So this is less awful than some of the other recent actions such as the air strikes in refugee camps that killed many young children, but man, I really don’t see what the Israeli military and/or government thinks it has to gain by blowing up the local headquarters for several international news organizations.
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Controlling the narrative about the conflict, ultimately.
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Follow up:
It was as tense as expected. Until my visiting brother-in-law, who is a medical weed farmer in Montana, talked my FIL into eating two edibles. Much calmer since that became a thing. Flat FIL afterwards.
ETA: and I really, really appreciate all the expressions of support. Y’all the best.
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Trans and BAME people do not trust the police as it is, all this will do is cause a hidden group of untreated mentally ill people (including myself) scared to find help.
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Worked very well for the US in the invasion of Iraq. Kill local journalists, face absolutely no consequences for it, bring in your media to see some bullshit performance with a rent a crowd from out of town which, as they don’t know a fucking thing about where they are covering, they breathlessly “report”.
Because when the right/centre talk about freedom of speech they do not mean for Muslims.
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It remains to be seen if there’s any meaningful consequences besides a couple of angry news cycles (I wouldn’t hold my breath) but what makes this different is that it wasn’t just local journalists who were affected by this. The AP and Al Jazeera news organizations have huge reach beyond the immediate region and bad coverage from those groups could potentially sway world opinion against these actions, at least a little.
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Given that neither of those organizations are particularly pro Israel in their coverage, this will hardly cause them to shift their editorial stance.
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Wasn’t in Iraq either (US rocket attacks on Al Jazeera for example, along with years of targeted harassment of journalists). By local I meant people with real local knowledge. It’s important to get rid of journalists who can confidently call out your bullshit when you are going to pull some propaganda stunt. Often these organisations will hire locally too, but the main point is they are on the ground, speak the language, and know the players and what’s going on.
As I said the US got away scot free from that and has a reputation, to itself, as the home of press freedom. So does Israel and it will point proudly at its free media. They don’t point so enthusiastically at the suppressed media under their occupation which is brutally, sometimes fatally, censored.
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I would argue that the US reputation worldwide took a very serious hit from the whole Iraq war debacle, from which we still haven’t fully recovered. The US is large and powerful enough that some reputational damage doesn’t necessarily translate into serious economic harm (we’re so big that everyone pretty much has to trade with us) or put us at a huge physical risk (we don’t rely heavily on allies to protect ourselves from an outside attack.) I’m just not sure that’s true to the same extent for the nation of Israel. But time will tell.
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this is a take from one of my go to sources for info on the middle east. i ran across juan cole in the run-up to the invasion of iraq and he offered several cogent answers to the rhetorical question of the day: “would colin powell lie?” mutliple variations on “yes and here’s why.” most of which were amply proved by the reality of the occupation as it unfolded. to put it another way, i trust his knowledge and experience.
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If you guys have not read them, I highly recommend both of Joe Sacco’s graphic novels about Palestine…
Footnotes in Gaza is especially wrenching…
His graphic novels on the wars in the Balkans are great, too.
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Thank you.
I can’t find a crying gif that’s right for that.
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Me either. I don’t think there are any for what’s going on right now.
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That is truly heartbreaking. 
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Among Finland’s main parties, only Simo Grönroos of the Finns Party and Asmo Maanselkä of the Christian Democrats reported that the issues of hate speech and online debate had no effect on their acquisition of candidates.
Why aren’t populist right-wingers not targeted by antifa? Can this mystery ever be solved?
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China is investing very heavily in Africa. Given the land-grabby tendencies of the government, I would be worried.
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