2025-02-10

The Ceasefire is at Risk

Ceasefire deal is in danger of collapse. Hamas is delaying hostage release because it claims that Israel has been in violation of the ceasefire terms by impeding aid delivery and killing people in Northern Gaza. There was an incident a few days ago where the IDF said they "fired warning shots" and killed three people. There's also video from Ceasefire Day One of a teenaged boy being killed by a sniper and a second Palestinian is shot and injured trying to recover the body. That's not the only incident - there are reports of multiple Gazans being killed by the IDF during this ceasefire.

I've been trying to find information about the truck volumes.  There's this story from the first week of the ceasefire, which says 4,200 trucks entered in six days - and that's including a drastic drop in volume on the sixth day down to 339 trucks. On average this is 700 trucks per day, above the minimum of 600 required under the deal - although it's not clear to me if an average is acceptable or if it has to be at least 600 every day. 

I also found this update saying it's "over 10,000" on February 6th. Meaning 5,800 trucks entered between January 25 and Feb. 6 - or over the span of 12 days - which is below 500 averaged over that time frame. And finally, there are stories like this one claiming "over 12,600 trucks" as of Feb. 9. This last one seems dodgy to me,  Feb. 9 marked 21 days of ceasefire - so if we assume the deal is for the average number of trucks, 12,600 is literally the bare minimum requirements. 

We do have a statement from Euro-Med Monitor that the amount of aid being allowed is insufficient and falling short of the agreed upon volumes.

Is it possible that the actual bare minimum number of trucks (using the assumption that it is 600 trucks averaged out over time) have been delivered and Hamas is lying about impeded aid? Yes. I do believe the possibility that Hamas is lying. Is it also possible that truck volume surged in the first five days of ceasefire while everyone's attention was being drawn and has since tailed off to below the required minimums? Also yes - this is definitely a distinct possibility.

Still, the fact remains that Israel is still shooting Gazan civilians to death under the "ceasefire" and judging by how the "ceasefire" in Lebanon has been going, it's entirely reasonable to believe that they are not abiding by the terms - and also that the "guarantors" are letting them get away with it.

The situation though - still vastly improved over what it was like at any point in 2024. But those improvements might not be durable at all. And now we are facing the challenge of trying to keep the fragile peace intact all while Trump continues to insist on ethnic cleansing and mainstream media keeps sanewashing the proposal.

2025-02-06

What About a One State Solution?

Two states has been the de-facto solution, supported by basically every nation in the world - even notionally Israel. But a lot of people, now including the Israeli Knesset, have deemed this answer to be unworkable. It's an interesting point - the idea of two states peacefully co-existing beside one another - with the current levels of animosity between them - this sounds like it will never work. But of course, this is nonsense - Germany and France co-existed and shared a border through both World Wars and are now close allies. India and Pakistan were given arbitrarily drawn borders by the British and religiously segregated into unfriendly sides, and they co-exist with only low level belligerence between them - despite both being controlled by highly nationalistic fascist or near-fascist governing bodies. It certainly can work - it's only opposed because Israel sees this as a massive loss of power and influence.

So what is the alternative? It's a one-state solution. Israel - from the river to the sea. Technically the status quo. We can see the obvious problems with that - mostly deriving from the denial of the right to self-determination for the Palestinians. This manifests itself in problematic ways - whether you call it "resistance" or "terrorism" - it is the obvious response to oppressing a large mass of people. This is the point that the Abraham Accords dipshits refuse to acknowledge - "oh, let's just pretend that the Palestinians just don't exist and maybe they will go away". It is born of deep ignorance and stupidity and a whole lot of racism.

The other problem with that is legitimacy. This would not be seen as a legitimate solution by a large part of the world - it would be what it is now, an apartheid state. Fundamentally, it is being denied the right to vote but being subject to the laws and rules forced upon you. It's like the American Founding Fathers with their "no taxation without representation" - only "taxation" in this case means dehumanizing oppression in every single aspect of your life. It's kind of wild that the denial of the resistance of the oppressed is so strong in America, born from revolution and maniacally fixated on the notion of Freedom - but I guess racism is a helluva strong drug.

