NEW FROM FMEP
“The clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground” — Ta-Nehisi Coates & Peter Beinart (New Occupied Thoughts episode)
FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Coates’ new book, The Message. Coates’ website describes this part of the book this way: “Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.”
REGION/DIPLOMACY
Biden sends antimissile system and 100 troops to Israel, deepening U.S. role (WaPo 10/13/24)
The United States is sending one of its most advanced missile defense systems and about 100 U.S. troops to Israel, deepening U.S. involvement in the escalating war in the Middle East amid U.S. expectations of an imminent Israeli assault on Iran. The mission marks the first significant deployment of U.S. troops to Israel since the war in Gaza began…The deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system, or THAAD, is the latest indication that the United States expects the Israeli assault to be “so comprehensive that the Iranians will have to respond,” said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert who has advised multiple Republican and Democratic administrations. The THAAD deployment adds to the more than 50,000 tons of armaments and military equipment the United States has sent Israel since the start of the war last October, according to Israel’s Defense Ministry.”
U.S. demands Israel improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk military aid (Axios 10/15/24)
“The Biden administration sent a letter to Israeli leaders on Monday demanding Israel take steps within 30 days to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel being affected, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Axios…Israeli authorities closed crossings into Gaza earlier this month, halting deliveries of food and essential supplies to 400,000 Palestinians before some trucks were able to enter again on Monday…Countries that receive U.S. military aid and are in an active military conflict must allow the transfer of U.S.-supported humanitarian aid without interruption, according to U.S. law and a national security memorandum signed by President Biden in February. Failure to do so could lead to the suspension of U.S. military aid…The letter sent Monday from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and Minister of Defense Yoav Galant signals the Biden administration doesn’t think Israel is implementing its commitments. The letter was the most wide-ranging and comprehensive list of U.S. demands from Israel since the beginning of the war.” See also Israel lets 50 aid trucks into northern Gaza after US threat to curb arms deliveries (Times of Israel 10/17/24); U.S. warns Israel arms transfers could halt unless humanitarian situation in Gaza improves (WaPo 10/15/24)
Israeli jets pummel southern Lebanon and Beirut suburbs (Al Jazeera 10/16/24)
“Israel has ramped up air strikes across Lebanon, killing a city mayor, toppling buildings and causing widespread destruction in several southern areas. The latest strikes came with Israel under increasing international pressure after its forces attacked United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon, causing several injuries. The Israeli army said its warplanes struck dozens of targets linked to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in the southern city of Nabatieh on Wednesday. The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 16 people were killed and 52 injured in the strikes on two municipal buildings, adding that rescuers were searching for survivors.” See also Hezbollah launches rocket attacks on central Israel after deadly Haifa strike (Al Monitor 10/14/24); Israeli strike kills Lebanese mayor at meeting to coordinate aid deliveries (Guardian 10/16/24); Where a Million Desperate People Are Finding Shelter in Lebanon (NYT 10/16/24); With Lebanon under Israeli bombardment, over 200,000 flee to war-torn Syria (Al Monitor 10/13/24); The UN says over 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in 3 weeks by war (AP 10/15/24); Lebanon’s Hospitals Buckle Amid Israel’s Offensive Against Hezbollah (NYT 10/15/24)
Netanyahu tells U.S. that Israel will strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets, officials say (WaPo 10/15/24)
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities in Iran, according to two officials familiar with the matter, suggesting a more limited counterstrike aimed at preventing a full-scale war…President Joe Biden has said publicly he would not support an Israeli strike on nuclear-related sites.” See also France again bans Israeli firms from defense fair, deepening diplomatic rift (Al Monitor 10/16/24)
UNIFIL says Israeli tank fired at peacekeepers watchtower in Lebanon (Al Jazeera 10/16/24)
“UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon say Israeli forces have fired at one of their positions in the south in a “direct and apparently deliberate” attack that damaged a watchtower. The incident is the latest in a series of Israeli attacks and violations against peacekeepers in Lebanon and comes as Israel expands its bombardment and ground attacks on the country, killing hundreds of people and displacing nearly a quarter of the population. On Sunday, UNIFIL said Israeli troops “forcibly entered” a UNIFIL position near the village of Ramyah, crossing the UN-mandated Blue Line, the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon, with two tanks.” See also What is Unifil and why has Israel been firing on its positions in Lebanon? (Guardian 10/15/24)
Hezbolla drone attack kills four IDF soldiers as US prepares to send missile system to Israel (Guardian 10/13/24)
“A Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in central Israel killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others on Sunday, the Israeli military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago. Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city a retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It later said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defence systems during the assault by “squadrons” of drones.”
