A little comedy, and then the ongoing tragedy ...

 

The Streisand effect portrait that keeps on giving ... Swimming boss defends athletes lobbying national gallery to take down Gina Rinehart portraits

Actually it's a pretty fair likeness and rather flatters Mr Hasemann, though the absence of glasses seems something of a mistake, as does the provocative suggestion that the portrait bears a deep likeness to some nobody going by the name of Gina ... 

Kev Kavanagh, meat artist, butcher laureate, international meat fashion designer and supine swimming chief from the mighty 'Gong would have been a better label ...

Say what? There were two of them?

Better and better, and so to another yarn that keeps on giving and giving ... SCOTUS, in its many forms of weirdness ...

The original for that yarn is at the NY Times, (paywall) which goes on endlessly when it seems obvious enough ...

Sam is, to use an old-fashioned phrase, pussy-whipped ... you can just imagine a domestic scene where he says "dear, there might be a slight conflict of interest in me being seen in a household of election deniers and coup lovers," what with that montage of instructions to SCOTUS staff in another Times' piece on the matter ... (paywall) you know, the internal rule book where nobody at the top feels the need to follow the rulez ...

Shut up Sam, you can hear the virago say, if you're such a gutless wonder, you can blame it on your wife.

You might set the laws of the land, but I set the flags for the house, and I stand beneath them as a proud election denialist and coup lover, and you're either with me or agin me, and with that the pussy-whipped justice meekly surrendered ... 

Just tell 'em you were following orders, Sam, it was the bloody ball and chain, and not having any balls or situational awareness, what could you do? It worked at Nuremberg ...

And the pond apologises because there endeth the comedy this Sunday ... and it's on to more serious matters, and while the reptiles seem to have lost interest in the ongoing attempt at a genocide in Ukraine, they remain hot to trot for the genocide in Gaza ...

Here the pond would like to draw attention to actual signs of life in Israel, with the front page as it was yesterday... Haaretz

It's a small, flickering, but vigorous sign of life with a lively opinion section ...

The New Yorker's David Remnick wrote a piece not so long ago celebrating it, An Israeli Newspaper Presents Truths Readers May Prefer to Avoid, Haaretz consistently attempts to wrestle with the realities of what is going on in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. (paywall) 

In part, and minus the hot links in the original:

....It’s essential to emphasize the heroic work that has been done by Palestinian journalists in Gaza, many of whom have been killed. But it is also worth looking at one of the few Hebrew-language institutions that consistently attempt to wrestle, however imperfectly, with the realities of what is going on in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank: the newspaper Haaretz, which was founded in 1918. In terms of audience, Haaretz trails far behind the popular tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth and the conservative paper Israel Hayom, which is owned by the family of the late billionaire casino operator Sheldon Adelson. Haaretz’s resources are modest, its reputation primarily ideological; it is left wing in a country that has moved decidedly to the right.

Yet what’s been impressive about the paper lately is the breadth of its reporting and analysis. On a nearly daily basis, Amos Harel and Anshel Pfeffer give unblinkered assessments of brutal military overreach and political folly; Yaniv Kubovich has scored one scoop after another on the failures of the security establishment. Amira Hass, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, has been living in, and reporting from, Gaza and the West Bank for more than three decades. Her anatomization of the structures and the human costs of occupation has been an insistent, if willfully ignored, presence in Israeli public life for more than a generation. Netta Ahituv’s portrait of David Hasan, a Palestinian American neurosurgeon at Duke, who has been treating children and adults in Gaza, provided a glimpse of the suffering in Khan Younis and Rafah. Hasan recalled trying to attend to his countless patients while bombs shook the hospital to its foundation. “I asked the local doctors what to do,” he said, “and they told me . . . I should just keep working to distract myself from the anxiety.” Sheren Falah Saab, who grew up in the western Galilee and covers Arab culture for the paper, recently published a stark report on Gaza in which she allowed the victims to speak directly to the reader:

“Death is everywhere. Not all the dead can be buried, not all the bodies can be extricated.” That’s how Maha, a 36-year-old mother of three who fled Gaza City for Rafah, describes the situation in the Strip. “Sometimes, when they can’t find and remove all the bodies that were buried during a shelling, they ask the neighbors or relatives and write the names of the dead on the wall of the house, if there’s still a wall. They write that they’re there, under the ruins. Maybe at some point they’ll be able to extricate them.”

No less impressive is the paper’s over-all capacity to present multiple truths to readers who might prefer to avoid them. Haaretz has reported, for example, on the deeply troubling rise in antisemitism around the world, but, unlike some other outlets, it has generally avoided comparing the situation to 1938 or tarring most student demonstrators as “pro-Hamas.”

The reporting on Netanyahu has been both factual and critical, but Haaretz has also presented a three-dimensional picture of the world in which the Israeli Prime Minister is not the only dangerous actor in the regional drama. Not long ago, Shlomi Eldar interviewed a range of Palestinians––including many Fatah supporters––who had experienced life in Gaza under Hamas rule and then left for Cairo. A former Fatah official named Sufyan Abu Zaydeh told Eldar how, on October 7th, when he saw a jeep racing by carrying an Israeli hostage, he anticipated with despair the war to come: “Gaza was on the road to perdition.” And Eldar’s Palestinian sources described in detail a meeting nearly three years ago at the seaside Commodore Hotel, in Gaza, called “The Promise of the Hereafter Conference.” At that meeting, Eldar’s sources told him, delegates discussed their plans to conquer Israel––or, as the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar put it in a statement, to bring about the “full liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river.” Hamas leaders outlined various aspects of what should follow—which Israelis ought to be killed or prosecuted, how to avoid a “brain drain,” and how to divvy up Israeli properties, including apartments, schools, gas stations, and power plants.

