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Jewish students at the University of Haifa on Tuesday protested a decision by officials to allow nine Arab students accused of making pro-Hamas posts on social media to return to class, further raising tensions at one of the most diverse colleges in Israel.
www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/09/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
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The Federal Aviation Administration has temporarily grounded scores of Boeing 737 MAX 9 jetliners after a fuselage door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines plane midflight near Portland, Oregon, on Friday. The incident forced the plane to make an emergency landing. The National Transportation Safety Board has revealed Alaska Airlines had concerns about the plane prior to the incident but kept flying it. It’s just the latest safety issue plaguing Boeing’s MAX planes, which had two catastrophic crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people when faulty flight control systems put the planes into nosedives. “This is a tip of the iceberg type situation,” says aviation expert Ed Pierson, a former senior manager at Boeing who says he left the company over its “unacceptable” business practices that prioritize production over safety. We also speak with Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Rose Stumo was among those killed in the 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. “There are serious, serious problems with these MAX planes,” says Milleron. “A lot of them are manufacturing problems, and Boeing is trying to evade safety regulations.”
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— Read on m.youtube.com/watch
Israel
Hamas’s Goal in Gaza
The renewed centrality of Gaza raises imporqtant questions about Hamas’s senior leadership. Previously, it had been assumed that Hamas was largely run from outside the territory by its leaders located in Amman, Damascus, and Doha. But that understanding is long out of date. At least since 2017, when Yahya Sinwar took over Hamas’s Gazan leadership, Hamas has undergone an organizational shift toward Gaza itself. Along with making the territory more autonomous from Hamas’s external leaders, Sinwar has presided over a strategic renewal of Hamas as a fighting force in Gaza. In particular, he has aimed at taking offensive action against Israel and connecting Gaza to the larger Palestinian struggle. At the same time, he has adjusted the movement’s strategies to account for evolving developments in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including the growing tensions around the al Aqsa mosque. Paradoxically, instead of isolating Gaza, the Israeli blockade has actually helped put the territory back at the center of world attention.
But the primacy of Hamas’s external leaders was gradually called into question after Israel assassinated Sheikh Yassin, the movement’s spiritual head, in Gaza in 2004. Several factors enabled the Gazan organization to gain greater clout. One was Hamas’s victory in the 2006 elections and its formation of a government, both before and after it seized control of the strip in June 2007. Once Israel reinforced its blockade, the leaders of Gaza managed to generate revenue through trade via their clandestine network of tunnels, thus making the Gazan organization less dependent on the economic support of the diaspora.
I’m not saying that Gaza has overtaken the leaders based outside Gaza, but there is now a greater balance between the two.” Notably, despite the rupture in Syria, the Gazan leadership was able to maintain strong links with Iran. This was particularly true of senior members of the Qassam Brigades such as Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, who traveled to Tehran whenever possible.
The growing autonomy of Hamas’s military organization was also clear in the case of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted and taken to Gaza in 2006. It was Ahmed al-Jabari, the leader of the Qassam Brigades, who ordered Shalit’s capture and who, along with Hamad, negotiated the much-discussed 2011 agreement for Shalit’s release. According to the deal, the Israeli soldier was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, and many Palestinians saw it as a major victory for Hamas in Gaza. Israel assassinated Jabari a year later, opening a new military offensive against the Gaza Strip known as Operation “Pillar of Defense.”
Israel’s recurring military operations in Gaza played their own role in strengthening the influence of the Qassam Brigades. On the frontlines in Gaza, these fighters could claim a central part in the struggle against Israel in contrast to the external leadership, which was increasingly marginalized. In recognition of the brigades’ growing importance, in 2013 three of its members joined the Hamas political bureau, giving the armed wing a new and direct role in political decision-making.
Sinwar soon proved he could get results. In 2018 and 2019, he was able to obtain a relative easing of the Israeli blockade by orchestrating the March of Return protests on Gaza’s barriers with Israel. Hamas quickly took advantage of these weekly protests, which drew tens of thousands of Gazans to the border to protest the blockade, to fire rockets and incendiary balloons toward Israel. In response to this pressure strategy, Israel ultimately entered into a series of agreements to allow the limited opening of several border crossings as well as increased Qatari funds to be delivered into Gaza to pay civil servants. Still, many Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank remained skeptical of Hamas, accusing it of using the marches to distract from growing criticism of its rule and wielding force only to defend its own interests in Gaza.
By entering these U.S.-brokered agreements—known as the Abraham Accords—these Arab countries made clear they were prepared to take such a historic step despite the looming prospect of an outright Israeli annexation of the West Bank
the decision to attack appears to have come from within Hamas’s Gazan organization and did not involve the movement’s external leadership.
Despite the Internet blackout of Gaza, intense Israeli bombing, and the destruction of telecommunications infrastructure across the territory, Hamas has continued to broadcast information from the battlefield, providing a continual counternarrative to official Israeli accounts of the war.
it has become increasingly clear that Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership in Gaza disdain the members of the movement in Doha, who live at a comfortable and luxurious remove from the conflict.
Even if it has come at a high price, Hamas’s attack has made the liberation project concrete for Palestinians; and by provoking Israel to unleash its devastating invasion and massive killing of civilians, it has also brought extraordinary worldwide attention on the brutality of Israeli occupation and Israeli control of the Palestinian territories. These outcomes will probably have deep consequences for the future of the conflict.
despite a five-week onslaught by one of the most powerful armies in the world—one in which an overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forced to leave their homes and more than 17,000 have been killed—Hamas shows few signs of having been eradicated. Not only has it managed to maintain itself; it has also asserted its autonomy from the organization’s outside leadership as well as its Arab allies and Iran, which was not warned of the attack. The Gazan organization’s ability to remain a force even now, with a highly structured leadership, a media presence, and a network of support, calls into serious question all the current debates about the future governance of the Gaza Strip.
