Israel-Gaza war

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The hostages' families are reportedly not happy at all with the decision to begin the ground invasion now.

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This thread has proven valuable in one way: I sent warnings last night to a couple of Gazans I follow on Twitter/X - they all feed and help stray cats, btw - to grab the cats, their families, and themselves and to take shelter - well one account is now run by the son of the original person because he died in an airstrike - because thanks to this thread I could tell the Israeli invasion was imminent. I despise Hamas and fully agree that Israel has the right and duty to go after them, but I am under no delusions about what a Bibi-led government is going to do, especially if Bibi thinks it will keep himself out of prison.

A common MENA practice and major W of Islamic culture.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This thread has proven valuable in one way: I sent warnings last night to a couple of Gazans I follow on Twitter/X - they all feed and help stray cats, btw - to grab the cats, their families, and themselves and to take shelter - well one account is now run by the son of the original person because he died in an airstrike - because thanks to this thread I could tell the Israeli invasion was imminent. I despise Hamas and fully agree that Israel has the right and duty to go after them, but I am under no delusions about what a Bibi-led government is going to do, especially if Bibi thinks it will keep himself out of prison.

A common MENA practice and major W of Islamic culture.

I saw some people doing it in Andalucía as well, likely a remnant from the Islamic era.

I've seen it personally in the Mezzogiorno and in Tunis and I've heard of it in Istanbul (famously; there is a very good documentary movie about this), Beirut, and now in this thread Andalusia, Gaza, and Crete. It seems to be pan-Mediterranean. My guess is it's a combination of sunnah (both as practiced in currently Muslim societies and, as you say, as a remnant in former ones) and the fact that cats are, quite simply, native to that part of the world; they're not a temperate-to-boreal forest species like dogs. They really live with humans in the Mediterranean, on a population level rather than an individual level, in a way that they don't elsewhere.

Anyway, speaking as someone who's currently working on gaining a stray cat's trust with a view towards rescue and potentially adoption, this conversation has been a welcome diversion for me given how ugly what's actually happening in Gaza appears to be getting.

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Welp it’s started 😔

Did they announce a full-bore invasion (as opposed to the slow-rolling incursions of the past day or two) or did you just log on/check the news for the first time today? I'm at work and haven't checked any of the major news sites or liveblogs in a few hours.

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The "second war of independence" framing is absolutely insane. I have to believe the Israeli mainstream is at least not fully on board with it, especially given how pissed the families of the hostages are.

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An absolutely demented response to a Bernie Sanders tweet about...the anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

https://twitter.com/ByYourLogic/status/1717994676878475774

SnowStalker & Co: "Demonizing Israel will have no consequences. People will obviously be able to separate Israel and Jewish people"

Now Jews, including myself, are paying the price for this.

The worst thing to come out of this war is definitely a Jewish podcaster being mean to Bernie Sanders, yes.

I don't think the tweets about the Tree of Life shooting should be seen as commentary about Israel, for the record.

Of course they shouldn't. The idea that it's even a reasonable interpretation, still less the correct one, is absurd. People running their mouths like this (with bonus hoping "from the left" for a second Trump presidency to own Bernie Sanders of all people) demonstrably delegitimizes the real and increasingly serious problems with what the IDF is doing in the minds of grillist normies who run across it, yet we keep seeeing it anyway. Bird app revolution theater is just that addictive, I guess.

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McCain's widow is extremely worried.

https://twitter.com/WFPChief/status/1718176834444030006

For additional context on this, she is the incumbent Executive Director of the World Food Programme.

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Netanyahu again blamed the 10/7 attack on his generals. Had to delete the tweet in embarrassment/shame. At least Chamberlain had the patriotic balls to resign when his credibility evaporated lol

Absolutely disgusting.

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An absolutely demented response to a Bernie Sanders tweet about...the anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

https://twitter.com/ByYourLogic/status/1717994676878475774

wth is a "bowers clone"?  Are they trying to say Bowser?

Robert Bowers is the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. It's a really inappropriate remark even in the context of picking a mass shooter to compare the IDF to.

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There are, in fact, several things Biden could do:

* He could impose a no-fly zone and obliterate the Israeli Airforce

Huh?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CybLhohSTqf/

That is like a Nazi sympathiser asking the USA and Great Britain to start fighting each other on the day of the Normandy invasion in WW2.

At this stage, a more viable option is for President Biden to withdraw funding of $1 Billion annually to Egypt until they open the Rafah border and start taking Gazan refugees.

Rinse and repeat with Jordan.

