#can palestinians not exist without it being political

[gingerswagfreckles]

I think people need to understand that when someone says the situation in Israel/Palestine is complicated they are not necessarily saying that the discussion of who the oppressor vs oppressed is complicated. The Israeli government has been oppressing the Palestinians for a very long time, that is clear, and it is not complicated to understand that at least since the 80s they have had dramatically more financial and military power to keep control of the territory in the way they like.

However, it is reductive and dismissive to insist that there is no complexity in the potential ways to move forward to bring peace to the region. Despite what people on tumblr.edu like to believe, "Israel should never have been created" is not a practical solution to an incredibly heated geopolitical situation in the present day. Israel was created and it does exist. 10 million people live there. 74% of the population is native born and the country has existed for 75 years. Hand waving these fact away with the opinion that "they should move back to where they came from" may make you feel good about being a Radical Leftist, but it does not give anyone a road map for how exactly millions of people without dual citizenship are supposed to just up and evaporate. Nor does it acknowledge the reality that 21% of Israelis are Arabs, the very people you are claiming to want to give the land back to.

Insisting that there's nothing complicated about expecting an entire country's population to willingly dissappear with no consequences is not a productive way to think about this conflict. It ignores the many massive superpowers that have an interest in proping up different states in the region, the power dynamics involved in any land back movements, and the inevitably negative consequences of totally dissolving an established state without a plan. It is also completely and almost comically unrealistic, so much so that it makes it hard to believe that anyone who's opinion starts and ends with this idea really gives a shit about anyone who lives in the area as much as they care about their online leftist clout.

There's nothing complicated in understanding that the Israeli government is and has been maintaining an oppressive apartheid state for decades. It is, however, very complicated to come up with a realistic way to resolve some of the most intricately entangled land disputes on the planet without plunging the region into total chaos. Not everyone has to be deeply educated on every geopolitical situation, but it is very hard to take people seriously when they know nothing about the politics or history of a region and yet insist that there is nothing complicated about it at all.

There's a lot of people on this website who are getting dangerously smug about their own ignorance, and are starting to go down Qanon type anti-intellectual paths in the name of being sufficiently radical. Not knowing the details of a very convoluted land dispute isn't something to brag about online as you call for intentionally reductive solutions. You can support the Palestinian cause and be aware of the oppression they have faced while also holding off on calling people trying to do real analysis and de-escalation work bootlickers. We need to get control of the urge to fit every global issue into a simplistic YA novel narrative structure that appeals to Western revolutionary fantasies.

#gingerswagfreckles #israel #palestine #israel palestine conflict #i/p #i/p conflict

[jewishvitya]

I remembered this essay from years ago when I was unlearning what I knew of Israel and zionism and I couldn't find it again, and now I see it in a Shaun video, with the source.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, "The Iron Wall." I downloaded it from the Jabotinsky Institute.

These are the titles he gave this essay:

I said that Zionist leaders explicitly talked about Zionism as a colonialist movement. This is an example of what I was talking about.

Some quotes:

There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

He's saying openly: no land was colonized with the consent of its indigenous population. So we have to do it without that consent.

Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.

That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."

He said that any zionist who depends on the Arab population accepting a Jewish state on their lands, might as well withdraw from zionism because that's impossible.

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

And then he says that this Iron Wall is the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration - they're the power that stops Palestinians from resisting us.

He says that despite this, zionism is moral and just, so justice must be done, zionism must move forward. He just wants to be honest about what it takes. He wants to discourage talks of an agreement to avoid signaling to the British that they must try to reach one between us and Palestinians. Just stop them from fighting us, we'll colonize the place.

Zionism was openly colonialist until this language was no longer politically useful.

Editing because I was kinda shocked by the response this got, in several moments. When the slavery of US founders was brought up to dismiss this whole thing. When First Nations reservations were brought up on the same list as the United States as equivalent to Israel, because I said I oppose the existence of a country that prioritizes one ethnic group at the expense of others, and I support democracy that protects everyone equally.

But another thing that's still nagging at me is the idea that this whole essay can be dismissed based on semantic arguments, like sure this uses the word colonialism, but is it actually the colonialism that we talk about and oppose? And what if this word is only used to appeal to the British for support?

This isn't the the first time that prominent zionist thinkers talk about zionism as a colonialist movement. I saw it in old publications, things like magazines, I'd be posting them too if I found them again. I did my own deconstructing years ago, I don't remember where I found all my sources.

I do remember that they talked about the two concepts together - the idea that we're here to colonize, and that we're here to come home. So nowadays there's the arguement that people can't colonize their own homeland, but to them there was no contradiction. I saw it again looking at Herzl's diary last night.

I say I define colonialism through actions and tactics, through the harm that's done to the victims of colonization. Because if we knowingly repeated the actions of colonizers and used the help of an imperial force to conquer a land, having a historic connection to it shouldn't absolve us.

Jabotinsky didn't write to the British in this essay. He wrote to other zionists who wanted to aim for something more collaborative with Palestinian Arabs. And it's true that word choice can mean different things in the context of the time, but there's a reason I chose those quotes. What is he actually saying in this essay?

Consider colonization throughout history - the native population never agreed, so we must do the as colonizers did in the past.

Palestinians will never agree to a Jewish state - so we must do it by force. We should use an imperial force as an "iron wall" to prevent them from resisting. Stop talking about an agreement because then the British will try to reach one instead of holding them back and letting us do our thing.

He's comparing the zionist movement to other efforts of colonization, to talk about emulating them.

This isn't a game of semantics. I'm not just bringing this up just because he used the words.

What he's describing - conquest by force, preventing a Palestinian state, forcibly creating a Jewish majority - is what happened. And it's still what's happening.

This is the branch of zionism that went into practice and founded Israel.

#riki babbles

[rainbowfractals]

This post is about antisemitism. I'm going to put my cards on the table here. I am not Jewish, I am a Muslim. I have been spending a lot of time in predominantly left and leftist spaces for some years. I've been paying attention to what's being going on on this site too. I think the left, the right no matter what your politics are has a big problem with antisemitism. I've seen people constantly dismiss it, claim it isn't a priority, claim the effects aren't that bad.

Within the last 4 months, I have seen many Jewish people on the Internet , on this site and others leave or take down anything relating to being Jewish because of constant harrasment. This harrasment has had an upsurge but it is not new, I remember hearing the same canards and same false claims years and years ago. I keep seeing people betray a callousness to effects this political enviroment and hostility has on Jewish people.

They refuse to even push back against statements like 'they care more about the jews' or 'being a member of the chosen people means your better than everyone else and they're your slaves', 'there are too many jews in the government', 'there are no palestinians who are of jewish descent, have jewish family members or are jewish and this is propaganda''. I've seen people unable to speak about grief about those they trusted and respected turning out to be antisemites without being harrased over the ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

I've seen a lot of antisemitism in Muslim spaces too, ranging from 'we're tolerant and this is how they repay us', to condenscension to 'some aren't bad but others are bloodthirsty and vengeful', and denial of any antisemitic attacks or crimes done by Muslims. I have also seen attempts to put a stop to this and defend against this and correct misinformation.

