#have money to waste? donate to Palestine causes

[trans-wojak]

Regarding your post about Palestine I definitely agree. Its honestly become a trend among "those" types of people to "support" Palestine, not because they actually care but because it suddenly became trendy to do so and they're just like "alright if I want to be seen as woke I guess I'm doing this now" and they begin spamming posts with the hashtags free Palestine, acting as if its a new thing even though its been going on for years.

I've also seen MANY and I mean MANY "woke" people using this whole thing to disguise their blatant antisemitism, they blame all Israeli's and all Jewish people for whats going on instead of the people ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE, its to the point where some girl on TikTok said "Jewish privilege" was a thing and the video as far as I know is still up

Its honestly just a repeat of people showing "support" for BLM when police brutality became a "trending topic" back in 2020 even though police brutality against black people has obviously existed years before 2020

These people don't even do anything to "free Palestine" anyways, they just put a Palestinian flag in their bio, flood everyones page with posts about Palestine and call it a day, they don't donate anything or give anyone links to places we can donate, they don't talk about ways we can help, its just blatant that 90% of these people just want to keep up with the "trend" and as soon as this whole thing with Palestine isn't as "popular" in the media they'll just stop posting about it and begin talking about the next big problem going on

It was the same when the whole thing with Ukraine and Russia happened, everyone on TikTok made the Ukrainian flag their pfp, at most made 1 or 2 videos and did nothing else

And I will not even get started on those people who are like "If you don't make posts about Palestine you're evil and are contributing to genocide" because god forbid I don't want to talk about people dying and stuff

I've seen literal 13 year olds and teens get harassed for not talking about Palestine, what the hell is a child gonna do about freeing Palestine?!

(of course these issues are important, and what has been going on with Palestine and Israel is obviously awful, but I'm sick of people using it to get clout, using it as an excuse to crap on Jews, and just seeing it as a "trend" and not an actual problem)

Couldn’t have said it better myself, this is 100% how I feel too. I’ve seen these woke types literally say things like “guess the Jews learned nothing from WW2 now they’re just being Hitler” like bro?? That’s like saying America is responsible for Britain colonising over the world because they’re both predominantly Anglo christian nations.

This war has been going on since like, before 1950 from what I remember. No one remembers Ukraine now, no one mentions BLM, even though police brutality has been a thing since FOREVER especially targeting minority groups.

That chick was deadset being transphobic (not that I actually care, I just like irony) and she’s acting like she’s actually a good person because she spams the internet with shit about free Palestine lmao

I’m actually Jewish, I don’t have any ties to the culture cause my grandfather passed away really young. But there are deadset people still out there who deny the Holocaust happened and I’m seeing a lot of these people post “look a Holocaust survivor said X about Y, it means it’s true!” Like bro, just like Israel doesn’t represent all Jews, neither does one guy.

I simply don’t think wasting energy on caring about this is a good use of emotions or empathy. Unless people actually donate money and PHYSICALLY make an impact, it’s nothing more than signalling how “good” you are to me. I don’t pay attention the news on crap like this cause I don’t need to worry about it, it does not affect me and there’s nothing I can do even if I feel empathy or sympathy. Literally nothing changes besides I wasted some energy. Is it self serving? Yes. I just say the quiet part out loud. I don’t want to listen and talk about war crimes, it’s not productive nor interesting to me. I block tags about it but people rarely tag and it gets posted in meme tags, also by meme pages cause it’s trendy. It’s boring and I’m sick of seeing pretending they are these great activists for clicking reblog on a post they have no idea if it’s even verified.

#thanks for the ask! #ask answered #literally this #i agree #virtue signaling #pretty much summed up how I feel

[cmiyczine]

I'm an artist that applied and I think you both have points. 1. My own feelings don't hold any weight compared to the suffering of the Palestinian people. I appreciate your compassion but many of us (not all, but a significant amount and possibly majority considering this was introduced as a Palestine charity zine right out the gate) do acknowledge that our personal internal hurt feelings don't matter when considering actions to aid Palestine, much like our own grief fatigue shouldn't be used as an excuse to quit or take a long, long break in the name of self care. It's a common principle among pro-Palestinian activists. 2. Given the aid we're intending to provide, we do want to get this out as fast as possible. HOWEVER. 3. You're right about this timeline being loose. We must have it be somewhat flexible to allow for the best possible quality in order to turn the most profits from the people who wouldn't otherwise actively choose to donate to help Palestine. Plus higher quality will mean we can raise the prices a tiny bit without it seeming out of line to those who want this for the product and not the donation.

