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

https://thebaffler.com/latest/netanyahus-inferno-malekafzali

Butchers.

https://archive.ph/hyNeW

Israeli Minister of Finance and de-facto governor of the West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, arrived at Majdal Shams, in the occupied Golan Heights, and had to leave after being yelled and cursed at by local residents. https://t.co/7FhokfnxDa pic.twitter.com/yXDNwVSSef

— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) July 28, 2024

This shit is so difficult. I don’t even know what to say. This really made me cry. They kill anything that’s alive, they poison the earth and water, they uproot olive trees and burn crops and mass slaughter livestock. The ecological impact of their violence is devastating. https://t.co/ZENq8Caurp

— لارا (@NormalArabGirl) July 27, 2024

https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-812226

“Following the Hezbollah rocket strike that killed several children in Majdal Shams on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided on Sunday to postpone the departure of 150 sick Gazan children to receive treatment in the United Arab Emirates, KAN reported Sunday.
The children were supposed to depart this coming Monday via the Ramon airbase, but following the attack on Majdal Shams, Netanyahu ordered the departure postponed, KAN noted.”

There's currently a "confrontation" going on between Sde Teiman soldiers / camp guards and the military police who've come in to arrest one for them for torture. I don't recall last time there was an actual physical tussle between two groups of Israeli soldiers - do you? https://t.co/2avwWI1xJL

— Dimi Reider | dimireider.substack.com (@reider) July 29, 2024

The depravity..

Yair Lapid:

"All the red lines were crossed today. MKs and ministers who participated in the invasion of violent militias into military bases constitute a message to the State of Israel: they are done with democracy, they are done with the rule of law,” he says in a statement.

“A dangerous fascist group threatens the existence of the State of Israel. They are the best thing that happened to [Gaza ruler Yahya] Sinwar and [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah. If we don’t stand up to them, the country will fall apart. If Netanyahu does not fire the ministers who participated in these violent raids today, he is not fit to represent the State of Israel,” the statement reads.

Insane Report:

The IDF is withdrawing multiple battalions from the Gaza Strip and sending them to defend the Beit Lid base which is under siege by fascist militias.

This is actually good news. https://t.co/bBX4i9SOIf

— Benzi Sanders (@BenzionSanders) July 29, 2024

I mean what do you expect? Ben Gvir can declare himself the king of the West Bank all he wants but why would Israel allow it?

Saw a tweet last night which said "Hamas have sacrificed Gaza to destroy Israel" and there is a ring of truth to it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-chief-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran-hamas-says-statement-2024-07-31/

not that there was much to begin with, but there goes any hope for a ceasefire anytime soon

there's no hope for a ceasefire until bibi wants one, right? he'd rather just kill people

at least, by being assassinated, this guy avoided being sodomized by 'the only democracy in the middle east'

sorry, what’s the case for hinayeh being an agent for peace?

no case at all, i'm sure. perhaps even understandably!

let me know when you find someone who truly is tho

he sucked like everyone else involved

I'd say killing the other side's main negotiator in the middle of ceasefire negotiations is a novel approach to diplomacy.

Everyone sucks is not any kind of beginning.

not weeping any tears for Haniyeh, but bombing his residence in Iran is a huge escalation

Wonder of US forces will get involved between now and the election.

that would be disastrous, but I'm sure Bibi and lots of Republicans would be gleeful if it happened.

The US military has announced that it will deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Friday, as Washington braces for Iran and its regional allies to make good on a promise to respond to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

I see we're still doing this routine pic.twitter.com/hiNuH0TJt6

— Ken Klippenstein 📎 (@kenklippenstein) August 2, 2024

Wait are we still giving Klippenstein the tjme of day? He’s been turning into a mini Greenwald.

his feed doesn't seem Greenwaldy to me:

what happened to them claiming he was a spy lmao pic.twitter.com/6ueFop7Poy

— Ken Klippenstein 📎 (@kenklippenstein) August 2, 2024

Klippenstein is correct in that tweet that Biden's threat to count the US out is part of a routine.

oh shit guess who bombed a school

yeah I’m puzzled with the lumping in with greenwald of klippenstein. other than their stances on israel I don’t see the similarity

other than their stances on israel I don’t see the similarity

true, in that case they're completely different

ok to be honest I haven’t really kept up with greenwald in years. has he horseshoed into a zionist now?

No

Hezbollah launches drone attack on northern Israel
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has hit northern Israel in a drone attack in response to what it called “attacks and assassinations” carried out by Israel in several villages in south Lebanon. The Israeli military says the attack wounded two soldiers and set off a fire.

klippenstein went on steve bannon's podcast recently but that's so far the only warning sign i'm aware of for him doing a contrarian reactionary pivot like so many other ex-intercept reporters. absolutely worth some caution but he thankfully hasn't started rambling about wokeness or anything yet

tbf that has to be one of the biggest single warning signs. i was trying to find a recent list of bannon's guests to see if he ever has anyone on that's not constantly lying, and saw this summer bannon wanted to take some vacation so he had gaetz, greene, and boebert guest host his show for a while. i imagine the entire 5 to 10-mile radius around bannon's dude cave/studio is encrusted with cruelty, and i'm not sure how you ever appear on the show (and help bannon make money) with a clean conscience, unless the entire purpose of the visit was to try to take down bannon

https://t.co/6iMVr0UJeY pic.twitter.com/C52wWcFtf0

— روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) August 6, 2024

Open political warfare now as high-ranking figures in the IDF and Israeli security services are leaking like mad about Netanyahu repeatedly scuttling the ceasefire deal they're trying to negotiate so the war doesn't end and he doesn't get booted out by the voters.