GAZA
UN says 400,000 trapped in north Gaza as Israel ups strikes, limits aid (Al Monitor 10/15/24)
“The Gaza-based Health Ministry said in a Tuesday statement that 55 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll from the year-long Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip to more than 42,000 with over 99,000 injuries…On Oct. 5, the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for several areas of the northern Gaza Strip including hospitals as Israeli tanks began what the military says is an operation to eliminate “terrorist infrastructure and terrorists.” On the same day, Israeli forces laid siege to Jabalia and its refugee camp, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, with UN agencies saying the operation has severely restricted aid entry after Israeli forces closed the main crossings into the northern part of the Strip earlier this month. On Tuesday the Biden administration sent a letter to the Israeli government demanding to see improvement in the humanitarian situation or risk the disruption of US arms shipments, according to reports. More than 50,000 people have fled the Jabalia area since then, while nearly 400,000 remained trapped in the north amid intense bombardment, according to UN humanitarian agency OCHA.” See also Israel is turning northern Gaza into a killing cage (Jeremy Scahill & Sharif Abdel Kouddous//Drop Site 10/14/24); UN says no food has entered northern Gaza since start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of starvation (CNN 10/11/24); Israel kills at least 50 in Gaza, tanks deepen raid in the north (Reuters 10/15/24); Israeli Strikes on Northern Gaza Kill at Least 20, Aid Workers Say (NYT 10/12/24)
UN says no food has entered northern Gaza since start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of starvation (CNN 10/11/24)
“No food has entered northern Gaza since the start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of going hungry, the World Food Programme told CNN on Friday. In August, approximately 700 hundred aid trucks entered northern Gaza. In September, only 400 aid trucks entered, after commercial operations ceased at the Allenby Crossing on the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, the WFP added. No food trucks have entered northern Gaza in October, the WFP told CNN. On Wednesday, the WFP said in a report that the aid entering the strip has plummeted to its lowest level in months, forcing the organization to stop the distribution of food parcels in October. “Hunger remains rampant and the threat of famine persists,” WFP added. “If the flow of assistance does not resume, one million vulnerable people will be deprived on this lifeline.”’ See also Palestinians ‘starving’ in northern Gaza as Israel presses assault (Al Jazeera 10/16/24)
Israeli siege plan for Gaza under scrutiny as U.S. demands urgent change (WaPo 10/16/24)
“For the first two weeks of October, no food reached the 400,000 people in war-battered northern Gaza. Rescue workers said Israeli forces fired at families as they tried to heed evacuation orders; hospitals ran desperately short on supplies as they struggled to treat the wounded and evacuate the critically ill.
What has played out in this stretch of the enclave mirrors, at least in part, a controversial siege plan conceived by a former Israeli general to gain full control of northern Gaza and then larger swaths of the enclave. It envisions systematically emptying areas of civilians and starving out — or shooting down — anyone who stays. The “General’s Plan” is being pushed by some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, despite pushback from the Israeli military, human rights groups and the White House.” See also Is Israel deploying a ‘surrender or starve’ strategy in Gaza? (Ishaan Tharoor//WaPo 10/14/24)
“It Was Like Hell on Earth”: Scenes From a Night of Horror in Gaza (Mohammed R. Mhawish//The Nation 10/16/24)
“It was around 2 am on Monday when an Israeli air strike tore through the tents of the displaced at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza—where families, patients receiving treatment, and many of my friends and colleagues were sheltering. The strike cast a horrific, searing glow of fire that soon consumed the place they thought would provide safety. In videos from the scene, the people’s cries for help could be heard as they stumbled through the dense smoke, searching for loved ones amid plumes of smoke that curled up into the sky. The air itself seemed to scream, and the ground burned with the heat of destruction. What brought me to tears were the wails of people burning alive before they even registered the sounds of the attack. That night has left both the living and the dead destroyed beyond recognition.” See also Shaaban Al-Dalou, Burned Alive in Gaza, Would Have Been 20 Today (Abubaker Abed//Drop Site 10/16/24); Mohammed R. Mhawish’s new Substack; ; Israeli strike at Gaza’s al-Aqsa Hospital burns tents, killing at least 4 (WaPo 10/14/24)
Survivors of Israeli Bombardment Face New Catastrophe: Epidemics, Amputations, Starvation (Murtaza Hussain//Drop Site 10/15/24)
“As the northern Gaza Strip is subjected to a fresh campaign of massacres and enforced starvation, doctors working elsewhere in Gaza say that a quieter threat is now sweeping across the territory: chronic disease and infection.”