I admire your compassion and our ethics vary when it comes to personal feelings in the wake of mass tragedy of, supposedly, strangers. But the fact that you're making this at all isn't something to be ignored. It's still a donation campaign. I think, should you attempt this kind of charity zine again, if the guilt of rejecting people is still overwhelming, have a template to fill out where the blanks you fill in make it personal, and add a unique comment about their work in there somewhere. That might be a workable balance that doesn't compromise the principles of many involved.

I say with this big a project there's no one predominant mindset, but a handful, and I'm not just going to jump ship if I get accepted since it's very much worth it. There are other charity projects that are more prompt and seemingly more experienced, but I'm not qualified for. Not to mention this is the serious version of "holy shit, two cakes". I have my personal beliefs about how this should be operated, but whatever is done is done and money will be made anyway, and it'd take longer to get the money if I started my own zine, something I have no knowledge or experience with.

Whether what you're doing is the right way to do it or not, it's still right that you're doing it at all.

And, frankly, you were explicit about the cause of the delay and it didn't appear to be anything affecting the organization and release of money, so I'll foreseeably disagree with that anon on that front; there is no clear correlation.

This project shouldn't devolve into passionate emotional arguing this early. What's important is that it's a project in the first place and since it's started it'd be an immoral waste to drop it. The only other important thing is that anyone who leaves, as they are not profiting off of this, foes so by choice and is able to by choice.

Thank you for your message. You are right about one thing : This project shouldn't devolve into passionate emotional arguing this early. Nor it should EVER.

It is is so easy for you as an outsider to say that most participants should not put their emotions above that of the suffering of Palestinians. Which I evidently completely agree about. But you were not the one going through the applications. I've read every single one, I've read their name and pronoms, saw their galleries, read about them gushing about the characters theyd want to draw, read their suggestions for the project. Each of these person, just like each palestinian, is one whole universe. And It was completely out of the question for me to just bcci everyone with a copied and pasted message of rejection.

If you think I am displaying too much empathy, You wont believe what fuelled me to sacrifice a significant amount of my time and sanity for this project in the first place. I do NOT want to be the cause of hurt for anybody. And You might have nerve of steel and brush a rejection easily, But it is an issue and a struggle for many others. I dont know the psychological profile of the people who applied. And you know wat ? I dont care. Were it any other project I would have done the same. I do not want to cause hurt to anybody. People can feel empathy for Palestine while feeling hurt about a project they were enthusiastic about too. There is no hierarchy in emotions.

I cant believe people are getting ok my case for a delay of a few days because I couldnt bring myself to be NOT be empathic toward participants, when it is litteraly that same empathy that has my heart bleeding for Palestine everyday. I am supposed to be humanitarian toward the people of palestine but not toward the people whom sent applications ? I dont know how you function but my empathy doesnt have a filter nor a hierachy. I feel for everyone, wether the hurt is small or unbearable.

If you do not approve of my methods, I beg you to please unfollow this project and move along. Make your own Palestine project. I am no one, I am irrelevant, I've only organized one zine, I just have friends whom have taken care of big projects. If someone like me can orgazine a charity project then so can you.

Come back in a few months and see the results as well. Maybe you'll realize that gettting on my case for a few days delay was nothing in the grand scheme of things.

#ask

[eretzyisrael]

Social Media and the Cognitive War Against Israel

Time to take a break from giving and receiving abuse on Twitter and do some work.

Last night we watched the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma.” It’s about the big tech companies and how their systems manipulate us into giving them what they want, which is our time and attention.

About 25 years ago I was stuck in the airport in Reno, Nevada, where there were slot machines available for waiting passengers to entertain themselves. I recall watching a woman play one, rhythmically swaying back and forth to the musical accompaniment from the machine as she pulled the lever over, and over, and over. I could see from her glazed eyes that she was in a trance, one with the machine. I wondered if she would succeed to pull herself away in time when her flight was announced, or if indeed she would even hear the announcement. Later, I recognized the same look in the eyes of someone scrolling through Facebook or Twitter on their phone.

These systems, which although they have been developed by humans, work autonomously and learn from experience how to control the behavior of their subjects. Their developers only care about getting us to sit still and eat the ads we are “served” (I love that locution), but of course it has destructive side effects. The creation of ideological bubbles, the dispersion of fake news, and the encouragement of extremism are some of them, but there are other, deeper changes that are not obvious, like the contraction of the subject’s attention span, the forced withdrawal from normal social activities, the decline in risk-taking, and the abysmal waste of time.

