Since it's been a while since we had an Israel/Palestine thread...

[version]

I haven't felt motivated to upbraid Chava for anything because I consider him the most oppressed member of the forum. As for HMGovt I think it's acceptable to partner up albeit always serendipitously like two maverick Tom Cruises buzzing the Death Star along different flight paths. The mob-handed rabble of the prorg circle jerkers is several steps of solidarity too far, however.

You need to get back to the natural state.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Same goes for the free market lot. Worship at the altar whilst doing everything they can to insulate themselves from it. Bailouts, lobbying. Anything to rig it in their favour.

I've been doing nothing of the sort.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

It's been crystal clear from day one

People yelling about cancel culture are generally the same exact people who want to ban books, ban queer people from public life, mandate their own fantasy version of history (i.e. "slavery taught slaves useful skills"), etc.

Scratch a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist and 99/100 you'll find someone who actually wants the freedom to say whatever he wants without consequence and the ability to ban whatever he doesn't like. And usually what they want the freedom to say without consequence is that black people or Jews or trans people or feminism or whatever are the evil root of all society's ills.

And dog whistling is a very real thing btw. It was a cornerstone of Republican strategy in the south for decades. It's the exactly how Marine Le Pen has repackaged the National Front. Etc. And both wokeness and cancel culture have been almost exclusively RW talking points for a lot of years now. Getting canceled is basically a mandatory career move for starting a pundit grift on Fox News/OAN. You don't even need to fuck off to Gab/Rumble etc ever since famous free speech absolutist (except for yunno Saudi Arabia or any other authoritarian regime he's beholden to, or anyone he disagrees with) Elon Musk bought Twitter. So I find this handwringing about "the authoritarian left" - a tiny, marginal grouping in Western society - at best unconvincing, if not actively disingenuous.

The problem is not that voices might be completely suppressed. What cancellation actually entails is foreclosing further dialogue because of threats to ideology, further deepening schisms between sets of people, at least one of which is normally subject to inflexible ideological commitments, by dissuading interaction between these factions. Your main tactic in the trans thread, for instance, was to tar any fact or opinion you found awkward by associating it with people from a putative opposing faction. However, once you are presented with a less abstract take from the Mumsnet forum all of a sudden you reveal yourself actually as being quite reasonable and moderate.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Same goes for the free market lot. Worship at the altar whilst doing everything they can to insulate themselves from it. Bailouts, lobbying. Anything to rig it in their favour.

Or those people who take an absolute drubbing in a discussion about LGBT issues because they insist all trans people have got something badly wrong with them and pose a danger to children, and then disingenuously use an appeal to Israel's progressive laws around same-sex couples to argue in favour of war crimes. What do you call them again?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Oh yeah, @mixed_biscuits, that's it.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Ha, case of vanishing posts there, biccies?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Or those people who take an absolute drubbing in a discussion about LGBT issues because they insist all trans people have got something badly wrong with them and pose a danger to children, and then disingenuously use an appeal to Israel's progressive laws around same-sex couples to argue in favour of war crimes. What do you call them again?

I think you need to reread that thread more than a few times hah

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think you need to reread that thread more than a few times hah

I wish I could read it several fewer times than I've read it, which was once.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I wish I could read it several fewer times than I've read it, which was once.

You can barely get your own thoughts in order, let alone someone else's...remember you were arguing vehemently for biological essentialism on one thread and the diametric opposite on another...oy vey

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Your main tactic in the trans thread, for instance, was to tar any fact or opinion you found awkward by associating it with people from a putative opposing faction. However, once you are presented with a less abstract take from the Mumsnet forum all of a sudden you reveal yourself actually as being quite reasonable and moderate.

As always, not going to take your typical sealioning bait, but just to clarify your typical thing of trying to put words in my mouth to make it seem as if we agree.

None of this happened. Your opinions on trans rights are bad because they're bad opinions, as well as generally quite ignorant. Separately, they're shared with a variety absolutely terrible people (RW evangelicals, Neonazis, etc). The point of mentioning that is to demonstrating the absurdity of claiming to be on the left - which obv doesn't apply to you - while happily supporting people who in turn happily ally themselves to the most regressive RW elements of society. And I answered, in detail, every single opposing take, however bad and ignorant I found them. Go and find me an unanswered one.

Mumsnet is a raving hotbed of transphobia as, again, I detailed with links etc that you didn't bother to read.

And none of this is "abstract". It is all very immediate and very real. It's only abstract for you bc you don't have any real stakes involved, beyond a frankly creepy obsession with trans women.

That's all I'm going to say about that. Not letting this get derailed.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Back to relevant news


Haaretz remains the only major Israeli media outlet worth following (that I know of at least). Behind a paywall but I'll c+p a couple relevant bits.

