Gaza War - Aggregation & Commentary

Yehya Sinwar in subterranean hospital compound.

Priestess of Jewish anti-Israelism Perhaps the most hard working, skilled, and well-funded anti-Israel Jewish voice on X is @LaraFriedmanDC, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace @FMEP. @FMEP, in its various incarnations, has since the 1980s been instrumental in working to debilitate Jewish support for Israel among American Jews. You’d be surprised who has been in and out of their doors and coffers. While Friedman also plays a role with the U.S. wing of Peace Now, most of its supporters have no clue about the real work of @FMEP and how the two instruments are linked.

What would Engels do? Bernie Sanders -  I saw a young socialist holding up a pro-Hamas sign at some protest in Washington, lamenting how Bernie was standing with Israel against a ceasefire in Gaza. Against a ceasefire in return for nothing. Against a ceasefire that would save Hamas without releasing the captives taken on October 7. I had no idea what she was talking about until I came across this interview. The woke socialists look set to excommunicate Bernie. But I welcome his late-in-life epiphany. Let’s see if it is lasting.

Congratulations The great genda philosopher Judith Butler, an expert in ethix “third-wave feminism” and “queer theory,” has been awarded the “Sheik Yassen Chair in LBGTQRA-T” studies at the Islamic University of Gaza الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة It is expected to be a brief tenure. Writing in the anti-Zionist London Review of Books, Butler, an “AsAJew,” engages in tedious woke bothsiderism and doublespeak. But let me try to summarize her position. Israel=bad. Hamas=not ideal. Hamas= hideous Hamas=do not deserve to be blacklisted or threatened.Israel=settler-colonial Hamas= terrifying and appalling answer to Israel=racist framing of contemporary violence Israel=recapitulates the colonial opposition between the ‘civilised ones’ and the ‘animals’ who must be routed or destroyed  Solution= an end to the state of Israel that was itself founded in violence no future can be imagined Peace= a euphemism for normalisation which means keeping structures of inequality, rightlessness, and racism in place. Got all that? And, yes, she makes a nice living from teaching and writing this stuff.

Let’s keep Detroit’s Samantha Woll in mind as we await a determination if her murder was related to the antisemitism and anti-Israelism sweeping America and Europe. Mass rallies against Israel that often devolve into orgies of antisemitism have been held in London (on the Tube and in the street), NYC, and Washington, DC. In Sweden, “bomb Israel” rallies are staged outside synagogues.

The Washington Post hones the art of the micro-aggressive headline. “As Gaza death toll soars, secrecy shrouds Israel’s targeting process. Experts say Israel’s rules of engagement in Gaza, which are classified, appear to include a higher threshold for civilian casualties than in past wars.”  So, IDF operations have not been signaled to the Post in advance, and the Post disapproves of the unwillingness of the IDF to sacrifice its soldiers to protect the human shields Hamas has taken. Thousands of willing human shields sat on plastic chairs outside a hospital for a screening of the “best jihadist attacks on occupation soldiers,” cheering the explosions.

Senator Chris Van Hollen (J Street) – is what you need to understand in parsing The New York Times complaint that “U.S. Officials Fear American Guns Ordered by Israel Could Fuel West Bank [Settler] Violence” J Street planting stories in the more than willing NYT.

‘UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians’ – What you need to know if you are just joining us is that UNRWA is the only refugee agency whose mandate is NOT to resettle refugees permanently. It is tasked to keep Palestinian refugees, whether in Palestine or abroad, refugees in perpetuity. Almost all its employees are Palestinian Arabs. Its schools teach the Palestinian curriculum of political agitprop: no to permanent resettlement or even permanent housing in "refugee camps." Its buildings have sometimes been used to store weapons and to shoot at Israelis.

Summarizing This war will not be quick. Israelis are paying a heavy price—soldier funerals. Air raids sirens over metro Tel Aviv. Hezbollah attacks in the north, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad launches from the south. Jerusalem is comparatively quiet of sirens. This is a war of “no choice”. It is either us or them. People who want a ceasefire without getting our hostages out and the removal of Hamas are, in effect, siding with Hamas. There is no room for both-sider-ism.