Netanyahu’s government has expressed its admiration for Haaretz by having its communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, lash out at the paper’s “defeatist and false propaganda.” One of the Cabinet’s most reactionary ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has referred to Haaretz as “the Hamas daily.”

With Netanyahu currently threatening a full-blown assault on Rafah, it’s nearly impossible to think of the future in any clear way. Amid all the fury and death and distrust, what is needed are leaders, thinkers, and institutions of vision and integrity to build what has always been imperative: a set of political arrangements that refuse to accept the cruelly stubborn “facts on the ground” of occupation, and a concerted movement toward a humane and workable settlement that provides the Israelis with the security that they naturally require and the Palestinians with the dignity and the independence that they rightly demand. 

Since then of course the destruction of Rafah has begun, but what a different world begins to emerge up against the tired nostrums of Polonial prattle about the left...

That old, tired routine. Why the pond might as well boast about having had a fuck or three with Jewish people, or to have worked for Jewish people or have hired Jewish people (the pond can do the same for Aboriginal people, but to what avail? 

Notoriously Nazis thought nothing of sex with Jews, and so it was with white colonial settlers in Australia). "Some of my friends" (or "my family") "are" or "includes" or "whatever", is perhaps the most pathetic and feeble line of all ...

Some of the pond's family includes prize loons. Some might be as irritating as Jennifer Westacott.

The thing about Haaretz is that it's willing to look at both sides and what's been happening in Gaza. 

There's not much point linking to Haaretz items specifically because of the severe paywall (they need their shekels, the odds are against them), but back on 10th May Amira Hass wrote a piece, In Rafah, People Flee to Nowhere in a Desert of Devastation and Sand ...

The Polonial act of denial is that none of this is taking place, or if it is, it shouldn't be mentioned ...

At nine o'clock on Thursday morning, my friend Fathi Sabah told me that he and 34 of his family members and friends are still in his parents' house. The house is built on the eastern side of the road that connects Khan Yunis to Rafah, on the eastern outskirts of the Shaboura refugee camp.

Fathi is a journalist and journalism lecturer, in his fifties. Over the course of about half an hour, he described to me in a WhatsApp conversation what was happening in Rafah, and the dense artillery shelling "which scares us more than the bombs from the air," as he put it.

Based on his description, conversations with two other friends with whom telephone contact was possible for a short time, and a report on the Al Ajyal radio station, I already drafted the following opening: "Warnings from U.S. President Joe Biden to Israel against 'entry' into Rafah did not calm the 1.2 million Palestinians crowded into the southern city. They were under no illusions that the tanks would stay to the east of the city and not invade it. On the contrary – large parts of the city, not just the neighboring village of Al-Shuka near the border and the eastern neighborhoods, have been emptying of people in the past two days."

But at 11:10, his eldest daughter – who, because of her health condition, Fathi had fought like a lion in order for her to go abroad in the third month of the war – sent me a message saying: "A short time ago, a tank shell hit the first floor (of three) in my grandparents' house. My parents and two brothers and the rest of my family are inside. I called them and they told me there were no injuries and they were trying to get out of the house as quickly as possible. Then another shell landed on the second floor and now no one is answering me."

Earlier, at a quarter past nine, Fathi reassured me: "We are 'off the map' (referring to the army's instructions for residents to leave the village of Shuka and the neighborhoods in eastern Rafah)," but added that "we know that this is not a guarantee for anything."

He said that it's only a matter of a few hours, at most a day, until they too will have to leave the house – the partial stability and the roof they've had for a few months.

The shelling is not aimed only at houses in the city's east, he said. They are not "limited," as can be understood from the Israeli, and perhaps also U.S. media. On Wednesday, he says, the army shelled a house 100 meters from their home. The municipality building in the center of the city was bombed twice, on two separate days this week. A shell also hit Tel a-Sultan (a refugee neighborhood) in western Rafah. No wonder, then, that all the members of his household were unable to sleep for the past few nights.

"When there's a bomb, there's a hiss, or a sharp siren sound. During a shelling, the whole house shakes," he explains. "The nylon sheets that have replaced the glass in the windows, which were shattered long ago, rustle. From the houses that were bombed, we hear the crackling of broken concrete. During the day, you can see the smoke. At night, it's pitch dark. Who remembers that we used to have electricity? The small dog [of the daughter who went abroad] is constantly shaking with fear. He trembles and hides among us even when a truck passes outside and honks."

Due to the night of shelling, when we spoke on Thursday morning, most of the family was taking advantage of the brief lull and were still sleeping. Including his 80-year-old mother. His wife was preparing something in the kitchen. "What will you take when you leave?" I asked, and he said: "Mattresses, blankets, clothes, kitchen utensils. The amount of water we have – which we buy in gallons once a week – is enough for two more days. That's why we only shower once every two weeks. We'll also take the little food we have. I couldn't find any bread this morning. The bakery down the street is already closed. Its owners fled. Maybe I'll go look for bread in the bakery next to Shaboura [the refugee camp]."