For the time being, as its forces have failed to fulfill its objectives in Gaza, Israel has stepped up military operations in the West Bank through daily raids, mass arrests, and sweeping crackdowns. Not only does this raise the prospect of a two-front war after years of Israeli efforts to separate the occupied Palestinian territories from the Gaza Strip. It also suggests that the Israeli military itself may help further Hamas’s own goal of reconnecting Gaza with the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation.
How a strategy to reunify the Palestinian struggle led to a devasting war.
the West Bank was a far more obvious arena of conflict. With its expanding Israeli settlements and frequent incursions by Israeli soldiers and settlers into Palestinian villages, the West Bank—along with the holy sites in Jerusalem—attracted continual international media attention. For Hamasand other militant groups, here was the more appropriate staging ground for nationalist Palestinian armed resistance. Indeed, Israel seemed to recognize this: on the eve of October 7, the Israeli forces were busy monitoring Palestinians in the West Bank, on the assumption that Gaza posed little threat other than occasional rocket fire.
— Read on www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/hamass-goal-gaza
MONDAY 8 JANUARY 2024
News Notes:
The Trial of Alex Murdaugh (Podcast)
Article by Crime Online
Life with Cats
Settlers are trying to drag Israel into war in the West Bank as well.
The number of attacks on Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank has increased since the war in the Gaza Strip began
In the wake of the attacks, IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari urged settlers not to “interfere with counter-terrorism efforts” and said that the responsibility for Israel’s security is “the army’s alone.” That is far from enough. There are cabinet members whose loyalty is above all to the settlement enterprise.
They and their partners in the governing coalition encouraged criminality and land theft and supported settler violence. The government and the man heading it, Benjamin Netanyahu, abandoned the Gaza border communities and left them defenseless, as the IDF provided security for every settler whim, whether the sukkah of Religious Zionism lawmaker Tzvi Yedidia Sukkot or settlers who wanted to pray at Joseph’s Tomb or at Mount Ebal. When people ask where the IDF was, part of the answer is: in the territories.
To stop them, sending the IDF spokesperson is not enough. The prime minister must show up in person and order them to stop jeopardizing Israel’s security.
It’s hard to believe Netanyahu will oust Religious Zionism from the government, since he is consumed by concern for his political survival. But if he allows the settlers’ rampage to continue, which will lead to the opening of another front, he will be responsible for another failure in his series of disastrous failures.
The U.S. announced last week that it would ban violent settlers from entering it, while Britain issued a similar statement on Thursday. At least half of the EU countries have expressed support for such a move, including France, Spain, Belgium, and Ireland.
The boundary between the settlements and the army, which was blurred in any case before the war, was completely erased once hostilities began. Palestinians testify that since the start of the war, settlers who were until a short time ago neighbors harassing them have appeared in uniform, with weapons and the authority of the Israel Defense Forces.
The soldiers are joined by settlers, some of them residents of outposts known to be ones harassing Palestinians, who have now received military weapons from the IDF. This is not a new phenomenon. In the past, there were reports indicating that the army admitted that there was no real monitoring of weapons distributed in the West Bank.
Among the people inducted and given weapons are those who in the past admitted to and were convicted of assaulting Palestinians. One of the justifications used by the IDF for distributing arms to settlers who are not soldiers is that they live in illegal outposts situated in dangerous locations. If the outpost is illegal and the location dangerous, what justification is there for distributing weapons that enable the continued existence of the outpost? This is patent support for illegal activities.
Amid the ongoing emergency situation, the Knesset and the Supreme Court permitted a significant reduction in living space for prisoners and detainees; the police limited the right to protest and banned protests in Arab communities; firearms were distributed to the public in an accelerated and dubious process; freedom of expression for Arabs on social media was reduced, and private militias were established by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who continues to batter Israel’s already fragile democracy like a wrecking ball.
Since Israel’s founding, many here have been caught up in fantasies: If only the country would empty out of Arabs, we could live in safety; there’s no peace because there’s no partner; military control of the West Bank and a blockade of Gaza can be maintained without consequences; if we don’t look at the other side and don’t see what’s in the backyard, it won’t blow up in our faces; occupation does not corrupt, certainly not us; our wars are all wars of no choice; and of course – we’re not like them, we mustn’t be like them.
Besi
A “united we will win” slogan sits on the screen for most TV news and talk shows. Politicians face heavy criticism, but interrogations of the military, its strategies, its generals and ordinary troops are muted.
SATURDAY 6 JANUARY 2024
Mike was at the vet this morning with Flynn. He got in a tussle with Little Carmine yesterday and he had tufts of hair coming out when he came home. We could feel that he had two areas where there appeared to be dried blood matting the hair on his shoulder, but we couldn’t see the puncture marks. The vet confirmed he had three puncture marks. The vet didn’t say whether they were claws or teeth, and I’m not at all sure you can tell the difference. But, Flynn is feeling drowsy, and like the rest of the cats has been dozing al day.
He got a two week lasting antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory shot. Boy. Mike feels really bad about it all.
I found out this morning when Mike told me a more detailed story of the confrontation, that Flynn was eve more responsible than I thought yesterday. He ran after Eddie, intercepted Eddie and made Eddie come back inside the screened in porch. It was only then that Flynn slow-crawled towards Carmine, who wasn’t even looking at him. He chased Carmine and I guess eventually caught up with him.
News Notes:
ISRAEL: Haaretz (Israeli Newspaper)
Law, Power, and Justice 