User talk:Nishidani

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Personal work section notes. I get headaches and am as slow as a wet week, in dragging up diffs, and even have a geezer's trouble in following these arguments all over several pages, so I can't really make an adequate case. So I'll have to make my contribution in the next few days, according to the fashion I normally work after, when I did work, in the real world. Reflecting from principles, through to the problem, the evidence and conclusions. Apologies to anyone reading this. It's written to help myself get some order into this chat, not to guide others.

• An editorial split between those in favour of using 'Judea & Samaria' to designate (a) parts of, or (b) all, or (c) all of the West Bank and parts of Israel, and those who oppose the usage, except on those specific pages devoted to (i) Samaria (ii) Judea (iii) the administrative territory known in Israel as 'Judea & Samaria'.

• The 'Judea and Samaria' school holds that (a) these are geographical and historical designations predating the West Bank (b) used in a variety of sources published in Israel and abroad to denote the territory, or parts of it, known as the West Bank (c) and that opposition to the employment of these words in wiki constitutes an 'ethnic-based discrimination' against both Israeli and Jewish people.(d) specifically, that MeteorMaker, Pedrito and myself have conducted a campaign to denigrate or deprecate Jewish terms in the I/P area, a kind of ethnic cleansing of nomenclature, in a way that lends substance to fears our position is motivated by, well let's call a spade a spade, anti-semitism.

• The 'West Bank' school asserts that (a) these terms have an intrinsic denotative vagueness because they refer to different geophysical, administrative and political terrains depending on historical period, and that to use the terms of the territorially bounded and defined area known internationally as the West Bank creates cognitive dissonance (b) that these terms, as documented, were used under the British Mandate, then dropped for 'West Bank', which has remained to this day the default term of neutral usage internationally and in international law and diplomacy (c) that, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, in 1967, the terms 'Judea & Samaria' were pushed onto the political agenda by an extremist settler group, Gush Emunim, then adopted by the Likud government in 1977, and imposed by government decree on the Israeli mass media, which suppressed the international term, West Bank (d) that, as documented, the terms 'Judea and Samaria' have a potent ideological charge as appropriative nomenclature, renaming Palestinian land presently occupied, annexed or expropriated illegally by Israel (ICJ judgement 2004), over which Israel has no sovereignty, where Israel is establishing illegal settlements at least half of which on land with private Palestinian title, and with its own Arabic toponyms, and erasing the traditional native nomenclature by creating a neo-biblical toponomy (d) that reliable secondary sources explicitly define the term as partisan, even in contemporary Hebrew and Israeli usage (e) that the evidence for usage overwhelmingly documents the prevalence of 'West Bank' (northern, southern) in neutral sources, whose neutrality is affirmed also by the very sources that otherwise employ the words 'Samaria and Judea' adduced by the former school, (f) that if explicitly attested partisan Israeli toponymy and administrative nomenclature is allowed on non-Israeli territory, then by WP:NPOV criteria, automatically this would mean the corresponding Palestinian toponymy and nomenclature, often covering the same areas, would have to be introduced (g)that in this whole debate, the West Bankers have not even represented the Palestinian side, which is absent, invisible, while the Israeli side is being treated as though its national naming were on terms of parity and neutrality with international usage (h) that wiki criteria, WP:NPOV, WP:Undue, WP:RS, WP:NCGN etc. require that neutral terminology, particularly as evidenced by the overwhelming majority of reliable sources, be employed. (i) If we are to allow Israeli terminology to be generally employed in denoting territory over which Israel exercises no sovereignty, but is simply, in law, an occupying belligerent, a very dangerous precedent, with widespread consequences for articles where ethnic conflicts exist, would be created.

(ii)Note on language, naming as an appropriative act of possession and dominion.

'According to the aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called out his own name; and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret couplet or couplets of his song. The he 'named' (tneuka) the place where he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the animals sporting about nearby, any strangers that came to visit him, and so forth. He gave names to all of these, and thereby gained the power of calling them by their names; this enabled him to control them and to bind them to his will.'^[1]

Wa’-yitser’ Yĕhôwāh’ (Adonai) ĕlôhīm’ min-hā'ădāmāh’ kol-‘ha’yath’ ha’-sādeh’ wĕ'ēth kol-ôph ha’-shāma’yim wa’-yāvē ‘ el-hā'ādām’ li-r'ôth mah-yiqrā-lô’ wĕ-kôl ăsher yiqrā-lô’ hā'-ādām‘ ne’pfesh ‘ha’yāh’ hû shĕmô. (20) Wa’- yiqrā’ hā'-ādām‘ shēmôth….

‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names.. .' ^[2]

Wa-‘allama ādama l-asmā’a kullahā,

'And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’ Qu’ran 2:31.^[3]

In Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, the narrator Cherrycoke recounts, against the huge backdrop of seismic shifts in the political and scientific world of that time, the story of the eponymous figures who have undertaken to draw a scientific map of the wilderness and terrain between Pennsylvania and Maryland:

‘what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding and ultimately meaningless, - we were putting a line straight through the heart of the Wilderness, eight yards wide and due west, in order to separate two Proprietorships, granted when the World was yet feudal and but eight years later to be nullified by the War for Independence.”

Late in the novel, the Chinaman of the piece remarks:

‘To rule forever, . .it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,- to create thus a Distinction betwixt’em. –’tis the first stroke.-All else will follow as if predestin’d, into War and Devastation.’ ^[4]

The dispute here in wiki, like the historical reality it refers to, has its ‘Bad History’. In the novel, the apparently empirical task of defining boundaries is found unwittingly implicated in the later travails of American history, with its exceptionalism, erasure of native peoples, of possible alternative worlds, of Frostian paths never taken. American innocence and pragmatic realism, in the innocuous work of two surveyors, is swept up in the torment of power: cartographic principles embody an Enlightenment’s reach into the unknown, while, applied, to the ends of order and control, they inadvertently engender violent confusion and disarray. What is the ‘right line’ to take on nomenclature, when history’s line demarcating Israel and the West Bank was drawn by war, then the West Bank was occupied in the aftermath of war, and the world of Israeli settlers begins to redraw the map? One thing that happens is that the complexities have drawn editors into a minor war, as Pynchonesque as it is Pythonesque. There is one difference: most the cartographers say one thing, and Israel, the controlling power, asserts a different terminology. So what’s in a name?

Before the world was tribalized and invested by the collateral damage or fall-out from the Tower of Babel, God assigned to the mythical forefather of all, ‘man’ or Adam, the faculty to name the world, though God himself had exercised this right in naming the light (or) day (yom) and the darkness (hôshek) night(layĕlāh) (Gen.1.5) There was only one name for each thing, and in later European thought the primordial language employed in this taxonomy was to be called ‘the Adamic vernacular’^[5]. The thesis was that the pristine jargon employed by Adam, being pre-Babelic, represented the true name for every object: every thing had a proper name intrinsic to its nature. The Greeks, as we see in Plato’s Cratylus, were much prepossessed by the philosophical crux of the correctness of names (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων): did names have an intrinsic relation to, or represent, things, or was the link arbitrary.^[6]. The Confucian school’s doctrine of the Rectification of names (zhèngmíng: 正名). In the Bible itself the Hebrew text is full of the magic of words, of the power of words themselves to alter reality, a belief testified to in Isaiah:

'So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.'^[7]

Modernity, especially after Ferdinand Saussure (1916), has opted, correctly, for the latter position, and disposed of the magical force of naming. But nationalism, another product of modernity, reintroduced it, via the backdoor, in a new sense. Naming was an act of assertive territorial control, of defining ethnic rights over land, especially as Anthony Smith argues, ethnie are defined also by attachment to a specific geophysical reality, the ‘homeland’ that defines in good part their identity ^[8]). Since national identities are a political construct, the inculcation of a uniform language, and the use of its lexicon to define or redefine the landscape, are crucial instruments in forging a national sense of common tradition. Nationalism demanded toponymic unison, and linguistic conformity.

John Gaddis, glossing James Scott’s recent book on North Dakota roads and maps, remarks on maps that they reflect

‘what states try to do to those portions of the earth’s surface they hope to control, and to the people who live upon them. For it’s only by making territories and societies legible – by which he means measurable and hence manipulable – that governments can impose and maintain their authority. “These state simplifications,” he writes, are “like abridged maps.” They don’t replicate what’s actually there, but “when allied with state power, (they) enable much of the reality they (depict) to be remade.” ^[9]

The idea of a nation as a territorial unit speaking one language over that territory is a parlously modern ideology, one engineered by nation-builders into a plausible if specious semblance of commonsense. As Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the dawn of the Italian Risorgimento, ‘we have made Italy: our task now is to make Italians’^[10], 95% of whom could neither read, write and nor often even speak ‘Italian’.

Imperialism, venturing into terra incognita to appropriate foreign land and incorporate it into an empire, went side by side with nationalism, which was a form of internal colonization over, and homogenization of, the disparate cultures that made up an historically defined territory. For the natives, their indigenous naming is ‘essentially a process of asserting ownership and control of place and landscape’^[11]

Daphne Kutzner, in her analysis of the role of Empire in classic children’s fiction, looks at the question from the perspective of the intrusive Empire and its refraction of imperial renaming as reflected in popular books, notes that

‘Naming a place gives the namer power over it, or at least the illusion of power and control. Colonial powers literally transform a landscape once they rename it and begin reshaping it.’ ^[12]

Terra incognita is the foreigner’s name for an ostensibly empty landscape which, had they taken the trouble to learn the local languages, would have revealed itself to be replete from every rocky nook to crannied gulley with ancient toponyms. The tendency was one of erasure, and, as with introduced fauna and flora ^[13], the landscape was consistently remade as it was renamed to familiarize the alien by rendering it recognizable, a variation on the landscape settlers came from. The new mapping, as often as not, represent as much the settler’s mentality, as the queerly new features of the foreign landscape under toponymic domestication.^[14]

Australia is somewhat the extraordinary exception, and broke with the gusto for imperial nomenclature. There, following the pattern set by the earlier land surveyor Thomas Mitchell and his assistant Philip Elliott that “the natives can furnish you with names for every flat and almost every hill” (1828), native names were adopted in a standarized English form for both euphony and their characteristic relation to the landscape, and indeed a resolution was passed as early as 1884 which established the priority of native names in international usage.^[15]

Often imperialism and nationalism go hand in hand. Napoleon’s troops, in 1796, could hardly communicate with each other, such were the grammatical, semantic and syntactical rifts between the various provincial patois at the time. By 1814, Napoleon had formed a European empire, and millions of provincials spoke the one, uniform language of the French state’s army. When two nations, or ethnie, occupy the same territory, the historical victor’s toponymic choices, dictated by the victor’s native language, and as articulated in bureaucratic documents and maps, usually determines what names are to be used. However, the presence of two distinct ethnie on the same national soil creates fissiparous tensions in nomenclature. Speaking of French and British conflict in Canada over areas, Susan Drummond, remarks that, 'Symbolic appropriation of a territory is a critical index of control’, and notes that, as late as 1962, the Québec cartographer Brochu, invoked the political dimension of place names as important, in the conflict with the majoritarian English heritage of Canada over the naming of the northern Inuit lands. ^[16]

Again, in another familiar example, Alfonso Pérez-Agote notes that Spain has its Basque Autonomous region, Euskadi. But the original force of that name covers an area beyond the administrative and territorial units of Spain, and Basque nationalists evoke its symbolic territory, comprising also the Basque area of Navarre in France. Euskadi has, on one level, within Spanish administrative discourse, a ‘territorial political objectification’, and on another level, in Basque nationalism, a ‘non-administratively objectified’ territory extending into a neighbouring country.^[17]. The analogy with Israeli and Palestinian nationalism is close. In Israeli discourse, Israel or Eretz Israel can denote Israel and its outriding West Bank, while Palestine, which is the favoured term of West Bank Arabs for the land they inhabit, also can refer to the whole neighbouring territory of Israel as well.

The anomaly, in comparative terms, is that history has settled the question, whatever local separatist nationalisms, revanchist or irredentist, may claim, except for such places as ‘Palestine’. For there, while Israel is a constituted state, it emerged the victor, manu militari in a conflict that gave it control over a contiguous land, but has no recognized legal right, since that land is defined as and ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory. Acts of unilateral annexation, the extension of administrative structures, settlements, toponymic remapping, and widescale expropriation of land in Palestinian title, is not only not recognized, but judged ‘illegal’ by the highest international bodies of law. All major encyclopedias (Encyclopædia Britannica, Encarta etc.,), except Wiki, maintain a strict neutrality, and, in recognition of the fraught difficulties, adopt the neutral toponymic convention of ‘(northern/southern) West Bank’ in order to avoid lending their prestige to the partisan politics of the parties in this regional conflict.

(iii)The specific instance of Palestine and the West Bank

When the British wrested control over Palestine from the Ottomans in the First World War, and established themselves there to administer the region, Selwyn Troen notes that, 'naming also became part of the contest for asserting control over Palestine'.^[18]. As early as 1920 two Zionists advising the British Mandatory authority on everything regarding the assignment of Hebrew names, fought hard for the restoration of Hebraic toponymy, and when, with such places as Nablus, or indeed 'Palestine' itself, were given non-Hebrew names, they protested at the designations as evidence of discrimination against Jews. The point is made by the Israeli historian and cartographer Meron Benvenisti:-

'When the Geographical Committee for Names, which operated under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society (the only body authorized to assign names throughout the British Empire, decided to call the Mandatory geopolitical entity “Palestine” and the city whose biblical name was Shechem, “Nablus” these Jewish advisers saw this as an act of anti-Jewish discrimination, and a searing defeat for Zionism.'^[19]

One pauses to reflect. We are being accused here of 'anti-Jewish/Israeli discrimination' for refusing to insert Israeli toponyms into the West Bank. Nothing is said of the logic of this POV-pushing, i.e. that a Palestinian reader might well regard a Wiki endorsement of suc h foreign nomenclature as a 'searing defeat', and adduce it as proof of 'anti-Palestinian discrimination' both by Zionist editors, and Wikipedia itself.

Since Zionism took root, and especially since Israel was founded, the making of a people, living in a defined territorial unit and speaking one language, has followed the universal pattern of modernity. The landscape, full of Arabic words, had to be renamed, often according to Biblical terminology, but, more often, by the invention of Biblical-sounding names. To do this, a good part of the 10,000 odd Arabic toponyms collected by Herbert Kitchener, T. E. Lawrence and others in surveying that part of the Middle East had to be cancelled, and replaced with Israeli/Hebrew terms, to remake the landscape and its topographic songlines ^[20] resonate with historical depth. Hebrew is a ‘sacred tongue’ (Leshon HaQodesh:לשון הקודש), the Bible describes the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples, who were not part of the chosen: the pattern is repeated in modern times, down to the renaming. The revival of Hebrew, with its potent shibboleths, understandably exercises a powerful hold over the new culture of the country.

