli Army Uses Palestinian Civilians to Inspect Potentially Booby-trapped Tunnels in Gaza

A mefite (Israeli-American Jewish person who stopped coming here because of the ambient Zionism) woke me up with that story and an ungated link. Maybe if Israeli media reports it, it's actually not Pallywood: "The senior ranks know about it," the source said. The army has played innocent despite footage shown on Al Jazeera about two months ago. Israeli soldiers can be seen dressing Palestinian detainees in uniforms and flak jackets, putting cameras on them and sending them into badly damaged houses and tunnel entrances with their hands bound by plastic ties.

(...) "One of the commanders turned to one of the combat soldiers who tried to receive answers and told him: 'You don't agree that the lives of your friends are much more important than their lives? And isn't it better that our friends will live and not be blown up by an explosive device, and that they get blown up by an explosive device?"

This soldier said that the commander's comment was made with such aggressiveness that it was clear that there was little room for the troops to express doubts.

One soldier said that when he and his colleagues asked "why," they were told about the dogs of the Oketz canine unit. Dogs were getting killed or wounded when they were sent in to locate explosives or attack the enemy. Or after their experience, the dogs had to be discharged because their operational senses had deteriorated.

Every accusation a confession.

Anyway, rejoice, go back to treating the US presidential nominees like pop stars with their memes and how they're good people, the Martyrs of Gaza account have decided to stop: We don't believe we deserve to be abandoned! And we never wished for anyone to go through what we are enduring. We always prayed for Lebanon and Yemen, hoping they would never experience this.

We tried to honor the memory of our friends, neighbors, family, and loved ones, but we are broken by a world that waits for us to die so we can become just content on their pages, only to be forgotten afterward.

Nothing has broken us in this genocide more than your abandonment!

Can we ask, is it possible for us to live in peace like the rest of the world?!

-¨C----------
(News older than a week will be marked with a date)

Al-Jazeera: Israeli crowds storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, West Bank villages on Jewish holiday - Raid in at-Tawani is part of broader settler violence in the occupied West Bank on Jewish anniversary of temple destruction.

5th Aug: (MEMO) Egypt denies Israel claims about Gaza tunnels

6th Aug: UNESCO uses emergency procedure to name Gaza site to both its ¡®World Heritage¡¯ and ¡®In Danger¡¯ lists: ...Along with the United States, Israel left UNESCO on Dec. 31, 2018, amid allegations of anti-Israeli bias at the U.N. agency which crescendoed after the organization accepted ¡°the State of Palestine¡± as a member in 2011.

Under the Biden administration, the United States formally rejoined UNESCO in July 2023.

Speaking about that bias - from Andrew Desiderio at Punchbowl News, ostensibly about the drama in the Senate Council for Foreign Relations: We first told you in June about the committee¡¯s dysfunctional state and the reasons for it. It stems from Republicans¡¯ demand that the panel vote on House GOP-drafted legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court. Senate Democrats want to pursue a different bill. The ICC¡¯s top prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for top Israeli officials over the war in Gaza with Hamas.

Since then, the Foreign Relations Committee¡¯s paralysis has only worsened, with nominees for critical ambassadorships piling up, unable to be sent to the Senate floor for confirmation. Democrats say this is directly harming U.S. national security in areas of the world where China is prioritizing its diplomatic engagement.

(...) Cardin said he¡¯s hopeful that the panel will be able to convene for a business meeting when senators return from recess in September, but that¡¯s far from guaranteed.

¡°Ben is trying to get this done in a bipartisan way,¡± Schumer told us in a recent interview. ¡°He¡¯s willing to compromise. I want to get something done on ICC. I¡¯ve hated the ICC forever because I¡¯ve always thought they¡¯re vehemently anti-Israel.¡±

We asked Schumer if it¡¯s worth putting the House-passed ICC sanctions bill on the next business meeting agenda if only to allow nominations to get through. Schumer wouldn¡¯t commit either way.

¡°I¡¯ve never seen this before, these right-wing people hold up nominations and tie the government¡¯s hands in knots because they don¡¯t exactly get their way,¡± Schumer said.

Even though the House GOP bill won bipartisan support, the Biden administration opposes it and most Hill Democrats believe it goes too far in undercutting the ICC. They argue it would force the United States to sanction allies who are party to the ICC. Like Israel, the United States isn¡¯t a signatory to the international agreement behind the ICC.

So let's see how that logjam of personalities will square with this news, which apparently is taken well by those who have been actively criticizing Biden's Palestine policies: (JTA) Harris campaign taps Israeli-born former peace negotiator Ilan Goldenberg as liaison to Jewish community - Matthew Petti then shared a 2020 piece he did that included quotes from Goldenberg, and even then (but what more now) his position would've gotten him hounded off of the WH inner circle:

The next administration could promise to ¡°do less to protect the Israelis¡± from international criticism ¡°viewed as reasonable by the United States¡± or even unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, he told the National Interest.

The United States could eventually have to tell Israel that ¡°we support the two-state solution, but if it¡¯s no longer possible, we support democracy¡± with equal voting rights for Palestinians under Israeli control, Goldenberg said.

¡°Hopefully, you¡¯re in the mode of deterring, and not responding,¡± he added. ¡°I would hope the Biden administration would¡­reverse any American recognition of annexation as part of an early step to reverse a bunch of bad decisions in this space by the Trump administration.¡±

Annexation, eh? Oh well! New Arab: Annexing history: Israel poised to seize West Bank's archaeological sites under new law

----
I started my comment not because of that news I referred to, but because of this tab that I've had open for days, relating to the news that opened this FPP: (MEE) ¡®Raped by female soldiers¡¯: Palestinian in leaked Sde Teiman photo speaks out - The man in the famous photo, Ibrahim Salem, spent eight months in Israeli detention, where rape, electrocution and beatings were routine

And now I shall cap off that news about gender equality in the military and Kamala's appointment news, with something slightly earlier than the appointment story and more hopeful, because we sure as hell need something: (HuffPo) Kamala Harris Hasn¡¯t Broken From Joe Biden On Gaza. But Skeptics Of The War Watch Her Rise With Hope. - Harris' aides are more "moderate" than Biden's team, a U.S. official told HuffPost, and the administration is signaling she will play a bigger role in policy.
posted by cendawanita at 8:36 AM on August 14, 2024 [12 favorites]

People posting updates in these threads makes me feel less insane while watching the world shrug its shoulders. So thank you.
posted by armacy at 8:46 AM on August 14, 2024 [16 favorites]

What armacy said.

This is genocide, this is madness.
.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:08 PM on August 14, 2024 [9 favorites]

I don't think the world is shrugging, the world is outraged, the world is angry, the world is disconsolate.

Their leaders are shrugging because power is what matters to them, nothing more.
posted by chaz at 1:39 PM on August 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

"And for what? For a little bit of land? There's more to life than a little land, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it."[1,2]

Israel publishes plan for new West Bank settlement as regional tensions simmer - "Israel announced in June it was going to legalise five outposts in the West Bank, establish three new settlements, and seize huge swathes of land where Palestinians seek to create an independent state, further inflaming Palestinian anger."

The new 60 hectare settlement called Nachal Heletz will form part of the Gush Etzion settlement cluster and connect the region with nearby Jerusalem, said Smotrich, who heads a pro-settler party and who himself is a settler.

Peace Now, an Israeli NGO, said: "Smotrich continues to promote de facto annexation, disregarding the UNESCO Convention that Israel is a signatory to, and we will all pay the price."

The Gaza war threatens to spill into a regional conflict involving Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel is braced for significant Iranian and Hezbollah attacks following the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut and the political leader of Hamas in Tehran.

posted by kliuless at 2:56 PM on August 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

(this bit I also shared in the current VP thread)
Zeteo: New Poll Suggests Gaza Ceasefire and Arms Embargo Would Help Dems with Swing State Voters - The YouGov/IMEU Policy Project poll found over a third of voters in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia are more likely to vote for a Democratic nominee who pledges to withhold weapons to Israel.
In Pennsylvania, 34% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee vowed to withhold weapons to Israel, compared to 7% who said they would be less likely. The rest said it would make no difference. In Arizona, 35% said they¡¯d be more likely, while 5% would be less likely. And in Georgia, 39% said they¡¯d be more likely, also compared to 5% who would be less likely.

Similar results were found when respondents were asked separately if they were more or less likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if Biden called for an end to US.-funded weapons to Israel or if the US president secured a ceasefire.

The results were particularly stark when looking at responses by those who voted for Biden in 2020 and are currently undecided. In Pennsylvania, 57% of such voters said they¡¯d be more likely to support the Democratic nominee if they pledged to withhold additional weapons to Israel for committing human rights abuses; in Arizona, 44% said the same; in Georgia, 34% said so.

Got this via these tweets commenting on it:
Yonah Lieberman: Harris earns more votes by supporting an arms embargo than opposing it.

Hamid Bendaas: If I could show one thing directly to Kamala Harris it would be this:

Among *Biden 2020* voters in Pennsylvania who now say they are voting third party/not voting/unsure, *57%* say they would move toward Harris if she calls an arms embargo on Israel and *ZERO* said less likely

---- otherwise ----

On Turkey (I still sideeye the Instagram embargo though) - Al-Jazeera: ICJ bid, Instagram ban latest signs Turkey is moving away from Israel - The Turkish government has been criticised by some for not doing enough for Gaza, but it has moved to cut many ties.

Irish Times: Israel must face boycotts, human rights lawyer says - Self defence gives ¡®blank cheque¡¯ to countries to attack others inside UN rules, Prof Conor Gearty says
The International Court of Justice findings against Israel ¡°are an extraordinary moment¡± in the global legal world that now requires the rest of the world to boycott the country, a leading Irish human rights expert has said.

The ¡°ringing statements¡± made by the international court which has found that Israel has breached international law are ¡°aimed at so-called law-abiding countries¡±, Prof Conor Gearty of the London School of Economics said.

¡°It¡¯s not just enough to protest diplomatically. The court has said action is necessary, the action is tough,¡± and such action might require economic and academic boycotts, the Irish-born academic and barrister told the West Cork History Festival

(...) Dating back to the United States¡¯ decision to attack Libya in 1986, countries now enjoy ¡°a blank cheque¡± to attack others in the name of self defence, while still ¡°being vaguely¡± inside United Nations rules, he said.

Self defence could be justified in the past after an attack. However the doctrine evolved so that pre-emptive attacks could be made far away ¡°because you anticipated something that might come later and might kill you,¡± he said.

(I will say it's interesting if anyone else noticed that as far as Harris is concerned, she's retired the self-defence phrasing - opting instead for saying Israel should be able to go after terrorists. Do with that what you will.)

Also: (FP) ICJ Opinion on Israeli Settlements, Explained - The top court¡¯s historic declaration is a major boon to the Palestinian solidarity movement.
Given Israeli and U.S. intransigence, the nonbinding decision is unlikely to change the course of the current war and will do little to prevent the imminent regional conflagration. But it will have profound diplomatic and political implications beyond this moment and is a major boon to the Palestinian solidarity movement¡¯s program of isolating Israel on the international stage. Whether it alters U.S. policy in the near term, particularly in the event of Vice President Kamala Harris¡¯s electoral victory, is a question of political will: Though the Biden administration claims to abide by international law and has already declared Israeli settlements illegal, it has declined to use the ample leverage at its disposal to pressure Israel into compliance.

Oh word? Politico: The Saudi Crown Prince is Talking About An Assassination. His Own. - Many people want to kill the Saudi leader, but is he using such threats as a means to get the U.S. to pressure Israel on a future Palestinian state?
The Saudi royal has mentioned to members of Congress that he¡¯s putting his life in danger by pursuing a grand bargain with the U.S. and Israel that includes normalizing Saudi-Israeli ties. On at least one occasion, he has invoked Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader slain after striking a peace deal with Israel, asking what the U.S. did to protect Sadat. He also has discussed the threats he faces in explaining why any such deal must include a true path to a Palestinian state ¡ª especially now that the war in Gaza has heightened Arab fury toward Israel.

The talks were described to me by a former U.S. official briefed on the conversations and two other people with knowledge of them. All of the people, like others quoted in this column, were granted anonymity to describe a high-stakes, sensitive topic. The discussions have been weighty and serious, but one takeaway, the people said, is that the crown prince, often referred to as MBS, appears intent on striking the mega-deal with the U.S. and Israel despite the risks involved. He sees it as crucial to his country¡¯s future.

Extremely and darkly enjoying the understatement here: To MBS¡¯ chagrin, however, the Israeli government has been unwilling to include a credible path to a Palestinian state in the pact.

I shan't say more.