UN inquiry accuses Israel of seeking to destroy Gaza healthcare system (Reuters 10/11/24)
“A United Nations inquiry said it found that Israel carried out a concerted policy of destroying Gaza’s healthcare system in the Gaza war, actions amounting to both war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination. A statement on Thursday by former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay that accompanied the report accused Israel of “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities” in the war, triggered by Hamas militants’ deadly cross-border attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.”
Big Tech and the risk of genocide in Gaza: what are companies doing? (Marwa Fatafta//Access Now 10/11/24)
“Technology is playing a central role in enabling the relentless mass slaughter and destruction unleashed in Gaza. From supplying the dystopian AI systems used to automate the killing and bombing, to facilitating the spread of state-sponsored disinformation and online incitement to violence and war crimes, Big Tech is deeply embroiled in this brutal war. However, the impunity with which Israeli authorities have been allowed to wage this war has also served to shield technology companies from scrutiny. Not only have companies failed to uphold their human rights commitments in times of war, they have also dismissed, ignored, and even punished dissenting voices among their own ranks, civil society, and the public flagging their possible complicity in what the UN’s top independent expert on Palestine describes as an unfolding genocide. This post interrogates how technology companies can be potentially facilitating or contributing to an endless list of egregious violations of international law, including the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, currently under investigation by the ICJ and the International Criminal Court (ICC). We also provide companies with recommendations to avoid potential complicity in such violations.”
Israeli Defense Officials: Gov’t Pushing Aside Hostage Deal, Eyeing Gaza Annexation (Haaretz 10/13/24)
“According to senior defense officials, the Israeli government is not seeking to revive hostage talks and the political leadership is pushing for the gradual annexation of large parts of the Gaza Strip. In closed-room discussions, these officials say the chances of reaching a hostage deal appear slim right now. One of the reasons cited is that since negotiations were suspended, there has been no discussion among international players involved in the talks. In addition, they say, Israel’s political leaders have not held any discussions with the various security branches about the condition of the hostages.” See also ‘It is doable’: 10 Likud MKs to attend conference calling for ‘resettling Gaza’ (Times of Israel 10/16/24)
How Israel’s Army Uses Palestinians as Human Shields in Gaza (NYT 10/14/24)
“An investigation by The New York Times found that Israeli soldiers and intelligence agents, throughout the war in Gaza, have regularly forced captured Palestinians like Mr. Shubeir to conduct life-threatening reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk on the battlefield. While the extent and scale of such operations are unknown, the practice, illegal under both Israeli and international law, has been used by at least 11 squads in five cities in Gaza, often with the involvement of officers from Israeli intelligence agencies. Palestinian detainees have been coerced to explore places in Gaza where the Israeli military believes that Hamas militants have prepared an ambush or a booby trap. The practice has gradually become more widespread since the start of the war last October. Detainees have been forced to scout and film inside tunnel networks where soldiers believed fighters were still hiding. They have entered buildings rigged with mines to find hidden explosives. They have been told to pick up or move objects like generators and water tanks that Israeli soldiers feared concealed tunnel entrances or booby traps.”
