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Laura E. Adkins

@Laura_E_Adkins

Jun 12

This morning, The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (COI) released a report on the war crimes committed on and after Oct. 7.

Here's what we know:

Systemic sexual violence
Relying on thousands of open-source materials they forensically collected, authenticated, and analyzed, the COI found extensive evidence of systematic sexual violence committed by Hamas and other Palestinian individuals on and after Oct. 7.

The COI found indications that Hamas and other armed groups "committed gender-based violence in several locations in southern Israel on Oct. 7. These were not isolated incidents but perpetrated in similar ways in several locations and by multiple Palestinian perpetrators.”

Read 26 tweets

Laura E. Adkins

@Laura_E_Adkins

Dec 29, 2023

The overwhelming evidence of sexual violence committed by terrorists who infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7 documented in a new @nytimes investigation is being met with denial.

Because ultimately, nothing — not a blockbuster investigation, not survivors testifying to the carnage they witnessed, not even substantial forensic evidence — will ever be enough to make Israelis human and worthy of sympathy in the eyes of many.

In a worldview reduced to victim and oppressor, there is simply no space for it.

To acknowledge Israeli pain and suffering threatens the reductive worldview in which victim and oppressor are the only categorizations that really matter.

Because if individual Israelis can be victims as well as members of a nation that has occupied another’s territory for decades — and if individual Palestinians can be at once suffer under occupation and be capable of committing horrific acts of terrorism — then the entire house of cards collapses on itself.

My latest in @jdforward discusses the dangers of viewing the world this way:

forward.com/opinion/574844…

@nytimes I’ve blocked + reported dozens of replies so far for violent event denial.

“What evidence?,” they say.

A two-month independent Times investigation using videos, photos, GPS data, 150+ witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors is dismissed as Israeli propaganda.

Read 4 tweets

Laura E. Adkins

@Laura_E_Adkins

Dec 6, 2023

Absolutely indefensible:

The IDF "had enough warning signs to prepare – at least partially – for the possibility that terrorists would seek to infiltrate from Gaza into Israel.

Despite the fact that the IDF Gaza Division's Northern Brigade approved the Nova music festival's staging in the Kibbutz Re'im parking lot, was responsible for its security, and its commander was aware of the warnings, no one in the IDF notified the thousands of party-goers or the party's organizers of their concerns, or demanded that the event be shut down."

"The festival production team says that if they had received a warning from the army even an hour before the attack, they could have evacuated all the party-goers in time.

Even though the defense establishment did not anticipate the size of the incursion by Hamas terrorists, it received warnings the night before that the organization would try to stage an attack inside Israel."

Layer upon layer of IDF soldier — many of them women — gave warnings that something was up. But

"Throughout that night, no one from the IDF or Shin Bet came to the area of the party to update the party's security team on the warnings, and no one demanded to stop it."

Read 13 tweets

Laura E. Adkins

@Laura_E_Adkins

Dec 5, 2023

Not the “speaking Yiddish is anticolonialist” discourse again 😂

For starters, no actual societies throughout human history who speak/spoke any Jewish languages have been colonisers in any meaningful sense.

For second…there is a growing and robust community of native Yiddish speakers. They’re not frikken Marxists they’re HAREDI ORTHODOX JEWS

There was once a robust, thoughtful and powerful Yiddish secularist tradition. (Hello, that’s how the Forward got its start.)

But Hitler, Stalin and assimilation mostly succeeded in destroying it.

Read 4 tweets

Laura E. Adkins

@Laura_E_Adkins

Dec 5, 2023

I have been writing about Israel for over a decade. I am no stranger to disinformation and antisemitic vitriol.

I have never seen proliferate as quickly online as it has since Oct. 7.

Here’s some advice I can share for how I deal with it.

🧵:

1: Remember how the algorithm works.

When you respond to someone or quote tweet them, you are amplifying and driving engagement with their feeds.

If someone is engaging in good faith, or has a big following, sometimes it can be worth trying to respond with better info.

BUT

It is almost never worth commenting if you’re not sharing info you feel will be worth doing so.

Sure, you also likely boost engagement with your own thread when you do so. But it’s not the kind of engagement you likely want or that will benefit you.

Read 9 tweets

Laura E. Adkins

@Laura_E_Adkins

Nov 5, 2023

Something I'm thinking about:

The strongest poll I've seen on the Israel-Hamas war (conducted Oct. 13) found just 8% of Americans (12% of Gen Z) think that the US gvt should publicly criticize Israel.

That is very different from what I see online / on campuses.

What gives?

The polling data:

And the source of this graph:
maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/upl…
npr.org/2023/10/13/120…

We've also seen, in other polls, support for Israel trend slightly *upward* since then.

today.yougov.com/politics/artic…

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