Hamas Attacks, Israel Responds

I can understand why Bibi hates Haartez so much. They do not mince words with this bozo. Really solid paper too.

Opinion |
Why Netanyahu Loves Antisemites Like Elon Musk So Much

By cosying up to the world’s most prominent Jew-haters while denouncing his critics, Netanyahu is betraying Jews wholesale. Musk is only the latest, dangerous example, but welcoming him to Israel in the middle of the Gaza war is particularly odious.


David Rothkopf

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news...-so-much/0000018c-150b-d19a-a3cf-7d9b9dd30000

 

I caught a really interesting talk show on my local NPR station, On Point from WBUR, where they interviewed:

Yossi Beilin, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister from 1992 to 1995. Key initiator of the Oslo Accords.

Omar Dajani, Professor at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. Served as legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel from 1999 to 2001.


It was very insightful, and I’d encourage everyone to listen at the hyperlink above. They don’t appear to have a transcript.

 

That's making the same point that @The Jitty Slitter has been saying for a while now.

 

Not sure how to copy a post from thread.. Hope this works.....In any case, I came across this clown show at an Oakland city Council meeting. Utter delusional ignorance and stupidity. This is one thing to be sympathetic to Palestinians civilians but trying to defend Hamas is truly beyond the pale and repulsive.

https://www.threads.net/@yasharali/post/C0NS9ravFdN

 

I do love the smell of napalm in the morning.

 

Josh Marshall with some excellent thoughts.

Moment More of Israel Obsessiveness
By Josh Marshall
|
November 28, 2023 1:31 p.m.

I had a clarifying moment this early afternoon sharing notes with TPM Reader MH via email. This was about the situation in Israel/Palestine but more particularly how it is impacting both people’s views and politics in the United States. What I think has happened is that the events, which began with the Hamas massacres in southern Israel on October 7th and has continued with Israel’s merciless retaliation, has pushed the discussion among not just Democrats but everyone to the left of the 50 yard line of American politics from “should Israeli policy be different” to “should Israel exist.”

The first is fairly unifying. The second is profoundly divisive and, for a non-trivial chunk of the Democratic coalition, existential.

By “should Israel exist” I don’t mean, as the more florid online debates and protest slogans sometimes have it, should the Israeli Jews be exterminated or forcibly displaced or even necessarily that the country and society should be forcibly reconstituted. (Maximalist slogans like “from the River to the Sea” are by design vague and menacing and easy for people to pour their preexisting fears into. Jews may jump to fears about extermination, but let’s just say it’s a touchy issue.) In a sense, even if these things were being discussed, it wouldn’t really matter since those things aren’t happening. What I mean is something different: that there is a discussion about whether it is right or moral that Israeli society and state, more or less as it now exists and within its 1967 borders, should exist. Should it have come into existence? Should it continue to do so now, etc.?

Even in this more toned down sense that ‘debate’ is, just in the nature of things, pretty threatening to Israeli Jews and to the great majority of American Jews who have some communal affinity with that country and those people. In this case, I’m just using ‘affinity’ as a catchall for the range of attachment that majority feels toward Israel, ranging from vague attachment to being totally bonkers obsessed.

Stated in these less heated and more analytical terms I think this is explains why this is, at least for the moment, a significant thing in the Democratic party and a fairly big thing for many American Jews, even for the majority who have been increasingly turned off by the rightward trend of Israeli politics for many years.

 

That's worth getting behind the paywall for

https://archive.ph/oDP2l

 

Indeed. The article is simply brutal. I detect no lie though!

 

Can you please post those links? I have not been able to find anything.

 

We don't have to. The Ukraine war is happening right now. You actually can't get much information on civilian deaths because both sides have reasons to not publish estimates. What Russia is doing in the occupied territories is horrific and well beyond what is happening in Gaza.

 

I've got to correct that. It was in fact @Bootsy Collins who asked him about it. I confused my interactions with another poster with those.

