#more than america did on iran in a year.

[snoopyrps]

i really posted a FACT about the genocide on my instagram story and my dad started arguing with me then asked "well what if your boss sees it and he's pro-israel?" it was literally a FACT.

#israel tw #genocide tw #also idk i personally dont want to work for someone who'd fire someone bc they dont support genocide! #and it was literally. just a fact. it was just a screenshot of the headline about israel dropping 6000 bombs in six days. #more than america did on iran in a year. #then a link to the source #and this man really got into the whole ''YES BUT IN THE BIBLE-'' like????? #I DIDNT KNOW THE BIBLE CONDONED GENOCIDE. #(also i know that whole 'posting ur life to insta?' but i only saw one other person posting pro-palestine so i joined him)

[doberbutts]

I’m wondering if you have thoughts on James Baldwin’s “open letter to the born again”? I’m struggling a bit with what his point is in that piece; it feels kinda dismissive on Jewish zionists agency in creation of Israel? But I may be missing parts or not getting things

The text in question.

And the segment I think anon is struggling with:

I know what I am talking about: my grandfather never got the promised “forty acres, and a mule,” the Indians who survived that holocaust are either on reservations or dying in the streets, and not a single treaty between the United States and the Indian was ever honored. That is quite a record.

Jews and Palestinians know of broken promises. From the time of the Balfour Declaration (during World War I) Palestine was under five British mandates, and England promised the land back and forth to the Arabs or the Jews, depending on which horse seemed to be in the lead. The Zionists—as distinguished from the people known as Jews—using, as someone put it, the “available political machinery,’’ i.e., colonialism, e.g., the British Empire—promised the British that, if the territory were given to them, the British Empire would be safe forever.

But absolutely no one cared about the Jews, and it is worth observing that non-Jewish Zionists are very frequently anti-Semitic. The white Americans responsible for sending black slaves to Liberia (where they are still slaving for the Firestone Rubber Plantation) did not do this to set them free. They despised them, and they wanted to get rid of them. Lincoln’s intention was not to “free” the slaves but to “destabilize” the Confederate Government by giving their slaves reason to “defect.” The Emancipation Proclamation freed, precisely, those slaves who were not under the authority of the President of what could not yet be insured as a Union.

It has always astounded me that no one appears to be able to make the connection between Franco’s Spain, for example, and the Spanish Inquisition; the role of the Christian church or—to be brutally precise, the Catholic Church—in the history of Europe, and the fate of the Jews; and the role of the Jews in Christendom and the discovery of America. For the discovery of America coincided with the Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Does no one see the connection between The Merchant of Venice and The Pawnbroker? In both of these works, as though no time had passed, the Jew is portrayed as doing the Christian’s usurious dirty work. The first white man I ever saw was the Jewish manager who arrived to collect the rent, and he collected the rent because he did not own the building. I never, in fact, saw any of the people who owned any of the buildings in which we scrubbed and suffered for so long, until I was a grown man and famous. None of them were Jews.

And I was not stupid: the grocer and the druggist were Jews, for example, and they were very very nice to me, and to us. The cops were white. The city was white. The threat was white, and God was white, Not for even a single split second in my life did the despicable, utterly cowardly accusation that “the Jews killed Christ’’ reverberate. I knew a murderer when I saw one, and the people who were trying to kilI me were not Jews.

But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say that it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.

Finally: there is absolutely—repeat: absolutely—no hope of establishing peace in what Europe so arrogantly calls the Middle East (how in the world would Europe know? having so dismally failed to find a passage to India) without dealing with the Palestinians. The collapse of the Shah of Iran not only revealed the depth of the pious Carter’s concern for “human rights,” it also revealed who supplied oil to Israel, and to whom Israel supplied arms. It happened to be, to spell it out, white South Africa.

Well. The Jew, in America, is a white man. He has to be, since I am a black man, and, as he supposes, his only protection against the fate which drove him to America. But he is still doing the Christian’s dirty work, and black men know it.

My friend, Mr. Andrew Young, out of tremendous love and courage, and with a silent, irreproachable, indescribable nobility, has attempted to ward off a holocaust, and I proclaim him a hero, betrayed by cowards.

For context: Andrew Young, considered the right hand of MLK Jr, had a longstanding and occasionally fraught relationship with the Jewish community. He stepped down from Congress shortly after being forced to choose between voicing support for Palestine and continuing to work towards black-jewish interests by his constituents and fellow politicians, as he felt very strongly about supporting both. This was a fairly unpopular move. While I don't believe he ever called himself Jewish by the strictest sense, he was actively involved in Jewish communities and the known "white" ancestry within him is a Polish Jew in his great grandparents.

To be honest, I don't really see much a problem with this as I think it fairly closely matches up not only with my understanding of the history of this problem but also my own country's part in it as well as my personal feelings on it decades later. It pretty blatantly says that Zionism is utilizing a machination of white supremist colonism due to the extensive history of antisemitism and having had the ancestral land dangled in front of them like bait on a hook from the British Empire, which owned Palestine at the time. It also goes on to say that many Zionists aren't even Jewish and are antisemitic in nature, but are Christians happy to get rid of as many Jews as possible and how that tracks due to the Christian church's millennia-deep history of antisemitism.

I don't think it lets anyone off the hook. I think it pretty much flat out says this is a problem caused first and foremost by white Christians who hate Jews and Arabs alike and have a vested interest in getting the two populations to fight because it'll be easier to kill off just the one group instead of both of them, if one ends up eradicating the other. It even talks about the friction between the black community and the Jewish community, what caused it, what drives it, how that friction in itself is a tool of white supremacy to hurt us both.

