v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

The Reality Unseen by the American Public

 

A clearer perspective from Dalia Hatuqa in today's NYT:

To many inside and outside this war, the brutality of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks was unthinkable, as has been the scale and ferocity of Israel’s reprisal. But Palestinians have been subject to a steady stream of unfathomable violence — as well as the creeping annexation of their land by Israel and Israeli settlers — for generations.

If people are going to understand this latest conflict and see a path forward for everyone, we need to be more honest, nuanced and comprehensive about the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, particularly the impact of occupation and violence on the Palestinians. This story is measured in decades, not weeks; it is not one war, but a continuum of destruction, revenge and trauma.

Since the 1948 Nakba — in which entire Palestinian villages were wiped off the map and the modern state of Israel was established — Palestinians have endured a subjugation that has defined their daily lives. For decades, we have been reeling from Israel’s military occupation, as well as a succession of deadly invasions and wars. The wars of 1967 and 1973 helped shape the modern geography and geopolitics of the area, with millions of largely stateless Palestinians split between Gaza and the West Bank. In Gaza, often referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison, Palestinians are prohibited from entering or leaving, except in incredibly rare circumstances.

This history has been absent from much of the discourse surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, as though the attacks of Oct. 7 were completely arbitrary. The truth is, even in times of relative peace, Palestinians are second-class citizens in Israel — if they are deemed citizens at all. According to Israeli law, Palestinians do not have the right to national self-determination, which is reserved for Jewish citizens of the state. A variety of laws restrict Palestinians’ right to movement, governing everything from where they can live to what personal identifications they can hold to whether or not they can visit family members elsewhere.

The “right of return” — the right of Palestinians and their descendants to return to villages they were ethnically cleansed from during the 1948 war — is central to many Palestinians’ political perspective because so many are still, legally, refugees. In Gaza, for instance, roughly two-thirds of the population consists of refugees. This status is not some abstraction; it dictates everything from where people live to what schools they go to or doctors they see.

Many Gazans have parents and grandparents who grew up only a few miles from where they live now, in areas they are now, of course, forbidden to enter. They still invoke rich memories from their childhood or adolescence, when they walked through citrus groves in Yaffa or olive fields in Qumya — the latter of which, like many villages whose people were expelled into Gaza during the 1948 war, was later transformed into a kibbutz.

There have been periods of increased cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians over the past 75 years. But these were usually preceded by times of increased conflict, such as the first and second intifadas, or popular uprisings. The intifadas, in which Palestinians participated in large-scale resistance, sometimes civil and sometimes violent, are often presented by Western media as random or indiscriminate bursts of murderous savagery — as has been the case with the Oct. 7 attacks. But that violence did not happen in a vacuum.

Stark conditions in Palestinian communities — including the ever-tightening control of daily life through violent night raids, arrests, military checkpoints and the building of illegal Israeli settlements — were the backdrop to these outbursts. Unfortunately, from a historical standpoint, these acts of violence seem to be the only things that have moved the needle politically for Palestinians.

 

 

Bad Guys

 

From Ettingermentum Newsletter:

It’s hard to defend the indefensible. It’s a little easier if you pretend it’s something other than what it is.

Over the past few days, there have been a number of people who have looked at everything going on in the world and decided that the most productive thing to do is scold supporters of Palestine over the language they use to describe the actions of the Israeli government. Their contention is that it is improper to even insinuate that Netanyahu and his war cabinet are engaging in anything other than warfare and warfare alone. There can be disagreements over tactics, strategy, and Jewish Israeli politics, of course—hardly any of these bellyachers would call themselves Likudniks. But larger questions about what the Israeli government is engaged in, and what its ultimate intentions may be, are out of the question. We must simply assume that everything they are doing comes from a pure-hearted desire for safety and leave it at that.

