life's not easy for 43-year-old teeny boppers. especially not when they're fey. justy timberlake is learning that:
Justin Timberlake’s latest era of his solo musical career is not going very well. The singer doled out two tracks from his latest project, Everything I Thought It Was, before the album dropped in full, but neither of them became big hits. Now, the full-length has started to appear on charts all around the world, and it’s proving to be something of a disappointment for him.
Everything I Thought It Was is new to the Australian albums chart this week. The set launches at No. 23 on the ranking of the most-consumed full-lengths in the country. Debuting outside of the top 20 is not impressive for Timberlake. In fact, it makes Everything I Thought It Was the worst-performing title of his career–by a wide margin.
call it karma. as 'she knows' notes:
The last few years have not been kind to Justin Timberlake, who has spent much of his time apologizing for finding himself mired in controversy. Whether it is how he treated Janet Jackson in the aftermath of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction or Britney Spears’ claims that he encouraged her to have an abortion, the news surrounding the NSYNC star has not been great.
'the los angeles times' reviews the new album:
It would’ve been weird enough for Justin Timberlake, of all people, to open his new album with a sob story about the high price of fame. But one in which he frames the pain he’s endured as a byproduct of his devotion to his Tennessee hometown? That’s truly unhinged.
Yet it’s just what Timberlake does with “Memphis,” the first song on “Everything I Thought It Was,” which came out Friday, more than half a decade after the release of his previous LP. Over a bleary, slow-mo trap beat, the singer and former boy-band star, now 43, laments the isolation he experienced and the sacrifices he made on his way up — a wild choice given the critique that’s coalesced in recent years of Timberlake as a man long permitted to glide by troubles that damaged the women around him (including his ex-girlfriend Britney Spears and his onetime Super Bowl halftime partner Janet Jackson).
It’s also a baffling aesthetic approach: By rooting his struggles in his connection to an African American cultural capital — “I was way too far out in the world, but I still put on for my city,” he insists in his well-practiced blaccent — Timberlake is flaunting his proximity to Blackness at a moment when pop seems to have little of the use it once did for white guys doing R&B. Consider the disappearance of Robin Thicke; consider Justin Bieber’s apparent reluctance to jump back into the game.
he really needs to grow the f**k up.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Friday, March 21, 2024. Jonathan Turley tries to incite his mob against another professor, talk of a deal for Julian Assange, Gaza remains under assault, and much more.
We have to start with stupidity -- and if it's campus stupidity, chances are we're talking fish-eyed, oily skinned crack-a-toa smelling Jonathan Turley. The Sweetheart of The Federalist Society is an idiot. He is a dangerously under-educated person who always thinks he knows everything but he usually doesn't. This week, he hit on "mendacity" and thought he was capturing Tennessee Williams' CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. No, you uneducated hick, Big Daddy is taught about mendacity by Brick -- his bisexual son -- though Turley wouldn't know that either because a theater masterpiece, an American classic play exists in his tiny mind only as a film. He's just so damn stupid.
And I've had to hear about all week from friends unlucky enough to be professors at the same college. Crack-a-toa. Your colleagues wish you would learn to wash your ass. Your crack stinks and nobody wants to walk behind you, Turley. Use some soap and water.
But what has them ticked off with him this week is his attack on another professor.
As one of his Turley's (male) colleagues asked me, "Is he trying to be Libs of TikTok?"
It would appear so.
Before we go further, let me note the first sentence of his article -- not his Tweet:
George Mason Professor Bethany Letiecq is at the center of a firestorm of controversy over his article in the Journal of Marriage and Family declaring that the institution of marriage plays a key role in white supremacy.
Now I know he had Tweeting problems this week after he was puffing out his chest and pretending he knew something and insisted, "US District Judge William Henry Pauley III slammed Michael Cohen today in saying that he" -- No, he didn't. Pauley died in 2021. And the attacks on Letiecq is just another example of how he doesn't know what he's talking about. Over and over.
For starters, Bethany Letiecq is not a "he" and never has been a "he" so there is no "his article." In his first sentence of a piece he wrote and posted March 16th, he misgenders the person he's attacking. In the first sentence.