[ilguna]

Expired Medicine Pls! Bucky & #5?

☼ left behind but never forgotten (Bucky Barnes) ☼

warnings; swearing, death, death mention, gun use, grenade use, fighting, injuries.

wc; 3.5k

prompt; 5. "I'll come back for you, I promise."

notes; spoilers for captain america the winter soldier.

--

 The halls of the hospital are busy, swarming with doctors and nurses. They flip through pages of documents, some of them dodging in and out of rooms. If there’s any bad time to be on a mission, it’s now. In a place that’s supposed to be secure and safe from danger. 

You told Steve that you’d come inside by yourself to retrieve the flash drive, but he didn’t trust you, wanting to make sure that he got it, himself. So, you follow behind him, letting him lead the way. He has his navy blue hood pulled up to block the view of his blonde hair and to shadow some of his more notable features. You know that he wants to avoid drawing attention, but you think it makes him look more suspicious than not. 

His pace comes to a slow pace as he stops in front of the vending machine. On the way, he told you that he put the flash drive behind three sticks of bubblegum while the employee was stocking it. He wanted it here for safe keeping because he’d gone back with some of the SHIELD members. And with Fury’s warning, he didn’t want to take any chances. 

You come up beside him, looking over his shoulder. Your eyes search the entire machine, looking for the aforementioned bubblegum. You even take a step back to get a bigger picture, but you come up with nothing. 

You glance at Steve. “This is a problem.”

“I know.”

The sound of popping behind you makes you turn to see where it’s coming from. It’s Natasha, loudly chewing the pink gum, eyes switching between you and Steve. He lets out an annoyed sigh before he steps at her, placing a firm hand in the middle of her chest to push her into the empty room across the hall.

The door opens with a slam as the blinds rattle against the glass.

“So much for not drawing attention.” You mutter, reaching to close the door behind you.

Steve pushes Natasha against the nearest wall, trapping her with one hand as he pulls off his hood with the other. “Where is it?”

“Safe.” She says.

“Do better.” 

“Where did you get it?” She counters.

“Why would I tell you?”

You glance out the window, watching another medical staff member pass by, completely oblivious of the three of you.

“Fury gave it to you. Why?” Her eyebrows are drawn in.

“What’s on it?”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head.

“Stop lying.” Steve tells her.

“I only act like I know everything, Rogers.” She says, as if it’s obvious.

Steve looks over his shoulder at you, maybe for assurance. Or to make sure that you’re standing nearby. When he looks back at Natasha, you step in closer. “I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn’t you?”

Natasha’s mouth opens, no words coming out for a second while she thinks of a response. “Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you.”

Steve grabs her shirt. “I’m not gonna ask you again.”

“I know who killed Fury.” She finally says, Steve’s grip loosens. “Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.”

“So he’s a ghost story.” You say, shaking your head. 

“Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer so he shot him straight through me.” She pulls up the bottom of her shirt, revealing a scar on her left side, a few inches away from her bellybutton. “Soviet slug. No rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis.”

“Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now.” Steve remarks.

She gives him a halfway smile before it drops. “Going after him is a dead end. I know, I’ve tried.” She pulls out the flash drive from her pocket, holding it up between them. “Like she said, he’s a ghost story.”

“Well, let’s find out what the ghost wants.” Steve backs off of her, moving so that you can see them both. “Are you still in?”

“‘Course I am.” You cross your arms over your chest. “This sounds like fun.”

—

If you’d known you’d end up in a car, squished between Natasha and a HYDRA agent, you think you might’ve told Steve that he could figure this out on his own. It probably wouldn’t have gone over well. He might’ve even begged you a little bit to change your mind, but with Sam here, there’s really no need for you to be.

“Natasha, why don’t we switch spots?” You ask, eyeing Sitwell for another moment before looking at her. “I don’t feel comfortable sitting next to him. I think this is more your specialty.”

She gives you an amused look. “I told you not to get in the car first.”

Sitwell blinks, drawing his attention from the cars passing you by on the freeway, to you. “Afraid all that training is going to fail you?”

Your eyes narrow, “No.”

He sighs. “HYDRA doesn’t like leaks.”

“Then why don’t you try sticking a cork in it?” Sam retorts, looking at him in the mirror.

Natasha leans over you to speak to Steve, who’s sitting in the passenger seat. This pushes you closer to Sitwell. “Insight’s launching in sixteen hours. We’re cutting it a little bit close here.”

“I know. We’ll use him to bypass the DNA scans and access the helicarriers directly.”

“What? Are you crazy?” Sitwell asks, eyes wide. “That is a terrible, terrible idea.”

A loud thud on the roof of the car makes it cave in a little. You only have enough time to glance up, before the window shatters next to Sitwell, sending glass flying all over the interior of the car. You shield your face, feeling the glass pelt your jacket and jeans, before landing on the now-empty leather seat.

Sitwell is gone, he screams briefly as he’s thrown into oncoming traffic on the other side of the concrete barrier, where he’s hit by a honking truck. You watch as a gun appears in front of the open window, the safety being turned off, before being pulled away.

Natasha leaps from the back seat to the front, landing in Steve’s lap as she pulls his head down. A bullet pierces the leather where she had just been, you slide there as another bullet slams in your seat. With two hands on the back of your head, you duck, listening as two more shots are fired.

When you raise your head, you catch Steve reaching forward to the emergency brake, yanking it back. The brakes screech against the asphalt, slamming the car to a hard stop. The man that had been on top of the car flies from the roof, somersaulting in the air so that he lands on a knee pad and a singular arm. A metal arm.