Apartheid regimes are limited in their legitimacy - much of the world will not recognize it as valid. While it is possible to have an apartheid regime in the modern world, don't expect to be a member in good standing of the global community. This is the story of Apartheid South Africa and the birth of the Boycott Divest Sanction movement. Even if the elites love the racism and want to support the racist state, the public won't accept it and will force change. And while Israel had many advantages in avoiding BDS given that the state was born out of the singular horror that was the Holocaust, the genocidal campaign in Gaza has burned much of that forbearance.

Israel cannot withstand BDS. It's not a major economic power like China or Russia, that can just ride it out. It's network of allies that will support it despite the apartheid is ever shrinking and support from those allies becomes more tenuous with every bomb the IDF drops. The only thing keeping Israel as an existing state right now is the unconditional support of the USA - which explains the ludicrous efforts and resources being expended by AIPAC. You don't even need a pro-BDS president, just one that's not a hardcore Zionist. This would basically undermine the entire existence of Israel as a sovereign state.

So that is the alternative. A one-state solution, Israel from the river to the sea. And believe it or not, this is what a lot of pro-Palestine activists want too - a one-state solution, only without the apartheid. Some Palestinians want to return to the lands their parents and grand-parents were expelled from during the Nakba. I imagine that there might even be some Nakba survivors remaining today. And adding some 5 million Arab voters to the Israeli electorate would certainly change the way Israel does anything - but also, is a scenario that much of the Israeli elite would despise even more than a two state solution.

The denial of a Palestinian state is thus a doubling down on what is now seen as a lost bet. Israel and the US put a bet down on Palestine suddenly not being a problem any more - because reasons. And the past sixteen months have shown that this was an incredibly stupid bet. I mean - what is the prize if they won this bet? A strip of land polluted with unexploded ordnance and still holding thousands of bodies buried under the rubble? Did they think that opening a US-Israel theme park in Gaza was going to be met with world-wide acceptance? Where do they think "terrorism" comes from?

But there's more in how badly they lost this bet. What they did not expect (and still refuse to acknowledge) is that Palestinians are fucking unbelievably amazing. The resilience and solidarity of the people of Palestine is mind blowing. As I have gotten older, I have become more jaded and cynical about human nature, but the spirit of the people of Palestine has shown me that I'm an idiot. It was back in December of 2023 that I thought their spirit might be broken - that would have been more than enough to have broken me. But time and again, even as the entirety of the Gaza Strip was completely destroyed and they suffered pain and losses unimaginable - they kept going. And they keep going. And they kept right on going. And I may never understand where they find the strength but they do. The amount of denial of reality that's required to look at what Gaza has been through and the people still standing tall despite it all and thinking that they can still be defeated? It would require a truly breathtaking amount of delusional stupidity and intense racism - but here too I guess I have underestimated the scope of human nature.

2025-02-01

The Hostages

The ceasefire is holding - knock on wood. There was just an exchange of 3 Israelis for 183 Palestinians, and one aspect of the Palestinians released caught my attention. You might have missed it - I get caught up on some of the weirdest things. Let me quote it below:

Detained in Gaza on suspicion of militancy, the 111 Palestinians released Saturday have been held without trial since the day after the Oct. 7 attack.

Something I have been saying for a while is that the IDF is worse than Hamas. By every conceivable measure. One of these was hostages kidnapped - Hamas took a few hundred hostages on October 7th and these hostages are the only hostages that are referred to when the word hostages is used.  But as I said - the IDF is worse.