Chotiner interview w/ one of the cofounders of Breaking the Silence on the radicalization of the Israeli military: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-radicalization-of-israels-military

last q in that interview:

You mentioned that there had been more pressure on the Army to look into allegations of abuse and misconduct after reports started appearing internationally in the New York Times and CNN. Were these reports surprising to you or surprising to people who study this stuff in Israel?

For me, the idea that bad things are happening in Gaza, that bad things will happen in detention centers, is not surprising. But how bad they are, to be honest, is surprising. I fear that we’re just scratching the surface here. And I fear the fact that the media is largely not yet in Gaza. I fear that we’re going to discover that we’ve reached serious new lows in our behavior—in terms of rules of engagement that were extremely permissive in the amount of collateral damage allowed, and in terms of treatment of detainees. For all these things, I fear that we still don’t have the full story.

But I don’t think there is outrage. I think there is a big chunk of Israeli society that, for them, the kind of assault that is alleged against detainees actually sounds reasonable. It sounds reasonable to people in the Knesset today and for ministers in the government. You saw thousands of Israelis standing and defending these soldiers, even with what is alleged that they’ve done. That’s how low we’ve reached. An entire section of Israeli society and the political class and government have actually stood up to defend these actions.

And here's an Israeli journalist arguing for the systematic rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners as both revenge and a deterrent: https://www.instagram.com/vpalestinet/reel/C-XcEbWAjR5/

Can't help thinking of

https://nypost.com/1999/05/05/a-dedicated-dad-stands-by-his-son/

By Douglas Montero
Published May 5, 1999, 4:00 a.m. ET
SWAGGERING like a cop, Justin Volpe walks to the spectator section of the Brooklyn federal courtroom to exchange hellos with his father, Robert.

Justin Volpe, accused with other cops of torturing a Haitian immigrant, smiles casually as his father touches his hand.

NY Post hasn't changed much huh

They did finally turn on Volpe after he was convicted

yeah I just read a story from last year where they said Volpe was being released after serving "just" 24 years (out of 30), so they found a way to stay on brand

"swaggering like a cop", how do they come up with such vivid imagery

https://www.timesofisrael.com/likud-polls-as-largest-party-for-first-time-since-oct-7-netanyahu-favored-over-gantz/

well look at that (though if the poll is accurate the election would be very close)

where does the times of israel stand on the partisan spectrum?

Yeah. The polls show what the polls have been showing. The current coalition can't survive an election. In a grim way, it's good news that Netanyahu himself is recovering a bit in the polls; the more an election means the inevitable end of his position as Prime Minister, the more he'll do anything (i.e. prolong the war) in order to make an election impossible. But if he thinks he can hold on in a unity coalition with Gantz and Lapid he'll flush the far-right parties in a heartbeat, I expect. That would give the whole situation a very different (better) look.

That said, it looks like in this poll the opposition might be in position to cobble together a bare majority without Netanyahu.

https://unosat.org/products/3904

This map illustrates a satellite imagery-based comprehensive assessment of damage and destruction to structures within the area of interest in the Gaza Strip. . . . According to satellite imagery analysis, UNOSAT identified 46,223 destroyed structures, 18,478 severely damaged structures, 55,954 moderately damaged structures, and 35,754 possibly damaged structures for a total of 156,409 structures. These correspond to around 63% of the total structures in the Gaza Strip and a total of 215,137 estimated damaged housing units.

“In the United States’ Guantanamo Bay detention camp, nine prisoners were killed in twenty years; in Israel, it’s sixty detainees in ten months.” https://t.co/kynnbrdFk5

— dylan saba (@shaabiranks) August 12, 2024

I'm honestly trying to post less in this thread b/c clearly there isn't much to discuss at this point, but the relative quietening around the genocide (I don't mean on ilx, I mean in general) is hard to accept while revelations like this keep coming.

Haaretz Investigation: Israeli Army Uses Palestinian Civilians to Inspect Potentially Booby-trapped Tunnels in Gaza: https://archive.ph/pEq28

At first it's hard to recognize them. They're usually wearing Israeli army uniforms, many of them are in their 20s, and they're always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks.

But if you look more closely, you see that most of them are wearing sneakers, not army boots. And their hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces are full of fear. The soldiers call each of them a shawish, an obscure Arabic word of Turkish origin meaning sergeant.

Random Palestinians have been used by Israeli army units in the Gaza Strip for one purpose: to serve as human shields for soldiers during operations.

"Our lives are more important than their lives," soldiers were told. The thinking is that it's better for the Israeli soldiers to remain alive and for the shawishim to be the ones blown up by an explosive device.

This description is one of many obtained by Haaretz, some from combat soldiers, others from commanders. The picture that emerges: In recent months, Israeli soldiers have used human shields in this way all over Gaza; even the chief of staff's office knows.