And why he is attacking her. She wrote a scholarly piece. He apparently doesn't like it. We all get that right, how his pretense of being for free speech is really just for speech he agrees with -- he's made that clear in the last three years with his attacks on LGBTQ+ people and his silence when they're free speech rights are violated.
Doctor of Jurisprudence
Bethany has a doctorate. Jonathan? Not really. He's got the legal equivalent of a doctorate (a doctor of jurisprudence -- basically a tech degree in law -- a very limited field of study). But Bethany has a doctorate and she's not writing for a legal journal. I don't think the idiot Turley understands the social sciences. Her article would attract agreement pieces, disagreement pieces, pieces arguing you're-half-right-but-you're-half-wrong. He doesn't understand the periodicals or for that matter a family studies symposium. He understands nothing.
A classic in Bethany's field (family studies) is Stephanie Coontz' THE WAY WE NEVER WERE: AMERICAN FAMILIES AND THE NOSTALGIA TRAP. I love that book -- I agree with it but I love it because of all the conversations it has inspired. Some, like me, agree with Coontz, some feel she's 100% wrong, some find sections to build on and continue the conversation -- Bethany's continuing the conversation. Turley doesn't know that because he doesn't know anything about family studies, about feminism, about anything but here he is pretending because he's got a small dangling Y chromosome, he's an expert on everything.
Turley knows nothing about the social sciences, knows nothing about what gets published and what doesn't in family studies periodicals, he doesn't know anything -- again, he doesn't even know to wash his own ass leading his co-workers to complain about his crack odor. (Disclosure, I labeled it crack-a-toa. His peers complained to me about his stinky ass, I labeled it crack-a-toa.)
He doesn't even know enough, six days after posting his attack on Bethany, to change "his article" to "her article."
Grasp as he attacks a professor for a piece she wrote -- a piece that is not in his area of expertise or even his area of rudimentary comprehension -- that he has still refused to write one word about all of Clarence Thomas' many ethical scandals revealed in the last 12 months. This huge Supreme Court news but 'legal scholar' Turley won't say a word against his beloved.
But he will take the time to attack a woman who wrote a scholarly article that makes an argument he disagrees with. He's trying to incite people against her -- 'She's the reason that others don't get published!' He is trying to stir up an attack on her. He's done that repeatedly as the advance man for FOX "NEWS" over the years.
He's hated on campus. And I'll be really shocked if he's not told to narrow his scope because his attack on this professor has everyone appalled. And they should be.
He concludes his attack on Bethany with this:
My
disagreement with the paper of Professor Letiecq does not mean that I
do not believe that it should have been published. It is provocative and
challenging. My concern is the dominance of such scholarship in
academia with the declining number of conservative or libertarian voices
on faculties. These publications are far less likely to publish a work
by an academic espousing the value of a traditional family unit. The
result is a new type of orthodoxy and intolerance in higher education.
What a weasel. He has no proof that her piece getting published silenced others. But isn't that the FOX "NEWS" way -- make charges that attack others without backing them up. There is no backing for his claim that people were silenced because Bethany was published. But his lie fuels the wallow-in-victimhood status that too many conservatives in the US embrace as their safety blanket. 'I'm a scared, I'm a scared, the mean old world is out to get me.'
The paper was published over a month ago but the conservative mob just got started attacking it recently which is why Jonathan's on board. It's like when he tried to turn a mob on Target, remember? There's nothing controversial about noting that marriage was property rights (for the male) historically or that slavery existed in the US and legal marriage was denied in most cases to slaves.
But butt hurt babies like Jonathan Turley need to get their cranky rage out so they throw a tantrum and attack a writer.
Bethany's now on "The Professor Watchlist" and all the butt hurt babies like Turley are gunning for her. What a great way to pretend you support free speech.
I really understand why a professor (male) at Turley's campus says, "Every time I see that prissy face of his, I just want to punch him out." He does bring out that "This Waitress" vibe.
-- "The Waitress," written by Tori Amos, first appears on her UNDER THE PINK.
