Israel to World: "Suck It."

Why on earth would they want to?

Honestly? Think of the real estate boom (no pun intended) it would create in the region. Investors (including amoral rich fucks from every Arab country) would be lining up to buy condos on the beach in what used to be Gaza. And I genuinely don't believe the political blowback would be very much at all. A non-binding UN resolution of some sort. A few tearful speeches in Congress that would still end up pro-Israel. The party in charge might lose a few seats in the next election, but the country's general right-wing drift would continue if not accelerate. The more I think about it, the more it seems like a winning strategy. Except for the whole "becoming exactly the kind of genocidal regime that inspired the creation of the country in the first fucking place" thing, but honestly, does it feel like the judgment of history matters at this point?

Because:

- it would immediately incite retaliation from neighbouring Arab nations
- it would permanently end any possibility of peace with the West Bank
- it would be extremely unpopular with the vast majority of Israelis, who even at their most extreme views surely would never call themselves genocidal
- it is infinitely more elegant/elegant for Bibi to do as he has been doing, dissolving the West Bank and Golan Heights gradually while brazenly presenting future plans for a single Israeli state to the UN

This Hamas attack plays so heavily into Bibi’s favour, especially considering his recent extreme unpopularity (criminal investigations, protests about the proposed reform of the judiciary) that I won’t at all be surprised if, over the next year, we see an emergence of “Supernova was an inside job” conspiracy theories

Of course there'd be political blowback. Support is already weakening in the US and EU among the under-50s, regional states would be forced into open hostility with Israel - even MBS and Saudi Arabia wouldn't be able to keep moving toward normalization without risking uprisings.

I genuinely don't believe the political blowback would be very much at all.

Maybe not the USA, but worldwide there would be serious blowback. Among other things, the EU is a bigger trading partner of Israel than the USA and the EU isn't as supine on their behalf. Ofc, Islamic nations still control vast amounts of oil and can make the world very uncomfortable. Besides, they've had all the success they require through incrementalism and controlling the narrative to a large extent. Mass murder is not the narrative they want, however much they might desire Gaza and Hamas to simply vaporize.

it’s really not worth engaging with

This Hamas attack plays so heavily into Bibi’s favour, especially considering his recent extreme unpopularity (criminal investigations, protests about the proposed reform of the judiciary) that I won’t at all be surprised if, over the next year, we see an emergence of “Supernova was an inside job” conspiracy theories

― (the poster formerly known as Twitter) (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 10 October 2023 21:54 (thirty-three minutes ago) link

No Israeli source I have looked at seems to agree that this is good for Bibi. I think people are mistakenly analogizing this to Bush and 9/11 when they think that way and it’s actually so completely different.

Yeah, the media is pointing to a whole bunch of anger within Israel on who exactly dropped the ball here, with regards to intelligence... especially since the attack fell on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war

That’s true: articles in both Haaretz and Al-J have highlighted what a massive security failure this is for him

unperson -- tbh a cursory understanding of israel's history would tell you that people w/in its government have understood from the beginning that its grand objective (total ownership of the arab state thru force) largely had to be achieved through violence that is carried out in shadows, behind closed doors etc. the same question you're posing -- why not just commit genocide? -- has been asked several times over, in different ways, w/in the israeli government throughout its history. for instance, why did israel never assassinate yasser arafat? they tracked his movements meticulously, knew when he was giving public speeches etc... so why didn't they just blow up one of his rallies to ensure his death even if it meant killing hundreds or thousands of innocent egyptians or palestinians that the israeli govt, abstractly speaking, wanted dead anyway? this was a question legitimately brought up w/in mossad in the 70s and 80s, i'm not being theoretical here. the answer is because israel (well, key power holders in the israeli govt) understood that arafat was perceived to be a legitimate head of state. and even if lots of ppl in the israeli govt believed that every second he lived resulted in the deaths of jews, israel needed to play by the rules in order to not attract the backlash of western governments. so they tried to kill him in various private and far less shocking ways that were unsuccessful. there were years long debates about whether it was worth it to covertly assassinate participants in the munich olympics attacks on western soil. i say this not to imply any moral grace on the part of the israeli govt, of course, but just to note that while your assumed nihilism on this topic is understandable given the stakes, it's been the position, internally debated for years, that a certain tact had to be employed by israel's killing machine if it was going to be allowed to stay killing.

