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

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.

I want to post more but its just repetition until things get worse.

that's part of the problem too, right? hard to tell when things get markedly worse versus the steady grind of dehumanization, mass murder, disease, starvation, and destruction. even in the article I just posted -- which initially struck me as a remarkable step towards deeply immoral conduct -- there's mention that the IDF did this before during the second intifada, which was news to me.

I worry about being ghoulish though. there was an article yesterday about newborn twins being killed while their father was away registering their births that I thought about posting but decided it was too terrible, too awfully intimate. otoh it mentioned that 115 (iirc) babies have been born and then killed in Gaza since Oct 7, which I didn't know and feels like something one should have to face

There is a quieting of talk on ILX too, fwiw, but since I get flak for bringing it up whenever I do, I have also stopped talking about it.

(as much as i should)

true, obviously this thread is much quieter than it was in previous months, but I don't think I can draw any clear conclusions from that. being fatigued or numbed by how horrible this is is entirely understandable, and probably healthier than my own approach if I'm being honest.

I do get frustrated by the sometimes (imo) inane topics that can generate lots of posts in the USpol thread. but I have to remind myself that posting on ilx is more or less meaningless, so it's not worth hectoring people about. the rejoinders are all predictable and will be basically correct anyway

this is a message board that generated thousands of posts about a Simpsons joke, what do you expect

I'm grateful for the links and news in this thread when it's posted. I'm so saddened and angry and I feel so powerless.

xp
well if you actually want to talk about it: there are dozens of threads about Israel in the archives, and I don't know how many posts but probably more than there are about Ralph Wiggum. so I think the fact that almost no one wants to talk about Israel & Palestine during a major genocide is maybe a little unexpected? I mean I've already said I empathize with people being numbed, but this board doesn't *only* talk about inane stuff

anyway, this was making the rounds yesterday so I assume most have seen it already, but this is well worth reading: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov

It’s probably a good idea to not call people who disagree with you ethnic cleansing deniers and then wonder why the thread’s not getting posted in. Never stopped caring, very much lacking energy for the bullshit that comes with. xps to table

"there was an article yesterday about newborn twins being killed while their father was away registering their births that I thought about posting but decided it was too terrible, too awfully intimate."

I thought above posting that but yes there was a video of the father crying and so was too intimate. I try to steer away from a specific case as its quite a lot to take on.

"hard to tell when things get markedly worse versus the steady grind of dehumanization, mass murder, disease, starvation, and destruction."

Personally I think its quiet because it has been going on for nearly a year now. Nothing to do with genocide denial or AS. Its banal but Gaza has been destroyed, its a reality.

My marker for things getting worse is if/when things escalate between Israel and Iran, and if the US gets involved. More of a geopolitical thing.