But, he continued, people have also started fleeing from the camp, which lies to the west of his house. It was only on Monday and Tuesday that displaced persons from the Al-Jneineh neighborhood, including our mutual friends from Gaza, began to gather in the camp. Now, as the shellings get closer and closer, those mutual friends are starting to look for a tent and vehicles in order to flee westward. This will be their fourth displacement since the beginning of the war.

For Fathi and his family, this will be their third displacement since October: in the second week of the war, they left the bombed-out Gaza for his wife's family's home in Khan Yunis. In December, after a missile struck the room where their sons and cousins were sleeping, and after the eldest son was wounded by shrapnel in his leg and back – they moved to Rafah, to the home of his mother – a widow, a refugee, born in the village of al-Bureir (where today lies Kibbutz Bror Hayil). Each displacement is a result of the army's advance, and every advance squeezes the displaced into a smaller area in the Gaza Strip.

People were killed in Wednesday's shelling of Rafah houses, he said. The armed Palestinian fighters, he added, were fighting at the border. "We don't know who among them have been killed and how many, but those who were killed in the houses were civilians." He sent the names of those among the dead who had already been identified at the hospital: Jana al-Lulu, one year old; Yazid Mohana, one year old; Ahmed Eid, 10 years old; Lana Eid, 12 years old; Muhammad Eid, 19 years old, Rimas al-Lulu, 27 years old; Bilal Eid, 27 years old; and 35-year-old Mohammed al-Lulu.

"When someone is killed, we don't cry," Fathi told me. "We can't cry. Our eyes are dry, stones instead of tears. Death is a relief for the dead. When my mother-in-law died, I couldn't cry. Because of all the grief around us, even my wife couldn't cry for her mother, who had been undergoing dialysis. There are several hundred kidney patients who need regular dialysis. They were treated around the clock at the Yosef al-Najjar hospital. Now it's abandoned, by order of the army. With all its expensive devices and equipment."

"Since yesterday, I've seen people asking on WhatsApp, where is it possible to get dialysis. A doctor said that Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis will resume functioning in three days. But what will they do until then? Many elderly people are dying in this war, from lack of treatment or because they couldn't bear the difficult conditions," he said. Due to the army's takeover of the Rafah crossing and its closure, sick and wounded patients who were supposed to go abroad for treatment – have remained trapped in the Gaza Strip.

After receiving the message from his daughter, about the shelling of their house, I went through an hour or two of oppressive tension until Fathi answered me again at around 1:30 in the afternoon – this time with a regular mobile phone call, because the WhatsApp connection went silent. He said: "Fifteen minutes after we finished talking in the morning, the first shell hit the first floor, belonging to my brother. They were not there at the time. Five minutes later – another shell hit the same floor." Ten minutes later – when everybody in the house was already getting ready for the new exodus – a shell hit the second floor where there were nine family members. No one was injured, but they were paralyzed with fear.

When we spoke the second time, Fathi and three family members were still in the house, gathering whatever they could. The rest dispersed and headed to several different new places of refuge. "We will go to Mawasi," he said. This is the narrow strip of beach that has been filled with "real," as well as makeshift tents. Fearing that the house would be shelled again with Fathi still inside, I did not prolong the conversation and questions. From the report of Muhammad Al Astal, a reporter from Al Ajyal radio station, I knew that there was not a scrap of free land left for a tent in Mawasi, and in any case, there were no tents to be found.

In the previous two days, the upper floors of residential buildings in the center of the city had been shelled. A station for filling gas balloons was also shelled, and thick black smoke rose from it. This shelling, too, taught the people that they had to flee. Earlier in the morning, Fathi told me that "the streets of Rafah, which in the past six months have been famous for their density – have been emptied of residents and displaced persons."

"Just a week ago we couldn't walk in these streets because of the many people, stalls selling everything, people who stop and check and discover that the product is too expensive, children lugging water, tent-neighborhoods on the sidewalks. Now you wouldn't recognize them: the streets are empty, ghost streets," he said.

You know ...

Those whose tents were inside the city folded them up and ran away with them, he said, with their mattresses and mats. But east of Rafah, people who fled did not have time to fold and take the tents, and according to one report, the army set them on fire.

Our mutual friend in Shaboura said that around them people have started leaving, while he and his family were still hesitating. And no, he said, they don't have a tent and don't have money to buy a tent at an inflated price.

Al Astal said in a broadcast that the dense and close shelling made it clear to the people that, as was the case in Gaza City and Khan Yunis, they are the prelude to a full-scale ground invasion. Based on what he saw, he said that the number of people displaced for the second, third, and even sixth time, is much higher than the figure of 80,000 given on Wednesday by the United Nations refugee agency (UNRWA).

Residents fleeing Rafah, Thursday.Credit: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

People who tried to flee towards the evening, he said, could not find a place to situate themselves among the thousands of tents, leaving many stranded on the road at night. Children were crying from thirst, he reported, and women crying over their crying children. There is no institution or organization distributing water, and there are no toilets, he said. During the day, the convoys of the displaced drag on slowly in the intense heat.