Since we believe in peace, we'll just hit Jonathan with a reading list -- a brief one -- and the hope that someone will read the books to him:
Stephanie Coontz's MARRIAGE, A HISTORY: FROM OBEDIENCE TO INTIMACY, OR HOW LOVE CONQUERED MARRIAGE
Stephanie Coontz' THE WAY WE REALLY ARE: COMING TO TERMS WITH AMERICA'S CHANGING FAMILIES
Annette Lareau's UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS: CLASS, RACE, AND FAMILY LIFE
Assange, the divisive WikiLeaks founder, is fighting a drawn-out legal battle with the British government to avoid being extradited to the U.S. to face trial for publishing thousands of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables around 2010. A U.K. court is currently considering whether to allow a last-ditch appeal by the 52-year-old. After U.S. prosecutors charged him in 2019, U.K. law-enforcement officials apprehended him, and he has been in a London prison ever since.
Justice Department officials and Assange’s lawyers have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like to end the lengthy legal drama, according to people familiar with the matter, a potential softening in a standoff filled with political and legal complexities. The talks come as Assange has spent some five years behind bars. U.S. prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside.
The discussions remain in flux, and talks could fizzle. Any deal would require approval at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, said he has been given no indication that the department will take a deal. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Citing the report yesterday on DEMOCRACY NOW!, Amy Goodman noted, "Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since 2019 awaiting possible extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes."
Turning to Gaza, the editorial board of THE NATIONAL notes:
In learning that the US tabled a draft UN Security Council resolution on Wednesday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, some may be tempted to think: “Better late than never.” But the human cost of this war – The Nationalreported on Thursday that more than 800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of Ramadan – makes clear the lethal consequences of diplomatic failure.
Security Council resolutions may be legally binding, but several countries – including Israel – have ignored them in the past. Many people who want to see an immediate halt to the bloodshed will understandably wonder what practical benefit such a resolution would have for the 2.3 million Gazans living in fear of their lives. Nevertheless, the fact that it is the US, Israel’s main backer, which is now endorsing calls for a ceasefire is significant, particularly when one looks at the wider pressure being exerted on Israel’s bellicose leadership.
There is increasing divergence between the White House and the Israeli government. US President Joe Biden has publicly described an Israeli military assault on the overcrowded Gazan city of Rafah as a mistake. One of Mr Biden’s political supporters, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer – a senior pro-Israel figure in Washington – recently described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace. Washington has also held talks with one of Mr Netanyahu’s main political rivals, Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz.
But pressure on the Israeli government is coming from other quarters, too. Canada's decision this week to suspend future arms exports to Israel may not be a major move in terms of weaponry – Ottawa is not a major supplier to Israel’s armed forces – but it was a significant warning shot from a long-term western ally. Elsewhere, Israel appears to be losing control of the narrative as prominent international actors make clear their objections to the Gaza war.
Losing control of the narrative. Peter Oborne (MIDDLE EAST EYE) explains:
Forensic. Sober. Clear-sighted. Scrupulous. Al Jazeera’s investigative unit has produced a film that tells the story of what really happened on 7 October.
This authoritative documentary does not flinch from detailing the atrocities and war crimes carried out by Hamas. But it shows beyond reasonable doubt that many of the lurid accounts that emerged from Israeli sources were false.
Deeply inflammatory stories, whether concerning allegations of mass rape or the beheading and burning of babies, were either unsupported by evidence or straightforward lies. Yet, they prepared the way for the murderous savagery of the ensuing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has been described by the International Court of Justice as a plausible genocide.
Al Jazeera painstakingly analyses how these accounts entered the public domain. This involves a sustained look at Zaka, Israel’s emergency response unit of trained paramedics who handle terrorist episodes and homicides.
Al Jazeera shows how Zaka gave details of atrocities that never happened, including of burned and beheaded babies, which made headlines around the world and were used for maximum propaganda effect by Israel to gain sympathy.
One Zaka employee, Yossi Landau, told reporters that Hamas burned to death “two piles of 10 children each” in a house in Kibbutz Be’eri.
This account was pounced on by the media, and a version was repeated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a conversation with US President Joe Biden: “They took dozens of children, bound them up, burned them and executed them.”