The problem is, as Steven Runciman pointed out in the mid-sixties, that the part assigned to Israel by the UN deliberation of 1947 was the western, non-Biblical part, whilst the part assigned to a future Palestinian state, what we now call the West Bank, is precisely the area most infused with Biblical associations cherished by the Jewish people, with sites and names redolent of the founding myths and realities of their ancient forefathers. Israelis, in their secular land, mostly dwell where the Philistines dwelt. The Palestinians dwell where the ancient Jewish tribes once settled. The tensions simmer between the secular Israel, which thrives in its new Mediterranean world, and the religiously-identified Israel that aspires to return to a geophysical space where origins and the present, the sacred nomenclature of the Bible and the modern world of Jewish life, might at least, once more overlap, in an ‘Adamic’ harmony congruent with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

(iv)The Negev Precedent With the foundation of Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1948 war, the vast Negev and part of the Arava were captured, and Ben Gurion duly established a Negev Names Committee to ‘hebraize’ the landscape’s features, its mountains, valleys and springs. The area already had a rich Arab toponymy, and some on the committee thought these terms might be preserved as a ‘democratic gesture towards the Arab population of the new state.’ It was not to be. The nomadic Bedouin who dwelt throughout the area were rounded up and expelled by force. They had terms for everything, but with their uprooting and displacement, Benvenisti notes, ‘an entire world, as portrayed in their toponomastic traditions, died.' ^[21] Ben Gurion wrote to the committee setting forth his view that:-

We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs’ political proprietorship of the land, so also we do not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.^[22][23]

Political pressure and ‘the influence of patriotic arguments’ prevailed over those who, like S.Yeibin, thought the erasure of Arab names, many of which might preserve an archaic Hebrew origin. Yeibin thought this a disaster:-

‘With a clap of the hand they were wiping out an entire cultural heritage that must certainly conceal within it elements of the Israeli-Jewish heritage as well. The researchers did indeed endeavour to identify all those names that had a link to ancient Hebrew ones in an attempt “to redeem, as far as possible, names from the days of yore.” ^[24]<

Any Arabic toponym in short only interested the topographers in so far as it might provide a clue to reconstructing the hypothetical Hebraic original that might lie behind it. This consideration, however, often created a mess of concocted pseudo-traditional names. The hebraization of such Arabic toponyms did not restore the historic past, but invented a mythical landscape, resonant with traditionalist associations, that had, however, no roots in Jewish tradition. The most striking geologic formation in the Negev, Wadi Rumman was rewritten as if that word disguised an ancient Hebrew Ram ('elevated'), whereas the Arabic term it was calqued from actually meant 'Pomegranate Arroyo', for example.^[25]

Reflecting on Benvenisti’s account in his larger study of language conflict in the Middle east, the Palestinian expatriate scholar Yasir Suleiman makes remarks that,

’By assigning Hebrew names anew to places on the map, the committee was therefore ‘redeeming’ these places from the corrupt and ‘alien’ Arabic names that they have acquired over the centuries’

and likens this process of linguistic erasure of Arabic and the reconstitution of Hebrew metaphorically to the nakba:-

‘The cartographic cleansing of the Negev map of Arabic place names and their replacement by Hebrew names is an enactment of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland’ ^[26]

The record is therefore one of a linguistic cleansing of Palestine of any trace of its long Arabic history, and, as we shall see, an attempt to remodel Arabic usage in the territories Israel conquered and controls, to conform with Hebrew. Toponyms can only retain some semblance of an Arabic form, if that form is suspected to camouflage, in turn, an original Hebraic name. Adapting the reborn Hebrew^[27] language to the alien realities of the Palestinian landscape, the obvious problem was that the nomenclature for much of the flora and fauna, not to speak of the landscape itself, was infused with the very language, Arabic, a revarnished Hebrew had to compete with. As early as 1910 Jacob Fichman, a member of the Language Council, stated that Hebrew:

‘will not digest the new names of plants, especially those which have been taken from the Arabic language’ and that these borrowed names ‘will always be like atrophied limbs’ for ‘despite the fact that the Arabic language is our sister language in the family of Semitic languages, it has no foundation in our |psyche ’^[28]

Hebrew was thus to be programmatically sealed off from Arabic, to prevent atrophisation, and cultivate purism by means of a fake Biblical antiquarianism. Theodor Adorno, writing in the melancholic aftermath of the Holocaust on the effects of cultural purism, once remarked on the purging of foreign words from German undertaken by nationalists intent restoring an ideal of cultural authenticity. He saw this as part of the pathology of nationalism in Germany. Foreign words were treated as if they were 'the Jews of language' (Fremdwörter sind die Juden der Sprache)^[29]. In expunging the landscape and the human world of Palestine of its Arabic language, of landscape and culture, Zionism likewise treated Arabic as German or French linguistic purists treated loan-words in their own languages, or, later, actual Jews in their midst, as foreign bodies to be expelled, or expunged if a proper 'foundation for an authentically Jewish psyche' were to be successfully engineered. One would call this ironic, were it not so tragically melancholic in its unintended resonances.

(v)The West Bank. History and Naming The relationship between demographic displacement and the loss of one's landscape through the erasure of its traditional placenames in Palestine has been remarked on by Paul Diehl.

‘The exclusive attachment to territory is reflected in the naming and renaming of places and locations in accordance with the historic and religious sites associated with the dominant political group. Not only did the outflow of Palestinian refugees bring about a change in the Jewish-Arab demographic rations, it brought about the replacement of an Arab-Palestinian landscape with a Jewish-Israeli landscape. The names of abandoned villages disappeared from the map and were replaced with alternative Hebrew names . . Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have taken on biblical names associated with the specific sites as a means of expressing the Jewish priority in these places and the exclusive nature of the territorial attachment. Modern Israeli and Palestinian maps of Israel/Palestine possess the same outer borders, but the semantic content of the name is completely different.. The means by which new landscapes are created to replace or obliterate former landscapes is a good example of the way in which metaphysical and symbolic attachment to territory is translated into concrete realities on the ground.’ ^[30]

In 1950, when King Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, unilaterally annexed the territory he had conquered in 1948, he changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which incorporated the remaining fragment of Palestine as aḍ-Ḍiffä l-Ġarbīyä, or 'the West Bank' of that kingdom. The usage is still current in German (Westjordanland). Though only Britain recognized his annexation, the word itself found ready acceptance in, and was not, 'forced on', the international community, as Binyamin Netanyahu argued. ^[31]

In 1967, Israel conquered what the world knew as ‘The West Bank’, the Biblical heartland, and a decree calling it ‘Judea and Samaria’ was issued by the Israeli military on December 17 that year with the explicit definition that it would be identical in meaning for all purposes to the West Bank region^[32] to replace the interim terms 'Occupied Territories' (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim), and ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) in use since the immediate aftermath of the June war.^[33] The term 'Judea and Samaria' however was rarely used until Likud took power^[34]. The Labour Government never enacted a settlement policy, though Gush Emunim, an extremist settler ground with a fundamentalist ideology, pressed settlement, and propagated the terminology ‘Judea and Samaria’. When the Likud party, the maximalist, expansionist party with strong ties to both religious and ultra-Zionist groups and traditions, was elected in 1977, it imposed Samaria and Judea as the vox propria in modern Hebrew on the mass media, expressly forbidding the use of the international term West Bank^[35][36]. Notably, the government's imposing of these terms on Israeli usage was seen as a prerequisite for an envisioned settlement policy, since accepting the terms would predispose the public to accepting the policy.^[37]

Gideon Aran describes the achievement:

‘The importance of changing names in the process of conquering territory is well known. Assimilation of the name “Judea and Samaria” in normal and official language, as well as in jargon, attests to G(ush)E(numin)’s political and cultural achievements.' ^[38]

The Camp David Accords negotiations of and the final agreement, in 1979, only underline how great was the linguistic rift between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's position and the American government intent on brokering an agreement.

‘Begin consistently proved to be the most extreme member of his delegation, insisting on seemingly innocent terms such as “autonomy” as opposed to “self rule,” on the labelling of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in the Hebrew text, and on the use of the phrase “undivided Jerusalem.'^[39]

A huge amount of wrangling between the American negotiators and Begin revolved around this term.

‘for what must have been the tenth time, he (Begin) objected to the term West Bank, giving a lesson to the president on the geographic and historical appropriateness of the term and the importance of using the words Judea and Samaria.’ ^[40]

Begin refused to back down from his ‘rock-hard’ intransigence on using ‘Judea and Samaria’ and at the Camp David signing ceremony, (March 26,1979) several interpretive notes were required to be added as annexes to the basic documents, one specifically dealing with the West Bank, which President Carter annotated with his own hand with the words:

‘I have been informed that the expression ‘West Bank’ is understood by the Government of Israel to mean ‘Judea and Samaria’. ^[41]

An ambitious programme of colonising settlement, toponomastic Hebraisation and cultural Judaization was undertaken, and indigenous Palestinians were shifted off their land, in a repetition of the Negev programme, which forms the precedent. The programme took wing especially after the unprovoked^[42]invasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose key political objectives included ousting the refugee Palestinian resistance in the para-state^[43] on Israel’s northern flank from Lebanon, where the PLO projected a 'state in waiting' image that threatened Israel’s plans for long-term control over the West Bank. The war was, the head of the IDF said at the time, ‘part of the struggle over the Land of Israel^[44]. It aimed to further the isolation of Palestinians on the West Bank by depriving them of close support, halt the rise to political respectability of the PLO, which embodied Palestinian nationalist aspirations, and deprive that body of its claims to be a political partner in the peace process for Israel’s normalization of its relations with the outside world. ^[45] One calculation, a minority view entertained by both Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eytan, however, was that, expelled from Lebanon, the PLO would be forced to return to Jordan, topple king Hussein, and establish a Palestinian state there to satisfy Palestinian national ambitions that Israel would thwart on the West Bank. ^[46]

Changing the realities of occupied territory by the manipulation of language, Hebrew, Arabic, and in controllable sources like the global Wikipedia, became a programmatic goal. The settlers were in fact 'colonists' in the old sense, but Israeli English usage has here prevailed in the politics of the culture wars to determine how the international community perceives the dynamics of that area. The corresponding Hebrew usage is complex (see Israeli settlements), but continuity with the biblical setlement of Eretz Yisrael is evoked by referring to Jewish settlers as mitnahalim. The root *n-h-l directly evokes a passage in the Book of Numbers^[47] where each tribe is assigned its portion on entering Canaan, or the Land of Israel, particularly as ' in the pledge by the tribes of Gad and Reuben that they will fight on the west side of the Jordan river to help the other tribes take possession of their assigned portions'^[48] Settlers, qua, mitnahalim are not colonizing anybody's land, in this usage: they are simply taking up their 'assigned portions' as those were marked out by God to the Chosen People.

Rashid Khalidi has remarked how the Israeli authorities themselves try to engineer the way Palestinians think in Arabic by tampering with that language's natural idiom in the Arabic broadcasts they authorize. Over Israeli Arabic channels, one does not hear Jerusalem referred to, as it is customarily in Arabic, and by Palestinians, as Bayt al-Maqdis ('The House of Sanctity') or Al Quds al-Sharif ('The Noble Holy Place'). Arabic usage as sanctioned by Israel speaks rather of Urshalim ('Jerusalem') or Urshalim/al-Quds ('Jerusalem Al-Quds'). The purpose is to diffuse a variety of Arabic names for places that are calques on the Hebrew terms chosen for the area.^[49].

This goes right through the bureaucratic language, a form of linguistic colonization that reinforces the physical occupation of the west Bank by cultural re-engineering. A new travel permit was imposed on the colonized Palestinians in the West Bank in 2002, and required of any of them wishing to travel in that area. This was issued, printed and released by Israeli authorities who call it in Arabic Tasrih tanaqul khas fi al-hawajiz al-dakhiliyya fi mantaqat yahuda wa al-samara. ('Special Travel Permit for the Internal Checkpioints in the Area of Judea and Samaria.'). Here, Palestinians who must travel in the West Bank, for them 'Filastin', are required to obtain a document which requires that area to be referred to by the settler term, 'Judea and Samaria'. It is this form of Arabic which they are expected to use in negotiating their way with Israeli authorities through checkpoints. But West Bank Palestinians simply abbreviate it and refer to their tasrih dakhili (Checkpoint permit), ^[50], thereby eluding the settler term imposed on them.

Michael Sfard indeed has spoken of Hebrew being mobilized to lend itself to the national emergency of occupying Palestine, and denying the Palestinians the liberty to be themselves. They are passive subjects of an activist language that wraps them about in bureaucratic euphemisms.

'It has been tasked with providing a soothing, anesthetizing name for the entire project of suffocation, for the blanket system of theft we have imposed on those we occupy . . Thus extrajudicial executions have become “targeted assassinations”. Torture has been dubbed “moderate physical pressure”. Expulsion to Gaza has been renamed “assigning a place of residence”. The theft of privately owned land has become “declaring the land state-owned”. Collective punishment is “leveraging civilians”; and collective punishment by blockade is a “siege,” “closure” or “separation".'^[51]

A proposal is now being made to apply the principle of Hebraization, as of 2009, even to those places within Israel which the world designates by traditional toponyms, such as Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) Nazareth (Natzrat) and Jaffa (Yafo).^[52][53] According to Yossi Sarid, the process, illustrated further by Knesset proposals to eliminate Arabic as one of Israel's official languages, constitutes a form of ethnocide.^[54]

(vi) Analysis of Ynhockey's suggestions

‘Mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy and codified’ ^[55]

'Mapmaking is not, however, solely an instrument of war; it is an activity of supreme political significance – a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and symbolic values, while cloaking them in a guise of “scientific objectivity.” Maps are generally judged in terms of their “accuracy”, that is, the degree to which they succeed in reflecting and depicting the morphological landscape and its “man-made” covering But maps portray a fictitious reality that differs from other sorts of printed matter only in form.'^[56]

After 1967 ‘Cartographers . .had many options, which tended to reveal their political proclivities. Those who were sympathetic to Israel labelled the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai as “administered territories” and used the phrase “Judea and Samaria” for Jordan’s former West Bank. They also included all of Jerusalem within Israeli territory,. Mapmakers who were ideologically neutral generally referred to “occupied territory” and maintained the term “West Bank”. . . In the post-1993 period a Palestinian Authority has been established in the West Bank and Gaza, yet there is no actual independent state of Palestine. Most international maps have stayed with the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” but maps published by the Palestinian Authority describe these areas as “Palestine.” Furthermore, Palestinian Authority maps usually leave out Israel and assign its territory to “Palestine,” with the added designation that it is “occupied territory.”Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Harvey Sicherman, The power of projections: : how maps reflect global politics and history, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006 pp.37-8

We are dealing with a defined territory and its naming. User:Ynhockey would make tidy distinctions, define the bound geographical territory (CIA Factbook) as just a political reality, and use Judea and Samaria for all other contexts. In his own work on Wiki, much of it admirable, we find many maps. Examine the following map he authored and uploaded, and which is employed on the Battle of Karameh

The central colour, a washed acquamarine tint, allows one to highlight the field of movement in the battle, and blurs the neat territorial division between the West Bank, and Jordan. But note that, in a wholly unnecessary manner, Israel is stamped in large bold characters and made to overlay the West Bank, which is placed diminutively in parentheses. Willy-nilly, the impression is that the West Bank is some territorial hypothesis or province within Israel. Whether Ynhockey meant to give the reader this impression or not is immaterial. Maps, as one source already quoted noted, reflect the cognitive bias of the mapmaker as much as an interpretation of a landscape, and here the bias is that the West Bank is under Israel, behind Israeli lines, a subset of that state. It is a fine example of what many cartographers and historians of cartography argue: the making of maps, and toponymic nomenclature in them, serves several purposes, to clarify, as here, a battle landscape, for example, but also to impose or assert power, or claims, or blur facts. Objectively, User:Ynhockey has loaded wiki with a map that cogs our perceptions, tilting them to an annexationist assumption. Indeed, unlike the Israeli government so far, his map actually looks like it has the West Bank annexed.