“What the fuck.” You breathe, watching as he dislodges his hands from the asphalt to rise to his feet. 

For a few seconds, it’s a stand-off, as the cars around you weave in and out of the lanes to avoid hitting the car you’re in. Natasha tries to whip out her gun to shoot at him, but an armored truck hits you from behind, making you jerk forward, forcing the car in his direction.

He jumps, landing back on the roof. Sam slams on the brakes, trying to stop, but the truck is too strong. A metal arm comes flying through the windshield, fingers wrapping around the steering wheel, breaking it off.

“Shit!” Sam screams.

Natasha tries shooting at the roof, but the Winter Soldier jumps off, onto the truck behind you. You turn, wanting to keep your eyes on the threat, and find him on the hood of the armored vehicle. 

“He’s accelerating!” You shout.

The trunk crumples further as you’re rammed again, this time throwing the car off course. It turns, wheel running up the side of the barrier, before forcing you back on the freeway. The car begins to wobble from side to side, growing more violent by the second.

Steve pulls up his shield, placing it on the passenger door. “Hang on!” He shouts, grabbing Natasha. 

The car begins to twist, you reach for the window that Sitwell had been forced out of, grabbing the edges and pulling up as you go airborne. Steve, Natasha and Sam must escape together out of the door, because when you look down to launch yourself out, they’re gone.

And so are you.

You cross your arms over your chest with fists, holding on tightly to the body of your jacket while you’re thrown into the air. You gain several more feet, and in that time, you duck your head, ankles locked together, until you come crashing down to Earth.

With the world being one giant dizzying blur, you have to guess how far away you are from the freeway. You hesitate, waiting for the best possible moment to land without hurting yourself. Unfortunately, it’s a second too long, because when you throw out your left foot to throw you into a roll, you land on it sideways.

The pain is immediate, but it takes up the back of your mind as you hit the concrete, rolling for several feet. When the momentum is gone, you sit upright, clutching at your ankle, eyes searching for your friends.

You find the overturned car, and then Natasha and Steve, who are still sitting on his Captain America shield. Beside you is Sam, who’s eyeing your ankle, worried. You’re more focused on the Hydra vehicle, and the fact that the Winter Soldier now holds a grenade launcher.

In one solid move, you grab the front of Sam’s shirt, throwing him down as a grenade is sent in your direction. Steve holds up his shield, intending to deflect the explosion, but he ends up triggering it instead. The blast sends him ricocheting off of a car behind him, and over the side of the overpass.

You jump to your feet while you can, ignoring the piercing pain in your ankle as you try to run to hide behind the van. Sam is right beside you, you can feel his hand on your lower back, but then it’s gone, as he goes to hide behind the silver car a few feet back. 

Natasha glances at you, gun in her hand. “Got any tricks up your sleeve?”

“Not really.” You tell her.

She pops up, shooting back at the HYDRA agents that are slowly advancing in your direction. You look back at Sam, and watch as he makes a run for it down the freeway. You suck in a breath, springing up to hurl yourself over the side of the barrier. A car whizzes by, and Natasha lands next to you.

You swear the whole bridge shakes when another grenade explodes. 

She grabs your hand, passing one of her guns over. “I’ll distract him, you shoot when you get the chance.”

“Just to be clear, this is the Winter Soldier, right?” You ask.

Natasha makes a grave face, nodding. When there’s a break in the gunfire, she crosses three lanes of traffic, rolls over a car, only to be thrown off the side of the bridge when he launches a bomb.

A car comes to a screeching halt a foot or so away from you, inadvertently shielding you from the enemy. You turn to the left, climbing on your hands and knees while you try to get a better spot to shoot. It’s eerily quiet for several seconds, you slowly creep up to look over the wall, finding him aiming below the bridge.

When you’re sure that the HYDRA agents aren’t watching, you stand up, popping the safety off. You hold up the gun, aiming for the back of the Winter Soldier’s head. And right as you go to pull the trigger, a shot is fired, his head whipping to the side. When he turns to drop down, you can see that Natasha got him in the goggles.

He pulls them off, fist tightening around the black material. Then, he gets back up, spraying bullets at Natasha in response, pissed. They get into a brief gunfight, where you wait for the better opportunity to shoot.

As soon as the other HYDRA agents get to their feet, you fire. They’re solid shots on all three of them. So solid and precise, that they’re dead as soon as the bullets hit their bodies. You let out a breathy laugh, surprised that you still have that in you, but the celebration is gone when the Winter Soldier begins to turn.

You hit the cement, but you must be the least of his worries, because he doesn’t come after you. When you’re sure of this, you get back to your feet and over the barrier to retrieve one of the HYDRA guns from the bodies. You find a hook embedded into the hood of a car, attached to a thick black wire that hangs over the side of the overpass.

First, you check to make sure that there’s not an agent attached at the bottom. Then, you attach the gun to your body with the strap to keep it on you. After you’ve pulled your jacket sleeves over your hands, you slide down the wire, joining Steve, Natasha and the Winter Soldier below.

Except, there is no one.

You stand in the middle of the street, eyes sweeping the area, but all you’re coming up with are civilians running away. You head toward the anger to start, keeping a sharp eye out for any of the HYDRA agents that might be lurking around nearby. 

There’s a distant sound of gunfire, followed by an explosion. You pick up the pace, jogging down three blocks before you’re met with a busy intersection. You hoist the gun up, one eye peering through the scope before you pull the trigger.

The Winter Soldier moves, making you miss by barely an inch. Steve runs at him to keep him from shooting back at you, swinging the shield up in time to block his punch, causing the metal to sound like a gong. Steve gets kicked off of the car, landing on the road, where he covers himself with the shield. 

