So here's a story of our time. 1. In 2016, an Israeli soldier called Elor Azaria executes a wounded Palestinian militant. Point blank. On camera. 2. He becomes a hero to the far-right and the execution of wounded suspects briefly became a wedge issue in Israeli society.
3. Briefly, bc it's long been accepted - at least since 2nd intifada - than even if someone used a butter knife to attack soldiers they might ALSO have a suicide vest and therefore need to be finished off, in case. 4. Which makes no sense to me and idk if ever happened, but ok.
5. Fast forward to 2023. A major cheerleader of Elor Azaria (and a convicted terror supporter himself), Itamar Ben Gvir is police minister. 6. After October 7th, Ben Gvir begins randomly handing out weapons to civilians, ostensibly because you need a Good Guy With a Gun etc.
7. This past Friday, two Hamas paramilitaries shoot up a bus stop in Jerusalem, killing three people, including a pregnant teacher. 8. The first guy to engage them is a local lawyer, Doron Castleman. A civilian who happens to be armed. A Good Guy with a Gun. He kills both...
gunmen and stops the attack before more people could be killed. 9. Then, IDF soldiers arrive. Castleman realises he might be mistaken for one of the attackers. So he drops his handgun. He kneels on the road. He lifts his t-shirt to show he's got no vest. He asks them
in Hebrew not to shoot, explaining who he is. 10. One of the soldiers, a settler with a self-confessed extremist background, shoots him anyway. In the abdomen. On camera. And walks off. 11. When more security arrive they assume Castleman was a gunman so they let him bleed out.
12. Castleman bleeds to death. 13. The settler-soldier who executed him gives smug interviews and gets much kudos from other far-right figures (they later erase the tweets.) 14. The army and police spend say they won't be investigating, before u-turning under pressure.
15. Netanyahu chips in days later, and says: I support the policy of handing out weapons; sometimes there's a price to pay, but c'est la vie. 17. C'EST LA VIE. That's what he said, albeit in Hebrew: אלו החיים).
18. RIP, Doron Yuval Castleman. A hero. Right guy, right place, right time. Wrong government. Wrong kind of state.
19. Maddeningly, much of Israeli media describe him as killed "accidentally" or as victim to "friendly fire." He was deliberately executed by uniformed neonazi douchebag who was too hyped up to stop, and, in his own words, all so hyped to mark an "x" on his rifle.
20. There will be many, many more Castlemans.
Update: Castleman's uncle says that three days after the killing, the family are yet to be contacted by any officials, and police are still not treating this as a murder investigation.
Also, important clarification: Castleman had a gun because he's ex-police, not because of Ben Gvir's policy. But when asked about the killing, Netanyahu's first instinct was to defend Ben Gvir and his policy because a) he needs Ben Gvir and b) he thinks the policy is popular.
As @Nadav_Eyal notes, a sane prime minister would have a) spoken out against killing people who no longer pose a threat b) ordered a criminal investigation c) called the family. Netanyahu did none of that.
That said, it's perfectly obvious that the more guns you have on the streets, the more likely it is to happen again.
Basically: 1. Don't summarily execute people, even if you believe them to be the enemy 2. Don't let anyone wounded bleed out, ever. 3. Don't hand out firearms.
Finally - if you're using this thread to further convince yourself of the lie that most civilians killed on Oct 7th were killed by friendly fire / Israeli airstrikes / black helicopters or whatever, I'm sorry for you, and you're really, really not helping.
(Btw, all of this very much applies also to Hamas; e.g. that Oct7 bodycam video where we see unarmed Israeli conscripts huddling under a desk in an overrun base, before being machine-gunned at point blank. Just don't.)
Also, the family says the shooter has not yet been arrested.
Update: The soldiers who participated in the shooting are now being interrogated "under caution" by the military police THREE DAYS LATER and only after mounting public outrage. When it's about holding their own to account, the Israeli justice system be like
Another update: Netanyahu finally called Castleman's father, expressed condolences, called his son "a hero" and said the killing will be investigated to the full. He also claimed he "wasn't in possession of all the facts" when he made his c'es la vie comment. Castleman's father..
told journalists after the call: "I want to believe all this will be done, but we [the family] aren't going to stop [campaigning] until it is."