111 people in Gaza were taken by the IDF on October 8. "Detained", And now released. Not Hamas terrorists - as noted in the article, no prisoners that participated in the October 7th attack would be released. IOW, the IDF rounded up 111 Gazans on October 8th and just fucking held them in custody even after determining that they had nothing to do with October 7th. No charges let alone convictions - just held and now released, they have been in custody for 1 day less than the hostages that everyone is so concerned about.

To be clear - I am not defending Hamas. They attacked civilians, killed many of them, and kidnapped others. These are criminal acts - even given that they are resisting occupation and siege. They are a terrorist organization. But they are practically angels and boy scouts compared to the Israeli state and the IDF. Even going by the unbelievably biased standard of starting the clock on October 7th, Israel and the IDF are so much worse than Hamas. Fully an order of magnitude worse - likely much more than that.

Anyways - 3 hostages taken on October 7th were released, as well as 111 hostages taken on October 8.

2025-01-24

Democracy is the Worst Form of Government Except for All of the Other Ones

One thing about gangs of thieves is that betrayal is a feature, not a bug. The buzz right now is that Trump is expanding Witkoff's mandate based on his securing the Gaza ceasefire. Specifically, the speculation is about getting Witkoff to do a deal with Iran. Traditional establishment types, the kind who loved McCain's Bomb Iran song, are getting booted and I'm pretty curious about how AIPAC is taking it.

It shouldn't be surprising - all of Trump's owners are making moves with Iran. Putin just finalized a military co-operation deal with Iran, and Saudi Arabia is moving forward with settling their long standing rivalry. There's definitely a current of bringing Iran into the club - it is one of the expansion nations in BRICS. While Trump does count on the Israel lobby to back him at every step, apparently he feels like he owes them nothing in return. They need him more than he needs them and he knows it.  

Am I noting this because I think it'll be good for Gaza (because it is obviously bad for Israel)? Maybe? It's complicated. 

I don't think this is good for Gaza. Acting in opposition to Israel specifically with regards to the generations of occupation and apartheid and now this recent stage of full blown genocide? That is good - but it does not excuse the horrible shit that came with it. Hamas is a terrorist organization that specifically targeted civilians for violence and harm. More over, they were not and are not a responsive and fair governing authority. Violating human rights in the Gaza Strip is not a practice unique to the occupying IDF forces. Hamas, well they're no angels.  

Additionally, Iran is a far-right theocracy - not the type of people I want to see becoming more influential in our already broken world. So this is bad in many ways. That said - my objections are pretty high minded relative to the fact that it is a fucking genocide going on. I'm going off that Ben Franklin quote - " those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." But the fact is, Palestinians (especially those in Gaza) already have neither liberty nor safety. Worrying about the spread of far right religious extremists is a luxury that is pretty alien to a devastated territory that has been essentially bombed out of existence. These concerns are well into "let them eat cake" levels of out-of-touch.  

Here's where I am - the US has lost a fuckton of standing in the world, and the new Commander-in-Chief is absolutely not going to reverse that trend. And as terrible as US foreign policy has been, I still see this as a very bad thing. The West built up an international order, which had a lot of very real problems, but also too delivered a lot of real benefits. Maybe I can say this because I am not a citizen of the Global South, but I do believe that the "international rules based order" has been a net positive, and by a pretty significant margin. But the whole thing has been severely damaged by the ridiculous antics of the Biden Administration - just absolutely shredded and left with little to no legitimacy whatsoever.  

And it wasn't just Biden, although clearly he was the driving force behind it all. The whole lot of us -Canada, the EU, our allies like Japan and Australia - we all went along with it. Maybe some of us put up some resistance eventually, but certainly not enough. We are at this point because Western democracy has failed so spectacularly and now the consequences are starting to show themselves.  There are other games in town - and as much as we tell ourselves that "democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other ones" - well maybe we have been rating it too highly. 