At that stage, would you be surprised to learn of any potential links between Egypt and Hamas?

Jordan has absorbed so many refugees over the past 75 years (not merely Palestinians but, in more recent years, Iraqis and Syrians) that the number of refugees and their descendants vastly outstrips the "indigenous" population.

“Why don’t you just make Jordan the Palestinian state?”

Hashemite monarchy: —….—

Ironically, this is the same sort of flippant unconcern with how deeply traumatizing population movements can be that you see with people who insist that the Allies should have made the Zionists set up their state in Uganda or wherever.

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My takes on the past few days, some of which could be based on misunderstood facts due to the inherent difficulties of monitoring a fog-of-war situation on another continent:

First of all I think there are three basic narratives for the soft launch of the ground invasion and cyber blackout around it that could be more or less true:

1. The worst is true; the IDF cut internet and cell services expressly to obscure seriously and calculatedly heinous acts that they were planning and that they have since carried out. I don't think this is all that likely, but insisting that it's impossible is It Can't Happen Here thinking and we should all try to avoid it.
2. The best is true; the blackout was a relatively normal form of information warfare in service of a campaign that, on the ground, remained targeted and precise (at least by the low standards of Middle Eastern ethnoreligious conflicts). This is unfortunately something I think is a little less likely still than option 1.
3. Somewhere in between; the blackout had both military and PR purposes and the IDF began the invasion in a way that would shock Western consciences but isn't that out of the ordinary for the collective-punishment-happy Israeli way of war. This is what I think is far and away likeliest.
ETA: 4. The blackout happening was some kind of collateral damage. I don't know enough about telecommunications infrastructure to have any idea how likely I think this is.

So how's the invasion going so far? The IDF has rescued one hostage, Ori Megidish, and might have blue-on-blued another, Shani Louk, if the reports about her being identified from a blown-apart skull fragment are true. Poor show if so. They've definitely killed a lot of Hamas leaders so it's possible that aim is going well. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is obviously awful. There are no good guys on the ground here, even though in the abstract Both Sides Have a Point. In that respect it's nothing new for ~The Conflict~, although the intensity of it is obviously way worse than usual.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, no sign of Israel invasion of Gaza. It's an expanded ground operation, almost like Special Military Operation.

[Regina George voice] So you agree? Putin's framing of what he's doing in Ukraine is mendacious BS and always has been?

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I agree with Ramaswamy. Nobody under 25 should vote.
https://twitter.com/xiaovinyl/status/1719047291997172123

Among the many, many problems with this sort of thing, one of the worst to my mind is the wolf-crying effect that it creates in cases where Israel does pursue genuinely heinous and unacceptable policies.

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One of my friends, a news videographer for Voice of America, is currently en route to Gaza. She'll be back on November 19 (or, you know, never). Needless to say, I'm very worried for her.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, no sign of Israel invasion of Gaza. It's an expanded ground operation, almost like Special Military Operation.

[Regina George voice] So you agree? Putin's framing of what he's doing in Ukraine is mendacious BS and always has been?

I said like 20 times Russian invasion.

I'm sorry for confusing your view that Putin's actions in Ukraine are fine because there's just not anything wrong with them with the views of others that they're fine because they're not really happening, then. In any case, we're off-topic.

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Nasrallah speech in minutes. I don't expect nothing big though.

https://twitter.com/VerminusM/status/1720447369450229893?s=20
Basically this, but of course Hezbollah =/= Lebanon.

It's surprising to me that the Houthis of all people have ended up more directly involved than Hezbollah, so far.

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You don't need to defend Carlos Latuff in order to make this point. He's hardly the only person making it.

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I sent Senator AFE and moderator KoppaDaQuick personal messages that they should be ashamed of themselves for openly supporting the terrorists of Hamas. Instead, they should support Israel and the Jewish People, who have been encircled and oppressed and killed for centuries by various enemies and who have every right to defend themselves and go after Hamas terrorists, now and forever!

Oooh a personal message. I'm sure they're shaking in their boots.

Also neither of them support Hamas and your baseless allegations are repulsive. AFE is one of the best people here.

Hamas terrorists engaged in unspeakable atrocities against Jews.

If you call this "baseless allegations", you are mentally ill.

Having a Palestinian flag on your profile doesn't signify support for Hamas you absolute moron. You're either 12 or 65, which is it?

I will not discuss any longer with you, because you are clearly a terror-loving Hamas/Palestianian supporter too ... and I don't debate with terrorists.

