Israel war update

This is taken from comments PD made here yesterday:

Reporting from today indicates that the changes described in my last comment are only picking up momentum and getting more extreme. Authors and journalists in Israel are describing Israel now as a country that is becoming fascist, and the war as a genocide. Below are 2 stories from the Middle East Eye. Israelis with guns (some supplied by members of the National Religious Party) are injuring and sometimes shooting Arabs. Palestinian citizens of Israel are lying low and avoiding use of their language in public using Hebrew or English. 

Some disturbing video footage, and apparently many of those behaving and talking like bigots are former liberals who have now freaked out after the Hamas attack on 10/7. Even some liberal academics have caught the bug. I already saw this beginning to happen days ago. A newspaper editor in an interview with Ian Bremmer couldn't stop repeating the need to get rid of Hamas "once and for all" even if innocents are killed in the process. Asked by Ian Bremmer, "But what then? What's the end? What would you do with Gaza? Who would administer the territory? Are you prepared to deal with insurgents that may be more radical than even Hamas?" etc. etc. He just kept repeating, "These are not important questions right now. The thing is to destroy Hamas NOW! Everything else must wait until later." That's a prevalent frame of mind now. The distinction between Hamas and Palestinian has become blurrier by the day. In the act of killing, the perpetrator fast becomes desensitized. Humanity is lost.

The US isn't quite as bad, but the trends after this attack are here as well. Arabs and Palestinians here are also beginning to live in fear, and ethnic racism appears to be gaining ground. People here mostly support what is clearly a genocide. Israelis and Biden announced some deal with "humanitarian assistance" that was supposed to arrive today. It's not clear it will. 

But unreported here is the fact that the deal conspicuously leaves out fuel/energy. Without that, all hospitals will run out of juice killing many more than that bomb that got so much attention. At least 1200 of the 4000 killed in Gaza now were children. Without fuel, the drinking water (which relies heavily on desalination equipment) will dry up.

Some Palestinians in Gaza are already drinking saltwater and/or dirty water in desperation. Middle East eye and 972 are both good online magazines to keep up with events most media outlets don't report . A common (probably accurate) perception of those writing there is that they are facing a second Nakba, which is their traumatic "catastrophe" in the 40s, something that shapes collective memory and world view for most Palestinians.

Two articles are relevant. One is about America's unwavering support of this ethnic destruction and the other on what appears to be an emergent fascism or something close taking shape in Israel since 10/7. I don't use the word fascism lightly, but now we ARE seeing eliminationism in rhetoric and policy. The rate of ethnic elimination or genocide, in my view, is already much more rapid than anything Nazis did in the early and mid 30s. They have trapped 2.3 million people into a ghetto concentration camp setting of their devising (with no escape open, all gates closed). They subject them to slow death by starvation and cut the energy needed for everything including functional hospitals. They tell them to move south, then they bomb them in transit and in the places they told them to evacuate to, such as Khan Younis and other places in the south. 

PBS comments: 

In the nearly two weeks since a devastating Hamas rampage in southern Israel, the Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in response. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes continued across the territory overnight and Palestinian militants continued firing rockets into Israel.

A residential building in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had sought shelter, was among the places hit. Medical personnel at Nasser Hospital said they received at least 12 dead and 40 wounded.

The bombardments came after Israel agreed Wednesday to allow Egypt to deliver limited humanitarian aid to Gaza, the first crack in a punishing 11-day siege. Many of Gaza’s residents were down to one meal a day and drinking dirty water.

Another article focuses on Israel's urge for revenge being aimed at all Palestinians:

When you walk the streets of Jerusalem, you don’t see people anymore. You see police and private security forces.

Increasing numbers of civilians have been carrying guns in the streets, and even in shopping malls, where some Israelis were armed with M16s. This comes after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir decided to hand out thousands of guns and to ease the conditions for purchasing weapons.

In one case, a group of armed Israelis stopped a Palestinian man, ripped a baby seat from his car and dropped it in the street, and then searched his vehicle. The Israeli state has given them implicit permission for this type of harassment.