But the biggest problem I've seen is that their are a lot of people, who see this is wrong but don't do much about it, or think that it will somehow take away from calling for Palestinian liberation some who have saying this line for years others who have only just started saying it recently. In my experience it is generally not Palestinians saying this who are far more likely to push back against dehumanzing rhetoric than those who say , 'Oh we can't focus it now, Palestinians are dying.' In fact I seen anger against using phrases like 'free palestine' to hurt Jewish people as using the oppression of a people to be antisemities.'

People [in general] keep adding all kinds of caveats 'oh some are good', 'oh some are kids', like acknowledging the humanity of the Jewish people takes the lifeblood away from a Palestinian. In my experience openly saying one should listen to and defend Jewish people and Jewish communities from antisemitism without question is getting increasingly a volatile response. Simply saying that 'Oh what if they're a Zionist?' to just horrific biogtry is antisemitic and you should never deny what's happened to them is bad on that basis. Its used a dogwhistle to justify anything.

And here's the thing, I've spent the last 5 or so years trying to learn all I can about Judaism and Jewish culture, and the dissonance between what I now know and what I see around me has grown very wide. I don't know that much, but I keep seeing the same misinformation and lack of care as to how destructive it is. I keep seeing people assuming that antisemitism is someone else's problem to deal with. I keep seeing all kinds of monolithic, flattening and caricatures that bear no resemblance to the reality.

The most jarring thing was that there are people on this very site that if you had one should support and stand with Jewish people against antisemitism to make a fairer world that had learned a lot about why it is so rampant are now shying away from these statements. Jewish people are spoken about as if one event has obliterated any past or present of discrimination. As if their lives they have led have ceased to exist. The things that caused that atrocity and the current horrors were still around 5, 10 years ago. It wasn't out of nowhere.

I have seen those who have no issue with agreeing with neo-nazis and just violent hate and doxxing and shootings and so on and simply unpersoning Jews in their mind. This has happened many times before and unless there is a big change will happen many times again.

More and more Jewish people are ailenated and leaving places there otherwise went, changing how they live their lives and so on. To all those who are suffering from this. I'm sorry that this happening you shouldn't be treated in such a cruel way.

And to those of us who seen or noticed this withdrawal, we should try to prevent it. Its not enough to say that's wrong to some hateful statements we have work against a hostile and suspicious enviroment this hate flourishes in and give it no air to breathe and to water to drink from.

Antisemitism is not someone else's problem, its all of our problem. We should be vigilant in spotting it and then doing something about it. Many say this but there is a great need for action. Everywhere, on the social media, on the schools and workplaces in the place sof worship in the businesses, in the politics, in the media and so on.

I'm going to say this again, as because I am not Jewish I cannot be claimed to be priveleged and looking for attention by those denying the case. When I say volatile reaction, I mean there are people who viewed me talking about differences in theology between Judaism and Islam and the work of David Bar-Tzur in sign lanaguage interepretation Jewish settings and writings and community work with the Jewish Deaf community and how Judeo-Christian does not exist and is antisemitic and so on.

As first distaste 1 as I spoke to them about it over multiple conversations and was met with increasing hostility and eventually claims that I was following 'degenerates' and that I was too 'kindhearted' and had become 'brainwashed' by 'Zionist media'. Which quickly changed from condescending pity to cold anger when I protested against this. When said I wasn't going to get disclaimers that some 'Jews are bad' all the time whenever I said anything about them and deemed what they were saying to be antisemitic, the conversation devolved from there.

In their eyes I'm object of suspicon for essentially sympathising too much with Jewish people and knowing 'too much'. Yes they considered the amount I knew to be a sign I was brainwashed. It was even insinuated that I lack faith in my own religion and so on. If I didn't like this, I could just walk away and ditch everything I have said and done then keep my head down. But those suffering from antisemitism can't do this as they are being targeted.

That's all I have to say. Please respond if you have anything you'd want to say to me.

This was someone I've known for years who had over time more and more negative reaction, by distaste I mean there was a distinct sense of when I brought the topic up. Perhaps naively I keep trying to talk with them knowing what I know now I would have disengaged sooner and stopping trying act like this was a two-sided good faith discussion earlier, but the past is the past.

I also did not expect this post to get so much traction, I assumed some of my mutuals would read it and it would get some likes and a few reblogs and replies then the attention would leave my blog. I've been reading the responses, thank you for what you've had to say.

Also there are many people doing good work fighting against this in Muslim communities all over, I fear perhaps my original version this post didn't focus on that much, I was talking more about people causing and keeping up this issue.

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #muslim #antisemitism in muslim communities #fractal posts

[the-library-alcove]

One consistent insistence by Antizionists that has repeatedly puzzled and confounded many Jews and Israelis over the last few months since 7/10 is the often-repeated assertion that there are "Jewish Palestinians under attack by Israel in Gaza" in its full formulation, or more concisely, that there are "Palestinian Jews".

At first, most of us waved this off as simply an indicator of complete ignorance of the conflict and history of the region, and assumed that they were referring to A) "Jews who are part of the Palestinian nation-people", who exist in extremely, extremely limited numbers through intermarriage and the like, B) some kind of misconception on pre-1948 Jews who were residents of the British Mandate of Palestine, and before that the Ottoman province, or C) Jewish residents of Gaza who self-identify as Palestinians.

C seemed to be the group that was most understood as correct upon cross-examination of people making these assertions, but, being blunt...

There are no members of Group C.

All Jews were removed from Gaza by Israel in 2006, many by force, and the territory was handed over to the Palestinians entirely. There are approximately 1000-2000 Palestinian Arab Christians in the Gaza Strip, with the remaining 99.8% of the population being Sunni Muslim. The only Jews currently in Gaza are hostages held by Hamas and the IDF soldiers who are deployed there, and none of them identify as Palestinians.

But despite this topic being repeatedly and easily debunked, the claim persists among antizionists. The question is why? Not that there is disinformation in play--this entire conflict has been the subject of concerted disinformation campaigns that can be easily disproven by a glance at Wikipedia without any need for deeper research. The "why" here is "what propagandistic/narrative purpose does this claim serve?"

And the primary reasons we can come up with are less than great.

First, claiming that there are "Palestinian Jews" in Gaza allows for the invention of a perfect ideological victim being persecuted by the "racist, White Supremacist, fascist" state of Israel--i.e. they undermine the Israeli claim that the state exists for the protection of Jews.

Second, related to the first, they allow for the Antizionist promoting the theory to avoid facing the antisemitism endemic in the Antizionist movement--by positioning themselves as acting in defense of or advocacy for a (fictitious) Jewish Palestinian, then they can't be antisemitic, just "antizionist".

Third, by claiming that there are Palestinian Jews, it means that Jews are welcome and free to practice their religion in Palestine (and ties into the belief that Judaism is "just a religion"), meaning that "Zionists" are overly paranoid White Supremacists moaning about "the Great Replacement" and "White Genocide" like all other White Supremacists out there, and their concerns about Jewish survival in a hypothetical post-Israel Palestinian state under the governance of Hamas or the PFLP are unfounded and thus there is no need for Israel.

Fourth, and most disturbingly, if there are Jewish Palestinians in Gaza under Hamas' governance, then that proves, to the antizionist, that Hamas truly are freedom fighters working to expand and free their idealized multi-racial, multi-religious democratic Palestinian State from the White Supremacist Racist Zionists who are oppressing everyone, including Jews. (Instead of, you know, terrorists who oppress Gazans and want to kill all Jews everywhere).