This is a very curious presumption. You can only really believe in it if you also believe that history started sometime earlier this month, and that all of the figures currently running the country burst out of thin air around then. In such a world, it might be reasonable to give the Israeli government the benefit of the doubt. However, we do not live in such a world. The people making up the Israeli government are real human beings, with long careers in politics, and many, many, many statements on Palestine. So, to help, I have gone over the political backgrounds and beliefs of the current top members and parties of the Israeli government. All of the information comes from their own statements, past actions, and Israeli political reporting. I hope it proves useful for you if you find yourself in a discussion with those who are acting as if we have no frame of reference for what the country is currently doing.

To start, we have the single most unfortunate fact for hasbarists assigned with selling Zionism to the world’s many progressive Jews. This fact is the existence and relevance of Itamar Ben-Gvir, current Israeli Minister of National Security and head of Otzma Yehudit (lit. “Jewish Power”). 

If Ben-Gvir did not actually exist, any description would come across as a crude, over-the-top parody of extremist Zionism. Currently running the ministry that once singled him out as a “good candidate for detention,” Ben-Gvir has dedicated his entire life to anti-Arab racism. Starting as a teenager, he moved around between several organizations that advocated for the ethnic cleansing of Arabs until settling on Kach, a fascist political party led by the convicted Israeli-American terrorist Meir Kahane. Kach, which was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, and Israel itself, disavowed democracy and called for Israel to turn into a theocratic ethnostate. In their world, all of Palestine and Jordan, along with parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, were to be annexed by the Jewish state. Arabs who came under Israeli control would either flee or be enslaved. All territory under Israeli control would be opened up for Jewish settlement. Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews would be banned. The army would be given shoot-to-kill orders against anyone who attempted to resist this regime.

Because of how extreme this all is, you may be wondering if I’m exaggerating things. I’m not. All you have to do to see where Kahane and his followers stood is to look at the laws he proposed while in the Israeli parliament, such as:

• “Non-Jews in the State of Israel will be without any national rights and without any part in political proceedings in the State of Israel. A non-Jew will not be able to be appointed to any position of authority and will not be able to vote in elections to the Knesset or to any other state and public body.”

• “Non-Jews will be obliged to assume duties, taxes and slavery. If he does not agree to slavery and taxes, he will be forcibly deported.”

• “A non-Jew will not live within the jurisdiction of the city of Jerusalem.”

• “A non-Jew who has a marital relationship with a Jew is liable to 50 years in prison. A Jewish prostitute or a Jewish male who has an affair with a non-Jewish male is sentenced to five years in prison.”

Ben-Gvir served as this party’s youth coordinator.

Today, Kach no longer exists. The party faced a mortal blow with Kahane’s 1990 assassination and was officially banned in Israel in 1994 after party supporter Baruch Goldstein went on a shooting spree and murdered 29 people in a Hebron mosque. But Itamar Ben-Gvir has carried on its legacy ever since, both in word and deed. According to The New Yorker, he has been convicted of criminal charges at least eight times, including but not limited to support for a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. His criminal record is reportedly so long that a court once had to change the ink in their Xerox when printing it out. In his speeches, Ben-Gvir refers Kahane as nothing less than a saint; as for Goldstein, the terrorist mass murderer, Ben-Gvir hung a gigantic mural of him in his living room for almost the entirety of his adult life, only taking it down recently when fellow ultra-right settlers said it was bad optics. He still refers to both as “martyrs” to this day, even in speeches given in his capacity as National Security Minister.

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A Poem by Ahlam Bsharat

 

Colonial soldiers,
what have they been doing
to my poetry all these years
when I could have easily killed them
in my poems
as they’ve killed my family
outside poetry?

Poetry was my chance
to settle the score with killers,
but I let them age outdoors,
and I want them to know decay
in their lives, their faces to wrinkle,
their smiles to thin out,
and their weapons to hunch over.

So if you, dear readers, see a soldier
taking a stroll in my poem,
trust that I have left him to his fate
as I leave a criminal
to his many remaining years,
they will execute him.

And his ears will execute him
as he listens to me reciting my poem
to grieving families,
he won’t be able to slink out
of my book or the reading hall
as the seated audience stares at him.