On the way to the ruins that Khan Yunis is now there is no shaded place to hide, since the Israeli tanks have already razed and destroyed all the green and fertile land that surrounded the city. People are fleeing in a desert of devastation and sand, Al Astal said. "They know they have to flee from annihilation, from catastrophe – but they are fleeing to nowhere." He also said the Arab name for holocaust.

On Thursday, around five in the afternoon, when he was at his sister's house in the Tel a-Sultan neighborhood, Fathi sent me another list of 36 dead whose bodies were recovered from the ruins in the Rafah district in the past 24 hours: among these are eight children, the youngest being a four-month-old baby, and six women.

Conflating and confusing anti-Semitism with what is goingn down is the first refuge of the scoundrel and sure enough there was video clip interrupting Polonius featuring one such scoundrel ...downsized and neutered ...

Meanwhile, Polonius rambled on, as he always does when stuck behind the arras of bigotry...

... it's not just Haaretz that points out that blather about the alienated life has sfa to do with realities on the ground, per this AP story about doctors who turned up to help ...

The 35 American and other international doctors came to Gaza in volunteer teams to help one of the territory’s few hospitals still functioning. They brought suitcases full of medical supplies and had trained for one of the worst war zones in the world. They knew the health care system was decimated and overwhelmed.

The reality is even worse than they imagined, they say.

Children with horrific amputations. Patients with burns and maggot-filled wounds. Rampant infections. Palestinian doctors and nurses who are beyond exhausted after seven months of treating never-ending waves of civilians wounded in Israel’s war with Hamas.

"I did not expect that (it) will be that bad,” said Dr. Ammar Ghanem, an ICU specialist from Detroit with the Syrian American Medical Society. “You hear the news, but you cannot really recognize ... how bad until you come and see it.”

Israel’s incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah has exacerbated the chaos. On May 6, Israeli troops seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt, closing the main entry and exit point for international humanitarian workers. The teams were trapped beyond the scheduled end of their two-week mission.

They got out which is more than can be said for those left behind ...

The military's nearly 2-week-old Rafah operation has sent more than 600,000 Palestinians fleeing the city and scattering across southern Gaza. Much of the European Hospital’s Palestinian staff left to help families find new shelter. As a result, the foreign volunteers are stretched between medical emergencies and other duties, such as trying to find patients inside the hospital. There is no staff to log where incoming wounded are placed. Medicines that the teams brought with them are running out.

Thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in the hospital. Outside, sewage overflows in the streets, and drinking water is brackish or polluted, spreading disease. The road to the hospital from Rafah is now unsafe: The United Nations says an Israeli tank fired on a marked U.N. vehicle on the road Monday, killing a U.N. security officer and wounding another.

When the Rafah assault began, FAJR Scientific's 17 doctors were living in a guesthouse in the city. With no warning from the Israeli army to evacuate, the team was stunned by bombs landing a few hundred meters from the clearly-marked house, said Mosab Nasser, FAJR’s CEO.

They scrambled out, still wearing their scrubs, and moved to the European Hospital, where the other team was staying.

Dr. Mohamed Tahir, an orthopedic surgeon from London with FAJR, does multiple surgeries a day on little sleep. He's often jolted awake by bombings shaking the hospital. Work is frantic. He recalled opening one man’s chest to stop bleeding, with no time to get him to the operating room. The man died.

And so on, and the pond's usual contempt for Polonius cranked into overload, way beyond 11 ...

Courage? This is courage: Dr. Mohamed Tahir, an orthopedic surgeon from London with FAJR, does multiple surgeries a day on little sleep. He's often jolted awake by bombings shaking the hospital. Work is frantic. He recalled opening one man’s chest to stop bleeding, with no time to get him to the operating room. The man died.

By way of contrast, Polonius is a gutless weasel deploying gutless weasel words ...

And then ... it got worse, though the pond acknowledges reading the hole in the bucket man while on a computer in a study, only civilian planes overhead disturbing the silence, isn't the same as being shaken by bombings ...

The pond is pleased that our Henry raised the matter of the Nakba.

It allows the pond to reference a piece by Etan Nechin a few days ago in Haaretz ...

Denial, Defiance and Dehumanization: Why the Gaza War Means Israel Must Now Acknowledge the Nakba

As ministers in the Netanyahu government threaten a 'second Nakba' while refusing to recognize the first expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, as they erase the Green Line and claim there are no innocent people in Gaza, it's not just the Palestinians that are severed from their roots, but also Israelis

Nechin went on :

Dozens of students attended a Nakba Day commemoration event at Tel Aviv University Wednesday, a gathering the Supreme Court ruled could be held after the Israeli police tried to prevent it by refusing to give organizers a permit.

The scene Wednesday, which included a counter-protest by far-right activists and a ban on Palestinian flags, speaks to how emotionally and politically charged commemorations of the day, observed annually on May 15 are for what Palestinians call the Nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe". The term describes the displacement of over 700,000 Arabs during Israel's War of Independence, marking their expulsion from what now constitutes the state of Israel.

Since the Hamas assault on Israel October 7, there has been less tolerance by the police for what they view of as dissent of any kind, including calls to end the war, or expressions of solidarity with Palestinians – especially among Arab citizens of Israel, some of whom have been arrested and humiliated for posting social media content critical of Israel or even waving a Palestinian flag. Others have  lost their jobs.