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🧵This clip is circulated as example of how low Israeli discourse sunk during the war, but imo its other way round: "Radio Rwanda" has been our background noise for decades. It's a cause, not consequence, of Israeli wanton cruelty in Gaza.
Here's my journal entry from Nov 2007..
when I was a cub journo on night shift in the @Jerusalem_Post newsroom:
"It's late at night. The radio is open on two channels, Army Radio and Israel Radio. On both are late-night agony aunt programs, less political or hateful than midday call-in shows. But even here...
"a woman calls. She is in a relationship with a married man, she loves him but knows he won't leave his family. Then she stresses the fact the man lives in East Jerusalem. The anchor's first reaction is grave. 'An Arab,' he says, and pauses to consider.
🚨🚨🚨🚨 IT'S OFFICIAL: ISRAEL GOES ON GENERAL STRIKE FOR A HOSTAGE DEAL, FROM TOMORROW.
I was holding back despite the unprecedented sequence of events in the last 48 hours, but this, I think, is it. Either there's a ceasefire by week's end or the government falls, or both.
*might be it. Never underestimate Netanyahu's ability to divide and mislead the opposition.
🧵Just before he died, Mike Lynch and @DavidDavisMP began work on a UK version of @Innocence Project—something desperately needed here. He was reportedly esp interested in the Lucy Letby case, and there are likely hundreds of other cases in need of reviewing. However...
There have, actually, been previous attempts at UK @innocence, and almost all of them petered out - not for lack of miscarriages of justice, but because the UK justice system is remarkably resilient to correction. @HeidilBlake explains it best in her recent New Yorker piece:
Unsurprised by Uncommitted endorsing Harris despite not getting anything at all at the DNC. What else they gonna do - endorse Trump? (endorsing Stein would be the same as endorsing Trump, irl.) In some ways, it's the reality lack of real leverage, especially...
with the momentum of what Harris's election would mean in the context of US race relations putting a serious dent in the BLM/Arab-American solidarity. Unlike Biden, Harris seems to have chance of carrying states where this alliance would have been pivotal. But what's frustrating
is that significant leverage is EVEN NEEDED to secure even as minimal a gesture as inviting a Palestinian-American on stage at DNC. Nope, not even a Palestinian-American congresswoman. No, not even as veteran a peace activist as @AzizAbuSarah. No Palestinian-Americans, period.
So. Having excavated my jaw from a crater in the floor, here's my take on Haniyeh assassination. Three ways to read Netanyahu's thinking:
a. He WANTS a regional war
b. He calculated this WON'T spark a regional war
c. The semi-official Israeli narrative, which is bullshit.
Reading A: Netanyahu wants regional war. Pro: It's not going great for him rn. Britain dropped objection to his arrest warrant & is about to impose at least a partial arms embargo, Kamala is signaling she'd be tougher on him than Biden, Trump is on the backfoot; IDF is cracking.
What to do? Kick the table over. Unite the nation in an epic WW2 style effort. Start a regional war with stakes so high the West will HAVE to abandon its quibbles, and join in on Israel's side - or risk losing its main strategic asset in the Middle East. But...
Perspective: Israel only emerged as a cohesive state, eschewing an intra-Jewish civil war, only because in '48 one faction moved very quickly, and pretty brutally, to concentrate weapons in its own hands and monopolize "legitimate violence"...
defeating/coopting other militias and instituting some of the world's toughest gun laws (even police trade unions are banned bc they would amount to armed orgs independent of the state!) Nine months into the war, this equilibrium is out of the window, owing to three factors - -
a) Unprecedented numbers of mobilised continually armed reservists b) a 800% rise in gun licenses issued by Itamar Ben Gvir, convicted terrorist and now police minister c)exhausted, underpaid, already problematic & violent police getting explicitly, factionally politicised by BG