The enemy rolls off the car, pulling out a machine gun to shoot at Steve. When the bullets run out, Steve swings himself over the top of the car, foot knocking the gun out of his hand. You reload the rifle, waiting for the right moment to shoot, while they engage in hand-to-hand combat. 

He shoots, they go back and forth with the punches, and block. The gun is put away, Steve is twisted out of the shield, now in the Winter Soldier’s grasp. It’s placed between them to keep a distance, but eventually yanked from Steve’s rip as the HYDRA assassin uses it to his advantage.

When there’s a pause, you go to pull the trigger, until the shield comes flying in your direction.

You jerk to the side, watching as the shield lodges into the back door of a white van behind you. With wide eyes, you look back at Steve, only to find him fighting once more. You reach, yanking the shield free, and also retrieving your gun as you move closer.

Steve seems to have a knife now. He tries to take multiple stabs, but ultimately it’s taken from him, and he ends up dodging once more. The Winter Soldier makes the mistake of swinging over Steve twice, allowing him to counter with a hook and a kick. The soldier slams back into a car, Steve runs at him, slamming him into it further, causing the door to dent and the glass to break.

He goes in for a punch once again, but the Winter Soldier blocks it, backing Steve away as he tries to fight back. Steve flips him over, standing over him for just a second, before the Winter Soldier grabs Steve’s neck, squeezing.

You let the gun hang against your chest, fixing the shield in your hand. You swing back, and then launch it forward. Steve’s eyes dart to it, ticking off the Winter Soldier, so he throws Steve over the hood of a car, turning just in time to grab the shield before it hits him. By then, you’re firing bullets, watching as they bounce off of the metal.

The gun jams.

“Shit.” You pull it off of you, hurling it in his direction. He catches it in his metal hand, clenching his fist around the material, breaking it.

He turns his attention back to Steve, who’s on the other side of the car. They go back to fighting, you continue to advance, a little annoyed that he doesn’t see you as a threat enough. He pulls out a knife, going to stab Steve, but the metal pieces a grey van, slicing the paint vertically.

Steve grabs the Winter Soldier, throwing him back to get him off, and swiping the shield in the process. The enemy swings, hits metal. He swings again with the knife, hitting metal. The Winter Soldier punches Steve successfully, trying to kick but he’s met with the shield, so he swings again.

Steve slams the shield into the metal arm of the Winter Soldier, and then forces it up, hitting him in the face. Steve wraps his hand around the mask, flipping him over backward, but it's too much momentum, because the Winter Soldier somersaults.

You walk around the truck, going to join Steve, finding the black mask lying on the asphalt. The Winter Soldier rises, back to you at first, until he slowly turns his head, allowing you to see what he looks like.

The blood runs from your face, lips parting as your eyes lock on. 

Bucky.

He looks… different, but not in the bad sense. His dark hair is messily long, just barely reaching his shoulders. When in the past he’s kept it shorter, cleaner. There’s a shadow of a beard forming on the lower half of his face. And there’s this emotionless void in his eyes, as if he’s looking right through you.

This can’t be him, though. The last time you saw him… 

Steve stands up, panting through his teeth. “Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” He asks, turning toward the two of you fully. 

He pulls up his gun to shoot at either of you, but Sam kicks him over, sending him tumbling over the asphalt. That small move does basically nothing, as Bucky gets back to his feet, you take a step toward him, even when he goes to shoot again, but you’re interrupted by a grenade flying over Steve’s shoulder.

A red truck explodes. You look behind you to see Natasha, barely holding herself up against a car with the grenade launcher. Bucky is nowhere to be seen.

There’s sirens approaching, presumably the police, a firetruck, a couple of ambulances, but all you see are black SUV’s approaching. Your eyes catch a figure disappearing into an alleyway.

“I’m going after him.” You dig into your pants pocket, pulling out the singular smoke bomb that you’d brought with you.

Before Steve can stop you, you pull out the pin, tossing the bomb in the middle of the intersection. In the matter of seconds, the grey haze is taking over the street, concealing your escape. Either Steve is too shocked or knows better than to go after you, because he stays there with your other two friends, letting you run off.

Your ankle is slowing you down, but that doesn’t make you stop. You chase Bucky down several streets until he jumps out from behind a car, fist swinging at your face. You catch it, fingers wrapping around his hand, eyes boring into his.

The two of you stand like this for a very long second. If he knows who you are, he’s doing a very good job of hiding it, because you’re none the wiser. If you had to guess what happened to him, you’d say Zola experimented on him. And you think that Steve would even agree with you.

He tries to punch you with his metal arm, but you block it with your forearm, holding him there for a second longer. You can’t do this, not here. He’s not stable enough to have a conversation, especially since he was trying to kill you. He is trying to kill you.

“I’ll come back for you, I promise.” You tell him, despite knowing that this means nothing to him. “I’m not letting you go so easily, Bucky.”

--

this was part of my 3k celebration!!