Screams Without Words

I got a lot of pushback when I suggested that the accounts of Hamas using rape as a weapon of war might be lies. Hamas is a terrorist organization! Of course they were systemically raping people in their October 7th attack! Except of course, now we know that there was an active effort to lie about this. Basically every story that was exploded into the front pages was discredited. The big one - which this post is named after - was written by someone who approvingly liked some outright genocidal posts on social media. Where multiple people she interviewed said that they were misrepresented and interviewed under false pretenses.

The Israeli prosecutor who had charge of investigating these cases eventually conceded "we don’t have any complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will eventually come together will be entirely different…"

As far as I know, there are zero substantiated cases of rape committed by Hamas on October 7th. Zero.

That's not necessarily evidence that Hamas terrorists did not commit rapes in the attack - but it is absolutely evidence that the accusations widespread use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war were bullshit. Also I would like to note - it is immensely more evidence than should be required. If we go by past behaviour, the assumption should be that the IDF is lying. They are shameless in their lying - they make Republican politicians look like an honest men. No really, they are that bad. Just awful, terrible purveyors of bullshit. 

Also too - it actually is believable that the Hamas fighters did not commit any rapes or sexual assaults. Now I said the IDF lies all the time, but that does not mean that Hamas is strictly honest. They are a terrorist organization, they deliberately targeted civilians, it is completely unsurprising that they too would lie and peddle bullshit stories to cover up their war crimes. Only thing is - the explanation for why their fighters didn't rape anyone actually makes Hamas look worse. And that was why I felt it was believable.

Hamas noted two items. First, their fighters are religious nutjob "holy warriors" on what was likely going to be a suicide mission. This was the blaze of glory they were going to go down in - and they are religious fundamentalist extremists - so they wouldn't sin by committing haram acts at that moment. This is hardly a flattering description - so it does ring true. Now it is also true that a lot of people claiming to be deeply religious also do a lot of systemic sexual abuse - but very few of them are the kind so committed to the cause that they go on suicide missions to slaughter civilians. Regardless, this is the less strong explanation for why Hamas did not rape on October 7th.

The second thing the Hamas spokesperson said was that their fighters knew they were on a clock - that the overwhelming response from the Israeli military was on its way and that they only had a short window to kill as many Israelis as they could. So they didn't commit rape because that would take away from their murdering time. Which, holy shit - this "excuse" kinda makes them seem even worse.

Anyways, this is still not complete exoneration. The explanations as to why Hamas would not have raped during their terror attack are believable and match the evidence so far - which is that there is no credible evidence of rape. But it still remains possible - perhaps the only rape victims were also murdered. A lot of people were murdered that day. But really, this is the extent we have to go to in order to substantiate a belief that Hamas committed rape.

OTOH, we do have criminal charges about rape and the use of sexual assault as torture on Palestinian prisoners held by Israel at Sde Teiman. IOW, if we use as a standard - the number of criminal charges for rape laid by the Israeli criminal justice system - the IDF is still worse than Hamas.

2025-01-23

It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

A fun book and maybe worth looking back into in these dark times ahead. The title comes from a story of a small town fire department being dispatched to a building with smoke billowing out the window. They found a man lying down on a smouldering mattress. After dousing the burning bed, they questioned the man - was he smoking before going to sleep? That sort of thing. His answer is the title of this post.

There's a lot of things this title could refer to. The most apt topic - admitting something truly monumentally ridiculous just to avoid conceding that they may have done something wrong. Even if that excuse is way more wrong.  Very relevant for our times now. This post is not that - it's about the LA wildfires.

Wait, those are still a thing? Yes, those are still a thing. 10,000 acres near Bel Air has gone up in flames. And still the reporting on it is likely to not say anything about climate change. These fires are 100% due to climate change, even though there are countless people desperately seeking the one initial cause of these fires.

Wildfires happen. All the time. There are countless different things which might start them. And most of the time, they aren't an issue. They burn themselves out before become a big deal - or firefighting gets dispatched and they get the blaze contained in short order. This is how things normally work - and there are a lot of resources put into monitoring for new fires as well as respond to them as quickly and effectively as possible. This is how it has always gone - tall towers out in the sticks with a person regularly scanning the forest for wisps of smoke - calling incidents in and having aircraft at the ready to be dispatched. The methodology we have used for generations.