In essence, it's a Big Lie. It seems absurd, outrageous even, to just... make up an entire demographic of people for political/ideological purposes, but the fact is, there are concrete and understandable reasons for why people both make it up in the first place, and spread it afterwards...

And those reasons boil down to, "Because we want to believe it, and it fits with the way we want the world to work."

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #israel hamas conflict #jewish palestinians #antizionism

[opencommunion]

since zionists want to act obtuse about why we're criticizing a superbowl ad, here's an explanation from before the ad even aired. it was openly designed to act as pro-genocide propaganda. fighting antisemitism is a worthy goal but that's not what's happening here:

"The New England Patriots’ 81-year-old owner, Robert Kraft, writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC, but his personal, political, and financial ties to Israel run deeper than the occasional donation. The multibillionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel in 1963 when Kraft, then 22, was older than the nation itself. Together they set up numerous business, athletic, and charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on the Kraft company website. In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its 'Touchdown in Israel' program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations to see 'the holy land' and come back to spread the word about 'the only democracy in the Middle East.' (Not every NFL player has chosen to take part.) Kraft also attends fundraisers for the Israel Defense Forces, currently—and in open view of the world—committing war crimes in Gaza."

Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza—more than 25,000 Palestinian have been killed with at least 10,000 of them children—Kraft is again flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the indefensible. His Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) will be spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled 'Stop Jewish Hate' that will be seen by well over 100 million people. Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media. 

... The content of the Super Bowl ad is not yet known, but FCAS has afforded Kraft the opportunity to make the rounds on cable news saying things like, 'It’s horrible to me that a group like Hamas can be respected and people in the United States of America can be carrying flags or supporting them.'

This is Kraft enacting the mission of FCAS: fostering disinformation. He is far from subtle: A Palestinian flag becomes a 'Hamas flag,' and people like the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets of Washington, D.C., last month to call for a cease-fire and end the violence are expressions of the 'rise in antisemitism.' Without a sense of irony or the horrors happening on the ground in Gaza, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his own money to FCAS, because 'hate leads to violence.'

Let’s be clear: What Kraft is doing politically and what he will be using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to think any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a cease-fire and a Free Palestine that are part of the problem. Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.

... Right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish state existing alongside their conviction that Jews are going to Hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition. Left-wing anti-Zionist Jews are not. The greatest foghorn of this evangelical right-wing 'love Israel, hate Jews' perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, counts Donald Trump as a close friend and even donated $1 million to his presidential inauguration.

No one who provides cover for the most powerful, public antisemite in the history of US politics should ever be taken seriously on how to best fight antisemitism. No one who funds AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a cease-fire amid the carnage should be allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl. But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth, perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we don’t have a choice."

#zionism

[weirdmageddon]

i posted this on twitter also but it’s still eating at me. i’m so fucking embarrassed to be jewish rn. i dont want to be associated with this ongoing bullshit from israel. why do we need our own state. theyre just making every jew across the globe look bad in general even though many of us are conflicted about zionism and the legitimacy of israel as a state

people have hated jews throughout history for no fuckin reason but now israel exists but now its like. GIVING people reasons to hate us as a group. note that i DON’T conflate zionism with jewishness, but a lot of people in the world don’t know the difference because theyre uninformed and been dripfed cultural antisemitic tropes their whole life and that’s the scary part is them falsely putting two and two together. like what the fuck israel stop youre just putting fuel on the fire for people around the world to hate an entire group of historically persecuted people if youre being this shitty with your insane colonialism and apartheid like……I Want No Fuckin Part Of This. you’re spelling our own doom. you cant just swoop in and go “mine now” and then oppress the people you took land from under a regime without my blood boiling at the injustice no matter WHO you are. even if my lineage is tied to you. so when news outlets support israel it doesn’t feel like they have the best interest of jews as a people in mind. it’s in the interest of a zionist ethnostate and whatever that christian zionism belief is about the jewish people returning to the holy land as prerequisite for the second coming of jesus. its not like they care about us as a dispersed ethnocultural group, it’s all for that religious narrative that a bunch of people in the US are backing.

saying you want all jews to die is antisemitic. beating someone up because they’re jewish and no other reason without knowing their views is antisemitic. criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by israel and the belief that one group deserves more rights another is not antisemitic. and the fact that israel has the ability to pull that antisemitism card in response to criticisms of the violations they commit because their state is the “jewish homeland” drives me fucking insane. take fucking accountability for your actions. and yes, there do exist full-on anti-jewish groups in the middle east that go beyond hatred of israel’s policies and existence as a state and i’m tired of people pretending there aren’t in fear of appearing to seem like they support the state of israel. on the other side of things many people overestimate this by fearmongering and saying EVERY arab is out to get jews worldwide, telling people like me “they want YOU dead”. this is not the belief every person in the middle east and it really rubs me the wrong way that people group millions of individuals into all-encompassing lumps like this. many people there do understand nuance of this political situation.

even if i have that “right of return” by israeli law or whatever, i don’t feel obliged to it; it does not register as fair. why do i have a “right of return” when i’ve never even been there in the first place while palestinians who have homes there can’t return to them? what’s the basis for that? substituting objective reality with an imaginary reality? i don’t think like that. i can hypothetically come and go whenever i please but palestinians are severely limited in mobility? what makes me more entitled to that land than the people who lived there for centuries? nothing that comes from natural law thats for sure. it’s all artificial and inflated.

but at the same time i also dont want to be the target of antisemitism and caught in the fray just for being ethnically jewish. once people start calling for the genocide of entire groups we’ve got issues (and you better believe this absolutely applies to the palestinian victims in gaza too), because people who dissent to the violence perpetrated by the loudest are caught in there with the people who are perpetrating the violence. lack of nuance. people conflating israel and its zionist apartheid policies with jewish ethnicity and culture worldwide. other people conflating being terrorist anti-jew with muslims worldwide (like that 6-year old palestinian-american boy that was just stabbed to death in chicago). scary times man. but as a jew i can’t just opt out of this if it’s how i was born as. i don’t have control over that. but i can control what i think and what my beliefs are

#israel palestine conflict #israel #palestine #what i feel is right most strongly resonates with secular humanist philosophy #never really found the right way to explain my worldview until i read about it

[fairuzfan]

I’m a genocide historian and I do think comparisons between the Holocaust and the genocide in Palestine are unproductive because A) the Holocaust is pretty distinct from Palestinian genocide not in its exceptionalism but in its method - the “shipping” of victims from 20+ countries by international rail to a handful of centralized killing sites; 15000 people being gassed in Auschwitz daily (a single gas chamber had standing capacity for 2,000 people) and their stolen hair sold in bales for use as maritime rope and cushion stuffing - and forcing Holocaust parallels obfuscates the terrible and very unique methods of genocide being used by Israel against Palestinians. B) People often invoke the Holocaust as an emotional appeal regarding the moral culpability of all Jews (“how could you do what was done to your ancestors!”) when the same responsibility to end the genocide in Palestine exists regardless of one’s background or religion.

What Israel is doing in Palestine is 100% a genocide. Whether or not it is similar to the Holocaust (or any previous atrocity) does not make this any more or less true.

