Israel Palestine Conflict 2023

[Surf]

@commonWealth

Yeah I fear the worst, this coverage reminds me a lot of WMDs in Iraq.

I clicked over there, seeing the Yuv post about almost everyone in the country knowing of someone who died kinda put things in perspective to me about how bad the situation is as far as trying to rein in Israel. Feels like trying to imagine if 9/11 was proudly and publicly perpetuated by the government of Newark or something.

[BriansHat]

Yikes from that post:

“It is seen as a duty not only to revenge Saturday’s actions, but as a symbol to revenging the holocaust.”

So the historical victims of genocide have decided it’s time to commit their own genocide against an enemy?

[TheHip41]

I don’t think they just decided. It’s been going on for awhile.

[Soulman]

They’ve decided to (try to) finish the job this time.

[Surf]

Well this not looking hopeful. Imagine if Poland had done this for Ukrainian border. (Made me curious and looks 14 million refugees have crossed that border) ETA- 14 million seems high, maybe that counts multiple trips for same people?

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1713107080712782170?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet

[commonWealth]

I’m starting to think what’s going to happen is they’re going to completely level the northern segment of Gaza, close it off with a new fence/wall, and confine the Palestinians there to the Southern ~half. They’ll say it’s necessary to secure/protect border towns. God knows how many civilians this will kill, but they’ll say they gave fair warning, etc.

There will probably be a few hundred Palestinians killed in the West Bank too, and the Western world will shrug that off as well.

When the dust settles they’ll be even harsher on what’s left of Gaza, and around and round we’ll go until Hamas decides to carry out another atrocity and another round of awfulness happens.

[LFS]

Here is something I am struggling with: it definitely seems to me that much of the anti-Israel sentiment (not here, I’m talking about in the general public discourse) is based on the idea that Jews don’t belong in that area at all, and that they just showed up one day and kicked out people to whom it had always belonged. From my understanding of the subject, the real answer to that is extremely complicated, but that Jewish people are in fact indigenous to the area. So it makes it somewhat uncomfortable to say “What Israel is doing in Gaza right now is wrong and they should stop” (which is how I feel) when the vast majority of the other people saying that follow it (explicitly or implicitly) with “and the Jews should get out of the area and give everything back to the Palestinians”.

It seems to be a fact that Israel will literally never be accepted as legitimate by its neighbors (and by a huge portion of people everywhere), and will always be involved in some form of cold or hot war.

Obviously people here are capable of saying “Israel should not commit genocide” while also - I think - acknowledging the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Am I correct about that?

[commonWealth]

@LFS

Obviously people here are capable of saying “Israel should not commit genocide” while also - I think - acknowledging the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Am I correct about that?

In my case you are, and I assume that goes for most/all here. I think Jewish people have as much right to live in that area as basically anyone has anywhere. They have a long history there. So do the Palestinians. It’s a tragedy that a peaceful solution can’t be found for both.

[Surf]

@LFS

but that Jewish people are in fact indigenous to the area

Yeah I was thinking about this in the context of thinking about indigenous people elsewhere and makes it feel unsolvable. Like does the fact that Romans/Persians/etc controlled the land for over a thousand years or whatever invalidate a indigenous land claim? Seems unimaginably complicated, like what if in 500 years a million Seminoles showed up in Florida?

[feedthabeast]

I hate this entire situation, and the cherry on top of the shit sundae is Trump crowing about how he’d never have let this happen. I’m dreading the poll that shows 80%+ believe this only happened because of Biden.

[CaffeineNeeded]

https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1713201470445609322?s=46&t=N0_fcOKIYYmlCS2e4YShsQ

Some interesting debates about this in the comments, but the blue checks are taking over

[Krayz]

Why shoot at your own people and blame Israel, when Israel is already doing it? Also doesn’t change anything about the atrocities both sides are/have carried out.

[CaffeineNeeded]

If your goal is to use civilians as meat shields you do what you can to stop them from leaving

[goofy]

@LFS

So it makes it somewhat uncomfortable to say “What Israel is doing in Gaza right now is wrong and they should stop” (which is how I feel) when the vast majority of the other people saying that follow it (explicitly or implicitly) with “and the Jews should get out of the area and give everything back to the Palestinians”.

While there’s always a group of people that will hold any opinion imaginable, I feel like the opinion I’ve seen expressed the most from the corner of the left I follow is that “the occupation must end”, which (I think?) means free Palestinian control of the West Bank and Gaza but not all of Israel.

[LFS]

@goofy

@LFS

So it makes it somewhat uncomfortable to say “What Israel is doing in Gaza right now is wrong and they should stop” (which is how I feel) when the vast majority of the other people saying that follow it (explicitly or implicitly) with “and the Jews should get out of the area and give everything back to the Palestinians”.

While there’s always a group of people that will hold any opinion imaginable, I feel like the opinion I’ve seen expressed the most from the corner of the left I follow is that “the occupation must end”, which (I think?) means free Palestinian control of the West Bank and Gaza but not all of Israel.

Among people with some knowledge of history and the depth of this conflict, I think that’s true. And I think that’s like 10% of people, but that’s a guess.

