Gaza has gone dark ... and I am very afraid!

[HeidiInTheBigCity]

Tonight, as Gaza has gone dark, tonight, as Gazan civilians have lost that lifeline that used to be "publishing their cries for help to the Internet, as they were literally dying", tonight, as even that option has ceased to exist!

I STAND WITH CIVILIANS!

Not with Hamas!
NOT with the ultra-far-right Israeli government - out for revenge!

Tonight, I STAND WITH CIVILIANS, as innocent men, women and children are dying, collectively punished, for the crime of having been born in the wrong place, at the wrong time!

Tonight, I STAND WITH CIVILIANS, as the families of Israeli hostages watch helplessly, as their missing loved ones are bombed into oblivion, and their own PM has not even bothered to meet with them! Because, once again, revenge has won! Violence has won! Barbarism has won! Death has won!

Tonight, I stand with my friend, a Palestinian-born [what he does for a living] currently getting drunk at a bar in [not where you'd expect] - because he cannot stand watching anymore! We cried together on the phone - it felt nice to know there was someone else out there - but it also felt supremely disempowered and helpless! Tonight, I stand with men, women, boys, girls ... just people, people who want to live!

Tonight, as I recall how utterly terrified I used to be when I, myself, became an accidental witness to the assault on [Palestinian city], some 20 years ago now! I also recall the good times: I recall standing on the rooftop of the [name] family's home, watching flares in the sky, deliberately pretending they were just very bright stars, kissing, and dancing with my fiancé. Snuggling up to him under the wide open sky, as we ignored the sound of shooting in the background, as we just wanted to ... live a little! ... under circumstances that didn't leave much room for living. For life! Knowing we would learn about names of people we knew and the fact that they had been killed while we had been trying to ... just live a little ... as the following day would break!

Tonight, I stand with civilians, realising that this particular, comparatively "fluffy" version of war - a version, make no mistake, that has left me deeply traumatised for life, bittersweet memories aside! - this is just NOT AN OPTION for Gazans tonight!

Tonight, I CRY FOR CIVILIANS! Especially, but not only, for civilians in Gaza!

We have GOT TO DO better!

Note: yes, I have censored a number of data points - because that is how afraid I am! I am not willing to potentially expose people I consider friends, family even, unnecessarily as I, frankly helplessly, post to the so-called Internet, pleading for their lives or, at the very least: sympathy!

Advise?? Haha
They have no where to go? Do you realise how big or shall I say small gaza is?
Telling a population if 1 million to leave within 24 hours, with almost no where to go and then bombing the few that are trying to leave, yes that is a war crime.
Indiscriminately bombing civilians and wiping out wntire families is considered a war crime.
Taking hostages is also a war crime. Hamas took hostages and now Israel has arrested almost 10,000 Palestinians and is currently torturing many of them in administrative detention without access to legal representatives. That is a war crime

Yes exactly. I literally used this exact analogy this evening to try to explain my (limited) knowledge to my son.

we have a greater moral accountability in this conflict because Palestine was a British Mandate until 1948.

Ukraine are reportedly taking care not to target civilians, who knows what the truth is.

Furthermore it’s mass murder because for some time Gaza has been an open air prison, with the Israelis controlling what goes in or out down to the number of calories, or type of condiment.

That's actually not made up
It was widely reported on major news channels that Israel dropped leaflets saying that those who remain would be considered as terrorists

@Wolfen what I mean is exactly what I wrote.

Stop the massacre of thousands of innocents.

who is going to do this & how?

Hold both terrorists and war criminals to account

again who & how?

Glib statements are pointless.

Please explain to me why this person “doesn’t like jews”

indiscriminate bombing of civilians is a war crime. That’s just a fact. NGO’s , human rights organisation's and the UN are all shouting war crime. Who are we to believe? Can you even have a war with an occupied state that doesn’t even have an army? It’s not a war at all, it’s a devastating attack on civilians. And ultimately it will cause more deaths on both sides - anyone who survives will be left with hate in their heart for Israelis. I don’t believe the Israeli government believes in peace or the preservation of life. It believes in some “greater ideology” of the preservation and expansion of a Jewish state and it puts that before the lives of both it’s own citizens and the ordinary citizens of Gaza and the West Bank.

