"#Forensic Architecture has documented the mass displacement of Palestinian civilians being carried out by the Israeli #military [… which] has repeatedly abused the humanitarian measures of evacuation orders, ‘safe routes’, and ‘safe zones’, and failed to comply with the laws governing their application within a wartime context. These patterns of systematic violence and destruction have forced Palestinian civilians from one unsafe area to the next." https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/humanitarian-violence-in-gaza@israel
"The Biden administration plan for the “day after” in Gaza is rooted in American hubris and ignorance, and therefore doomed to failure."
"The United States has a long history of misunderstanding the Mideast, but this level of ignorance and willful blindness far surpass anything we’ve seen before."
#Israel on trial?
This is not what the #ICJ organises. Its role is to establish the law.
A halt of invasion?
In 2022, the ICJ issued a condemnation on the #Russia invasion, to no consequence.
Kate Ferguson: “Will it be enough to stem the tide of atrocity crimes? No, of course not.” https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/dr-kate-ferguson@israel
Israel's latest occupation of southern Lebanon allowed #Hizbullah to pass for a national liberation movement.
Hizbullah's involvement in the crimes of the most recent Assad has discredited it: Arab public opinion considers it terrorist.
The offensive that Israel is launching in southern Lebanon is an opportunity for Hizbullah to try to regain a reputation for #resistance.
Israel's latest occupation of southern Lebanon allowed #Hizbullah to pass for a national liberation movement.
Hizbullah's involvement in the crimes of the most recent Assad has discredited it: Arab public opinion considers it terrorist.
The offensive that Israel is launching in southern Lebanon is an opportunity for Hizbullah to try to regain a reputation for #resistance.
Israel's latest occupation of southern Lebanon allowed #Hizbullah to pass for a national liberation movement.
Hizbullahs involvement in the crimes of the most recent Assad has discredited it: Arab public opinion regards it as a terrorist.
The offensive that Israel is launching in southern Lebanon is an opportunity for Hizbullah to try to regain a reputation for #resistance.
Between 1932 and 1948, Yosef Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Fund's Land Settlement Department. He wrote in his diary:
On 1941, June 22:
"The land of Israel is not small at all, if only the [Palestinian] Arabs will be removed, and if its frontiers would be enlarged a little; to the north all the way to Litani [River in Lebanon], and to the east including the Golan Heights […] while the Arabs be transferred to northern Syria and Iraq […] From now on we must work out a secret plan based on the removal of the Arabs from here [and] to include it into American political circles."
On 1941, June 26:
"Through out the journey my reflections were focused on [the plan] of evacuating the country for us [the settlers]. Only through population transfer will redemption come […] There is no room for us with our neighbours […] They [the natives] are too many and too much rooted [in the country]. The only way is to cut and eradicate them from the roots. […] People and money will be transferred there. We will set up an apparatus from the Yishuv manned by distinguished experts and these will supervise the [Palestinian] Arab transfer and resettlement and a second apparatus will receive the [Jewish] redeemers and plant them in the land."
On 1948, April 28:
"Khayriyah and Saqiyah [two Palestinian Arab villages in the coastal plain] have also been cleared out. My plan is getting implemented."
In 1949:
"[During the British Mandate period, the JNF had purchased land] crumb by crumb. But now a great change has taken place before our eyes. The spirit of Israel, in a giant thrust, has burst through the obstacles, and has conquered the keys to the land, and the road to fulfillment has been freed from its bonds and its guardians-enemies [referring to the natives]. Now, only now, the hour has come for planning considered [regional] plans […] The abandoned lands will never return to their absentee [Palestinian Arab] owners."
The terrible human toll in Gaza has many causes.
A chilling investigation by +972 highlights efficiency:
An engineer: “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed.”
An AI outputs "100 targets a day". Like a factory with murder delivery:
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”"
"The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices."
A person who took part in previous Israeli offensives in Gaza said:
“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it.”
Behind any aircraft that takes off for an attack, there are thousands of soldiers, men and women, who make the information accessible to the pilot. "They produce the targets and make the targets accessible. To set a target, it’s a process with lots of factors that need to be approved. The achievement, the collateral damage and the level of accuracy. For that, you have to interconnect intelligence, (weapon) fire, C4I [an integrated military communications system, including the interaction of troops, intelligence and communication equipment] and more," said Nati Cohen, currently a reservist in the Exercises Division of the C4I Division of the army.
It was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.
“We were not interested in killing operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
The agreement between the israeli government and Hamas provides for the release of 50 women and children held hostage in Gaza during a four-day pause in the fighting, in exchange for the release of around 150 Palestinian children and women held in Israel.
The stakeholders thus avoided an exchange of all captives.
