Reading

I Try To Avoid The Word Genocide

https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/niyBMplQItAgxAfzhdSS47kdRKkm2PJP
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 17:56
I Try To Avoid The Word Genocide

—because it’s vastly over-used. Most things are not genocide, even some events were believe are (the Holodomar) are not. Genocide is the deliberate killing of mass numbers of specific ethnicity because they are that ethnicity.

Now, I’ve always been very concerned for Palestinians and Israelis because there is no way for Israel to remain a “Jewish” state in the long run without getting rid of the Palestinians. One option is ethnic cleansing. The other is genocide.

The sane solution is to make everyone a citizen and give up on blood citizenship, but that wouldn’t be a “Jewish state”.

Israel has bombed Gaza plenty in the past. It’s sickening and evil and collective punishment and all those bad things. They’ve also engaged in ethnic cleansing repeatedly, that’s part of why so many Palestinians are packed into Gaza.

But they’ve stopped short of genocide.

Child’s Guide to War: A film troika*

https://digbysblog.net/2023/10/10/childs-guide-to-war-a-film-troika/
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 11:30
*This is a slightly revised version of an older post that (sadly) is relevant again. Have you heard the reasons why?(Yeah, we’ve heard it all before)But have you seen the nation cry?(Yeah, we’ve seen it all before) -From “War Weary World” by The Call Oy. It’s been a trying couple of days… Bertrand Russell said, “war does not determine who is right-only who is left.” That may be pithy, but he’s yet to be proven wrong. I realize that the 24-hour news channels have little choice but to “recycle” a certain amount of horrific footage as a huge international story of this nature is developing, but I’m old enough to recall when such imagery was processed as deterrence to conflict and a call for diplomacy, rather than a base and puerile incitement for vengeance (not by those reporting the news but as some politicians and pundits have been wont to do). What I find particularly heartbreaking is the plight of the non-combatants (on both sides) caught in the middle of the mayhem…especially the children. But perhaps I’m just naive, what with my pacifist wishes and hippy-dippy poster dreams.

Haaretz on how this happened

https://digbysblog.net/2023/10/10/haaretz-on-how-this-happened/
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 10:30
When Israelis can catch their breath they are going to have to grapple with this reality They are still in the midst of their horrific trauma. But it won’t be long before they are going to be looking at how this massive failure happened. This from Gidi Weitz in Haaretz shines a light on one of the major reasons: How depressing and upsetting it is today to recall Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrogance under interrogation about Case 2000, one of the three corruption cases against the prime minister. “This is classified, don’t let it leak, okay?” he said, flattering the police investigators with the magic lure of security secrets. And then he explained his doctrine regarding Hamas and Hezbollah.

A Social Media cesspool

https://digbysblog.net/2023/10/10/a-social-media-cesspool/
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 09:00
Twitter/X is now a nightmare of disinformation Twitter/X is a terrible source right now and it’s really not worth looking at if you want information about the Israel Hamas situation. There is so much disinformation floating around and even some people you follow may be disseminating it without realizing it. At times like these, wityh emptions running so high, you really need social media to be well curated and have safety measures in place to ensure that disinformation and misinformation are restrained as much as possiblke. That isn’t happening at all on twitter even though they have very belatedly admitted the problem: The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, declared late Monday that it would limit the spread of misinformation regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. “A cross-company leadership group has assessed this moment as a crisis requiring the highest level of response,” the Trust and Safety team’s statement read. But according to Wired, the team has no leader following the resignation of Ella Irwin in June.

Eyeless in Gaza

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/10/10/eyeless-in-gaza/
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 08:00

In the Jewish legend, the great warrior Samson ends up, as John Milton famously puts it, “eyeless in Gaza.” He is blinded by the Philistines and harnessed to a huge millstone, forced to drag himself around and around in circles, always moving but unable to go anywhere. Eventually, in the most spectacular of suicides, he gets […]

The post Eyeless in Gaza appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

A Death Cult gets its jollies

https://digbysblog.net/2023/10/10/a-death-cult-gets-its-jollies/
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 06:00
A noun, a verb, and the southern border With this, and Ronna Romney McDaniel declaring the attacks a “great opportunity”—and really everything since Benghazi—it could not be clearer that the GOP salivates for barbarism and human calamity when the president is a Democrat. Utterly ghoulish party. https://t.co/HS5MB1FtvZ — Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) October 10, 2023 Note the flat affect when he’s talking about the carnage in Israel. It’s just a lead-in to his renditon of The Snake which he apparently thinks is a good metaphor for the Israel Hamas conflict when in the past it was a metaphor for the border. This is how his addled brain works: That imbecile is going to be the GOP nominee for president. For the third election in a row. Here’s more on his speech yesterday when everyone else was watching the horrific events in the Middle East: In a weekend filled with politicians offering criticisms and condemnations over the state of the world, Donald Trump on Monday had a few. For the Wall Street Journal editorial page (“globalists”), for windmills (“we see whales washing up on shore”); for Florida Gov.

Selective enforcer: ICC must warn Israel on crimes against humanity

https://johnmenadue.com/selective-defender-icc-must-warn-israel-on-crimes-again…
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 04:56
The International Criminal Court (ICC) faces a test of its credibility in how it monitors and deals with the conduct of Israel as it strikes back against the horrific attacks committed by Hamas. It must send a clear warning that while Israel has a right to defend itself, crimes against humanity and war crimes will Continue reading »

As Palestine bleeds, Sydney Opera House drapes itself in the colours of apartheid

https://johnmenadue.com/as-palestine-bleeds-sydney-opera-house-drapes-itself-in…
Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 04:55
“We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly.” – Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. On October 7, the special day being Simchat Torah, the vaunted security barriers protecting the State of Israel from those troublesome, sovereignty yearning Palestinians were spectacularly breached. From sea, air and land, Hamas executed a daring operation that saw, within Continue reading »