#ilguna #bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes oneshot #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x yn #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky imagine #bucky fanfic #bucky oneshot #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky x yn #bucky x y/n #marvel #ask #anon #requested #3k celebration #angst

[thebreakfastgenie]

Can you explain Jimmy Carter to an Australian

Jimmy Carter was president from 1977 to 1981. He lost re-election to Ronald Reagan in perhaps the downgrade of the century. Carter was traditionally ranked as one of our worst presidents, but that's kind of unfair, and recently some (including me) have begun to say he was underrated. I think sometimes he gets memefied into being more liberal than he actually was, but he was liberal, and he has a reputation for being more interested in peace that other US presidents. His foreign policy was mixed bag, but he did refuse to invade Iran during the hostage crisis, and I think that counts for something. The peaceful reputation is somewhat relevant to the contrast with Kissinger. The American hostages held in the embassy in Iran were released immediately after Ronald Reagan took office and Reagan fans like to claim this was because Reagan was so intimidating but Reagan didn't really do anything. The Ayatollah's government hated Carter personally because he let the deposed Shah of Iran come to the US for cancer treatment. Jimmy Carter is probably one of our best examples of a Christian president, except he's the kind of Christian who's like "peace is good and racism is bad" so the "America is a Christian country!!" people hate his guts lol.

He was also kind of chill in other ways; they called him the rock and roll president because he had some musicians campaigning for him, especially the Allman Brothers, who played a big role in his campaign. Also Gregg Allman smoked weed at the White House with Carter's son and Carter 100% knew about it.

For many years Carter's reputation has been "not a great president, but a great ex-president" because the Carter Foundation has done a lot of incredible humanitarian work, perhaps most notably nearly eradicating guinea worm, a parasitic disease. He was also personally building homes with Habitat for Humanity into his nineties. He's also known for being a peanut farmer before he got into politics. He was married to his wife Rosalynn who just died for 77 years. So he has kind of a sweet old man reputation.

He's also 99 years old, beat brain cancer once, and announced he was going into hospice, like, almost a year ago? It was a while ago, and yet he's still kicking. So that's kind of a meme too among the kind of nerd who follows these things (me).

So the tl;dr is two really old American politicians, one associated with peace and humanitarianism, one associated with war crimes.

[pockymun]

Maps of Galahd by Pockymun

I've been writing fic for FFXV for a few years now. One of the obstacles I've run into again and again was not knowing where the characters were at all. This made it hard to plan logistics like travel time, weather, and climates. So I decided to look at what maps we have from FFXV and create my own for the lesser-traveled regions (which is everywhere except Lucis, and even that map isn't that great).

This task in itself was frustrating because it's impossible to tell where the equator and the tropics are supposed to be. The climates of Lucis and Niflheim only confuse it further. If Lucis is based on America, it's pretty far up from the tropics. Accordo doesn't appear a warm enough climate to be in the tropics, either. (Accordo has a very coastal Mediterranean climate; just a note for the future).

There has been debate regarding where Galahd is in Eos. Most agree that it is the islands located behind Insomnia. It makes the most sense because of reaction to Galahd's invasion in Insomnia's news: Niflheim conquered land in Insomnia's backyard, and were knocking at the door. When Niflheim slowly conquered much of the mainland Lucis, nothing was mentioned regarding a reaction from Insomnia.

Being where it is, Galahd should be a much colder climate than what I have it as. It should be more like Norway or Finland. However, the Kingsglaive anniversary artwork depicted a scene with a lot of South/Southeast Asian influences. The proper places of climates never seemed to matter to the developers of Final Fantasy.

In a rudimentary attempt to map the ocean currents of Eos, I drew a warm ocean current that runs westward on the north side of Galahd. This would cause the islands to have a slightly warmer climate than what it should have considering its placement. Logically, it wouldn't be warm enough to be considered subtropical, but I really wanted there to be a jungle climate in FFXV and I think that's what the developers originally intended as well.

On the southern coasts of Galahd, there is a cool ocean current that runs westward. These waters are much calmer and are ideal spots for large fishing enterprises. The warm ocean current in the north brings storms and a lot of rain; the north side of the islands are much wetter.

The climates I described in the climate map are classifications that can be found on Wikipedia. I tried sticking close to climates found in Southeast Asia, while also giving some more temperate areas as well. While much of the material culture is SE Asian, there are some things, such as the braids Nyx and Lib wear, that seem to stem from ancient Indo-European/Iranic influences. There was a custom among one of these people in which only warriors braided their hair.

For place names, I used fantasynamegenerators.com and selected random South/Southeast Asian town names. There are two straits, the oceans, and the seas that I haven't named yet. The map became very cramped with one names I already put on it.

Some headcanons I came up with while working on this:

Galahd's climate provides some challenges to the transportation infrastructure. There is no major roadway nor any major settlement on the north edge of Lhasgar due to the dense forest and the risk of annual floods. Cities and towns are more firmly established further in the island.

When Lucis still controlled the islands, they attempted to improve the infrastructure by establishing major roads and railways. The climate did not allow much leeway for railway, however. Around the same time, Lucis relaxed its control over Galahd and allowed for autonomy.

The most common forms of transportation are by vehicle, bus, or boat along the waterways.

There are cities and towns. These were there before Lucis took over, although they had looked much more traditional back then. Most of the world believes Galahd to be a couple of islands full of small backwoods villages, but they were as sophisticated as any other culture at the time they were conquered, and modernized with everyone else. While modernizing, Galahd had also managed to stick with their traditional culture.

While the map looks crowded, there is still a lot of open land and wilderness. The rivers and lakes shown are only the major rivers and lakes; there are more, just as there would be for any other regional map. Water and wilderness are defining features of Galahd.

The mountain ranges had once been connected, just like how the Appalachian and the Little Atlas Mountain Ranges.

Feel free to use these maps when writing your own fics or headcanons! I would greatly appreciate being credited. These maps are just my interpretation, and don't stand in for canon material. They are flawed, but I worked with what I had. I made these using Inkarnate.

