...one has to wonder what the latest Blinken round of visits to the Middle East was supposed to accomplish, since all it did was expose our impotence. Even the Financial Times could not hide that the meetings with Netanyahu and then Arab leaders were a train wreck. Netanyahu rejected even any itty bitty ceasefire, branded a humanitarian pause, to get relief in, demanding that Hamas release all hostages first. The fact that Israel has welched or underperformed on its past begrudging promises to let trucks from Egypt in, would make that a non-starter even before getting to Hamas being sure to stick to its position of wanting to trade hostages for Palestinian prisoners. And of course the Arab states are not about to budge. Blinken got a more pointed version of what he was told before.
Antony Blinken faced intense pressure from regional allies to facilitate an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, laying bare the stark gap between US support for Israel and the outrage in Arab capitals over the siege and bombardment of the strip….
Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, demanded an unconditional ceasefire, a commitment that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly rejected after meeting Blinken on Friday.
Blinken had been expected to “brainstorm” with Arab diplomats the future of Gaza, home to 2.3mn Palestinians, after the war ends. Safadi bluntly rejected those talks as premature. “How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know how Gaza will be left?” he asked Blinken. “Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we talking about a whole population reduced to refugees?”
This comes off as the sort of thing someone who had just read classic texts on negotiating trying to put in practice: “Gee, let’s get a dialogue going! Let’s get to ‘Yes’ on some less fraught issues to pave the way for further agreement!” In addition, “brainstorming” is cringemakingly American. You don’t do that with people who are mad at you. You don’t do that in a crisis. Between independent entities, you do not do that at the top level. You have low level people or emissaries float ideas. So why this exercise? The worst is that Biden and Blinken come off as so disconnected from reality that they though they might get someone to accommodate US needs.
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
You're going to have to (hex)bear with me on the update this week. Have you been feeling generally pretty terrible this last month or so? So have I, and doomscrolling and archiving it all is my quasi-job at this point. Not good, folks, more and more people are saying it. I'll get over it eventually.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
The Mosaic Community, the orthodox Jewish religious organization who most Danish Jews belongs to and who is treated as representing all Jews in Denmark has reported a significant increase in antisemitic incidents since the Al-Aqsa Flood. Their report describes several of the incidents and gives an insight in what is really behind the numbers we read in the media.
Physical violence is rare and there are no examples of systemic antisemitism or antisemitism done by employers, bureaucrats, cops or in similar relations with unequal distribution of power. Most of the incidents involves threats and slurs. All of the incidents described (except, perhaps, an incident where a Jew experienced having stuff thrown at a window displaying a menorah and a zionist flag) describes problematic racist behaviour that targets Jews. To the credit of the Mosaic Community, none of the incidents described are disingenuous labeling of anti-zionism antisemitism.
The motivation for the incidents can be placed in several categories. There are examples of what could be termed cultural antisemitism, like people making casual remarks about Jews being misers. Then there is the really nasty stuff where Jews are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by neonazis with a clear exterminationist goal. But what seems to be the most common motivation is misguided anti-zionism where people are justifiably appeled and enraged by zionist atrocities in Palestine and then misattributes them to Jews in general. Often a lot of these antisemitic incidents are provoked by the victim making pro-zionist statements and the perpetrator responding by making threats and insults directed against Jews in general.
If the purpose of the zionist occupation of Palestine is to keep Jews safe from antisemitism and if the driving factor of most antisemitism in the world is misguided anger over said occupation then one could be provocative and ask if the Zionists are not doing a piss-poor job by working hard to make all Jews look like genocidal maniacs.
Interesting example. That's always been the point for Zionists though. The conflation of Israel and Jewish people is a feature not a bug.
This doesn't really surprise me. The Zionists are bringing a lot of attention to themselves, and through their intentional conflation of Zionism and Judaism, to all Jewish people. That means a lot of people who already subscribe to anti-Semitism are likely to find more reason to hate and more reason to act on it. And it means some people are going to take criticism of Zionists and misdirect it toward all Jews.
OTOH I can't see the Zionists' actions endearing them to anyone who previously hated them, or hated Jews in general. Maybe a very, very few people whose main racist focus is Islamophobia and who for some reason didn't already love the Zionists for their violence toward Palestinians might be somewhat more endeared to them by the current, acute acceleration of genocide. But I suspect it'd be dwarfed by all the other reaction.
And this is kind of how oppressive hatred works in the capitalist world. Someone sneezes and the hatred jumps up a notch, whereas it takes a pretty monumental, intentional effort to bring people together and increase their empathy for and understanding of one another. Otherwise it wouldn't be oppression; it would just be irrational hatred without the systemic component. Which is far less troublesome.
Bibi et al have a deliberate, semi-public strategy of collaborating with traditional anti-Semitic fascists to make the world outside Israel hostile to Jewish people. The idea is that the ZIonists can create a situation where Jewish people are forced to flee to Israel having no other choice. Provoking anti-Semitism is a strategic goal of Zionism.