it's been the position, internally debated for years, that a certain tact had to be employed by israel's killing machine if it was going to be allowed to stay killing

Yeah, I get that, but who is the current Arafat? Hamas has no leader with an equivalent public profile. And that's just one way in which things have changed. The current government of Israel is manifestly more fascist and criminal than pretty much any prior government. They really seem from the outside to be on a "let's just do it and be legends" death trip. Which is why I said what I said at first, that this really feels like suicide by cop on the part of Hamas. They struck a blow that they should/must have known would result in an overwhelmingly destructive response from Israel...and a response ranging from sorrowful apathy to outright cheering from the Western world.

Good (sigh) post J0rdan

that they should/must have known would result in an overwhelmingly destructive response from Israel

that was a key idea in The Battle of Algiers... committing acts of terror precisely to invite reprisal, which they know will be heavy handed and turn public opinion against the oppressor overlords, possibly attracting more support for their cause. However, I think murdering entire families in their homes is probably overplaying their hand, except in violently antisemitic circles

They really seem from the outside to be on a "let's just do it and be legends" death trip.

i do think it's important to understand that these people have always existed at the very highest levels of the israeli govt from the outset and been resisted on strategic grounds for many decades. again i'm not being abstract here... if you read about the history of mossad etc you'll find that there are pretty much always several people high up in the israeli govt who are like one or two degrees away from the red button whose entire goal in life is to have the red button be pushed. which isn't to say that it could never happen, just that the very discussion has animated the israel government since day 1

There are 2.6 million men, women and children in the Gaza Strip. Killing them all would be the greatest genocide since the Holocaust. I don't think anyone, not even the US, could be a cheerleader for that.

u&k

xp

my fucking FB wall is full of Van Horn Streets this week.

this entire idiotic fucking country is full of Van Horn Streets this week. i nearly threw my phone across the room reading the news this morning

The entire idiotic fucking country has been banned permanently.

but can post on The Church

The sheer number of people competing for space and resources in that tiny piece of barren land far outstrips its ability to comfortably provide for them.

Just have to say that this is an extremely weird take. There are less than 10 million people there, and there are a lot of resources

FWIW, the hardliners I personally know in life - by that I mean a few people I've gone to school with at different stages in life, and it even encompasses individuals who are otherwise very liberal - have repeated the same arguments as long as I can remember: that Palestinians are sworn to the destruction of the Jewish people, that they put it in their charter and therefore they can never be trusted, etc...in other words it's forever their life's mission. Even now they are saying it has nothing to do with rebelling, it's in line with what they've ALWAYS been after. It's really hopeless trying to reason with the hardliners - they've committed to be sworn enemies to people they will never make peace with because they will never trust them no matter how history turns, no matter how people evolve socially and culturally. And it's pretty fucking sad that I've come to see this view echoed over and over again against all Muslims by nutcase far-right Christians - to them, it might as well be the Crusades all over again. All it takes is a few, even just one bigoted asshole to make the world a shitshow.

*rebelling against any injustice done to them, it's only a continuation of the sworn destruction of Israel they've ALWAYS been after

I found out this woman Vivian Silver is a relative of mine - I didn't know her but she grew up with my mom. She's a Canadian citizen who is missing from the kibbutz Be'eri.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/revered-peace-activist-missing-sending-harrowing-text-message-hamas-as-rcna119475

She became a leader of Women Wage Peace, a grassroots organization made up of thousands of Arab and Jewish women seeking a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I spent much time in Gaza until the outbreak of the second intifada. We continued working with organizations in the West Bank,” Silver wrote in the post. “That’s why it especially infuriates me when people claim: ‘We have no partner on the other side!’ I personally know so many Palestinians who yearn for peace no less than we do.”