#final fantasy xv #reference #fantasy map #ffxv #galahd #kingsglaive #worldbuilding

[zvaigzdelasas]

Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 on the promise of new ideas, more competence, and a “return to normality.” But when it comes to economic sanctions, President Biden has chosen instead to maintain the path that his predecessor set. From Venezuela to Cuba to Iran, the Biden administration’s approach to sanctions has remained remarkably similar to Trump’s. On the campaign trail, candidate Biden promised to rejoin the Iran deal and to “promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.” Yet two and a half years after taking office, the Biden administration has made little progress towards fulfilling these promises. While economic sanctions may not seem important to the average American, they have strong implications for the global economy and America’s national interests. President Biden initially showed promise by requesting that the Treasury Department conduct a swift review of U.S. sanctions policies. However, the review’s publication in October 2021 was underwhelming. It produced recommendations such as adopting “a structured policy framework that links sanctions to a clear policy objective,” and “ensuring sanctions are easily understood, enforceable, and, where possible, reversible.” If the U.S. was not already undertaking these measures, it is fair to ask what exactly was taken into consideration when prior sanctions were implemented. The failure to reenter the Iran deal is the most egregious error of Biden’s sanctions policies. Apart from harming American credibility and acting as a strong deterrent to any future countries looking to enter diplomatic agreements with the U.S., Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy has been a complete failure. As the United States Institute of Peace notes, Iran’s “breakout time” —the time required to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb — stood at around 12 months in 2016. As of today, Iran’s breakout time stands at less than a week. It did not have to be this way. Although Iran violated segments of the JCPOA after American withdrawal, it never left the deal completely, signaling potential for a reconciliation. Yet the Biden administration declined to lift sanctions initially. As Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, told CNN in early 2021, “It was the United States that left the deal. It was the United States that violated the deal.”[...]

Biden has shown similar hesitancy on Cuba. Although the administration has taken certain steps to undo Trump’s hardline stance, there remains much room for progress. Six decades of maximum pressure on Cuba have failed completely, serving primarily to harm Cuban civilians and exacerbate tensions with allies who wish to do business with Cuba. The U.S. embargo of Cuba is incredibly unpopular worldwide. A U.N. General Assembly Resolution in support of ending the embargo received 185 votes in support, with only two against — the U.S. and Israel. Steps such as reopening the American embassy in Havana and removing restrictions on remittances are positive developments, yet the Biden administration could do much more. Primary among these are removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and ending the embargo once and for all. This would not only improve daily life for Cuban civilians, but increase business opportunities for Cubans and Americans alike. Trump also attempted his maximum pressure strategy with Venezuela, but failed to achieve anything resembling progress. In one of his final actions in office, he levied even more sanctions on Venezuela, further isolating one of the region’s largest oil producers. Venezuela is another country where the Biden administration has taken mere half-measures. Easing some sanctions in late 2022 is a positive sign, but there is no serious justification for keeping any of the Trump-era sanctions in place. All of these actions have had major consequences, not only for the citizens of the sanctioned countries, but also for Americans. As oil prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the fact that Iran and Venezuela, two of the world’s largest oil producers, were unable to sell on the U.S. market no doubt led to higher gas prices for American consumers. And the millions of Americans with family in sanctioned countries face serious difficulties in visiting and sending remittances to their family members. Despite these measures, none of these countries are considered serious threats to the U.S. In a March 2023 Quinnipiac poll, Americans rightly ignored Iran, Venezuela and Cuba when asked which country “poses the biggest threat to the United States.” Just two percent chose Iran as the biggest threat, with zero choosing Cuba or Venezuela.

These sanctions are unpopular, ineffective and quite often counterproductive to American interests. While changing the course of U.S. foreign policy can take quite some time, the dangers of hesitancy are quite clear. Rather than maintaining the Trump status quo on sanctions, which saw record increases, President Biden should fulfill his campaign promises and end the ineffective and costly sanctions on countries such as Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and return to the use of diplomacy to further American national interests.

You know things are bad when The Hill is coming after you as a democrat (note the lack of mention about sanctions on China or DPRK)

22 Jun 23

[eretzyisrael]

Exiled prince:’Jews are part and parcel of Iran’s future’

Iranian Jews may still contribute to a post-Islamic revolutionary Iran, even if they don’t live there, says  the exiled prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah. Wide-ranging interview by Karmel Melamed in JNS News:

Journalist Karmel Melamed interviewing Prince Reza Pahlavi

Q: When you visited Israel last year, you interacted with many Iranians in the country who welcomed you warmly. What surprised you the most about the Iranian community in Israel, and how did their interactions with you, which Persian-language news media broadcast, impact perceptions of Iranians worldwide about Israel?

A: First of all, I wasn’t surprised, because I knew of that sentiment from the very beginning. The Iranian Jewish community in Israel, compared to peers elsewhere, has from the very beginning been the most vocal that we had to flee the country but has remained Iranian, attached to the motherland.

This was not a surprise to me. I knew it from the very beginning. This sentiment is present today more than ever.

I’ll tell you what was more of a surprise to me. On the last day before I returned to Europe, I was strolling on the beach in Tel Aviv in front of the shoreline, and average Israeli citizens would walk up to me excited, knowing full well why I was there. They said how hopeful they were that we can have this relationship again between our two countries. That was an element that I didn’t expect—that level of enthusiasm and interest.

Q: For more than four decades, Iran’s once-sizable Jewish community has nearly completely fled Iran for its safety and due to the persecution it experienced at the hands of the Islamic Republic ruling Iran. What sort of future do you foresee for these Iranian Jews—who live primarily stateside and in Israel and who have achieved significant success there—after the regime is no longer in power? What roles might they have in helping to rebuild Iran?

