Meanwhile on the International front....

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/hamas-has-fractured-arab-world

As this explosive situation unfolds, sharp divisions have begun to emerge in the Arab world. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which have entered the Abraham Accords with Israel, have issued statements clearly condemning Hamas. In turn, Qatar, Hamas’s main Arab backer, has lashed out at Israel and adopted language very similar to Hamas’s. Jordan and Egypt, meanwhile, with the most at stake on the ground, have remained cautious, navigating between their own national security concerns and restive domestic audiences. And then there is Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally and perhaps the most consequential regional player today. Saudi Arabia was making progress on historic, U.S.-brokered talks with Israel at the time of the attack, yet it also seeks to maintain or perhaps even bolster its leadership role in the Arab world and support for the Palestinians.

 

I'm beginning to wonder if the IDF is actually going to launch a traditional ground offensive. They have to know that an invasion will be a second Stalingrad.

 

I don't know how they can back down at this point. The loss of credibility, the pressure from Israel's right wing makes it seem all but impossible. And if they did back off, how do they attempt to punish Hamas without making everyday life for a million other people a living hell?

I suppose that's better than being a dead innocent bystander.

 

OK.

U.S. Picks Troops to Prepare for Potential Deployment to Middle East

 

Good work here.

https://www.mysuncoast.com/2023/10/16/tampa-based-project-dynamo-rescues-300-americans-israel/

DeSantis will certainly share the credit. But Project Dynamo is the NGO doing the heavy lifting.

https://www.projectdynamo.org/

 

Saudi Arabia has to be pissed. It is pouring all this money into sportswashing only for Hamas to, potentially, ruin its bid to host a World Cup.

 

I think that you’ve tried to walk an interesting line in this conversation, because it seems like you’re trying to make people aware of past actions. You’ve talked about the Nakba and people fleeing and being scared of history repeating itself, and about what happened last weekend. You’ve mentioned that Israel has some responsibility for the long-term situation on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza. But at the same time you are saying that from a human-rights perspective, in some sense, that’s all irrelevant, and that people have the responsibility to live up to human-rights obligations regardless of what’s happened in the past.

Absolutely. And to be fair, I can understand that people look at the horrific acts of Saturday in southern Israel and they feel angry. But if they try to connect with why they’re feeling angry, they’re feeling angry because children were targeted. They’re feeling angry because elderly people were kidnapped. They’re feeling angry because civilians were harmed and basic principles of human decency were flouted. And so the response should not be to flout basic principles of human decency and protections of civilians on the other side. It shouldn’t be this difficult to say that, but it is. And I guess I would encourage people to think about whether the “They’re worse than we are” argument is particularly constructive or morally sound.

Or, perhaps, even if it’s morally sound, it still might not be constructive right now, because we all still need to follow the same universal ideas in our behavior.

And those universal ideas include very strong standards of nonreciprocity. You do not get to target civilians because somebody else has targeted civilians. It’s nonreciprocal because your obligations are to the civilians. It’s not a deal between fighters. It’s a deal with humanity. ♦

 

I live in a neighborhood with an Orthodox Jewish community. The school/synagogue is across the street from me. Cop cars have been in front for the last few days. Last year around July 4th the Rabbi was stabbed.

 

I'm 100 percent for peace in the region, figure Israel has been developing around Gaza and squeezing the Palestinians to the point that is reckless. That said, this is a bad time to want to shout your "friend of Palestinians" bonafides, whether you are a politician or liberal social media user. True friends of the Palestinian people should be as pissed off at Hamas as everyone else is.

 

“True friends of Palestine” is kind of hard to swallow for me in much of a peaceful manner.

The problem for me is — and I know it was 15 years ago, but — Hamas was elected. I’m certainly no expert on the convoluted mess that is the Palestinian government, but it is, in at least some manner, a representative government. Palestinians knew what they were getting when they voted for them.

 

Full Context: that vote occurred in the aughts.

Not taking sides, it just needs to be presented when making that argument.

A good number of people in Gaza weren’t alive when that vote took place. I have no idea what a vote would look like today.

I just don’t see that vote as a useful talking point any more than saying Americans are against gay marriage because of the 2004 general election.

 

None of the Palestinian children getting killed were alive to cast that vote. But cool.