Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

The few ppl that have done anything

BREAKING: Five actionists were sentenced to prison today after they occupied and cost Thales' weapons factory in Glasgow over £1million.

For disrupting Scotland's complicity in colonialism and genocide, three were given 12 months and two were given 14 and 16 month sentences.… pic.twitter.com/5Uef9v6sxa

— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) August 20, 2024

Callous.

DNC attendees cover their ears as the names of dead Palestinian children are read as they leave the convention pic.twitter.com/9bueCbFeEr

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) August 22, 2024

whenever I see someone post something like "we have all seen the photos of dead Palestinian children every day," it occurs to me that a huge factor in how people perceive the salience of the war in Gaza is whether this is true for them. personally, I have not seen a single photo of a dead Palestinian child (although admittedly I am not looking for them). this doesn't mean I don't care about the war at all, but if I were regularly confronted with photos, I imagine it would be much more front of mind for me.

yeah I think one of the horrifying aspects of this genocide has been that as it worsened it dropped off the front pages (not entirely of course), and even when it was being covered you didn't nec see graphic imagery.

one factor to bear in mind being Israel's deliberate murder of at least 115 journalists thus far

Most people have seen how Gaza has been reduced to rubble by bombs the West makes and ships over. No need for photos of bodies.

I would say, because of protests here and a lot of coverage since last October, people know enough.

there's a heartbreaking article about the uncountable number of Gazan orphans in the nyt today btw

I always think of the idea that support for the Vietnam war in the US collapsed partly due to graphic images of atrocities making their way into the evening news - people knew these were being committed before that but it was the emotional impact of actually seeing what that entailed that turned the tide. This is a tidy little narrative and I'm sure reductive, simplified, etc - for all I know it might be totally aprocryphal like JFK winning the debate on TV/Nixon winning it on the radio or that thing about the audiences running from the train at the Lumiéres showing.

Point is I don't want to see those images but part of me worries that seeing them is the only way to get a lot of people engaged.

we don't have a draft now like we did during Vietnam

people engaged.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 22 August 2024

You're almost certainly correct here. Once something doesn't have the same level of media coverage, then it is no longer happening. If its not in the media as much as before then it must be quietening down

I think there are other factors at play as well, but perception is a big part of things and if something was bad on tv yesterday but it wasn't on tv today then maybe its improving

crut yes that's def a big part of it, but US soldiers were dying in Vietnam before public opinion turned, too, as they had been in Korea, WWII, etc. Obviously Vietnam being a strategic blunder and costing more and more US lives kept the momentum going tho yeah.

as it worsened it dropped off the front pages (not entirely of course)

Not to make light because war is grinding hell at any speed but I wouldn't say it's worsened; more people were killed in the first three months of the war than in the eight months since. I guess if by "worsened" you mean "the possibility of a ceasefire deal seems more remote" then I would agree with that.

Public opinion on Vietnam turned on the Tet Offensive and the general feeling of it being a winnable war rather than the draft/American casualties/certainly not the destruction of Vietnam and Vietnamese lives. (much like Iraq and Afghanistan 40 years later)

xp I questioned whether "worsened" was justified based on the death rate or things like how prison torture was happening from the start but we're only learning about it now. I decided it was warranted due to the accumulation and expansion of atrocities (e.g., polio being detected or that 100+ babies born since 10/7 have been killed, 100+ journalists killed, 600 Palestinians killed in the West Bank, etc) plus the scale of destruction of the built environment, and yes as you say, the absence of prospects for change. so I see it as worse in scale if not pace. also, as has been mentioned before, recalling that fierce debate over the first hospital bombing compared to the utterly routinized destruction of the entire Gazan healthcare system, the constant evacuation orders & bombing of safe zones. I guess I'm saying it's turned from a shockingly violent military invasion to a comprehensive hell on earth (cf. the nyt article about orphans I just mentioned)

I took a communications class in college in 1991 immediately following the first Gulf War that compared media coverage of that war with media coverage of Vietnam. One point the professor made was that Vietnam was the first war with reporters with cameras embedded with troops in the field and the direct line of that coverage to the nightly news meant that the army could not continue to credibly craft the winning narrative as the war turned south (pun intended). So the news coverage and whether the general public thought the war was winnable were directly related.

The Gulf War was a much different war, but the military had learned certain lessons from Vietnam regarding its handling of news media and where they let them go. It probably played some role in the decision not to take out Saddam Hussein as that type of operation would not be able to be stage managed the way the military managed the liberation of Kuwait (as we saw in the Second Gulf War).

def part of why I called Israel's killing of journalists deliberate

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2024-democratic-national-convention/2024/08/22/high-ranking-chicago-cop-browbeat-palestinian-underling-gaza-war-dnc-protests

“You have behaved in a wrong and cowardly fashion. That is your responsibility. May you […] live well with that.”