But as Al Jazeera shows, these accounts were untrue. An examination of the list of the dead showed that two 12-year-old twins were tragically killed when police and soldiers stormed the house in Be’eri, but there were no other children at that location, the documentary notes.
More generally, the list reveals that two babies died on 7 October. One was killed when a bullet was fired through a door, while the other died following an emergency caesarean section after the mother was shot. Neither was burned or beheaded.
Let's drop back to yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We look now at a new report published by the research group Forensic Architecture, which counters Israel’s argument at the International Court of Justice that it followed humanitarian policies to safeguard civilian life in Gaza. South Africa argued in January before the ICJ that Israel was guilty of genocide during its war on Gaza. The report argues that what Israel says are humanitarian evacuations in Gaza actually amount to the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in London by Eyal Weizman, a British Israeli architect born in Haifa. He’s founder and director of Forensic Architecture, a professor of spatial and visual cultures at Goldsmiths College at the University of London. He’s the author of several books, including Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation and The Least of All Possible Evils: A Short History of Humanitarian Violence. He’s also a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and of the Center for Investigative Journalism.
Eyal, welcome to Democracy Now! As we come to air right now, the United States has presented a resolution to the U.N. Security Council for a temporary ceasefire. I’m wondering if you could respond to that and Netanyahu only speaking with Republicans, behind closed doors — now he might be addressing a joint session of Congress, if the House speaker decides to invite him — saying that Rafah invasion will happen.
EYAL WEIZMAN: Yeah. If a Rafah invasion will happen, we will see the humanitarian disaster, the man-made humanitarian disaster imposed on Gaza, just aggravated to levels that we haven’t yet experienced. In Rafah, we have a huge part of the Palestinian people evacuated to living in inhumane conditions where there are famine and lack of basic humanitarian provisions, in something that is called a “safe zone.” And I think that it’s important to understand that there is no safe place in Gaza. Although Israel is designating part of the Strip as so-called safe areas and ordering the population to evacuate to them, it continuously imposes on these areas conditions that amount to unlivable conditions and in continuation of its genocidal policies.
So, what we need to — my comment to that is, rather than allowing any or entertaining any specific plans and provisions, you know, that the U.S. is discussing now with the Israelis about allowing them to attack Rafah under certain conditions, we need to see immediate ceasefire across the board in all places of Gaza, in order to allow for the rebuilding of the Strip, in order to allow for humanitarian provision to reach each and every Palestinian in the north and in the south.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Eyal Weizman, the proposal that the U.S. has put forth — this is before we turn to your report. The proposal that the U.S. has put forth for a temporary ceasefire is reportedly for the release of Israeli hostages and allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza. You wrote in a piece — I want to ask you about a piece you wrote for the London Review of Books in November in which you document — the piece is headlined “Exchange Rate,” where you document the change in Israel policy with respect to its hostages. So, if you could talk about the way that that’s played out? You wrote the piece in November. If you could talk about the way that’s played out, and how you think that might affect what happens now, going forward, with respect to the hundred or so hostages who remain, who are reportedly still alive?
EYAL WEIZMAN: I think that what you see in all negotiations around the captives and the Palestinian prisoners sitting in Israeli prisons, some of them on administrative detentions without charge, thousands of them, is that Israel has been creating and enlarging its bank of prisoners in order to create — in order to allow it to change the exchange rate. The title of that piece in the LRB was “Exchange Rate,” and it was looking at the history of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation through the capture of captives, from — really, from the famous airplane hijacks of the '70s all the way to the present, the way in which Palestinians forced Israel into — the only way that Palestinians could actually affect and release their prisoners is through capturing Israeli captives. Over the years, the exchange rate has changed favorably to the Palestinians. And what you're seeing is that Israel is now arresting people in order — Palestinians, again, and holding them in administrative detention, in order to beef up its bank of captives.