The thing that doesn't make sense to me with this point is that no one is saying that the Holocaust and Palestinian genocide are a 1:1 comparison. Like most people acknowledge the terrible genocide that occurred in the Holocaust against all its victims. But when they're talking about comparing genocides, there are tell tale signs that repeat throughout history that are precursers to larger events. Like when people compare the Warsaw ghetto to Gaza. I'd say those are quite similar in practice and intention. When we "compare" genocides (not a 1:1 but more of a drawing parellels by disecting the inteion and reasoning behind certain events that werent necessarily actively violent but passively violent) its to show "hey this is going to get really bad really soon because something like this happened before." Masha Gessen has an article about this that I reblogged.

People should care about fighting injustice everywhere I agree. But that doesn't change the fact that parallel drawing is an act separate from emotional invocation. When genocide scholars and survivors talk about "Hey this was like xyz that happened to me/in history" it's to show that there is precedent for this thinking and a terrible methodology happening when genocides occur. They dont just get really bad out of nowhere, you need to examine the precursors to prevent the large event from happening. How that large event happens differs from place to place, I agree. But to say that because things happen differently against different people means you can't examine the underlying reasons behind those actions is kind of reductive. By this definition you can never compare any genocide ever and all the terrible things that happen just happen naturally without any political or social influence.

Arnesa talks about how the Bosnian genocide precursors mirror the Palestinian genocide. She also talks about how Lula specifically should have mentioned other genocides (like Rwanda, Bosnia, etc) in his statement because there are parallels there too. I'd argue that's the real intention behind genocide studies, in that you notice trends and patterns to analyze how certain events might turn out.

I do want to mention because this is where im coming from a little bit, it is a pretty big zionist talking point (by especially American dems) saying you can't compare the holocaust to what's happening to Palestinians because it's antisemitic, which is not a real talking point and actually kind of rude in that it assumes that Palestinians can't call out parallels between their treatment and the treatment of those in the Holocaust because they're fundamentally doing it from a point of antisemitism and not a plea for recognition that the events are mirroring each other.

[steveyockey]

I paid $5 to access séamus malekafzali’s latest substack on palestine, here’s the full text,

It is easy to be lulled into a state of complacency, even with military occupation.

Israel’s occupation of Palestine has gone on longer than many of us on Earth have been alive, now going on 75 years. The levels of that deplacement, blockading, and violence have ebbed and flowed over years and decades, but that hand around the neck has always remained, even if how much it constricts has a tendency to loosen and tighten. Over 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israel this year in its occupation. News bulletins of them dying, oftentimes teenagers, come up through the headlines of Palestinian newspapers and channels as often as the weather. These deaths at the hands of Israeli security personnel are not isolated incidents, with soldiers materializing on roadsides and at checkpoints as unfortunate coincidence. They are constant spikes in the waveform of an incessant low-grade hum of humiliation, imprisonment, and destruction that has made daily life a forced agreement to constantly exist on the precipice of death.

This framing is not meant to be a tired retread of the conflict between Israel and Palestine or the nature of the Israeli occupation. This is meant to be a bulwark against the inevitable framing of this latest battle unfolding around Gaza, as it will appear in the Western media in the days to come.

There is a tendency, a deep-set one, to report Israel and Palestine as two countries that are on roughly the same playing field internationally, as you might report on a war that might involve Israel battling against a place like Jordan or Egypt. This kind of coverage obscures how deeply interlocked Israel’s military operations are with the fabric of the Palestinian society.

In the West Bank, settlements and checkpoints have made Palestinian land into a kind of comical archipelago, where in addition to being separated from Gaza by a huge land border, they are also separated from traveling to communities only a stone’s throw away from them without going through significant anguish. In Gaza, while no Israeli soldiers walk the streets, all their land borders are essentially sealed, their ports almost completely blockaded. Israel’s continued occupation has been so pinpoint and precise that its planes have gone as far as bombing bookstores, and its restrictions did not let up even when the COVID-19 pandemic reduced one health organization to carrying only as many tests of the deadly disease as could fit in a car.

This is not a matter of moral justification; one does not need to constantly busy themselves with having to make a full ideological conversion before understanding this. This is a matter of cause and effect.

What is the logical expectation, regardless of politics, ideology, culture, and creed, when a population of people is thrust into conditions that can only be described as an open-air prison, where every individual is a criminal in the eyes of the military occupying power regardless if they pick up a rifle or not, because there is supposedly always the threat that they will one day?

These are the basic conditions that have preceded the initiation of Operation al-Aqsa Storm this morning. As dawn broke on the morning of October 7, only one day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, launched a military operation of unprecedented scope in its history. Hamas fighters would not only attempt to enter Israeli territory proper with ground troops, already in of itself an intensely bold action (though not without precedent in the past decade). This operation would be a combined incursion into Israel by both land, sea, and even air. Ground forces would cut the border fence into settlements surrounding Gaza, speedboats would make landings in southern Israel, and fighters from a newly-inaugurated paraglider division would fly over the border fortifications and then further inland.

Threats of an invasion of Israeli territory proper have been a staple of speeches from Hamas and Hezbollah and groups like it for years. There was a long-standing perception by outside observers that it was fanciful. An intentionally lofty piece of propaganda that fires up supporters while the real military wheeling and dealing is done under far more subtle and controlled terms, as with most militant organizations. After all, no Israeli-administered town, the ones occupied in Palestine during the initial 1948 war, had ever been taken in any war against the Jewish state since its creation, even by a combined force of multiple Arab national militaries.

That notion now can no longer exist.

At sunrise, Hamas fired a gigantic barrage of rockets into Israeli territory, a staggering 5,000 in the first wave alone. As Israeli military and police forces were distracted by fires and rocket destruction in residential areas of the country, Palestinian forces in Gaza proceeded to make their primary move.

After the sun rose, Hamas cut through the border fence surrounding Israel and sent both fighters on foot and on motorcycles into Israel. Images released by the group seem to tell a story in frozen figures. Israeli soldiers, strewn dead, caught by surprise, one having even rushed out so quickly that he put on his military gear but no other clothes except his underwear. An even grimmer story could be found in one of the IDF military dormitories, where an entire room full of soldiers had been massacred, only having perhaps seconds earlier gotten the alarm that Hamas had breached the perimeter, many of them seemingly mid-way through getting out of bed.

From there, Hamas made unprecedented move after unprecedented move. Hamas fighters moved as far north into Zikim, built on the former Palestinian village of Hiribya, and moved as far east as Ofakim, built on the former hamlet of Khirbat Futais. The Erez Crossing, for years the only legal border crossing that Israel operated with the Gaza Strip, came under full Palestinian control. Sderot, a city where Israelis had once gathered on couches dragged to high peaks to watch the bombardment of Palestinians, now found themselves facing down Palestinian fighters in their own streets.

An additional shock would come in Israel’s initial response. Amidst cataclysmic scenes like hundreds of ravers in the desert near Gaza fleeing on foot, neither the Israeli president nor the prime minister spoke in those early hours in the morning.

The Israeli high command, despite the continuous insistence of Palestinian factions that they would one day attempt to take the fight into Israel itself, had become complacent. They, like many observers of Israel-Palestine, believed the occupation they had constructed could go on forever, unburdened by the need to adapt. Israeli soldiers after all were now more used to sniping reporters and unarmed protesters than engaging in military conflict. Entropy was what was propelling the military occupation complex of the Jewish state, not a wholly active effort.

