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

There's obviously been camps, killings, raids, oppression in West Bank for decades but yes this looks like an escalation

There's a really good BBC doc about the West Bank since 7 Oct called "The Other War" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001ytzd/the-other-war

Available in the US on BBC Select and/or Amazon Prime

yeah very worrying development. don't want to jump to any conclusions but...

more aid workers attacked: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/28/middleeast/world-food-program-vehicle-hit-gunfire-gaza-intl-latam/index.html

The World Food Programme is freezing employee movement in Gaza after one of its vehicles was targeted with repeated gunfire just meters from an Israeli checkpoint, according to a statement by the humanitarian agency.

“Despite being clearly marked and receiving multiple clearances by Israeli authorities to approach, the vehicle was directly struck by gunfire as it was moving toward an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoint,” the statement by the agency read.

The armored vehicle was one of two returning from a mission escorting humanitarian aid through the Palestinian enclave. A photo released by the WFP showed multiple bullet marks in the driver’s side window; at least 10 bullets hit the vehicle, according to the agency.

None of the employees onboard were physically harmed, it said.

Histadrut (main union in Israel) calls a general strike, following strike call by opposition leader Yair Lapid. 69% of Israelis want Netanyahu out in latest poll. Understanding now widespread that he is not serious about negotiating a ceasefire/hostage deal and is keeping the war going to forstall an election that will inevitably bring down his coalition and remove him from power.

Of course, one should not hide that Sinwar doesn't want a deal either. Murdering more hostages makes that clear. The two of them are locked in a hideous agreement that the war must go on, Palestinians must die in terrible numbers, it suits both their needs. Masses out in the streets of Tel Aviv protesting but they've been there before, with essentially no effect. Will the general strike be any different?

worth a try!

It's very very clear that these months of massacres have done virtually nothing in accomplishing the war's stated goals of freeing the hostages and ending Hamas rule of Gaza. Wonder how widespread that viewpoint is in Israel at the moment

If the general strike is observed widely enough and long enough it's a powerful tool for destroying a government. Good luck, Israel.

Reportedly 280,000 in the streets in Tel Aviv, half a million nationwide.

accomplishing the war's stated goals of freeing the hostages and ending Hamas rule of Gaza.

Absolutely true, and again, Netanhayu's fault for declaring that any end to hostilities which left Hamas in charge would be a "defeat." Don't get me wrong, Israelis are not opposed to killing lots of Palestinians to achieve a military goal. But I think there is a feeling that what can be achieved -- a Hamas with a disrupted and weakened military and the tunnel system largely broken up -- has been achieved, and was achieved a long time ago, and since then Palestinians have been dying for not very much, and some Israeli hostages too. A new government is not going to be much friendlier to normalizing relations or establishing a state in Gaza free of Israeli military oversight, but a new government is not going to continue giving Ben Gvir free rein to try to create a second front in the West Bank -- indeed Ben Gvir and Smotrich will both be jettisoned once Netanyahu is gone.

pic.twitter.com/EQnH6BwESM

— Tom Blackburn (@malaiseforever) September 2, 2024

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has welcomed the labour court’s decision to end the general strike.

“I am thankful for the decision of the Labour Court to stop the Histadrut’s political strike,” he said in a statement.

Israeli police have arrested some protesters in Tel Aviv as thousands of people took to the streets to demand the government agree a hostage release deal

israeli public getting off their asses for 6 dead people

I’ve seen a lot of chilling stuff over the past year, but nothing as awful as that clip of the podcasters talking about how they’d kill everyone in Gaza if only they had to smash a button to do so, and saying that everyone (in Israel) felt exactly the same.

There’s been so much coded rhetoric and appalling stuff and these two guys - civilians - saying this has upset me more than any of the government mouthpieces. I wish I could feel anything about citizens protesting against Netanyahu, a shred of some kind of hope that this will one day end, but nothing out there has suggested anything other than at best indifference towards the civilians of Gaza & the West Bank.

Genuinely, it left me cold.

talking about how they’d kill everyone in Gaza if only they had to smash a button to do so, and saying that everyone (in Israel) felt exactly the same.

They can say that, but it's just not true. Podcasters and radio guys in America also like to pretend that their own messed-up beliefs are shared by everyone.

“According to the Jenin municipality, more than 70% of Jenin’s streets have been bulldozed; 20 kilometers of water and sewage networks, communication and electric cables have been destroyed; and water has been cut off from 80% of the city.” https://t.co/eAtdz9Tjt7

— Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain) September 3, 2024

The West Bank is being forcibly annexed.