Further reading:-

• Mark Monmonier, No Dig, No Fly, No Go. How maps restrict and control, University of Chicago Press 2010

• Stephen F. Eisenman 'A Small Boy and Israel, Counterpunch 10 November 2023 Nishidani (talk) 09:48, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Yuval Abraham, 'Gazans worked in Israeli kibbutzim for decades. Then came Oct. 7,' +972 magazine 6 November 2023
• Anna Morrow, 'Israel’s war is the biggest threat to Jewish peoplehood,' The Forward 8 November 2023
• Erika Solomon, 'Germany’s Stifling of Pro-Palestinian Voices Pits Historical Guilt Against Free Speech,' New York Times 10 November 2023
• Tareq S. Haijaj The stories we don’t know how to tell Mondoweiss 10 November 2023 (Issam Ileywa RIP)
• Linda Dayan, 'Ahmed Wanted Israelis to Listen to Gazans. Then 23 of His Family Members Were Killed,' On the Facebook page 'Across the Wall,' Israelis read personal stories by Gazans in Hebrew, until the last update came in: 'The entire family of this page’s founder has been bombed to death.' The Israeli co-founder of the page now says: 'I don’t know if we’ll be able to build that bridge again Haaretz 2 November 2023
• Raja Shehadeh, 'Israel has long wanted Palestinians out of Gaza – my father saw it firsthand,' The Guardian 20 November 2023

Events point to Israel’s strategy of emptying the north of Gaza of its Palestinian population, with both the massive bombardment that has damaged at least 222,000 residential units, . . .Everything that gave me hope that when violence reaches an unconscionable point and excessive violations of human rights are committed, Israel will be made to stop, is shattered now. I used to have faith that we would be protected by international humanitarian law, or by an outcry from the Israeli public against the excesses of their government – yet at this point I see no hope in either. Nor does it seem that there is hope that Israel will wake up from the delusion that war and violence against the Palestinians and its unassailable military strength will give it peace and security. This leaves us Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories vulnerable and with serious danger for our lives and our future presence in this land.

This article is the best I've read, succint, to the point. Of course as a founder of Al Haq, Shehadah must be dismissed as a terrorist, since Israel regards that and any other Palestinian rights organization as a front for terrorism.Nishidani (talk) 14:39, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Raji Sourani, 'I Live in Gaza. Israel’s Horrific Bombing Campaign Is Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen Before,' Jacobin 7 November 2023

We believe we are on the right side of history and that we are the stones of the valley. Despite the immensity of the challenges we face, people here do not give up.

If anyone is wondering where the Palestinian Gandhis are, the answer is that they are kidnapped and taken to unknown locations where they are being tortured, sitting in military and administrative detention in Israeli prisons, killed in cold blood on the way home from school, dying of treatable wounds in destroyed hospitals, buried under the rubble of vengeance in Gaza. Despite this, there are many who will continue to grow up in Palestine’s long-standing culture of resistance.

• Alison Avigayil Ramer, 'Bassem and Ahed Tamimi are in Israeli prison because they stand for Palestinian freedom,' 19 November 2023.

This is a powerful piece of testimony by an American-Jewish Israeli of what just one pacifist family suffered relentlessly through 13 years of her personal relationship with them, and in particular with Ahed Tamimi , now imprisoned for incitement to terrorism either because she totally blew her cool with an hysterical outburst commending the Hamas murders on the 7th of October before erasing the twitter post or because the usual suspects hacked her account and faked the said post to trap her with a rap and a long jail sentence. The details are on Ahed Tamimi's wiki page, but Ramer's concluding remarks underwrite what the whole historic record attests, and particularly the extreaordinary stoicism of that people under engineered conditions of willed immiseration.Nishidani (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

'If anyone is wondering where the Palestinian Gandhis are, the answer is that they are kidnapped and taken to unknown locations where they are being tortured, sitting in military and administrative detention in Israeli prisons, killed in cold blood on the way home from school, dying of treatable wounds in destroyed hospitals, buried under the rubble of vengeance in Gaza. Despite this, there are many who will continue to grow up in Palestine’s long-standing culture of resistance.The fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian people have remained steadfast for so long is a miracle of the human spirit. Extensive anti-Palestinian propaganda perpetuated by Israel and racist mainstream media coverage for decades should not rob humanity of knowing about some of the greatest activists in modern history.'

• 'Israel/OPT: ‘Nowhere safe in Gaza’: Unlawful Israeli strikes illustrate callous disregard for Palestinian lives,' Amnesty International 20 November 2023

In 1900 the Christian population of Palestine was more than double that of the Jewish population (now 1.9%. from that historic 10%) One of its oldest communities survived in Gaza, under Hamas's protection (it had been threatened by Islamic Jihad). That too has come under assault, with the strike on the grounds of the Church of Saint Porphyrius, where the Gaza Triad no doubt worshipped.Nishidani (talk) 15:09, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your list provides informative and thoughtful insights. BTW, did you get a chance to read the article from Oct. 27 by Max Blumenthal, saying there is high probability that many (perhaps even most) of the Israeli civilians (as well as Israeli soldiers) killed on October 7 were killed by so-called 'friendly' fire? It is not my intention to minimize, belittle or trivialize the proven fact that Palestinians killed many Israeli civilians on October 7, but it appears likely the Israeli military has also killed many Israeli civilians (and soldiers) on that day. Your thoughts? Ijon Tichy (talk) 11:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What is remarkable about all these articles (only 1 is RS)

• David Sheen, Ali Abunimah, 'Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says,' Electronic Intifada 16 October 2023.
• Max Blumenthal, 'October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles,' The Greyzone 27 October 2023
• 'A growing number of reports indicate Israeli forces responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths following October 7 attack,'Mondoweiss 22 October 2023
• Ali Abunimah,“Shoot at everything”: How Israeli pilots killed their own civilians,'Electronic Intifada 11 November 2023

is that they (a) draw directly on numerous reports in the Israeli press that however (b) like these articles themselves, are ignored by the Western mainstream press. So you have a paradox: Israel's press is 'freer' than its Western counterparts in reporting on the conflict, but its political elites (including the IDF) allow themselves a far more restricted set of options than would normally be the case in deliberations on critical situations in Western countries.

Why destroy an entire landscape when the enemy is underground? There is a very simple technological weakness in Hamas's tunnel-system. It needs large numbers of audible generators, detectable by sensors, to induct and circulate fresh air. Any network could be 'neutralized' by destroying the generators, giving those inside the option of surrender or asphixiation.(Trying to think in strictly military terms, as though I were an IDF commander) Nishidani (talk) 17:55, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More remarkable statements

• Jonathan Ofir, Israeli rabbis tell Netanyahu that Israel has a right to bomb Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza,' Mondoweiss 31 October 2023
• Tali Shapiro Jonathan Ofir, Israeli doctors urge the bombing of Gaza hospitals, Mondoweiss 5 November 2023

Nishidani (talk) 23:05, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Palestinians play a crucial role in the Israeli health system: we comprise 30 percent of the doctors, 30 percent of the nurses, and some 40 percent of the pharmacists, and all of us are being watched these days. The health system has adopted a McCarthyist witch-hunt approach toward all Palestinians. There are many cases of intimidation and persecution against medical personnel: according to civil society coalitions monitoring political persecution at workplaces since the war began, some 20 percent of the reported cases are of medical teams.This is not entirely new. We were always asked to come and do our job, play a crucial role in the health system, but keep our feelings and political views at home. Now, though, things are much worse.Medical personnel are being accused of supporting terror for liking a social media post, or for showing any sympathy with Palestinian pain or suffering. We cannot engage in any intellectual or moral conversation about the war. We are expected to condemn Hamas and join the patriotic Israeli military frenzy, while silently watching our Jewish colleagues cheer for the destruction of hospitals, the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, and the tightening of the blockade.'Ghousoon Bisharat, 'A Palestinian physician in Israel wrestles with her duty in the war: Lina Qasem-Hassan was due to join a medical delegation to Gaza,' +972 magazine 16 November 2023

Honourable men (once upon a time)

After the war, we heard that the first target usually seen by the pilots in the enclosed waterway was the Canberra. By chance, she was painted white, which was taken by the attackers to mean that she was a hospital ship. Without exception, the Argentinian pilots were honourable men, and not one attacked what they thought was a sanctuary for the injured.' Sharkey Ward,Sea Harrier over the Falklands, Cassell (1992) 2000 p.273.

Et cetera

• Elliot Colla, On the History, Meaning, and Power of 'From the River to the Sea,' Mondoweiss 16 November 2023

Useful source for some project on the laundremat linguistics of constantly endeavouring to spin out as antisemitic virtually the whole vocabulary used to describe Israel and thereby, by rendering the topic ineffable, make criticism impossible unless the words and concepts have received a prior seal of official approval by the interested party.Nishidani (talk) 11:24, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Interview with Max Blumenthal, posted on 17 Nov 2023. He summarizes his article above, and provides additional insights and analysis, not only on the events of Oct. 7-8 but also on more recent military, political, social and cultural trends in Gaza, Israel, the US and Western Europe.

(As a Jewish Israeli-American who has many good [as well as some bad] childhood memories of growing up in Israel and still has a small number of dear family and friends in beautiful Israel, I personally found the part about the increasingly insane, increasingly ethnocidal/ genocidal indoctrination and incitement inside Israeli Jewish society to be particularly disturbing. But this is not surprising, in light of the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, a settler-colonial state.) Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have many wonderful memories of my time in Israel, and also of the Golan Heights, the Sinai, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When enjoying a day off (I chose to work three shifts, from 3.30 am to 7 pm), I hitchhiked and invariably was picked up and given a free ride by taxi-drivers from Gaza, which I visited after talking my way past border guards who insisted I'd risk being murdered by terrorists. My father had been stationed in Gaza in WW2, and left a letter describing his pleasant evenings there).

Over the last few decades, I've come to the conclusion that Israel is caught up in an historical and structural logic, following on from the racial premises of Zionism, which militates against any resolution of its internal contradictions. Forget (in the sense of thinking they are part of the problem) about Palestinians: history has long wiped its arse on them. The problem is essentially what the internal, downspiralling dynamics of its limited options creates for the 'diaspora'. Zionism arose as an aggressive challenge to Jewish diaspora civilization. It took several decades of colonial accomplishments and intensive diplomatic and emotional pressuring to get Jewish communities throughout the world to anneal their vision of Jewishness, in all of its varieties, with the model Israel produced, a muscular, nationalist concept of the 'new Jew'. For readers of Josephus, all this is not 'new'. Rabbinical wisdom drew a lesson from the latter, which has now been forgotten in the tragic euphoria of successive, superficially successful wars. This latest episode, in a world where the mainstream media narrative no longer holds water because everyone, esp. the young, can access alternative media or the work of people like Blumenthal, will tend to give rise to exasperations which Israel and its commentariat will exploit to spin as a 'new' new antisemitism. No doubt antisemitism will indeed be strengthened - most cannot distinguish 'Jews' from Israel precisely because Zionism has insisted on their interchangeability. One can read Zionism, like Christianity, as a 'Jewish' heresy. The latter generated antisemitism, and Zionism itself may paradoxically, in one of those deep ironies beloved of history, produce a similar result for different reasons. But that will not relieve Jews in the diaspora of the difficult choices it must now make - retention of its assimilative humanism which has been the glory of its haskalah heritage, or endorsement, no ifs or buts, of a fierce ethnonationalism as the logic of history drives Israel even further down the path of maximalism. Best wishes 21:37, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani (talk)

• Jonathan Ofir, Influential Israeli national security leader makes the case for genocide in Gaza,' 20 November Mondoweiss 2023

Retired Major-General Giora Eiland:

The way to win the war faster and at a lower cost for us requires a system collapse on the other side and not the mere killing of more Hamas fighters. The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers. And no, this is not about cruelty for cruelty’s sake since we don’t support the suffering of the other side as an end but as a means.

The whole article is worth reading for a clue as to the kind of mentality that one often notes among the upper echelons of the IDF.Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be.

That is almost identical in tone and content to the drift of Himmler's speech addressing troops who had just mown down about 150 Jews near Minsk in 1941.Nishidani (talk) 18:04, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Israel allegedly enforces 'Hannibal Protocol' on Oct. 7, killing festival-goers to prevent their captivity. "'What we’ve seen here is mass Hannibal,' [Israeli] Lt. Col. Nof Erez says on [Israel's] military response to surprise attack at festival, where 364 people were killed." Published by Anadolu Agency, a Turkish news agency.
• Israel’s Campaign Against Palestinian Olive Trees, by the Yale Review of International Studies.
• Fool Me Twice. "The tried-and-tested tropes of the post-9/11 and Iraq War eras have been deployed for Israel's war in Gaza. The returns are diminishing."
• Israel's fears, its delusions and its future. Conversation with Daniel Levy, former Israeli negotiator and analyst who now heads the US-Middle East Project. --- Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:13, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Philip Oltermann, Israel-Hamas war opens up German debate over meaning of ‘Never again’ The Guardian 22 November 2023

In Berlin, the city senate is considering pulling funding for the Oyun cultural centre in the German capital’s Neukölln district, after the centre’s directors reportedly refused to cancel a peace vigil by a leftwing Jewish group.