Despite an ungodly amount of Western military equipment, highly advanced anti-aircraft systems programmed to shoot down thousands of rockets, an international reputation for tenacity and strategic knowhow, and multiple victories against Arab nations again and again and again, all of it ended up being useless against a Hamas fighter flying in on a box fan and a parachute.

This failure is two-fold, and both are closely related. One is the expectation that things could go on as before without addressing the root of the issue (that being a military occupation of an entire state), and the other in expectation that those being occupied had no capacity to learn from experience how Israel’s military strategy operates, people who could then going on to capitalize on that knowledge.

There is a fundamental flaw in the perception of Western powers toward the Middle East in general and Arabs in particular that because the groups fighting with Israel or the United States are irregular, bereft of highly professional uniforms and dedicated gigantic military headquarters, that they do not have the same ability to strategize and to confront the forces that are occupying their countries. Flashes of how faulty this thinking is rear their head again and again, from Iraq to Afghanistan and everywhere in-between and around, but still the idea, unspoken as it may be, remains that they are fundamentally unequipped compared to the might they are fighting against. But Hamas has military strategists of its own, ones that understand the asymmetric situation they are dealing with, and ones that understand what the actual capabilities of Israel are, versus what their perception is.

The perception of Israel’s invulnerability versus what has actually been displayed today could not have been more different. Instead of being forced to immediately pull back, in essence making today a raid, Hamas has instead actually contested several Israeli settlements, which are still being fought over at time of this writing many hours after the initial incursion from Gaza began. A single Israeli soldier captured and held in Gaza used to capture the Israeli imagination for years; now there are believed to be not only tens of soldiers captured by Hamas, but tens of Israeli civilians as well, all now being held within the Strip. Hamas has also brought Israeli military vehicles back into the Strip, the novelty of working IDF equipment now under Palestinian control a source of celebration within the territory. Over 100 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the first day of Hamas’ attack, and nearly 1000 injured, a shocking early casualty count in an ongoing conflict where casualties on the Palestinians’ side are usually far more lopsided.

Israel’s response so far to Hamas’ operation has been to escalate rhetorically, with Netanyahu now calling this a war, and escalating its usual military strategy with Gaza, with carpet bombing now on an intense, concentrated scale. At the time of this writing, almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in only a few hours, with that number expected to rise significantly in the days to come. Already, news has come in of Israeli planes having leveled Gaza’s second-largest building, the Palestine Tower, which housed a plethora of media offices, in scenes reminiscent of Israel’s bombing of another tower block of media offices in 2021 that infamously took out the local bureau of the Associated Press.

As fighting continues into the night in ways never seen before since 1948, the question remains: after all these decades, why now?

The ostensible justifications of what the clincher was that sparked this operation are innumerable, but two appear to be most clearly illuminated: the recent increased activity of far-right Zionists at the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem (hence the name of the operation itself), but just as well the indications that the Saudi Arabia and Israel may be close to a normalization deal, which would be the largest such development in the Abraham Accords yet. Hezbollah mentioned this operation as being a “message” and a “decisive response” to Arab nations pursuing the idea of normalization with Israel. Still, it is important to recognize that pinning the undertaking of a completely gigantic operation of this scale as just a simple message to Saudi Arabia would be reductive. As the Los Angeles Times’ international correspondent Nabih Bulos says of the matter:

“To pretend that Hamas did this to be a spoiler of KSA-Israel normalization is just downright epic in its navel-gazing nonsense.”

What is important to always return to is that eternally governing line above everything: the low hum of constant occupation, and who has been causing its spikes. Israel’s government, its most far-right in its history, has been on the warpath almost immediately from its inauguration, with figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, now thrust to the forefront, doing everything large and small to provoke a Palestinian response. The hope is that the inevitable Palestinian response can mobilize the Israeli society, that it can be swiftly defeated by the Israeli military, and that the Israeli state can use such an opportunity to impose its sovereignty over what little of Palestine governed by Palestinians remains, and perhaps even what lies beyond it.

But that formula relies on the Palestinian side only accepting being provoked, themselves having no strategy of their own outside of firing rockets and yelling on television. Military occupation breeds a feeling of annihilation, but that annihilation is enclosed with it inevitable feelings of rabid and desperate hope, inspiring within irregular groups desires to try things never tried before. These are not always guaranteed to be successful: one may look at Aleppo when rebel groups managed to come together and break the siege on the city in the final stages of the battle, only for it to fall in the months to come anyway. Nevertheless, there is a real perception within Israel, communicated out to the world by its media and by its intelligentsia, that it is a nation on the verge of internal collapse, brought to the precipice by far-right forces it has let fester for decades without envisioning its eventual conclusion.

What does looking at how Israel is faring now communicate to Palestinian factions in Gaza? What do young people in Gaza, who make up 47% of the Strip’s population, imagine might lie ahead for them as they see these events unfold? What does a Hamas fighter imagine might be possible when, as the writer Josef Burton says, he exits a 25 by 7-mile space he’s never left in his entire life?

#reading #palestine #from the river to the sea 💗 #I’ve debated caving and giving séamus my money many times before and today was like well. okay 👍🏻

[determinate-negation]

I'm sorry but having token jew(s) in your student movement does not absolve you of antisemitism and does not grant you a free pass from engaging with this problem. While I'm willing to believe many of these groups do actually advocate for Palestinian liberation without dabbling in the old jew hate, the reality is that the last weeks have seen some Very, very hateful and concerning targeting of Israeli and Jewish students, the Cornell forum and blocking of the kosher food court, whatever the fuck is happening in Columbia to name but a few. Many of my Jewish and Israeli friends in American universities have voiced major concerns, regardless of their political stance (yes! Even anti zionist aka the "good jews"!!)

Why are you so quick to dismiss these people's claims, the *are* the marginalized group, they are the ones feeling threatened, calling them delusional won't make them feel safe, unless, of course, you do not care for Jewish wellbeing and existence.

I must say that for the time being, as a jewish student, I thank God im not in American academia.

i wasnt gonna even respond to this but its so annoying how people refuse to interrogate the framing of things because youre falling for propaganda and im going to show you.

when i say that there are jewish students in palestine organizing, these are not “token jews,” although that seems to be the only lens through which you can view standing with liberation instead of violent ethnonationalism. but anyways, these are not token jews these are people making leadership decisions in sjp and jvp chapters. in new york specifically, not that you would know i guess, and which is misrepresented in the media, the issue in some chapters is having only a few “token arabs” and mainly white jewish members. if any of the reporters actually did their fucking job the articles they write about sjp would reflect this.

the incident you mentioned at cornell, someone making violent antisemitic threats, which is actually scary, has nothing to do with pro palestine organizing. in fact, quite the opposite, according to his lawyer.

so this was actually meant to vilify pro palestine students, and its working on you.

