Democratic enfranchisement of Turkey’s Kurdish citizens, like that of Palestinians, requires the dominant powers—the Turkish & Israeli states, respectively—to reconcile themselves w/ reality that Kurds & Palestinians may vote for candidates they consider terrorist sympathisers 🧵 In the eastern Kurdish-majority city of Van, Turkey’s local elections produced a winning candidate—Abdullah Zeydan—who was imprisoned after attending the funeral of a YPG fighter. Ankara sees YPG as part of the PKK, which has used terrorism in Turkey.
rudaw.net/english/middle…

The backlash to director Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech at the Oscar’s—where his film The Zone of Interest won “Best International Feature Film”—is really beyond the pale.

Let’s take a minute to watch his speech & examine what he said in context: 🧵
First, let’s recall the plot of the film that Glazer wrote & directed, for which he & his team won Oscars.

It’s about the Holocaust, & how a German couple whose home is next to the Auschwitz concentration carry on their lives w/ genocide in the backyard.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_…

Israeli audiences can find soldiers’ discovery of lingerie in Gazan women’s homes salaciously exhilarating bc many ppl have bought into flattened stereotypes abt Palestine divorced from its societies’ reality.

Fauda, for instance, showed no uncovered (hijab-free) women in Gaza. The idea that Palestinians, both in W Bank & Gaza, might live layered, vibrant, human lives—lives that include lingerie, for some married (and not-so-married) couples—is only shocking if you’ve reduced Palestinians to the most conservative declarations of Hamas or firebrand imams

Yes. The regional stability & security considerations of defunding UNRWA are significant—so significant, in fact, that they’ve kept the organisation plodding along for 75 years, despite the Israeli right’s desire to axe it entirely & Trump’s complete defunding of it in 2018.

https://twitter.com/garyspedding/status/1751390740410699982

Will UNRWA survive this catastrophe?

Probably, given how much skin the PA, Jordan, Lebanon, much of Israel’s security establishment & to a lesser extent Syria have in its existence.

But it’s been crippled by funding cuts & unpredictability for years now & is weaker than ever.

Algeria, which began its 2-year term on the UN Security Council earlier this month, will ask it to endorse ICJ’s ruling in favour of South Africa’s concerns re: Israel & genocide.

Given the strength of its ruling, the US should withhold its veto.

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

https://twitter.com/raminho/status/1750909328595251287

As of December 2023, the US had vetoed 89 UN Security Council resolutions in total since 1945.

Over half of all those US 🇺🇸 vetoes on the UNSC were used to swat down resolutions critical of Israel 🇮🇱, most of which pertained to its actions re: Palestine.

globalaffairs.org/bluemarble/how…

BDS has called to boycott Standing Together (⁦@omdimbeyachad), an org I proudly support.⁩

BDS describes it as a "Israeli normalization org" that “whitewash[es] Israel’s ongoing genocide."

This is counter-productive, circular firing squad purism. 🧵 bdsmovement.net/standing-toget… Standing Together is led by Jewish & Palestinian Israelis. It works in the incredibly fraught, increasingly repressive (some would say fascistic) envir of Israel to build common ground & get ppl to humanise each other. An uphill battle, to say the least.

theguardian.com/world/2023/dec…

Today marks 1 month since the Israel-Hamas war began.

On this day, I’m thinking about a crucial but under-examined topic: the role of graphically violent images & videos, which have spread w/ breadth & ferocity I haven’t witnessed in any other conflict—not even Syria or Ukraine. Like countless others worldwide, I have watched & listened to grisly, harrowing crimes against humanity in vivid detail. I have seen many, many things I desperately wish I could forget.

Profoundly wise piece by ⁦@gershonbaskin⁩, who has negotiated w/ Hamas since 2006.

“We Israelis must begin to confront the delusion that we have been living for decades. You cannot lock more than 2 million people into a human cage & expect quiet.” blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-future-of-… Baskin criticises Israeli leaders' wrongheaded fetishisation of deterrence--in other words, their assumption that displays of Israeli military force can tame Hamas or cut off its recruitment abilities.

In conditions where ppl are bereaved & desperate, they're less afraid to die.

Yesterday, Mecca's imam prayed for Palestine.

This & much else brings back '48. Ppl fleeing on foot, some by horse & donkey. Belongings spilling from their little bags. Babies crying.

This time, 🌍 watched their exodus live. Emotional impact tremendous.
Scholars, journalists & analysts cannot underestimate the resentments & ruptures these images will cause as they ripple & resonate across Muslim world & beyond.

Many in the Arab world, where I live, felt like they watched a Trail of Tears broadcast live.

Chilling, searing pain.

Evidence of new Hamas horrors is materialising.

Feeling compassion for one’s enemies is difficult. But we must make space in our hearts for both Israeli & Palestinian victims & their pain.

My friend Lisa is a cofounder of the anti-occupation @972mag & an outstanding journalist.

https://twitter.com/lisang/status/1711788263264891299

Lisa is a reliable source, but I am also seeking out evidence of these acts to independently confirm.

I have seen photos of burnt babies & bloody cribs at kibbutzim, Israeli eyewitnesses accounts etc.

Please feel free to DM w/ evidence or fact-checking information.

What many Israelis downplay as “collateral” deaths—and presumably less reprehensible than Hamas’s targeted terrorist attack killings—are, in fact, lives lost.

They are little boys & girls, held lifeless in screaming parents’ arms.

Seared onto hearts throughout the Arab world. The idea that all or even most of these children are Hamas shields is a comforting fiction.

If Arabs cannot grasp Israelis’ pain without witnessing Hamas’s true atrocities, Israelis cannot process their pain without witnessing the hearts torn by their own country’s violence.