I.e.German hypervigilance against a recrudescence of antisemitism as part of its programmatic if clichéd Vergangenheitsbewältigung has now ironically morphed into a vigilante punishing of Jews who are critical of Israel.Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Likewise,Apparently, right under our smog-insensitivized noses, US universities have been hijacked by a phenomenon even more terrifying than Hamas. They form a “woke mind virus factory,” Jack D The outsized place of the U.S. university in the current struggle, Mondoweiss 22 November 2023

• Basic Principles of Humanity, New York Review of Books (18 Nov. 2023). An interview with Human rights expert Sari Bashi, who lives in the West Bank and is the program director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), where she leads the organization’s research. “Willfully impeding the delivery of relief supplies, in particular life-saving fuel, is a war crime.” Ijon Tichy (talk) 22:54, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Yoav Haifawi, How Israel undermined the prisoner exchange by widening the definition of ‘security prisoners’ Mondoweiss 7 December 2023
• Donor Class vs. the First Amendment with John Mearsheimer.
• Philip Weiss. Weekly Briefing: Biden is risking reelection over Gaza to please donors, the mainstream media reports, Mondoweiss 19 May 2024 on how finally even the mainstream press is now documenting the huge role pro-Israeli Jewish donors in the US are using their billionares' heft to constrain universities to clamp down on dissentient views on campus.Nishidani (talk) 14:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hamas operatives are also trained to fire on IDF soldiers when they see them' Yaakov Lappin, 'Some 10 out of 24 Hamas battalions ‘significantly damaged’,' Jewish News Syndicate 20 November 2023

It's reported than despite the vast IDF bulldozing and uprooting of Gazan agriculture, a patch of strawberries was found by a group of invasive settlers, so the compromised land of the Philistines can once more offer fertile prospects as a promised land for settlers Nishidani (talk) 06:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Taking a leaf out of battle descriptions of the Israelites against the Philistines in the Bible, the Israeli minister for Telecommunications Shlomo Karhi has apparently called for the circumcision of captured Hamas fighters.(Oren Ziv , Yotam Ronen, Carrying the pain of loss on October 7, these families are pleading for peace, +972 magazine 22 November 2023 Nishidani (talk) 09:02, 23 November 2023 (UTC))[reply]

I don't know the common practice in Gaza, but most Muslim men are circumcised though it isn't compulsory. Zero^talk 12:27, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I was going to say ... pretty empty, if fucked-up threat ... Iskandar323 (talk) 13:11, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, of course, we all should know Muslims generally undergo circumcision. That was the point of citing this trash - the unbelievable obtusity of the ignorant who have a voice in shaping perceptions of this war. The 'Philistine' of the 'piece' is the fool who wrote that. See below for another bite from the tsunami of appalling crassness flooding the airwaves.Nishidani (talk) 11:28, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Apparently some editorsin here are engaged in a new crime; the keyboard terrorism of documenting suffering that is not IsraeliNishidani (talk) 16:38, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yafa Adar is home.The sub-humans around her are already lying deep underground, their house has probably been turned into rubble by the army of the state of Israel. That’s Jewish, Israeli power.(Yosef Israeli a reporter for Channel 13 cited Canaan Yidor, Israelis celebrate the return of hostage Yaffa Adar, 85, whose stoicism ‘embodies Zionism’, The Times of Israel 25 November 2023 )

It is natural that in a tragedy we connect and respond more instinctively to the fate of those whom we (may) know. Yaffa Adar was originally reported to be from Kfar Aza, where I once worked. I wondered whether I had known her during my stay, while deeply moved by the photo of her in a Hamas jeep being carted off to Gaza as a hostage. The photo of her resigned, apparent ease (almost 'well, I'd better get used to this new episode in my life') will figure as one of the iconic snapshots of the Israeli side of this war. I was really chuffed up to see her safe and sound, while naturally thinking that 10,000 plus 'sub-human' Gaza women and children would not survive to tell their side of the story. Hence the obscenity of the remark above. There are few things, readingwise, more nauseating that reading the infantile outpourings of an extremely jejune nationalism.Nishidani (talk) 11:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Zionism – An Ideology for the Self-Loathing (27 October 2023). by Roger Harris for CounterPunch. "Yet growing numbers of us [American Jews] still embrace our ancestral identity and, especially in light of current events, wholly renounce its self-loathing antithesis of Zionism. What the Nazis failed to achieve – the obliteration of European Jewish culture – the Zionists are carrying forward. We have a word for that in Yiddish. It’s a shanda, a scandalous embarrassment and shame." Ijon Tichy (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Rhana Natour, 'These Palestinian boys received life-saving surgery in the US. An Israeli airstrike killed them in their home,' The Guardian 28 November 2023

• I’m exasperated by people whose hearts bleed for only one side, or who say about the toll on the other: “It’s tragic, but ….” No “buts.” Unless you believe in human rights for Jews and for Palestinians, you don’t actually believe in human rights.Likewise, Palestinians deserve a country, freedom and dignity — and they shouldn’t be subjected to collective punishment. We’ve reached a searing milestone: In just five weeks of war, half of 1 percent of Gaza’s population has been killed. To put it in perspective, that’s more than the share of the American population that was killed in all of World War II — over the course of four years. Nicholas Kristoff,'What We Get Wrong About Israel and Gaza,' New York Times 15 November 2023

• Most editors won't have time to read the several good book-length studies of Hamas. But an excellent early study of its dynamics is available on jstor and should be required reading, as a cautionary prophylaxis against swallowing holus-bolus the Hamas=terrorism-and-nothing-else meme that is an article of faith in mainstream reportage, and the default staple of nearly all Israeli newspapers. I refer to Menachem Klein, Hamas in Power, Middle East Journal , Summer 2007, Vol. 61, No. 3 , pp. 442-459 Nishidani (talk) 21:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Tareq S. Hajjaj,'‘They shot her son in her arms and forced her to throw his body’: testimonies from the death march on Salah al-Din Street,' Mondoweiss 30 November 2023

The Salah al-Din Trail of Tears or something like that will probably be written some years down the track, when testimonies from masses of survivors of the trek involving over a million individuals are cross-checked. The killing of several dozen local reporters has made the collection of evidence extremely difficult, the systemic bias of giving intense coverage to Jewish victims of Hamas's outrage while only referring to the obvious death march in generic allusions to an abstract mass's plight in a line or two. Some of Hajjaj's material consists of rumours, but the hallucinating experiences of people like the lad with the smashed leg look typical and not unlikely for at least several thousands.Nishidani (talk) 07:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• The Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza: Understanding history. "Zionists say they do not understand why Palestinians take up arms, and that their insurgency is terrorism. Let them read their own history. Where it says Ana put Jana. Where it says Jews put Palestinians, where it says Warsaw put Gaza and where it says Nazis put Zionists. Maybe then they will understand."
• The Israeli perspective–on genocide–dominates our airwaves. ---- Ijon Tichy (talk) 07:52, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Inside the Pro-Israel Information War. "Israeli gov-led Zoom calls, WhatsApp chat logs, and other docs provide a window into the massive effort to shape online discourse and silence pro-Palestinian voices." Long-form article by Lee Fang and Jack Poulson. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:59, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the saying, 'scum always rises to the surface' is invariably true, but the bags here do appear to follow the rule. Thanks. Nishidani (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Israelis aren't seeing the devastating pictures Australians see from the war in Gaza. They're watching a sanitised war (9 December 2023). John Lyons in ABC News (Australia)

• ‘Israel-Hamas War’ Label Obscures Israel’s War on Palestinians (8 December 2023). Gregory Shupak in FAIR. "What the media presents as a war between Israel and an armed Palestinian resistance group is in reality an Israeli war on Palestinians’ physical survival, on their food and clean water supplies, on their homes, healthcare, schools, children and places of worship—a war, in other words, on the Palestinians as a people." Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:30, 10 December 2023 (UTC). --- Here are several additional thoughtful and insightful articles by Gregory Shupak on key media aspects of Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, posted over the last 3 years. He also wrote a book about this. Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:54, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds (9 December 2023). Julian Borger in The Guardian. "Civilian proportion of deaths is higher than the average in all world conflicts in 20th century, data suggests." Original in Haaretz: "The Israeli Army Has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza, and the Data Shows Unprecedented Killing. The IDF chief of staff recently boasted of the army's precise munitions and its ability to reduce harm to noncombatants. But the data shows that in the war on Hamas that principle has been abandoned. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Death and Destruction in Gaza (11 December 2023). By John Mearsheimer. "As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?" ["... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"] Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yesterday, Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Arieh King tweeted a photo of over a hundred naked Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli military in Gaza, handcuffed, and sitting in the sand, guarded by Israeli soldiers. King wrote that “The IDF is exterminating the Nazi Muslims in Gaza” and that “we must up the tempo”. “If it were up to me,” he added, “I would bring 4 D9’s [bulldozers], place them behind the sandy hills and give an order to bury all those hundreds of Nazis alive. They are not human beings and not even human animals, they are subhuman and that is how they should be treated,” King said. He ended by repeating Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek genocidal reference: “Eradicate the memory of the Amalek, we will not forget.” Jonathan Ofir, 'I used to think the term ’Judeo-Nazis’ was excessive. I don’t any longer,' Mondoweiss 8 December 2023

Nothing of this surprises me. What does is the moral cowardice of the communities who stand by. Nishidani (talk) 00:13, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are several reasons for the moral cowardice of the wealthy western nations (especially the US, Western Europe, Canada, Australia etc). At least two reasons come to mind: (a) The tremendous power of the pro-Israel lobbies in these countries, and (b) There are very large fossil fuel reserves near the coast of Gaza, and the US strongly prefers that these reserves would be under Israeli control and not under Palestinian control, because if they're in Palestinian hands the Palestinians then could sell (most of) the fossil fuels to China, whereas if these resources are in Israeli hands, the US government could exert enormously powerful pressure on the Israeli gov't to refrain from selling them to China.

Over the last 15 years or so, the US has been gradually shifting its foreign policy (for the US, its 'foreign' policy has always been practically indistinguishable from being a key component of its overall long-horizon economic policy) to focusing on trying to 'compete' with China i.e. to weaken/ hurt/ cripple the Chinese economy as much as possible. This is true for all US administrations regardless of political party affiliation, including both Democunt as well as Republicunt, starting in the last couple of years of the Bush Jr administration and continuing with the administrations of Obama, Trump and now Biden. The numbers don't lie, and the economic numbers are basically almost all that has ever mattered to US (and Chinese, Western European, etc) decision makers. Up until recent years, US GDP was by far the largest on the planet, but in the last few decades China's GDP has been growing faster than the US's and has recently surpassed the US: today China's GDP (PPP) is roughly about $33 Trillion, while US GDP (PPP) is about $27 trillion. That is, from the POV of US decision makers, their top priority, by far, is how to slow - and preferably reverse - the fact that the US has in recent years lost its undisputed global economic dominance to China.

See this, among several other articles and books published in recent years about the geopolitical implications of the vast oil and natural gas reserves near the Gaza shoreline. Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:23, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• The Death of Israel (17 December 2023). By Chris Hedges for ScheerPost. "Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception."

Well, I think that is a piece of wishful thinking. It is simply wrong-headed to assert that 'Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception'. The 'new' world is dominated by successful settler colonial states that have withstood the usury of time, and indeed thrived, and Israel will be no exception. Of course this latest triumph of Zionism rubbishes the moral force of both the haskalah tradition and the Holocaust, but they too are past their use-by date.Nishidani (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• What is wrong with Israelis? (27 December 2023). "Max Blumenthal takes a searing look at the societal sickness that exploded into the open after October 7, as Israelis of all walks of life took to social media to mock the suffering and torture of Palestinians, and proudly broadcasted grotesque war crimes to the world." Ijon Tichy (talk) 10:47, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

None of which is reported abroad. That Gaza is one huge whore, deserving of genocidal rape by missiles carrying the signatures of young Israeli women, is all over Israeli social media, as are euphoric chants by children, rabbinical students and entertainers in army camps mocking the destruction of Palestinian women and children. It's all there, and invisible to readers. Words fail one.Nishidani (talk) 13:10, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• More on moral cowardice: Saudis Attempt To Normalize Ties With Israel By Air-Striking Gaza (11 August 2023). By the writers of The Onion.

• Yet more on moral cowardice: ‘The Onion’ Stands With Israel Because It Seems Like You Get In Less Trouble For That (13 October 2023). By the Editorial Board of The Onion. "Some may call us cowards for our decision. To this, we can only say the following: If a coward is a person [IT: or a government] who avoids taking a difficult stance on topics for personal expediency, then “coward” is a badge this editorial board will gladly wear, again and again and again." Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:54, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• NY Times October 7 hoax exposed (30 December 2023). By Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate, who "meticulously debunk a New York Times article purporting to demonstrate that Hamas carried out a policy of sexual assault against Israelis on October 7, and demonstrate that the Times' Jeffrey Gettleman is guilty of journalistic malpractice and serving as a willing tool for the serially mendacious Israeli government." Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:33, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That the NYTs article is a pretentious exercise in pseudo-journalism is self-evident, but I don't think Max B is at his best there. That challenge is not meticulous but somewhat offhandish. MB was showing signs of fatigue. Does an amputated breast maintain its shape so that it can be thrown around and juggled like a ball, as was claimed? That is now a meme, and I've yet to see anyone stop to think about it. Only in Picasso's imagination, one would think. I made the 850 mile train trip to Madrid in late 1981 just to catch the inaugural showing in that country of Guernica. There has been a Guernica every day since 7 Oct. The past has no more resonance.Nishidani (talk) 04:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Chris Hedges: Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust (31 December 2023). By Chris Hedges for ScheerPost. "By obscuring and falsifying the lessons of the Holocaust we perpetuate the evil that defined it." Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:39, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• The only thing to note is that the relevant provisions of international law can never, in all probability, be interpreted in a way to hinder Zionism's historical mission to utterly disintegrate the indigenous population of Palestine. The present ethnocide will simply lead to a surge in industrial and industrious scholarship that, while confirming the obvious, will inflect neither Israeli opinion, world opinion nor international concepts of justice. The only thing that interests me at this point is to observe to what degree Israel will succeed in convincing the diaspora that all this Germanic thoroughness in wiping away an authentically semitic people is for the good of the Jewish people. In any case, rather than Hedges, see the ever-lucid A. Dirk Moses, More than Genocide: The law occludes the abhorrent violence routinely perpetrated by states in the name of self-defense The Boston Review 14 November 2023Nishidani (talk) 12:30, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whenever I hear the babble of nonsense with which politicians dress up the horrors of war, I am once more that seven-year-old child, shocked, bewildered and deeply shamed.' Richard Flanagan Question 7, 2023 p.64.