More than that, you could see that in the reports on the negotiation, the fate of those people that have been purportedly evacuated into safe areas is being brought into the equation. One way of thinking about it is to say, of course, Hamas or Palestinian factions in Gaza are holding over 100 Israeli captives, and Israel is holding close to 2 million Palestinian captives and bargaining for their return home in exchange for its prisoners. And that is obviously patently illegal, according to international law. And the fact that even that is being brought into the negotiation testifies that that was the intent of holding them away from their home as a bargaining chip towards that. So, you have an exchange rate now that is 200 million Palestinians displaced — sorry, 2 million Palestinians displaced, 100 Israeli captives, and this is really where the negotiations are going.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Eyal Weizman, let’s turn to your report, the Forensic Architecture report, which is headlined “Humanitarian Violence in Gaza.” If you could begin just by explaining — the two words don’t normally come together, “humanitarian” and “violence.”
EYAL WEIZMAN: Right.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: If you could explain what you mean by that? Of course, you’ve also written a book on this. And then lay out the three phases of mass displacement that you document in the report.
EYAL WEIZMAN: Yeah. So, you know, we think about humanitarian principles — and part of them is international humanitarian law, so-called the laws of war — as being there to protect civilians. But a certain manipulation of international humanitarian law allows you to have operational advantage, or, in this case, advantage in negotiation over the captives in this particular way. So, there is a principle, an accepted principle, in international — in humanitarianism that if you want to evacuate a population into a safe zone, that safe zone needs to have several conditions. There needs to be proper medical care. There needs to be proper food and housing in these areas. Israel has evacuated — ordered the evacuation of Palestinians from within Gaza and from the north to the south into areas that were repeatedly under attack, into areas with no housing, no medical care, and now that we see no food is being provided in it, or very little, or not sufficient levels of aid within that. So, that is, firstly, you know, the kind of the principle of using a humanitarian principle that is purportedly used in order to save, in order to treat civilians and take them out of harm’s way, in order to achieve Israel’s operational objectives in this attack on Gaza, and that is to exercise pain on the civilian population to generate levels of destruction and harm that would deter Palestinians from ongoing resistance to the Israeli occupation.
And it’s becoming more and more clear that the harm, that the levels of destruction that we’re seeing, that the level of displacement that we’re seeing, are not the byproduct and not the collateral effects of this conflict, but really the only thing that Israel has achieved during that war. It hasn’t achieved any of its tactical aims. It hasn’t dismantled Hamas as an operative force. It hasn’t captured the Hamas leadership. It hasn’t freed hostages, except of in very rare situations. What it has done is create an equation in which the civilian population is being put in harm’s way in order to bargain against their return back to the north, to north of Gaza, in order to effectively achieve what tactically Israel has not achieved.
So, in relation to the stages, a week or so after the October 7th attack, Israel has given the entirety of the north of Gaza an evacuation order. They were ordered to leave the north of Gaza, home to over a million Palestinians, the center of Palestinian political, cultural life, was actually ordered to cross Wadi Gaza, which divides, according to them, Gaza into north and south. That was the first stage. And after the ceasefire, the temporary ceasefire in which some prisoner exchange was happening at the beginning of December, what Israel has done is releasing an interactive map online, dividing Gaza into kind of a gerrymandered 623 zones. It was very difficult, with people that we spoke to in Gaza, to understand whether they are in zone number 546 or 547. The map was extremely confusing. It was released online at a time of very frequent internet and power cuts, or it was communicated via leaflets that were unevenly distributed. It was an incredibly confusing system that led to the ongoing displacement of Palestinians from one zone to the other. So, when they were — after they were ordered to all move into southern Gaza, from different parts in the southern part of Gaza, they were ordered to go into different places.
