#Ben Herzog

[plitnick]

Cutting Through: Breaking Down Israel's Defense At The ICJ

In the latest edition of the Cutting Through newsletter, I take a deep dive into Israel’s defense against charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice. I examine their claims and whether any of their arguments might serve to sway the court. Check it out, and share the newsletter and help it grow!

[agentfascinateur]

Bravo Turkyie 👏🏼👏🏼

#backbone

#solidarity with Gaza

[merlinaknight]

Me with all my faves.

Logging onto Tumblr Dot Com

[news4dzhozhar]

[troythecatfish]

South Korea took the unprecedented move to file lawsuits against 7 Israeli leaders for crimes against humanity

The shock move, Seoul has filed lawsuits targeting high-ranking Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Source: Mintpress

[gayspaces]

Wendell Burnette - Private residence

[satanic10]

New York Powder Room Bathroom

Inspiration for a two-piece toilet, pedestal sink, and multicolored walls in a transitional powder room remodel.

[lovelyyellowdress]

Home Office - Transitional Home Office Remodel ideas for a study room with a medium-sized transitional built-in desk, a medium-tone wood floor, and gray walls.

[odinsblog]

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.

👉🏿 https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-748435

👉🏿 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-no-longer-star-us-flag-says-ben-gvir

👉🏿 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/protesters-block-israel-highways-over-new-supreme-court-bill-2023-07-11/

👉🏿 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/03/palestinians-killed-israeli-strike-west-bank-jenin

👉🏿 https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/

👉🏿 https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-07-02/ty-article-opinion/.premium/president-isaac-herzog-israels-good-cop-to-netanyahus-bad-cop/00000189-131a-dbf5-a3cf-bbbe4c770000

👉🏿 https://www.gq.com/story/israel-bans-ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib

[probablyasocialecologist]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” This is a reference invoking the Biblical story of the total destruction of the Amalek by the Israelites, which Biblical passage reads in the relevant part: “Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.” 

President Isaac Herzog: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”

Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant:  

Israel is “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” 

“Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”

Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir: “[t]o be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”

Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich: “We need to deal a blow that hasn’t been seen in 50 years and take down Gaza.”

Minister of Amihai Eliyahu: “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes … We must talk about the day after. In my mind, we will hand over lots to all those who fought for Gaza over the years and to those evicted from Gush Katif” [a former Israeli settlement].  “There is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”

Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter: “We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” [This term, “Nakba,” is a reference to the forced expulsion of around 750,000 Palestinians during the war that established Israel as an independent state. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe refers to it as The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.]

Knesset Deputy Speaker and Foreign Affairs and Security Committee Member Nissim Vaturi: “Now we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” 

Israeli Reservist Major General and adviser to the Defense Minister Giora Eiland: 

“The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.”  

“When you are at war with another country you don’t feed them, you don’t provide them electricity or gas or water or anything else . . . A country can be attacked in a much broader way, to bring the country to the brink of dysfunction. This is the necessary outcome of events in Gaza.” 

“Israel has no interest in the Gaza Strip being rehabilitated and this is an important point that needs to be made clear to the Americans.”  

“The State of Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is temporarily, or permanently, impossible to live in.”

“Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers. . . . The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer . . . It is precisely its civil collapse that will bring the end of the war closer. When senior Israeli figures say in the media ‘It’s either us or them’ we should clarify the question of who is ‘them’. ‘They’ are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population who enthusiastically supported Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th.”

[plitnick]

Biden won’t let Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state interfere with his delusions

While Joe Biden tries to save the illusion of a two-state solution, Israeli leaders from Benjamin Netanyahu to Benny Gantz, and from Bezalel Smotrich to Isaac Herzog all reaffirm that there is no hope for a two-state solution. Some say never, some say not any time soon, but they are all agreed on opposing any serious settlement with the Palestinians. But does that stop Biden? Nope. I look into it…

[girlactionfigure]

🟫 BALLISTIC MISSILES & DRONES AROUND JERUSALEM - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

( VIDEO - Fire from missile debris hitting Beit Shemesh, or teenage vandalism during missile alert - unclear. )

⭕BALLISTIC MISSILE this morning, oddly centered on Beit Shemesh - alerts on a wide area including Hebron.  A missile from Yemen.  Intercepted.