Silver’s activism went beyond leading marches and rallies.

In addition to ferrying Gaza residents to Israeli hospitals for cancer treatments, her friends said, she also traveled to the border to make sure Arab laborers who worked at her kibbutz got paid during periods when they were barred from entering Israel.

committing acts of terror precisely to invite reprisal, which they know will be heavy handed and turn public opinion against the oppressor overlords, possibly attracting more support for their cause. However, I think murdering entire families in their homes is probably overplaying their hand, except in violently antisemitic circles

It might be, but just as Israel may have been having the "lets just be legends" debate outlined above, similar debates may have been happening inside Hamas as well? Especially if its true that top brass wasn't even informed (no idea how much store to put in that). Even the concept of overplaying a hand seems sort of out of time

And Hamas might also feel they were being sidelined, a lot of regional powers normalising relations with Israel, Saudi in particular imminently on the horizon. large numbers of Israeli tourists visiting Dubai. There's not just political opinion in the west to consider, there's also political opinion in the region, and they might have felt that was trending away from Palestine

How does Netanyahu possibly survive the acknowledgment that Israel had warning from Egypt? For an already fairly loathed leader, I just don't see how that isn't the end. (NB: I barely understand internal Israeli politics, so maybe there's a path there for him, but he's barely held on for a long time now.)

Perhaps that has been posted before, but it still bears repeating: half the population of Gaza are aged 19 or under.

I remember when this happened in 1973. Nothing but despondency since.

*sucks it*

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect encapsulation of the wicked role of the western media. As dozens & dozens of children are being massacred in Gaza, tomorrow’s headlines are unverified, evidence-free claims made by the very army that’s killing en masse in Gaza & lies routinely. pic.twitter.com/YdNry4CUoD

— Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) October 10, 2023

Workers from Gaza who had Israeli working permits have been kicked out from their job with no wages, beaten up & had their money and phones stolen & left stranded at the military checkpoints, hundreds made it to Ramallah where they are being taken care by the residents. pic.twitter.com/uy7iuS7HmD

— Zaid 🧉 (@ZaidAmali) October 10, 2023

Interesting quote on what a one state solution could look like.

Noel Ignatiev laid out how simple and moderate a one-state solution could be, if only Israelis were willing to give up their special status and live as equals in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual secular state. The refusal of this vision is the status quo.https://t.co/NEcDvBHiNY https://t.co/qx5HljJlQE pic.twitter.com/P5F4kaNzob

— Bathhouse Agitator (@gusselsprouts) October 9, 2023

Israel is of course using whatever propaganda it can. & getting support from a lot of sides including a number of liberal and I thought leftist podcasts.
The 2 Red Nation podcasts from Monday gave a really interesting alternative perspective. Including a history of how Palestinian representation has been progressively silenced. Red Nation is inherently anti settler-colonial to give perspective but it did sound pretty balanced. I've seen footage of Israelis complete disregard for the indigenous people of the area going back for decades.

I'm glad to hear that there is a resistance in Israel to completely swallowing its government's version of the narrative.
Continually struck with the idea that one should learn compassion and sympathy from one's oppression and Israel just seem to want to channel it onwards. So something eventually going to break.

like you don't take years or decades or centuries or whatever of being oppressed by one group of people and find some other group entirely to discharge it on. You shouldn't be punching down like.
Not sure that is a way of getting rid of trauma, seems to be just a way of creating it.

Struck deeply by the idea of neutral reporting not being something I'm hearing. But if you do take current situation as not being a l;ongterm process and just seeing oooh out of the blue something happened has a weight of its own.

Have just been hearing Chris Hayes coldly describing the Israeli preparations of armament which is expected to be going into Gaza in a way that doesn't view that as building things up further

Not sure if that's quite the full picture but it does sound like Israel is being presented as acting in the way they must do. THough it sounds like Palestinian casualties are already close to teh same level.
& I'mhearing phrases like 'unnecessary civilian damage' or similar in interviewson his show. as though it is inevitable that some civilians are going to be hurt in reprisals.