And what the report is showing is the systematic and ongoing use of these evacuation orders were meant to achieve that population displacement and that people were continuously being put in harm’s way. The routes, the so-called safe routes, along which Palestinians were ordered to evacuate were attacked. Areas where they went to had no provisions and very often were attacked themselves. So, we cannot see that humanitarian policy, so-called humanitarian policy, of the Israeli forces — and the argument that the Israelis put forward in The Hague that, you know, they are not in violation of the Genocide Convention because they apply humanitarian principle, but we cannot see it as anything else but part of the genocidal campaign that is actually inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: And now, of course, if Netanyahu does succeed in a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah, they will go back to all these places they were forced to flee. And they talk about, “No worries, Palestinian civilians will be protected in these humanitarian zones.” Eyal Weizman, if you could respond to that? And also, just for people to understand, your organization is so unusual, and it also operates in several different countries, you yourself born in Haifa. If you could explain how you do what you do? We are also showing a series of maps, where you show the stages, one, two, three. You’ve done so many different investigations, from who killed Shireen Abu Akleh, the great Al Jazeera Arabic reporter — when Israel was saying caught in crossfire, you proved the opposite: She was killed by an Israeli sniper — among other things. Can you talk about what Forensic Architecture does, and what you, as an Israeli British architect, are doing in this kind of analysis — an architect?
EYAL WEIZMAN: Yeah, thank you for asking that. Of course, the nature of the Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, and throughout Palestine complete, makes use of architecture as part of the violence applied on Palestinians. So, starting from the location of settlements on hilltops in a way that divide the Occupied Territories, surveys it, bisect Palestinian-built fabric, the design of roads, the provisional infrastructure, you could say that settler colonialism is architecturally enacted.
In Gaza, obviously, we had settlements in Gaza up until 2005, when they were evacuated, but after that, the Gaza envelope is a system of civilian and military infrastructure that included a number of fences and earth berms and military facilities, as well as kibbutzim and moshavim. These are agrarian settlements that are part of what Israel always called its regional defense.
Of course, all that system was attacked on October 7th. So you could see how architecture is mobilized as part of the system of control and occupation of Palestinians. You could see why Palestinians would attack that system of infrastructure — and this is without commending and, of course, not supporting the killing and abduction of civilians.
But I think that architecture is a key part of that, of understanding the conflict, the long history of Israel’s settler colonization, and also understanding what is happening in Gaza now. It is happening in urban environment. And one has to understand what this urban environment, that has been created over the years of — you know, since, really, the Gaza Strip was created as a historical anomaly in 1948, when it was carved out as a kind of concentration area for refugees, becoming one of the densest parts of the world, most densely inhabited part of the world. How do you control population centers? And a lot of thinking was done from the Israeli side in terms of thinking about the control of Palestinians as an urban problem.
And what we see now happening in Gaza is the shaping of Gaza for, you know, the day after. Would it come now? Would it come in weeks, in months? We do not know. But what we see is Israel actually shaping the built fabric, destroying all homes and agricultural areas in a huge buffer zone along the border, creating east-west routes, not only the famous one that we know, around Deir al-Balah, but all throughout that very long and thin strip of territory, the Gaza Strip, we see it being truncated, almost cut like salami, with routes and military infrastructure that would be there in order to isolate and divide different parts of the Gaza Strip, if resistance continues, from the Palestinian parts.
And so, architecture — if architecture is really the means by which Israel exercises control, we, architects, and the organization that I run, Forensic Architecture, is — you know, has many architects working with us, but also open-source investigators, journalists, lawyers, etc. — we are monitoring things from a cartographic, spatial and architectural perspective. We work very closely, and we have a partner organization in Ramallah, the Al-Haq Forensic Architecture Unit, because we understand that working in Palestine, like working anywhere else in the world — Forensic Architecture has also got offices in Mexico, in Bogotá; now we’re starting one in Istanbul, in Athens, in many other places in the world. But understanding the lived reality, understanding the way that architecture is used as an oppressive mechanism requires also the lived experience — understanding the lived experience of people there. And therefore, when we’ve done that report that you mentioned, we’ve been in touch with — we’ve been in touch with Palestinians on the ground, we’ve been in touch with medical professionals, with doctors, in understanding the conditions in the so-called safe zones. And as I say, there are no safe areas in Gaza.
We’ve tried to understand the spatial logic of that campaign. And we could see that one of the main strategic tools for Israel to control and afflict that pain on Gaza is through the evacuation orders, and that they have been spatially designed — initially, again, dividing north Gaza from south Gaza, and then dividing it into 600 Tetris parts, if you like, in which, you know, you would get very a confusing order in which your number would come up, and you would be told to go from that number zone into another number zone. Do you get this message? Do you understand it? And also, on the way, you’d be attacked. And the zone in which you’re being evacuated to is itself unsafe and unlivable.