As a British Jew I stand with civilians on both sides who are at the mercy of the extremists on every side, making innocents pay the ultimate price for their intransigence and refusal to accept the humanity of each other. It’s unbearable. I am scared to look at the news yet I feel I can’t turn and look the other way. The powerless to help is terrible.

I've seen a few theories about this. Some analysts are as confused as we are about how Hamas weren't detected before they broke through the barrier but I did see one intelligence analyst say that Israel gathers so much intelligence from Gaza and relies on computer algorithms to analyse the data that the problem was too much rather than too little intelligence. The computers algorithms couldn't see the wood for the trees sort of thing.

He thought that an experienced analyst would have done a better job than the computers and based on some of the satellite images out there I think a blindfolded 3 year old would have done a better job. If you've got footage of Hamas doing paragliding training exercises you might reasonably think they intended to come over the wall.

The bombing of a whole school if there was an intruder/shooter hiding inside the school building full of innocent students and staff would never happen right?

I’ve never heard anyone suggest that’s it’s “mass murder” for any country to defend itself when attacked in any other conflict. Certainly not on mn.

I don’t think it’s “mass murder” for Ukraine to fight back against Russia or for the fight back against Isis in Iraq (which the uk military participated in). Many civilians died and are still dying in these wars but it’s not murder (although of course sad). War is awful. But sometimes sadly necessary.

so why is there all this name calling when Israel defends itself? We know why. Let’s not kid ourselves

Honestly, I grew up in Northern Ireland and to me this seems like the equivalent of Britain bombing catholic areas because the IRA committed atrocities in Britain.

Tbf the British Army killed innocent civilians in NI during the Troubles .

are you talking about that hospital or the hospital that was hit by a rocket a few days ago?

Hit by a bomb more like

https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/1716532694564127072

Full thread I quoted above.

I find a lot of the points really interesting - particularly about Egypt position and the US's position. Its worth the time for anyone trying to understand the CURRENT geopolitics (not the historial roots of the crisis) and what the competiting interests and concerns of various countries is. And what they perhaps can or can not say.

His starting point is the really critical one to understand: Hamas wouldn't have attacked without considering what Israel's response would be and having prepared for that. Everything then stems from that. And its fascinating because it really does look like Israel and the US have been really caught unprepared by it.

And yes I do think they were caught off guard and there was a massive intelligence failure going on. Egypt says they had given warnings but they were ignored / not taken seriously. I think this can be explained if you think Israel had an arrogance problem - they didn't think Hamas was capable of successfully launching such a big attack. (Think of a reverse concept of Russia arrogantly thinking they could take Kyiv in 3 days - ego matters).

Why do I think this rather than a conspiracy theory where Israel just wanted an excuse to 'wipe out Gaza'? Well because the scenario thats played out threatens Netanyhu's position personally - why would the Israeli leader put himself into such a personal political pickle, there's clearly an internal conflict between Netanyhu and the military AND more crucially, if you were planning to wipe out Gaza you'd actually have a plan to do it. Theres too much flying by the seat of the pants stuff going on. They simply have NOT had control of the information war up to this point - and the images coming out of Gaza haven't been in Israel's favour. Its only NOW as a reaction to that, that communication has been cut. If there was a well thought out plan, wouldn't you have done that much earlier BEFORE you get to the point of UN motions asking for humanitarian pauses?

I think the UK position is in some ways similar to the US's detailed in the thread but with bit more nuance and less unconditional thinking - because of the historic ties and because we have significantly different demographics which are influential. This has changed significantly within just twenty years. The SNP's Humza Yousaf having family in Gaza is a really good illustration of this. It makes it so no UK political party can ignore the fact there is significant concern within the UK regarding humanitarian issues and racism - and this angle is a lot more pronounced than within the US. There are domestic security concerns within this dynamic for the UK to consider.