and i dont know what youre referring to about columbia, because whats mainly happening is pro palestine students and arab students in general who are completely unaffiliated are being doxxed by right wingers and the administration is taking extreme measures to shut down political speech. lets be fucking real: antisemitism on college campuses exists and is an issue, but is mainly coming from right wingers or opportunists, not the leadership of palestine organizations. conflating them when its actually a different story is serving a specific political purpose of slandering the palestine movement. its also ignoring the real root of the problem. and more cops on campus and administrations destroying academic freedom cynically framed as “preventing antisemitism” is actually a bigger threat for us in the long run. its just wrong to consider pro palestine people as the biggest threat to jewish students on campus, they simply arent the people behind most of this increase of antisemitism. if you joined sjp you would most likely find people committed to justice and liberation and would completely welcome you if youre equally committed, and who are vocal about not equating jews and the state of israel. stop fucking buying all this propaganda. my post specifically was about the misrepresentation of college palestine organizations as antisemitic terrorists, and nothing i said in it was incorrect

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Israel has been preparing for the possibility of a direct strike from Iran. To that end, the IDF has been initiating GPS jamming, first in the south, and now in central Israel as well. On a personal note, I had to calm my mom down today (I could do this thanks to having heard about it on the news already), because it's a scary thing for people, and they don't know what to think, when they open Waze and find themselves "appearing" in enemy territory. Iran's attack options might also include drone attacks, or anti-Jewish terrorist attacks around the world. We've heard about Esther and Mordechai's Tomb being attacked tonight in Iran itself.

Speaking of the country that's the biggest funder of terrorism globally, tomorrow it's "Al-Quds Day" (Jerusalem Day) in Iran. It was established in 1979, after the Islamist revolution, as an antisemitic political measure, meant to help radicalize people against the Jewish state. Officially, it's a protest of Israel's sovereignity in Jerusalem, the city which has been the capital of the Jewish people, the place we pray to, for over 3,000 years, longer than Islam has existed. Some people worry that Iran will use this date specifically to strike against Israel or other Jewish targets around the world.

With or without connection, the chief of Israel's army intelligence is quoted as saying in private conversations, "I have told you time and time again that it is not certain that the worst is behind us and we are ahead of complex days."

Back in February, we heard that the niece of Hamas' overall leader, Ismail Haniyeh, gave birth in an Israeli hospital, and her baby, which was born prematurely, was treated in an Israeli hospital's NICU, the same hospital that had to have millions of shekels spent on, in order to make parts of it safe during Hamas' rocket attacks. While at it, we were reminded that several of Haniyeh's sisters live in Israel after marrying Israeli Bedouins, and that a few more of his relatives were allowed from Gaza into Israel for medical treatment. Just a small reminder that Haniyeh's personal wealth is estimated to be somewhere between 4 to 5 billion dollars (Taylor Swift's is only a little over 1 billion dollars), and if he wanted to, he could have flown his entire family out of there, to join him in Qatar, with the best facilities and care, rather than get medical care at a hospital subsidized by the "genocidal Zionist enemy."

Now we get the news that one of Haniyeh's sisters, a 57 years old woman, has been arrested for helping Hamas, including support for the Oct 7 massacre.

This is 34 years old Lidor Levi.

He was critically injured in the Palestinian terrorist attack in Gan Yavne. He was in a hospital, fighting for his life for 4 days. Today we got the news that he succumbed to his wounds. He leaves a pregnant wife and a daughter behind. May his memory be a blessing.

I will never understand how the accidental killing of 7 civilians in Gaza is making more headlines, and causes more rage, than the on going and intentional killing of so many Israeli civilians targeted in terrorist attacks along this entire war. I can't remember the world even addressing it, let alone raging about how unacceptable these killings are, and how they're proof that Palestinian terrorist organizations must be stopped. For that matter, I haven't come across anywhere as many headlines and world leaders' statements about an intentional drone attack that killed several rescue workers in Kharkiv, where a residential area was targeted. The hyperfocus on the one conflict where Jews can be demonized, is also leaving a lot less attention for, practical aid, and just general caring about other conflicts, which are in many ways far worse (just look at Tigray alone on the below map). It's harmful to so many more people than we come close to realizing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #israelunderattack

[hero-israel]

Here's the thing about this narrative that Palestinian resistance no matter what form is acceptable. Jewkilling cannot exist in a bubble. It cannot be politically neutral. 1000 years of European (and Arab) antisemitism culminating in genocide have ruined that. Sorry to Palestinian activists but that's just how it works. You can't murder a Jew without it being a tragedy, without it contributing to the continued global oppression of Jewish people.

And all that said, that's just if Hamas and others only targeted soldiers and police (or at least tried as best they could). The IRA didn't go out of its way to purposefully target noncombatants. Why? Probably because there isn't thousands of years of history of English people being seen as subhuman, there isn't thousands of years of anglophobic propaganda showing English people as twisted monsters preying on children and secretly undermining Irish society. The Irish national movement was not born because English refugees returned to their historical homeland and challenged the notion of Irish Supremacy. It was a pragmatic liberation movement. Resist military occupation, undermine military infrastructure designed to oppress the people. The descendants of English and Scottish settlers would even be allowed to stay if they had won. Imagine that.

These things are all tied up in each other. I'm against police brutality, I'm against the escalation and the militarization and the mistreatment of Arabs in Israel and in Judea & Samaria and Gaza and Golan and everywhere. But killing Jews can never be righteous. Sorry to anyone who feels that way but it can't. Antizionists NEED to understand that. Jews will always feel defensive and ready themselves for retaliation because of history, because of that context. Jews keep saying "prove to us a post zionist society where we all share the land won't be antisemitic" and their concerns are completely brushed off.

There's no empathy at all. A little girl can be stabbed to death and antizionists celebrate because she was a "settler," and that brave Palestinian man was defending his indigenous homeland, by targeting the weakest of his enemies. And since Israel has mandatory military service the antizionist can surmise that no Jews are Innocent. An Israeli Jew cannot be a noncombatant. They have to, otherwise the only other explanation for why Jewkilling is acceptable to them, or even feels good to them, is that they hate Jews. And as of right now, the optics are still against that. I have a sinking feeling the optics won't be against them much longer. I inherently don't trust a "liberation" movement that's all too eager to make murdering Jewish civilians praxis. I'm sick of the internet falling for this bullshit.

One of the best asks I have ever received. Thank you for sharing it and I agree with every word.

The entire progressive intersectional social-justice frame has failed Jews (or, alternately, has succeeded in excluding them), due to being intellectually colonized by a clearly fascist ideology of incessantly hating the Jew as a poisonous alien. Try to get an online activist to critically deconstruct the social assumptions they were raised with about Jews in their Muslim, Christian, or very slightly post-Christian society... it won't go well. Funny how Jews have lived in India and China for thousands of years yet you will look in vain for examples of bitter bloodthirsty kill-your-nextdoor-neighbor antisemitism in those societies. That's because the origin, the core, of Chinese and Indian societies was not "We're the people who are better than Jews."

From a review of Richard Landes' new book "Can the Whole World Be Wrong?":

[During the Second Intifada] Israelis were described at the time as the new Nazis. But the malice that was unleashed was even worse. As Landes writes, “It was mostly about being freed from a sense of obligation to the Jews, a chance to take up again the Jew-baiting so long denied Europeans by a politically correct post-Holocaust sobriety.” Landes quotes a poisonous comment made by a member of the House of Lords and reported in the Spectator, “Well, the Jews have been asking for it, and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last.” During that time, I was told something horrifyingly similar to my [=the reviewer's] face.