On settler extremism

The people determined to turn this difficult conflict into a real war of Gog and Magog are the radical settlers in the West Bank. Not a day goes by without them starting violent incidents against Palestinians, on top of the serious friction between Palestinians and the security forces. The impression one gets is that some of them are seeking another war like the 1948 War of Independence, in which Arabs would be expelled from their homes.

This is bad news, and very dangerous, and the government and the security services need to wake up and deal with it promptly. Nor is the Shin Bet security service the only one worried about this danger. So is the Biden administration, which has been warning Israel on a daily basis about what is happening in the West Bank.

On Israeli anger at Netanyahu. The context is a tweet he posted falsely claiming that didn't ignore multiple warnings from Israeli intelligence about declines in Israeli security posture.

This is probably one of those cases where a half-truth is worse than a lie. After all, there is no dispute that the IDF and Shin Bet did not anticipate the attack, despite the frequent drills conducted by Hamas, did not warn of it and did not make the appropriate preparations. The issue is not that, but rather the fact that Netanyahu ignored the warnings about the decline in Israel’s strategic situation. Such warnings were also voiced by MK Gadi Eisenkot in March and by opposition chair MK Yair Lapid in late September. Netanyahu simply did nothing about it, hence his great responsibility for the failure...

...On a long drive Sunday evening there was something unsettling about listening to the Kan public radio broadcasts. A major in the reserves explained to his interviewers in a direct manner that Netanyahu seemed to him to be “shell shocked”; a Likud lawmaker admitted that it was unpleasant to go out on the street in the face of citizens’ complaints against the governing coalition; a man whose daughter was abducted to the to the Gaza Strip demanded the dismissal of Netanyahu, whom he likened to a CEO who brought the company to bankruptcy; and a woman from Kibbutz Nahal Oz announced that the enraged mothers of the Gaza border communities will bring down the government. I have never heard a radio program like this in Israel. The interviewers themselves were absolutely astounded by the sharpness and directness of the speakers.

 

[Murphy]

biological essentialism

 

[version]

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

A couple other relevant bits from Haaretz

Lebanese govt basically begging Hezbollah not to get stuck in bc of how messed up Lebanon is rn and the devastation and Israeli invasion would cause.

And a number of senior Israeli defense officials (albeit mostly retired ones) backing an "all for all" swap in which Israeli would release all Palestinians it currently holds to Gaza in return for all hostages. Probably infeasible but significant to even see it broached; it would be proportionally in line with the Gilad Shalit swap. Hostage swaps also being tied by Hamas negotiators to an internationally guaranteed ceasefire. No surprise there, but also seems infeasible for current Israeli leadership.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

As a lot of people have mentioned on Twitter, Wolf Blitzer began his career as essentially a hasbara propagandist - literally worked for AIPAC in the 70s - so if he even is incredulous you know it's truly fucked

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Aside: that Scottish accent really caught me off guard

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Btw in re the mothers of the border communities bringing Netanyahu down, there's a direct precedent

The downfall of Meir's govt after the 73 war began with a single Israeli soldier - Motti Ashkenazi, who commanded the only Bar Lev line fort not to fall to the Egyptian attack - beginning a solo protest outside her office that grew into a mass movement

From tiny acorns and so on

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

yup. keep hamas on life support as a response to the corruption of the PA whilst US and UK imperialists funnel weapons to Israel. basically, business as usual.

Yeah, PA with zero credibility among Palestinians and a defanged Hamas to still serve as a pressure outlet is ideal short-term outcome for Israeli govt.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

In today's settler fanatic news, Netanyahu just appointed this guy to head the Knesset's West Bank security sub-committee

Netanyahu appoints far-right MK as chairman of West Bank committee

Groups like Brothers in Arms and Peace Now accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of endangering national security with the appointment.

m.jpost.com

Hard to convey what a terrible idea this is. Zvi Sukkot is the living embodiment of hardline settler violence. It's like appointing David Duke to oversee a committee on race relations. Just hurling gasoline on a fire. Dangerous and crazy with no upside.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I thought I understood how deeply in thrall to the settlers Netanyahu was, but I underestimated. The fact that someone like Sukkot as gone from a Shin Bet target for perpetrating terrorism to literally overseeing WB security tells you everything you need to know about how Israel has changed in the last 14 years. These religious irredentists and their fucking Greater Israel fantasies are a disaster for actual Israel as well as Palestinians and Netanyahu is content to just give them a free hand as long as they keep him on the throne. Truly despicable.

Surely Netanyahu is the most disastrous figure in all of Israeli history? I'm struggling to think of any competition.