We are also caught by the fact we have a long standing relationship with Israel (and US) over shared defence strategic goals which we can't just drop

BUT

The UK probably is freer to both openly make the same calculation as el-Baghdadi about it being impossible for Netanyahu and how he can't win and crucially perhaps make this point in a diplomatic way (Abstaining may be part of this btw) than the US. I can not believe the US think differently having fought 'unwinnable' wars in Afghanistand and Iraq. They have a sunk costs issue but they REALLY don't want a war, because they know how it will play out.

The UK couldn't support the UN motion. But we couldn't oppose it either. But its not insignificant to abstain. Nor is abstaining 'sitting on the fence'.

Diplomacy is often making a seemingly very restrained small point which actually isn't anywhere as small and as insignificant as it might seem.

On the same note - not many people picked up on Rishi's big move last week.

When the hospital was hit, it put the Arab and Egyptian leaders in a position where they couldn't be seen to 'do nothing'. Their response was to cancel their meeting with Biden who was already in Israel. At this point Sunak SUDDENLY and very hastily arranged a meeting with Netanyahu and the same leaders Biden was supposed to meet. Why? This hadn't been on the cards 24hrs earlier.

The next day, two US hostages were released by Hamas and an agreement (which needs to cooperation and support of both Egypt and Israel) was put through to allow the trickle of aid through. Its a token thing, but it also wasn't insignificant. Think of the diplomatic behind the scenes stuff going on within that. Who was doing what and what was the message and to whom? (Hell of a lot to unpack on that one btw which I'm not going to here).

My point here is that, the UK government isn't sitting on its hands - but I do think there are also significant limitations as to how much we can lean in on the main players in this too. Even seemingly small things may be actually be bigger than you think and may be hiding a hell of a lot of behind the scenes diplomacy. If you know where to be looking for it.

I always say, look for the silences and what people DON'T say as much as they DO say when it comes to politics and media.

My thinking:
The UK is saying that there is a problem with the US and Israeli strategies with an abstention. We clearly picked up some of the pieces of diplomacy that the US were trying to do before the hospital was hit - diplomacy that several parties wanted to happen for whatever reason (I don't think it happened purely on the request of the US).

Think about this - for this to de-escalate someone has to facilitate diplomacy between the opposing sides - who is in any way placed to do that?

Would supporting the UK supporting the UN motion mean the UK was well placed to do that? I might be wildly wrong on this, but if the UK government are weighing up the possibilities on this, an abstention makes WAY more sense than supporting the motion even if it doesn't appear on the surface to be the morally right way to vote. It'd be the pragmatic vote.

(Sorry that was longer than I intended).

@Heelenahandbasket I said similar on another thread. Israel are definitely held to a higher standard. I believe 20 thousand Russians have died in the recent conflict but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a thread about them.

Tbf the British Army killed innocent civilians in NI during the Troubles

They did indeed but they didn’t bomb Belfast into a pile of rubble.

Okay, folks, I am, like, LITERALLY! going to try and go to sleep now, but ...

... THIS SHIT NEEDS TO STOP! CATEGORICALLY just needs to stop!

Please CALM THE FUCK DOWN!

If we cannot find it within us to even agree that civilians are blameless - then WHO EVEN ARE WE?!

This ought to be the most uncontroversial notion ever!

@HeidiInTheBigCity

you are the only one here shouting

Please stop with the baseless accusations of antisemitism. Real antisemitism is on the rise and should be taken very seriously.

The people too afraid to leave their homes or have to hide their children's school uniforms because of antisemitism deserve our support, they are not to blame for the actions of Netanyahu's government so let's stop conflating the two.

Most posters here are critical of the Israeli government and all the other political leaders who are cheering them on or staying silent.

Absolutely fantastic post (would expect nothing less from you RTB) and explains far better than I could just how stark the contrast is between the fire and rage of war and the nuances of geopolitical diplomacy.