Your example of Irish nationalists not going out of their way to murder British children is a good one. The oft-reached comparisons between Palestine and South Africa are frivolous for many reasons as I have explained here before, and the ANC advocating and normalizing a vision of enduring racial diversity and equality is high on the list of reasons (made possible because black African identity is not predicated on a thousand-year history of hating and oppressing whites). The case of Rhodesia is even more instructive. Robert Mugabe - ROBERT MUGABE! - pleaded with the whites to stay, to live as equals, as brothers, and work together in building a better society in Zimbabwe. Ian Smith, last white PM of Rhodesia, agreed with him and stayed in Zimbabwe. If a so-called "liberation" movement is more openly dedicated to straight-up exterminating their enemies than Robert Mugabe ever was, maybe, just maybe, it shouldn't be described as "liberation" at all.

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #israel #palestine #zionism #palestinians #jumblr

[aviad1b]

Secular Jewish ranting post.

If the Talit in my pfp scares you - Out. Antisemites - Out.

If you see anything below this cut as a rejection of Palestinian safety, then you're reading words that aren't there, and sorry-not-sorry but: You're just straight up antisemetic. No excuses, no buts.

At this point, I think I can confirm that not a single tag on tumblr is clear of i/p posts.

and I'm not just talking about general i/p posts, not "death is bad" posts, not even pro-Palestine posts, but straight up "each and every Israeli person deserves to die" posts.

They say Zionism is a political movement, yet they say every person born in a specific place is automatically a part of that movement. That is a disguise of recism, and at this point I cannot be convinced otherwise.

They say people who fled from their homes should be protected, yet somehow it's the Mizrahim's fault that they were slaughtered and pushed away into Israel.

I hate this. I want to browse the "trans rights" tag without seeing that my family deserves to die because my grandparents ran for their lives. I want to live in a world where people don't insist that my ethnicity isn't real, because somehow I'm white despite not being considered white in any actual physical fucking place.

I want to live in a world where my very existence isn't widely considered to be the cause for enormous death, and therefore invalid.

I used to ramble about how similar Antisemitism, Transphobia and Homophobia are. I'd say that all of those share the trait of trying to object to people who exist, as if objecting will make them disappear. I'd say that people who share those beliefs simply can't handle the existence of people who are proof against their theories.

As for antisemitism, I was both wrong and right. A simple glance at how those "antizionists" view the Mizrahim tells: Only considered existant when their existance can be used as a talking point, scoring "bonus points" against Israel, then thrown away not even a sentence later becomming "white" once more.

And don't even get me started on how those people view (or rather deny) Jewish ethnicity and history as a whole. Things that are a simple single google search away.

I always knew that it would come to this, but never have imagined the scale.

This isn't where I thought I'd turn out this year.

#jumblr #israel #palestine #secular jewish #I'm unapologetically ethnically-Jewish and natively-Hebrew #and good luck killing my spirit #secular jewish rant

[certifiedlibraryposts]

re the palestinian bird thing: different anon here, idk what they meant but it’s worth noting that, in addition to political fuckery, that the campaign to remove the word “palestine” from the bird's name might have partially been an attempt to correct a bit of historical revisionism. the only reason that region of the world is commonly known as palestine today in the first place is because the roman empire renamed the area to “syria palaestina” after the roman-jewish wars. they had previously allowed the province to be called judea/judaea, as in jews and the jewish kingdoms that existed there before being conquered. and it wasn't until much later that the arabs now known as palestinians came to be. (disclaimer: I don't speak hebrew and can't be bothered to track down hebrew articles from a decade ago to translate by hand to fact check how much this played into the bird thing but it is a reasonable possibility and an understandable one, as jewish heritage has been so often destroyed and erased. regardless, the palestinian response to make the bird a symbol is equally understandable.) relatedly, be careful about the phrase “from the river to the sea”, because while it's sometimes about palestinian liberation, it's also often used as a dogwhistle that means “kill all jews in the levant”; and the dogwhistle version has become increasingly common as of late. look into the organization called standing together for antisemitism-free activism and jewish/palestinian solidarity.

I see what you mean, the history you mentioned seems to check out and it's unquestionably been a tumultuous part of the world that's been given a lot of different names over time. However I don't really feel comfortable in agreeing it was combating revisionism because it happened during what I understand to be a violent occupation. Without a source or truly knowing the intentions it's just kind of speculation.

"From the river to the sea" was used in that post in the context of Palestinian freedom and peace. Related to that point, I also received another ask concerned with my use of the word "zionist" as it has historically described a very wide range of ideas, and has also been used as an antisemitic dogwhistle. That was not my intent, it's the word I was most familiar with to get across my point that I don't support violence against or the erasure of Palestinian culture. Those using violence and calls for peace to excuse antisemitism are despicable. One can and should be an ally of both Palestinians and Jewish people.

I looked up Standing Together, I can certainly get behind their message of peace and cooperation, and people in Israel who are working to end the genocide deserve so much respect and admiration. It seems like reception to the movement has been mostly positive, but I feel it'd be irresponsible not to mention that the PACBI wing of the BDS movement has taken issue with it in the past week. I don't feel qualified to take a definitive stance either way, especially as I also can't read Hebrew or Arabic to get more direct contex. I encourage anyone interested to learn more and come to your own conclusions.

My overall point is that I do not support the genocide the Israeli miltary is enacting on the Palestinian people. I want to share more posts about Palestinian culture, art, and joy in a time where there is effort being made to erase it.

Finally, while I do my best to make sure what goes on this blog is accurate, I just wanna make it clear that I'm neither an expert at research, nor am I able to be a definitive resource for this topic (or frankly most things).

#As a sidenote i have anon asks turned off for the time being. Probably will not be permenant #Mostly its for if anyone else would like to make claims in the near future I want to know who theyre coming from yknow #And also i did recieve a lot of anons in a short time span last night and it was pretty overwhelming #Dont worry i didnt get anything nasty everyone was respectful #Thank you to those who sent kind words. I teared up a little reading them <3

[probablyasocialecologist]

The claim that Zionism is merely Jewish self-determination also conflates the Jewish people with Zionism, an ideology finding its origins in Europe in the late 1800s. At the time, the Jewish people were largely uninterested in Zionism. As a matter of fact many Jewish groups were fiercely anti-Zionist. The attempt to conflate the two is an attempt to give legitimacy to self-professed settlers from Europe, and portray any criticism of the Zionist project as inherently antisemitic. Yet in the early days, the Zionist movement was astonishingly honest about its existence as a form of colonialism. For example, Herzl, one of the founders of political Zionism wrote in 1902 to infamous colonizer Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion”: “You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor ; not Englishmen, but Jews . How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.” Nordau, Herzl’s right hand man, even rightfully called Zionist settlements in Palestine “colonies”: “Zionism rejects on principle all colonization on a small scale, and the idea of “sneaking” into Palestine. The Zionists have therefore devoted themselves preeminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them.” Menachem Usishkin, chairman of the Jewish National Fund, was known for his calls to rid Palestine of its natives: “What we can demand today is that all Transjordan be included in the Land of Israel. . . on condition that Transjordan would be either be made available for Jewish colonization or for the resettlement of those [Palestinian] Arabs, whose lands [in Palestine] we would purchase. Against this, the most conscientious person could not argue . . . For the [Palestinian] Arabs of the Galilee, Transjordan is a province . . . this will be for the resettlement of Palestine’s Arabs. This the land problem. . . . Now the [Palestinian] Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . . because this country belongs to us not to them . . . “ Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, in an essay titled The Iron Law (1925) wrote that: “A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.”