MERIP: State Secrets and Crimes¡ªRape at Israel¡¯s Sde Teiman Prison - The recent reports of rapes of Palestinian prisoners at the Israeli detention camp, Sde Teiman, and elsewhere have caused widespread outrage, revealing the fault lines in Israel¡¯s political and military establishment amid the ongoing war on Gaza. - a preview of a piece from their upcoming Fall issue

Australia is having its own bs hysteria (consistently overlooked despite not speaking German), eg: (BBC) Pianist's Melbourne show cancelled over Gaza remarks

ICYMI, it did feel like literally after this article came out (The Nation: The Man Using Sports to Fight Israeli War Crimes - Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestine Olympic Committee, says sports can be a nonviolent tool to resist occupation.), this was posted: (AJ live updates) Israeli authorities detain head of the Palestine Olympic Committee

Jibril Rajoub, who is also a member of Fatah¡¯s Central Committee, was stopped by the Israelis upon his return from the Paris Olympics on his way to the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported.

The 71-year-old was searched, had his passport confiscated and was summoned for questioning at Ofer military compound near Ramallah on Thursday.

Rajoub has previously been threatened with imprisonment by some members of the Israeli government for campaigning to bar Israel from the Olympics and football World Cup because of its violations of the Olympic Charter and FIFA regulations against apartheid in sports.

In May, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz threatened to revoke his travel pass.

¡°We will work to thwart his plans, and if he doesn¡¯t stop, we will imprison him in the Muqataa [presidential compound in Ramallah], where he will be left to play stanga by himself between the walls,¡± said Katz, referring to a popular Israeli street game involving a football.

Why can't Palestinians protest peacefully bla bla bla, in the meantime, as part of the long-standing agreement that God forbid anyone should review to do something about: (AP) US approves $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel amid threat of wider Middle East war - including scores of fighter jets and advanced air-to-air missiles, the State Department announced Tuesday.

Congress was notified of the impending sale, which includes more than 50 F-15 fighter jets, Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAMs, 120 mm tank ammunition and high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles and comes at a time of intense concern that Israel may become involved in a wider Middle East war.

However, the weapons are not expected to get to Israel anytime soon, they are contracts that will take years to fulfill. Much of what is being sold is to help Israel increase its military capability in the long term, the earliest systems being delivered under the contract aren¡¯t expected until the 2026 timeframe.

¡°The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives,¡± the State Department said in a release on the sale. (more direct details in this press release)

Coincidentally, Harrison Mann, the Jewish USAF major who resigned over this "war", wrote for the Guardian: Why should US troops pay the price for Biden¡¯s failure to rein in Netanyahu? (he was also interviewed in June in NY Mag which I think I missed)

Canada update: one of these charities were already reported on, but based on yesterday's news, it's actually two charities: (Haaretz) The Canadian government announced on Monday that it had revoked the tax-exempt status of two major Jewish organizations: Jewish National Fund Canada and the Ne'eman Foundation.
posted by cendawanita at 8:58 PM on August 14, 2024 [6 favorites]

Some action items if you are so inclined - these are all US: Operation Olive Branch - supporting various Palestinian families directly; Uncommitted National Movement; there will be a National Day of Action this Sunday to rally to call for an arms embargo; petition the DNC to allow Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan to speak at the DNC; petition the SF DA to drop the charges against the Golden Gate 26 protesters who shut down the bridge for Gaza. If you are in NY, urge your reps to co-sponsor the Not On Our Dime! Act, which takes aim at the US based charitable organizations that send money to the Israeli settlers. This bill is backed by AOC.

Columbia University's president Minouche Shafik has resigned amid criticism of her handling of pro-Palestinian protesters.

Canada strips 2 pro-Israel charities of tax-free status including flagship "JNF".

100 rabbis and cantors across the US call for Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire deal to free the remaining hostages.

Someone else giving voice to my thoughts: But Palestinian Americans like me are discovering something this year: the Democratic Party will bomb your homeland, kill your family, use your own money to do it, and still expect your vote. More than that, Democrats will curse you and shame you if you push back.
posted by toastyk at 9:01 PM on August 14, 2024 [9 favorites]

Oops sorry the Canada link about the charities is a duplicate of cendawanita's sorry about that.
posted by toastyk at 9:11 PM on August 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

No worries, Haaretz is gated anyway, so more choices is good!
posted by cendawanita at 9:16 PM on August 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

Belated shares:

Guardian (Observer) interview with Nathan Thrall: ¡®The scale and brutality of the Israeli response in Gaza hasn¡¯t surprised me, no¡¯ - The US journalist and author on his Pulitzer prize-winning book about a Palestinian father, the aftermath of 7 October and what it means to be a Jewish critic of Israel

Al-Jazeera: Australia finds ¡®serious failures¡¯ in Israeli attack on food aid convoy - Seven people, including an Australian, were killed when the Israeli military struck three World Central Kitchen vehicles in Gaza.
For all that: Israel¡¯s investigation into the attack had been ¡°timely, appropriate and, with some exceptions, sufficient,¡± he [former Australian air force chief Mark Binskin] added.

¡°In this incident, it appears that the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] controls failed, leading to errors in decision making and a misidentification, likely compounded by a level of confirmation bias.¡±

Al-Jazeera: Israel returns ¡®decomposed¡¯ bodies of 89 Palestinians to Gaza - Government Media Office in Gaza says Israel has ¡®stolen¡¯ 2,000 bodies since October 7 and sent some of them in ¡®an inhumane manner¡¯.

Dropsite News: Microsoft Encourages Employee Donations to Illegal West Bank Settlements, While Barring UNRWA

+972: ¡®Order from Amazon¡¯: How tech giants are storing mass data for Israel¡¯s war - The Israeli army is using Amazon¡¯s cloud service to store surveillance information on Gaza¡¯s population, while procuring further AI tools from Google and Microsoft for military purposes, an investigation reveals

FT: Widespread boycotts in Muslim countries hammer western brands

CNN: See how data analyses contradicts Netanyahu¡¯s claim about war in Gaza - Nearly half of Hamas¡¯ military battalions in northern and central Gaza have rebuilt some of their fighting capabilities despite more than nine months of Israel¡¯s brutal offensive, according to analyses by the DC-based American Enterprise Institute¡¯s Critical Threats Project, the Institute for the Study of War and CNN.

Haaretz: Israeli Minister Held Talks With Black Cube About Spying on pro-Palestinian U.S. Student Group - Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli met with Black Cube in June to discuss a possible espionage mission against Students for Justice in Palestine, the group leading anti-Israel protests on U.S. campuses ? The operation, the parties say, never got a green light, but while the ministry says Black Cube approached it with the idea, sources claim the opposite
According to another senior diplomat, Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, Israel's former ambassador to the United States: "Beyond the potential damage to relations with the U.S. administration, activity as described in this story [the surveillance of U.S. citizens] could gravely damage Israel's image, turn organizations that have conducted an unfair campaign against Israel into victims, and depict Israel as a belligerent and bullying state in public opinion. Bad ideas like this are no substitute for the basic work at which Israel has failed: waging the battle for public opinion among young Americans."

(...) Perhaps the last thing Israel needs internationally right now is a connection between its government and Black Cube ¨C and the last thing Black Cube needs is to be caught operating on U.S. soil in the service of a foreign government. These are likely reasons why the two sides both stress in their responses that the operation was never implemented.

HRW: Gaza: Israeli Forces Open Fire While Storming Home
In the same X post, the Israeli military posted a photograph and said it raided a school, which Human Rights Watch located on the opposite side of the street, and found a cache of weapons and explosives. The Israeli authorities have not publicly provided any further information about the attack. Additionally, they did not respond to a July 15 Human Rights Watch letter summarizing its findings and requesting specific information about the incident.

DCI-P: Israeli forces run over, kill 15-year-old Palestinian boy injured in drone strike
¡°Israeli forces continue showing contempt for Palestinian children¡¯s lives as they carry out aerial attacks in densely populated civilian areas like Jenin,¡± said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. ¡°Israeli forces not only injured Khatab in a drone strike, but they shot at paramedics trying to provide aid, then parked their military vehicle on top of his torso while he bled out in a shocking act of cruelty. Countries need to enact an immediate arms embargo and sanctions on Israel to force accountability for Israeli forces who have been allowed to brutally kill Palestinian children with impunity for decades.¡±

Guardian: US-Israeli soldier posted videos showing detonation of Gaza homes and mosque - IDF soldiers have shared scores of videos of their conduct in Gaza. The American-Israeli soldier says his videos were ¡®taken out of context¡¯ (will placing it in context improve it that much? Maybe if you think every Palestinian deserves it)

Oh no, must be stressful: The soldier¡¯s father said his son had ¡°sent a congratulatory video dedicating a detonation to honor a friend¡¯s new marriage¡±, and that the family business had received threats since the videos began circulating.

Guardian (their reporting of the Sde Teiman tortures story): Palestinian prisoners describe systemic abuse in Israel¡¯s jails - Guardian interviews back up report by rights group B¡¯Tselem, which says jails should now be labelled ¡®torture camps¡¯

Speaking of, as the only UK outlet that does actually follow-up on Israeli media reporting (I'm being very specific here; they revert back to the mean when it comes to Palestinian journalism, which is nothing), their report on the human shields story: Israeli forces in Gaza ¡®use civilians as human shields¡¯ against possible booby-traps

Not belated in terms of date of reporting but this is about the May Biden ceasefire speech (ah, May... So many more Palestinians were alive then. And Lebanese....): (ToI) A Biden speech urging national Israeli reckoning was shelved at the last minute. Here¡¯s why - Top aides crafted address on Israel¡¯s choice between integration and isolation, but instead went with another speech exposing details of Jerusalem¡¯s freshly submitted ceasefire offer
But as critical as Biden¡¯s May 31 address was, it was not the speech he was originally meant to give that day, three US officials told The Times of Israel.

Earlier in May, several of his top aides had drafted an address that was even more far-reaching.

In this earlier version, Biden was slated to present the Israeli public with a choice between two paths.

Washington already feared Netanyahu¡¯s government was heading toward the first one ¡ª an indefinite Israeli occupation of Gaza; a spillover of the fighting sparked by Hamas¡¯s October 7 onslaught that ignites the already-deteriorating situation in the West Bank; a chilling, if not a severing, of Israel¡¯s ties with Arab allies; and broader international isolation.

The second path was one that the Biden administration had spent the previous eight months trying to solidify. It featured at least five Arab countries assisting in the postwar management of Gaza. Those countries would include Saudi Arabia, which would also agree to normalize relations with Israel ¡ª a move that would be conditioned on Israel agreeing to create a political horizon for the Palestinians, but would allow for the solidification of a regional security network to counter Iran, which Jerusalem has long sought.

¡°It was a speech that was supposed to present the Israeli public with a clear understanding of where they were heading and where they could be going,¡± said one US official.

I'm just chinhandsing, being neither American nor Israeli, and just marvelling at how much slack a country can get. But also, I didn't realize Biden is also managing the Israeli public like he's their president.

Anyway, always this guy at the scene of the crime: The decision to write a different address came after Israel submitted a hostage deal proposal on May 27 that many in the administration believed created an opening for a breakthrough in the long-stagnant negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

White House Mideast czar Brett McGurk ¡ª backed by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan ¡ª led the crafting of this new speech that focused more squarely on the Israeli proposal, the US officials said.
posted by cendawanita at 12:02 PM on August 15, 2024 [6 favorites]

Eesh. defacto ban on mentioning I/P outside of this thread.
posted by Artw at 12:52 PM on August 15, 2024 [9 favorites]

Well, at least that's my work cut out for me for the foreseeable future.
posted by cendawanita at 12:54 PM on August 15, 2024 [9 favorites]

That's unfortunate.
posted by Gadarene at 1:28 PM on August 15, 2024 [4 favorites]

I suppose acknowledging the ongoing complicity of the current administration in genocide was harshing the mellow.
posted by pattern juggler at 3:25 PM on August 15, 2024 [11 favorites]

Even Pelosi is calling for Biden to stop, but we have to pretend that the fact that administration is enabling Israel is a fringe idea.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:58 PM on August 15, 2024 [8 favorites]

In the event that Trump wins, is it likely that the Democratic Party and their sympathetic press will suddenly remember human rights and rejoin the struggle for Palestinian liberation (or at least organise against genocide)?

Is it insane to think that power has hardened their hearts?

I recall in the dark days of Trump the press protesting briefings with audio recordings of children suffering in concentration camps at the US border. Why aren't Biden's mouthpieces taking the podium to the results of their prevarications?
posted by Kitten as a cat at 6:56 PM on August 15, 2024 [3 favorites]

ndr, earlier: One thing not well appreciated is that the Israeli intelligence establishment is generally to the left of the public on the issue of Palestine because they are pragmatists who actually have to come up with real solutions.

Ami Ayalon is still making the rounds, here's the latest one with Zeteo (interview with Mehdi Hasan): ¡°If I Was A Palestinian, I Would Fight Against Israel¡¯s Occupation¡±: Former Israeli Security Chief Ami Ayalon

I was thinking if I should share this OCHA OPT update:
- The number of Palestinian children killed by live ammunition fired by Israeli forces has almost tripled since 7 October compared with the preceding 10 months (115 compared to 39).
- The number of Palestinian children injured by live ammunition fired by Israeli forces has more than doubled since 7 October compared with the preceding 10 months (1,411 compared to 615).
- Israeli settlers assault two Palestinian children by handcuffing them, breaking their legs, and urinating on them in a settler outpost near Bethlehem.