— Mariam Barghouti مريم البرغوثي (@MariamBarghouti) September 3, 2024

vote blue no matter who

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/middleeast/american-activist-killed-west-bank-intl/index.html

CORRECTION: Full name Aysenur Izgy, 26. pic.twitter.com/5c43zRQ0Wo

— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) September 6, 2024

Or, you know, Ezgi

Almost certainly a Muslim, so no-one will care.

xp autocorrect is against 'foreign' names

oof there were no details in the CNN story when I posted that. horrifying

Aysenur Eygi seemed like an exceptional person. May she rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/lnMm2BqKGg

— Laila Al-Arian (@LailaAlarian) September 7, 2024

"Still, one thing has not shifted. Among hundreds of thousands of demonstrating Israelis, one would be hard-pressed to find more than several hundred calling for an actual end to the Gaza campaign."

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-protests-hostage-deal-palestine/

Really.

هنا كان مخيماً للنازحين، قبل أن تمحوه إسرائيل عن الوجود..! pic.twitter.com/NH4U1eJI3N

— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) September 9, 2024

https://truthout.org/articles/un-expert-warns-israel-on-track-to-exterminate-nearly-entire-gaza-population/

Albanese cited a recent report from University of Edinburgh global public health chair Devi Sridhar finding that the true death toll from Israel’s genocide could be estimated at 335,500 as of September.

Sridhar based this rough calculation off of an estimate by public health researchers published in The Lancet in July regarding typical indirect death counts from previous conflicts, citing research hailed as the gold standard in the field. At that time, the researchers estimated that the true death toll could be roughly 186,000, stemming from direct killings like bombings as well as Israel’s destruction of the health, food and sanitation systems in Gaza.

The death toll, then, could be between 15 and 20 percent of the population by the end of this year, Albanese said, in just over a year of Israel’s genocide. And, as Sridhar writes in her Guardian report, the calculation that she borrows from The Lancet editorial is highly conservative — meaning the death toll could be even higher than her 335,500 estimate.

Israeli officials have repeatedly suggested that they would be happy to kill all 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. Last month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who is currently leading Israel’s charge to annex the occupied West Bank — moaned that international powers wouldn’t let Israel wipe out Gaza’s population.

“Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned,” Smotrich said.

bit stunned by that Smotrich quote, wow

Anyway, as I have said before and will say again…using old figures from the beginning and refusing to admit that the casualty numbers have increased immensely is just a form of genocide denialism at this point.

The death toll is creeping up to half a million people. https://t.co/oLGIcCJXnH

— Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura (@Rrrrnessa) September 11, 2024

is the Gaza Health Ministry/Palestinian Ministry of Health no longer the best source for those numbers?

My understanding is of a Palestinian authority still counting the dead, but also more work done to show that casualties are a lot more than what the Palestinian authority have come out with.

It's not a road I love going down, but I think it's reasonable to ask for a bit more information when a person with no listed credentials and no formal organization is claiming that you're obviously a genocide denialist if you don't already recognize that the death toll is multiples higher than even the highest estimates that have been put out, and the person she's retweeting is an unnamed business school phd candidate who just says "is now estimated" without a source. Even that Lancet thing was actually just an opinion letter written to the Lancet, not a Lancet-published peer-reviewed paper.

(xpost) The letter, and its appendix, are grim grim reading, but I don't understand reposting it as supporting a claim of 368k deaths - it really doesn't.

After a bit more reading, it seems to be some random shitposter deciding that the letter to the Lancet said "actual deaths to direct deaths are usually 3x to 15x so let's say 4x" and deciding, sure, let's do that here.

“they’re not killing as many innocent people as you say they are! you are wrong!!!”

listen to how you sound.

arguing over these numbers seems like a losing game to me. I think everyone here knows that there's no way the toll is truly 41,000, especially when you factor in disease and starvation. the horror is we can't know, the level of devastation is so immense.

stories like these are more horrifying to me (in a way) than trying to make estimates: https://apnews.com/article/gaza-war-hamas-dead-graves-40000-988d16b648e06e222f04964dc9440da0

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Tiers of graves are stacked deep underground in a bloated Gaza cemetery, where Sa’di Baraka spends his days hacking at the earth, making room for more dead.

“Sometimes we make graves on top of graves,” he said.

Baraka and his solemn corps of volunteer gravediggers in the Deir al-Balah cemetery start at sunrise, digging new trenches or reopening existing ones. The dead can sometimes come from kilometers (miles) away, stretches of Gaza where burial grounds are destroyed or unreachable.

The cemetery is 70 years old. A quarter of its graves are new.