A: It’s no secret that many of the people in Iran who brought in factories, industry and investments to help the country modernize were Iranian Jews.

Of course, they are part and parcel of Iran’s future. I’d like to stress one point. When Hitler was mounting his war and carrying out the events of the Holocaust, I wonder how history took a change.

The attack on Pearl Harbor propelled America to engage in the Second World War. Until then, it didn’t want to have anything to do with it, knowing what Hitler was doing to the Jews. Even before the war, in Iran, we were harboring Jews and protecting them and we did so especially when the war started.

We had Iranian diplomats in Europe like Abdol Hossein Sardari, who helped get visas to Jews in France. Iran was a country—dare I say the only country in the Middle East—that actually gave refuge and asylum to fleeing Jews.

I think Iranians do embrace that. Iran was a country that was once respected in the world. Iranians were one of the few peoples who would travel to many countries without visas. The Iranian passport had value. They were respected.

Today, they’ve been humiliated and painted as terrorists.

All that context of course includes Iranian Jews rebuilding the nation. It goes without saying. It’s obvious.

There were those that had to but didn’t want to leave Iran who were murdered by the regime. It forced an exodus and exile. Many would have preferred to stay, but how could they do so under such a level of immediate discrimination?

They don’t necessarily have to return physically, but they can contribute to Iran in a hell of a lot of ways. They still have that attachment and can still find that role.

At the end of the day, history will not repeat itself if we do not forget what happened before. Today’s new generation of young Iranians needs to understand a little bit of what contributed to that development in the past. It was not imposed on them, but Iranians participated in it voluntarily.

Imagine how much more can be done in Iran once the atmosphere is opened, outside of all of these discriminations, and everybody has equal opportunities to contribute and what a bright future we could have. That’s the message we should spread around the world far beyond whether we are Jewish, Bahá’í or Muslim, or whatever ethnicity or whatever political thinking. The country can in fact help itself.

Read article in full

#Iran/Israel #Iranian Jews in Israel #Jews of Iran

[princesssarisa]

How many versions of Cinderella in the world involve the maiden getting her revenge on the family that abused her?

Quite a few do.

In the Vietnamese Story of Tam and Cam, Tam tricks her stepsister Cam into boiling herself to death in the end, telling her the boiling water will make her beautiful, and then salts her flesh and feeds it to the unsuspecting stepmother. Lest you think Tam is too sadistic, this punishment isn't just for being treated like a servant – Cam and her mother had murdered her after her marriage, and Cam destroyed all the various forms in which her spirit came back until she finally regained her human form.

In some Finnish versions, which have an ogress who abuses the heroine while magically disguised as her mother, she takes some "accidentally-on-purpose" revenge during the feast at the palace. She throws bones from the meat at either the ogress herself or at her repulsive daughter, breaking her foot on the first night, her hand on the second night, and putting out her eye on the third night.

In the Scottish tale of The Red Calf, early on in the story, the stepmother finds out that the titular magical calf has been supplying the girl with food. So she commands her to kill the calf while her stepsister holds it down. But instead the girl brings down the axe on her stepsister's head, killing her, then takes the calf and runs away.

In the Portuguese tale of The Hearth Cat, the title character is rewarded by fairies for cleaning their house. But when her stepsister wants the same reward, the heroine tricks her into making a mess in the fairies' house instead of cleaning it, and as a result they curse the stepsister and make her hideously ugly. A similar plot line is also featured in The Story of Little Fatima from Iran, which results in the stepsister sprouting a donkey's tail and ears.

In the Italian Cat Cinderella, at the beginning of the story, the heroine Zezolla tricks her stepmother into putting her head inside a chest, then slams down the lid and breaks her neck. This doesn't end well for her, though – she does it at the urging of her governess Carmosina, who proceeds to marry her father and become an even more wicked stepmother than the first one was.

And this doesn't even count the versions where her abusers are killed by the prince, sometimes in brutal ways, or where they're attacked by her magical helpers (e.g. the pigeons in the Grimms' version).

Then there are the adaptations of the familiar Cinderella story that don't make her as forgiving as Perrault did. The lesser-known 1955 German film by Fritz Genschow has Cinderella condemn her stepfamily to work as scullery maids for a year. And in Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Danielle combines mercy with tit-for-tat revenge in an elegant, diplomatic way, by saving Baroness Rodmilla and Marguerite from being deported to America, only to have them permanently reduced to laundresses instead.

These are only the versions I've read or seen so far. I'm sure there are several more. Perrault may have popularized the idea of Cinderella forgiving her stepfamily in the end, but in no way is that a universal aspect of the tale!

#cinderella #fairy tale #variations #revenge #tw: violence #tw: murder #tw: cannibalism

[wosoimagines]

Put Respect On My Name - USWNT/Reader

I will say that I due use both Christen Press and Christian Pulisic in this fic but it’s not at the same time. So when you see the spellings change know that it’s a different person and I’m not just stupid.

prompt: Pulisic!Reader is at the December camp. Reader is pissed after she watches a break down of the men’s team and its made mention that Christian’s family must be excited because its the first time a Pulisic is going to a World Cup even though the Reader went to the 2019 World Cup.

warnings: none

words: 1817

(Y/N) POV

We were sitting around the conference room with one of the laptops hooked up to the projector so we could play the program that was breaking down our men’s team that would be in Qatar. As much as I had wanted to be in Qatar for the World Cup, Christian understood why I wasn’t going to be there. After all, I could be arrested and jailed in Qatar just for being queer.

