When the story of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians is told, it will tell the story of how it cut electricity, food and water from the “human animals” and how Israelis mocked the starving thirsty children with videos of running water taps and lit lightbulbs 🧵
It will tell the story of how Israel used unreliable technology and massive collateral damage - bombs “focused on destruction, not accuracy” - to bomb sleeping children next to their sleeping parents, accused by some algorithm of being Hamas
It will tell how families were forced to flee their refuges once, twice, three even four times, fleeing due to evacuation orders that made no arrangements for them and pushed them into areas that were then bombed by the IDF in a perverse theatricality of insincere “humanity”
It will show how doctors, ambulances, humanitarians, journalists, civil defence, were killed, sometimes executed, kidnapped or disappeared with impunity. It will talk of Hind Rajab. It will tell all the stories.
It will show the stories of soldiers justifying the murder of children, claiming today’s enemies are the children they did not kill a decade prior. It will show them looting and mockingly wearing the underwear of the women they killed or displaced
It will show how vast areas of Gaza, universities, hospitals, mosques, houses - the lifelines of civilian life - were systematically destroyed in controlled explosions to create a “buffer zone” and push people inward, closer and closer together, so they could be controlled
It will show the videos of Palestinians fleeing through invisible death zones where anyone is marked as a target. Palestinians with white flags, elderly women, even Israeli hostages, all killed because they crossed an invisible line in the sand
It will tell how once enough people where crammed in a tiny portion of the Strip, and against the express order of the ICJ, Israel launched a brutal assault in these overcrowded streets, inevitably leading to mass casualties
It will tell how people where then told to return north, and how Palestinians marched proudly back to their destroyed homes, seeking to rebuild, only to then be trapped there by yet another blockade of food and water
It will then tell the story of how Israel sabotage aid delivery and replaced it with a system of mass displacement and extermination masked as aid delivery. How Palestinians were told if they wanted food they’d need to walk the death zones once more and go south or starve
It will tell how starving Palestinians were not given baby formula or blankets. How they were given uncooked food and no means to cook it. And how the efforts to break the blockade to deliver this formula were met with force and mockery
It will tell the story of how Israel concentrated a starving population among 4 distribution sites and then when starving people rushed the sites, they were shot for acting “aggressively”
It will tell the story of how Israel propped up gangs to repress this starving population and then used their actions as justification for opening fire. It will show how the people who got food were then displaced again, forced into ever-shrinking concentration areas
It will tell all these stories and many more that are still yet to pass. It will talk of the apartheid and occupation. It will tell the story of how it got to this. And those who enabled or supported it will never be forgiven
The story *will* be told. The depravity is simply too great. It will be told in the blood and the charred skin and muscles of dead Palestinians. It will be told in the unforgiving fury of those who survive this. The story *will* be told. And no lie will ever be good enough
And once the story is told, then you will have to run. Because you will be hunted. Because the crime is too great and accountability will chase you.
The story will be told and you will not be forgiven.
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See, if you treat suicide bombing as “barbarism” - “what kind of culture does this?”, you’ll respond with an “exterminate all the brutes” kind of mindset. If you instead see it as a type of modern political violence, you can understand the politics and address root causes
People like Eyal want to simply state “they are savages that only understand violence”. Mamdani is saying “wait a minute, these people aren’t just insane, there’s modern political concerns that we need to understand to explain why someone would transform themselves into a weapon”
Eyal’s take leads to the kind of world we currently live in. Bomb the barbarians, they are monsters, you can’t talk to them they only understand violence, they don’t deserve the privilege of rules and rights. It’s Iraq, Gaza, Sde Teiman, Guantanamo, “there’s no uninvolved”
Guys it’s very important for you to understand: I’ve never in my life claimed to be normal. I’m weird af. I care about things you’ve never even heard of in your life. Don’t even get me started on Star Wars continuity errors or the llama on Troy
This article concludes that Israel’s plans to “concentrate” Palestinians in Gaza is a war crime & a crime against humanity. It also very relevant and arguably marks a turning point in how Israel’s actions in Gaza can be discussed.
Because it is authored by Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, who literally represented Israel before the ICJ
Prof. Benvenisti actually surprised many by joining Israel’s legal team. He has been one of the highest authorities in the law of occupation in decades and until recently held the Whewhell Chair of Int’l Law at Cambridge - one of the most respected positions in the field
First, Israel ordered the starvation and displacement of 1000s of Palestinians. Then, it used this displacement as an excuse for disproportionately bombing whoever remained in whatever areas they deemed bombable. Eventually, this turned into official “death zones” 🧵
Invisible lines in the sand where anyone trapped in them (even people waving white flags and Israeli hostages) were seem as targets. These zones emptied large portions of Gaza, that were then systematically demolished to create “buffer zones” and prevent people from returning
Then these death zones were turned into death traps. Israel placed food in the middle and forced Palestinians to traverse the death zones to get to food. Whoever made it was screened to see if they were sent to a torture camp, shot “in their direction” or displaced again
I think Ahmed misunderstands my point. Nothing in my tweet defends Iran’s atrocious human rights record or justifies/minimises 7/10. What it does is break the actual simplistic narrative of the Middle East, that he supports, that ontologically Israel is good and Iran is evil
The more complex reality is that the brutalities Israel has subjected Palestinians to are always held at a different standard than the atrocities committed by Iran against its own population. Something @afalkhatib himself does, as shown by his recent @jubileemedia
In other words, @afalkhatib can’t really show that I minimise atrocities. In fact, I would gladly join him in condemning Iran’s violations against Iranian women, their support of armed groups that directly target civilians, and the authoritarianism of its government.
See for instance his postcolonial analysis of the Rwandan Genocide, where he dissassembles the argument that Hutus simply hated Tutsis and reframes it as a result of Belgium’s colonial policies
Then of course is his excellent Neither Settler nor Native, an exploration of how the nation state is inherently a colonial entity that creates “permanent minorities”