Under the supervision of the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the authorities have intensified their crackdown against Jewish protesters as well, among them anti-war protesters and family members of hostages pressing for a truce that would see their relatives released.

Stifling discussion of the Nakba itself is not new. In 2009, Education Minister Gideon Saar removed the subject of the Nakba from Arabic textbooks. In 2011, the Knesset passed the Nakba Law that penalizes public institutions for commemorating Israel's Independence Day as a day of mourning.

The reverberations of such moves is seen today. The dialogue about resolving the conflict is stifled by a constrained vocabulary, a problem rooted in the omission of crucial facts from educational and public spheres, and the intense dispute over the facts that are acknowledged. This dynamic has nurtured a general indifference among many young Israelis towards the occupation, reinforced by societal habituation to overlook these issues and governmental actions aimed at perpetuating this ignorance.

It's within this context that the Knesset has even demoted the status of the Arabic language in the 2019 passage of the Nation-State law, and a narrow teaching of history has taken root that largely erases the Palestinian story, facilitating the entrenchment of a highly nationalistic narrative.

The trauma of October 7 has only seen Jewish Israelis retreat deeper into an "us against them" nationalism. This helps makes it easier to look away from the punishing Israeli assault in Gaza and the human catastrophe it has wrought.

The pond thought it might do one of its infamous cut and pastes, putting our Henry up against Nechin, and so back to Henry, full of the usual overblown pretentiousness ...

Nechin meanwhile had a 'meanwhile' to start his next sample ...

Meanwhile, the the media landscape, shaped increasingly by Netanyahu and his allies, has largely hidden the humanitarian crisis and staggering death toll  in Gaza in its coverage -- a reminder that when we avoid confronting historical truths, it becomes challenging to effectively engage with current realities.

Acknowledging the full story of Israel's founding doesn't imply an apology for our existence as Israelis; it's about recognizing our past actions, including those which were wrong. At the time the expulsions were justified by officials as a way to ensure the new state would be majority Jewish. The Palestinian displacement was entrenched by the law of present absentees, which confiscated the property of Palestinians who were displaced during the 1948 war, and remained within Israel.

The term "Nakba" resonates globally, shaping international perceptions of Israel's current actions. While the history of the Nakba is often downplayed or erased in Israel, the rest of the world has increasingly recognized its significance. More young people are learning about the history of Palestinian displacement, and they view the millions of Gazans currently displaced from their homes as indicative of another Nakba. This perception challenges Israel's argument that such displacements are merely temporary, especially when some members of the government align with those calling for resettling Gaza and forcing Palestinians to leave the area.

This dissonance, where ministers threaten a second Nakba but the history of the first expulsion isn't acknowledged—where even their mere existence is questioned— creates a situation where Palestinian suffering simultaneously exists and does not exist.

This mirrors the denial of historical atrocities in other parts of the world. Historian Ronald Grigor Suny succinctly captures this attitude in his description of the denial of the Armenian genocide by the Turkish government, stating: "They brought it on themselves and it never happened."

This not only gives more space for the revisionist right to erase not only traces of wrongdoing towards the Palestinians in 1948 or any other period, but any examples of peaceful relations between Jews and Palestinians, but leads to a society where someone like Ben-Gvir has gone from being target of surveillance by the police and Shin Bet security service to now in charge of them.

It also gives oxygen to those who perceive Israel solely as a manifestation of the ills of Western society—an abstract idea rather than a country with real people. In short, denialism leads to dehumanization for both sides.

When we permit denialist narratives to dominate, we silence both Palestinians and Israelis. We restrict what can and cannot be said, creating a societal dissonance. We find ourselves living in divergent realities.

'"To destroy a people," Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, "you must sever their roots." However, in erasing the Nakba, the Green Line, and in claiming there are no innocent people in Gaza, it's not just the Palestinians that are severed from their roots, but also Israelis.

Acknowledging the Nakba is central for both of us.

You won't read this sort of heresy in the lizard Oz. What you'll cop is the hole in the bucket man rabbiting on and offering a warped view of all sorts of past events...

The reptiles decided they'd slip in a quaint snap of fleeing Arabs ...

The pond would rather slip in another bit of Nechin ...

This isn't about challenging the legitimacy of Israel's existence; rather, it acknowledges that Israel, like any nation-state, was not created through immaculate conception, but emerged from a historical context of both creation and conflict. It gives us a way to speak out of this deterministic deadlock over blame and complicity; it allows us to face our past, dispel myths, restores dignity to Palestinians after 76 years, and grants Israelis control back over the full sweep of our story as well.

In this, acknowledging the Nakba isn't just crucial for societal health, but it's also an act of defiance against the powers seeking to suppress the painful facts of how our nation was born.

It's heartening to witness alternative ceremonies, both on Memorial Day, including the joint Israeli-Palestinian one, and those on Independence Day ones, like the event organized by hostage families or Yesh Gvul. This contrast was vividly illustrated on Independence Day, with a split-screen moment featuring Transportation Minister Miri Regev's pre-taped, crowdless, militaristic display alongside the poignant, grief-filled yet life-affirming alternative one.

Observing this emerging camp which manages to withstand rage of the moment and offer a vision for the future it becomes clear that power isn't just in the hands of top leaders led by fear and prejudice.

