War between Hamas and Israel

[Sunsilver]

Yes, a very excellent article. Will be reading some of the links he gives at the end of it when I have more time. I really don't know as much as I'd like about the history of the Israeli -Palestinian conflict

[N.E. Brigand]

Those conservative social media commenters I just referenced in the thread on Trump/Georgia (a subject which they are steadfastly ignoring) are all very worked up -- and not unreasonably so -- about resurgent awful expressions of American antisemitism in light of recent events.

More moderate observers are noting a lot of dumb kneejerk pro-Palestinian responses in some progressive circles.

And on the other side, you have vile (and stupid) Islamophobia from a sitting U.S. senator:

[N.E. Brigand]

I started to watch the video. Watched the first 30 seconds. Nothing graphic shown to that point, but the description is worse than what I wrote.

CNN and CBS have now confirmed that reporting.

I was careful not to repeat the specific claim that babies had been beheaded. Despite the fact that President Biden himself repeated that claim a day later, that particular point is still not clear. Were infants shot in the head and their corpses burned? Yes. Were infants beheaded? Unsure.

Apparently pathology reports indicate that Israeli authorities did find the bodies of babies without heads following the Oct. 7th Hamas attack, but it's not clear whether the babies were deliberately beheaded by the terrorists or if their heads merely came off due to explosions or heavy gunfire. (Note that the reporter at that link is being attacked from the right for not more forcefully describing what happened as deliberate baby beheading.)

I will note that given the heavy bombardment of Gaza in which children have died, there are likely headless baby corpses on both sides.

[N.E. Brigand]

I find this brief analysis largely persuasive, particularly this passage:

"Asking a state acting in self-defence to agree to a ceasefire before its lawful defensive objectives have been met is, in effect, asking that state to stop defending itself. For such calls to be reasonable and credible, they must be accompanied by a concrete proposal setting out how Israel's legitimate defensive goals against Hamas will be met through other means. It is not an answer to say that Israel has to conclude a peace treaty, because Hamas is not interested in a peace treaty."

I am also again wondering why Hamas attacks Israel but not Egypt.

[N.E. Brigand]

"No, Joe Biden Does Not Support Genocide."

Duh. But I guess it had to be said.

Solidarity with innocent lives doesn't require saying things that aren't true. ... Under an unforgiving set of circumstances, I think Biden’s done pretty well. I can’t articulate a course of action he could have taken and sustained that would’ve been obviously better. At the same time, I worry his efforts will become much harder to support if Israel ultimately blows him off and his policy remains unchanged.

So I want to speak here mostly to other people who are horrified by Israel’s campaign in Gaza, but (thus) feel as though Biden is morally impelled to use a firmer hand.

My basic plea is: don’t get seduced by the temptation, or succumb to pressure, to condemn him eternally as an architect or supporter of atrocity, as though he were a 21st century Kissinger. Don’t be overly swayed by what are essentially factional memes—search Twitter for ”Genocide Joe,” if you’d like—devised to condemn anyone who doesn’t here and now deem Biden beyond redemption.

My sense is that, to this point at least, a harder-line approach [against Israel] would not have worked. It would not have resulted in a ceasefire, or termination of U.S. military aid to Israel, neither of which Biden can control unilaterally.

[N.E. Brigand]

If this is true, I have to think that's where the hostages are being held, and they too would suffocate if Hamas runs out of fuel:

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. has steadily been pressuring Israel not to launch a full ground invasion of Gaza without clear achievable objectives, and while that delay continued:

"Support in Israel for an immediate full invasion has dropped from 65% to 29% in the past week."

Just days after Hamas's attack, President Biden urged Israel not to repeat America's mistakes following 9/11.

Mind you, note the word "immediate" in there, and to be sure, the poll does have some fuzziness.

[N.E. Brigand]

There have been a lot of social media posts about ridiculous reactions among Americans and Europeans to the events in Gaza and Israel. I've shared almost none of it here because a lot of it though hateful seems performative or just ignorant (e.g., idiots criticizing Sen. Bernie Sanders for acknowledging the fifth anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting by telling him to "read the room"). I am wary of accelerationists and other bad actors using these events like they used the Black Lives Matter movement in 2015-2016 to sow dissent. In particular, I've seen a lot of posts from the right about antisemitism on the left, so one item I do think worth sharing is this note about how surveys find antisemitism is far more common on the right.