.. It appears shrapnel fell and a fire started in Ramat Beit.

.. Report says FIRE was NOT from debris but just coincidental and timed perfectly.  N12 now reports it WAS missile debris. City officials say it was teenagers starting the fire during the alarm on purpose.

.. Fire burned cars and some vegetation.

⭕4 SUICIDE DRONES from Iraq towards Dead Sea / Jerusalem and the Galilee last night.  From Beit Shemesh to Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim, people noted low flying IDF jets, that were on drone interception duty.

⭕EXPLOSIONS IN SAFED, late last night, assumed to be rocket falls in nearby open areas - no alarms.

⭕HEZBOLLAH attack summary (from them!): 27 terrorist attacks against Israel, including 7 against civilian towns and suicide drones towards the Haifa navy base, and towards the Nimra base north of the Kinneret, and rockets towards the Sharga camp in the Golan Heights.

⭕IRAQI SHIA MILITIAS attack summary (from them!): Shiite militias in Iraq take responsibility for 7 attacks against Israel during the last 30 hours.

▪️PHISHING ATTACK.. at Mizrachi Tafachot (bank and loan) customers, by SMS.  If you got a message by SMS with a URL from Mizrachi, don’t click it!  Starts URL “did.li”. 

▪️LEGAL SYSTEM.. PM Netanyahu requests to delay testimony in his cases for 2 1/2 months due to the war and security.

▪️WEAPONS TO GERMANY?  Israel has sold the Arrow-3 ballistic missile defense system to Germany, with plans to train and deploy in 2025.

▪️PRESIDENT HERZOG.. will meet with US president Biden tomorrow in the White House.

▪️HAMAS HIT TEAM ON MK BEN GVIR.. Shin Bet arrests a terror team of 4 by Hebron who were following National Sec. Min. MK Ben Gvir’s SON, planning on shooting him and then waiting for the minister to arrive - to shoot him.  Arrested.  This is the 5th assassination plot against Ben Gvir that has been stopped.

♦️LEBANON - several reports of targeted airstrikes by the IDF, taking out senior Hezbollah commanders.

♦️GAZA - IDF eliminated the operations commander of Islamic Jihad.

.. Jabaliya - large groups of Hamas surrendering over the last few days.

.. Jabaliya - IDF demolishing large sections, clearing safe zones.

🔸CEASEFIRE NEWS.. Lebanese newspaper Al-Jadeed: Contrary to reports in the Israeli media, Lebanon has not yet received the ceasefire outline.

[chez-mimich]

Questa è la leggendaria (si può ben dire) rivista “Cinema e cinema” (titolo mutuato da una famosa poesia di Majakowski), datata aprile 1977. Non avevo ancora sostenuto la maturità ma i miei docenti che ci consideravano giustamente dei semi-deficienti, ci “consigliavano” queste letture. Da questo numero scoprii Wenders, Herzog, Schlöndorf, Fassibinder e tanti altri. Me la procurò il mio anico Renzo Martelli della libreria La Talpa… Va beh cose che capitano ravanando nella biblioteca.

[yourpixieandbuddy]

Rate (or roast or recommend) My Personal Library

my hope for 2025 is to review and read a book a week…this first week is coming to a close and naturally i have yet to open a book but maybe we’ll slide just one in. all less than savory reads will be donated to my free library on my street 📚

i lost all my personal books i collected over the last fifteen years in an emergency move last summer, so judge lightly