Israel's own history showcases the power of individual and collective action in shaping politics and war outcomes: Moti Ashkenazi's solo hunger strike in Jerusalem against leadership failures in the Yom Kippur War sparked a significant protest movement, contributing to Prime Minister Golda Meir's resignation in 1974.

In 1982, a massive protest of 400,000 people in Tel Aviv, enraged by the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, led to Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's resignation and the ascent of the Peace Now movement. The Four Mothers movement, effectively swayed public opinion and government decisions, culminating in Israel's 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

An acknowledgment of the Nakba, past and potentially looming, doesn't mean that we will see the end of the conflict after the end of fighting.

But recognizing our history—complex, courageous, tarnished, and real—allows us to keep our heads above the waters of despair. It enables us to meet the gaze of fellow Israelis and Palestinians with the knowledge that, at the very least, we share the truth. From that foundation, perhaps, new beginnings can emerge.

Etan Nechin is an Israeli-born journalist and author. 

You won't get any of that from our Henry, bloodlust and bigotry are his calling cards ...

Speaking of barking mad fanaticism, Gidi Weitz had a few thoughts in Haaretz, Netanyahu and His Partners Will Not Stop, Even After Bringing Disaster Upon Israel.

The prolongation of the war, the prime minister's weakness both at home and abroad and the fact that Israel is becoming a pariah state have only intensified Netanyahu's messianic complex

"First of all, happy holiday," National Missions Minister Orit Strock greeted her colleagues at the cabinet meeting on October 7, reminding them that the worst day in Israel's history fell on the Simhat Torah holiday. Some of those present writhed in discomfort. The first to respond was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "A happy holiday this won't be," he said in a constricted voice.

This exchange reflected the gap between Netanyahu's view of reality and that of his partners from the messianic far right, on whom his political fate depends. But as time passed, this gap gradually closed.

"His mood recently has been delusional and dangerous," one minister said. "He's lost it, and we're all going down with him. In his view, everyone can pay any price as long as he survives."

In reality, this messianic complex was always there. "You sit with Bibi, and he'll explain to you how he single-handedly saved the country," his friend Arnon Milchan told police in 2016. "Netanyahu's assumption ... and I'm using his own words, is 'we're facing a Holocaust now ... and if I fall, the Jewish people will fall.'"

The prolongation of the war, Netanyahu's weakness both at home and abroad and the fact that Israel is becoming a pariah state have only intensified this mood, as reflected in his "a nation that stands alone" speech and his overt fear of the protests against his government, which he sees as a genuine threat to his life.

At the same time, Netanyahu has increasingly needed to guard all his flanks to make sure nobody threatens his survival. To keep his governing coalition intact, he is willing to pay any price, from entrusting the police to a convicted criminal through heaping generous funding on his partners to his willingness to institutionalize ultra-Orthodox draft-dodging.

He's also running the war according to his partners' whims. This has led Israel into pointless bloodletting, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said publicly.

Nor has Netanyahu abandoned the legal front. Even during the war, he found time for trans-Atlantic calls with Milchan, a prosecution witness in his corruption trial. The prime minister's lawyer, Amit Hadad, has also spoken with Milchan several times.

One might have thought the tycoon's incriminating statements to the police would end his friendship with Netanyahu. But when testified in court by video link from England, he softened his story, tried to remove its sting and gave himself over to Hadad. The latest conversations discussed the possibility of having Milchan undergo another cross-examination about his activities on behalf of the defense establishment. But for now, that is not on the table.

The conversations with Milchan are further proof of Netanyahu's juggling skills. And for now, it's working. Seven months ago, not many people imagined that the war would last this long or that Netanyahu would remain in power despite the protests that were expected to erupt like a volcano. But one person who did read the map correctly was that nemesis of Netanyahu's diehard fans, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

"This war is likely to last as long as the War of Independence," rather than resembling the 1973 Yom Kippur War or the 2014 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, he said in private conversations six days after the October 7 massacre. "As far as Netanyahu is concerned, it can go on, with pauses, until after next summer. That will ensure that he doesn't have to testify at his trial, which will languish due to the challenges he has taken upon himself. The public will forget the shock it's experiencing now, and all the anger against him will die down."

Perhaps the man who brought disaster on the country will soon drop the ball, but Israel's tragedy will likely not end there. The political forces that have kept Netanyahu in power are far from disappearing, and it's not inconceivable that the worst still lies before us.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a failure as national security minister, is currently winning at least 10 Knesset seats in polls, even without Bezalel Smotrich, and he's especially popular with soldiers and new voters; Reservists fighting in Gaza have frequently been shocked by evidence of Kahanism among conscript soldiers; And even with a microscope, it's hard to detect any differences between some of the rising stars in Netanyahu's Likud party and members of Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit.

The fact that Netanyahu's bloc, which is supposed to be at a historic nadir, is nearing 50 seats in the polls ought to further terrify anyone who fears for the country's future. Given the comparative birthrates of coalition and opposition supporters, the alliance between Likud, the ultra-Orthodox parties and the far right hasn't yet said its last word, barring a dramatic sobering up by one of those three groups.

In another few years, when Israelis take to the streets to demonstrate for what little remains of our democracy, they may well discover that they are a negligible, persecuted minority. Then, there will no longer be anyone to keep the government from achieving total victory – castration of the law enforcement system, a hostile takeover of the media, politicization of the defense establishment, silencing critics and using the Shin Bet security service against political rivals. An isolated Israel will entrench itself in its own righteousness and fight tooth and nail for its survival, until it is defeated.