RIVER TO THE SEA
The ‘pact of silence’ between Israelis and their media (Edo Konrad//+972 10/16/24)
“When the war began, the Israeli media found itself at a critical juncture, navigating the trauma of a nation that was shaken by unprecedented violence and quickly retreated into a deeply-entrenched perception of historical victimhood. News broadcasters responded to this national trauma, [veteran journalist Omer] Persico notes, by slipping further into the clutches of state-sanctioned propaganda. As days of brutal violence turned into weeks and months, the Israeli media reverted to familiar patterns: rallying around the flag, amplifying state narratives, and marginalizing any critical coverage of Israel’s brutality in Gaza, let alone showing images or telling stories of human suffering among Palestinians in the Strip. The path to this moment was paved long ago. Israel’s media landscape, which Persico says has always been subservient to the political and military establishment, has come under relentless pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu over the last decade; the Israeli prime minister has attempted to transform it into a tool for wielding power and ultimately ensuring his own political survival…In an interview with +972…Persico reflects on the media’s historical role in the denial of Israel’s human rights violations, its failure to challenge the political establishment, and the near-complete lack of solidarity for Palestinian journalists under bombardment in Gaza.” See also The great emigration: Israel sees an unprecedented number leave the country (JPost 10/13/24); A Year of Living Among Genocide Apologists
Diana Buttu on what life in Israel has been like since Oct. 7, 2023. (Zeteo)
Investigation: Netanyahu’s Government Not Only Permits Jewish Terror in the West Bank, but Also Finances It (Hagar Shezaf & Hilo Glazer//Haaretz 10/11/24)
“Settlers call it a revolution: More than 60 illegal farm outposts have sprung up in the West Bank during the past seven years, seizing vast tracts of Palestinian land. With cheap labor provided by ‘at-risk’ youths, this enterprise has also become a main fomenter of Jewish terror in the territories – and the state is generously footing the bill” See also U.K. Sanctions Israeli Settler Outposts, Organizations for Violence Against West Bank Palestinians (Haaretz 10/15/24)
West Bank facing ‘most dangerous olive season ever,’ UN-linked experts warn (Times of Israel 10/16/24)
“Palestinian farmers in the West Bank are facing “the most dangerous olive season ever,” experts affiliated with the United Nations said Wednesday, urging settlers and soldiers not to interfere with the harvest and recommending a “foreign presence” to act as a buffer between the two sides.”
Roadblocked (NYT 10/13/24)
“Getting around the West Bank is never easy, but it’s a lot harder if you are Palestinian. That’s no accident. We rode along on two bus trips, one for Israelis, the other for Palestinians, that tell a story of separate and unequal roadways…“Palestinian free movement on main roads in the West Bank is viewed as something that Israel can give and take as it wishes based on its own interests,” said Sarit Michaeli, of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. “It is providing a swift and fast system of transport for Israeli settlers into Israel and between settlements. This has always been the guiding principle.”’
U.S. SCENE
What to know about U.S. military support for Israel after a year of war (WaPo 10/14/24)
“The United States has provided Israel with billions of dollars’ worth of security assistance and weapons over the past year since Israel began retaliating for Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack. In addition, the Biden administration has deployed the U.S. military in direct support of Israel. The Gaza conflict has since broadened into an invasion of southern Lebanon, amid fears of an even wider war. Ahead of Israel’s anticipated response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel earlier this month, the United States said Sunday that it would send a THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense antimissile system, to Israel along with the U.S. military personnel needed to operate it. The deployment, which places U.S. troops on the ground acting in Israel’s defense, comes after the U.S. military helped defend Israel against two large-scale Iranian missile attacks in April and October…Separate from the U.S. military’s own efforts in defense of Israel, Washington has significantly increased the amount of military assistance funding sent to Israel and has approved more sales of arms and equipment to the country. Israel had already received more U.S. military aid — and more U.S. aid of any type — than any other country since World War II…U.S. security assistance to Israel has totaled more than $200 billion since the aftermath of World War II.”
The group behind Project 2025 has a new plan to fight antisemitism (Arno Rosenfeld//The Forward 10/15/24)
“The organization behind Project 2025, the controversial blueprint for a second Trump administration, just released a plan to counter antisemitism. It’s called Project Esther, and, in short, suggests the federal government train its sights on “virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American groups” that it calls the “Hamas Support Network,” or HSN, and compares to the German-American Bund that supported Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The plan calls for using counterterrorism and immigration laws against leaders of this alleged network — which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine — as well as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act that was used to bring down the mafia. This dragnet would also target major progressive foundations like Tides and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which fund a handful of pro-Palestinian organizations as well as many other liberal causes. Project Esther is full of grandiose language light on many specifics, but it’s worth paying attention to because of its authors. It was published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which also wrote Project 2025. The think tank has helped shape the policies of Republican presidents for decades and is now focused on “institutionalizing Trumpism.” And its antisemitism plan was drafted by a coalition that includes the America First Policy Institute, which is often referred to as a “White House in waiting.”’