Today in anti-Semitic madness:

Tunisia's president, Kais Saied, claims that Storm Daniel (which destroyed Derna, Libya) is evidence of Zionist infiltration & a Zionist "attack on the mind & thought" bc it's named Daniel, after a "Hebrew prophet." 🤦🏻‍♀️🧵⬇️
As Tunisian analyst Amine Snoussi rightly pointed out, it's just the latest conspiratorial & anti-Semitic "delirium" from Tunisia's president, who seized all powers in a self-coup on July 25, 2021--the day he shut democratically elected parliament with army tanks.

https://twitter.com/amin_snoussi/status/1703902401986437571

No publication fact checks more rigorously than ⁦@NewYorker⁩ imho & no journalist covers MENA better than ⁦David Kirkpatrick⁩ (@ddk_nyc⁩).

This ✍️—on why Ghannouchi’s arrest matters not just for #Tunisia but for the world—is a must-read. 🧵 newyorker.com/news/daily-com… “The imprisonment of a leader as singular as Ghannouchi,” Kirkpatrick writes, is not just a blow to #Tunisia’s democracy. It’s “a setback to the wider world.

For Islamists who espouse violence, his imprisonment is a vindication—new evidence of the futility of the ballot box.”

600,000 demonstrating is an extraordinary figure. It means approx 6.5% of #Israel's population is out protesting tonight, many having literally woken up from their beds when they heard Bibi fired Gallant.

When was the last time 6+% of any country protested? Genuine question.

https://twitter.com/talschneider/status/1640108443548672002

Acc to @EricaChenoweth, a top scholar of protests, 3 of the largest were Philippines 1986 (3.5% of pop), Brazil 1984 (less than 1% pop) & Czechoslovakia 1989 (nearly 5% pop).

🇮🇱’s protest tonight is, pop percentage-wise, larger than all these.

Source: bbc.com/future/article…

I want to introduce you to some of the kind, dignified ppl—most of them card-carrying UNHCR-certified refugees—surviving in utterly inhumane conditions in one of #Tunisia’s 🇹🇳 very poshest neighbourhoods.

This is what President Saied’s “Great Replacement” speech has wrought:🧵⬇️ In the Lac neighbourhood of Tunis, amidst UN offices, foreign embassies & some of 🇹🇳’s fanciest cafés, a large group of refugees—the majority of whom I met were card-carrying UNHCR (@Refugees) certified—have been camping in very cold, rainy weather.

They are hungry & unsafe.

In 2018 I dated a brilliant Turkish seismologist who worked at 🇹🇷’s top earthquake research institute, Bogazici University’s Kandilli Observatory.

We naturally discussed earthquake preparedness a lot.

He was fond of saying that earthquakes don’t kill ppl; buildings do. Like most ppl w/ a firm grasp of statistical probability, he didn’t expend much energy worrying about terrorist attacks.

Those sometimes happened in Istanbul.

But the real threat—the looming sword hanging over all our heads there—was, & remains, a quake.

Erdogan’s enraged face says so much.

He hasn’t visited the deprem bölgesi (earthquake zone) to empathise, apologise for Turkish state’s clear failures (in planning & construction regulation) or applaud responders.

Instead he sits in Ankara, threatening those who dare criticise

https://twitter.com/canokar/status/1622934955864084483

Ironically, white-hot rage against the state’s response to #Turkey’s devastating 1999 earthquake, which killed 18,000 ppl—characterised by sclerotic incompetence & touchy intolerance towards critique—created the context for Erdogan’s meteoric rise & 1st electoral victory in 2002.

Serious delays in response, reflecting possible oversights in planning & coordination, are emerging in #Turkey.

https://twitter.com/LizSly/status/1622699596081233928

Here’s one widely shared video on Turkish social media today.

It features an Izmir pediatrician who rushed to the affected area in SE Turkey.

But there’s a total absence of coordination, he explains, leaving doctors & nurses idle, their presence wasted.

https://twitter.com/mahabadanter/status/1622717090409971713?s=46&t=j_iG2UkQ6lMDo4zmmzSzXQ

In #Turkey’s 1999 earthquake, reported death #’s on 1st day constituted tiny fractions of the total (nearly 18,000).

Then, as now, countless ppl are trying to dig loved ones out of rubble w/ their bare hands.

Then, as now, entire blocks of flats collapsed in one fell swoop.

https://twitter.com/gonultol/status/1622645596447203328

But now, tragedy’s faces are much more immediately visible.

Through our phones, we watch ppl trapped under collapsed buildings, broadcasting messages begging for help.

We wonder if rescue teams will get to them in time, and how—w/ airports & roads broken—they might manage.

The IMF—searching for some sort of guarantee amidst Saied’s esoteric & unstable 1-man rule—has demanded a contract between the gov & UGTT (labor union) agreeing on key reforms before it ponies up.

This is an agreement to talk, not an agreement on reforms. journalistesfaxien.tn/%D8%B1%D8%A6%D… 3 parties—1) PM Bouden, to whom Kais Saied handed the IMF file, 2) UGTT & 3) UTICA, the employers’ union—have agreed to hold “jalasat hiwar” (dialogue sessions) starting Monday to discuss social benefits & economic reforms, either bilaterally (just Bouden & UGTT?) or trilaterally

Hugely important. “Costly wheat will blow up budgets in Middle East, perhaps forcing subsidy cuts that leave citizens hungry. Across sub-Saharan Africa, higher oil prices will strain budgets that are already creaking under burden of a debt splurge.” economist.com/middle-east-an… #Egypt, the world’s largest wheat buyer, is esp vulnerable to supply fallout from #UkraineRussiaWar. It needs 21m tons of wheat each year, but produces less than half that. Approx 86% of its imports are from Russia and Ukraine.