Given America's threat to halt arms supplies, Netanyahu compared the war of 1924 to that of 1948. "There was a U.S. embargo then ... and opposite us were five Arab armies – and we won," he said. What a yawning abyss there is between him and Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, for all the latter's weaknesses.

Ben-Gurion, whose wartime appointment books show his feverish efforts to secure supplies of arms and ammunition for the young country, went to military funerals and corresponded with bereaved families. His son Amos was a battalion commander in the pre-state Haganah militia and then in the Israel Defense Forces.

In this context, Ben-Gurion was quoted in Tom Segev's book "A State at Any Cost" as saying, "I always wonder – no one has yet attacked me, no one has tried, in his sorrow and grief, to cast a stone at me, no one has raised his voice to me, and no one has shouted in his pain: 'You wanted a state, and we are paying the price.'"

He saw any war as "a horrible and terrible catastrophe" even for the victors, "a cruel waste of blood, destruction of property, loss of spiritual and material resources."

Ben-Gurion's ambitious vision was a country founded on the prophetic ethics, whose pillars would be the importance of human life and human liberty. As we marked Israel's 76th Independence Day this week, his words seem disconnected from this place, where life is cheap and liberty is dying. In the foreseeable future, only Orit Strock and her colleagues can still expect happy holidays.

What a relief that brings the pond to the last Henry gobbet ...

But wait, it gets worse, though admittedly not as bad as chewing grass in Gaza to survive. 

Having decided to ignore Dame Slap blathering on about moral courage, the pond was left with the last panel in the reptile Gaza triptych, which featured a mindlessly moronic chanting about moral narcissism ...

Actually, it's got nothing to do with social media and reputational damage. The Israeli government has managed all that on its own ...

The New York Times has routinely been on the side of the Israeli government, always ready to kowtow to the needs of the Jewish lobby.but of late some stories have taken a curious turn ... (paywall)

Well yes, you don't have to be on social media to note that others have noticed a singular lack of standards...

Whatever it takes to be a myopic moral narcissist, it seems that Adam Slonim might qualify ...

What a stupid man he manages to sound like, and the reptiles compounded it by running their usual sort of ABC baiting and bashing, with idle talk of anti-Semitism ...

Meanwhile, the New York Times was finally noticing what others have been noticing for years ...

The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel

After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law. (paywall)

A sample ...

Is it any wonder The View Within Israel Turns Bleak ...

And so on, while the blathering bigot wraps up with a final gobbet ...

For once the pond isn't going to leave the final word to a reptilian contributor, even if it meant sacrificing the usual Sunday cavalcade of cartoons.

There was a Haatez editorial to consider ...

It went on ...

The move was hideously transparent. After all, Gantz – now a member of the war cabinet – was the bill's original sponsor, so how can he oppose it now? And Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had said that he would support a conscription law that enjoyed broad support. Netanyahu thereby hoped to trap everyone in a political spiderweb in which everyone else would lose, including the state, but he himself would once again win. And the conscription issue? That's the last thing that interests Netanyahu. Just let him buy a little more time to satisfy his lust for power.

But this transparent trick was easily exposed. Gantz announced that he would oppose the bill, explaining what ought to be clear to any decent person: "Israel needs soldiers, not political tricks that divide the country during wartime." Gallant also made it clear that the trick was transparent when he said on Thursday that the defense establishment "won't move forward with any bill that is submitted unilaterally." And Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara outdid herself by informing the Justice Ministry on Thursday that there were legal obstacles to moving forward with the legislation, and that it is unsuited to the current situation and disconnected from the defense establishment and the Israel Defense Forces. And she's right.

For more than seven months now, Israel has been at war and has suffered heavy losses. It's impossible to continue accepting the lack of equality in bearing the burden of defense and the dread of bereavement. Moreover, due to the war, it has become necessary to expand the military. And this must not be done by further increasing the burden on those who already serve while continuing the draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox men.

But none of this interests the Ministerial Committee for Legislation. On Thursday, it approved letting the bill begin from where it left off in the parliamentary process. This was further proof that the government and the man who heads it are acting contrary to the interests of the country and its citizens and are therefore unfit to lead Israel.

Well, yes, Black Knight Hamas has singularly failed Palestinians, but so have the barking mad mob of religious fundamentalists and fanatics backing Benji's desire to stay out of the clink.

And what about this offering from Caroline Landsmann in the same vein ...

She went on ...

And if we're already talking about Levin and humiliations, he deserves congratulations. On Wednesday, he was appointed by Netanyahu – who surely trusts him blindly following the dizzying success of his judicial "reform" – to head a ministerial task force responsible for coming up with ways to retaliate against the Palestinian Authority for the UN General Assembly's resolution last week to bolster its status.