How Israel’s War in Gaza Ripped a Major Abortion Fund Apart (Slate 10/14/24)
“The falling-out at DCAF (DC Abortion Fund) is emblematic of a much larger clash currently roiling the worlds of philanthropy and nonprofits. Employees at left-leaning, mission-driven organizations have increasingly adopted a worldview that sees all issues of injustice as interconnected, making many less satisfied to contain their advocacy to any single issue. This doesn’t always cause internal disputes: Often, a new position added to a group’s platform will be broadly agreed upon, such as a commitment to ending police brutality, and will function more as an expression of solidarity than a programming priority. But nonprofits that attract staffers and funders of reasonably diverse political leanings are finding it difficult to broaden their messaging in ways that please the full spectrum. As a result, coalitions that have worked toward similar goals are fracturing over issues only tangentially related to their core missions, threatening their ability to make progress on areas of common ground. This is especially true when it comes to the topic of Israel and Palestine—one of the touchiest issues in American politics, laden with ancestral trauma and emotional ideological commitments for Jewish and Arab communities. But the staggering scale of the devastation in Gaza has compelled many in the social-justice sector to condemn Israel’s assault and the U.S. aid that is bankrolling it, leading to a growing crisis in nonprofits as donors and philanthropic institutions cease their contributions in response.”
A clarion call: How attacks on U.S. Palestinian solidarity movements undermine our democracy
(Rana Elmir//Fall 2024 Issue of Responsive Philanthropy)
“Our social movements are complex living and breathing formations with the capacity for growth and contraction. The existential threats to democracy that we are facing demand that we grow in this moment. By castigating, threatening and defunding one group, in this case Palestinian human rights voices, we have not only set a precedent for the targeting of others, but we have made our movement smaller, effectively weakening our collective power and in turn impeding our own progress toward a just, inclusive and multiracial democracy.”
Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters arrested outside New York Stock Exchange (Reuters 10/14/24)
“Police arrested more than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had staged a sit-in outside the New York Stock Exchange on Monday to demand an end to U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, authorities said. The protesters, many of them from activist groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, chanted “let Gaza live” and “stop funding genocide” in front of the exchange’s iconic building near Wall Street, in lower Manhattan.”
PERSPECTIVES//LONG READS
How Palestinians look back on 7 October a year later (Muhammad Shehada//New Arab 10/10/24)
“While used by Israel to justify the destruction of Gaza, Palestinian attitudes to Hamas’ attack reveal a more complex picture: what exactly do Palestinians support about that fateful day? Why? And in what context does this support occur?…The PSR (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research) adds that almost 90% of the Palestinian public believes that Hamas militants did not commit alleged or documented atrocities on that day, and either attribute them to others present or question their genuineness. The Hamas-led attack consisted of two waves, with the first consisting of elite Hamas militants, the Nukhba forces, that predominantly focused on Israeli military bases surrounding Gaza. The second wave formed spontaneously once news of the attack broke in Gaza, and anyone with a gun rushed to the fence, including members of six other armed factions and non-Nukhba Hamas individuals, as well as criminal elements and curious spectators. This wave had no central command, prior plans, coordination, or set goals, which prompted Hamas’ own leaders to acknowledge that “things went out of control”…In that sense, two 7 Octobers have since emerged; one that Israel and its supporters see as “pure evil”, which focuses on the killing and kidnapping of civilians, and another that Palestinians voice support for; an attack on military targets that broke Israel’s image of invincibility.”
No Matter What, Palestinians Will Never Give Up (Ahmad Ibsais//The Nation 10/16/24)
“In the last year, the world has seen the sumud, or steadfastness, of my people over and over again…Yet, even as our very existence is met with genocide, the people of Gaza embody sumud—the unbreakable refusal to submit to subjugation. It is the moral backbone of Palestinian resistance…In the diaspora, our sumud must be equally tangible, not an abstract ideal. Sumud cannot simply be just about bearing witness to death and dispossession, as some would suggest. Sitting with the images of inhumanity is a minimum. We have to believe that what we do in our daily lives is having an impact, and not succumb to the despair that Israeli society so desperately wants to create…Palestinians have shown what it means to see our land get stolen yet still believe in our right to return to it. We have taught the world what it means to live under occupation yet still hope for a better future. We have shown what it means to live through generations of ethnic cleansing yet never lose pride in our being.”
“The Only Refuge I Could Offer” (Anonymous//Jewish Currents 10/16/24)
“Just one week before Israel invaded Rafah, A. and I were able to leave. We left our families behind. We carry this guilt, an inescapable weight. We didn’t deserve safety more than they did. I didn’t deserve to give birth in a hospital with resources to care for patients more than any other pregnant woman in the Strip. It’s just the privilege of knowing someone abroad, of speaking English, of being able to secure money. The world does not see Gazans as human. We are just abstract ideas. The things we are facing don’t matter to them. They don’t need us…R. was born to us, distant from the warmth of her grandparents, the teasing of her aunts and uncles. She was brought into a world I both cherish and fear. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened had we stayed—whether either of us would have made it. When I held R. for the first time, her tiny warmth resting against me, I kissed her over and over, thanking her for holding on to me, to us. And now, as she nestles against me, each determined latch feels like a surge of life, a quiet exchange of energy filling us both with the power to be.”