 

The to me worrying thing is that with the disappearing of the people who either have lived through WWII and the Holocaust, or have been intensely confronted with it after the war ended, the newest generations arenot going to make a connection with Israel and vitims of a genocide, but with Israel as perpetrators of it, and that will have security consequences in the long run, as it takes away the why of the existence of Israel.
The stupidity of 50 years of sabotaging a two state solution after the Yom Kipur victory up till now with ever increasing human rights violations, violating laws concerning duties of occupying armies etc., comes from a mindset that thinks current conditions last forever, like the USA being the superpower for ever. History has shown us no empire lasts forever, so behaving as a small nation like that will be the case is suicide in slow motion.

 

Last night the Oakland City Council voted on a resolution to call for a ceasefire.

A city council member tried to insert language condemning Hamas.

This was the reaction… pic.twitter.com/r7aTb2mkrQ

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 28, 2023

This is really just a footnote in history. Still, it's amazing that any section of the US public with access to information that we have is able to self regulate like this.

 

Yeah, some in here have that ludicrous idea hamas needs indoctrination to make people hate while those recruted have more likely seen dead siblings/children/houses flattened etc. from the day they were born.

 

That theory that the Oct 7 massacre was actually perpetrated by the IDF has been making the rounds for awhile now. I know people like to ridicule superdave’s “Trump of the left” fear, but you’ve gotta admit there are a sizable number of people on the far left who are just as prone to gullibility and groupthink as those on the far right. And their direction on this issue isn’t going anywhere good.

 

the lunatic left were a big help to trump with their #neverhillary campaign in the run up to 2016. These are the the burn it all down, capitalism is the root of all evil, defund the police, hammer and sickle crowd who, like their extremist counterparts on the right, have an outsized influence, particularly with kids and the politically gullible, on social media.

I expect we’ll see it again in the run up to 2024. For these far lefties, center left establishment democrats are almost as bad as maga red hats. And yet they’ll be the biggest whiners when it comes to things like Roe being overturned or the inevitable forthcoming attack on gay rights, etc.

It’s probably some combination of anger, ignorance, indifference…but it’s been very consequential, particularly when people like Nader and Sanders enter the fray and feed into this stupid notion that this country is ever going to ever shift far left.

 

It's undoubtedly groupthink plus a lot of unconscious maneuvering of what the next ingroup/outgroup situation will be.

 

Come on guys, let's not bring back this canard again from its ridicule. Yeah there may be a "sizable" number of people gullible enough to spout this nonsense garbage but they are not representative by any stretch of the left at large or even the progressive movement. Even sizable is making a lot of work here. Unlike the right where MAGA is the prevalent "ideology" (for lack of a better word).

 

I’ve pretty much ignored that thread because I think it’s overall a silly term, but I do think it’s conceivable that a charismatic individual could rally that deluded population around themselves enough to negatively affect American politics. I don’t think they’d ever gain enough traction to take the Democratic nomination, but all we’d need is a big enough spoiler to make things go sideways.

 

Great piece again from Josh Marshall, asking the right questions. The enclosed article by John Ganz is totally worth reading as well. I would say both pieces are required reading. They will give a clearer picture of the current situation, the dilemma for Israel and perhaps some exit strategies.

I wanted to flag to your attention this post by John Ganz, someone who, if you’re not familiar with him, is well worth becoming familiar with. Ganz and I see the questions about Israel, the Palestinians and Zionism differently. Indeed I disagree with the title of the post I’m sending you to. But what is most important in writing, especially in commentary, is not that it be “right” but that it be illuminating. Reading what is “right” is often reading a more polished version of what we already think — the utility of which is limited. Ganz manages to approach these questions with insight as well as texture and elegance, no simple feat.

https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/israel-has-already-lost

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/decision-time-3

 

Wish I had more confidence in the lefts ability to stick together but unlike the (R)’s who are united around taxes and the Supreme Court, the left seems more likely to splinter and not back Biden, fully. I even had a leftie friend the other day, who loathes trump, say he wasn’t voting for Biden! Too old he said.
Defeating trump and trumpism is going to take an all hands on deck display of party unity, we all know how evenly split the country is.

 

I have to point out over and over to many of my family and friends how there is no bothsides about this. Granted, we are in Utah and it's going GOP no matter what (I think 56% is the worst they've done in a statewide election in my memory), but overcoming this self-defeating pessimism is damn important.