Then I saw this news broke: One Palestinian killed as Israeli settlers attack West Bank village
Ihab Hasane has videos from the pogrom.

I've seen people pointing out that the quick condemnation from people like Smotrich may likely be due to the threat of EU sanctions. In any case, Maytal Kowalski: What was that Hasbara line again about how a Palestinian state is a reward for terrorism?
Because if statehood is contingent on a lack of terrorism, boy are things not looking great for us.

Coincidentally, Mairav Zonsvein in the Intercept: Israeli Society Is in a Deepening State of Contradiction - Israelis blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for dragging them into endless war ¡ª and are at a loss for how to carve a way out.
Even before this escalation, many Israelis, especially those in the north, were demanding the government invade Lebanon, as if there is a magic button they can press to get rid of the threat from Hezbollah. A recent poll shows a majority of Israelis want the country to take more aggressive military action against Hezbollah, even as they are disenchanted with the leadership. Many of the mayors and municipal leaders who have been demanding the army turn its focus to Lebanon have also condemned the Netanyahu government for its intelligence and security failures, and for failing to devise a plan to restore security to Israel¡¯s north.

In my life in Israel and in my work researching and analyzing its politics and security, I have observed a society gripped by despair but at a loss for how to carve a way out. The Israeli public is in a constant state of contradiction. Earlier this summer, polls showed that 72 percent of Israelis wanted Netanyahu to resign. They hold him responsible not only for the failure to protect Israelis on October 7, but also for delaying, undermining, and even rejecting a hostage deal, which a majority ¡ª 56 percent ¡ª want, even if it means ending the war in Gaza. A larger 62 percent asserted that getting the hostages back is more important than defeating Hamas.

While a small minority oppose the war on Gaza on moral grounds, among other reasons, most Israelis continue to be apathetic to the suffering of Palestinians, with reports of starvation, disease, and infections due to dire conditions in Gaza scarcely a news item. After Netanyahu¡¯s speech in Congress last month, Israelis polled said Netanyahu is considered more fit to be prime minister than any of his political rivals. And after the twin assassinations the following week, Netanyahu¡¯s Likud party led polls for the first time since October 7. This may less reflect Netanyahu regaining popularity than the dysfunctional paralysis that has gripped Israeli politics for the past several election cycles.

(...) But however many Israelis may now agree with this, they are not able to push the government out ¡ª or onto an alternative path.

There are several reasons for this. For decades, Israel has defied international opinion ¡ª and now, according to the International Court of Justice, also law ¡ª in the occupied territories, creating a culture of lawlessness and impunity. The settlement project, and with it, settler violence, tells a story of normalized violence, the dehumanization of Palestinians, and a certain arrogance of power, which played an important role in the leadership¡¯s blindness to the signs leading up to October 7. Within Israel, right-wing mobs recently broke into a detention facility and army base to protest the arrest of soldiers accused of torturing a Palestinian detainee. The Israeli right¡¯s 20-year campaign, led by Netanyahu, to dominate the media, undermine state institutions like the Supreme Court, and demonize Palestinians and Israelis who don¡¯t toe the line has created a vacuum in both politics and civil society. The latter finds itself incapable of prioritizing the saving of lives as a policy goal, an indifference that appears to extend from Palestinian lives to Israeli ones.

Perhaps the most critical reason for Israeli society¡¯s inability to force political change is that it holds the army sacrosanct and relies heavily on the military¡¯s use of force to maintain a semblance of control and stability. It is a society that has over decades of constant conflict with Palestinians become convinced that any compromise or diplomacy makes Israel appear weak and can only lead to defeat, a sentiment that has grown manifold since October 7. Today, not a single Jewish opposition leader in Israel talks about a two-state solution and not a single Jewish Israeli party voted against a recent Knesset resolution opposing Palestinian statehood ¡ª showing that even those who vehemently oppose Netanyahu also reject Palestinian self-determination.

And in the meantime, Haaretz: Struggling to Assess ICC's Next Step on Netanyahu, Gallant, Israel Pushes to Delay Warrants
Official Israeli sources familiar with the details of the procedure and legal experts following the matter told Haaretz that diplomatic pressure is being exerted on the court to delay the issuance of the warrants. It is hard to predict, however, how these measures will influence the judges' decision.

Our ally in the free democratic world, everyone.
posted by cendawanita at 9:48 PM on August 15, 2024 [11 favorites]

I suppose acknowledging the ongoing complicity of the current administration in genocide was harshing the mellow.

Whenever I start getting overwhelmed by despair about that, I remind myself that TFG is basically Bibi translated for US conditions, which at least makes the despair come at me from a different direction.
posted by flabdablet at 2:20 AM on August 16, 2024 [3 favorites]

Bisan from Gaza discusses a recent attack which eviscerated the victims to the point where they handed families the remains in bags of collected parts by weight depending on whether they lost a child or adult Bisan Owda Update! Don't Turn Away: If this is not a war crime what is it? (SLYT short) Taxpayer dollars at work.
posted by phigmov at 11:21 AM on August 16, 2024 [5 favorites]

they handed families the remains in bags of collected parts by weight depending on whether they lost a child or adult

Looks so much like the sacrificial meat Muslims distribute for charity during Eidul Adha too - but who cares right.

(Well, not the one where the remains of the child is in a rice bag. That's just dystopian and paid for by Western tax dollars)

Won't be here for the weekend I think, but as the current ceasefire negotiations is going as well as expected (ie not very well) for the usual reasons (Hamas is in, Bibi is not and using new conditions as excuse), I thought these make good reading:

FT: Hizbollah closes ranks as US scrambles to avert regional war
Hizbollah¡¯s approach is also linked to a wider peace drive in the region. Washington, with Qatar and Egypt, is pushing for fresh talks in Doha or Cairo on Thursday, aiming to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the Gaza war and secure the release of Israeli hostages.

That is deemed key to ending the regional hostilities that erupted after Hamas¡¯s October 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza.

¡°There¡¯s a political incentive for both Hizbollah and Iran to see a ceasefire through,¡± said David Wood, Lebanon analyst at the Crisis Group think-tank. ¡°It would be something both parties would see as a huge victory.¡±

Can't let the genocide end, then the terrorists win. Dunno who's the terrorists in this situation though.

Since the assassinations, however, Hizbollah has not been in a listening mood, said people involved in the diplomatic efforts.

For months before that, Hochstein had tried unsuccessfully to broker a deal between Hizbollah and Israel to halt hostilities that have killed dozens of civilians and led to hundreds of thousands being displaced on both sides of the border.

Hizbollah has repeatedly said it would not stop its attacks on Israel as long as fighting continues in Gaza.

A Hizbollah-affiliated newspaper recently accused Hochstein of bearing responsibility for the Israeli strike on Beirut that killed Shukr, in a sign of the challenges the US faces in pushing for a diplomatic solution.

Hizbollah, the dominant political and military force in Lebanon, also has domestic issues to consider. An all-out war with Israel would be devastating for a country already mired in a years-long political and economic crisis. A destructive conflict could fuel more of a backlash at home.

Iran and Hizbollah have been sceptical about the diplomatic efforts and sincerity of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but neither wants to be seen as scuppering the talks, Kassir said.

If the talks fail, however, ¡°then all bets are off,¡± said the person involved in the diplomacy.

And MEE exclusive: Hamas 'categorically rejects' attempts to add Netanyahu¡¯s conditions to Gaza ceasefire proposal -
US says it has 'already narrowed some gaps' in talks, but sources tell MEE that Netanyahu's conditions are an obstacle and 'positive' media leaks are unfounded

Commenting on media reports on the latest Doha negotiations, the source said: ¡°All the Israeli and international media leaks portraying the talks as positive, are unfounded and misleading. They [the Israelis] seek to gain time hoping to contain the regional escalation following the assassination of Haniyeh.¡±

And lastly, per BM: You enjoyed Israelis "shooting & crying"??? Well, you're gonna LOVE the new version - torturing & crying!

These poor Israeli souls, they took part in abusing Palestinians in a concentration camp, so they had to redeem themselves by talking to @haaretzcom

Haaretz (ungated): We Served on Israel's Sde Teiman Base. Here's What We Did to Gazans Detained There - Hands and feet in shackles. Eyes blindfolded. No moving. No talking. And, sometimes, violent beatings. Days upon days, weeks upon weeks pass like this at the Sde Teiman facility for Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians from Gaza. These interviewees know. They served there

Since the war broke out, thousands of Israeli soldiers in regular and reservist forces have served at Sde Teiman. Most were posted there within the framework of a mission with which their unit was tasked. Others volunteered to serve there for a variety of reasons. In recent months, a number of soldiers and medical professionals agreed to talk with Haaretz about their time there. Eight of the testimonies follow, anonymously and in chronological order, from the earliest stint to the most recent.

(...) "When I got back to my company people were already whispering about the place. Someone asked if I'd heard about what was happening there. Someone else said, 'You know you have to hit people there,' as though he was taunting me and wanted to test my reaction, whether I was a leftist or something like that. There was also a soldier in the company who boasted that he'd beaten people at the facility. (...) I was curious about the place, and the stories sounded a little exaggerated to me, so I pretty much volunteered to go there.

(...)"I did a few more shifts there, it was enough for me. And then we were discharged. It wasn't an in-demand task in the company; you could say it was even semi-volunteering, because of its complexity. There was this awareness among the soldiers that it was a tough task¡­ It stinks in there, in those pens. It stinks, so people there wear masks all day, which doesn't really help, either.

"But sometimes there was a sort of amusing atmosphere. Especially toward the end, the task became a type of joke, with people making wisecracks, or videos of detainees, or telling jokes about the shawish. We were always ordering coffee at Aroma [a caf¨¦] in Be'er Sheva and someone would tell the cashier that their name was shawish ¨C everyone would split a gut when they called him on the loudspeaker [to pick up his order].

[...] "The thing is that when I was there, it all somehow looked normal to me, because there are excuses [for sending them to the camp's hospital], and the medical work takes place in a normal, familiar space. But in the end, what's happening there is total dehumanization. You don't really relate to them as if they're real human beings. It's easy to forget that when they don't move and you don't have to talk to them. You just have to check off that some medical procedure was done, and along the way you remove the whole human dimension of medicine."

(...) "It frustrated me terribly that I couldn't look them in the eyes. That isn't how I learned to treat patients, no matter what they've done. And what's most shocking is that when I was there, I have to admit¡­ I wasn't even sad. It all felt so surrealistic to me, just a quarter of an hour's drive from Be'er Sheva. Like, everything I'd been taught, all the years in university and in hospitals, how to treat people ¨C all that exists, but in an environment in which 20 people are being held naked in a tent. It's something you can't imagine. I understand, if we were fighting in Afghanistan, there I can somehow grasp [the existence of] a field hospital like that. But here?

"Looking back, what's most difficult for me is what I felt, or actually what I didn't feel, when I was there. It disturbs me that it didn't bother me, that somehow I looked at things but didn't see them, or somehow¡­ felt fine about them. How could I not have asked about the small details? Why are they covered with blankets? Why are they anonymous? Why are we anonymous? How can it be that they pee and poop in a disposable diaper? Why are they given a straw to eat with... like, why?

"I guess it was clear to me already there that what was going on was not right, but not to what extent. Maybe there's a process of habituation. You're among professionals, speaking Hebrew, and we were already used to seeing handcuffed prisoners in hospitals. So somehow¡­ the process becomes normalized there and at some stage it simply stops bothering you."

[...] Who would do the hitting?
"Usually the military police officers."

Why do you say "usually"?
"Like, there were actually cases of soldiers who were really gung-ho to hit, so they would ask¡­ and they [the military police] would sometimes agree to let them. But usually it was the officers themselves."

Then why did they agree sometimes to let the soldiers do it?
"I don't know, I think it was a sort of deviation, but I'm not sure whether it was against the rules or just against the custom. There was a bit of a feeling that it wasn't really right to allow soldiers to do it."

(...) Where was it done?
"For the blows themselves they were taken aside, to a more hidden place. The rest of the soldiers and detainees remained standing ... I saw those beatings: Six or 7 men, from Force 100, stand around one guy and kick him. Blows, slaps, punches, everything. Two or three of them stood to the side with weapons as guards. And there was also a dog."

How long did this last?
"Until they got tired of it. There were also times when they invited regular soldiers to take part in the beatings, from the guard units or from the military police. I don't know whether it was coordinated in advance with them, or they just called on them spontaneously, but it was a type of gesture to certain soldiers, who were in the loop.

"There were instances when I didn't see the beatings, but I did hear the punches or the shouts. They were very intense, the shouts. They were more intense than what I sometimes heard in other interrogations. Now, all this time, the dogs were also coming and barking and jumping on them. With a muzzle, yes, but scratching them and really scary. Ah¡­ at the beginning there was also a stun grenade. Yes, every time a search like that started, Force 100 threw a stun grenade into the pen."