• Mearsheimer today, on his substack: Genocide in Gaza 4 January 2024. Finally he's come round to regarding it as a genocide. He's only saying, more politely, what the ranting Cornishman said days ago. --NSH001 (talk) 22:58, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, N. I noted in particular

the United States is a liberal democracy that is filled with intellectuals, newspaper editors, policymakers, pundits, and scholars who routinely proclaim their deep commitment to protecting human rights around the world. They tend to be highly vocal when countries commit war crimes, especially if the United States or any of its allies are involved. In the case of Israel’s genocide, however, most of the human rights mavens in the liberal mainstream have said little about Israel’s savage actions in Gaza or the genocidal rhetoric of its leaders. Hopefully, they will explain their disturbing silence at some point. Regardless, history will not be kind to them, as they said hardly a word while their country was complicit in a horrible crime, perpetrated right out in the open for all to see.

Application Instituting Proceedings regarding Israel's genocide lodged by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. pp.59-67 provide clear verbal evidence of genocidal intent by Israel's leaders.Nishidani (talk) 01:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• The best overview I am familiar with now is Seth Ackerman, There was an Iron Wall in Gaza Jacobin

This explained the anomalies in the attacks that I noted within the first two days, if the hypothesis of a rift within Hamas between the political and military wings, which led to a radical change in the battle orders by Sinyar et al., in the last three hours to include attacks on civilians, proves to be correct. Note that the rape, mutilation etc charges that were used to orchestrate Israel's case for retributive genocide against this collective of 'animals' are eerily reminiscent of, almost a replica of the testimonies about the Israeli assault on Palestinians at the Massacre of Deir Yassin in 48. Nishidani (talk) 01:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• How Israel's war on Gaza exposed Zionism as a genocidal cult (11 January 2024). By Joseph Massad in Middle East Eye. "The question is no longer whether the Israeli government is racist and genocidal but whether the Israeli Jewish majority supporting its crimes against Palestinians also fit this description." Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Gaza and New York (Nov/Dec 2023). By Alexander Zevin in New Left Review. "America’s exorbitant levels of military and diplomatic support for Israel have long been sustained by the hold of pro-Zionist advisors, donors and lobbies over US Middle East policy, Congress, the media and the cultural world. With the latest Gaza war, might their grip on the latter be weakening?" Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• ‘It is a time of witch hunts in Israel’: teacher held in solitary confinement for posting concern about Gaza deaths (13 January 2024). By Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem, for The Guardian. "Meir Baruchin, who was fired and jailed for criticising the military, says that many who agree with him are afraid to go public." Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:38, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• A Critical Look at The New York Times' Weaponization of Rape in Service of Israeli Propaganda (14 January 2024). By Randa Abdel-Fattah in the Institute for Palestine Studies. "The fact is that Israeli mass rape claims are so emblematic of wartime atrocity propaganda that you have to be deeply committed to and affirmed by the racist tropes of Palestinian men to suspend all critical thinking and, in doing so, consent to the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.   This is the sobering reality Palestinians face. The racism that animates hyper-attention over crimes imagined to have been committed against Israelis is the same racism that desensitizes people to crimes actually committed against Palestinians." Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:26, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Several recent reports by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate:

• Traumatizing the public into compliance w/official Israeli, US lies
• NYT atrocity propaganda continues to collapse
• Blockbuster Israeli report exposes Oct 7 friendly fire orders
• Max Blumenthal confronts State Dept on genocide support
• Life in Jerusalem under Israel's military dictatorship
• Israeli victims' families denounce NY Times 'Hamas rape' report

Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Jewish Scholars vs. Jewish Donors on Antisemitism (22 January 2024). By Peter Beinart for The Beinart Notebook. "... But there’s another divide, I think, kind of hidden divide, inside the American Jewish community that is often overlooked, that gets described in the language of antisemitism. And that’s a kind of a divide around class between different elements in the Jewish community that have different views about Israel and that are in different positions in terms of class. And I want to try to give an example of how this is playing itself out."

• A Hannibal Directive by Any Other Name (22 Jan 2024). By Brad Pierce for The Wayward Rabbler. "The IDF is Accused of Causing Mass Civilian Casualties on 10/7." Ijon Tichy (talk) 11:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Domicide: The Mass Destruction of Homes Should Be a Crime Against Humanity (29 January 2024), The New York Times. By Balakrishnan Rajagopal, with photos and accompanying text by Yaqeen Baker. Dr. Rajagopal is the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. Ms. Baker’s home was destroyed in the war in Gaza. Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:22, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Death and Donations: Did the Israeli Volunteer Group Handling the Dead of October 7 Exploit Its Role? (31 January 2024). By Aaron Rabinowitz for Haaretz. "The Zaka volunteer group began collecting bodies in the devastated communities of southern Israel immediately after the Hamas attack, while the IDF sidelined soldiers trained to retrieve remains. An investigation reveals cases of negligence, misinformation and a fundraising campaign that used the dead as props." Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:35, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Thomas Friedman’s Vermin Analogies Echo Ugly Pro-Genocide Propaganda (6 February 2024). Jim Naureckas for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had a piece in the Point (2/2/24), an online Times feature the paper describes as “conversations and insights about the moment,” that compared the targets of US bombs to vermin. It’s the sort of metaphor that propagandists have historically used to justify genocide." Ijon Tichy (talk) 15:33, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well if Friedman and his likes are now going mainstream with vermin tropes for the adversarial 'Other' (Theodor Adorno has a good early analysis of insect metaphors for despised ethnic groups, in The Authoritarian Personality (1951) - it was a serious element in antisemitic caricatures, vide Kafka for the most egregious example) I guess I'd better make a wiki page on the history of this variety of subhuman stereotype as it has developed in Israeli discourse on Palestinians.Nishidani (talk) 01:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• AIPAC of Lies (6 February 2024). By Arvin Alaigh for The Baffler. "The pro-Israel lobby brooks no dissent on Capitol Hill ... The Israeli government is losing the battle of public opinion across the world, and increasingly, in the United States ..." Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Energy firms face legal threat over Israeli licences to drill for gas off Gaza (15 Feb 2024). By Dania Akkad for Middle East Eye. "Rights groups say exploration licences handed to companies in first weeks of war encroach on Palestinian waters and may amount to the war crime of pillaging." Ijon Tichy (talk) 20:24, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite news to me. An insider privy to these things told me a good while back that the Gazan fields' resources were already being pilfered from by some lateral intrusions. Nishidani (talk) 23:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Opinion: I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation (16 Feb. 2024). Irfan Galaria, The Los Angeles Times.

• IDF Sent in Handcuffed Prisoner to Evacuate Hospital, Then Killed Him When He Left (14 Feb 2024). Kavita Chekuru, The Intercept. "The young man, bound by zip-tie cuffs, delivered his Israeli captors’ message but was shot as he tried to walk out of the hospital gate."

With regard to this item, scruple demands that I ask myself whether or not this young man might have been murdered by a Palestinian militant, in retaliation for acting as an Israeli messenger. Unlikely, but one never knows. All one has learnt from this war is that Israeli culture has never absorbed any moral lesson from the holocaust, except that moral sentiments are trash, a dangerous weakness in one's chutzpah armour or amour-propre. The real sum of the Palestinian dead has now reached roughly 38,000. Nishidani (talk) 22:26, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Israeli soldiers post distressing content out of Gaza (22 Feb 2024). CNN. "Israeli soldiers are taking to platforms like TikTok to document their destruction of infrastructure in Gaza -- with many adding what they consider as a comedic twist to their content." Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:18, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Israeli necropolitics and the pursuit of health justice in Palestine (Received 30 December 2023, Accepted 2 January 2024). Layth Hanbali, Edwin Jit Leung Kwong, Amy Neilson, James Smith, Sali Hafez, Rasha Khoury. BMJ Global Health, a prestigious peer reviewed academic journal. This particular paper is probably more of an editorial, it was not commissioned for external review but was internally peer reviewed. Some key sections:

"The horrific scale of Israel’s latest attacks validates the concerns and calls raised in our editorial: namely that Israel’s ongoing military violence in Gaza is an extension of the longstanding, systemic violence intrinsic to the Israeli state’s colonisation and occupation of Palestine. Connections can be clearly traced between the exploitation and dispossession of people, land and resources that defined European colonial violence, ongoing neocolonial exploitation worldwide, and every aspect of Israel’s settler colonial violence in Palestine today. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to actions that expose and challenge sites of exploitative and extractive power and violence. People’s health, lives and freedoms are at risk…

"Attempts to dehistoricise and decontextualise the present encourage us to ignore the many ways in which the Israeli state dictates both life and death for the Palestinian people, either through the fast violence of aerial bombardments, or what Berlant referred to as ‘slow death’: visible in the progressive dispossession of Palestinians who are crammed into ever-shrinking spaces, the denial of life-sustaining necessities and services, the destruction of livelihoods, repeated physical assaults and disablement, mass incarceration, extensive restrictions on movement (including to seek healthcare), and now ethnic cleansing in Gaza executed by mustering Palestinians through a dystopian grid of ever-shifting, supposedly ‘safe zones…

"The recognition of the systematic nature of this violence, and the pervasiveness of Israeli state control over almost every aspect of the everyday lives of Palestinians, made the philosopher Achille Mbembé declare that: ‘The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine’. It is the power to dictate the terms of life and death, and ultimately who lives and who dies. Repeatedly framing Palestinian violence as a provocation and Israeli violence as a response is a product of ignorance to the necropower exercised by the Israeli state. Necropower and necropolitics are enabled in places that Achille Mbembé termed ‘death-worlds’, where ‘vast populations are subjected to conditions of life’ that enable a precarious form of survival in perpetual proximity to death. Within this world, there is gross indifference to Palestinian suffering and extreme obfuscation of the horrors of Israeli necropolitics.

• Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-based Health Impact Projections, Report One: 7 February to 6 August 2024 (19 Feb 2024). Zeina Jamaluddine, Zhixi Chen, Hanan Abukmail, Sarah Aly, Shatha Elnakib, Gregory Barnsley, Fiona Majorin, Hannah Tong, Tak Igusa, Oona MR Campbell, Paul B. Spiegel, Francesco Checchi and the Gaza Health Impact Projections Working Group. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

"Executive Summary

"Overall

"The ongoing Israel-Gaza war has heavily affected civilians in both the Gaza Strip and Israel. Residents of Gaza are now mostly displaced from their homes and living in overcrowded conditions with insufficient access to water, sanitation and food, and health services have been considerably disrupted. So, to inform humanitarian and other decision-makers working on the Gaza crisis, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University have initiated a project to estimate the potential public health impact of the crisis under different future trajectories of its evolution. The first set of projections covers a six-month period from 7 February to 6 August 2024. The projections will be periodically updated until May 2024. The projections are not predictions of what will happen in Gaza but provide a range of projections of what could happen under three distinct scenarios: 1) an immediate permanent ceasefire; 2) status quo (a continuation of conditions experienced from October 2023 till mid-January); and 3) a further escalation of the conflict.

"The projections are based on a range of publicly available data from the current and past Gaza crises, data from similar crises, and peer-reviewed published research into excess death estimates and take into account the limitations and biases of different data sources. Where data is limited or unavailable, the projections draw on consultations with experts. These projections are designed to help humanitarian organisations, governments, and other actors plan their response to the crisis and take sound, evidence-based decisions. Ultimately, the hope is that they will make some contribution to saving lives.

"Over the next six months we project that, in the absence of epidemics, 6,550 excess deaths would occur under the ceasefire scenario, climbing to 58,260 under the status quo scenario and 74,290 under the escalation scenario. Over the same period and with the occurrence of epidemics, our projections rise to 11,580, 66,720, and 85,750, respectively. All projections feature 95% uncertainty intervals as shown in the Summary Table below.

"Under the ceasefire scenario, the projections suggest that infectious diseases would be the main cause of excess deaths, with 1,520 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 6,550 including epidemics. Traumatic injuries followed by infectious diseases would be the main causes of excess deaths in both the status quo (53,450 traumatic injuries; 2,120 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 10,590 including epidemics) and escalation scenarios (68,650 traumatic injuries; 2,720 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 14,180 including epidemics).

"Our projections indicate that even in the best-case ceasefire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur, mainly due to the time it would take to improve water, sanitation and shelter conditions, reduce malnutrition, and restore functioning healthcare services in Gaza. While the total number of estimated excess deaths from maternal and neonatal causes are relatively small (100-330 excess deaths), every loss of a mother has severe consequences for family health and wellbeing. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) were the primary cause of death in Gaza in 2022, and the conflict has aggravated these conditions (1,680-2,680 excess deaths) via heavily disrupted specialised health services and impeded access to treatment and medications.

• thanks. I wouldn't have otherwise caught that, which is clinically scientific and ventures rational scenarios, all of which translate into a statement that Israeli and American decision-makers are now familiar with the likely lethal consequences of the three options available. Sara Roy, with Jean-Pierre Filiu and Finkelstein the 3 world authorities on the Strip, spoke a year ago, before oCT 7 of Israel's longterm planned catastrophe'.Nishidani (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• 'Shocking, unsustainable and desperate' conditions across Gaza, Security Council hears (22 Feb 2024). UN News. Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Shielding (the) US Public From Israeli Reports of Friendly Fire on October 7 (23 February 2024). Bryce Greene, in Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. "... Indeed, IDF responsibility for Israeli deaths has been a repeated topic of discussion in the Israeli press, accompanied by demands for investigations. But the most US readers have gotten from their own press about the issue is a dismissive piece from the Washington Post about October 7 “truthers.” ... How many Israeli civilians were actually killed by Hamas, and how many by Israel? Was the Al Aqsa Flood a terrorist attack designed to kill as many civilians as possible? These are important questions that have yet to be conclusively and independently answered, but the Washington Post seems to want to dissuade people from even asking them. In evoking the specter of Holocaust denial, Dwoskin and the Post are not defending the truth, but attempting to protect readers from it." Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:38, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Were the four main Hamas leaders in Gaza endowed with an intelligent grasp of the wider forces of the modern international order, they would offer to place themselves in the hands of the ICJ to be put on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity, a position Hamas outlined some years ago as their readiness to be prosecuted abroad were such a trial to allow similar measures against Israeli leaders. Since the measure they took in attacking Israel foreseeably enabled the genocide of their own people underway, a cost they must have calculated, they should in theory accept that this kind of personal commitment to their own symbolic 'martyrdom' in a court of law is the one step that could sway world opinion to insist that Israel stop the war. Unfortunately, this won't happen. Nishidani (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I read quite a few years ago that 15% of American kids go to bed feeling hungry, something that I recall to mind while reading Israeli debates on whether or not children under 4 (but not over that age limit) should be provided with food currently. Ralph Nadar has now made the point more cogently.