But these fires are around LA. The population of Greater Los Angeles is over 18 million people - these fires were going to be spotted very early, and there are massive resources sitting right there, ready to deploy in no time flat. This is why we normally don't get fires threatening large metropolitan areas - the concentration of people automatically makes the area exceptionally well suited to preventing wildfire outbreaks. It takes a very rapidly growing fire - one with access to a lot of high quality fuel - to actually get out of control. And that only happened because of the climate change inflicted drought.

Typically, fires that do major damage to cities are fires that start in the city - because many buildings are exactly the sorts of high fuel density structures that result in out of control fires. Building codes and urban planning have done a lot to reduce this problem - but there are still bad decisions that can result in very bad outcomes.  The 2023 Tantallon Fire in suburban Halifax for example - subdivisions built right into the forest had to be evacuated. Not just because they were built into the wildlands, but also because they were built with "dry hydrants" - essentially a pipe that leads out to a lake. In hindsight, these were recognized as inadequate. Also too, these were subdivisions with houses scattered across half a dozen blocks or more - maybe a hundred houses or so - all with a single 2 lane road as a gateway to the main arterial. Suboptimal for getting firefighting crews in and evacuating residents out.

The other threat to urban areas is when remote wildfires grow out of control and then continue growing until they start to encroach on cities. In 2016, the Fort McMurray fires started 15 km away from the city. This one also was enabled by climate change and the drought induced build up and drying out of fuel. Fire crews responded and were spraying within an hour. Under normal circumstances, this would have been another contained wildfire, but that's not how it went.

The Pacific Palisades fire started about 5 km away and fire trucks were on the scene 45 minutes after getting the call. This is problematic - they should have responded faster, but apparently they were already dispatched to numerous other fires happening at the time. Because, as I noted initially, wildfires happen all the time. And as we have seen - the conditions were extremely conducive for wildfires. Perhaps LAFD needed more resources - that certainly seems believable. Still, 45 minutes is not a long time for a forest fire under normal conditions. It should have been contained - and only wasn't because the entire area was a tinderbox full of fuel that had been dried out after literally nine months without rain.

So climate change is 100% the cause of the damage. You cannot prevent all wildfires from happening - they always happen and have always happened. But we've developed methods for containing the threat and respond to the danger - only problem is that those methods were developed in a pre-climate change environment, and they are now woefully inadequate in our more extreme weather world. That's what happened here - and it is going to happen more and more frequently. 

Fun fact - preventing wildfires has been recognized as one of the causes of extreme wildfire damage. When you stop all wildfires as soon as you can, the amount of fuel builds up. More trees die or drop branches, which sit on the ground, drying out over time. If these don't burn normally, then they just contribute to the danger when the next wildfire eventually does come close. 

2025-01-18

How it's Going in Gaza

Been a while since we looked in on this. It's just so goddamned depressing - reviewing the circumstances at any point in the past half year or so means grappling with the fact that the Gaza Strip has been destroyed. Most of the buildings have been demolished or are severely damaged that they will need to be demolished. All of the normal infrastructure that's associated with human habitation, also destroyed. Water, sewer, electrical, libraries, schools, markets, and of course the entire healthcare system - pretty much wiped out.

So, what was achieved? What can Biden and Netanyahu say they managed to accomplish over these fifteen months of genocidal rage?

Nothing. And that's being as generous to them as possible about it. Even if you don't count a literal genocide as negative (because you are a racist fuckhead like Joe Biden or his foreign policy brain trust) - this whole tragedy has only incurred massive costs on the US and Israel. Israeli society was allowed to sink into the darkest depths of genocidal fever - which is going to result in a very serious reckoning when the time comes. But even aside from these future implications, they've paid a significant cost now.