AFE and Koopa skew a bit more pro-Palestinian than I do (although I hate that framing of it) but they do not support Hamas. This is ridiculous and unacceptable calumny.

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Can we try to keep unironic race science out of this thread, and ideally out of our understanding of the similarities and differences between Jews and Arabs in general? Thanks in advance.

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Second evacuation corridor opens on Al-Rasheed road adjacent to the coast. This will enable whatever “refugees” in As-Shati to move south before the IDF works to close the pincer.

Do we know how many have left so far since the pauses started?

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So Israel went from "no way we bombed that hospital" to "oh look, this was Hamas about that hospital, and that was Hamas about that hospital, if was Hamas HQ..." and we still don't think they bombed the hospital??

Are you maybe mixing up Al-Ahli hospital (likely PIJ misfire) and Al-Shifa hospital? No one has denied the IDF operation into Al-Shifa, and the collateral damage from such is certainly saddening.

In fact, the whole reason I was inclined to believe that Al-Ahli was a PIJ misfire in the first place was that the IDF tends not to outright deny bombing hospitals but to argue that the hospitals are disguised military targets. I thought that made their insistence that they just hadn't bombed Al-Ahli at all a lot more credible than it would have been otherwise.

England's greatest ever Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, would have crushed the Pro-Palestinian protests in London according to her former aide, Nile Gardiner.

https://www.heritage.org/europe/commentary/how-thatcher-would-have-crushed-the-pro-palestinian-protesters


I am in no doubt that she would have supported an outright ban on the hate-filled pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas “protests.”
Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images

You've officially gone off the deep end

I mean UK Tories did vote Thatcher as their greatest hero over Churchill and Disraeli

That is a very bad thing and the Tories are a very bad party.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Some of the Israeli government needs to be put on trial for war crimes after this. We learned this the hard way after WW2, and need to make sure never again really means never again.

Some people accuse me of hating Israel or Israelis, but I don't. There's a lot of incredibly moral people in Israel who are some of the bravest people alive.

I am confident that after this is all done, there will be a reckoning in Israeli society with regards to the individuals and institutions that led us to this terrible place. It might not happen in a year or even five, but I believe it will happen one day.

America had one of the nastiest explosions imaginable of anti-Muslim bigotry after 9/11, but now we have a new generation that rejects that kind of bigotry more than almost anyone else in the industrialized world. I am not going to write Israel off.

You and I don't agree on a ton, but I think you're absolutely right on this.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Some of the Israeli government needs to be put on trial for war crimes after this. We learned this the hard way after WW2, and need to make sure never again really means never again.

Some people accuse me of hating Israel or Israelis, but I don't. There's a lot of incredibly moral people in Israel who are some of the bravest people alive.

I am confident that after this is all done, there will be a reckoning in Israeli society with regards to the individuals and institutions that led us to this terrible place. It might not happen in a year or even five, but I believe it will happen one day.

America had one of the nastiest explosions imaginable of anti-Muslim bigotry after 9/11, but now we have a new generation that rejects that kind of bigotry more than almost anyone else in the industrialized world. I am not going to write Israel off.

You and I don't agree on a ton, but I think you're absolutely right on this.

To elaborate, I think Israel's stated war aim of permanently degrading Hamas is legitimate, especially after the events of last month, but I'm completely out of hope on the current government and military establishment's strategy as capable of, or frankly even interested in, attaining that aim. You can't conduct a bombing-first counterinsurgency; you can't reliably get away with feeding histrionic, dehumanizing rhetoric about the enemy to your own public and insisting to the rest of the world that you're not doing so (even though that trick has been Hamas's bread and butter for decades); you can't invade a country famous partly for your previous disengagement from it without any plan at all for what to do with it once you've reestablished military control. This is the sort of campaign that Legend of the Galactic Heroes characters plan at the beginnings of plotlines that end with Reinhard von Lohengramm having them shot.

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https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1728131580668047538

Good to see that my country is critical of Israël.

What does "didn't condemn Hamas" mean here? Did they just not bring it up or did they make an active, vocal decision against condemning it? The appropriateness of this changes enormously depending on the answer to that.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Look at the "warmth" for groups like Hamas and PIJ:



This was posted on Discord, and while it was posted by someone I trust I can't vouch for his own sources,* but if this is even remotely accurate it's yet more evidence for my belief that Israel's conduct of this war has made its (in itself richly justified) stated strategic goal slip even further away. These groups used to be almost as loathed by the Palestinian street as by the Israeli street.

*EDIT: It's from the Palestine-based research firm AWRAD.