(...)And among yourselves, among the soldiers, did anyone have questions about what was going on there?
"There were soldiers, mainly female soldiers, who went into a kind of panic attack when they saw a search. But there were plenty who were enthusiastic about doing those shifts, who wanted to be there. Even the officers from my company looked for an excuse to show up. It fills you with adrenaline¡­ like, when I was in the situation, too¡­ it's not some ordinary sort of situation. It causes stress. The rest of the time it's boring in the tent of the rest area, and there's not much interaction between the soldiers. There's a few tables, you sit, pass the time, and suddenly it happens. There's action.

"Most of the guys were just fine with what was happening. There were some who were a little bothered by it, and there were others who were bothered by it at the start and then they toed the line with the system. The excuses were that 'it's wartime,' 'they are terrible' and 'there's no other way to impose discipline on them.'

[...] Did you have dilemmas during your service there?
"I suppose some came up, I don't exactly remember. But as I said, I came to do the work without thinking too much about it. I relied on the idea that the bigger system knows what it needs to do and why it needed me there. I trust the army. And everything I saw at Sde Teiman looked to me, all in all, very logical, under the circumstances."

[...] . They keep pumping it into your brain that you have to disconnect. That they're not people. That they're not human beings."
Who said things like that?
"The guys, the company commander, the officers, everyone. You know, there was a female officer who gave us a briefing on the day we arrived. She said, 'It will be hard for you. You'll want to pity them, but it's forbidden. Remember that they aren't people. From your point of view, they are not human beings. The best thing is to remember who they are and what they did in October.'
"Until then I'd seen [television] reports, things they said on the news about the place. I also saw videos of released Gazans who talk about what goes on there. But suddenly, when you're in it, they become real people. You notice how easy it is to lose your humanity in a second, how easy it is to come up with justifications for treating people as if they're not people. It's like in the movie 'The Wave' [a 1981 film about a high-school teacher who does a simulation experiment with his students how easily they can be made to lose their humanity]. Only in your face, and live. It was insane to see how that happens."

[...] In the meantime, I heard conversations around me. Some people said they intended to beat the detainees or spit in their food. Good people whom I know talked about being cruel and abusive to people, like they were talking about something routine. No one around protested or squirmed uncomfortably. No one talked about the law or about the role of the authorities.
"The dehumanization frightened me. I couldn't understand how a group of young people who were around me every day underwent such a dangerous process in such a short time. Of course I understand the pain and the fear, which have also accompanied me since October, but I didn't believe to what extent they'd succeeded to distort the concept of reality of the people living around me. I felt an obligation to document what I heard. I took out my phone and began transcribing everything I heard [following is an excerpt from her transcript, which she titled]: '2 June 2024 testimony: reserve call-up of female squad commanders to military police. Conversations around: "We'll beat them with clubs." "I will just spit on them." "How do you plan to beat terrorists?" "I think this is a mission, the task." "Why do they even deserve conditions like these?" "The truth is that I'm between jobs and a tenner actually suited me." "Do you really want to do this?" ¨C "Yes, I want money," with a wink.'

(...) "Someone asked, 'How can you call up girls for a task like that?' [Meaning,] because of the harassment and all. The officer replied that they are handcuffed, with flannelette over their eyes, in a cage with bars. 'In other words, you have no direct contact with them.' One of the participants said: 'What bothers me is that morally, I don't see myself bringing them food. I can't imagine myself seeing to their needs.'

"The officer replied: 'Under international law we are obligated to bring them a certain amount of food. After all, the army could simply kill them. But the army needs them. And don't worry, it's not like they're being pampered there.'

[...] Did you witness any irregularities?
"Depends how you define irregularity. In my everyday life, I don't encounter a level of violence like that, of curses and humiliation. So yes, every minute there is irregular. At the personal level, I went through one event there that changed my whole attitude to the place.

"It was in one of the first shifts. I was sitting in the gazebo of the prison camp, in a break between shifts, when a military police officer with a rubber club came over and said, 'Come with me, we have to deal with someone who's making trouble.' I went with him and with another soldier and we removed a detainee, who was about 40 or so. He had a bandaged leg and he limped a little. We took him to the side of the lockup, to an area that you don't really see, and the military police officer hit him four times on the back with the club and while doing it shouted at him, 'Be quiet! From now on ¨C uskut ["keep quiet" in Arabic]!'

"The Palestinian raised his hands and tried to protect the back of his neck, even though the club didn't land there. And then, while he was being beaten, he shifted the blindfold by mistake and it fell to his neck. That set off the officer and he started to beat him even harder. The Palestinian fell to the ground, it looked as though he was giving up, that he had no more strength to stand and he was simply collapsing. And then he started to shout, in Arabic, "Laish? Laish?' ¨C like, 'Why? Why?'¡­ And from the ground, while he was maybe trying to protect himself with his hands, he suddenly looked at me.
"He looked me in the eyes and begged, 'Laish? Laish?' His eyes were brown and large, and bulging from the sockets from all the pain. His veins swelled up, he was red and obviously suffering. I stood there, shocked. Never in my life had I seen a look like that. The shouts stressed out the military police officer a bit, so he cursed him and spat on him. And then he was taken back to the pen.
"The event really shook me up. I stayed on at Sde Teiman after it, true, but a lot less enthusiastic, a lot less happy."

"(...)Who volunteers to serve there? Only those who really enjoy beating up Arabs. I saw them removing people from vehicles, always with violence, curses, spitting. They wear tactical uniforms, gloves, face masks and all that ¨C all kinds of macho swaggering of gung-ho types. There too there's a thing of looking frightening and threatening in the face of the detainees. Actually, we're talking about frustrated people. With all the bluster, it's not that they're fighting in tunnels or blowing up buildings in Rafah. They're coping with manacled, hungry people. It's not very hard to be strong against them. So I'm not an expert in the field, and I didn't study psychology, but yes, I saw sadists there. People who enjoy causing suffering to others."

The last testimony ended on such a choice though: There has been testimony about acts of brutal violence in the detention facility. Did you receive people whose limbs were broken but not on the battlefield?
"No, I never saw¡­ beyond the¡­ no. Never. I also don't know what they were hurt from before they got to us. That's not my job."

Broken teeth, serious contusions?
"No. Nothing. No way. Not only did I not see, I also didn't even hear. And if such things had happened, I would have been shocked. Maybe things were different before I arrived. Don't forget October 7 and the two to three months that followed. That is not the situation today. I believe there was very great anger. Trauma. But when I was there, I didn't see anything, and if I had, I probably would have passed that on to those above me. Because I wouldn't have been able to bear it. Not because of them: They are terrorists and I have no pity for them. Because of us, because when we behave like that, it hurts us. We must think about ourselves, only about ourselves."
posted by cendawanita at 9:50 PM on August 16, 2024 [12 favorites]

Israeli Academia's Complicity in Israel's Settler-Colonial Project: "a conversation with Maya Wind, a scholar of Israeli expertise and militarism. Her new book is Towers of Ivory & Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. As this book shows, Israeli universities serve as pillars of Israel's system of oppression against Palestinians. Towers of Ivory and Steel is a powerful expos¨¦ of Israeli academia's ongoing and active complicity in Israel's settler-colonial project."[1]

also btw...
Notes From A Holocaust
-Song For Aaron Bushnell
-If A Song Could Raise An Army
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM on August 17, 2024 [9 favorites]

Over 100 journalists and 7 freedom press groups have sent an open letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the US to stop sending weapons to Israel. Not among the signatories was PENAmerica, which is currently facing a renewed call for boycotts from Writers Against the War on Gaza.

Aid groups in Gaza are aiming to prevent a polio outbreak with a surge of vaccinations. A 10 month old has contracted Gaza's first case of polio in 25 years. Investigation shows that this type of polio is vaccine-derived polio - The oral polio vaccine ¨C which is not used in the U.S. but is used in many lower income countries ¨C contains a weakened live polio virus. This works well for the person being vaccinated. It¡¯s weak enough so they don¡¯t get sick but strong enough to build up lifelong immunity. The issue is that for a few weeks after swallowing a dose, the person can shed the weakened virus in feces and into the sewage. From there it can mutate, regain strength and infect someone who is unvaccinated and comes into contact with contaminated wastewater.

Attention CA: The ACLU is ringing alarm bells over S.B. 1287, which the group believes will chill free speech on California campuses - proposed and supported by mostly Democrats - Glazer and the bill¡¯s supporters, which include a host of pro-Israel advocacy groups, say the bill protects all students¡¯ safety and free speech, regardless of their positions. Glazer has defended his bill from critics who view the measure as a part of a larger effort to curb free speech of the student activists who voice support for Palestine, and has amended it to remove some of its most targeted language.

Still, Glazer¡¯s approach to the issue of protests against Israel is clear, even if he argues it has nothing to do with the bill. ¡°I¡¯m not trying to hide my opinion, I just haven¡¯t said a lot about it because I know why people want to make this be about pro-Palestinian, anti-Palestinian bill,¡± Glazer told The Intercept. ¡°I would argue, pro-Hamas, anti-Hamas,¡± Glazer continued, referring to how he would frame the debate, before immediately disavowing the idea that he was framing the debate at all.

¡°Whatever framing you want to use to make your case, people are doing that ¡ª I¡¯m not,¡± Glazer said.

The original version of the bill was bluntly aimed at criminalizing pro-Palestine protests when it was drafted, said Leena Sabagh, an advocate and a policy manager with the Council on Islamic-American Relations.

The original bill included a proposed ban on a ¡°call for or support of genocide,¡± which Sabagh took as a direct attempt to prohibit the common protest slogan ¡°From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.¡± The ¡°genocide¡± language was eventually cut from the bill after pushback by free speech advocates and state assembly members who were concerned the ban would violate First Amendment rights.

Mask bans have been signed into law in Nassau County, NY, and North Carolina. Los Angeles Democratic mayor Karen Bass has also proposed a mask ban, before coming down with COVID-19 herself.
posted by toastyk at 7:36 AM on August 17, 2024 [8 favorites]

Jacobin: Mainstream Media Is Ignoring Israel¡¯s Sexual Torture
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 11:27 AM on August 17, 2024 [8 favorites]

An interesting analysis by Mouin Rabbani of the current ceasefire negotiations and whether they are likely to have any impact.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 6:54 AM on August 18, 2024 [7 favorites]

Middle East Eye: Majority of Israeli Jews believe prison rape suspects shouldn't face criminal charges
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 7:30 PM on August 18, 2024 [6 favorites]

So in the UK over the weekend, there was news of a fairly high-level resignation but outside of Hind Hassan reporting it, it's been dead silence. Until today: (BBC) Foreign Office official resigns over Israel arms sales
A British Foreign Office official who worked on counter terrorism has resigned in protest at arms sales to Israel, saying the UK government ¡°may be complicit in war crimes¡±.

Mark Smith wrote to colleagues on Friday, saying he had raised concerns ¡°at every level¡± in the Foreign Office, including through an official whistle blowing mechanism.

Mr Smith, who was based at the British Embassy in Dublin, added he had received nothing more than basic acknowledgments.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) declined to comment on an individual case but said the government was committed to upholding international law.

The resignation email, which has been seen by the BBC, was sent to a wide set of distribution lists including hundreds of government officials, embassy staff and special advisers to Foreign Office ministers.

All that cover, and still Bibi is sulking because: Israel's Netanyahu 'refused to meet David Lammy over UK's ICC position' - Netanyahu denied the British foreign secretary's requests for a meeting, according to Israeli media reports

Coincidentally, as shared in the DNC thread: (Guardian) Israel feared legal trouble over US advocacy efforts, leaked files suggest
The Israeli government sought legal advice on a US federal law requiring the disclosure of foreign-backed lobbying campaigns, out of concern that mounting enforcement of the law could ensnare American groups working in coordination with the Israeli government, leaked documents reviewed by the Guardian suggest.

Emails and legal memos originating from a hack of the Israeli justice ministry show that officials feared that the country¡¯s advocacy efforts in the US could trigger the US law governing foreign agents. The documents show that officials proposed creating a new American nonprofit in order to continue Israel¡¯s activities in the US while avoiding scrutiny under the law.

(...) The discussions around circumnavigating Fara focused on a ¡°PR commando unit¡± formed by the strategic affairs ministry in 2017 to improve Israel¡¯s image abroad. The group, a private-public partnership, was originally known as ¡°Kela Shlomo¡± (which translates to ¡°Solomon¡¯s Sling¡±) before being rebranded as ¡°Concert¡± in 2018 and ¡°Voices of Israel¡± in 2021. Its initial mission was to undermine the BDS movement targeting Israel with boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns in protest of its policies towards Palestinians.

Over the course of its history, the group has supported American nonprofits advocating for anti-BDS laws and coordinated campaigns to push back against pro-Palestinian activities on US campuses.

