Israel to World: "Suck It."

Jacques De Maio, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation to Israel and the PA, asserts: 'There is no IDF order to shoot suspects to kill, as political officials tried to convince us'; he also rejects claims of apartheid: 'There isn't a regime here that is based on the superiority of one race over another; there is no disenfranchisement of basic human rights based on so-called racial inferiority.'

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4953648,00.html

This Palestinian village had solar power — until Israeli soldiers took it away

^ sums up everything wrong with the condition of Israeli politics/policy today.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak, one of the targets of Netanyahu’s sniping, rebuffed Netanyahu’s comments saying “there’s no hunt, there’s corruption.”

Yair Lapid, a former finance minister under Netanyahu who heads the Yesh Atid party, tweeted after the prime minister’s speech that it “crossed every line.” “What we saw this evening wasn’t a rally of support for Netanyahu but a rally in support of corruption,” Lapid said.

Likud leaders put heavy pressure on party activists to attend the rally. The gathering had a festive atmosphere, with activists hoisting Israeli flags, banners criticizing the media and chanting “Bibi, King of Israel,” using his nickname.

Netanyahu, the second-longest serving leader in Israeli history, is engulfed in a series of scandals relating to alleged financial misdeeds and supposed illicit ties to executives in media, international business and Hollywood.

https://apnews.com/bd0c708ddaed4f4387849d6a656bdd74/Netanyahu-rips-media,-opposition-in-face-of-corruption-case

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/magazine/how-arafat-eluded-israels-assassination-machine.html

some shocking details of how sharon was willing to blow up a stadium and commercial airlines to get arafat

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-corruption.html

No, you suck it!

JERUSALEM — The Israeli police recommended on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, casting a pall over the future of a tenacious leader who has become almost synonymous with his country. The announcement instantly raised doubts about his ability to stay in office.

Concluding a yearlong graft investigation, the police recommended that Mr. Netanyahu face prosecution in two corruption cases: a gifts-for-favors affair known as Case 1000, and a second scandal, dubbed Case 2000, in which Mr. Netanyahu is suspected of back-room dealings with Arnon Mozes, publisher of the popular daily Yediot Aharonot, to ensure more favorable coverage.

some shocking details of how sharon was willing to blow up a stadium and commercial airlines to get arafat

― while my dirk gently weeps (symsymsym), Saturday, February 3, 2018 4:35 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im not shocked by this

a tenacious leader who has become almost synonymous with his country.

the hell he has

lol did you read the article jim?

this is def al capone getting busted for tax evasion

AIPAC panel on freedom of the press in Israel is closed to the press (photo via @AllisonKSommer of Haaretz). pic.twitter.com/wQJoLdTZkt

— Lisa Goldman (@lisang) March 4, 2018

https://www.timesofisrael.com/americans-support-for-israel-among-highest-ever-recorded/

Live blog: Israeli army opens fire as tens of thousands march in Gaza. At least 7 Palestinians killed and more than 500 wounded. https://t.co/4GOeJQ9gUD

— +972 Magazine (@972mag) March 30, 2018

Israel claims its troops opened fire only when it was necessary and in the face of attempts to damage the fence and infiltrate its territory. After a number of recent efforts to break across, the Israeli army has increased its presence in the area. It had already had about 100 snipers deployed before the protest.

“Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed,” Israel’s military said in a tweet on Saturday. However, when asked to clarify, it would not provide a specific number of people it believed its forces had struck, and the tweet was later deleted.

this seems like good news: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-cancels-forced-asylum-seeker-deportations-after-deal-with-un-1.5973475

This is a remarkable statement by an Israeli general, translated by @ShunraCat, that the IDF's snipers shoot children not as a personal choice but as policy approved at the highest level https://t.co/LnnZOTgygZ pic.twitter.com/xiIx8VcbCh

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) April 23, 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/05/07/netanyahu-puts-wrong-foot-forward-by-serving-japans-abe-dessert-in-a-shoe/?utm_term=.52a2726046b6

http://www.instagram.com/p/Bidx3pWgMnF/?utm_source=ig_embed

i'd eat it

As a follow-up to the atrocities this week. On Israel's shoot to maim policy:

as we're all struggling to digest the unconscionable images and numbers coming out of Palestine over the last few days and weeks, it is worth amplifying the fact that the policy of the Israeli state is to shoot to maim, injure, or disable rather than kill.

— kai a. bosworth (@kaibosworth) May 15, 2018

Is that post intended to convey information

Just emphasizing the failure of the policy

I'm just amazed anybody thinks "shoot to hurt" is a believable line, much less a policy that a standing army would comply with - cops don't even bother with such pretense

this post on LGM - by an israeli commenter - is really depressing

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/05/problem-voters-dont-want-another-path

also a good reminder of why splintering your left wing into various fronts is a terrible idea

we have the trail of tears and such. not to be inflammatory for real but genuinely curious what the israelis call the 1940s/50s relocation of the palestinians

I'm just amazed anybody thinks "shoot to hurt" is a believable line

There are many things to be amazed by - use your imagination.

