1/ An often overlooked aspect of the Israeli condition is our collective faith that we are constantly in transition, a work in progress. We are rejuvenating Judaism, building a model society, achieving peace. We care little for arrival. We are perennially on the road. ---> 2/ That is also an element of our supremacy turned solipsism. Actually getting there entails an acceptance of an outside reality, one in which actions have consequences. We are always "on the verge" of reality. The mark of true supremacy is full impunity. --->

1/ What can explain continuous lethal strikes against a hospital, killing and maiming dozens in one night? For Israel, priding itself on applying "thorough intelligence" and armaments "meant to decrease damage", it is the presence of a "central terrorist". ---> 2/ What does that even mean in real words? It means that Israelis view themselves as the Scourge of God, charged with meting out absolute punishment for absolute sins. It means that killing Israelis is an absolute sin. It means that Palestinians are terrorists or nothing. --->

1/ The current Israeli all-out attack on Gaza, compounded as it is by bombings in Lebanon and Syria as well as ongoing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, is a scathing indictment served in blood against the dominant world order. Israel is the epitome of this order. ---> 2/ This order is based on two foundations - fungibility and deniability. Fungibility is the the quality that makes things interchangeable, devoid of intrinsic value and assessed only in relation to other fungible things. The global order is based on human fungibility. --->

1/ The Ramadan Massacre and all that has followed it is, in my understanding, the gravest crime committed by Israel throughout its genocidal campaign. It is the most hollow, the most cynical, the gravest denial of humanity I have seen throughout this godless time. ---> 2/ Some of my wise friends here see a grand plan unfolding. I don't. I see a society so thoroughly dehumanized that it thinks nothing of wholesale destruction as a means of achieving its own political ends. Israel is pretending the last 2 months never took place. --->

1/ Even outrage pales before the Ramadan massacre. Its egregiousness comes from its lackadaisical execution and logic - "what choice did we have?" For Israelis, weakness is the only strength, the trump card that assures permanent vindication. Death is life. ---> 2/ The words of the prophet Isaiah come to mind:
"Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter." (Isaiah 5:20)

Woe to those who call choice necessity. --->

1/ No rest for the wicked. Just spoke on @AJEnglish (up anyway). I don't think this is a resumption of the war. I think this is a copycat version of Trump's attack in Yemen. I also think that it is an attempt to stall mass protests and new investigations against Netanyahu. ---> 2/ The blatant disregard for Palestinian lives is a crime against humanity. It also demonstrates Israel's severely limited options. Israel has been fantasizing about ethnic cleansing. Now it resumes its failed genocide. This is political manipulation aimed domestically. --->

1/ We are continuing to spiral down the historical drain. Today it is vituperative rants against the UNHRC report on Israel's sexual and reproductive crimes during the pat year and a half in Gaza. No one even tries to deny the specific crimes ascribed to Israel. ---> 2/ The denial is directed at the notion that said crimes could be considered crimes against humanity because clear intent can be established. Israel claims it has a right to "destroy Hamas". Bystanders who get caught in the crossfire? That is, indeed, unfortunate. --->

1/ Yet another reason that makes me certain Israel is on the verge of complete irrelevance has to do with the number of radical "plans" innundating the Israeli public from every institution of government and control. Everyone is shirking their responsibilities. ---> 2/ For example, the IDF has announced that for the next 5 years draftees (compulsory drafts, remember) will complete 17 days at their post and 3-4 days at home. Otherwise, "Israel will
not be able to prevent Hamas and Hizballah from becoming terrorism monsters (for real)". --->

1/ Trump is not just "corrupt". Netanyahu is not simply pursuing a "greater Israel". This state of affairs does not boil down to "ulterior forces" or "the grand game". The grand game itself was and remains corrupt. The new evil simply doesn't care. ---> 2/ When you look at Trump and list all those to whom he is beholden in an attempt to predict his actions, I think you are missing the point. The same goes for Netanyahu. In their minds, their very presence is its reward, true greatness for Israel and the US. --->

1/ There are two very different ways to consider Israel at the moment. The first is as a bird of prey poised to strike. Israel continues to kill Palestinians, to bomb its neighbors without provocation and to obstruct a deal in Gaza. It seems self-explanatory, right? ---> 2/ The second is to see Israel as besieged and teetering. It isn't "the world" that is besieging us. It is reality. When we bomb in Syria and in Lebanon, we are not preparing for occupation. We are displaying our lack of faith in our ability to defend our own borders. --->

1/ Israel's bluff is being called from Gaza to Beirut, by way of Damascus and Riyadh. In inverse order: the rollout of the Arab plan for Gaza will force Israel to choose an actual path forward. I'm betting on Netanyahu frowning for a bit and then accepting the plan. ---> 2/ Syrians have begun to notice Israel's presence on their southern border. Damascus is allowing the protest to grow organically without picking a fight. When the time comes (soon) the new leadership will seek international support for Israeli withdrawal. --->

