Search results for tag #israel
Or more specifically: the spend much of the time complaining that the conference does not protest about current situation in Gaza. Well: guess what: there's enough of that. Much of it by people who will talk in the conference.
But it's not good enough to be a naysayer and just complain that things are broken. It also helps if you know where you're heading. The current government is actually very bad at this and there's not enough public debate at what we should do going forward. Steering the public debate our way is quite useful.
Furthermore, being optimistic is important. If you're busy fighting a big machine all day, you need reasons to be optimistic. Granted, those should not be of the unrealistic and fanatic type. And this is another useful reason.
(Note: written from my alternative account that does not have a limit on the number of characters per message)
What a ‘peace summit’ reveals about the state of the Israeli left https://www.972mag.com/israeli-left-peace-summit-genocide/ #Israel #Gaza #Palestine @palestine
'More than 70 former Eurovision contestants have signed an open letter demanding #Israel and its national broadcaster KAN to be banned from this year’s contest, which is due to take place next week. ' https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/05/06/former-eurovision-contestants-call-for-israel-and-broadcaster-kan-to-be-banned #BDS
@Jinjirrie For more context, the #EBU won't ban them from #Eurovision because #Israel 's public broadcaster, KAN, is technically still separate from the state (Norway's statement here: https://eurovoix.com/2025/05/06/nrk-responds-to-call-for-israel-removal-from-eurovision/). On the more speculative side, Eurovision's biggest sponsor, Moroccanoil, does most of its manufacturing in Israel....
A picture I took yesterday at a demonstration in #Jerusalem:
https://tooot.im/deck/@tzafrir/114455460519068781
The text in Hebrew is a pun: הקטאר הטרויאני: the second word is the adjective "Trojan". The first word, קטאר, means Qatar. But sounds like the related word קטר: locomotive[*]. The colors are those of the Qatari flag. The silhouette is that of Prime Minister #Netanyahu.
Later on there were two actors, one with a fact mask of Netayahu and another dressed as a "Qatari Emir". I wrote before about this local #Qatargate:
https://cohens.org.il/social/tzafrir/p/1743448078.070798
Protesters are upset that while Qatar is considered to be a patron of #Hamas and generally of quite a few extreme Islamist groups, the Israeli government chooses it as a partner all too often.
[*] A bit of etymology: the word stems for an ancient word that is related to steam. As it happens, the the Arabic word for "train" is similar: قطار, vs. the name of the country that is قطر. It seems both words were coined in the era of steam trains.
So what did Netanyahu do in the face of a wave of protests: start a war. launched an attack on the #Gaza Strip. And later launched attacks on #Lebanon and intensified attacks on #Syria.
It did help to partially quell the protests. It did somewhat break their momentum and they failed to create a general strike or something close to it.
Note: this is certainly not the single goal of the recent attacks. It is also an excuse for some parts of the government of the more lunatic nature (BTW: Katz is not lunatic by nature. He just follows Netanyahu's orders to cooperate with the lunatics).
Netanyahu is known for not caring about hiring people with lax morality (e.g.: Natan Eshel) and even criminal behavior (e.g.: Ari Harow). The crux of this affair is that some of his closest aids also ran a side gig, and in their side gig (among other jobs) did some PR work for Qatar. A country Netanyahu himself occasionally considered an enemy.
And then we get the separate issue of Eli Feldstein. He was investigated on a different affair. And then it turned out that he could not get a government job because he failed to pass a security clearance. Netanyahu still wanted to hire him. So he looked for someone else to pay his salary. And that someone ended up being a lobbyist for Qatar in the US government.
There is also another document mentioned, that is very likely faked: I'm not going to elaborate on them, but they were republished by Memri after being published by some dodgy French sources.
So far the main issue for Netanyahu is potential financial misconduct (which could potentially amount to allegations of bribe). The real problem is that Netanyahu not only did not help the investigations: he immediately tried to fire the head of the secret service (who was running it, because the police are a bit lax nowadays). So basically he behaves as if he has something to hide.
The ceasefire agreement between #Israel and #Hamas is one that was brokered between two parties that were not really interested in having one.
Both the Hamas and the current Israeli government were interested in keeping the war, as this is the only way for them to not be fully exposed as failures and deposed.
Indeed, the #Netanyahu government has already helped making sure as much as they could that there's no Palestinian alternative to the Hamas.