So, here what we see is the abuse of humanitarian principles to further Israeli genocidal campaign. And this is why we call that report “Humanitarian Violence.” We need to be very, very wary when we are speaking about humanitarian principles in war, because very often militaries — not only the Israeli militaries, but, you know, Western, Northern, global — militaries from the Global North, when they engage in urban warfare in parts of the Global South, they are applying humanitarian principles — they’re playing international law in a particular way that does not contain violence, that actually amplifies it.
I’ll give you another example for that: warnings. You know, you could think that to warn a population is actually something that could be very, very helpful. It could save lives. But, actually, the aims of these warnings, or what is implied in them — and sometimes explicitly mentioned — is that if you do not heed the warning, you would be considered potentially part of the armed resistance in a particular area. That means you get redesignated from a protected civilian to a nonprotected either voluntary human shield or part of a resistance, if you do not heed the warning. So, in a sense, with one legal tool, you created the redesignation of a big part of the population, and you basically let the blood in that way. So, humanitarianism, when it — those principles, when they’re using in such a brutal campaign, it could be actually part of the problem, rather than something that is moderating and defending civilians.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Eyal Weizman, if we could talk a little bit more about that? The scale, just to point out, just to give us a sense of the scale of the crisis of mass expulsions, at the moment, almost 70% of the total area of the Gaza Strip has been issued evacuation orders. If you could say, very quickly, in terms of the International Court of Justice ruling, what does your report suggest about the defense that Israel presented?
EYAL WEIZMAN: Yeah, that the defense is completely inapplicable. We will show how — and we have shown how — Israeli military, the occupation forces, when they maneuver through — if you look at things in relation to each other, if you look at military maneuver, you look at areas that have been bombed, as we have, through speaking to people, through analyzing videos, through looking at satellite imagery, we have a good understanding, we have a good map of what are the areas that have been bombed. Overlay that with the so-called safe zones, overlay them with Israeli military maneuver, and what you see is, A, civilians are being evacuated into areas that have been bombed, that have no facilities, and are continuously bombing — they are still being bombed as Israel has ordered civilians into them. And you see, in some cases, Israeli military maneuver, Israeli invasion into the area it itself designated as safe zones.
So, in a sense, you see those categories operating in relation to each other as part of an overall strategy, rather than you’re seeing humanitarian principle pushing against military violence and moderating it. You see it has become one of the tools in the Israeli campaign toolbox to generate that level of destruction in Gaza. So, you know, you’re speaking about 70% of the area is being displaced. And the proportion —
AMY GOODMAN: Eyal, we have 10 seconds.
EYAL WEIZMAN: The proportion of people displaced is much higher, and the proportion of civilian infrastructure destroyed is almost complete. So, look at those things together and understand the militarization of humanitarian principles.
AMY GOODMAN: Eyal Weizman, we clearly have so much to talk about. We’d like to ask you to stay, and we’ll post Part 2 online at democracynow.org. Eyal Weizman is a British Israeli architect, founder and director of Forensic Architecture. We’ll link to the new report, “Humanitarian Violence: Israel’s Abuse of Preventive Measures in Its 2023-2024 Genocidal Military Campaign in the Occupied Gaza Strip.”
Gaza remains under assault. Day 168 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." AFP notes, "The health ministry in Gaza said today that at least 31,988 people have been killed in the territory during more than five months of war." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
We need to wind down. Let's close with this from Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman's latest NYT report on Crooked Donald:
The threat from President Donald J. Trump to his vice president, Mike Pence, was clear and direct: If you defy my effort to overturn the 2020 election by certifying the results, your future in Republican politics is over.
“Mike, this is a political career killer if you do this,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Pence by phone on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, according to the White House valet who was with the president for much of the day and told Congress he had overheard the conversation.
The testimony of Mr. Trump’s valet, provided to the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Committee in 2022 but not previously released publicly, offers a rare firsthand look into the former president’s behavior in the hours before, during and after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol seeking to halt the certification of President Biden’s victory.
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