Anyway, five days after its cover story (but not in the actual article itself #journalism): Fact-Checking What Benjamin Netanyahu Said in His 2024 Interview With TIME

Back in the Americas: (BNN Bloomberg) Colombia¡¯s Petro Signs Decree Banning Coal Exports to Israel

Don't worry for fans of rogue states though: (CTech) Israel¡¯s arms industry profits soar as wars fuel billion-dollar contracts

Zeteo: 200 Days and Still No Justice for Hind - Prem Thakker presses State Department for answers on Israeli forces killing of the 6-year-old girl in Gaza
The topline video is a pretty damning compilation of prevarication.

Al-Jazeera: Gaza records first polio case as UN calls for truce to tackle virus - Hamas says it supports UN request to halt the fighting to allow a vaccination campaign for children against polio.

Imperial boomerang be boomerang-ing: (Dropsite News) While Elon Musk battles the UK and EU over social media censorship, Israel is jailing citizens for Instagram posts
In the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas, Israeli State Prosecutor Amit Eisman changed the legal process to allow police to carry out investigations for the crime of incitement or support for terrorism without approval from prosecutors. The Knesset later broadened the law by amending it to make mere consumption of particular media or social media a crime ¨C rather than just publishing it or distributing it. In the months that have followed, a truly draconian crackdown on online speech in Israel has ensued.

According to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Rights in Israel, more than 400 people, many of them Arab citizens of Israel, have been arrested and detained on charges related to their social media activity. Around 190 of them have been held in custody throughout the legal proceedings, which in many cases can drag on for months, and include confinement in brutal conditions within the Israeli penal system.

Full data is hard to come by. But according to police data cited by the watchdog organization Shomrim, also known as the Center for Media and Democracy in Israel, by May of this year the state prosecutor had allowed police to open investigations into 524 social media posts. That figure itself is likely an undercount, as it does not include investigations into social media activity opened independently by police, or other prosecutions that have been reported publicly, but don¡¯t appear on Shormin¡¯s list.
posted by cendawanita at 5:13 AM on August 19, 2024 [6 favorites]

Missed this: Noga Tornopolsky's thread (threadreader) summarising the Hebrew reporting in Ynet -
#Breaking: Nahum Barnea, Israel's most important political columnist, with a bombshell: "In two discussions that took place on Wednesday, one in the afternoon, in a limited forum, Netanyahu eliminated any chance for progress in the ceasefire negotiations. It's over, at least for now.

(...) These [Israel's negotiators leaving for the negotiations] are empty voyages, a source deeply involved in the negotiations told me. As was today's Blinken-Netanyahu meeting. The summit planned for the end of the week, with the Israeli team & representatives of the mediators, may be canceled, postponed or held just for show¡­ Someone on the US side believed in magic: As if saying a deal is in if they say a deal is coming, it will really materialize.
posted by cendawanita at 5:27 AM on August 19, 2024 [8 favorites]

I think we all kind of knew that's where ceasefire negotiations were headed as long as there is no real pressure from the US. Our favorite Axios reporter Barak Ravid reports that "Hamas has rejected new US proposal for Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal" - you will have to scroll down the article, past the headline to find out: More specifically, Hamas objects to the fact that the proposal doesn't include a permanent ceasefire or comprehensive Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

It would also not allow the free movement of civilians from southern Gaza to the north because it endorses Netanyahu's demand for control of the "Netzarim Corridor."

The proposal would also give Israel control of the Rafah Crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border, as Netanyahu has demanded, per the Hamas statement.

Anyway, some humor for this morning: everyone is Hamas - Zeteo documents literally everyone who has been called Hamas as they speak up for Palestinians.

Zeteo reporter Prem Thakker reports that DNC will host first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights, a win for the Uncommitted team. Politico interviewed one of the Uncommitted delegates a few days ago: We cannot win against Donald Trump if we don¡¯t have all the uncommitted voters and all the people who are truly on the fence right now. If we do not have a cease-fire and arms embargo promise from Vice President Harris, come November, I am sure that we will lose.

As a Muslim woman, who wears a hijab, I have the most to lose from a Trump presidency. So I¡¯m saying this from a self-preservation standpoint ¡ª I know that this is the only way we can save the soul of our party.

A reminder that the Not Another Bomb campaign has action items for people who are interested in calling on reps for an arms embargo. I went to one of the rallies yesterday and there was a good turnout, and it was just honestly relieving to see other people who were passionate about ending genocide. It made me feel, like, not crazy, for once.
posted by toastyk at 6:42 AM on August 19, 2024 [11 favorites]

Interesting, I just came across this right-wing profile of John Fetterman, in which his communications director basically admits to having different views on Israel than him - side note, this comms director was hired after his staff started leaving him because of his pro-Israel stance:

¡°I don¡¯t agree with him¡± about Israel and Gaza, Carrie Adams, Fetterman¡¯s communications director, told me in a phone call, after my interview with the senator ended.

¡°I have a sense that his international views are a lot less nuanced than my generation, because when he was growing up, it was might makes right, and for my generation and younger who, of course, are the ones protesting this, they have a much more nuanced view of the region,¡± Adams added.

I¡¯ve been a reporter since the summer of 1998, when I covered Bill Clinton¡¯s trip to Martha¡¯s Vineyard for the Vineyard Gazette. This was the first time I¡¯d ever encountered anyone¡ªon Capitol Hill or anywhere else, on the record, off the record, on background, whatever¡ªcriticizing ¡°the principal.¡±

Also the reporter, despite his obvious condescension for those who are pro-Palestinian, admits that his views are rapidly becoming the minority: A January poll indicates 62 percent of Democrats think Israel has gone too far in its war against Hamas. A March poll showed that just 38 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 support Israel. That figure is dropping.

If nothing changes, by the time Kamala Harris is sworn in in January, or someone else in January 2029¡ªfor pro-Israel and Jewish Democrats, it's only a question of when¡ªthe sea change on the American left will be complete. The confusion will have been made permanent.
posted by toastyk at 6:56 AM on August 19, 2024 [8 favorites]

Mouin Rabbani sums it up (my formatting):
A laughable charade.
1. The US presents an Israeli ceasefire initiative as its own and rams it through the UN Security Council.
2. Contrary to US-Israeli expectations Hamas accepts the initiative.
3. Israel responds by rejecting adding new conditions to its own initiative, designed to be rejected by Hamas.
4. Under the guise of presenting a ¡°bridging proposal¡± that would address the implementation of the original initiative, the US rewrites the initiative to incorporate Israeli conditions presented after the UNSC endorsed and Hamas accepted the initiative.
5. Hamas predictably rejects the new US document on the grounds that is a different initiative rather than a plan to implement the initiative it accepted.
6. Amid much fanfare and lavish praise showered by Antony Blinken, Netanyahu accepts the revised initiative, and both insist the ball is now in Hamas¡¯s court.
7. Keeping his options open just in case Hamas reverses course and accepts the new initiative, Blinken pledges to produce a new ¡°bridging proposal¡± if Hamas endorses the initiative. As previously noted, the ceasefire negotiations are nothing but an Oslo for genocide, repurposed for a regional conflict.
posted by cendawanita at 8:57 PM on August 19, 2024 [9 favorites]

The Guardian: Biden¡¯s Gaza policy is a liability for Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden now (Mehdi Hasan)

Complacency, however, would be a huge mistake for the Democrats. Harris, ideally, needs to maintain a sustained two-point lead over Trump to overcome the pro-Republican bias of our broken electoral college. Despite her clear momentum, she continues to struggle in the key swing state of Michigan, where ¡°Uncommitted¡± voters are demanding a Gaza ceasefire paired with an arms embargo on Israel.

Agreeing to such a demand should be a moral, geopolitical, and ¨C for the Democrats ¨C electoral no-brainer. Gaza may not be Vietnam but Harris should, nonetheless, be distancing herself from Biden on Gaza in the same way that [Hubert] Humphrey distanced himself from Johnson on Vietnam. She should be advocating for all four of the steps that he advocated for in Salt Lake City, beginning with a call for an immediate halt to the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza¡¯s schools, apartment buildings and refugee camps.

Crucially, however, she should do it more than a month before he did; she should do it in her acceptance speech to the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Thursday night. (¡°I fear she will be Humphrey and break too late,¡± one prominent House Democrat texted me last week.)

What does she have to lose? As the Financial Times pointed out last month, the polling suggests there is ¡°less downside¡± on Gaza than one might expect: ¡°a Democrat who is soft on Israel (as Biden is seen as having been) loses support on the left, but a candidate who takes a more critical line wins those voters back without losing votes among moderates.¡± A poll last week from YouGov and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) showed over a third of voters in three swing states say they are more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if they pledge to withhold weapons to Israel, while only 5 to 7% said they would be less likely to do so.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 10:34 PM on August 19, 2024 [5 favorites]

Channel4 UK: Palestinian detainees allege torture and sexual abuse by Israeli captors

Nation: The Cost of Trying to Make Palestinian Lives Matter in the Newsroom

posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:58 AM on August 20, 2024 [9 favorites]

The IDF continues to excel in killing Israeli hostages: Six hostages' bodies retrieved, Israel's military says

A Hebrew article in the Shomrim: (Eng title) Normalization of Evil
The pull quote from their tweet: Here are some of the things that the families of the abductees hear every day on the street and from politicians: "It's good that your children were murdered", "I wish you and your daughter would die in Gaza", "You are ruining the country"

Guards following ten months of toxic Israeliism, its effect on a deal and who it serves politically.

Bloomberg published an impressive data-driven piece as well: Gaza Reduced to 42 Million Tonnes of Rubble. What Will It Take to Rebuild?
As US-backed ceasefire talks restart in Doha, calls to reconstruct the Strip are becoming louder

So far, Israeli air strikes have left more than 42 million tonnes of debris across the Strip, according to the UN. That¡¯s enough rubble to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from New York to Singapore. Removing it all may take years and cost as much as $700 million. The task will be complicated by unexploded bombs, dangerous contaminants and human remains under the rubble.

The majority of the debris is destroyed housing, and its distribution across the Strip roughly mimics Gaza¡¯s population density before the war.

Trump will be worse? How? Is he going to personally drive a Caterpillar bulldozer himself? Just to really get the job done?

Oh well, we have five more months, God willing. There's still a couple of buildings. (No point bringing up the lives, I'm sure it's always "too many")
posted by cendawanita at 5:20 AM on August 20, 2024 [7 favorites]

In deep blue California, our revered University of California system is enacting a ban on encampments and face masks in order to provide a ¡°safe, inclusive climate¡±.

A reminder that in Hong Kong also banned masks after months of protests. You¡¯ll remember that it was really popular in the US to champion these young protesters¡¯ free speech rights from both Republicans and Democrats as the Chinese government is an easy bogeyman.

Last night was the DNC, where the US President Joe Biden said that ¡°the protesters have a point¡± - and also a lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.

The DNC gave the Uncommitted National Movement an untelevised panel on Palestinian human rights - unfortunately I haven¡¯t found a link to a transcript yet but there is testimony from one of the doctors who was in Gaza discussing the impact on health care workers and children.

I have voted Democratic my entire life. Every election in this country seems to be a race to the bottom, and the one that is supposed to be on my side is still supporting a genocidal state after months of protests, enacting mask bans to curtail free speech, calling police on protesters and running with a theme of ¡°freedom¡± for their election campaign. I want out of this system.
posted by toastyk at 6:52 AM on August 20, 2024 [8 favorites]

Apparently this is the only thread where the US response to Gaza can be discussed.

Iran has been repeated by multiple people here as the reason we can't stop giving Israelweapons to kill children with, so I suppose MSNBC or someone is pushing that line.

If Israel doesn't keep getting more US weapons, they will look weak and Iran will attack them, and Israel will retaliate with nuclear weapons. So we have no choice but to keep supporting genocide.

It isn't a plausible course of events for numwrous reasons, starting with Iran being aware of the Israeli nuclear arsenal.

But the argument makes it clear that nothing Israel does will ever warrant a break with them in the mind of establishment Democrats. Genocide, the deliberate murder of children, desecration of the dead, systematic tape of prisoners. What is left? The imagined evil ontentions of Muslims will always count more than the actual crimes of Israel.
posted by pattern juggler at 8:29 AM on August 20, 2024 [9 favorites]

toastyk, not sure if you're also checking the DNC thread, but I posted: Democracy Now justed posted their coverage of the Palestinian human rights panel, with substantial clips. Not quite the full panel but just like the panel, good enough for now.

---
Dead hostages being discussed in Israel --

Noga Tornopolsky: ?The men whose dead bodies were returned to Israel today survived for more than 5 months in Hamas captivity. As Netanyahu & his men bask in self-congratulations & the families of hostages disintegrate, Baskin provides clarity: "Rescuing 6 bodies is not success- it's shameful!"

(The Gershon Baskin tweet)

Elsewhere,
Channel4 UK: Palestinian detainees allege torture and sexual abuse by Israeli captors
re: that - Samira Mohyeddin: I¡¯ve been holding on to this photo for 9 months. It¡¯s from the Iron Swords telegram page where Israeli soldiers happily post their war crimes with impunity. Now feels like a good time to publish it.