The international standing of these countries is in tatters. And their strenuous efforts at postponing and delaying accountability means that this continuous harm to their reputations will persist. The ICC and ICJ cases will continue to have developments keeping the genocide as an active issue - all while we start getting information out from Gaza about how hellish the situation really is. The Hind Rajab Foundation's pursuit of IDF soldiers with complaints and requests for arrests being made anywhere exposed IDF soldiers travel is eventually going to have a hit and lead to an arrest. As much as everyone just wants to move on and not think about the genocide, we will be confronted by it repeatedly in the coming years.

Here's something I did not see as being part of the cost to Israel and their lobby in the US. That control over US foreign policy has been shaken. The genocide is so bad that large swaths of the American public and many people in the system itself - are now doing the previously unthinkable - questioning US support of Israel. This has been a forbidden topic for so long - it was always taken for granted that the US would back Israel no matter what. Well, the absolute shitshow this has resulted in has changed the game. Also too - and it's wild that someone as evil and shitty as he is - Donald Trump's return to power has changed the game. While most politicians, and basically anyone prior to Trump that could make it as a viable candidate for president, must have had extreme loyalty to Israel - Trump doesn't. Trump's only loyalty is to Trump. The fact that he's even worse than your usual politician is the gamechanger.  For him, there are no sacred cows - anything can be sacrificed to the higher purpose of appeasing whatever shiny thing has his attention at that moment in time. And that includes the US' ironclad support of Israel.

Nearly a thousand IDF soldiers have died. Many times more than that have been injured. And many times more than that have been traumatized. Israel had been scraping the bottom of their conscription reserves for some time - forcing people who had retired out of service to pick up guns and cutting off time for reservists to lower than had previously been legally allowed. Worse - Iran now knows how to defeat the missile defense system. Even the Houthis were able to successfully hit Israel through the Iron Dome and with a US carrier group assisting the interception efforts. This easily offsets whatever deterrence impact they managed to get from the assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership. Hell, Sinwar died in a manner that made him a frigging hero. Holding off an IDF squad single handedly. Literally single handed - he lost one in the fighting, and still managed to push a squad back, forcing them to fall back on a quadcopter to kill him. And he went down fighting to the very end. On the front line.

The traumatization of IDF soldiers is going to get worse. As I mentioned before, there will be a reckoning as Israeli society starts to come to grips with what they have done. Now to be clear - there are definitely parts of Israeli society that won't give a shit - but it's absolutely not everybody. Some of them will see how they got played by Netanyahu and the far right. The harm to Gaza was especially bad because so many children were killed and maimed - and not every Israeli will continue to be able to justify this by ralling back on being racist shits and discounting those children just because they are Arabs. Some Israelis are going to realize what's happened - what they did. And some of those people are drone operators and snipers.

Their stated goals were to destroy Hamas and rescue the hostages. Hamas is not destroyed. The US believes that Hamas has essentially replenished their ranks by recruiting as many fighters as had been killed. Also too - it's not like that boost in recruiting ability is temporary, so undoubtedly - the military arm of Hamas is in better position now than they were on October 7. As for rescuing hostages? They did manage to rescue some hostages by force. Something like 8 hostages have been rescued alive by the IDF. This is fewer than the IDF has killed with their bombings.

Biden's position on any post-war Gaza was that Hamas could not have any role in it - in any way, shape, or form. But this was always stupid - who the hell is the ceasefire deal with then? If Hamas doesn't exist, there can be no ceasefire deal since there's no one to deal with. And sure enough, Hamas is not only still around, but remains the de-facto government of Gaza. The PA has stated that they are ready to take over in Gaza, but this will be pure theatre. It will be the same people who are doing the job now that will be doing the job after. And also too, even if Hamas steps away from their governance role, there is nothing in the ceasefire agreement about Hamas disarming or dismantling itself. And why should there be? As noted - Hamas is in a stronger position now than they were over a year ago.