Why is Congress preparing to appropriate over $14 billion to Israel in military and other aid without any public hearings and without any demonstrated fiscal need by Israel, a prosperous economic, technological and military superpower with a social safety net superior to that of the U.S.? USDA just reported over 44 million Americans struggled with hunger in 2022. Ralph Nader, What the Mass Media Needs to Cover Re: Israel/Gaza Conflict CounterPunch 26 February 2024

Yes, Hunger in the United States is a serious problem. Other major socio-economic problems include (but are not limited to) Homelessness in the United States, serious Crime in the United States (including gun violence), the largest known prison population in the world, the fact that annually tens of thousands of families declare bankruptcy because they are unable to pay their exorbitant medical bills, a relatively weak social safety net, a government with legislative and executive branches that for many decades have been to a very large extent captured by wealthy special interests/ Inverted totalitarianism, as well as other serious socio-economic ills.

Thanks for the article by Ralph Nader, it is informative and thought-provoking. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Extraordinary charges of bias emerge against NYTimes reporter Anat Schwartz (25 Feb. 2024). By James North for Mondoweiss. "New doubts are emerging about the New York Times’s coverage of sexual violence in the October 7 attack. The paper must explain why it broke its own rules by hiring a clearly biased writer who endorsed racist and violent rhetoric toward Palestinians."

Like Chalmers Johnson - one of the most thoughtful and insightful thinkers on US imperialism - said many years ago (slightly paraphrasing from my rusty memory): Don't read the New York Times to find out the truth, read the New York Times to find out the lies. (I don't think this is invariably true, but it is frequently true.) Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• As Journalists Are Murdered in Gaza Their Counterparts Lose Jobs in America (27 February 2024). Steven Thrasher for Literary Hub. "Steven W. Thrasher Wonders Who’s Left to “Afflict the Comfortable”." Ijon Tichy (talk) 09:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation (15 March 2024). Long-form article by Arun Gupta, Counterpunch. " ... But an investigation by YES! examining both reports, other media investigations, hundreds of news articles, interviews with Israeli sources, and photo and video evidence reveals a shocking conclusion: There is no evidence mass rape occurred." Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:59, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've already read both. I said from the outset that the horrendous massacre of several hundred civilians in one day would be spun in spectacularly lurid terms, when the mere facts were sufficient to freeze one's blood. Some years down the line, the actual facts and statistics, and contexts of each tragedy or act of violence will finally emerge. But the template of cooked babies, stabbed children, bayoneted vaginas, slashed-off breasts etc.etc.etc., has predictably won the day and will remain functional for the time frame that is important, the war, both on the ground, and in the media. The 130 odd hostages are prime time news: the 7000 Palestinians who languish in prisons, 3,000 alone seized from their families after 7 Oct as bartering material in future negotations, -tortured and uncharged, are in Palestinian terms, hostages, seized predominantly for political reasons, but the semantic distinction between 'hostage' and 'arrested suspect' means there too, the battle of misrepresentation has been won. All of these reports and counter-reports conjure up for me an image of a frigate armed with 40 36-pounder long guns engaging with a dhow defending itself with a handful of jezails. Nishidani (talk) 19:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• War on Gaza: Torture, executions, babies left to die, sexual abuse ... These are Israel’s crimes (15 March 2024). Jonathan Cook for the Middle East Eye. "Why is the same western media obsessively reheating five-month-old allegations against Hamas so reluctant to focus on Israel’s current, horrifying atrocities?"

• Israel detains 20 more Palestinians in West Bank, bringing total arrests since 7 Oct to 7,605 (16 March 2024). Middle East Monitor.

• UNRWA report says Israel coerced some agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links (8 March 2024). The Times of Israel, article by Reuters and TOI staff. "The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the October 7 attacks." Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:44, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• What Israeli soldiers' display of Palestinian women's lingerie reveals about the Zionist psyche (14 March 2024). Shereen Hindawi-Wyatt, Middle East Eye. "Israeli soldiers' brazen intrusion into displaced or murdered Palestinians' romantic and sexual lives is a terrifying indication of the occupiers' capacity to violate with impunity." Ijon Tichy (talk) 15:59, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Censorship is a crucial complement of genocide (20 March 2024). Somdeep Sen, Al Jazeera.

• What Biden Would Do if He Were Serious About Ending the War in Gaza (19 March 2024). Noah Lanard in Mother Jones. "A former Israeli peace negotiator says the president’s response has “failed to meet even the lowest of low expectations.”" Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:48, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Establishment Papers Fell Short in Coverage of Genocide Charges (21 March 2024). Lara-Nour Walton, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "Establishment media in the US were slow to cover South Africa’s “epochal intervention” in the ICJ—initially providing the public with thin to no reporting on the case. While the quantity of coverage did eventually increase, it skewed pro-Israel, even after the court in January found it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered Tel Aviv to comply with international law."

• Flour Massacre Called ‘Aid-Related Deaths’ -— Rather Than Part of Israel’s Engineered Famine (22 March 2024). Robin Andersen, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "Over 100 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded on February 29, when Israeli snipers opened fire on people approaching a convoy of trucks carrying desperately needed supplies of flour. The attack was quickly dubbed the flour massacre.     Corporate media reporting was contentious and confused, mired in accusations and conflicting details that filled the news hole, even as media downplayed the grave conditions in Gaza created by Israel’s engineered famine. With headlines layered in verbal opacity, the massacre prompted yet another egregious moment in media’s facilitation of Israel’s continuing genocide in Gaza." Ijon Tichy (talk) 11:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Chris Hedges, A Genocide Foretold, 30 March 2024. A pretty comprehensive survey of the horror. --NSH001 (talk) 06:59, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's better than a lot of the things that he's written in the past (not citable because it is self-published), and quite powerful, simply because he sticks to the factual details, which being appalling, are worth more than a lot of emotional outbursts. Another item today illustrates the point.

The number of trucks crossing into Gaza rose slightly to about 190 a day – less than half the peacetime daily total. Israeli inspectors were still turning back 20 to 25 each day, NBC News reported, citing an Egyptian aid official, on grounds as arbitrary as the wooden pallets bearing the food not being exactly the right dimensions. Israel has banned Unrwa, the main UN relief agency in the region, from using the crossing.' Julian Borger, Toby Helm, Lorenzo Tondo, Quique Kierszenbaum Israel alone? Allies’ fears grow over conduct – and legality – of war in Gaza The Guardian 31 March 2024

Banning UNWRA as well, which has the only large organization on the ground with a proven distribution network, has suicidal consequences, just as the emergence of clan gangs taking over the control of the little food airdropped because Israel shoots to kill the local police who traditionally maintained order on the grounds that they are employed by Hamas and therefore terrorists (not in international law) is a recipé for even more violence, inside the world of the starving survivors itself. Nishidani (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Israeli propagandist behind Hamas ‘mass rape’ narrative exposed as grifter, fraud (25 March 2024). The Grayzone.   "Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the Israeli lawyer at the center of the campaign accusing Hamas of systematic sexual violence on October 7, now stands accused by Israeli media of scamming donors and spreading misinformation. The allegations appeared just days after Elkayam-Levy received the prestigious Israel Prize."

• UN Tells Israel: Cease Fire; NYT Says: If You Want (4 April 2024). Dave Lindorff, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).   "The editorial boards of the nation’s major media organizations must have been frantic last week.   Used to reporting on US foreign policy, wars and arms exports so as to portray the United States as a benevolent, law-abiding and democracy-defending nation, they were confronted on March 25 with a real challenge dealing with Israel and Gaza. No sooner did the Biden administration, for the first time, abstain and thus allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution that was not just critical of Israel, but demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, than US officials began declaring that the resolution that they allowed to pass was really meaningless.   It was “nonbinding,” they said.   The New York Times (3/25/24) reported that US’s UN Ambassdor “Thomas-Greenfield called the resolution ‘nonbinding’” —- and let no one contradict her.   That was enough for the New York Times (3/25/24), which produced the most one-sided report on the decision."

• Israel's toxic legacy: White phosphorus bombs on south Lebanon (25 March 2024). Justin Salhani for Al Jazeera.   " ... Driving out civilians, burning down their agricultural lands, poisoning their soil and water, destroying their homes, dropping cluster munitions, and paralysing the local economy are part of what they say are efforts to make south Lebanon uninhabitable today, tomorrow and long into the future.   “The target is to create a wasteland in the south,” Baalbaki said.   “It’s to break the link between the people and their ties to the ground, their nature, their trees. The target is to tell them that this is an inhospitable area and to leave it.”" Ijon Tichy (talk) 22:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Hostages are having their legs amputated from being zip-tied by all 4 limbs for months; they're being forced to defecate in diapers & fed through straws (4 April 2024). "Those are Gazan hostages at Israel's Sde Teiman "concentration camp" ..." A series of 7 tweets, based on investigative reports in Haaretz. --- Ijon Tichy (talk) 11:42, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alas, this (nothing new in terms of prisoner treatment) is only the tip of the iceberg. I can't and wouldn't read tweets on principle. Here, there is nothing 'chirpy' to be tweeted about.Nishidani (talk) 13:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I respect your decision to refrain from reading tweets on principle. Would you care to share which principle you are alluding to? In the past, I have seen some people objecting to the format/ style of tweets because of the 280 character limitation on the length of each individual tweet. But this limitation has been increased last year to 4,000 characters. Many world-class scholars and investigative reporters tweet extensively and frequently including essay-length tweets, e.g. Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Jonathan Cook, and thousands of others in many important topics/ subjects (including but certainly not limited to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

For example, here is a recent insightful essay by Norman Finkelstein, posted on twitter (last I checked, this essay was unavailable on Finkelstein's personal blog on Substack): ISRAEL’S MORAL DILEMMA (April 5, 2024). Regards, Ijon Tichy (talk) 15:33, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, one more proof I'm an ignarunt effwit. For years the computer I worked on could never visualise any link to a twitter site, and I was amazed on clicking on the link in this revarnished computer, that I could access NF's post there. But the principle will still obtain. I've never had a smartphone, nor a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account because my observation on those who do is that, generally, they spend an inordinate amount of time on browsing those media, and, at this burntout end of a smokey life, I value time: every day must be free, unconstrained by disturbances or distractions, of being sucked up into the blogosphere. Working wikipedia for a few hours is trying enough. I find even simple sentences, my own included (when, rarely, they emerge as just simple statements) question-begging so I prefer to spend my time foraging in books or jstor article on any number of topics. That said, I'm glad to have read NK's note there: I think those of us who have closely followed the several wars, know that the Kitchen Car incident was old hat, unique only in that it drew exclamations and outrage, whereas scores of such incidents of the type (a) a misile collapses an apartment block (b) survivors, with neighbours' help, emerge dazed and (c) ambulances arrive and (d) the ambulances are shot up, are so commonplace (as he illustrates from 2014 - I still recall those two) that it is only remarkable that (other than Finkelstein's 2017 book) there seems to be no scholarly interest in connecting the dots, and writing a comprehensive analysis of such 'incidents' over the last 18 years to elicit the military logic behind it. Certainly this war abounds in such cases. Hegel wrote that 'die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug'. The owl in this case probably flies no more, exhausted by the futility of causing a late flap after each war, only to see the identical tragedy and the identical abuses, identical bullshitting memes of self-exculpation, renew themselves regardless Nishidani (talk) 21:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• The government is also attempting to cut the very budgets dedicated to the development of Palestinian citizens. The war is estimated to have cost Israel nearly $60 billion in the first three months — an expense so extreme that the Moody’s rating agency recently downgraded Israel’s credit rating.In an effort to minimize further economic damage, Israel has increased its deficit and is pushing major budget cuts through parliament. These include cuts across the board, but the board isn’t flat. Reductions to funding directed to Palestinian citizens are slated to be three times higher than the rest — 15 percent compared with 5 percent. Through these budget cuts the Palestinians in Israel are effectively paying a disproportionate cost of the war against fellow Palestinians. Raghad Jaraisy and Ofer Dagan, A Special Anguish Among Palestinian Citizens of Israel New York Times 23 February 2024

This piece is an interesting conceptual voyage that immediate got me thinking of your learned self. I suspect it is likely to contain something of interest for most people in its currents. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks indeed for that excellent essay link,Iskander. I speedread it given circs butwill have to eventually print it out to make a more comprehensive study of it.CheersNishidani (talk) 02:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've often mentioned over the years the sense of deja vu this particular conflict invariably induces in someone like myself,coming from an Irish background. I now see Mark Levene has set forth the striking analogies in his'Words matter, lives matter more' in Journal of Genocide Research. Sorry I can't provide you with a link from this laptop which does not seem to allow me to copy and paste. It's not coincidental that the Irgun learnt from the IRA, the only difference being the Irgun were the colonial invaders whereas the IRA, like Hamas, were indigenousNishidani (talk) 13:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC).[reply]