Photo is a row of men (I counted 11; I think one of them is a teen) lying naked on the grass & paved ground, face down, blindfolded and arms ziptied behind them, clearly battered, with one closest to the camera having huge parts of their body deeply lacerated (exposed and red). All have huge numbers painted onto their back in black paint. You can see uniformed legs of soldiers who are otherwise cropped out. There's Hebrew text below it with the cry laughter emoji.
posted by cendawanita at 11:13 AM on August 20, 2024 [6 favorites]

(I will go to sleep after this)

From BM, a machine translation of a Ynet news burst, 'Main assessment: the abductees suffocated to death in a tunnel due to a fire that broke out following an IDF attack'.

If only they were in Lebanon or even Iran. IDF in Palestine is just a murderous Mr Magoo.
posted by cendawanita at 11:24 AM on August 20, 2024 [7 favorites]

FYI, I made a thread specifically to discuss the US response to Gaza.
posted by toastyk at 10:06 PM on August 20, 2024 [5 favorites]

Photo is a row of men (I counted 11; I think one of them is a teen) lying naked on the grass & paved ground, face down, blindfolded and arms ziptied behind them, clearly battered, with one closest to the camera having huge parts of their body deeply lacerated (exposed and red). All have huge numbers painted onto their back in black paint. You can see uniformed legs of soldiers who are otherwise cropped out. There's Hebrew text below it with the cry laughter emoji.

The (ex-)mefite I mentioned previously provided the translation for the text: 'Have a good week, all the lady escorts.'

-----

ToI: Members of Israel¡¯s negotiating team accuse Netanyahu of intentionally sabotaging hostage deal talks

New Arab: Israel has expelled Norwegian diplomats. What does it mean?
Analysis: Israel's revocation of the diplomatic status of Norwegian envoys suggests other diplomats working in Palestine may soon be in a similar position.

Guardian: Lawyers seeking arms export ban submit claims of Israeli war crimes to UK court -
Case brought by NGOs is attempt to prevent the UK government continuing to grant arms export licences
Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe, a barrister acting for GLAN, who has compiled and submitted the evidence, said her only limiting factor in compiling the witness statements was the sheer number of cases of mistreatment and abuse.

I news: Could UK ministers and civil servants be liable over Israel war crimes?
There are growing concerns that the UK Government, and even individuals working for it, could be held personally liable
Dr Sam Fowles, a barrister at Cornerstone Barristers told i that one consequence of Israel¡¯s relationship with the UK could mean UK ministers and civil servants could be held liable.

He told i: ¡°International law recognises that states and individuals who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other wrongs often do not do so alone.¡±

¡°Where a state (or individual within a state) knowingly provides assistance which facilitates another¡¯s wrong, then both states can be liable.

¡°While we don¡¯t know for sure the extent of the UK¡¯s assistance to Israel (because both states still keep much information secret) there¡¯s a clear prima facie case that, if Israel has broken international law then the UK has done so as well.¡±

He added: ¡°There is a real prospect that the UK and/ or individuals herein has/ have the requisite knowledge of Israel¡¯s wrongful and allegedly wrongful acts and had knowledge that, in the normal course of events, the aid and assistance rendered would help facilitate those acts¡­ Consequently, there is a real prospect that the UK and/or individuals herein have committed breaches of international law (by vicarious liability).¡±

BBC: Scottish government suspends meetings with Israel
The SNP administration has faced criticism after External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson met Israel¡¯s Deputy Ambassador to the UK, Daniela Grudsky.

Mr Robertson said he was sorry that the meeting was not "strictly limited" to talks about a ceasefire.

He said the government would not accept further invitations from Israel until "real progress" had been made towards peace, on humanitarian assistance and until Israel "co-operates fully with its international obligations on the investigation of genocide and war crimes".

(...) Mr Robertson said the meeting was not an attempt to legitimatise the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.

"The Scottish government has been consistent in our unequivocal condemnation of the atrocities we have witnessed in Gaza," he said.

¡°The reality, however, is that this meeting has been taken by many to represent a normalisation of relations between the Israeli and Scottish governments.

¡°As such, it is clear that it would have been better to ensure that the meeting was strictly limited to the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the appalling loss of life in the region. I apologise for the fact that this did not happen."

He said it would "not be appropriate to accept any invitation" for future meetings until "real progress has been made towards peace".

Zeteo: A Video Shows an Israeli Settler Shooting a Palestinian Point-Blank. 10 Months Later, No One Has Been Arrested -
How generations of extremist settlers have terrorized Palestinians with impunity.
Ten months after the shooting, the police have made no arrests. Al-Adra and his family continue to live as neighbors with the man who shot him.

"I am not surprised, only ashamed," said al-Adra¡¯s attorney, Eitan Peleg, an Israeli Jew. ¡°This happens here every day.¡±
posted by cendawanita at 12:34 AM on August 21, 2024 [10 favorites]

BDS win: AXA divests from Israeli banks and Elbit Systems (Mondoweiss)

French bank AXA has divested completely from Israel, thanks to the BDS movement. More of this, please.
posted by adrienneleigh at 11:49 AM on August 21, 2024 [10 favorites]

Meta
posted by Artw at 2:05 PM on August 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

IDF general Yitzhak Brik warns that Israel will collapse within a year if the war continues (archive.is):

The country really is galloping towards the edge of an abyss. If the war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues, Israel will collapse within no more than a year.

Terror attacks are intensifying in the West Bank and inside the country, the reservist army is voting with its feet following recurring mobilizations of combat soldiers, and the economy is crashing. Israel has also become a pariah state, prompting economic boycotts and an embargo on arms shipments.

We are also losing our social resilience, as the growing hatred between different parts of the nation threatens to ignite and bring to its destruction from within.

Another day another "ceasefire in sight" - US officials have expressed optimism that a ceasefire deal in the war in Gaza ¡°is in sight¡±, despite growing indications from Israel and Hamas that a breakthrough is not imminent and as renewed fighting rages in parts of the Palestinian territory.

Washington has put pressure on both parties to accept a bridging proposal suggested during internationally mediated talks in Qatar last week, dispatching the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on his ninth visit to the region since the conflict broke out 10 months ago. The latest round of negotiations, in which Hamas is not directly participating, were scheduled to restart in Cairo by Thursday but appear to have been postponed.

Hamas has said the latest proposal veers too closely to Israel¡¯s demands, but characterised comments by the US president, Joe Biden, on Tuesday that it was backing away from an agreement as ¡°misleading¡±.

posted by toastyk at 1:19 PM on August 22, 2024 [5 favorites]

IDF general Yitzhak Brik warns that Israel will collapse within a year if the war continues

God, i hope so. But that still won't bring back the hundreds of thousands of dead.
posted by adrienneleigh at 4:57 PM on August 22, 2024 [5 favorites]

Al-Jazeera: Gaza war extends toll on Israel¡¯s economy -
Heightened tensions between Israel and Iran could incur ¡®significant additional military spending¡¯ for Israel, further straining its finances.

Absent a full-scale regional war, Oxford Economics anticipates that Israel¡¯s economy will slow to 1.5 percent growth this year. Subdued growth and elevated deficits will put further pressure on Israel¡¯s debt profile, which will likely raise borrowing costs and soften investor confidence.

Red lines? What red lines: Israel claims to take control of Rafah in Gaza Strip

Whole slew of reports as I was sleeping --

Rami Ayari: Chilling #UNSC briefing from @save_children's Operations Lead in the Emergency Health Unit in #Gaza Louisa Baxter. Am told it's the first briefing SC has received via video from the Strip since war began. Speech focus was on polio but this quote stands out as well: "Our protection teams in Gaza are working with children released from the Israeli military detention system. These children report sexual violence, including rape. They report being denied food, beaten, and attacked by dogs. They report seeing their parents stripped and beaten in front of them. These children are struggling to cope with the profound trauma and mental and physical harm that this has caused."

On polio Baxter says: "Unless preventative action is taken immediately, this polio outbreak will not only be a disaster for children in Gaza, but may substantially set back global eradication efforts. Polio anywhere is a threat to children everywhere. And as we speak, polio is spreading in Gaza, and it will not wait at the inspection gate at Kerem Shalom or the customs desk at Ben Gurion airport." She echoes SG call "for two sustained cessations of hostilities, no less than one week for each phase" to vaccinate children against polio. Adds: "If the parties to conflict cannot agree and implement a ceasefire, then it falls to this Council and its Member States to demand and enforce one, including by adopting measures to halt the transfer of weapons to the Government of Israel and Palestinian armed groups."

Politico: With cease-fire in Gaza looking less likely, officials press for release of hostages -
Getting the hostages home has become one of the main focuses of the cease-fire talks this week.
¡°The cease-fire is dead,¡± said a Western aid representative briefed on the talks, referring to the idea that fighting would subside with a deal. ¡°It seems like the war is never going to end ¡­ even if a deal is reached. So, they are trying to get the hostages home knowing that the fighting is going to continue anyway.¡±

Peace Now Israel with an article on one of the entities that's been sanctioned by Canada: The Involvement of Amana in Settlers Farms
One of these organizations sanctioned by the Canadian government was Amana. This organization is one of the strongest settler organizations financially, politically, and in terms of its influence on the establishment of settlements and outposts in the Occupied Territories. With assets valued at approximately NIS 600 million, and an annual budget of tens of millions of NIS, Amana is considered the ¡°mother and father¡± of the illegal outposts, and in recent years also of the illegal agricultural farms that are a major factor in settler violence against Palestinians. Peace Now revealed Amana¡¯s central role in taking over land and in the construction of illegal outposts in our 2017 report ¡°Unraveling the Mechanism behind Illegal Outposts¡°.

Around the year 2018, more and more agricultural farms of settlers began to be systematically erected throughout the West Bank. They began to take control over large areas and to expel Palestinians from them. It was clear from the start that Amana was involved.

(...) Settlers themselves also testified about Amana¡¯s involvement in the farms, perhaps in a moment of carelessness. In a video released by the Gush Etzion regional council following the cabinet¡¯s decision to establish a settlement near the farm in Nachal Heletz, the head of the council Yaron Rosenthal thanks ¡°Zambish and all the guys from Amana¡±. In an article published in the New Yorker in February 2024, Moriah Sharvit, the wife of Moshe Sharvit, who and his farm was subject to international sanctions because of violence against Palestinians, boasted about how the treaty ¡°connected them to the water network¡±. (At this point, her husband Moshe Sharvit intervened in the interview and told her to be careful what she said).

... I doublechecked the dateline. It's new: (Haaretz ungated) Israeli Army Prosecutor: Sde Teiman Soldiers Beat, Electrified, Sodomized Gaza Detainee -
The five IDF soldiers arrested last month are accused of abuse that caused a punctured rectum and fractured ribs. The military prosecutor has requested they remain under house arrest for an additional two weeks

Al-Haq report: Al-Tabaeen Genocidal Attack: Israel¡¯s Deliberate Targeting of Gaza School Shelter
Evidence collected by Al-Haq, including eyewitness preliminary interviews, video footage and photographic evidence, indicates that the destruction covered the entire floor area of the mosque (approximately 100 square metres per floor). There was also damage to palm trees at the mosque¡¯s entrance and surrounding buildings at least 20 metres away.

The IOF did not provide any evidence to support their claim that the mosque was used as an ¡°active compound¡± for Palestinian armed groups. The attack occurred during Fajr prayer, at a time the mosque would be crowded, contradicting the Israeli claim of minimising civilian harm and supporting our analysis that the IOF deliberately timed the attack to inflict mass killings and injuries of Palestinians.

(...) Al-Haq¡¯s Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit (FAI) has examined tens of videos from the site ¨C both open source and exclusive footage ¨C, which show dozens of killed and wounded, as well as the fear and panic among hundreds of displaced people. Analysed footage also shows food supplies and clothes scattered among the ruins. Moreover, no military equipment, to support the IOF¡¯s claims of an ¡°active compound¡± for Palestinian armed groups, were found among the debris and wreckage in the analysed footage.

Type of Weapon Used: Al-Haq was able to examine the remnants of two GBU-39 bombs, each weighing approximately 100 kilograms and causing a destructive area with a lethal radius of 10-15 metres.

DCI-P: ¡°They were trying to exterminate us¡±: Palestinian children in Gaza tortured by Israeli military
During an Israeli military incursion into the Al-Tuffah area of Gaza City on December 27, 2023, Israeli forces detained at least eight Palestinian children and used several as human shields, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International - Palestine. Israeli forces detained around 50 Palestinians, including brothers 13-year-old Abdullah H. and 11-year-old Abdulrahman H. as well as 12-year-old Karim S. Israeli soldiers forced them to take off their clothes and bound their hands before forcing them to walk in front of Israeli tanks.

(...) DCIP field researchers also collected testimonies from two Palestinian children who were detained and tortured by Israeli forces in Gaza City in March.

GLAN: New testimonies obtained in Gaza reveal Israel¡¯s systematic torture of Palestinians undermining assurances to UK government.
"Israeli torture is now so routine it contaminates all intelligence and undermines assurances given to the US and the UK and other governments when considering arms exports" says GLAN Director Dr Gear¨®id ? Cuinn.