...

Even in death, Palestinians have been displaced by Israel’s offensives.

Palestinians move corpses, shielding them from the path of war. Israel’s military has dug up, plowed over and bombed more than 20 cemeteries, according to satellite imagery analyzed by investigative outlet Bellingcat. Troops have taken scores of bodies into Israel, searching for hostages. Trucked back to Gaza, the bodies are often decomposed and unidentifiable, buried quickly in a mass grave.

or this: https://www.savethechildren.ca/article/gazas-missing-children-over-20000-children-estimated-to-be-lost-disappeared-detained-buried-under-the-rubble-or-in-mass-graves/

arguing over these numbers seems like a losing game to me. I think everyone here knows that there's no way the toll is truly 41,000, especially when you factor in disease and starvation. the horror is we can't know, the level of devastation is so immense.

OTM

Israel has overwhelmed Palestinians' ability to count the bodies, which is just...

I remember hearing all the time about these badass Israeli commandos, the 'best in the world' etc... seems like it was just utter bullshit. That's who you would send in to clear tunnels or liberate a school or hospital, instead they just call in airstrikes on said schools/hospitals

most moral army in the world, baby

Fuck off, tabes. Either you're being lazy or you're being dumb, and neither has a place on this thread.

rob otm

fuck you Andrew

Even that Lancet thing was actually just an opinion letter written to the Lancet, not a Lancet-published peer-reviewed paper.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 11 September 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Would it matter to you that it was? Unless you or I have the skills to go through the evidence you are reading it in some form of good will.

But I think its worth sharing that people are doing some work on this and that we are staring at the extermination of a people.

yeah I should clarify that I believe researchers making these estimates is important work (the Lancet's work on the US's Iraq invasion death toll was critical to piercing the fog of jingoistic nonsense clouding those years). I just don't want to get into arguments about specific figures on ilx

I do think calling the Lancet letter "actually just an opinion letter" is going too far, given the institutional affiliations of the writers and the, afaict, eminently reasonable claims made in the letter.

but above all this was otm:

Israel has overwhelmed Palestinians' ability to count the bodies, which is just...

― symsymsym, Wednesday, September 11, 2024 6:39 PM (yesterday)

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has just published a 649-page document with the the name, age, gender, ID number of every Palestinian killed in Gaza from October 7 to August 31 that it has info for (over 34k out of 40k). The 1st 14 pages the age is listed as 0 (under 1 year old) pic.twitter.com/NZZNLLf7ml

— Sharif Kouddous شريف عبد القدوس (@sharifkouddous) September 15, 2024

nyt report:

Wireless Devices Explode Across Lebanon After Israel Warns Hezbollah

A Lebanese official said pagers belonging to Hezbollah militants had exploded, and the health minister said hundreds of people were injured. The Israeli military declined to comment.

Large numbers of “wireless devices” simultaneously exploded across Lebanon in an apparently coordinated attack that caused hundreds of injuries, Lebanese health officials said on Tuesday, a day after Israeli leaders warned that they were considering stepping up their military campaign against Hezbollah.

A Lebanese intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said that the blasts occurred after pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded across the country. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said that hundreds of people had been injured in the blasts but that the authorities were still working to gather an exact figure.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement that many people had arrived at Lebanese hospitals after being wounded when their wireless devices exploded. The ministry warned citizens to stay away from similar devices until it was clear what had caused the blasts.

The Lebanese Red Cross said in a statement that 80 ambulances were responding to “multiple bombings” in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as in Beirut, the capital, and Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces Directorate asked people to clear the roads so people could be rushed to hospitals.

The blasts appeared to be the latest salvo in an 11-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that began last October, after Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory in solidarity with its ally, Hamas. The conflict has largely remained contained to exchanges of missiles and rockets, but for months, leaders on either side have warned that it could expand into a war involving ground forces.

pretty bold to frame this as part of a military campaign

Reuters report suggests the pagers were part of a new shipment brought in in recent months, hell of a sabotage operation if so: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-members-wounded-lebanon-when-pagers-exploded-sources-witnesses-2024-09-17/

more than 2700 wounded: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-exploding-pagers-8893a09816410959b6fe94aec124461b

What a wild cyber attack damn

Tweet puts this in historical context.

Remotely exploding pagers carried by hundreds of people including paramedics, civil defense workers and civilians in 2024, and planting hidden explosives inside children toys back in 1982, are different methods of terrorism by the same genocidal Zionist colonial entity.

— Ghassan 𓂆 ☭ غسان (@GhassanKDE) September 17, 2024