Ahed Tamimi and other Palestinians

[Nefertiti2]

Boycott is the best response

[Nefertiti2]

THis is the tweet Lang Spoon is referring to

https://twitter.com/BowenBBC/status/996273880217026560


The BBC foreign correspondents are much more ready to call things out. The pressure to tell the pro Israel narrative is very much more at home, I think. as evidenced by this deleted Tweet during the time when Priti Patel
and Conservative Friends of israel went completely rogue

https://twitter.com/clickforchanges/status/929693507996053504

[Antepli Ejderha]

Sarah Sands and Humphrys are a poison on Radio 4. Can just hear him going on about the right to defend your borders. He’s a nasty know-nothing cnut and he’s revelling in saying the unsayable since Brexit. Retire ya grey faced fuck. Or peg it, I don’t care.

This. Nick Robinson saying that the majority of demonstrators were unarmed really got to me. Ther's absolutely no proof that anyone had any weapons at all yet this statement implies that there were armed people there.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Bowen's been a decent proper journalist over the years on this topic, to be fair

He was very good on PM today. For the BBC he's one of the few really good journalists left. Where's Orla Guerin?

[Lang Spoon]

I don’t think Israel would let her back in. And the beeb wouldn’t push it.

[Nefertiti2]

This is alos by Jeremy Bowen

https://twitter.com/BowenBBC/status/995244492667195392

Love that expression of "regret"

[Lang Spoon]

The antics of Michael Collins and the lads 1918 to 21 were keenly studied in The Mandate. But sure, things may be regretted when committed in a war of national liberation. There is no and can be no equivocation between acts of terror and Good Bombs against Bad People.

[Nefertiti2]

This isn't satire

https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/996427205944184832

This is

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/996090114920022017

The onion doing a magnificent job, incidentally

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/996460255520358400

This is neither satire nor The Onion but deserves a wider audience

https://twitter.com/DanielSeidemann/status/996421896714489857

[Nefertiti2]

Stop the Bloodbath

A ha'aretz editorial that is far fiercer than anything in the Uk press. let alone the BBC

The people on both sides of the fence are the same age. On one side are armed Israeli soldiers – whose lives are not in danger most of the time and none of whom have been injured – who are free people, citizens of their country, with their future ahead of them. Facing them are young Gazans, in general unarmed, unprotected, the vast majority unemployed, and hopeless as long as the siege continues.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/996514569601323011

[Snake Plissken]

https://twitter.com/DailyPolitik/status/996448986230853632

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/jsternweiner/status/996674500099039232

[E10 Rifle]

Must. Not. Get. Into. Arguments. With. Racist. Victim-Blamers. On. Social. Media

[ad hoc]

The truth is that Israel is well prepared to massacre hundreds and thousands, and to expel tens of thousands. Nothing will stop it. This is the end of conscience, the show of morality is over. The last few days’ events have proved it decisively. The tracks have been laid, the infrastructure for the horror has been cast. Dozens of years of brainwashing, demonization and dehumanization have borne fruit. The alliance between the politicians and the media to suppress reality and deny it has succeeded. Israel is set to commit horrors. Nobody will stand in its way any longer. Not from within or from without.

Gideon Levy, as brilliant as ever. (Though wrong about one thing - Israel does still have a conscience. It's him)

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.pre...ence-1.6095178

[E10 Rifle]

Following on from something ad hoc posted on the social medias yesterday, it's depressing, yet revealing, to see strands of Respectable Opinion line up behind an essentially victim-blaming "yeah but what about Hamas", "What were they doing near the fence in the first place" narrative. This is unmistakably the mentality that blamed Liverpool fans for Hillsborough, that would have excoriated parents in the Bogside for letting their kids near a "combustible" demo on Bloody Sunday, that would have said the miners' pickets at Orgreave were "provocative", that might even have had mealy-mouthed things to say in "explanation" of those responsible for Sharpeville or Amritsar. They're putting themselves on a certain side of history with all this. (And yes, the left hasn't been completely innocent of this – that element that downplays or ignores Assad and Putin's crimes is doing the same thing).

It's racism though isn't it, basically. The denial of agency to victims, the assumption that they've been manipulated or brainwashed, the inability to see or care about power imbalances or to support anything that attempts to do something about it. These victims, these people, they're Not Really Like Us.

[ad hoc]

Saw a clip (on Fb which I can't find again) which was an interview with an Israeli government spokesperson for Irish TV (I think). Her response to the question about why the live fire? "Well, we can't put all of these people in jail"

Edit: have found it now and put it on my FB page. Can't find a way to link it here. It is Irish TV - RTE News

[Johnny Velvet]

Following on from something ad hoc posted on the social medias yesterday, it's depressing, yet revealing, to see strands of Respectable Opinion line up behind an essentially victim-blaming "yeah but what about Hamas", "What were they doing near the fence in the first place" narrative. This is unmistakably the mentality that blamed Liverpool fans for Hillsborough, that would have excoriated parents in the Bogside for letting their kids near a "combustible" demo on Bloody Sunday, that would have said the miners' pickets at Orgreave were "provocative", that might even have had mealy-mouthed things to say in "explanation" of those responsible for Sharpeville or Amritsar. They're putting themselves on a certain side of history with all this. (And yes, the left hasn't been completely innocent of this – that element that downplays or ignores Assad and Putin's crimes is doing the same thing).

It's racism though isn't it, basically. The denial of agency to victims, the assumption that they've been manipulated or brainwashed, the inability to see or care about power imbalances or to support anything that attempts to do something about it. These victims, these people, they're Not Really Like Us.

Yeah, nail on the head.

The compulsion to relentlessly focus on the beliefs of groups like Hamas whenever something like this happens exposes a racism that they're not even aware they exhibit. Their argument is usually something along the lines of "Yes, it's terrible that people have been killed but Hamas are Islamist imperialists who want to blah blah blah and as bad as the Israeli government is they don't want to commit genocide." The people who believe this don't seem to understand what evil is or how it works. It would be easy, so easy for us all, if evil only ever manifested itself as visibly and obviously as the raving Islamic fundamentalists of these people's darkest nightmares. But evil is a broad church. Evil is the only word that adequately describes what the Israeli government and the IDF have done over the past few days. It's the only word that describes the Occupation.

[ad hoc]

http://www.newsweek.com/gaza-opinion-928597

[Nefertiti2]

Hundreds of British Jews sign a letter criticising the Board of Deputies comment on Gaza

[G-Man]

The response from the Christian leadership and the pope has been disappointing, with all the fudging and equivocation. Clearly, it's some kind of diplomatic expedient at play. Just as couple of months ago, the state of Israel was going to bankrupt the churches by charging them taxes from which they had been exempt, and backdating them to create unpayable amounts (a cunt's trick Israel used to dispossess Palestinians and deny them restitution). They've obviously intimidated the churches, which overwhelmingly comprise Palestinians. But there comes a time when you say:"Well, fuck this. It's time to overturn the tables in the Temple." And that time was now.

[Lang Spoon]

This is so fucked, they can pretty much do what they want forever. Till the poor bastards are kicked into the sea. The world will just sigh and do the Both Sides thing.

[ad hoc]

Recommend this long and tragic read. And people wonder why there are desperate protests https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...pp_Add_to_Lite

[Nefertiti2]

Meanwhile the internal struggle at the NYT continues

https://twitter.com/wideasleepnima/status/997633949412286464

[ad hoc]

https://www.thenation.com/article/pa...th-a-massacre/

[ad hoc]

Noura Erakat who has been superb this week and must be utterly sick of constantly having to answer questions about Hamas

https://twitter.com/4noura/status/997502150631673856?s=19