Didier Fassin,The Rhetoric of Denial: Contribution to an Archive of the Debate about Mass Violence in Gaza, Journal of Genocide Research, (5 February 2024) referring to the German genocide of the Herero, analyses its three stages, and argues for a similar three phases in the Israeli genocide/ethnocide of the Palestinian people.Nishidani (talk) 12:41, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the shared diasporic experience, there was one important difference. The Jews developed their communal life around the synagogue, and the attendant privileging of abstemious scholarship as the primrose path to survival in partibus infidelium. The Irish expatriate communities pinioned their fellowship around the institution of the pub where mastery in yarning and inventing improbable stories, given that no on felt there was much point in remembering the grief of dispossession, helped one's rise on the social ladder,(until one felloff it, pissed as a newt).Nishidani (talk) 08:07, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Despite trying desperately hard to retire, much like Finkelstein, you've been dragged back into the fray haven't you? Part inability to keep one's eyes off the news with all the historical echoes bouncing around the brain, and part, presumably, that slightly addictive element that Wikipedia has to it for certain personalities when they espy errancy. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioning some minor kibitzer like me in the same breath as Finkelstein only diminishes the latter while grotesquely inflating myself. I don't actually follow the 'news' since there is little that is new in the recurring recitation of the same memes about this conflict - it is newsworthy if an Israeli is taken hostage or killed, and each gets massive personalised coverage: it is not newsworthy if day after day children and youths, so far 116 individual cases, are shot dead by Israeli snipers from a safe distance in the West Bank. Apparently the several thousand WB Palestinians whose families have seen the disappearance into the holding pens of the IDF's carceral system of administrative detention, don't experience the kind of noteworthy grief the families of those taken hostage in Gaza undergo, though in essence we are dealing with the same issue - holding a people hostage. Fortunately, the net does allow one to go beyond this skewing travesty with all its racist assumptions about significant human beings, versus those troublesome others. That is why students, who have no yet been socialized into the cognitivce status quo because they are adept at exploring topic far more broadly that their parents who just absorb mainstreamlined news, are one of the few bodies exhibiting residual signs of life in a deadening and deadly, lethally deadly world. And, in its own distinctive manner, wikipedia's design, and its, until now at least, relative immunity to lobbied or sentimental selectiveness of the facts, has a role of honour, and if helping it is taxing, it is a tithing of our increasingly short time well worth paying-Nishidani (talk) 08:21, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The books are beginning to drop. [1] Iskandar323 (talk) 04:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the tip-off. I'll order the original Enzo Traverso, Gaza davanti alla storia, Laterza, from the superefficient girls at my local newsagent's, and should have it within days. But I have a dozen novels loaned to me by a friend on the fictional Neapolitan detective Ricciardi, excellent cop stories set in Naples under fascism written by Maurizio de Giovanni (perhaps taking a leaf out of Philip Kerr's masterly novels about a German detective, Bernie Gunther under Nazism) - I got hooked by reading a minor masterpiece - All Souls' Day, not translated unfortunately. So won't have time to tackle it till early August. Yes, I would expect that there is something of the beginnings of a paradigm shift, long in the works, but now precipitating, caused by the snowball effect of legal events, the insanity in Gaza/Israel, and the internal crisis in Zionism crystallising under Netanyahu's administration. It will take years to work itself into the mainstream, as scholarship always does, however. I've had reservations about one or two of Traverso's articles in the past, which is normal - that is what serious reading is about- but this looks stimulating. Grazie Nishidani (talk) 08:16, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Hind Rajab, age 6. On the 29 January, 2024, 7 members of a family, Hind's four cousins and her aunt and uncle, were warned by an Israeli alert to evacuate before further bombing of their once affluent Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood. To get round a collapsed high-rise, they had to drive north first to exit the area before moving south. Their Kia Picanto encountered Merkava tanks. Some time later, Hind's 15 year old cousin Layan Hamada rang the Palestinian Red Crescent, saying that apart from herself and Hind, all other members of the family had been shot dead, and pleaded for help. They were near a tank. Her voice cuts off, and, for 6 seconds on the audio a total of 64 gunshots can be heard, a volume compatible with an M4 assault rifle or a Merkava FN MAG machine gun. The surviving girl, Hind, managed to keep contact by phone. An ambulance was dispatched. Two weeks later, the ambulance and the bodies of its two medics wre found next to the Kia Picanto, which had been riddled by 355 bullets. Hind's body was also found. On the ambulance audio tape, at 6pm, just as they communicate that they had finally sighted the car (50 metres away), an explosion is heard, and they too were blown up. Hind's father hadn't formed part of the evacuees. He was killed in June. A study by Forensic Architecture suggests that the tank which fired must have been located within a distance of 13–23 metres from the Kia Picanto. The ambulance itself was probable struck by a High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose-Tracer round. (The Killing of Hind Rajab, Forensic Architecture 21 June 2024; Vijay Prashad, 'The Unbelievable Stories About the Children of Gaza,' CounterPunch 5 July 2024)
• Elisha Ben Kimon,Palestinian convert to Judaism fatally shot in West Bank Ynet 21 March 2024 Nishidani (talk) 13:51, 21 March 2024 (UTC) The grandfather, Eid al Zaitoun, had saved 25 Jews from the 1929 Hebron massacre. The grandson converted to Judaism, and was shot to death by IDF soldiers at a Gush Etzion busstop after a knife was found in his baggage.Nishidani (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Idem for Rami Al-Halhouli. (Arwa Mahdawi, As Gaza is destroyed, Israel is killing dozens of children in the West Bank The Guardian 23 March 2024) A 12 year old, one of a 100 children (of 400 West Bank Palestinians) murdered since Oct 7. He lit some fireworks to celebrate Ramadan, and was shot dead because, the IDF state, he aimed the fireworks at them. Itamar Ben-Gvir called the officer who killed him a 'hero' for having eliminated a terrorist.

The point is, that on-the-spot judgment of intent to kill (against all the probabilities) warranting the child's murder. The ICJ is to deliberate on whether Israel has an intent to commit the genocide (or whether it is just an unintended consequence of the war) which, by any reckoning, is taking place. The massive evidence will be equivocated and pettifogged to death to deny the charge, because intent is hard to prove legally, as opposed to it being easy to establish when a child lights a firecracker in the vicinity of IDF troops.Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Idem for Tamar Pelleg-Sryck. Imad Sabi, 'In memory of an Israeli lawyer who never lost her moral purpose,' +972 magazine 22 May 2024 Nishidani (talk) 21:40, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Idem for Majed Abu Maraheel 'Palestine's first ever Olympian dies in Gaza from lack of treatment due to Israel's war,' Middle East Eye 14 June 2024. Maraheel used to run all the way from the Nuseirat refugee camp to the Eretz crossing and then over to the kibbutz where he worked as an agricultural labourer. He died three days ago, at 61, for lack of care, a fate looking in the face another 1,000-1,500 patients in the Strip with his condition, since only 4 of 36 hospitals/ clinics remain (barely) functional after the bombing. Most are expected to join the casualty list in the near future.Nishidani (talk) 16:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Marc H. Ellis, Jewish theologian. Those unfamiliar with him, may see Adam Horowitz, Weekly Briefing: Losing the Prophetic Mondoweiss 16 June 2024. Nishidani (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Mohammed Bhar (25), a Gaza downie/Down Syndrome victim was attacked by a battle-trained dog when he tried to pet it. His mother was forced to abandon their home, in what was once Shuja'iyya, as Bhar screamed - the dog was ripping into his arm. The IDF promised her they would send a medic, but never did. His body was found rotting when the family finally returned a week later. The Oketz Unit which had sicced it on is famous in Israel for conducting elaborate and highly emotional burial ceremonies for each attack-dog that dies in battle. Sotah49b reads:'The face of the generation will be like the face of a dog; a son will no longer be ashamed before his father. And upon what is there for us to rely? ' Gideon Levy, 'In Gaza, Israel Lost What Remained of Its Humanity,' Haaretz 24 July 2024. One of thousands of stories, (here's another, an epic trek to bring to safety orphans eith Down symdrome and cerebreal palsy managed with the help of fellow refugees) most of which will never be told because the victims are not hostages, except to (mis)fortune.Nishidani (talk) 07:38, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  A poem: "He called the dog Habibi". --NSH001 (talk) 10:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Neil. For 9 months, as I watch the videos of those streets and their straggling, pingponged people, I can't help focusing on the donkeys, heads bowed, pulling carts, and I feel rather like those Africans who were shown a film by a foreign instructor on how to avoid unsanitary conditions, stagnant water etc. In the follow-up questionnaire, asked to describe their impressions (i.e. what had they learnt), they all leapt up and cried:'The chickens!!' (which the Western medicos and film crew hadn't even realized had been fleetingly captured in the film. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy 1962 p.41) I'm rather embarrassed by this, looking beyond the human tragedy, at the lowest on the rung, toiling on scraps without a murmurn under the inhumane orchestra of bombs dropped by cool technicians doing their day's job, and then going home to enjoy the beaches at Tel Aviv. I'm tempted to write something like that poem about it, but the task beats me.Nishidani (talk) 12:03, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Samantha Hill, Arendt would not qualify for the Hannah Arendt prize in Germany today,' The Guardian 18 December 2023
• Shir Hever, BDS Suppression Attempts in Germany Backfire Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 2019, Vol. 48, No. 3 pp.86-96
• Liz Fekete, Anti-Palestinian racism and the criminalisation of international solidarity in Europe Institute of Race Relations 2024

• The growing frequency of Germany police crackdowns on any form of manifesting solidarity for, or even publicly discussing, the issues of Israel's treatment of Palestinians suggests there might be an article covering this recent phenomenon. Slavoj Žižek described with exasperation the state of the German crackdown by saying that one is almost at risk of being arrested there if you repeat statements critical of Israeli policies made by the former heads of Shin Bet, 1.03 minutes into the youtube presentation of Deluge: Gaza and Israel From Crisis to Catastrophe'.The chapter by Colter Louwerse apparently contained a detail archival reconstruction of the diplomatic prelude to Operation Cast Lead (Hamas had in this interpretation, consistently sought a return to the status quo ante ceasefire (which Israel had broken) It should become when available a resource for the background on that article. On Dec 27, 11:30 in a fews minutes Israel dropped 100 tons of bombs on Gaza killing 300 people. He compares that to 7 October.Nishidani (talk) 16:59, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Yanis Varoufakis here, i.e. addio Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Nishidani (talk) 20:44, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• idem Ghassan Abu-SittahNishidani (talk) 08:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• idem Nancy Fraser here Nishidani (talk) 08:24, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• (2) The situation is even more drastic in Israel, as we learn with greater detail, thanks also to a courageous letter cowritten by our fellow wikipedian Shira Klein in Haaretz (Shira Klein and Lior Sternfeld, Students Are at the Forefront of Israeli McCarthyism (Instead of taking on the role of resistance, rebellion,and challenging conventions – as students do in other countries – in Israel, the students are leading the censorship enterprise Haaretz 17 April 2024)

The two cases, together with several notable instances of extreme pressure in the US academies to break with tradition and muzzle dissent over what is being permitted in Gaza, suggest that we need an article on the phenomenon, something along the lines of "(Neo-)McCarthyism in the Hamas Israel war", enabled I believe by the toxic influence of the soi-disant International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition (a political construct) on the political imagination these last decades in its parlous subtextual conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism/criticism of Israel's human rights record.Nishidani (talk) 15:32, 19 April 2024 (UTC) On the conflation or distinction there was an interesting clash between Paolo Mieli, one of Italy's foremost popular historians, and the art historian Tomaso Montanari on La7. Mieli could not imagine that anti-Zionism might not be antisemitic as opposed to Montanari who vigorously defended the necessity of distinguishing the two. Mieli narrowly defined anti-Zionism as a denial of the right of Jews to national self-determination, a recourse to the default language.*(note) Anti-Zionism (as opposed to anti-Israelism, which is inherently antisemitic) in the broad acceptance arguably consists in a critique of Zionism as an ideology which in practice denies the rights of Palestinians to self-determination and a state of their own.Nishidani (talk) 15:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC) *note. On this meme see Peter Beinart'a sensible deconstruction, There Is No Right to a State Jewish Currents 27 January 2021.[reply]

• The Israel Lobby with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt Outside the Box Podcast, 18 April 2024 A critique of the lack, in their view, in the US mainstream media, esp.The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, of any information about Palestine. Surprisingly, both consider alternative media like Mondoweiss, The Greyzone, and the Electronic Intifada - consistently held hostage on wikipedia as unreliable RS, close to deprecation - as important sources of information. Nishidani (talk) 17:57, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Omer Bartov, Raz Segal, Jelena Subotić,'Hijacking Memory: The Holocaust and the Siege of Gaza,' Jewish Currents podcast A very trenchant discussion on the profound intertwining of Holocaust memory, its weaponizing and relation to Germany's crackdown on dissent, and the denial of the idea Israel might be engaged in genocide in Gaza.Nishidani (talk) 16:09, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What is the likely international response to warrants being issued? Israel and its supporters will react furiously. Most consequentially, the US Republican party will pursue sanctions against members of the ICC. Such sanctions were imposed by the Trump administration, and a group of a dozen Republican senators wrote a letter to Khan earlier this month warning his office: “Target Israel and we will target you.” Julian Borger, 'Will the ICC approve arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas leaders?,' The Guardian 20 May 2024

Another example of the most extraordinary things being reported without an eyebrow raised, or eliciting a storm of controversy. The letter in question was apparently sent some three weeks ago without a stir, and I for one never noted any coverage, until today as his decision was rendered public. A political party is making a direct public threat to the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan that he will be directly sanctioned by a state if he performs his duties as a prosecutor without fear or favour.Nishidani (talk) 16:37, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is also expected that Israel will encourage US Republicans to reimpose sanctions on ICC officials, and urge ICC-signatory allies to pressure the court into preventing warrants from being issued.' Bethan McKernan, Israel calls on ‘civilised nations’ to boycott ICC arrest warrants against its leaders The Guardian 21 May 2024.

I.e. Another undisguised public admission, the politicization of the rule of law, that it is now legitimate to form a pressure group/lobby for the purpose of threatening or impeding one of the highest independent judicial bodies in the 'civilised' world from carrying out its functions in terms of what international law stipulates, regardless of the fallout.Nishidani (talk) 16:48, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Richard Luscombe, Outrage over police violence at pro-Palestine rally in Brooklyn The Guardian 20 May 2024. I.e. zero tolerance of any display of pro-Palestinian sympathies in New York, with police thrashing people already detained. Nishidani (talk) 20:02, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Peter Beaumont , Israeli officials seize camera from US news agency, cutting live feed of Gaza The Guardian 21 May 2024

Since revoked after wave of outrage.

The most lucid voice in the panicky shouting over the ICC's arrest warrant case for both Israeli and Hamas leaders.Kenneth Roth, 'Why is the West defending Israel after the ICC’s request for Netanyahu’s arrest warrant?,' The Guardian 21 May 2024

• So now Ilan Pappé was detained at Detroit airport, interrogated over his Muslim contacts and had the whole of his Iphone contents downloaded by Homeland Security agents. Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé on Interrogation at U.S. Airport and “Collapse of the Zionist Project” Democracy Now 21 May 2024. Everyday since 7 October, something that sounds so 'Sovietic' to old ears, is happening in the 'civilised West'.Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See now Chip Gibbons,US surveillance of pro-Palestinian speech has a direct line to McCarthyism The Guardian 22 May 2024 Nishidani (talk) 09:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now that we have massive evidence of (a) the breaking of the First Amendment clause re free speech with (b) massive clampdowns on student protests (c) the arrest or forced resignation of academics and others in the US and Israeli for expressing their views (d) the extension of these practices to Europe (e) the close of Al Jazeera in Gaza/Israel and the seizure of Associated Press equipment allowing a glimpse of the actual war, and (e) mainstream documentation of the heavy financial threats of defunding of universities or political campaigns which express criticism of Israel an article along the lines of Censorship in the 2023-2024 Israeli-Gaza War seems almost obligatory, if it doesn't already exist. Nishidani (talk) 16:31, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Amira Hass, Haaretz Investigation | Israeli Army's Extortion Campaign Against Gazans: 'Contact Us or We'll Say You Reported Your Neighbors to Hamas' Haaretz 22 May 2024

This does not strictly fall within the parameters of clamping down on dissent. Rather, the obverse: coopting Gazans as 'collaborators', by threatening them with certain death if they do not comply, by directly informing the Hamas authorities that they have, for whatever reason, putatively, been forced to 'spy' for Israel (you can be denied treatment for cancer etc., which often requires permission to enter Israel, unless you reply to Israeli requests for information about your neighbours etc.) Nishidani (talk) 14:03, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• “The wave of anti-Israel feeling that is engulfing large numbers of people in the Western world has emerged not merely from the Gaza war, with its unbearable civilian casualties and now mass starvation. What that wave reflects, more profoundly, is the justified disgust with the ongoing occupation, its seemingly eternal and ever more brutal continuation, and the policies of massive theft and apartheid that are its very essence.” David Shulman, Israel: The Way Out, New York Review of Books May 9, 2024

• This however would fall within the ambit of the article suggested, i.e.

