The willingness of Netanyahu to deal at the last moment under pressure from Trump – defying far-right members of his coalition including Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – has not been lost on Israeli commentators.
“I ask myself where did all the obstacles go?” wrote Ben Caspit in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv. “All the conditions? All the ridiculous spins that were thrown out by the leader and were echoed by his mouthpieces?
“And what about the Philadelphi corridor [on the border with Egypt]? All of the obstacles that emerged at decisive moments in the negotiations, all of the statements that were issued, including several that were issued during the Sabbath, about how Israel would never leave, never stop, never surrender and never give in?”
This was posted yesterday, and since that time, Israel has already killed dozens more people including a bunch of little kids, and Netanyahu has said he won’t put the cease-fire up for a cabinet vote until Hamas stops sabotaging it in ways he is leaving unspecified.
The people who are taking seriously this idea that Trump might have been the guy who finally grasped how best to make progress on the Israel and Palestine problem, need to take a long, hard look at themselves and how they form their judgements, and why they are willing to believe hilarious fantasies as long as it’ll serve a narrative they like. And maybe stop doing that.
Since you’re obliquely inferring it, I don’t support Trump and neither does the Guardian. In Britain, “Guardian reader” is used to imply a stereotype of a person with modern progressive, left-wing or “politically correct” views.
I don’t expect journalists to report a version of reality that I like; that’s how I stay grounded and avoid getting trapped in a bubble where only some vast improbable conspiracy can explain why my assumptions about the world are constantly contradicted by reality.
Do you ever get tired of being profoundly wrong?
Update: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hostages-hamas-gaza-suspend-release-israel-rcna191507
Not that I am in any way happy about it. The whole reason I’m harping on this is that I think it’s bizarre that you are universally opposed to state power, apparently including even elements of it like elections that are pretty widely regarded as good features, but you’ve carved out a specific exception for this thing Trump did as an exercise of state power, even to the point of involving a MAGA-apologist fantasy about Trump and Israel’s future conduct in Gaza that anyone in any other context could have seen wasn’t going to be their future conduct in Gaza.
I’ll probably let it go after one more message notating the complete collapse of the peace, whether that comes in a few months or it comes this week. Honestly, I’m just trying to help you see that sometimes getting tangled up in “isms” can lead you to thinking up is down, because whatever world event has to always be manipulated and interpreted in a way that it always has to back up your “ism”.
The primary thing you’re demonstrating through these updates is that you deeply misunderstand my politics, but are happy to assign me reductionist beliefs and motivations that I don’t hold.
All of this because you’re desperate to have a debate where you appear the victor. In lieu of me admitting defeat, you’ll accept that I stop responding as a sort of victory. Unlike you, I am not afraid of an ideological defeat, because it means I come away with a more nuanced view of the world. Winning or losing an argument is not an act of emotional endurance, but of careful listening and consideration.
But I can’t win or lose an argument against you. You only understand anarchism well enough to convince people with no concept of it that you do. You haven’t done any independent research despite the ease of finding anarchist writing on the internet, and you expect your intellectual adversaries to explain it to you. But even doing the work of explaining it to you is a waste of time, as you’ve demonstrated that you’ll twist their words just as you’ve added non-textual interpretations of this article, or turn it into a straw-man, like what you’ve done in your mind to me.
I’m not an anarchist out of ignorance of liberalism. I’ll all too aware of your beliefs and arguments, I held most of them at some point in my life, and I see little value in engaging with people who demonstrate bad faith who still hold those beliefs. The way you act toward people with socialist and anarchist politics online is toxic, and if you really do value healthy dialogue or debate, you should reconsider Lemmy as an appropriate space for you to participate in while you haven’t done the prerequisite work on yourself.
The primary thing you’re demonstrating through these updates is that you deeply misunderstand my politics, but are happy to assign me reductionist beliefs and motivations that I don’t hold.
Are you not universally opposed to state power, and to elections? If I’ve misunderstood something, you can definitely explain it to me, or point me to what I need to read.
All of this because you’re desperate to have a debate where you appear the victor.
To a certain extent, yeah. There is a significant extent, though, to which I really want to help you understand what look to me like mistakes you’re making in your worldview. You may be right that I have your worldview wrong. I’m happy for you to explain. But you said some specific things about the world, totally separate from anything about anarchism, that I wanted to address, because to me they seemed extremely wrong.
If I didn’t take you seriously to some extent as wanting to understand the world and make progress in it, I wouldn’t talk with you at all. We definitely don’t need to agree in order to talk with each other.
But I can’t win or lose an argument against you. You only understand anarchism well enough to convince people with no concept of it that you do. You haven’t done any independent research despite the ease of finding anarchist writing on the internet, and you expect your intellectual adversaries to explain it to you. But even doing the work of explaining it to you is a waste of time
Nothing we are currently talking about is anarchism. I’m making a little bit of a jumping-off to criticizing what seems to me like dogmatism that might be why you think it makes sense that Trump might have achieved significant progress as described in the article. But mostly what I’m talking about is criticizing that conclusion, nothing about the ideologies involved.