You will not be consoled,
soldier, you will not,
not even as you exit
my poetry event
with slumped shoulders
and pockets full of dead bullets.

Even if your hand,
tremulous as it is
from so much murder,
fidgeted with the bullets,
you will not
produce more
than a dead sound.

                                        —Ramallah

 

From The Baffler 2021

 

Fady Joudah's Poem that The New Yorker refused to Publish in 2021

 

Remove

 

You who remove me from my house
are blind to your past
which never leaves you,
yet you’re no mole
to smell and sense what’s being done
to me now by you.
Now, dilatory, attritional so that the past
is climate change and not a massacre,
so that the present never ends.
But I’m closer to you than you are to yourself
and this, my enemy friend,
is the definition of distance.
Oh don’t be indignant,
watch the video, I’ll send you the link
in which you cleanse me item after limb
thrown into the street to march where
my catastrophe in the present
is still not the size of your past:
is this the wall
you throw your dice against?
I’m speaking etymologically, I’m okay
with the scales tipping your way,
I’m not into that, I have a heart that rots,
resists, and hopes, I have genes,
like yours, that don’t subscribe
to the damage pyramid.
You who remove me from my house
have also evicted my parents
and their parents from theirs.
How is the view from my window?
How does my salt taste?
Shall I condemn myself a little
for you to forgive yourself
in my body? Oh how you love my body,
my body, my house.

 

 

Link to the story at LARB

One day a house is yours, one day it is not

From Dr. Hala Hayan in the NYT:

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched Palestinian activists, lawyers, professors get baited and interrupted on air, if not silenced altogether. They are being made to sing for the supper of airtime and fair coverage. They are begging reporters to do the most basic tasks of their job. At the same time, Palestinians fleeing from bombs have been misidentified. Even when under attack, they must be costumed as another people to elicit humanity. Even in death, they cannot rest — Palestinians are being buried in mass graves or in old graves dug up to make room, and still there is not enough space.

If that weren’t enough, Palestinian slaughter is too often presented ahistorically, untethered to reality: It is not attributed to real steel and missiles, to occupation, to policy. To earn compassion for their dead, Palestinians must first prove their innocence. The real problem with condemnation is the quiet, sly tenor of the questions that accompany it: Palestinians are presumed violent — and deserving of violence — until proved otherwise. Their deaths are presumed defensible until proved otherwise. What is the word of a Palestinian against a machinery that investigates itself, that absolves itself of accused crimes? What is it against a government whose representatives have referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and “wild beasts?” When a well-suited man can say brazenly and unflinchingly that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people?

It is, of course, a remarkably effective strategy. A slaughter isn’t a slaughter if those being slaughtered are at fault, if they’ve been quietly and effectively dehumanized — in the media, through policy — for years. If nobody is a civilian, nobody can be a victim.

_____________________

Here is the truth of the diasporic Palestinians: They are not magically diasporic. Their diaspora-ness is a direct result of often violent, intentional and illegal dispossession. One day a house is yours; one day it is not. One day a neighborhood is yours; one day it is not. One day a territory is yours; one day it is not. This same sort of dispossession is grounded in the same mind-set and international complicity that is playing out in Gaza.

Animals in War

 

 

George Packer writes in The Atlantic:

Animals die in large numbers in every war. Think of draft horses drowning in mud in the battlefields of France, or water buffalo machine-gunned from the air in Vietnamese rice paddies, or the tormented farm animals in Picasso’s Guernica. Their deaths are never counted in official casualty figures; almost all of them go unrecorded and unremembered. Animals are also targets in war, usually as a means to deprive an enemy of food and income. But in this war, animals have become Russian targets for no purpose other than sheer cruelty. Ukraine’s government has accused the Russian military of intentionally striking dog shelters and horse stables. Russian soldiers in retreat from the Kyiv region left behind the bullet-riddled corpses of not just cattle, horses, and goats, but even pet dogs. By killing animals, the invaders seem to be responding to all the pictures of Ukrainians with pets in bomb shelters and evacuation convoys. The Russians have identified yet another way to inflict pain on the Ukrainian people—not by starving them but by breaking their heart.