& he's probably one of teh more pro Palestinian voices in the mainstream media I would think from hearing a lot of his work.

Haven't heard how Al Jazeera and others are reporting things

I'm noticing that western media is incredibly resistant to saying anything about the history of the conflict and wider dynamics at play. They're really happy to present all of this as taking place in a vacuum.

Meanwhile the BBC are being attacked for not referring to Hamas as terrorists.

Not to absolve the media who should have experts to consult, but I think part of the problem is that everyone needs to brush up on the history of the conflict, the lines of the territory, the complex power game, and remembering why nobody has found a solution in the last 75 years. I was discussing with a colleague over lunch, and we realized we both couldn't comment much about the possible role of Hezbollah, simply because that history has left our consciousness and coming back brutally. I certainly hadn't thought of Hamas in the last 20 years. It's a more intricate situation than imperialistic Russia bluntly invading Ukraine.

There is probably no subject I feel more internal dissonance on than Israel/Palestine, so forgive me if you think I misstate any fact or say anything callous to anyone's life or rights, I have no intention of propagandizing for anyone. I have a certain amount of inevitable human bias because of my connections. I haven't been on ILX much and I have been reading the thread but not posting much because I couldn't really collect my thoughts. My wife's family came here from Israel when she was a teenager. Her cousins and aunts and uncles and grandfather are still there. Two of her first cousins are now mobilized for the reserves, leaving small children at home. Family friends - an entire family with children - are missing after the attacks and either dead or kidnapped. My daughter's classmate's cousin was killed in the attacks. Randomly, I got my haircut yesterday by a new guy yesterday and it turns out his cousin is also missing after the attacks. Israel is a small country and there is a still rising death toll from the Hamas attack of more than 1200, and there are not a huge number of Jews in the world, so the odds of having a personal tie to someone killed or missing are fairly high.

I have not really considered myself to be Zionist since I was old enough to form my own opinions, in part because a friendship with a single Palestinian kid I happened to meet at camp helped me to challenge some of the narratives I had learned. I told my parents I rejected the idea of a Birthright Israel trip because of what the name implied. I mocked people who wore IDF shirts and went to Israel parades. At the same time, I have not entirely adopted the typical left discourse on Palestine because I think the reduction of Israel to a "Settler-Colonial State" misunderstands too much, and because I am not capable of feeling entirely neutral and unbiased about it. Yes, there are elements of a settler-colonial project but it is also fundamentally different from others, in that it was largely established by refugees, not colonists from a parent state. Even the pre-WWII zionists were seeking a solution to European intolerance toward Jews, the same intolerance my family fled between 1865-1920, thankfully coming to the US. My wife's family was not so lucky - those of them who stayed in Europe were all wiped out in the Holocaust, and the ones who went to Palestine (from about would have been wiped out. To be clear, this is neither the fault of nor should it be the burden of Palestinian Arabs to shoulder. It's just an explanation of the conditions that paved the way for Israel's founding. Even the most hardline militant zionists were animated by a belief that they had been abandoned by the world and were fighting for their own survival - some had literally been guerilla fighters against Nazis before they escaped. This is not about what "justifies" the founding of Israel, it is just the conditions that led to its founding. It is at least one of the reasons why Algeria is not a very helpful example, one of the reasons why attacks on civilians will never convince anyone to "go home." There is no parent state for them to go home to.

My wife's great grandfather was actually a fairly prominent Jewish political leader in Palestine who advocated something like a binational state, peaceful coexistence with Arabs in Palestine. He was a communist and completely secular. He was also a zionist. His version of zionism doesn't have much remaining influence today, although the Meretz party is a descendent.

In the 90s my parents and I were big believers in Rabin. There was no magical thinking involved, it was pragmatism, it was a sense that there was now an established Israeli state that was then already over 40 years old, that at the same time the Palestinians had legitimately been wronged, and that maybe it was time to say "Ok, this is enough. We will draw a line. We cannot reverse historical wrongs but we can prevent further wrongs. No one will get everything they believe they are entitled to but maybe everyone can live in relative peace going forward." I don't want to belabor that too much but I think that that sentiment was genuinely shared by many Israelis and American Jews around the world, and I think likely by many Palestinians but I can't speak to that as easily. I'm not qualified to dissect the peace processes, but I reject the idea that it was all just some ruse to continue expansion. I don't think that the amount of effort that was put into it would have happened if no one on either side was ever sincere about it. I think it was not inevitable that it failed - in fact, if failure was inevitable, there would have been no reason to assassinate Rabin.