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/moving-towards-life/

that's an excellent piece

I mean this is the way to talk to Democrats but also Palestinians have been killed by Democrat policy for months. Not allowing them a voice is the logical direction of travel.

Hasan said this and then swiftly got kicked out of the DNC in the most passive aggressive way possible. Clown show. pic.twitter.com/xMuQhIGnyL

— alex.station (@alexxstation) August 23, 2024

pic.twitter.com/MMY4BUQEZB

— Anwar El Ghazi (@elghazi1995) August 23, 2024

Mainz have paid up

that is a great post

Fantastic!

Here is what some of our other celebrity activists are up to.

god bless our celebrity activists https://t.co/4BdxxqI7f3 pic.twitter.com/BKehYHu1wa

— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) August 24, 2024

Public opinion on Vietnam turned on the Tet Offensive and the general feeling of it being a winnable war rather than the draft/American casualties/certainly not the destruction of Vietnam and Vietnamese lives. (much like Iraq and Afghanistan 40 years later)

I don't know if the two situations are comparable, there's likely a perception amongst Israeli youth that there is a level of external threat that wasn't present for Americans in the 1960s, as the opponent was the other side of the world. Whether this is true or not is secondary to the perception of it. I think the geographic proximity is going to be play a significant role in the differences in attitude

There is a stark turn in public opinion re: Vietnam that coincides with Tet and the war becoming obviously unwinnable. By the spring of 1968 (ie within 2-3 months of the offensive launch) the idea that the war was a mistake becomes the clear majority position and never wavers.

American attitudes toward foreign policy misadventure always boil down to “are we winning.” Body bags coming home and deaths abroad matter far less than being losers.

American wars are fought far from home soil and are thought of as wars of choice, which means if it starts to lose its appeal, its easy to pack up and go home and pretend it never happened.

I don't think there's a parallel here, in fact I think this is relatively unusual in that other wars are more likely to be fought at home, which leads to them being viewed differently by domestic populations

Which is perhaps why photos of massacred Palestinians and the words “You can’t afford groceries but your taxes paid for this and the educations of those who committed it” should start to be distributed

There is a stark turn in public opinion re: Vietnam that coincides with Tet and the war becoming obviously unwinnable. By the spring of 1968 (ie within 2-3 months of the offensive launch) the idea that the war was a mistake becomes the clear majority position and never wavers.

American attitudes toward foreign policy misadventure always boil down to “are we winning.” Body bags coming home and deaths abroad matter far less than being losers.

Quite a takedown of what it sounds like an insanely incoherent book.

https://spectrejournal.com/acting-jewishly-during-a-genocide/

"alleged"

Blogger who documented life in Gaza killed in alleged Israeli strike https://t.co/gk20uAigTJ

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) August 29, 2024

We have to wait for the strike's trial before we can confirm.

A clear-sighted reflection on Uncommitted and the DNC by Y. L. Al-Sheikh: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/democrats-palestine-activism-future/

I posted this story about Liberal Party staffers refusing to canvas for the party in the CanPol thread but it might interest people here too: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-staffers-gaza-montreal-byelection-1.7306984

during the Korean War, American pilots destroyed 85% of the buildings north of the 38th parallel, killed 20% of the peninsula’s population, bombed dams to create severe famine, killed 10’s of 1000’s of civilians in massacres, they recognize very well what’s happening in Gaza rn https://t.co/39ffHpe8s9

— rob (@lmNOTcatholic) August 29, 2024

That's right.

War crimes and genocide will continue. https://t.co/626QyigNcX

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) August 30, 2024

A very striking & good poster in Marseille. pic.twitter.com/MfBzOIT3Mp

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) September 5, 2024

has the us government even mentioned aysenur eygi yet

has anyone anywhere even bothered to suggest that she was somehow a threat

i mean it’s one (abominable) thing to provide the weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of palestinians, but it’s another to ignore the straight-up murder of american citizens, right? no?

there is no gain for anyone involved in mentioning it, so no one does

No need to worry, it is all in hand

"The Israelis have reached out, made sure we knew that they were promptly investigating this. As I understand, from just after I came out here, they are moving swiftly on this investigation, and will soon, we think, in the coming days, be able to present their findings and conclusions. We'll obviously withhold our judgment until we see that. We've called for a complete, thorough, swift, and transparent investigation. We'll see what they learn," he added.

https://www.trtworld.com/us-and-canada/no-contact-with-aysenur-eygis-family-white-house-confirms-18205691

Really appalling.