Maybe you’re right that it’s not fair for me to ascribe to you the reasons why you made this particular mistake, when you interpreted this article as something sensible instead of as a hilarious fantasy. The truth is, I have no idea why you read this article and thought it made sense. I’m just guessing. Mostly I’m pointing out that world events after the article are backing up my interpretation of its (screaming lack of) credibility.
, as you’ve demonstrated that you’ll twist their words just as you’ve added non-textual interpretations of this article
What did I misinterpret from this article?
, or turn it into a straw-man, like what you’ve done in your mind to me.
What am I ascribing to you that isn’t right?
I’m not an anarchist out of ignorance of liberalism. I’ll all too aware of your beliefs and arguments
Why do you assume I’m a “liberal?” People who I disagree with often use this reductionist framework to tell me why I am wrong, or tell me what my beliefs and arguments are, and very often they are extremely wrong. I probably am a “liberal” in Lemmy’s consensus categories, but I have a feeling that if you describe what “liberalism” is to you, there’s going to be a bunch of stuff in it that I strongly disagree with.
Tell me: What do I think about Gaza? What do I think about US state power? What do I think about Biden’s performance in office? I’m curious what my beliefs and arguments are.
The way you act toward people with socialist and anarchist politics online is toxic
Why is everything this tribal framework with you?
I’m really not trying to have an extensive argument with you. You felt the need to follow up on my comment, so I’m following back up on the situation with you as it develops further. Like I said, I’ll probably stop, once the killing resumes at scale with Trump’s approval.
Do you honestly want to talk with me about this? It sounds like you don’t. I tend to be pretty hostile sometimes when I talk online, which I can understand usually leads to conflict which doesn’t need to be there. I’m trying to be better about that, actually. I sort of don’t get why I would need to treat people with particular ideologies with kid gloves, though, or whatever you’re trying to invoke when you say I act toxic to people with particular ideologies. What did I do here that is toxic? What are you saying that I do in general? I’m genuinely asking.
Update: Hamas is now saying that Israel is stalling on implementing the next phase.
Like I said, I don’t know that the ceasefire will collapse and “official” killing resume. The only thing I’m pretty confident of is that within six months, Palestinians will have resumed dying en masse in Gaza, either from resumed military attack or from starvation and disease or both, and that in general the arc of the genocide will bend even closer towards a rapid completion.
Update: They started killing in the West Bank, too. Airstrikes with drones and helicopters on a refugee camp, and then a ground operation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg750yzdr8o
Like I say, it’s hard to predict the future, but if I had to guess at the specifics, I would say anywhere from two weeks to two months of no humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza, meaning people are still dying horribly at a pretty rapid pace, and then some pretext to resume the full military operation there. We’ll see whether I am profoundly wrong about that, I easily could be. My only pretty confident prediction is that the dying in Gaza will continue this year.
I didn’t have operations in the West Bank on the bingo card quite this soon, and I won’t make any specific predictions about what will happen there, but it’s not surprising to me that they’re being pretty overt about their rejection of peace. Like I said, any qualified observer could have seen it coming after watching the past year. In any context that didn’t give an opportunity to shit on Biden, I suspect that you’d be able to see it, too, and we wouldn’t be having any kind of disagreement about this.
Edit: Further update: Trump lifted the pause on 2,000 pound bombs.
Not that Biden had enacted any particularly effective level of stoppage of weapons shipments. But, Trump is on his first day going out of his way to undo even the pretty pitiful limits Biden had put on it. It’s a key priority for him. For contrast, here’s what Biden did on day one:
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/interactive_biden-first-day-executive-orders/
My assumption about the world is that Israel will resume killing Gazans en masse within 3-6 months, and potentially much sooner than that, and will not stop completely for quite some time. We’ll see whether that prediction is profoundly wrong. Actually, I think it is better than even odds that the Gaza Strip as a Palestinian entity will no longer exist by the end of Trump’s term.
I’ll be absolutely glad to be wrong if that turns out not to be that case, of course. It’s hard to predict the future. I still don’t plan to give Trump credit for achieving this cease-fire, because he is incredibly cruel, racist against Arabs, and also so mentally incapable of successful diplomacy or geopolitics that it seems silly to talk about. It’s truly bizarre that The Guardian is attempting to credit him for this, saying things like that nonsense about “dictation pace,” irrespective of the progress on the cease-fire.
I definitely think that it’s possible that Netanyahu wanted to stall the cease-fire until the lack of one had hurt the Democrats in the election, because Trump will be a much more friendly partner to him even than Biden was, and Biden was a war criminal for his partnership with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is not a moron, and he sure does like killing Palestinians, and I see no reason to think Trump has any desire to stand in his way.
