Thread by @medusaisdone

1. I'll try to give a balanced view of the current flare-up. If you're looking for villains & heroes, you've come to the wrong place.
Over the past few years, right-wing Jewish nationalist settlers have been given more and more freedom to behave despicably.
#Israel
#Palestine

2. This is nothing less than govt-sanctioned terror that mainstream Israeli press doesn't report on & the majority of Israelis turn a blind eye to. This includes burning Palestinian olive groves, beating up Palestinians & Israeli Arabs, trying to forcibly take their land,

3. & in general terrorizing them. The Palestinians have found very little legal recourse. Recently the lower courts in Israel recognized Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, as belonging to Jewish organizations pre-1948, & ordered the eviction of around

4. 70 Arab families. Right wing nationalist Jews are supposed to move in. This obvs serves Jewish right wing nationalists, who don't want to give up East Jerusalem. Of course, the courts recognize NO right of return for Arabs to land/homes in Jewish neighborhoods that were owned

by Arabs pre-1948. The Arab families appealed the decision & the case is slated to be heard by the Supreme Court.

5. This is what caused the initial riots in #Jerusalem & the Israeli response. Then came Jerusalem Day, where thousands of mostly nationalist young male Jews danced in front of the wall shouting "imach shemam" meaning "mat their names be erased", a curse usually reserved for

6. the Nazis. In the meantime, elections in the West Bank were scheduled for May 22. Hamas (who rule Gaza) do not want these elections to occur, due to their long-standing feud with Fatah. On the Israeli side, we've just had our own thousandth election within a couple of years

7. and Bibi, again, is struggling to form a coalition govt. So for both Hamas & Bibi, this was the PERFECT opportunity to sacrifice a whole bunch of Israelis & Palestinians, whip up some delicious fear & terror that they can use to fuel more hate & violence & nationalism,

8. and set the stage for the continuation of the conflict, now with more deaths & violence that both sides can blame on each other & use for their own gain. Also, any retaliation by Israel against Gaza is a boon for Hamas in terms of how the international media covers it.

9. This is all, of course, set against the background & history of the region, as well as the Holocaust on the part of Jewish Israelis, & the Nakba & ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza by Israel & Egypt, Hamas using international funding for arms, to build

10. tunnels, militarize the youth, & sabotage Israeli aid to Gaza (eg they constantly blow up the gas line that provides gas from Israel to Gaza).
So again, if you're looking for heroes and villains in this story, you won't find them. There are only villains & their victims.

11. And that's why I can't stand ideologists and dogma - it makes you blind to reality & nuance & allows you to be easily manipulated by the power-hungry, war-mongering, cynical, self-serving men in charge. And as long as they are in charge, nothing will change. Nothing.

12. As soon as leadership on both sides feel like they've achieved their goals, killed enough people, & whipped up just the right amount of fear, they'll stop (just before the tipping point where both populations begin to question the situation.) Until the next time the need for

13. a nice distraction & a dose of nationalism is required. Don't let them fool you - they don't care about anyone but themselves, and all they have is contempt for human life.
Now I'm going to prepare for tonight's probable barrage of rockets.