The Scale of the Blogging

I have thoughts about the developments around Sde Teiman, but those are still baking and will wait until a future post. In the meantime, some thoughts about how all fucked up and bullshit things are.

I mentioned it yesterday when I pointed out that the rate at which Israel has been slaughtering Palestinian children is the equivalent of at least 4 Majdal Sams bombings every day for closing in on 300 days. And this is just those identified direct kills. If we go by the Lancet's estimate of excess mortality, the number of dead is over 5 times higher. So the number of Druze children slaughtered in that attack is roughly equivalent to the number of kids that Israel has killed per hour since October 7.

To the people wondering why Gaza supporters are "ignoring" the slaughter of Druze - it's the scale. A bombing of a soccer field killing a dozen kids - that's got the same death toll of children as one hour of Israel's assault on Gaza. One hour.

At the start of this thing, I would do the occasional attempt at contextualizing the death toll - but we no longer have reliable numbers. The Gaza Health Ministry has been effectively destroyed, limiting even their ability to just count the dead. No one believes the death toll is under 40K at this point.

Now to be clear - this is not the fastest rate at which people have been genocided. Not even remotely close. The Rwandan genocide was several hundred thousand victims in 15 weeks. The actual number is disputed with estimates as high as a million, but even the lowest estimates coming in at around 500K show a rate of killing that outstrips the Gaza genocide by an order of magnitude.

That said "nowhere close to as bad as Rwanda" is a shitty defense against accusations of genocide. What's happening in Gaza might not be in contention for the most deadly genocide or the most intense genocide of all time - but it's still horrifically bad. It's definitely not the Holocaust, but it is still genocide.

And that's the part that the genocide-defenders want you to miss out on. The sheer scale of killing in Gaza is enormous. It's so bad that they've stopped invoking October 7 as an excuse. 1,139 (maybe as high as 1,300 if you count dead hostages, which you should) versus at least 40,000 - up to possibly 200,000 if not even more - just the sheer absurdity of it is staggering. They just want to leave it at "this is nothing like the Holocaust, and suggesting that it is, that's Holocaust denialism". It's a strong argument - Gaza is nothing like the Holocaust and saying that they are the same is Holocaust denialism. But that does not mean that what's happening in Gaza isn't fucking horrifically bad and in fact, an ongoing genocide.

That's just counting the dead. The survivors right now are not having an easy time of it. Nearly a hundred thousand identified as wounded while famine and epidemic disease stalks the massively overcrowded "safe zones". So many families shattered. And their homes - destroyed. Entire towns and large segments of cities levelled to the ground.

It is really fucking bad! And the efforts to minimize the scale of the suffering have been enormous.

And in the face of this - the fucking Democratic centrist dipshit asswipes are melting down over people that cannot bring themselves to support the Democratic party. "Trump is worse!" they yell. And sure - that's true. Trump is worse. But it is entirely reasonable and one might argue that it is the only moral position to take - to refuse to support genocide. The fault isn't with people who are so disgusted with the Democratic parties enthusiastic embrace of the mass slaughtering of Palestinians. It's with the Democratic Party and their enthusiastic embrace of the mass slaughtering of Palestinians.

And then we get to the other massive dishonesty with respect to scale. "America doesn't dictate Israeli policy! What can the US do?!" As if it was some big lift - some impossible sacrifice to stop supporting genocide. As if it was difficult to not send bombs to the IDF for use against civilians. As if it was hard to justify obeying the fucking law that prohibits funding countries doing what Israel has done for ten months and is currently doing right now.

Kamala Harris is the candidate. Her influence and control are massively increased. And there has been some evidence of change in the policy - the enthusiastic embrace of genocide now appears to be slightly more reluctant. But doing the right thing here is not hard. It's literally following the law to not aid and abet mass murderers. Biden couldn't do it because he's a racist fucking asshole who saw no upside in Palestinians not being bombed to death by the hundreds. Is the same true of Kamala? I appreciate that she's not even POTUS at this point and still has to fight for influence, but she's now fighting from the dominant position in the Administration. 

My guess was that it will take until Labour Day for her to consolidate enough power to have substantial control over policy. Which, to be clear, is fucking bonkers. But the Democrats have shown themselves to be a gerontocracy that values old people more than winning. Joe is a lame duck and letting him call the shots provides zero benefit at this point - but he's still the guy so tough luck for anyone who cares about November. Anyways, I'll be watching to see how things turn out in the coming weeks. I'd be delighted to be wrong and for there to be an actual real shift in US policy towards Israel-Palestine instead of just some meaningless platitudes that are in direct contradiction to actual policy - but I ain;t holding my breath.