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"We Have Normalised Horror."

Hamas welcomes UN Security Council resolution for ceasefire.

Rep James Clyburn said he will not be attending Netanyahu's address to Congress.

Biden admin considering negotiating a unilateral deal with Hamas on the release of 5 American hostages if current ceasefire talks fail.

The Intercept has posted eyewitness accounts of the IDF operation in Nuseirat (content warning for images of violence and death).
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 2:20 PM on June 10, 2024

Headlines I saw this morning as I woke up:

Blinken says fate of ceasefire down to Hamas.

Israel vows to press on in Gaza after UN Security Council approves ceasefire resolution.

WSJ Exclusive: Gaza Chief’s Brutal Calculation: Civilian Bloodshed Will Help Hamas (sorry, I don't have a sub and archive.is doesn't appear to have the whole article up)

Battlefield deaths from global conflicts hit 30-year high, study finds.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:04 AM on June 11, 2024

"a permanent cessation of military and hostile operations"

Thank you for starting a new thread.

Additionally I'm very sorry for your loss, Press.

Things I bookmarked recently:

Living as a Palestinian in Israel (Zeteo/Substack) - Israel’s violence has become so commonplace that Israeli soldiers openly brag about killing, wounding, maiming, and torturing Palestinians on social media. Israeli soldiers, who have learned there are no repercussions for their actions, film… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:59 AM on May 8, 2024

Cendawanita, you just reminded me that while I was browsing celeb gossip today, apparently Eurovision regretted one of their contestants wearing a keffiyeh, which was apparently a "pro-Palestinian symbol".
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:31 AM on May 8, 2024

It was even dumber than that because it wasn't even a keffiyeh, it was just a scarf!
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:39 AM on May 8, 2024

CNN exclusive:
President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel – which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 3:21 PM on May 8, 2024

Happening right now...apparently Israel's ambassador to the UN brought a mini-shredder and shredded the UN charter as there's a UN General Assembly vote today on Palestinian statehood. The livestream is here if you want to watch. I don't know the full implications of this vote, but as I understand it, this would give the Palestinians more rights and privileges but stop short of making them a full member of the UN.

Data for Progress poll shows that support for a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:24 AM on May 10, 2024

Singapore's speech is quite good.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:32 AM on May 10, 2024

I am still kind of reeling from the idea that the actions of the Biden administration have in any way been particularly politically savvy. It may be savvy for a certain segment of the American audience who want to buy into "incremental" progress and believes in whatever is happening behind-the-scenes, but to me, personally, it looks like a betrayal of every principle he ran on - empathy for everyone, a commitment to human rights and international law, etc.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:26 AM on May 11, 2024

Just woke up and:

Israeli officials seize AP equipment and take down live shot of Gaza, citing new media law, which prohibits sharing images with Al-Jazeera: The Qatari satellite channel is among thousands of clients that receive live video feeds from the AP and other news organizations. The AP denounced the move.

“The Associated Press decries in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government to shut down our longstanding… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 6:48 AM on May 21, 2024

Meanwhile, the Israelis have been surveilling and targeting the ICC and Palestinian rights groups to try to avoid war crimes probes over the past 9 years: The intelligence information obtained via surveillance was passed on to a secret team of top Israeli government lawyers and diplomats, who traveled to The Hague for confidential meetings with ICC officials in an attempt to “feed [the chief prosecutor] information that would make her doubt the basis of her right to be dealing with… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 9:35 AM on May 28, 2024

Hmm...

France bans Israeli companies from major weapons show over Rafah assault.

Israeli hostages' families told that Israel will not end the war for them: Hanegbi’s comments indicated that the government believes Hamas will refuse to release the rest of the hostages unless Israel agrees to end the war, and that the current coalition would refuse such a demand.

The terror group stiffened its demands on… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:17 AM on May 31, 2024

NAACP calls on Biden to halt weapons to Israel as he seeks to shore up support from Black voters: The NAACP, which has advocated for racial justice and rights for Black Americans, said the U.S. must use its influence with Israel to bring a permanent ceasefire to Gaza. According to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, Israel's campaign has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, caused widespread hunger and displaced most of the population from their homes.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 9:28 AM on June 6, 2024

35 Years Later: A Retrospective on the 1989 Tiananmen Protests

I went to the previous link that also linked to the factsheet, but it looks like it's been deleted?
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 10:14 AM on June 5, 2024

Gaza & University Protest

I forgot to add this one, about the disparities in treatment between protesters at CUNY, where protesters were charged with felonies, and Columbia protesters charged with misdemeanors.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 9:28 AM on May 25, 2024

If anyone is curious, here's UC's list of investments, which UC Regents has been pretty clear that they are not going to sell off. It includes investments in BlackRock and weapons manufacturers.

Apparently the UC system tried to file an injunction to stop the academic strike started by UCSC and which will be spreading to UC Davis and UCLA and was denied. We'll see how things go.

As for bad actors, I don't know how you can get much worse than… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:09 AM on May 26, 2024

Currently:

University of Copenhagen will halt investment in companies that do business in the West Bank as a result of student protests.