You can be angry at anyone who tells you that the Israeli government chose to sacrifice the other kidnapped. If you do not push for a permanent ceasefire, you're on the side of violence, not on the side of the kidnapped and their families. Hamas responsibility is irrelevant to this discussion.
Dr. Assaf David works at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute - מכון ון ליר בירושלים
He teaches political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He wrote on 2023-11-18 (machine-translated from Hebrew):
“Six weeks from the cursed Saturday it is already clear that the government of failure led by Netanyahu and led by the extreme right has made a strategic decision: the main objective is to injure Hamas, and along the way the Gaza sword and killed many thousands of uninvolved. The secondary goal is to return the babies and children, women, elderly, officers and female soldiers from the basements and tunnels in the southern strip.
The meaning of this strategy is twofold: first, complete abandonment of the abducted male citizens, and next to the captives men and women of the army, to murder, to torture, to disappear between the ruins of Gaza or to long sufferings in captivity without an expiration date. Second, the abandonment of the group of women and children kidnapped to Hamas's sickening games: the murder and disappearance of some of them, and the release of the other part at large ranges and with assurance of Russian life. Al-Kassam spokesperson's message this evening about "losing contact with some of the prisoner guard squads" is just a taste of what to expect.
Anyone who calls for the continuation of the fighting in Gaza is actually supporting these horror scenarios. Anyone who recites proverbs about the importance of releasing the hostages and does not understand that the meaning must be a long ceasefire actually supports these horror scenarios.
It's fucked up, it's frustrating, it's unbearable, but it's the reality. Nearly 240 kidnapped and prisoners that Hamas, other organizations and Iranian civilians have laid hands on are an equal breaker in this war. Disgusting but that's how it is. Security experts and negotiation experts with decades of experience said from day one: All against all. Empty the jails in Israel from Palestinians in exchange for all the kidnapped, prisoners and bodies held in Gaza. This is the lowest price we will pay for them, and it will go up daily.
Unless, of course, you believe in the far right and the paralyzed government, and support the strategy of the person in charge, that he will do everything he can to continue the war that will extend his reign. In such a case you have already decided, and you just don't like telling everyone, to destroy Gaza and eliminate everything possible from Hamas until you have to leave, worth the lives of the kidnapped and prisoners. In such a case, you are simply a continuation of the threatening failure that brought us here.
Everything that can be done to Hamas (within the limits of reality) and we still haven't done will have to wait. If we do not return them all immediately we are not worthy of the title of a state. Wish for yourself that you will never have to be in a situation where your children or loved ones are kidnapped into some hole and you are forced to look at the horror in your country, and in a large part of your society, sacrifices them without hesitation in exchange for dubious military achievements that could have been achieved later by military means or in combination with the exercise of force and correct policies.
This is a valuable decision. Stand behind it. They said: We hope to be able to eliminate Hamas, and we understand that the meaning is to give up the hostages and captives. Don't lie. And after that pray hard that next time the roulette of terror will not visit you. Because if it happens, you are alone.”
Amira Hass wrote on possible explanations for Israeli indifference in the face of destruction and cruelty in Gaza:
[Sorry for the poor translation from Hebrew]
⸺
The Gaza strip is being erased and gone. Of her families. Of her people. Of her children, their smiles and laughter. What allows most residents of the Jewish state to support this systematic and mass erasing? to see in it an appropriate answer to the massacre carried out by the Hamushi Hamas and their companions, to the military humiliation suffered by Israel and to the indescribable suffering of the kidnapped, the injured, the survivors, their families and the families of the hundreds of dead?
The IDF is erasing the Gaza cities, streets, countryside, fields and surprising mistakes, the alleys of the refugee camps there. Her beach promenade. He is erasing her cultural institutions and the universities, her archaeological sites. Hamas's military infrastructure is also being destroyed, thousands of its militants are killed. But the organization itself and its officials will recover and prosper, in every community and place where the degradation of Gaza will continue to occur.
What allows most Jews in Israel not to be shocked by the fact that in about two months we have killed about 7,000 children (temporary data) with the enhanced bombs that the United States provided us? What allows the majority of Jews not to suffocate in the horror of a compression of 1.8 or 1.9 million people in an area of 120 km, which is also constantly exploded? and not to cry out for the reports of the hunger and thirst of 2.2 million Palestinian citizens and the diseases that spread due to the density and lack of water and hospitals? What enables the erasure and mass slaughter of children, with our active and passive participation?
Here are some answers:
• Decades of education on the knees of absolute #belief in the exclusive ability of a military power to ensure the existence and prosperity of the country, while denying rights from the Palestinian people.
• Deleting all "context" — which incitement has made it a synonym for supporting Hamas and justifying its horrors.