Something is uniquely unfair about the suffering that war inflicts on animals. They are the ultimate noncombatants. War has nothing to do with the world they inhabit. In their consciousness it has no meaning, not even the meaning of evil. A deer scorched by artillery fire has no understanding of the cause of its pain, and yet it gazes at the camera with immense stoicism. In Ukraine, this unfairness seems all the greater because, more than in most wars, animals in this war are not anonymous. Because of the intense bonds they share with human beings, and because their fate is seen widely on social media, they’ve become individuals to the outside world—unwitting protagonists in the drama.

Perhaps Ukrainians are no more animal-loving than other people. I imagine Russians back home take good care of their huskies and borzois. But the stories of animals in this war tell you something about the two sides. An invasion launched for the purpose of erasing an entire nation has dehumanized Russian soldiers so quickly and thoroughly that killing has become an end in itself; so, in retreat, they shoot kenneled dogs. And the country they came to destroy, in fighting for its life, has become one that extends solidarity and love beyond its human citizens.

Sometimes You Don't Want to Say you are Winning

From Elliot Cohen in the Atlantic and someone who I'd never think I'd be quoting:

The evidence that Ukraine is winning this war is abundant, if one only looks closely at the available data. The absence of Russian progress on the front lines is just half the picture, obscured though it is by maps showing big red blobs, which reflect not what the Russians control but the areas through which they have driven. The failure of almost all of Russia’s airborne assaults, its inability to destroy the Ukrainian air force and air-defense system, and the weeks-long paralysis of the 40-mile supply column north of Kyiv are suggestive. Russian losses are staggering—between 7,000 and 14,000 soldiers dead, depending on your source, which implies (using a low-end rule of thumb about the ratios of such things) a minimum of nearly 30,000 taken off the battlefield by wounds, capture, or disappearance. Such a total would represent at least 15 percent of the entire invading force, enough to render most units combat ineffective. And there is no reason to think that the rate of loss is abating—in fact, Western intelligence agencies are briefing unsustainable Russian casualty rates of a thousand a day.

Add to this the repeated tactical blundering visible on videos even to amateurs: vehicles bunched up on roads, no infantry covering the flanks, no closely coordinated artillery fire, no overhead support from helicopters, and panicky reactions to ambushes. The 1-to-1 ratio of vehicles destroyed to those captured or abandoned bespeaks an army that is unwilling to fight. Russia’s inability to concentrate its forces on one or two axes of attack, or to take a major city, is striking. So, too, are its massive problems in logistics and maintenance, carefully analyzed by technically qualified observers.

 

Coming Apart

An article that describes how Russia's disinformation machinery stopped functioning:

For decades now, Vladimir Putin has slowly, carefully, and stealthily curated online and offline networks of influence. These efforts have borne lucrative fruit, helping Russia become far more influential than a country so corrupt and institutionally fragile had any right to be. The Kremlin and its proxies had economic holdings across Europe and Africa that would shame some of the smaller 18th-century empires. It had a vast network of useful idiots that it helped get elected and could count on for support, and it controlled much of the day-to-day narrative in multiple countries through online disinformation. And many people had no idea.

While a few big events like the US’s 2016 election and the UK’s Brexit helped bring this meddling to light, many remained unaware or unwilling to accept that Putin’s disinformation machine was influencing them on a wide range of issues. Small groups of determined activists tried to convince the world that the Kremlin had infiltrated and manipulated the economies, politics, and psychology of much of the globe; these warnings were mostly met with silence or even ridicule.

All that changed the moment Russian boots touched Ukrainian soil. Almost overnight, the Western world became overwhelmingly aware of the Kremlin’s activities in these fields, shattering the illusions that allowed Putin’s alternative, Kremlin-controlled information ecosystem to exist outside its borders. As a result, the sophisticated disinformation machinery Putin spent decades cultivating collapsed within days.