#israel #palestine #zionism #settler colonialism

[gothhabiba]

[ID: Anonymous ask reading "israel's policy of displacing arab muslims by settling in lands they used to live in (note that arab muslims being in said lands is itself the result of arabo-muslim conquests, so no i dont feel that teary eyed about it) is in solid part a ploy to destabilize europe by sending muslims there (the ummah in its great generosity refuses to take in the palestinians as a whole, they dont want refugees in general) who" message cuts off. End ID]

the rest of this message is complete virulent fanatical racism that’s not worth publishing, and of course this part of it is senseless racist blather as well, but this "arabo-muslim conquest" idea comes up often enough that I can almost convince myself it’s worth responding to.

first of all, this doesn’t matter at all in this context. like I said, genocide is just simply wrong no matter what. if you feel no sympathy as people are trapped in an open-air prison by the millions, trapped in actual prisons by the thousands with no charge trial or conviction, unable to have basic autonomy or freedom of movement, forbidden from harvesting food they need to live, subjected to racist discrimination and hate crimes even if they are among the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, bombed and murdered by the thousands with nowhere to flee to, purposely disabled by armed soldiers and denied the means to support their families, raped (men women and children) with impunity by settlers and settler soldiers (men and women), shot at by soldiers as they try to work their own land, living in constant fear not knowing if they or their families will wake up to-morrow, not knowing if the crops they’re consuming have been made unsafe for consumption due to repeated bombardment by chemical weapons, having their children shot and killed with impunity while playing, having their deaths by bombing watched as entertainment, having their nonviolent resistance regarded as terrorism, their violent resistance regarded as barbarism, being expected to basically lie down and die, having the entire western media establishment cast them as the aggressors and the perpretators of their genocide as the victims of their resistance, having even people who are ostensibly sympathetic to them basically believe that they shouldn’t resist and are only sympathetic as long as they lie down and die—

if you can regard all of that without feeling any sympathy for the victims of it because of who you believe them to have been descended from over a thousand years ago, then no, you are not allocating sympathy based on any objective or enlightened rationale, you are just casting about at random for reasons to be racist until you believe you've lighted on one that makes sense.

second of all, it isn't even true that the modern population of Palestine (or the rest of southwest Asia, or North Africa) is descended from ethnic Arabs who replaced the indigenous population that had existed before the Islamic conquests beginning in the 700s A.D. I'm not sure what people who claim this is the case believe happened to the indigenous populations (where did they go? did they flee elsewhere? were they all killed? how could such a wholesale replacement have happened without being recorded in any account of history?). I'm not sure either why the idea that this happened is so remarkably persistent in so many different contexts amongst so many different people, if not out-and-out racialism that believes "Muslim" is basically a "race" and thus it's impossible for a population to be converted? I'm also not sure what people who believe this do with the fact that there are Christians, Jews, followers of indigenous religions, and other smaller religious groups in these regions. nevertheless, the Arabisation and Islamicisation of these regions (two different processes!) were cultural and political conquests that did not largely replace the preexisting population. again, not that this even matters.

thirdly, there is no reason whatever to believe that Israel seeks to "destabilize" Europe. that is fantasy talk with no correspondence with any events that have occurred in the last century and more. I suspect that you're conflating Israel with Judaism, and that this conspiracy theory is simply that old antisemitic canard that Jews have some secret plot to overtake the white races dressed up in new, bizarre clothing (shocker! that anti-Arab racism and antisemitism would go hand in hand! /s). Israel is a creation of Europe, its strongest diplomatic ties are with Europe and the U.S., it has no power of its own that it doesn't maintain because it is convenient for the colonising and imperialist powers of the world. what on earth would it possibly gain from this plan you've invented.

fourthly, the vast majority of Palestinian refugees (other than those who were internally displaced) live in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. millions of them. Europe, Canada, and the U.S. have collectively accepted about 1% of that number. what on earth are you talking about.

#Anonymous #long post / #Palestine #rape m /

[fordtato]

Gffan has done the following:

-Letting people comment transphobic stuff on his Server

-associating with a reddit mod whos known to be transphobic

-openly showing weird distaste for the Dipper being Trans headcanon (didn't he also say: "I hate the Dipper Trans Theory" to us once?)

He also believes there’s only 2 genders

Hello. So. I do not normally respond to anonymous discourse like this in my inbox as a rule (especially given this site's proclivity for seeing anon callouts weaponized against trans people and women and people of color), but I felt it was important to do this in this case, since I am publicly working on a project with ThatGFFan.

I have known GFFan for over a year now now (in an exclusively online capacity), and in that time, he has not only never misgendered me (a nonbinary trans person, someone outside the "2 genders" framework) but has also actively corrected people who have misgendered me. I have witnessed him speak against transphobia in the fandom and against transphobic content creators. The idea that he "believes there are only 2 genders" is inaccurate by every account I have of him.

As for other accusations in this ask, such as him "associating with a reddit mod who is known to be transphobic" I don't have any evidence for this presented to me, and even if I did, association in a public online space is not the same thing as sharing transphobic sentiment. There is room in any online space for a conversation about the optics of this kind of engagement, but if I had to apologize for every person I've ever engaged with civilly who I later learned was problematic in some way, I'd be here all day, and that would be an unproductive use of my time, and would not undo any harm done by that person.

Lastly, I hope ThatGFFan will not mind me saying this, but he is a young person (younger than you think, I assure you). If he has engaged with unsavory people in the past, or has indicated any kind of transphobic sentiment (neither of which I have any evidence of) it is my belief that we need to allow people to grow, especially when I have actively witnessed that growth firsthand. And in that case, I do think (and maybe I'm putting my faith in the wrong person here, so I hope this doesn't bite me one day), that he has made an active effort to learn how to do better, even if he makes mistakes in that process.

What you have done, anon, is entered my inbox with accusations against a person of color, half of which have no evidence behind them, and the other half that I personally know to be demonstrably false. Nobody who is a victim of this transphobia has come forward, at least that I saw, and if they did, that would be up to ThatGFFan to respond to - not me, a trans person unrelated and far-removed from whatever incident you are talking about (an incident that likely occurred when ThatGFFan was a minor, in any case).

I don't have a big platform. I am a small creator (much smaller than ThatGFFan), and a trans Palestinian person. Why am I being called upon to answer for a cis person's (alleged) missteps as they grow into an adult? Why am I being called upon to publicly shame and renounce a person who has shown me kindness and allyship? Is it so I can prove my dedication to the fight against transphobia? My entire blog, my entire body of work, my entire existence, has been an active fight against transphobia.

I mean, by God, all I can do is hope I'm doing the right thing here, but I vouch for him. Or I at least vouch that he is trying.

(p.s. I hope this goes without saying, but someone disliking a specific queer headcannon does not indicate one's political beliefs, and this is not going to be an accusation that I really engage with, because it sets a bad precedent. This is not a moral wrongdoing. This is an opinion you are suspicious of.)