I think it's fair to say that no two-state solution is possible today due to the ongoing expansion of settlements, which I have always opposed, which my wife's family has always opposed, and which the Israelis I am friends with have always opposed. I can't really take up rhetorical arms against "the settler-colonial project of Israel" because it is the reason that my wife and kids exist today and that her entire family was not wiped out. Unfortunately my approach to the whole thing over the past decade or more has simply been to avoid thinking about it. I am here, not there. I am not Israeli. My wife has lived here longer than she lived there now. I can no more do anything about it than I can do anything about Kashmir or Tibet or Ukraine. I can't join the people who describe the project that saved my wife's family from obliteration as though it's some universal satanic force, which is how "zionism" is often portrayed.

I am nauseated and have trouble sleeping over the Hamas attack and the war. I watched Bibi promise to "avenge" the deaths and felt only sadness and despair, as though blood is acceptable payment for blood. I wake up feeling like I am trapped in rubble. But I also wake up and I am not trapped in rubble, I'm in a very nice, safe, calm place with an easy life. I argue with myself. I waiver between positions and no position at all. I make no soaring declarations on facebook, I have no flag on my picture. I am in a grim sense lucky enough to live in a settler-colonial state that had all but erased its opposition by the time my family came here, so I get to live free of the dissonance in my own daily life. But I don't believe it has to be inevitable that Israel does the same. Israel has two million Arab citizens - 20% of its population. Whatever the most hardline zionists advocated didn't come true. Those people are still there, they were not forced out. They are not given all the rights they should be, but they do not live in full apartheid either. They study in Israeli universities, they hold political office. When we visited Israel and had to take my daughter to the hospital in Tel Aviv, there were Muslim Arab doctors and nurses. I am not saying this because I think Israel is some wonderful multi-ethnic democracy, or because I think it is not racist against Arabs, I am just saying this because I don't think it is inevitable that Israel can only become the ugliest iteration of itself. I think that's facile. I still think it is possible to move toward some kind of imperfect but better than now situation where no one gets everything they want and people live in peace. But that might be wishful thinking, I don't really know. Maybe the hardline is bound to dominate in the long run, maybe only the most ideologically committed can drive the way things progress.

thanks for that post

Yes, thank you.

Good post, man alive. <3

Yes, thanks. I haven't posted to this thread because I'm not sure what I have to say or add, but aspects of what you wrote echo a lot of my family's recent discussions.

really appreciated man alive

Sending you and your family love, man alive <3

I appreciate you guys letting me get my thoughts/feelings out as well. And I also don't take offense if anyone has argument with anything I said.

Adding to the thanks. In some ways despite all the specific facts that make the situation so different from any other, the political dynamics of hardliners building power by forcing people into us-vs-them binaries are sadly familiar (and sadly successful, time after time). It's one of the great challenges of democratic government imo, and watching it play out in Israel has been instructive and tragic.

I don’t think it’s inevitable that Israel will be the ugliest version of itself, and know many, many Jewish people who believe the same.

However, at the heart of what is going on, and what is missing from so much analysis, is related to something that was posted yesterday.

Until the occupation ends, and until Palestinians are given equal access and rights within the state, any conversations about the Israeli state “doing the right thing” are moot. The state is maintaining apartheid, plain and simple, as it believes that it is this exclusion which grants it legitimacy. Until that belief is broken, there will be continued bloodshed.

But what do you define as “the occupation” and what does the end of it look like? That is the hard part and I do not think it is plain and simple.

ending the occupation, ime, means ending the israeli settlement of the west bank and lifting the economic and freedom-of-movement blockade on gaza