Russia’s network of influence was as complex as it was sprawling. The Kremlin has spent millions in terms of dollars and hours in Europe alone, nurturing and fostering the populist right (Italy, Hungary, Slovenia), the far right (Austria, France, Slovakia), and even the far left (Cyprus, Greece, Germany). For years, elected politicians in these and other countries have been standing up for Russia’s interests and defending Russia’s transgressions, often peddling Putin’s narratives in the process. Meanwhile, on televisions, computers, and mobile screens across the globe, Kremlin-run media such as RT, Sputnik and a host of aligned blogs and “news” websites helped spread an alternative view of the real world. Though often marginal in terms of reach in and of themselves (with some notable exceptions, such as Sputnik Mundo), they performed a key role in spreading disinformation to audiences in and outside of Russia.

But the digital realm is where Russia found the most success in opening new fronts in its disinformation war. Social media, quasi-legitimate blogs, and bots reached ordinary people en masse all the time. With skill and care, Russian operatives tested and retested how best to polarize audiences. Using different platforms, content, and messaging, they built up a profile of users for their targeting purposes and then reflected back to them a picture of the world that would make them angry, frightened, and despairing—a picture that only exists online. For evidence of this, look no further than recent discourse in the West, where the Kremlin has been amplifying everything from climate denialism to the anti-vaxx movement to QAnon. All these things already existed but were the preserve of conspiracy theorists, quacks, and pranksters—now millions believe, in the face of reality, that climate change was made up by Green extremists, that “they” (whether it be Bill Gates, George Soros, or the World Economic Forum) are using vaccines to microchip people, that there's a satanic cabal of baby-eaters in Washington, or all of the above.

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The Chemical Frontier

 

Today, even in NYT how misinformation has permeated our society=let's hope that in coming days the Russians do not use chemical weapons on civilian or any populations:

Prominent social media users and conservative voices have amplified a baseless theory promoted by Russian state media accusing the United States of funding biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.

There is no evidence to support the claims, which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have all unequivocally denied.

There are biological laboratories inside Ukraine, and since 2005, the United States has provided backing to a number of institutions to prevent the production of biological weapons. But Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, and others have misleadingly cited remarks from American officials as proof that the labs are producing or conducting research on biological weapons.

“Out of nowhere, the Biden official in charge of Ukraine confirmed the story,” Mr. Carlson said on his program Thursday night. “Victoria Nuland, the under secretary of state, casually mentioned in a Senate hearing on Tuesday that actually, yes, the Biden administration does fund a series of biolabs in Ukraine.”

Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, characterized Ms. Nuland’s remarks as a “serious admission.” Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, tweeted that her comments propelled the claim from “conspiracy theory to fact.”

Mr. Carlson also pointed to an interview with Robert Pope, the director of the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which helps countries in the former Soviet Union secure or eliminate nuclear and chemical weapons.

“As Pope put it, scientists are scientists, they don’t want to destroy all the bioweapons,” Mr. Carlson continued in his segment. “Instead, they’re using them to conduct new bioweapons research — that’s what he said.”

Mr. Carlson mischaracterized those remarks from Ms. Nuland and Mr. Pope.

In congressional testimony this week, Ms. Nuland, the under secretary of state for political affairs, was asked by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, whether Ukraine has chemical or biological weapons.

“Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of,” she responded. “So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

If there were a biological or chemical weapon attack inside Ukraine, Mr. Rubio asked, would there be any doubt that Russia was behind it?

“There is no doubt in my mind, Senator, and it is classic Russian technique to blame the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves,” Ms. Nuland responded.

The State Department said Ms. Nuland was referring to Ukrainian diagnostic and biodefense laboratories during her testimony, which are different from biological weapons facilities. Rather, these biodefense laboratories counter biological threats throughout the country, the department said.

Mr. Rubio made the same clarification in another congressional hearing on Thursday, noting that “there’s a difference between a bioweapons facility and one that’s doing research.”

In referring to Mr. Pope on Thursday, Mr. Carlson was distorting a February interview Mr. Pope gave to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization and publication.