1/ I doubt the evil stunt Hamas pulled with the Bibas family will disrupt the release of Palestinians and Israelis on Saturday. I am inundated with Israeli social media calls for the eradication of the Palestinians. I am not impressed. Nothing has essentially changed. ---> 2/ Making the Palestinians disappear was always the Israeli fantasy. We killed and cleansed them in 1948. In 1967 we realized we didn't have to physically drive them out - we could repress every aspect of their being, subjugating them and dehumanizing them. --->

1/ The return of the dead hostages marks Israel's complete divestment of any responsibility it may hold for anything that has happened in Gaza since 7.10.23. Israel always needs an excuse, proof that it is superior to the "animals" on the other side. We have it now. ---> 2/ The poor Bibas family, taken criminally by Hamas and killed criminally be unrestrained bombing (justified by most Israelis), are the "proof". "Only animals kidnap children", we cry as thousands of Palestinian children lie beneath the rubble we've left of Gaza. --->

1/ There's no reason to trust Israel further than it can be thrown, but there is good reason to observe it closely. Israel is floundering. Netanyahu allows his underlings, from the frothing settler at Finance to the braying fool at Defense, to spout off at the mouth. ---> 2/ He, however, commits to the "Trump Plan" with the full knowledge that there is no Trump plan. Meanwhile, as Arab leaders struggle to formulate a plan of their own, the Israel-Hamas agreement continues to happen. Everyone is waiting for the maligned Qataris to take charge. --->

1/ For me, the most impactful horror of Israeliness at the moment does not lie with those frothing at the mouth, full of bloodlust and rage. Murderous racists exist everywhere. They are not the majority. I can't get past the normalizers, those who turn reality into tactics. ---> 2/ These are the people, the great majority of Israelis, who say and write things like, "but wait a second! There's an actual problem here! Gaza is uninhabitable. We can't have nearly 2000000 people just hanging about. Let's get creative and wokeness be damned!" --->

1/ The Israeli center-left is now beginning to spin theories about a Qatari conspiracy not just to take over the world (parroting MAGA propaganda) but to destroy Israel from within. How so? Qatar is putting in motion an Arab "Marshall Plan" for Gaza! ---> 2/ The dastardly Qataris will unite the Arab world around the cause and will then negotiate a detente with Iran without need of American (or Chinese) help, help that always comes with strings attached. But Qatar is a dictatorship! And it promotes political Islam! --->

1/ Our PM is losing it. So is his government. There is very little "state" left. We are all Auden's "children afraid of the dark". After a wave of murderous hatred comes a wave of guilt articulated as fear. We denied our part in the destruction of Gaza. We can't anymore. ---> 2/ Not when it comes to the Palestinians, of course. They are not really here; and if they are, it is wholly their problem. But we can see ourselves. We can see our prisoners returning. Deny as we may, rage as we may, we still know that we did this even if we can't say it. --->

1/ The Israeli left now attempts to explain why the images of our emaciated prisoners returning home should not be cause for a resumption of the killing. The assumption is that we are within our rights to nuke Gaza, but we shouldn't. Why shouldn't we? ---> 2/ "Because we are better than "them". Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization, devoid of any humanity or morals. They really do just want to kill us! But we are not like them. We are good. We make mistakes but we rectify them. We fight only when and if we must. " --->

1/ Pay attention to the Israelis who call the new ethnic cleansing initiative "interesting". They will shape the immediate future more powerfully than the settlers baying at the gates of Gaza. These "interested" Israelis have been the most effective genocidaires. ---> 2/ There is a symmetry apparent in the execution of the genocide and in this current, open embrace of ethnic cleansing. Both were generated and driven from a place so deep that no "plans" were necessary. We just did it. Pilots bombed, soldiers shot and burned and looted. Us. --->

1/ Israel has never planned, but Israel has always dreamed about driving all Palestinians out. What you hear coming out of Israel now - "only if it is voluntary, of course! Why would we stand in their way! They want a future!" - is as mainstream as it gets here. ---> 2/ Plans are something else. I think that when one considers our genocidal campaign in Gaza it is easily discernible that there were no plans. There was a sense of a dreamscape made accessible, an inviolable righteousness eternally validated. All "plans" failed. --->

1/ Having just written about the potential for a radical politics of being, here comes the current installment of the Trump cabaret and demonstrates the urgency of such a politics. Lies are not the opposite of the truth. Lies turn the truth into one option among many. ---> 2/ Lies are noise, a destructive plurality of "possibilities" that may or may not occur, wholly or partially. In a world of lies there is no possibility of being. Being is, first and foremost, a bond. One cannot be alone, in a vacuum or in a world of shadows and phantasms. --->