This irresponsible decision was preceded by a lame debate that was itself a humiliation for Israel. (The quotes below are from the Ynet news website and the Kan public broadcaster). "We have to deal them a tough blow that will shake them," Transportation Minister Miri Regev said. And the nutcase from the West Bank hilltops, National Missions Minister Orit Strock, called the Palestinian move diplomatic terror and demanded painful retaliation. Levin himself wants to treat the PA's move (which, let us recall for the sake of the sane among us, fits the dictionary definition of a diplomatic struggle, meaning it's the opposite of terrorism) "like we treat terrorism" and exact a price "like we exact for terrorism." Like what, for example? "Hurt its senior officials and exact a price on the ground through settlement." Levin, you really think Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should be treated like Hamas' leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar?

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for toppling the PA, nothing less. So apparently, instead of letting the PA rule Gaza the Netanyahu government will end up with Hamas ruling the West Bank. The provincial boor also proposed punishing each country that recognizes a Palestinian state by building a new West Bank settlement.

There's a wonderful quote from Nietzsche that goes "In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." There is no better example of group insanity than the current Israeli government.

Gallant can't stop the madness alone. It's no accident that he appealed to the public, because only the public can stop the madness, as it did the night spontaneous mass demonstrations prevented Netanyahu from firing Gallant because he called for pausing the judicial overhaul. But for this to happen, the public has to want to stop the madness.

The categorical distortion of conflating terrorism and diplomacy is the worst crime committed by successive Netanyahu governments and a key element of the rotten doctrine of funding Hamas' path of terror while destroying the path of diplomacy. If a diplomatic battle to secure recognition of a Palestinian state is defined as terror, how is it possible to take Israel seriously? Is there any kind of struggle against the occupation it would view as legitimate?

Consequently, once again there's only one conclusion to be drawn: The world must take solving the conflict out of Israeli and Palestinian hands by recognizing a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1947 UN Partition Plan plus relevant border adjustments – roughly, the borders as of May 1967. This would liberate Israelis from the delusion that it is up to them whether or not "to grant" statehood. And it would liberate Palestinians from their refusal to settle for what Israel "grants" them. Israel isn't giving them the territories, because they don't belong to it. And the Palestinians aren't settling for the territories alone, because the rest of the land doesn't belong to them.

A border that would divide the land between the two peoples is the worst enemy of those who want it all, Jews and Palestinians alike. And to the European states that want to recognize Palestine but fear the new settlements in their names: Fear not. When those settlements are handed to the Palestinians, there'll be no need to change their names.

And then there was Anshel Pfeffer on the Gallant fuss ...Why Israel's Defense Minister Just Broke His Silence About Netanyahu's Gaza War Paralysis

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has made little secret of his contempt for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout this war. Long before his bombshell of a press conference on Wednesday night, in one of the very rare occasions over the past seven months in which the two were seen together in public (at a press conference on October 28), a reporter asked Gallant, "You've expressed confidence in the [Israel Defense Forces] chief of staff and in the directors of the Shin Bet and Mossad. Do you have confidence in the prime minister as well?"

Gallant hesitated for a second and answered, "I spoke about what I'm responsible for – the security establishment." Israel was at war and its defense minister was refusing to say that he had confidence in the prime minister. Not that it came as much of a surprise to anyone. Seven months earlier, Netanyahu tried to fire Gallant over his open objections to the judicial overhaul and backed down only in the wake of a night of massive protests that rocked his government and forced him to suspend the legislation. Netanyahu may have rescinded the dismissal, but that hardly restored confidence.

Neither was Gallant's message to the Israeli public this week particularly new. Over two months ago, someone leaked to the media that the defense minister presented the cabinet with a comprehensive plan for the gradual deployment in Gaza of a local Palestinian security force, aligned with the Palestinian Authority – only for Netanyahu to veto the plan.

When Gallant said on Wednesday night that "the day after Hamas will only be achieved through the rule of Palestinian elements that form an alternative to Hamas" and that "unfortunately, no such plan has been brought for debate, and worse yet, no alternative has been presented in its place," the only new detail was that he was finally doing so in public.

Why has Gallant remained silent on this for so long, and what caused him to choose this moment to speak out?

Here's the thing about a Haaretz story ...

Sure there's often a sombre conclusion ...

Gallant is no centrist. He supports continuing the occupation in the West Bank and building more settlements there. But he believes trying to do so in Gaza would be disastrous to Israel's security and its alliances with the United States and Egypt.

This is the third time he's put the government on blast. The first was over the judicial overhaul last March. Then, in February this year, he once again rocked the coalition when he announced that he would not support the government's legislation on regulating the yeshiva students' exemption from military service, unless it provided a real pathway towards drafting a significant proportion of them. And now, this week, he's challenged Netanyahu's lack of strategy in prosecuting the war. This isn't enough on its own to bring down Netanyahu, but it has set the stage for political upheaval.

Gallant knows by now he has nothing to lose. He won't run for the Knesset again as a Likud member. The party in its current form will not field candidates who have challenged the eternal leader so openly. But he reckons that Netanyahu won't risk firing him right now as it would trigger another "Gallant Night" like last year.

For now, we have the absurd spectacle of a senior minister severely criticizing the prime minister at a time of war and not getting fired for it. Yet another low for Israel's lowest of governments.

But the paper also isn't afraid to show snaps of the devastation being wrought, and on a daily basis in many stories...

Well the pond gave up on its cartoon cavalcade, but there is one cartoon that's simpatico with those images ...

We know not what we do to each other, or if we do, we don't seem to care ... at least if your guides to the world are the one-eyed pundits scribbling without empathy or insight in the lizard Oz ...