In 2023, the Israeli military censor barred the publication of 613 articles by media outlets in Israel, setting a new record for the period since . .2011. The censor also redacted parts of a further 2,703 articles, representing the highest figure since 2014. In all, the military prevented information from being made public an average of nine times a day. . . These regulations allow the censor to fully or partially redact articles submitted to it, as well as those already published without its review. No other self-proclaimed “Western democracy” operates a similar institution. . . media outlets are prohibited from revealing the censor’s interference — by marking where an article has been redacted, for instance — which leaves most of its activity in the shadows.' Haggai Matar, Israeli military censor bans highest number of articles in over a decade +972 magazine 20 May 2024

Thanks to Haaretz we now have a specific example of what the military censor redacts in those thousands of articles. This is what they were permitted to print of the scandalous case of arbitrary detention of Bassem Tamimi:Jonathan Pollak, Israel's Cause for Detention: ████ ██ █████ Haaretz 29 May 2024.

• So would this, a report on the punitive self-reflection 'assignments' students at New York University are expected to do for being morally upset to the point of protest that 46,000 people have been killed (36,000+10,000 missing) and over 80,000 injured in Gaza.

The assignments include a five- to six-page “reflection paper” to be written by students in a specified font, with prompts like “what have you done or need still to do to make things right?” Students are asked to list “who was affected by the incident” that led to the disciplinary action, including “society as a whole” and “property.” Other student protesters are being required to complete modules in a 49-page "Ethos Integrity Series" that seeks to teach them about “moral reasoning” and “ethical decision-making.” They must rank a list of 42 values, including patriotism, family, and security and safety, in order of importance to them. . . Students are also directed to read the Wikipedia page for the Bible’s Ten Commandments and watch the “Lisa Gets An A” episode from “The Simpsons,” in which Lisa cheats on an exam. NYU spokesperson John Beckman did not answer specific questions about the assignments but said in a statement: “Reflecting on the consequences of your actions is a vital lesson, which is why educational assignments in student discipline cases are common throughout higher education. These kinds of sanctions, which ask students to think about the impact of the choices they're making, are often in lieu of suspension.”Matt Katz, [2] Gothamist 15 May 2024

Beckman and his ilk are too young to recall the Red Guards' 'struggle (批鬭 pīdòu ) sessions', of which this assignment remedy is a distant, individualistic descendant, where people were hauled in to engage in a public confession of their thought crimes and behavioural deviations, as expressed in dissent from Maoism. The fact that a wiki biblical article is cited as a 'must read' piece for student ethics should be mentioned in the appropriate wiki article on mentions of this encyclopedia in the news, wherever it is. Nishidani (talk) 11:53, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• (1)Ben Samuels, You Don't Stand With Israel, We'll Work to Defeat You': AIPAC and RJC Enter GOP Primaries Fray,' Haaretz 26 May 2024

I.e. if you are not loyal to Israel, you may not represent the United States, but

• (2)"Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than to their interests of their own nation is listed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as an example of contemporary antisemitism in public life.""US House of Representatives votes to condemn antisemitism after Ilhan Omar's 'Israel loyalty' remarks" The Jewish Chronicle 8 March 2019.

I.e.It is antisemitic to suggest American Jewish citizens (AIPAC members above for example) might be more loyal to Israel than to the United States. Nishidani (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• (1) Reports of a Mossad chief's direct personal threats to the former ICC prosecutor to get her to drop investigations perhaps also enter into a future article on the silencing of protests. Fatou Bensouda, and her family was reportedly directed threatened by the then Mossad director Yossi Cohen in an attempt to dissuade her from opening war crime inquiries against Israel. (Harry Davies,Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry The Guardian 28 May 2024:'According to accounts shared with ICC officials, he is alleged to have told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family. . .The Mossad also took a keen interest in Bensouda’s family members and obtained transcripts of secret recordings of her husband, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Israeli officials then attempted to use the material to discredit the prosecutor. . .According to legal experts and former ICC officials, efforts by the Mossad to threaten or put pressure on Bensouda could amount to offences against the administration of justice under article 70 of the Rome statute, the treaty that established the court.'

The original investigative source is Yuval Abraham and Meron Rapoport, Surveillance and interference: Israel’s covert war on the ICC exposed +972 magazine 28 May 2024

• (2) Peter Beaumont, 'Journalist threatened over reporting on spy chief and ICC, Israeli newspaper say,' The Guardian 30 May 2024
• (3) Gur Megiddo, 'How Israeli Security Nixed Haaretz's Report Into Alleged Mossad Extortion of International Court Prosecutor,' Haaretz 30 May 2024 refrerring to a censored attmpt in 2022 to publish the details of Israel's intelligence operation to block the ICC.
• (4) Kenneth Roth, 'The ICC spying revelations show the Israeli government to be a lawless regime,' The Guardian 30 May 2024
• (5) Yossi Melman, 'Sounds Like Cosa Nostra Blackmail': Former Mossad Chief on Successor's Alleged Threats Against ICC Prosecutor Haaretz 30 May 2024 (words ascribed to Tamir Pardo)

I look forward to Israel or the US Republicans having a crack at Khan under the next UK government. That will end well for everybody... Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:58, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything to look forward to in this grotty little world where even doing one's job can result in punitive sanctions? Certainly, in terms of the higher comedy of farce, US Republicans taking over the UK government itself would make those like me, nostalgic for Monty Python episodes, tickle with delight, whether or not they snooked a cock or two at Khan or tried to kick his can.:)Nishidani (talk) 14:09, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• (This under manipulation of government research conclusions to assert they state what the experts writing them deny is the case)

Julian Borger, state department report absolving Israel on Gaza aid is false, says ex-official The Guardian 30 May 2024 According to Stacy Gilbert, senior civil military adviser in the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration (one of 9 State Department officials who have resigned in protest against Biden’s policies, and who had resigned her post), the state department report earlier this month absolving Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza was “patently false” and went against the consensus of department’s experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week. . . Even more controversially, the report said the state department did not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza. It was a high-stakes judgment because under a clause in the Foreign Assistance Act, the US would be obliged to cut arms sales and security assistance to any country found to have blocked delivery of US aid. Gilbert, a 20-year veteran of the state department who has worked in several war zones, said that report’s conclusion went against the overwhelming view of state department experts who were consulted on the report.'Nishidani (talk) 20:36, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

In other words, she is saying the Biden administration lied about its own internal conclusions in order to continue to break the law stipulating that countries which block humanitarian aid cannot be the beneficiaries of US arms sales. Nishidani (talk) 20:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Gloria Oladipo, New York hospital fires nurse after calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ in speech,' The Guardian 31 May 2024 Nishidani (talk) 08:40, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• The same month, as Israel reeled from the horror of the attacks, two Standing Together activists were detained for putting up posters with a message – “Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together” – that police officers deemed to be offensive. Officers confiscated their posters, as well as T-shirts printed with peace slogans in Hebrew and Arabic.' Lorenzo Tondo, Quique Kierszenbaum, ‘Solidarity over hatred’: the small band of Israelis stopping settlers obstructing aid trucks,' The Guardian 31 May 2024.Nishidani (talk) 17:14, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Sheera Frenkel, Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War New York Times 5 June 2024,
• Associated Press, Columbia Law Review board shutters website over article critical of Israel The Guardian 5 June 2024

The article is Rabea Eghbariah, The Ongoing Nakba: Toward a Legal Framework for Palestine N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change vol.48, 2024

Eghbariah is a Harvard doctoral candidate. I personally don't think the article passes muster for a law journal where one expects technical analysis, but that is not the point.Nishidani (talk) 16:49, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Book burning, which we associate with Nazi Germany, is a form of control by cancelling the founts of historic memory. Ergo this might be included.

  Recently, Israeli soldiers set ablaze the remaining parts of the al-Aqsa University’s library in Gaza City and photographed themselves sitting in front of the burning books. Similarly, an Israeli soldier recently filmed himself walking through the ruins of al-Azhar University, mocking scholasticide and rejoicing in the occupation’s destruction of the university. “We’re starting a new semester,” he said, adding: “It’ll start never.”Chandni Desai, 'Israel has destroyed or damaged 80% of schools in Gaza. This is scholasticide,' The Guardian 8 June 2024 Nishidani (talk) 12:00, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

• (1)Total mainstream media neglect of Richard Sanders (dir), The truth about October 7, interview with Peter Oborne Al Jazeera. (Perhaps not citable but Sanders states that Human Rights Watch is preparing a thorough forensic analysis of the allegations)Nishidani (talk) 13:37, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• (2)Owen Jones inteeviewing Sanders, October 7th: The Whole Story Finally RevealedNishidani (talk) 14:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Erika Lopez, Tascha Shahriari-Parsa,We watched Ivy League law reviews censor Palestinian scholars firsthand The Guardian 11 June 2024 Nishidani (talk) 05:12, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, the censorship is apparently a left-wing protocols like conspiracy. See

But the group became part of what writer Ben Weingarten has aptly named the censorship industrial complex. That describes an effort in which a sinister combination of Internet and social-media companies, left-wing nonprofit groups and the Biden administration sought to shut down conservatives who dissented from a wide range of policies. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court passed on an opportunity to stop this blatant violation of the free-speech rights of citizens this week in a case that may serve as a green light for future efforts by the Biden administration and its Silicon Valley oligarch allies.'Jonathan S. Tobin, Censorship stand comes back to bite the ADL on Wikipedia Jewish News Syndicate 26 June 2024

• New German citizens must affirm Israel's right to exist. Zero^talk 02:22, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I.e. I must imagine an alternative scenario in US history, with Trump winning the Presidential elections on a platform which included an oath stating that Afro-Americans, and anyone with a green card, must affirm White America's right to exist.

A demand for civil rights and equality for Palestinians in Greater Israel has been successfully spun as a denial of the right of Israel to persist (as a segregating, ethnocratic state). Nishidani (talk) 07:14, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Tom Perkins, Internal memo reveals Anti-Defamation League surveillance of leftwing activist The Guardian 8 July 2024Nishidani (talk) 22:34, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Bella Hadid, sacked by Adidas after Israel pressured the firm over her pro-Palestinian statements. Tom Ambrose, Adidas removes Bella Hadid from ad campaign after criticism from Israel, The Guardian 19 July 2024 Nishidani (talk) 19:54, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Fawzia Afzal-Khan, quite a detailed career analysis on the harassments faced by an academic with open pro-Palestinian views (particularly good on Susan Sontag's reaction to a question. Fawzia Afzal-Khan

US Academia and the Censoring of an Anti-Zionist Professor CounterPunch 19 July 2024 Nishidani (talk) 20:25, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• A law limiting academic freedom of speech has just passed its first reading in the Knesset

the country’s national union of students . . lobbied for the law, including spending 500,000 shekels (more than $136,000, £105,000) on a billboard campaign to promote it nationwide. The ads prompted the Haaretz newspaper to warn in an editorial that the country’s “illiberal students need a lesson in democracy”. . . Of the 30 university chapters of the union, two-thirds supported the campaign. . . In Israel, criticism of the war in Gaza is already restricted and penalised, even for Jewish citizens. A teacher who was charged with treason and spent four days in solitary confinement after posting concerns about civilian deaths in Gaza, has described it as “a time of witch-hunts”.Emma Graham-Harrison, Matan Cohen, Draft Israeli law to limit academic speech labelled ‘McCarthyite’ The Guardian 21 July 2024

This is the best and brightest of the younger generation in Israel.Nishidani (talk) 20:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bit baffled by that one, I removed Linfield, another returned her, and you have now removed her? I agree with that, but you seem to have a different idea? Selfstudier (talk) 22:56, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies. It's not much of an excuse to plead that, given a wild series of unforseen problems arising as I was extending hospitality, by the loan of my Rome apartment, to some French visitors (even having to find a plumber to fix an emergency when the shower heater broke down etc., etc.,) that I wrote that having managed only several hours of sleep in two days. Linfield's remarks are those of an uninformed airhead, silly because she thinks Arabs were wrongheaded to rejet, as 66% of the population, a proposal giving 30% of the population, almost all recent immigrants, the majority of the (best)land, and of no use, and I should have said that is why they should be removed. Or perhaps it's just further evidence of dementia.Nishidani (talk) 22:41, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

what happens every other week, and has so for almost 4 decades. Not a 'brief massacre' but a long-term one. Nishidani (talk) 16:45, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

e.g. The Western media haven't ever carried images, until today (hence the outrage over what is otherwise an absolutely facet of life there), if on maginal sites, such as this (a headless child victim of one more precision strike), which Gazans have directly witnessed over the last 18 years with hundreds of children. Nishidani (talk) 22:23, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well deserved Selfstudier (talk) 23:24, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did at Animal stereotypes of Jews in Palestinian discourse, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use your sandbox for that. Twice you have removed sourced information with no valid reason. This can be considered disruptive in a CTopic article.  // Timothy :: talk  11:48, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Come on now. Don't be silly. My edit summary said_'See talk page' where an extended set of reasons were given for the general mess of that page and specifically the rationale for removing the nonsense I took out. per WP:Synth, a nonsense apparently in sourcing to Bernard Lewis a view he does not entertain.Nishidani (talk) 11:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The disruption there consists in the editor, whom you support, consistently misconstruing sources. Source distortion is a reportable offence, particularly when it appears to form a pattern.Nishidani (talk) 13:32, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eman Mohamed, Rafah refugees are pouring into our starving, overcrowded city – and we hope they keep coming The Guardian 14 May 2024

Among other things, he recounts that of his class of bright girl students aged 11-16, - yes, they study in Gaza - 9 have been murdered, or as he politely puts it, 'killed', under the relentless bombings. Over the border, this means nothing to most: I assume these people are insignificant compared to the history of Jewish suffering taught there. Nishidani (talk) 15:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ps. Apparently some kindergarten students are spewing Nazi propaganda, around 59 minutes in, but also on the death of the Gaza teacher and poet Refaat Alareer. Nishidani (talk) 23:15, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]