The abuses of political correctness, cancel culture, and the wide popularity of absurd, self-contradictory theories and ideologies are all epiphenomena of the ubiquity of social media. They would not be possible without the ability to disseminate emotion-loaded stimuli widely and instantaneously to groups of like-minded people, people who are often in the receptive trance-like state engendered by the medium.

How, for example, did the Israeli-Palestinian conflict come to take over the mind-space of the Western world? Almost none of my Twitter abuse comes from actual Arabs or Palestinians. Most of the folks accusing me of supporting “land theft,” apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Palestinians live in the US or Europe, places which have their own problems. And yet they care so much about the Palestinians!

The Palestinization of the Western mind is a long story. It started with the KGB, who wanted to find a lever to get support for its Arab clients in the Middle East. It continued via the massive inputs of Arab oil money into Western educational institutions and “human rights” groups. It got a big boost from 2001’s Durban Conference on Racism, where the popular theme of anti-racism was successfully applied to Israel – a remarkable feat of reality inversion, since the Arab rejectionism that underlies the conflict is at bottom a particular rejection of Jewish sovereignty, and a desire to ethnically cleanse the region of Jews.

But the advent of the Internet multiplied – exponentiated – everything. It first became available in universities in the 1980s with email and Usenet newsgroups (like mailing lists) facilitating the democratization of the distribution of information. The first rudimentary social networks like Compuserve and America Online arrived in the 1990s. The dam burst with the creation of Facebook and others in the early 2000s.

The universities have always been repositories of misoziony, extreme and irrational Israel-hatred. This is because of the general leftward tilt of university faculties, who were fertile soil for the Soviet anti-Israel propaganda that began in the late 1960s and continued through the dissolution of the USSR. There was also the effect of the aforementioned Arab oil money donated to create departments of Mideast studies that were little more than indoctrination units. Students and faculty, early adopters of new technology, used it to organize and propagandize for all of their causes, including the increasingly popular Palestinian one.

Some important characteristics of social media that particularly affect cognitive warfare in this conflict are the immediacy of transmission of information, its bias toward emotional content, its tendency to create opinion bubbles, its encouragement of extremism, and the effect of numerical superiority of one side or another in a dispute. Let’s see how this works.

One of the propaganda techniques used against Israel is the “spaghetti test,” in which false accusations are rapidly thrown against the public in the hope that they will stick. By the time the information to refute them has been collected, the damage has been done and new accusations have been launched. The ability of social media to plant an idea in numerous receptive minds instantaneously with no filtering (such as is at least supposed to occur in traditional media) greatly increases the effectiveness of this.

It is well known that emotional content makes a story memorable, as well as serving as a motivation for action in a way that factual information cannot. Social media tends to be biased toward the transmission of emotionally affecting content, since that is what drives a person to share or retweet an item. Emotionally moving items (“IDF soldiers shoot Palestinian children for fun”) tend to dominate the timelines of its targets, arriving faster and more frequently than factual, but boring, corrections (“nobody was shot”).

The opinion bubbles prominent on social media, in which a person tends to collect “friends” and followers with similar political opinions means that propaganda will be repeated and amplified by the echo chambers formed by the bubbles. As it bounces around in an eagerly accepting environment, it creates anger and indignation, as well as accumulating greater authority (everyone is talking about the murder of Muhammad al-Dura, so the story must be true).

A participant in a social media opinion bubble is a player in a social game in which points are won by being first with the most shocking information. The “alphas” in the group are the ones whose opinions are the most exciting, which usually means that their positions are the most extreme. This forces the window of discourse in the direction of extremism, which is why it seems so shocking when it escapes from the bubble. The group “Canary Mission” often exposes social media posts in which students and academics express themselves against Jews or Israel in a way which is acceptable within their group but appears (and is) appallingly vicious to an outsider.

Jews and Israelis are a small minority compared to their enemies, and defenders of Israel are an equally small minority on social networks. The numerical advantage on one side makes it possible to “pile on” to a person and overwhelm them with verbal abuse. It seems that the Palestinians and their supporters are using social media much more effectively than those on the Israeli side. I am not sure if this is simply a consequence of their numerical advantage, or something else.

Technology of this kind has made everyday life much more convenient. Can you imagine life without Google? As the documentary points out, social media has reunited families and made it possible to become acquainted with people that one would otherwise never know. It can provide a lifeline for shut-ins, especially in this time of pandemic.

But – as its effects in facilitating cognitive warfare in our own sphere show – it has changed the world in ways we are just beginning to understand, and have made no effort to control. It has increased political polarization in general, fostered extremism, and seriously damaged traditional journalism.

No, I don’t want to be without Google (I think). But I wouldn’t cry if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. disappeared.

Abu Yehuda

#information war #media