• The #monopoly we took, the Jews, on the concept of suffering caused by the cruelty of the other.
• The choice not to know and not to watch the unbearable images that show Palestinian children trembling and gray-faced from dust, torn from the Russian walls. And you don't know who is more lucky: them or those who died.
• Every mass slaughter or tiffin-tiffin that we commit on Palestinians in years, every looting, humiliation, abuse, goes through thousands of media, psychological and academic filters. The effect is the self conviction that their situation is better than that of Somalis or Syrians, so let them not complain.
• Remembering every massacre Palestinians have committed on us. You have forgotten every massacre we have committed.
• The decades-old practice of living in peace and well five minutes away from our backyard, where israel (that is us) destroys for Palestinians and builds for Jews, flows water to Jews and exploits Palestinians. And all the rest is written in the reports "The Focus for the Protection of the Individual", "Betzelem" and "Adalea".
• Decades-old ignorance of warnings of "moderate" Palestinians, about who robbed the lands and freedom and violence of the settlers with the help of the state — and inspired by its violence — reduce the horizons of their children and generate desperation and belief only in the power of weapons and revenge.
• The essential perception of the world: Palestinians are terrorists because they are like that. Born with the genes of hating us. A direct sequel to Hamelnitsky and Titus.
• The self-conviction that we are a democracy even though for more than 56 years we have controlled millions of people without civil rights, in their land and economy.
• The deep racial disrespect of Palestinians, that we developed in order to cognitively and psychologically justify their trampling under our feet.
• Denial of Palestinian history and the roots of Palestinian existence between the river and the sea.
• Elimination of Gaza is possible because since 1994 we have deliberately missed the opportunity — offered to us by the Palestinians — to get rid of our characteristics as an occupying and settling entity and to give them a state of 22% of the territory west of Jordan. I wrote in July 2021: "In the light of the talk about apartheid is fading and eclipsing the dynamic, active and dangerous dimension that is Jewish-ass colonialism." This is an ideology in which the Palestinians are 'giving up', it is the actions that have shaped this ideology, which are inspired and nourished by it. In short: it is possible and desirable that only the Palestinians are bounded. Their existence here is conditional, by grace and not merit, depends on our will and our kindness, it's a question of time. The 'indulgence' ideology is a poison that spreads especially when the colonial process is in full swing. Settler colonialism is in a constant movement of land acquisition, eradicating historical boundaries, redesigning, and expulsion of the original inhabitants".
I then referred to the Palestinian "luxuries" in the West Bank and warned against the intentions for Gresham. I thought that the treatment of the people of Gaza as "giving up" resulted in the separation from their boredom and their families beyond the Erez checkpoint. But here, now the "indulgence" is manifested in their deportation ("willingly", in the shadow of the bombs) and in the physical erasure of the inhabitants and plans for the renewal of Jewish settlement in the Strip. Woe to them and woe to us.
⸺ https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/shabahit/2023-12-16/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018c-738a-d798-adac-f7af51de0000@israel@terrorism
“Israeli long-range missiles and exploding drones known as loitering munitions have made up for Azerbaijan’s small air force, even at times striking deep within #Armenia itself. Meanwhile, #Israel Barak-8 surface-to-air #missiles have protected #Azerbaijan’s airspace in shooting down missiles and #drones,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks #arms sales.
Actors #naming in EU laws:
"The end user and recipient of the service are both natural and legal persons using a certain service. However, the #DSA recipient of the service can be a person acting in a personal or commercial/professional capacity whereas the #DMA end user can only be a person acting in a personal capacity."
Here below are graphs of discrimination ratios over time by racialized group. The shaded area is 95% confidence region. You may notice that #discrimination has been stable since the #1970s except for a rise against MENA-passing persons since 1990.
Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah: "Countering violent extremism, governmentality and Australian Muslim youth as ‘becoming terrorist’"
Abstract
This article explores how a ‘regime of truth’ about Muslim youth has been historically produced through the underlying logic of Australia’s counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) policies and practices. The article is divided into three parts. I first look at how the pre-emptive logic of countering the ‘becoming terrorist’ constitutes young Australian Muslims. I then interrogate the way CVE has constituted Australian Muslims as a self-contained space, a governmental population divided between ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’. Lastly, I discuss how CVE operates as a technique of governmentality in the way that it deploys grants programs to foster the ‘conduct of conduct’ of Muslim subjects within this self-contained racialised space. I argue that the central organising logic of community partnership has been the targeting of the conditions of emergence of ‘extremist’ Muslim subjects, thereby guaranteeing the racialisation of Muslim youth as always at-risk, marked with the ‘potential’ of ‘becoming terrorist’.