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar

Little Miss Sunshine: The Shooting Script - Michael Arendt

The Handmaid’s tale - Margaret Atwood

Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbitt

New Animal - Ella Baxter

Sleepwalk With Me + Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia

The New One: Painfully True Stories From A Reluctant Dad - Mike Birbiglia

Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory - Raphael Bob-Waksberg

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide- Anthony Bourdain

Grace - Daphne A. Brooks

Graffiti (And Other Poems) - Savannah Brown

Closer Baby Closer - Savannah Brown

Love is a Dog From Hell - Charles Bukowski

On Cats - Charles Bukowski

Molly - Blake Butler

Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist - Albert Camus

Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote

To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die - Tim Carpenter

Lewis Carroll’s Guide For Insomniacs - Lewis Carroll

The Awakening and Selected Stories - Kate Chopin

The Alchemist - Paulo Choelho

700 Sundays - Billy Crystal

The Year of Magickal Thinking - Joan Didion

Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion

Notes From The Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Wild Things - Dave Eggers

Disrupting The Game - Reggie Fils-Aime

The Interpretation of Dreams - Sigmund Freud

The Book of Delights - Ross Gay

The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green

The Cult of Trump - Steven Hassan

People We Meet On Vacation - Emily Henry

The Twilight World - Werner Herzog

The Christmas Thief - Mary Higgins Clark

Open Throat - Henry Hoke

The Odyssey - Homer

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka

The Trial - Franz Kafka

Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen

Book of Dreams - Jack Kerouac

Newspaper Blackout - Austin Kleon

Lady Chatterley’s Lover - D.H. Lawrence

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire

From The Basement - Taylor Makarian

Wooly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creatue - Ben Mezrich

Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

Tropic of Capricorn - Henry Miller

Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty

My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh

Memoirs - Pablo Neruda

Fifty Beasts To Break Your Heart and Other Stories - Gennarose Nethercott

The Birth of Tragedy and Case of Wagner - Friedrich Nietzsche

The Twilight of the Idols/Anti-Christ - Freidrich Nietzsche

Zarathustra’s Discourse - Friedrich Nietzsche

The Vulnerables - Sigrid Nunez

Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk

Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk

A Bathroom Book For People Not Pooping or Peeing But Using The Bathroom As An Escape - Joe Pera

The First Rule Of Punk - Celia C. Perez

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Land That Time Forgot - Edgar Rice Borroughs

Another Roadside Attraction - Tom Robbins

Normal People - Sally Rooney

Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger

Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger

The Devil In Massachusetts - Marion L. Satarkey

The Woman In Me - Britney Spears

Little Astronaut - Hope J. Stein

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer - Patrick Susking

Strange Tales From A Strange Time: Gonzo Papers, Vol 1: The Great Shark Hunt - Hunter S. Thompson

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas: A Savage Journey To The Heart of the American Dream - Hunter S. Thompson

Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut

The Time Machine - H.G. Wells

John Dies In The End - David Wong

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin

The Private Lives of Adam and Eve - Albert Zugsmith

for reading tax here’s some images of my library/office space 💓📚

[shiveringsoldier]

Favorite Films I Saw in 2024

This year I saw a whopping 121 films for the first time (list here), more than double the number I saw in 2023. And since I saw so many films, that means I discovered a lot of great ones. So here is a long list of my favorite first watches of the year, in alphabetical order

8½ (1963, Federico Fellini)

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)

All We Imagine as Light (2024, Payal Kapadia)

Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Anatomy of a Fall (2023, Justine Triet)

The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)

Benediction (2021, Terence Davies)

Between the Temples (2024, Nathan Silver)

Blood of the Condor (1969, Jorge Sanjinés)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, David Lean) - likely my favorite on this list

Brief Encounter (1945, David Lean)

Caché (2005, Michael Haneke)

Challengers (2024, Luca Guadagnino)

A Different Man (2024, Aaron Schimberg)

Earth Mama (2023, Savanah Leaf)

F for Fake (1973, Orson Welles)

The Fall (2006, Tarsem Singh)

Four Daughters (2023, Kaouther Ben Hania)

Get Out (2017, Jordan Peele)

The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)

Great Expectations (1946, David Lean)

Harakiri (1962, Masaki Kobayashi)

Harold and Maude (1971, Hal Ashby)

I Am Cuba (1964, Mikhail Kalatozov)

I Live in Fear (1955, Akira Kurosawa)

Janet Planet (2024, Annie Baker)

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985, Paul Schrader)

Nosferatu (2024, Robert Eggers)