UCLA and UC Davis join the academic strike this week; the strike could include up to 3 more campuses by Friday.

There's an op-ed in the Daily Bruin contesting the UC's claim that the strike is illegal.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 9:51 AM on May 28, 2024

Protesting for Gaza on US universities

An op-ed from Jewish faculty published 4/10/2024:

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:49 AM on April 22, 2024

Meanwhile, Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley are calling for the National Guard to be sent in to the protests.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 12:56 PM on April 22, 2024

Punishing personal opinions is the first step to authoritarianism - a defense of USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum by Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History - Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research:

As the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and founding director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, as well as the cofounder and academic advisor for the resistance to… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 9:14 PM on April 22, 2024

Slate has an interview with Colin Roedl and Milène Klein, the current and former editorial page editors of the Spectator and how they view the ongoing protests:

Why do you imagine rhetoric around Jewish students feeling targeted is rapidly increasing like this, then?

Klein: The increased alarm relates directly to the scale of the protests. The protests are larger than anything we’ve seen before, really, aside from the Oct. 10 protest.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:07 AM on April 23, 2024

Are we going to continue these tedious accusations of antisemitism without a single acknowledgment of what Jewish people who are on the ground, and who are part of the protest movements, and what they say about their own experiences? Do they not matter? See below statement from a Jewish student at Columbia:

On Monday, I joined hundreds of my fellow student workers for a walk-out in solidarity with the encampment; we listened respectfully as a similarly sizable… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 2:18 PM on April 23, 2024

Meanwhile a perspective from NYU Palestinian-American adjunct professor who grew up in Israel and is also a human rights lawyer:

KABAS: How does having grown up in Israel shape your perspective on the American protests?
DAKWAR: My experience growing up in Israel was of a country that denies equal citizenship to non-Jewish citizens, especially Palestinians who are treated as undesirable guests in their own homeland. Growing up as a second-class… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 6:59 AM on April 24, 2024

Pictures from Bluesky: Texas state troopers try to subdue pro-Palestinian protesters at UT-Austin.

Instagram: encampment being set up at Harvard University.

Encampment set up at Brown University. USC. AP live feed at UC Berkeley on YouTube - currently there's a speaker critiquing Zionist feminism. Protests shut down campus at CSU Humboldt.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 11:57 AM on April 24, 2024

Anyway, someone rounded up a list of bail funds for the protesters. Send any new ones to JordanUhl.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 10:46 AM on April 25, 2024

My heart: children in Gaza express their support for US college students fighting for them.

Meanwhile: IU Bloomington changed policy 24 hours before IU Divestment set up encampments. “To invoke a reference to an ad hoc committee that might have existed half a century ago and attempt to use it to justify the on-the-fly creation of a new policy today, is utterly unprincipled,” Sanders said in an email. “If a university lawyer was involved in concocting this… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 9:25 AM on April 26, 2024

Well, the difficulty is that a significant portion of people assume that Zionists are Jews, and there's a significant number of Jewish people who are Zionists. There is no separation for a lot of people.

In the meantime, the current news may start highlighting all the anti-BDS laws in the US:

Ohio State University says it can't legally divest from Israel: Johnson is referring to Ohio Revised Code (ORC) Section 9.76 — which was signed… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:48 AM on April 27, 2024

Curious because I’m not familiar with academia: what are the consequences of the faculty no confidence votes?
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:07 AM on April 27, 2024

Brown commits to a vote on divestment: The University agreed that five students will be invited to meet with five members of the Corporation of Brown University in May to present their arguments to divest Brown’s endowment from “companies enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza.” In addition, Paxson will ask the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management to provide a recommendation on the matter of divestment by Sept. 30, and this will be brought to the Corporation… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 12:38 PM on April 30, 2024

On the lighter side: Lauren Boebert met with chants of "Beetlejuice" when she visited George Washington University and failed at pulling a Palestinian flag off a statue of George Washington.

Joe Biden gave his statements about the protests: Breaking days of silence on the issue since the arrests of students and other protesters at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, Biden emphasized that “peaceful protest is… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:41 AM on May 2, 2024

UC Riverside's encampments are being disbanded after negotiation and a settlement.

Eli Valley has posted a webcomic satirizing media response to the protests.

Bernie Sanders speaks up for the First Amendment and the right to protest. He also spoke with Christiane Amanpour on CNN about antisemitism and the war.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 2:11 PM on May 3, 2024

DailyBruin (UCLA student paper) takes a closer look at what happened: Sindha, who briefly left the encampment to go to the hospital after a counter-protester sprayed him with an irritant, said he could still recall the threats the counter-protesters made against those in the encampment. He said these threats included, “I’ll kill you,” “I’ll rape your sister” and “What Israel does to Gaza, we’ll do to you.”