This was good, published yesterday and written before this week's attrocities:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n10/henry-siegman/the-two-state-solution-an-autopsy-

Really powerful piece:

https://forward.com/opinion/401486/the-racism-of-blaming-palestinians-for-their-own-deaths/

we have the trail of tears and such. not to be inflammatory for real but genuinely curious what the israelis call the 1940s/50s relocation of the palestinians

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, May 16, 2018 10:08 AM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A common version you hear is "They left volunarily" or "The Arab powers told them to leave and promised them Israel would be destroyed and that they could return after." I usually try to point out that people who flee warzones are called refugees, and that it's pretty understandable to not want to hang out in your house in the middle of a battle, and that fleeing does not evince an intent to give up your home.

And of course some people did flee "voluntarily," but others were quite literally forced out at gunpoint.

It's like a script from Mel Brooks. Netanyahu says to an Arab member of the Knesset: "How dare you talk this way about the only democracy in the Middle East?" https://t.co/Hh9oxpmsHL

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) July 19, 2018

pull your pants up, dude in the photo

If you've ever wondered how today's media would cover openly segregationist laws, you have your answer. From this morning's @nytimes: pic.twitter.com/b7vjjXb6yB

— Alex Emmons (@AlexEmmons) July 20, 2018

#Breaking: Following reports of continued attacks against IDF soldiers near Karni crossing, IDF is bombing area. reports of 2 Palestinians dead.

— Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) July 20, 2018

too many war kites must have been launched from gaza. surely hamas is responsible and will be put down like the animals they are. /sarcasm

Israel is not Nazi Germany. And this kind of rhetoric is often used by hard-right governments that don't end up committing genocide. But this worldview can be called fascist without exaggeration, and hearing it from Netanyahu is alarming and disturbing. pic.twitter.com/RfXOFUeb4Z

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) August 30, 2018

Is anyone labouring under the illusion that the current Israeli goverment isn't hard right?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/benjamin-netanyahu-predicted-rise-authoritarianism/578374/

But Bibi took the opposite bet: that ethnic and cultural change would lead to an anti-liberal backlash making Orbán, not Obama, the model for European leaders. Rather than populism being a hiccup on the road to a grander, woke tomorrow, Bibi bet that it was the tomorrow. Deep, fierce attachment to nation and state was not going to fade away. It was going to fight back and win. And systematically, Bibi began courting the illiberals, authoritarians, and strongmen who, instead of fading, just kept on multiplying.

[...]

What I hadn’t realized, especially at the time, was that the Obama theory of history was only about the West. Not only did it have nothing to say about China, it also dismissed Vladimir Putin as some kind of throwback—a “19th-century” phenomenon, to quote Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry—destined to swift irrelevance. It still has nothing to say about the bloodbath that followed the Arab revolutions, or about the strongmen, not the democrats, consolidating power across the Middle East. There was not supposed to be any future for authoritarian capitalism.

Maybe it was the fierce pessimism of Bibi’s father, the historian Benzion Netanyahu, that shaped his views (an influence brilliantly explored by Bibi’s biographer, Anshel Pfeffer). Or perhaps it was the belief, inherent in Zionism itself, in the inevitability of nationalism and ethnic struggle. But instead of aligning himself with John Kerry and Cathy Ashton, Bibi positioned Israel to work with the emerging demagogues. And now we are living in the world that Bibi expected.

Only watching from Jerusalem, keeping a tab on his visits and his visitors, can you see just how successful Bibi has been. Never before have the leaders of Russia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and now Italy had such strong ties with Israel. Never before have they seen the leader that sits in Jerusalem as indispensable to their objectives. And this, not John Kerry’s “solutions,” has earned the respect of the strongmen who now rule from Cairo to Ankara to Pakistan.

things always change tho. right-wing seems ascendent today but maybe 2 or 6 years from now the left will seem ascendent again. but def anyone who thought that Obamaism was the guaranteed future was substituting hope for pragmatism.

Attorney General: Israeli PM Netanyahu To Be Indicted On Fraud, Bribery Charges https://t.co/VKKVXG9x8E via @TPM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 28, 2019

[insert ron paul "it's happening" meme]

new Trumpian territory for Bibi

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-absolves-hitler-of-guilt-1.5411578

new trumpian territory... from four years ago?

Trumpism is a state of mind.

goddammit

well at least he was there first

So there were a bunch of rockets fired at Israel and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza then a ceasefire and there's almost no coverage of it?

a forever story

It was covered over here fwiw.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/22/israel-plans-name-golan-heights-settlement-occupied-land-trump

ffs

can the golan heights trump hotel, resort and casino be far behind

This is even worse than it seems.

A national suicide of the Palestinians’ current political and cultural ethos is precisely what is needed for peace, writes Israel's ambassador to the United Nations https://t.co/cDS6DwOTBt

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) June 24, 2019