Mr. Pope had warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may damage laboratories in the country that conduct research and disease surveillance and are supported by the United States. He noted that some of the facilities may contain pathogens once used for Soviet-era bioweapons programs, but he emphasized that the Ukrainian labs currently did not have the ability to manufacture bioweapons.

“There is no place that still has any of the sort of infrastructure for researching or producing biological weapons,” Mr. Pope said. “Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program.”In a March interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mr. Pope also echoed Ms. Nuland’s concerns about the laboratories falling into Russia’s hands. He spoke specifically about the Pentagon’s support of 14 veterinary laboratories that provide Ukraine with sampling and diagnostic abilities to detect infectious diseases.In a March interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mr. Pope also echoed Ms. Nuland’s concerns about the laboratories falling into Russia’s hands. He spoke specifically about the Pentagon’s support of 14 veterinary laboratories that provide Ukraine with sampling and diagnostic abilities to detect infectious diseases.

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We Turn a Corner

This morning while drinking our coffee I told my wife that we will look back at these last 4-5 days and consider it a new stage-probably more relevant for our children but much like 9/11 it will color the future in a different light. Here's an article from Richard Fontaine  at The Atlantic:

Just days ago, Russia was widely seen in Washington, D.C., and major European capitals as a sullen and revisionist power, led by a president discontented with his country’s place in the world, but who generally chose pragmatism and opportunism over blundering savagery. This sentiment has transformed overnight, and Moscow is now viewed by Western leaders as a clear and present danger. Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine is the obvious, but not the only, evidence. Russia threatened “military and political consequences” against Finland and Sweden should they join NATO, and put nuclear forces on alert. Just days ago, European leaders visited Moscow to discuss the international deal that sought to end his last territorial assault in Ukraine, in 2014. No more—governments now have no trust in or tolerance for the Putin regime.

The world’s economies, save China, have combined to inflict harm on the Russian economy with remarkable speed, fomenting a financial crisis and enacting restrictions on Russian imports that will touch all of its citizens. The sanctions on Russia’s central bank alone may well force the country into a default on its sovereign debt. Previous worries about risks that could hurt countries pulling out of COVID-induced recession have been cast aside. So too have concerns that economic upheaval could provoke unrest inside Russia, with unknown implications.

Germany’s long-underweight military role and low defense budgets are also things of the past. Olaf Scholz, the recently elected chancellor, announced a onetime increase in defense spending of 100 billion euros, and committed to spending 2 percent of German GDP on defense annually. As a result, Putin’s aggression accomplished in days what decades of haranguing by American presidents could not. “We must put a stop to warmongers like Putin,” Scholz said. “That requires strength of our own.” In security terms, this may well mark the birth of a new, post–post–Cold War Germany.

Neutrality is on the wane, too. Finland and Sweden are firmly aligned with the West and against Moscow, and the invasion may tip them into NATO membership. Policy makers in both countries are openly discussing the possibility—hence Moscow’s preemptive threat—and for the first time a majority of Finns favor joining the alliance. Even if Helsinki and Stockholm do not sign up as allies, they have already begun collaborating with NATO more closely than ever before. Both, for example, are sending arms to Ukraine.

Even neutral Switzerland—Switzerland!—will freeze Russian assets as a result of Moscow’s aggression. “Russia’s attack is an attack on freedom, an attack on democracy, an attack on the civil population, and an attack on the institutions of a free country,” the country’s president, Ignazio Cassis, said over the weekend. “This cannot be accepted.” Large-scale protests on the streets of Bern, expressing popular revulsion at the invasion, helped focus minds in a country that has essentially been militarily neutral since 1516.The sudden shifts extend beyond Europe. The sanctions now imposed on Russia are global, with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Singapore, and more joining the anti-aggression bloc. Turkey, which previously maintained warm relations with Russia, has denounced Moscow’s “unjust and unlawful war” and will block the passage of Russian warships through to the Black Sea. The UN General Assembly will convene an emergency session, for the first time in 40 years, to discuss the crisis.

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