He added that when he asked a security officer why… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:47 AM on May 9, 2024

CSU Sacramento putting all the UCs to shame: As of Wednesday morning, California State University Sacramento (CSUS)—one of the largest schools in the California State system—announced it would take a different approach and listen to its students’ demands for divestment from Israel. “Student protests and political action are cornerstones of higher education and democracy, and we unequivocally condemn hate and bias in all forms,” the school’s president, Luke Wood, said in a statement.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:45 AM on May 9, 2024

WaPo gift link: on the violence at UCLA: While a small UCLA patrol could be seen in footage briefly early on, law enforcement agencies did not move in to stop the violence until 3 hours and 34 minutes after Tabibian’s first 911 call, a Washington Post examination has found — a delay that prolonged one of the most violent altercations since pro-Palestinian protesters began setting up encampments on college campuses across the country this spring.

The examination… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:25 AM on May 11, 2024

Six months and counting

I've made a post on the US university protests, specifically Columbia University.

Meanwhile, a baby was saved from her dying mother's womb after the Israeli airstrike in Rafah. Her mother, father, and 3 year old older sister were all killed in the airstrike. The baby was named Sabreen Erooh by her aunt, which means "soul of Sabreen," after her mother.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:27 AM on April 22, 2024

The baby I posted about upthread who was rescued from her mother's womb has now passed after 5 days in an incubator. Her name was Sabreen Jouda. Her uncle said: “God had taken something from us but given us something in return” with the baby surviving after her family died, he said. “But (now) he has taken them all. My brother’s family is completely wiped out. It’s been deleted from the civil registry. There is no trace of him left behind.”

Is there… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 7:52 AM on April 28, 2024

Bellingcat has published a new investigation, following the social media of track a single IDF combat engineering battalion, 8219 Commando, as they demolished buildings across Gaza. A tour video from 8219 Commando claims that in 84 days of fighting they destroyed 49 tunnels and 662 buildings. Our partners at Scripps News interviewed a member of 8219, Yonatan Segal, who said “I think we are the unit, at least until we left, that blew up the most amount of houses in Gaza.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 6:03 AM on April 29, 2024

Also, World Central Kitchen will resume operations in Gaza.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 6:14 AM on April 29, 2024

Jose Andres posted an opinion article in WaPo detailing their expectations for Israel as they resume operations and calling out their anti-Palestinian discrimination:

We expect and insist that the Israel Defense Forces protect and respect the lives and work of our Palestinian team members, just like citizens from other nations.

That sort of treatment has been rare since we have been in the region. For example, though every team member… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 10:25 AM on April 30, 2024

Thirded. Thank you very much for your contributions, cendawanita, it's kept me feeling sane in a lot of ways.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:20 AM on May 1, 2024

Haaretz on latest ceasefire proposal: According to the proposal, in the first phase, the IDF's activities in the Gaza Strip will be suspended for 40 days, during which the forces will withdraw from the populated areas and those close to the border with Israel, but not from the Netzarim corridor in the center of the Gaza Strip.

During this time period, three hostages will be released every three days, first women – including female soldiers, until the 33rd day.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 12:26 PM on May 1, 2024

Turkey...of all countries, is halting trade with Israel: Turkey said late Thursday that it had halted all trade with Israel until “uninterrupted and adequate humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza,” signaling further deterioration in relations between the two countries.

Turkey’s Trade Ministry said in a statement that exports and imports “for all products” would pause.

The move, which was initially reported by Bloomberg, had prompted the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 2:44 PM on May 2, 2024

I mean logically the settlers should be prosecuted for theft, evicted and their assaults on Palestinians and be forced to leave because they stole Palestinians' houses and property out from them.

But hey, consequences for illegal and immoral actions are just "too difficult".
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 6:17 AM on May 4, 2024

Only democracy in the Middle East has banned Al-Jazeera from operations.

Thousands of Israelis protest to demand a ceasefire to bring hostages back after rumors of Netanyahu scuttling a ceasefire deal.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 6:39 AM on May 5, 2024

Apparently a shipment of ammunition has been put on hold by the US with no explanation. So we'll see.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 1:43 PM on May 5, 2024

Al-Jazeera and i24 reports that Hamas has accepted a ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and Egypt.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 10:10 AM on May 6, 2024

Sigh. I was really hoping for an end to bloodshed. I'm tired.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 10:25 AM on May 6, 2024

Ceasefire Hamas agreed to is similar to proposal Israel approved (Haaretz) - what are we even doing here:

According to a foreign diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations, the outline Hamas accepted Monday night is, at its core, the same as the Egyptian proposal which Israel has already approved.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 11:14 AM on May 6, 2024

How to Identify Cinematic Themes & Visuals of Ancient China

Oh, my bad, could one of the mods fix that? Thanks!
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 9:40 AM on May 1, 2024

No Tech for Apartheid organizers fired

Google workers speak out, via a live press conference hosted by Haymarket Books.

According to the fired workers, current Google employees have doxxed them and publicized their photos on social media. More Google employees were fired, some of whom had nothing to do with the activism of these employees, and had only stopped to speak with them, or to find out more information.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 6:26 PM on April 22, 2024