(...) Our evidence demonstrates that people are being tortured into making false confessions that they are a fighter, or are transporting or hiding fighters, weapons or captives. Israel undoubtedly uses this false information in its military targeting decisions. In turn, this means that UK weapons are likely being used in targeting decisions that have been made on the basis of information derived from torture ¨C which is not only unlawful under international law but renders such military conduct and decision-making wholly unreliable.

? Things that would be verboten at the DNC: (MEE) Israel: sources accuse Blinken of sabotaging Gaza ceasefire talks

Guardian: Bombed hospitals, buried children: we have become numb to Gaza¡¯s destruction

Truthout: Israel Has Killed 2,100 Babies Under 2 Years Old in Gaza, Rights Group Says

Is this even surprising - Mondoweiss: Fighting the Israeli army in Gaza: Inside the battle for Shuja¡¯iyya -
In a testimony obtained by Mondoweiss, a resident of Shuja'iyya recounts his motivations for wanting to join Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades to fight against the Israeli army.

New Arab: #MeToo unless it's Palestine: Why Western feminists ignore proven Israeli rape of Palestinians
posted by cendawanita at 12:24 AM on August 23, 2024 [12 favorites]

(MEE) Israel: sources accuse Blinken of sabotaging Gaza ceasefire talks

Apologies, that should MEMO
posted by cendawanita at 12:35 AM on August 23, 2024 [3 favorites]

Baby paralysed in Gaza's first case of type 2 polio in 25 years. UN agencies wage uphill battle for vaccination.
posted by toastyk at 7:11 AM on August 23, 2024 [4 favorites]

Shin Bet chief warns Netanyahu, ministers that Jewish terror is endangering Israel - ¡°The damage to the State of Israel, especially now and to the vast majority of the settlers, is indescribable: global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies; spreading thin the IDF¡¯s personnel which is already struggling to keep up with all its missions and which wasn¡¯t intended to deal with this; vengeful attacks that are sparking another front in the multi-front war we are in; putting more players into the cycle of terror; a slippery slope to the feeling of a lack of governance; another obstacle to creating local alliances that we need against the Shiite axis; and above all, a massive stain on Judaism and us all,¡± Bar wrote.

8 year old Palestinian girl describes losing her hair due to trauma.

German pro-Palestine activists allege targeting by police.
posted by toastyk at 6:35 PM on August 23, 2024 [5 favorites]

So the head of the Israeli internal security service is Hamas now too? Cool and normal. Nothing weird at all going on in the Middle East's only democracy. Shining light of youth on a hilltop and so forth.
posted by flabdablet at 8:45 PM on August 23, 2024 [4 favorites]

Electronic Intifada publishes the genocide diaries of Refaat Alareer -

And then there is the fear of what to do if ¨C when ¨C we are bombed. We try to evade them. But how can you evade the bombs when Israel throws three or four or five consecutive bombs at the same home.

The big question Palestinian households debate is whether we should sleep in the same room so that when we die, we die together, or whether we should sleep in different rooms so some of us may survive.

The answer is always that we need to sleep in the living room together. If we die, we die together. No one has to deal with the heartbreak.

An audio recording of Netanyahu's conversations with hostage families was leaked just prior to Israel deciding to launch preemptive strikes on Lebanon:

In leaked recordings from the meeting broadcast by Channel 12 news, Netanyahu repeatedly asks the former hostages, ¡°What deal? Which deal?¡± when they push him on why he wasn¡¯t able to secure an agreement before dozens were killed in captivity.

Later, a former hostage exclaims: ¡°And they¡¯re dying and every day you¡¯re killing someone else.¡±

Netanyahu: ¡°Whoever told you that there was a [hostage-ceasefire] deal on the table and that we didn¡¯t take it for this reason or that reason, for personal reasons, it¡¯s just a lie.¡±

In between outbursts of dissatisfaction from the group, Netanyahu asks them, ¡°Another important thing¡­ I¡¯m trying to come to a deal that will maximize the number of hostages released, I won¡¯t do it for 12 ¡­ because I¡¯d just be leaving people there who are sick, who are elderly, the devil only knows. Would you do a thing like that? I won¡¯t.¡±

Freed Israeli hostage Noa Argamani clarifies in her social media that she was injured by an Israeli strike, not Hamas: Contrary to some Israeli media reports, Argamani clarified that she was not beaten or had her hair shaved by Palestinian fighters.

"I cannot ignore what happened here over the past 24 hours, taking my words out of context," she wrote, referring to the Israeli media coverage of her Tokyo speech.

"[Hamas members] did not hit me while I was in captivity, nor did they cut my hair; I was injured by the collapse of a wall caused by an [Israeli] Air Force pilot," she added.

"As a victim of 7 October, I refuse to be victimised once again by the media."
posted by toastyk at 6:44 AM on August 25, 2024 [8 favorites]

How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It (2018)
posted by Lanark at 7:19 AM on August 25, 2024 [4 favorites]

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (long summation of a leak as reported on Channel 12):
Netanyahu had a very unpleasant and somewhat shocking meeting with the hostage families. It was recorded and leaked to the press. Sara Netanyahu also joined the fray with some controversial comments. Netanyahu and wife did not win any points for this. Here are the exchanges that made headlines in Israel.

Released Hostage: "We went through difficult things. I was beaten. I was tortured. More cruelty than we experienced is impossible in my opinion, Enough. I can't stand that he is suffering there. I can't stand that the women are suffering."

Son of a hostage: Do you understand that there are girls being raped now? Because Biden understands that."

Netanyahu: "Hearing your stories is shocking. I went through a captivity training session. I was beaten, but it didn't affect me much, because I knew it was a drill. So I get hit, it hurts, I knew it was a drill. That I am not really in danger and that adds to the suffering."

Hostage daughter: " You can be remembered as the one who led the country to a better place or as the one who wreaked havoc here. You are the prime minister and you are responsible for the abductees, not Hamas and not anyone else. You are supposed to reach a deal that will bring all the abductees.¡±

Netanyahu: "What¡¯re you proposing that I do?¡± Netanyahu responded.

Hostage daughter:¡°I¡¯m proposing that you sign a deal that will bring the hostages home. There¡¯s a deal on the table!¡±

Netanyahu: "What deal? Which deal? Whoever told you that there was a [hostage-ceasefire] deal on the table and that we didn¡¯t take it for this reason or that reason, for personal reasons, it¡¯s just a lie.¡±

"There are many things we want and they¡¯re hard to get. For example, I¡¯d like to walk to Italy on foot in a straight line¡­ so if that¡¯s what we need to do, it means drying up the ocean, so ¡®let¡¯s dry up the ocean, what¡¯s the problem?¡¯"

Released hostage: "I didn't get an apology from you."

Another released hostage: "And you didn't take the blame."

Sara Netanyahu: "There is also the army."

Released hostage:" Who is the leader? He runs the army. He is responsible."

Sara Netanyahu: "They don't tell him anything. How is he supposed to know?"

She then complained about being demonized by the media for being Netanyahu's wife: ¡°I was Sara Ben Arzi, and no one told lies about me. I lived a normal life."

Released hostage: ¡°I also lived a normal life until I was kidnapped with my partner.¡±

The amazing ability of the Netanyahu's to make the suffering of the hostages about themselves and deny that there is a deal on the table is really staggering. No wonder the trust between the hostage families and the Prime Minister is at such a low ebb.

Key bit:
Hostage daughter:¡°I¡¯m proposing that you sign a deal that will bring the hostages home. There¡¯s a deal on the table!¡±

Netanyahu: "What deal? Which deal? Whoever told you that there was a [hostage-ceasefire] deal on the table and that we didn¡¯t take it for this reason or that reason, for personal reasons, it¡¯s just a lie.¡±
---

Guardian: ¡®No one has any money¡¯: Israel¡¯s restrictions stifle West Bank economy -
Soaring unemployment and poverty are fuelling unrest as Palestinian firms and workers face ¡®economic siege¡¯

Gaza is not separate from the rest of Palestine. What's happening there is all of a piece.
posted by cendawanita at 5:27 PM on August 25, 2024 [5 favorites]

HRW just released a report which documents the abuse of Palestinian healthcare workers: Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since hostilities began in October 2023, deported them to detention facilities in Israel, and allegedly tortured and ill-treated them, Human Rights Watch said today. The detention of healthcare workers in the context of the Israeli military¡¯s repeated attacks on hospitals in Gaza has contributed to the catastrophic degradation of the besieged territory¡¯s healthcare system.

Released doctors, nurses and paramedics described to Human Rights Watch their mistreatment in Israeli custody, including humiliation, beatings, forced stress positions, prolonged cuffing and blindfolding, and denial of medical care. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces, denial of medical care, and poor detention conditions for the general detainee population.

Israel launched more strikes on Lebanon

I guess this might also go in the US thread - Israel buying Google ads to discredit UNRWA: By buying ads for searches for ¡°UNRWA¡± and ¡°UNRWA USA,¡± the Israeli government now appeared to be aiming to draw potential donors to a webpage full of allegations about why the UNRWA couldn¡¯t be trusted. The page claims the UN agency has not declared whether employing members of Hamas would violate its neutrality and that the agency doesn¡¯t investigate its facilities for abuse by extremists. In fact, UNRWA does require independence from military interests, and an outside review found evidence of facility inspections, though it suggested the checkups happen more frequently.

After seeing the ads¡ªpaid for by the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, according to details shown when clicking on the menu button beside them¡ªKronenfeld and her staff of seven quickly appealed to Google for help fighting what they viewed as a misinformation campaign.

What has happened since shows the delicate relationship Google has kept with its advertising client, Israel, and the limits of the company¡¯s policing of alleged misinformation in ads. Several current and former Google employees tell WIRED the anti-UNRWA campaign is just one volley of ads that Israel has orchestrated in recent months that have drawn complaints both inside and outside of the company. The ads about UNRWA and another campaign targeting the Middle East have not been previously reported.

Israel's economy is struggling. Economists say ending the war would help.
posted by toastyk at 7:14 AM on August 26, 2024 [6 favorites]

HRW just released a report which documents the abuse of Palestinian healthcare workers

Democracy Now just posted their interview with one of the co-authors, Milena Ansari. It's got direct clips of testimonies as well.

In Israel meanwhile, apparently one of the Sde Teiman rapists who chose to unmask himself is now a celebrity tv guest. The promo tweet has a cute bit between him and the hosts, if you want even more videos of the guy.

Muhammad Shehada's tweets summarizing Hebrew articles:
Of this Mako one: ?Debunking:
Israel keeps claiming they're "setting a gold standard for urban warfare" b/c they issue "evacuation orders" to warn civilians about areas they'd invade

Israel's own channel 12 admits this is blatantly FALSE

Evacuation orders are all about psychological torture & collective punishment rather than anything to do with protecting civilians.

Israel says Gazans find "displacement is 1000 times worse than the war", & that's precisely why the IDF toys with civilians like pingpong & chess pieces to burn them out.

Every time Hamas attacks the IDF from an area, Israel collectively punishes the entire city with mass "evacuation orders", which means more than 84% of the entire Gaza Strip is under such orders.

In Khan Younis, as soon as Hamas fired primitive projectiles, Israel forced 250,000 civilians to flee out to nowhere & indiscriminately shelled the city but had ZERO intention of conducting any military operations there that necessitate the evacuation.

In Norther Gaza, Israel's most watched TV channel says the IDF uses "evacuation orders" as a "psychological warfare" tactic to pressure the population & Hamas.

"The unlawful use of violence & intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims" is the literal definition of terrorism.

Of this Ynet one: ?Israeli officials blame "naive" & "amateur" Blinken for destroying the ceasefire talks by falsely claiming that Netanyahu accepted the proposal so that Kamala's DNC "would go smoothly".

Blinken's lie allows Netanyahu to insist on his impossible terms & get away with it!

---

Amnesty investigation: Israel/OPT: Israeli attacks targeting Hamas and other armed group fighters that killed scores of displaced civilians in Rafah should be investigated as war crimes
- New investigation reveals Israeli forces failed to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians in attacks
- Israeli air strikes on Rafah IDP camp on 26 May used US-made weapons
- Tank shells fired at IDP camp in ¡°humanitarian zone¡± killed 23 civilians
- Civilians endangered by presence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders and fighters at camps for internally displaced people

CNN, over the weekend: ¡®They told me to strip.¡¯ Former Palestinian detainee says he was sexually abused in an Israeli prison

The Sunday Times special feature: Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you -
Palestinians in the West Bank say they are being driven from their homes by a campaign of terror waged by armed civilians determined to take their land

Coincidentally, B'tselem today: Kh. Wadi a-Rakhim, South Hebron Hills: Settler Shem Tov Luski sexually harasses Palestinian and implicitly threatens rape
This particular section keeps being quoted, eg David Sheen: Israeli settler to Palestinian in south Hebron hills: "Shut the fuck up. That's not your house¡­ You're my bitch. And you look sweet. You look so fresh. So sweet. I'll be happy to sit with you in jail some day. I'd be happy. You know Sde Teiman? Ooh-ooh. Rape in the name of God."