(Edited to add: I do worry that people on the left are falling for propaganda like this by someone who says "I lived through the invasion of Iraq and then the expansion to Afghanistan" and claims that the New York Times -- who recently took the untre word of Hamas that a hospital was bombed by Israelis -- is biased in favor of Israel. Also while it's true that the Bush administration lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs in order to justify an invasion, it's ridiculous to blithely dismiss claims that Saddam was "evil": at that point he had killed about 100,000 of his own people, and probably would have killed another 100,000 if he had lived. That doesn't justify the U.S. invasion, to be sure. But let's at least admit that most of us -- including her --won't do anything to stop mass murderers from continue to murder. Additionally, I would take exception to the claim that American presidents start wars to win reelection. I'm not even sure that applies to George W. Bush. He didn't win by a lot, and the good will generated by 9/11 probably would have carried him over the line three years later. William McKinley maybe? Richard Nixon apparent interference in Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War peace talks seems to have been based on the idea that wars don't help incumbents -- and if Nixon did what has been claimed, he made the right bet! And finally, since her subtitles keeps referring to Israel as "illegitimate colonizer," I would like to know what she intends regarding the Jews who live there.)

(Just a point of curiosity: I've never heard anyone pronounce "incumbent" as "INK'-yoom-bint" before.)

[N.E. Brigand]

As described, I agree that Israel should take this deal offered by Hamas.

[N.E. Brigand]

Will Stancil writes: "For all the talk about Biden controlling Israel, Netanyahu clearly has a history of blowing off Democratic presidents he doesn't like (see Obama, Barack) - presumably in part because he knows that if the GOP takes over, they'll let him do literally anything he wants."

This is in response to Congressman Max Miller, a Republican whose district extends south from Cleveland's suburbs, calling for Israel have "no rules of engagment" and bomb Gaza so heavily it becomes a "parking lot."

[Frelga]

Obviously you would need some way to ensure that Hamas upholds its end of the agreement,

Yeah. That's the catch all right.

Also the sooner Israel gets rid of Netanyahu the better for everyone. They've been trying to dislodge him for a while now but he dug in like a nail fungus. A cautionary tale for the US, perhaps.

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN has a new video about the challenges facing Israeli forensics teams working to identify Hamas's Oct. 7th victims. There are a few graphic moments. Yesterday CNN posted this story by Kaitlan Collins on the very graphic videos from Oct. 7th that, as I mentioned last week, the Israeli government showed foreign reporters (but did not allow them to record).

Nobably both stories were shared by NBC reporter Mehdi Hasan, who has been quite critical of Israel's response to the attack. As Hasan says, "[Far] too many people ... have weirdly and cruelly decided that opposing Israel's war in Gaza requires them to try and deny the sheer scale of Hamas brutality on Oct 7th. It doesn't."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This time there is no question about who is responsible. I understand that Hamas hides amongst civilian populations, but that does not justify this kind of wanton destruction.

[Frelga]

If we didn't call my sister-in-law, we wouldn't have known that Hamas keeps shooting rockets into Tel Aviv and its suburbs. I haven't seen a single report in the Western media that mentioned it.

[N.E. Brigand]

In the Senate today, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken details one specific atrocity Hamas committed on Oct. 7th while also calling for Israel to respond in a humane manner:



In other news, the Senate has finally approved Jack Lew to be the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, a post which has been vacant for nearly two years.

[N.E. Brigand]

Secretary Blinken also said that the Palestinian Authority (which controls the West Bank) should take over Gaza from Hamas after the war.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If we didn't call my sister-in-law, we wouldn't have known that Hamas keeps shooting rockets into Tel Aviv and its suburbs. I haven't seen a single report in the Western media that mentioned it.

I have seen and heard such reports, including on NPR.

[N.E. Brigand]

If we didn't call my sister-in-law, we wouldn't have known that Hamas keeps shooting rockets into Tel Aviv and its suburbs. I haven't seen a single report in the Western media that mentioned it.

I have seen and heard such reports, including on NPR.

Among the journalism searchable by Google News, a search for "Tel Aviv" brings up just one result for me from the past day, from the Times of Israel:

"Rockets target areas north of Tel Aviv for second time in minutes."

There are reports from other outlets from two days ago or earlier, but I think it's fair to say that much Western media does treat the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas as routine and not worth a new report each time it happens.

[Frelga]

This is Visegrad, which can be a bit hasty

BREAKING:

A missile launched by the Houthis in Yemen toward Israel has hit Jordan.

The Quds-3 cruise missile flew over Saudi Arabia before hitting Jordan.

Earlier, Jordan asked the US for a Patriot system, to protect against this exact situation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]