I don’t think the US government gave a shit about Rachel Corrie either.

Dear Americans, If you are killed by the Israeli government, our country won't care.

No one will be held accountable. It doesn't matter who you are, Israel can kill Americans and get away with it. https://t.co/oUa8LRoWQo

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) September 9, 2024

Thread on the NYer piece, about Jewish Currents.

I didn't know that Camus quote ("my mother over justice"). Its appalling.

It was inevitable that a major magazine was going to do a piece on @JewishCurrents & I dont besmirch anyone for trying to counterbalance the Leifers of the world. But the Journalist's outsized focus on "disillusioned" liberals is cloyingly nauseating herehttps://t.co/YMuLvejpXw

— Nathan Tankus (@NathanTankus) September 9, 2024

Uh… the public was extremely divided on the issue prior to Tet Offensive, so to even say “public opinion” is misleading. 1967 is when the antiwar protests really started ramping up, and … a lot of it had to do with the draft and restrictions on deferments.

It makes me wonder if there is a significant amount of antiwar sentiment and service avoidance among Israeli youth … and if not, then wtf
― sarahell, Tuesday, August 27, 2024 1:20 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Anvil covered this somewhat, but I find it to be a weird tic of Americans to view every situation in the world through the lens of something Americans have experienced. Vietnam could not be a worse analogy for Gaza. The vast majority of Israel's population lives within maybe two hours drive to Gaza. Most Americans had never even heard of Vietnam/French Indochina. Not a single American had been killed by Vietnamese people. Huge percentages of Israelis know someone killed by Hamas, either on October 7 or in one of their past bombings. Most Israelis have at some point gone into bomb shelters under Hamas rocket fire (or Hezbollah rocket fire, or both).

Americans have literally never had a modern war on or even near their soil. There are a lot of different Israeli sentiments about Gaza, but the idea that Vietnam would be a particularly useful tool in guessing how Isrealis would react to a situation that pretty much could not be more different is silly. I got on the same point when people were trying to make it into a 9/11 - Iraq analogy, which is also a terrible analogy, although maybe less terrible since at least Americans were killed in America on 9/11.

And just to be clear, I'm not talking about justifying the IDF's actions or anything in the situation, I'm just trying to address the failure to understand why there aren't more conscientious objectors. The average person who feels directly threatened doesn't say "well but my grandfather may have evicted their grandparents from their home," they just react to the threat. An ordinary person whose friend or relative is murdered doesn't tend to think "yes but there are historical reasons." Israelis who grow up in Israel know Israel as their home and their country just like you know America as your home and your country, and if they feel like someone is attacking it/them, very few of them have the wherewithal to do historical and political analysis, they just want the threat to go away.

Certainly some people may see that in the long term the threat is more likely to go away if you reach a political settlement vs engage in forever war/occupation, but expecting ordinary people, and particularly ordinary 18 and 19yos, to respond to what they see as a threat on their lives by refusing to participate in a military in which nearly everyone they know serves, and being baffled when they don't, seems extremely clueless and sheltered.

they just want the threat to go away

that is true as far as it goes, but there are many paths Israel could take to 'making the threat go away' which do not involve genocide. it does not require any special historical analysis to see that negotiation is an available path that incidentally kills far fewer human beings than dropping large quantities of high explosives in a densely populated area until you are just (to borrow a memorable phrase) bouncing the rubble.

"In one photo, two Israeli soldiers snuggle up in the twin sized bed of a child they’ve either killed or displaced. In another, a child’s doll is splayed out on the hood of a car. Another soldier in a child’s bed. And another in a crib. Maybe this one goes in carefree: soldiers giggle uncontrollably in an emptied playground, pushing each other in red-binned carts. "

https://thebaffler.com/latest/running-amok-turfah

"The pervasive sadism cannot be explained away as the behavior of soldiers at war"

that is true as far as it goes, but there are many paths Israel could take to 'making the threat go away' which do not involve genocide. it does not require any special historical analysis to see that negotiation is an available path that incidentally kills far fewer human beings than dropping large quantities of high explosives in a densely populated area until you are just (to borrow a memorable phrase) bouncing the rubble.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, September 10, 2024 1:16 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sure, but that doesn't really have anything to do with what I wrote, which is about individual 18 and 19yos' decision to become conscientious objectors or not, rather than what course the Israeli government chooses.

but the idea that Vietnam would be a particularly useful tool in guessing how Isrealis would react to a situation

I don't think anyone did that? The Vietnam detour was about American reactions and what gets Americans to stop supporting killing people outside of our borders.