CNN, not rape, just disease: Children are drinking from puddles and wading through sewage pools, as Israel pummels water systems in Gaza

+972: Israeli society¡¯s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute -
In the past, Israel¡¯s moral debate about its military actions may have been narrow and hypocritical, but at least it existed. Not this time.

After every war in recent decades that Israelis have fought in, there have been public displays of remorse. This has often been criticized as a mentality of ¡°shooting and crying¡± ¡ª but at least the soldiers were crying.

(...) Not this time. The Israeli military has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza ¡ª about two percent of the Strip¡¯s population. It has wreaked total havoc, systematically destroying residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and universities. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers have fought in Gaza over the past 10 months, and yet the moral debate is almost non-existent. The number of soldiers who have spoken out about their crimes or moral difficulties with serious reflection or regret, even anonymously, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

(...) Similarly, Lt. Col. A., commander of the 200th Squadron which operates the Israeli Air Force¡¯s fleet of drones, gave an interview to Ynet earlier this month, in which he claimed his unit had killed ¡°6,000 terrorists¡± during the war. When asked, in the context of the rescue operation to free four Israeli hostages in June, which resulted in the killing of over 270 Palestinians, ¡°How do you identify who is a terrorist?¡± he answered: ¡°We attacked on the side of the street to drive civilians away, and whoever did not flee, even if he was unarmed, as far as we were concerned, was a terrorist. Everyone we killed should have been killed.¡±

This dehumanization has reached new heights in recent weeks with the debate over the legitimacy of raping Palestinian prisoners. In a discussion on the mainstream TV network Channel 12, Yehuda Shlezinger, a ¡°commentator¡± from the right-wing daily Israel Hayom, called for institutionalizing rape of prisoners as part of military practice. At least three Knesset members from the ruling Likud party also argued that Israeli soldiers should be allowed to do anything, including rape.

(...) The Israeli killing machine does not know how to stop, wrote +972 and Local Call¡¯s Orly Noy on Facebook after the bombing of Al-Taba¡¯een school, because it operates by inertia and tautology. ¡°It is acting out of inertia because stopping it will force Israel to internalize what it has caused, what atrocity on a historical scale is registered in its name ¡­ And that¡¯s where the tautological logic comes in: As long as we kill, it¡¯s obvious that they still deserve to die.¡± Just like the commander of the 200th Squadron said a few days later.
posted by cendawanita at 9:30 AM on August 27, 2024 [9 favorites]

Tanks are moving into the West Bank - The Cradle (with video): Israeli media announces this invasion, which will reportedly involve thousands of soldiers and last for days, as the largest military operation in the occupied West Bank since 2002.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the army plans to evacuate civilian neighborhoods in order to "deal" with the resistance.

It's not just Gaza.
posted by cendawanita at 8:42 PM on August 27, 2024 [5 favorites]

But tanks are notoriously useless in urban warfare! Their speed, manoeuvrability and sight lines all get badly compromised by needing to operate amongst buildings and ... oh.
posted by flabdablet at 11:00 PM on August 27, 2024 [4 favorites]

This seems to be the most recent Gaza thread not centered on the US response (or lack thereof), but apologies if I missed a newer one.

The deaths of the 6 hostages found this week seems to be crystallizing a lot of Israeli anger against Netanyahu's unwillingness to make a deal for a ceasefire that would bring more of the hostages home. There are large protests in several Israeli cities (getting the usual imperialism turned inward state response against protests) and the country's largest labor union has called for a general strike starting tomorrow.

At least one protestor quoted by Lauren Izso and Tamar Michaelis for CNN doesn't expect this unrest to move the needle, after so much else has not, but we can hope she's wrong:

¡°I think that the fact that this hasn¡¯t brought any change so far, goes to show how oblivious our leaders are,¡± she said.

¡°Bibi is looking to keep his chair, everything he does is merely for the sake of holding on to his power,¡± she said, using a popular nickname for Netanyahu. ¡°I believe he¡¯s frightened, even though he has zero emotion or empathy. He neglected them,¡± she said.

posted by the primroses were over at 2:31 PM on September 1, 2024 [5 favorites]

No no, you are still on the right thread - I did share the strike news on the US response thread because of the media angle.

Speaking of Israeli media, breaking news via Al-Jazeera Arabic: Israel Hayom: Settlement Minister addressed the Military Secretary and the Security Cabinet to declare a state of war in the West Bank
posted by cendawanita at 4:48 AM on September 2, 2024 [5 favorites]

Well, Israel's Labor Court ordered the general strike to end at 2:30 pm today, but the West Bank raids continue bulldozing infrastructure.

(Saw your much more detailed and helpful comments in the US response thread, thanks, cendawanita.)

Edited to add - I meant those comments were more detailed and helpful than my own. Editing to avoid anyone thinking I was comparing cendawanita's comments in different threads.
posted by the primroses were over at 8:36 AM on September 2, 2024 [5 favorites]

No worries at all, it's just an unending stream.

Guardian: ¡®There was no mercy, even on children¡¯: trauma in the West Bank after Israeli raids -
Israel accused of using a 10-year-old girl as a human shield as it carried out its devastating attack on the occupied Palestinian territory

I'm sure the IDF will be its usual thorough, moral, and assiduous organization that it is when it investigates the case.

Palestinians in the West Bank aren't even governed by Hamas, but whatever, right.

Anyway, BBC: Israeli settlers are seizing Palestinian land under cover of war - they hope permanently
(BBC continues to have consistent issues in even reporting fairly about what's happening to the Palestinians but like most other western media at the moment they can agree that the settlers are bad news.)

Coincidentally Channel 4 had a similar news piece, ICYMI, it's on YouTube around the same time. The bit from the woman with a clear Texan accent saying that colonialism has got a bad rep (around minute 7:00) was making the rounds for obvious reasons, but really her entire section isn't particularly notable if you've watched enough media/interviews with that demographic - she's a lot nicer in her affect than most though but I'm grading on a low bar.

The Cradle: Sexual harassment of Palestinian women by Israeli troops spikes at Hebron checkpoint -
One soldier dropped his pants and said 'come and see' to a Palestinian woman as she tried to pass the checkpoint

Will I ever do a news roundup that doesn't involve sexual violence from the side that's made such a meal about the same set of crimes we still don't have any conclusive evidence of? In the meantime, what is the word of a Palestinian, really.

In the past, women used to film soldiers at checkpoints to document their behavior. But at the beginning of the war, one of the residents of the neighborhood was arrested for about a week after documenting a soldier's behavior, and since then, the residents testified that they are too afraid to do so.

Another woman from Hebron explained that when she would enter the checkpoint, the soldiers called her names and used sexual language to humiliate her. They would say things such as "your mom's pussy," "slut," and "on my cock," including on the loudspeaker of the checkpoint. Soldiers would also make sexual gestures with their hands.

"It's not just one soldier," she added. "Sometimes someone says, 'Give me your number.' Girls started to be afraid to go to the checkpoint alone."

But there's no video though. Right?

Oh, ICYMI: Israeli military launches fatal airstrike on humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza -
IDF claims ¡®armed assailants¡¯ tried to hijack vehicle leading convoy of medical supplies, but aid organiser says those killed were transport company staff

No, not the recent WFP shooting. Another one.
posted by cendawanita at 10:51 AM on September 2, 2024 [6 favorites]

IDF claims ¡®armed assailants¡¯ tried to hijack vehicle leading convoy of medical supplies, but aid organiser says those killed were transport company staff

They haven't even bothered coming up with plausible lies for this shit since, like, December.
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:43 PM on September 2, 2024 [6 favorites]

Starts with this: Netanyahu pushes back as pressure grows to secure Gaza ceasefire deal -
Prime minister insists Israeli control of Philadelphi Corridor must remain part of any ceasefire deal. (that's after this: Netanyahu said to claim general strike a show of ¡®support¡¯ for Sinwar and Hamas)

Not covered in the AJ report is Bibi doing his usual where the map he presents has Palestine existing only as Gaza while the other occupied territories are part of Israel. Per Mairav Zonsvein: Of course, the West Bank does not exist on Netanyahu's map. And Gaza is the forever Israeli enclave.

This speech will go down in history as Netanyahu's open admission to that world that Israel will remain between the river and the sea indefinitely, as long as he rules.

Useless to depend on American & other mainstream Western journos, but here's Amon Tibin post-speech: In his cruel, deceptive press conference just now, Netanyahu officially killed the negotiations for a hostage deal. He also got the date of Hamas' massacre wrong, "October 9". Well, not like anything important happenned, just 1200 Israelis murdered and 250 kidnapped on his watch.

(and later: Peter Lerner, former IDF chief international spokesman, sums up Netanyahu's press conference tonight: "He has sealed the fate of our hostages".)

Unsurprisingly to such folks then: Hamas says Gaza captives will return ¡®in coffins¡¯ if Israel continues raids -
Group¡¯s armed wing Qassam Brigades issues statement, two days after bodies of six captives are recovered from a Gaza tunnel by Israeli forces.

It only took nearly 11 months of bad-faith negotiations but we finally have some corroboration and not fever dreams of actual policy to kill the hostages, even if it's newly held.

Not that replacing Bibi means we'll even time to breath a sigh of relief (other than a hoped for cessation of active violence, back to status quo violence), if this kind of Haaretz op-ed (ungated) is of any indication: The ostensibly natural alternative to Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, is not ready to take full control, and in any case, Netanyahu refuses to grant it any role whatsoever. Therefore, an interim phase involving Sunni states and the international community is required. However, they have made their willingness to participate contingent on the PA gaining at least some minimal role in Gaza.

The galloping annexation of the West Bank must be halted, lest a "State of Judea" be established, which would turn Israel into a fascist and racist state, whose ministers and Knesset members are involved in de facto hate crimes. The events of October 7 have made a two-state solution impracticable, at least for the foreseeable future.

However, the overarching necessity to separate from the Palestinians remains as great as ever, and contrary to the common wisdom, the fundamental idea behind the Oslo Accords and the Gaza Disengagement was correct ¨C the need to divide the land and separate from the Palestinians.

The failure was in the implementation, in Israel's premature relinquishment of responsibility for security and willingness to overlook the Palestinians' repeated failure to meet the criteria set for the process to go forward.

(...) Given the current political realities in Israel and among the Palestinians, the most we can realistically aim for today is civil separation, but with Israel retaining security control. In other words, Israel would specify the territory it does not intend to annex (90 percent-plus of the West Bank), begin the process of returning settlers from these areas home, and keep the IDF fully deployed throughout the West Bank for security purposes.
The area that is not annexed might serve as the basis for a future two-state solution should it prove feasible, or for a revived idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian (and possibly Egyptian) confederation.

Wow. Wowwwwwww.

Context on the authors, from Arash Azizi: Yair Golan (the leader of the most left-wing Jewish-majority party in Israel) and @chuck_freilich have an op-ed in Haaretz which shows in no uncertain terms that they are NOT committed to the two-state solution anymore

They accuse Netanyahu of lacking "vision and a strategy" but their own 'vision and strategy' is apparently one of continuing a form of occupation 'until further notice'

Why wait - OHCHR: Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, says expert

Systematic aerial and ground attacks on Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem and Tubas governorates, particularly targeting refugee camps, have intensified in the past few months. Recently, on 28 August, Israeli occupation forces launched a full-scale military operation against these areas that have already killed 22 Palestinians and injured dozens.

Bulldozers have destroyed critical infrastructure, including roads, water and energy grids. New checkpoints have been established, following Israel¡¯s Foreign Minister Katz¡¯s declaration that ¡°We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required. This is a war for everything, and we must win it.¡±

An evacuation order has been issued to Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem and a city hospital in besieged Jenin, currently treating 150 patients. The Israeli occupation forces have blocked entry to the three main hospitals and imposed a curfew, while Israeli ground forces have invaded and besieged Shu¡¯fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.
posted by cendawanita at 5:36 AM on September 3, 2024 [8 favorites]

the country's largest labor union has called for a general strike starting tomorrow

Heard floating mouthpiece Peter Lerner interviewed on ABC Radio National yesterday about this. Motivations listed for the general strike were Israeli hostages first, war's effect on Israel's economy second. No mention at all of any objection to perpetrating a genocide.
posted by flabdablet at 10:17 PM on September 3, 2024 [5 favorites]

Motivations listed for the general strike were Israeli hostages first, war's effect on Israel's economy second. No mention at all of any objection to perpetrating a genocide.

Of course not. Something like 85% of Jewish Israelis are on board with getting rid of Palestinians. The "liberal" ones would prefer to do it by population transfer/ethnic cleansing, but there is no significant faction within Jewish Israeli society that actually opposes settler colonialism.

* NB: I am specifying "Jewish Israelis" in the sense in which Israel uses it, ie, non-Arab/Palestinian Israelis. The latter are a minority within Israel and are substantially oppressed even though on paper they have equal rights. I am not implicating the Jewish religion or Jewish people in general.
posted by adrienneleigh at 9:26 AM on September 4, 2024 [3 favorites]