The Passionate Friends (1949, David Lean)

Perfect Days (2023, Wim Wenders)

The Quiet Girl (2022, Colm Bairéad)

A Real Pain (2024, Jesse Eisenberg)

The Ruling Class (1972, Peter Medak)

Saint Omer (2022, Alice Diop)

Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman)

Shin Godzilla (2016, Shinji Higuchi, Hideaki Anno)

The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

Small Things Like These (2024, Tim Mielants)

Summertime (1955, David Lean)

Under the Shadow (2016, Babak Anvari)

A Woman Under the Influence (1974, John Cassavetes)

The Zone of Interest (2023, Jonathan Glazer)

Suffice to say this was a great moviewatching year for me, and I look forward to discovering even more films in 2025

[hero-israel]

What’s the situation like, with the protests? I’ve seen images of streets filled with protestors.

I don't live in Israel, but the situation got pretty extreme yesterday. After the Defense Minister said the judicial reform plan should be halted, Netanyahu fired him. It was already the middle of the night and yet people streamed into the streets and redoubled the already huge protests. The next morning the Histadrut - Israel's largest and most important union - called a general strike, the first in decades and by far the largest in the country's history. Pretty much EVERYTHING SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY. Schools, universities, businesses, embassies, Ben-Gurion airport (the only previous time I had ever heard of it closing was after a Hamas lucky shot in 2014, and this was seen as a death-level shock), the hotel and tourism industry (UNTHINKABLE, they kept Eurovision running even during a big blow-up with Gaza). Netanyahu backed down somewhat, said the plan would be postponed until summer and Lapid/Gantz/Herzog said it was time for real negotiation, the general strike ended and everything reopened and by my understanding the protests have calmed and shrunken. Now, maybe Netanyahu thought he could do a pretend postponement, wait for everyone's attention to lapse and energy to fade, then ram the same thing through anyway in the summer, but the threat of a general strike has really changed the equation. If he repeats, they'll repeat.

Here is a good article summarizing how things got here and what the political impact has been.

To give simpler background, as best I can as a long-term observer:

The Israeli Supreme Court acts without the checks and balances that most Westerners (and certainly Americans) would recognize. There is no input from voters or legislators. No Presidential nominees, no Congressional hearings. Israeli lawyers and judges appoint new judges, that's that. Because Israel has no Constitution, there's no real boundary on what the ISC can do. They can intervene on pretty much any issue as long as they say they are being "reasonable." Now it just so happens that the ISC has been a reliable protector of minority rights, women's rights, Arab rights, LGBT rights, etc. So it's "doing the right thing, the wrong way," because it could decide tomorrow to strip away minority rights just because, and nobody could say boo. It is not inherently unreasonable for people to want judicial reform, to want there to be some level of election-related involvement in who sits on the court. But that cause is now discredited because a gang of indicted criminals and terrorist sympathizers tried to ram it through while also ending all investigations into their own crimes, stealing the power for the Knesset to overturn court decisions, limiting the Law of Return, etc.

This began because Netanyahu has compulsively betrayed and backstabbed so many of his natural allies in right-wing parties (Gantz, Liberman, Sa'ar, Bennett, etc.) that he literally cannot form a governing coalition with people who know how to govern. His only chance to get a majority was to elevate a Halloween parade of ultra-ultra-fringe lunatics (Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Maoz), and that's who is in charge now. It's ironic because the whole point of Benjamin Netanyahu - the "value proposition" as it were - is that he was good at preventing major change while also growing the economy and diplomatic partnerships. And he has now shit on all that. If a new election were held today, Lapid or Gantz would be PM tomorrow. Inshallah.

There is A LOT in Israel that is clunky and unfair. The rabbinate, the marriage laws, school system, Temple Mount status quo, Haredi draft, ISC jurisdiction, and that's just in Israel, not even getting to the Palestinian Territories. In all such cases, it is better for people to try to cope with a clumsy work-around than to charge right at the gate with a big fast change. People have been fighting over literally every grain of sand there for 2,000 years and they are lucky it works even as well as it does.