I’m aware that The Guardian is traditionally left-leaning and reliable. They seem to be 99% sensible stories and then 1% total weird bullshit like this. For some reason, the topic of the weird bullshit is almost always Trump- or Russia-related. I don’t have any particular vast improbable conspiracy to explain why that is, I have simply noticed the pattern and been alarmed by it.
I don’t think that believing Trump is a moron, and reacting with alarm and disbelief to a story that paints him as a skilled and fast-talking diplomat, means I am trapped in a bubble. I think that it means that I am, as you say, grounded in reality.
Update: Israel has also, according to sources on the ground, violated the ceasefire in Gaza multiple times since Sunday, including when a sniper shot a child.
Edit: If you’d like me to stop, let me know and I will. I thought we could just send each other updates, though, and keep each other informed how things are going.
My reply is to your first paragraph, where you imply the journalists were irresponsible for reporting an imminent ceasefire due to demands from Trump. Despite your expectations, the ceasefire appears to be going forward. You can quibble with the tone or narrative, but this was good journalism from a respected source. Your outrage is misdirected.
Your second paragraph is entirely in bad faith, as are your replies to me. There is no credible reading of the article that implies Trump is a seasoned statesman who will solve the Israel Palestine conflict. Netanyahu has given indirect support to Hamas as a wedge against Fatah before Oct 7th. The redirection of the conflict into the Fatah-controlled West Bank is consistent with his history of rewarding the most violent actors on both the Israel and Palestinian side. Agreement from Hamas to not substantially interfere in these West Bank incursions to the US and Israel may have been the secret sauce that led Netanyahu to accept the terms.
You are now shifting the goalposts to Trump solving the conflict entirely. No one thinks that will happen. I’m not impressed.
My reply is to your first paragraph, where you imply the journalists were irresponsible for reporting an imminent ceasefire due to demands from Trump.
Reporting the ceasefire was fine. I posted a story from the AP a few days ago, where they reported on the first few hostages freed. It’s news. My quibble was entirely with the tone of the reporting, giving credit for it to Trump and painting Trump in terms like “speaks at dictation pace” and “suddenly came to recognise precisely where it is that they stand with the new American president.”
Despite your expectations, the ceasefire appears to be going forward.
I always admitted the possibility of a short performative ceasefire. I was a little bit surprised that one happened on paper, but I am not at all surprised that the Israeli military is continuing to kill Palestinians at a steady pace in both Gaza and the West Bank during the supposed cease-fire. I think it’s likely that they’ll keep killing a steady scattering of people from time to time, until someone shoots back at them, and then they’ll declare the ceasefire cancelled and resume their full-scale attacks, saying that Hamas broke the cease-fire. It’s now looking to me like the “couple of weeks” estimate I gave earlier is more likely than the ones that were at the higher end. It’s also possible that they will simply continue to refuse to allow any food to enter Gaza, and let things work themselves out on their own.
They also, by the way, just invaded several more towns in the West Bank.
Here is some analysis of the ceasefire situation that I generally would agree with:
https://aje.io/ibkb8d?update=3459663
Of course, no one has to have exactly that same take on it in order to be legitimate news. I’m saying that this treatment of Trump goes so far into fantasy-land, and implies such outlandishly false conclusions, that it’s journalistic malpractice, not just some opinions I disagree with.
There is no credible reading of the article that implies Trump is a seasoned statesman who will solve the Israel Palestine conflict.
You are now shifting the goalposts to Trump solving the conflict entirely. No one thinks that will happen.
When did I do that? I said it was absurd to say that he would “make progress” on the conflict as a whole. I also think it’s absurd to say that he will bring an end to this particular war as a whole, yes.
The article says: “In what some Israeli media described as a ‘tense meeting’, Witkoff delivered his message. The president-elect was emphatic that he wanted a ceasefire-for-hostages deal. Trump wanted the war in Gaza finished. He had other fish to fry” and then listed the Israelis as realizing that he would be so stern in his demands that they “would never be able to outflank him.”
You are right in one sense. That, what I just quoted, is so incredible that no one should take it seriously. It is what they said though. Trump will not bring a “finish” to this war, and definitely not to the Israel Palestine conflict in general, except through the route of extermination and annexation. There is no sense in which he is demanding peace and the Israelis are suddenly sitting up and forced to confront the new reality that they can’t get away with stuff under Trump. They are planning to “outflank” him by continuing to kill Palestinians, including at a resumed rapid pace after the end of the cease fire, with no real objection from him. That’s so obvious that I am confident making it as a future prediction.
Basically without those two paragraphs I quoted just now, it’s a perfectly sensible article that I would have no issue with. Although, I would think that adding in the context about how fragile the cease-fire is likely to be, and the issues that could derail it, would be a useful bit of journalism.
