World roundup: September 9 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Austria, and elsewhere
TODAY IN HISTORY
September 9 (or thereabouts), 9: A large Roman army under general Publius Quinctillus Varus is thoroughly defeated by a Germanic alliance under one of Varus’s former auxiliaries, Arminius, at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest somewhere in what today is northwestern Germany. Also known as the “Varian disaster,” which gives you some idea of the extent of the Roman defeat, the battle saw the effective destruction of three legions and brought an end to Roman efforts to expand further into Germania. The Roman historian Suetonius writes that, upon hearing of the defeat, Emperor Augustus began beating his head against a wall and shouting “Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!” (I’m sure it sounded nicer in Latin). Recent historiography has argued that this battle was less decisive than the German national mythos presents it and that Roman expansion probably would have reached its natural limit at the Rhine River with or without this setback.
September 9 (or thereabouts), 1141: A Qara Khitai army led by that dynasty’s founder, Yelü Dashi, defeats a Seljuk-Karakhanid army at the Battle of Qatwan, north of the city of Samarkand. Yelü Dashi was a relatively minor royal during the last days of China’s Liao dynasty who fled during the accession of the Jin dynasty and founded the Qara Khitai empire (sometimes also called the Western Liao) in Central Asia. Doing so meant displacing the Karakhanids, which his victory at Qatwan helped accomplish. The defeat of its Karakhanid vassal and the loss of a substantial chunk of eastern territory also triggered, or at least contributed to, the collapse of the Great Seljuk Empire in the Near East. Sketchy tales of this battle may have provided the basis for the Christian legend of “Prester John,” a Nestorian Christian ruler who was supposed to make war against Islam from the east.
September 9, 1855: The nearly year-long Siege of Sevastopol ends with a Russian withdrawal from the city. The siege is among the most famous in history and the centerpiece of the Crimean War—it’s pretty much the reason we call it the “Crimean War” even though most of the other fighting in that conflict took place somewhere other than Crimea. The Allied capture of the city contributed heavily to Russia’s eventual defeat.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
This is a developing story, but the Israeli military (IDF) has apparently carried out another major casualty airstrike on the “protected” humanitarian zone in the Gazan coastal region of al-Mawasi. At least 40 people have been confirmed killed so far and that figure is likely to rise. The Israelis offered their usual excuse for these sorts of incidents, claiming that they they targeted a Hamas “command center” embedded inside the humanitarian encampment.
At The Nation, Ori Goldberg discusses the one glaring omission from the newly re-energized pro-ceasefire protests in Israel:
Still, one thing has not shifted. Among hundreds of thousands of demonstrating Israelis, one would be hard-pressed to find more than several hundred calling for an actual end to the Gaza campaign.
The protesters implore Netanyahu to “make a deal.” They say nothing about the Palestinians or about Israel’s genocidal actions. A deal, it is implied, does not negate Israel’s commitment to the “destruction of Hamas.” The ongoing daily killing of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza and the expansion of the Israeli attacks in the West Bank are not mentioned. There is no vision of a future beyond “bringing them home now.” Israel must sign a deal to bring the hostages home. If it finds that it must continue to carry out a genocide even after the hostages return, it will continue to do so, seemingly with the acquiescence of most of the people in the streets.
It might seem strange that hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have committed to changing the reality of the genocide ignore the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians that Israel has killed, but that is where we are. Some examples of indifference are downright surreal.
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