Israel’s Hidden War: The Battle Between Ideologues and Generals That Will Define the Country’s Future (Mairav Zonszein//Foreign Affairs 10/15/24)
“The contest that pits Israel’s security establishment against the ascendant far right and its settler allies is not over whether Israel should use force in Gaza, stop occupying the West Bank, or make concessions to help find a solution to the decades-old conflict. It’s a clash over the security of the Israeli state, which for many Israelis is a battle over its identity. Israel could heed the warnings of security officials such as Bar or it could continue to be guided by the imperatives of the far right. The latter course will cause more bloodshed, ultimately hurt Israel’s standing and support in the West, and lead to further international isolation and even pariah status. Many Israelis who still view their country as secular, liberal, and democratic see the struggle against the extreme right as existential, with ramifications for every level of governance and Israel’s foreign relations. This battle will decisively shape Israeli politics and security in the years to come.”
No Propaganda on Earth Can Hide the Wound That Is Palestine: Arundhati Roy’s PEN Pinter Prize Acceptance Speech (Arundhati Roy//The Wire 10/11/24)
“So, this is the part in my speech where I am expected to equivocate to protect myself, my ‘neutrality’, my intellectual standing. This is the part where I am meant to lapse into moral equivalence and condemn Hamas, the other militant groups in Gaza and their ally Hezbollah, in Lebanon, for killing civilians and taking people hostage. And to condemn the people of Gaza who celebrated the Hamas attack…I refuse to play the condemnation game. Let me make myself clear. I do not tell oppressed people how to resist their oppression or who their allies should be…I am acutely aware that being the writer that I am, the non-Muslim that I am and the woman that I am, it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible for me to survive very long under the rule of Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Iranian regime. But that is not the point here. The point is to educate ourselves about the history and the circumstances under which they came to exist. The point is that right now they are fighting against an ongoing genocide. The point is to ask ourselves whether a liberal, secular fighting force can go up against a genocidal war machine. Because, when all the powers of the world are against them, who do they have to turn to but God? I am aware that Hezbollah and the Iranian regime have vocal detractors in their own countries, some who also languish in jails or have faced far worse outcomes. I am aware that some of their actions – the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages on October 7th by Hamas – constitute war crimes. However, there cannot be an equivalence between this and what Israel and the United States are doing in Gaza, in the West Bank and now in Lebanon. The root of all the violence, including the violence of October 7th, is Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its subjugation of the Palestinian people. History did not begin on 7 October 2023.”
Is this Israel’s first apartheid war? (Oren Yiftachel//+972 10/15/24)
“But contrary to popular opinion, clear-eyed analysis of the past year shows that Israel continues to promote an unmistakable strategic goal in this war: maintaining and deepening the regime of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In this sense, the past 12 months might be best understood as Israel’s “first apartheid war.” While its eight previous wars attempted to create new geographical and political orders or were limited to specific regions, the current one seeks to reinforce the supremacist political project Israel has built throughout the entire land, and which the October 7 assault fundamentally challenged. Accordingly, there is also a steadfast refusal to explore any path to reconciliation or even a ceasefire with the Palestinians.”
Israeli and Palestinian Societies Have Little Remaining Hope of Peace (Nathan Brown//Carnegie Endowment 10/16/24)
“Any hope for a revived diplomatic effort lies in the despair that is shared among so many.”
Gaza at risk of becoming ‘graveyard of international law’ – Palestinian lawyer (Guardian 10/15/24)
“A prominent Palestinian human rights lawyer whose Gaza home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the early weeks of the war has called on western powers and global institutions to do more to prevent the territory becoming “the graveyard of international law”. Raji Sourani, who founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 1995 and was a key member of the South African legal team that took Israel to the international court of justice on a charge of genocide, met the UK attorney general last week to urge him to assume a leadership role in defending humanitarian law…Last week, delivering the Edward Said lecture in London, Sourani shifted from quietly spoken wonder at the double standards of the west over Ukraine and Gaza to an angry prediction that Israel still intended to expel all Palestinians into the Sinai. Speaking to the Guardian, he said he was not sure of the extent to which the west was aware it was jeopardising something precious by shielding Israel from the legal consequences of its actions.”