[pvn]

@goofy

While there’s always a group of people that will hold any opinion imaginable, I feel like the opinion I’ve seen expressed the most from the corner of the left I follow is that “the occupation must end”, which (I think?) means free Palestinian control of the West Bank and Gaza but not all of Israel.

technically israel isn’t occupying gaza (not really sure what the west bank situation is, it seems there really isn’t a contiguous “west bank” geographical area anymore because israel has turned it into swiss cheese with settlers (another war crime).

israel ended the gaza occupation about 15 years ago and since then it’s been “under blockade” (i.e. a concentration camp).

[Surf]

This makes it sound like Hamas themselves told Egypt not to let people flee? Or is NYT adding that in as their interpretation?
——

Hamas’s top political official, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a televised speech that “there will be no migration from Gaza to Egypt,” and hinted that Egypt’s opposition to opening its borders to Palestinians in the neighboring Strip is in coordination with Hamas’s decision “to stay in our land.” He added that Egypt “welcomes the Palestinian people, but not on the basis of migration or an exodus.”

[CaffeineNeeded]

Of course they are, they need the meat shields.

[pvn]

There is no way I’m going to look up any schumer’s insta or whatever to figure out if this is real or not

https://twitter.com/gianmarcosoresi/status/1713233052087042538

[goofy]

I don’t think I’d heard of Hamilton Nolan a few months ago, but I keep seeing his pieces linked here and there on various subjects (mostly labor) and he’s very good. Here he talks about the annoying moral certainty and self-righteousness of youth, and where it exposes a real failure by the elite class:

Young Morality and Old Morality

It is, of course, impossible to have a great deal of wisdom produced by life experience when you’re young. You are young. Be definition, your life experience is limited. But this lack of lived experience is balanced out by something that young people tend to have more of than their elders: moral clarity. The rage and impatience of youthful political energy is a natural result of gaining insight into how the world works for the first time, and being disgusted by its many outrages. History? Economics? Foreign policy? To learn for the first time about any of these things is to be introduced to an unbroken string of murder, oppression, and theft stretching back thousands of years. Education, performed correctly, gives kids the knowledge that the world around them did not just spontaneously come into being; it is the result of the work of many, many generations of stronger groups wiping out weaker groups and taking all of their stuff. And sustains itself today not through a friendly spirit of universal cooperation, but through power arrangements that culminate, almost everywhere, with the barrel of a gun. To see the world through a child’s eyes, and then to have the actual, blood-soaked machinery of history and politics unveiled is a shock. It prompts an urgent desire to do something in anyone with a conscience. Young people are able to see the evils of our systems with eyes that are unclouded by the harsh compromises that life imposes on all of us.
…
Are young people annoying? Yes of course. They don’t know jack shit and they act like they know everything and they mock our outfits, which we are certain are cool. More to the point, what chafes older people so much is, I think, the fact that younger people seem eager to pass judgment on the world without ever having had to navigate its many challenges themselves. We see their certainty as unearned, their arrogance as off-putting, and their smooth, glowing skin as an insult to our own mortality.

Many people who hold prestigious and well-paid media jobs, and who control an influential megaphone at a time when that is of incredible importance, squander their time and ours with wheedling complaints about bullshit. Bret Stephens spends his column grinding familiar axes about campus protests and local DSA rallies; Pamela Paul complains about how stuff is being debated on campus at Stanford; Ross Douthat takes this opportunity to unleash some zingers against “woke-speak” among student groups about decolonization; even Michelle Goldberg, who is supposed to represent the left, focuses her column on… campus protests and local DSA rallies and how the angry kids on the left are not protesting in the proper way. These are the voices that dominate the opinion section of the most influential news organization in the English-speaking world. You will never find a more pathetic failure to rise to the occasion than this collection of navel-gazing cranks, the journalistic equivalent of suburbanites complaining about the annoying smell of smoke ruining their weekend dinner party as the city burns down around them.

Who is being childish here? Is it the young college students, appalled at genocide looming in front of their eyes, possessed with the overwhelming urge to do something , who—despite not possessing a PhD in global affairs—flood into the streets and rage against the atrocity? Or is it the well educated and highly placed and influential adults, granted positions of great importance, who, as a crisis unfolds, as civilians are murdered, as neighborhoods are bombed, as oppression and religion collide in war, use their time griping about the hotheadedness of the young people protesting in the streets? Which of these groups has more accurately identified what should be our current topic of attention—the young people whose focus is on the governments that possess militaries and missiles and are poised to cause thousands of deaths, or the adults whose focus is on how some college kid said something annoying at a DSA rally? Wake the fuck up. The adults in the room are everywhere proving the kids’ critique to be true.

Young people have a voice, but no power. Old people have a bigger voice, and all of the power. Guess which group has a greater responsibility not to waste the current moment moaning about petty bullshit? An inability to ignore the small annoyances of youth in order to welcome the indispensable purity of morality that young people give to us is not a mark of wisdom. It is evidence that one has maintained immaturity even as they have gotten older. It is proof that you have allowed age to shrink your moral universe, rather than expand and deepen it.