“What about Captain America? Christian Pulisic?” Alexi Lalas asked. I perked up at that. “You have to imagine that the Pulisic family is excited about this after the men failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. And most people were looking at Christian Pulisic for that. But also because he’s going to be the first one in the family to ever go to a World Cup.”

I clenched my fist at that. It was bad enough that I usually had to deal with my parents overlooking my achievements for Christian’s, but to have someone do it so blatantly on TV was humiliating. I ignored the looks some of my teammates sent me.

“I mean, everyone is going to be looking at Christian to lead this team,” Alexi said. I shook my head at him because I couldn’t let him get to me. “And with how Christian’s younger sister has been playing? Well, that family needs something to look forward to. I mean, (Y/N) Pulisic has been forgettable in these last three USWNT matches. Horrible last three games for her and there’s still one more game on the table. They might even lose that game and break the record for the longest USWNT losing streak. So this family must be looking forward to seeing their son in the World Cup.”

I scoffed at that. My recent performances were the last thing I needed to hear about.

“Fuck this dude.”

I looked over my shoulder at Pinoe who was sitting behind me.

“First Pulisic my ass. We’ve got a Pulisic who has won a World Cup,” Pinoe said. She reached forward and ruffled my hair. “We all have bad games every now and then. You’ll get out of this funk.”

I did stick around to see the rest of the program. I knew it would be crucial for our guys to get a win against Wales or Iran. We were obviously going to be the underdogs against England, but I couldn’t wait to see the guys play in the World Cup. It would definitely be nice to see Christian play in his first World Cup.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, don’t let what Lalas said get to you,” Christen said as I propped my phone up on the desk. “He’s just an idiot.”

“He said it for the whole country to hear. And that comment about this being the first time a Pulisic is at the World Cup?” I pointed out. I shook my head at that as I moved over to my bags. “It’s bullshit. I’m one of the best scorers in the world. I just won the Ballon d’Or this year.”

“Just make them respect you,” Tobin spoke up from the back ground. I rolled my eyes at that. “You have the skills. Just go back to your basics. Don’t try to be too complicated.”

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to try to live up to an older brother who hasn’t even accomplished half of what you have,” I pointed out. “I have more caps, more World Cups, and more goals and yet everyone thins Christian is better than me.”

“Look, at me, (Y/N).”

I looked up to meet Christen’s eye as I sat my gear on the bed.

“You’re a great player in your own right. You just listed out all of the accomplishments you’ve already achieved and you’re only 22,” Christen said. “You’re gonna go out there and play against Germany and you’re gonna do great. You’re gonna show people why they should respect you.”

“I just want people to remember me for what I’ve done, not because of my older brother,” I said. I sighed as I rubbed the back of my head. “Don’t I deserve that?”

“You do, (Y/N),” Tobin assured me. I shook my head cause I wasn’t sure anymore. “You really do. Just make them remember.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Tobin is right though, (Y/N). You just have to go to the basics. Don’t be too complicated,” Christen said. I sighed as I threw my gear into my practice bag. “I’m serious. Don’t worry about your own performance but rather how the team is doing. Just go out and play for the win and the rest will come to you. It always has.”

“Yeah, okay,” I nodded. I knew that they were right. “I just gotta make sure we are getting the win. Hey, I gotta go. The bus leaves for practice soon. I’ll call you guys later though?”

“You can call either of us anytime, kid,” Tobin said.

I gave her a soft smile as I reached out to grab my phone before ending the call. Once I pocketed my phone, I grabbed my gear bag before heading out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You know I don’t agree with what he said, right?” Christian asked through the phone.

“Yeah, I know,” I nodded.

Christian had called me as soon as I had gotten out of practice. I had been tempted not to answer, but I ultimately did because he wasn’t the one I was upset with.

“Obviously I’ve got to ask you for advice on how to deal with the pressure,” Christian said.

I smiled at that. Christian had always paid attention to how people often put me down even though my career had been more impressive so far.

“Just make sure you play to the best of your ability and you just play for the win,” I told him. Christian smiled at me.

“See? You’re already giving me great advice and the World Cup hasn’t even started yet,” Christian said. I chuckled at that. “Now I just need you to train me so I can win a Ballon d’Or.”

“Try moving to a new team.”

“Oh real funny, (Y/N).”

“Hey, you asked.”

The two of us just sat on the call in silence for a moment.

“Are you sure you’re not upset with me for decided not to go to Qatar?” I asked. It was something that was still really bugging me.

“(Y/N), answer this. If the World Cup was being held somewhere that wouldn’t arrest you for loving who you love, would you go?” Christian asked.

“Yeah, you know I would.”

“Then no,” Christian shook his head. “So long as you’ll watch the games and give me feedback on them, I don’t care.”

“Okay, but if you guys go to the final, I’ll be there,” I promised. Christian looked surprised at that. “You guys might surprise a lot of people.”

“Just go out there and show them why you’re the real Captain America in our family.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I broke out for the run as the ball was threaded through to me. I didn’t worry about trying to be fancy today. All I was worried about helping us win tonight. Before I knew it, it was just Berger and I. Then the ball was in the back of the net.

I immediately was running toward Pinoe. She ran out to meet me too.

“I told you that you’d get out of that funk!”

I grinned at that. It was now 3-1 as my goal had came after Sophia and Mal’s goals.

Just 5 minutes after that, I had a third goal on the night. I yelled as I ran toward the corner. I turned my back to the camera and pointed at my last name before turning back around.

“Put respect on my name! And don’t forget it!”

My teammates jumped onto my back.

“(Y/N) Pulisic is back!” Alex screamed as she threw her arms around me.

I grinned at that as we moved back to get ready for Germany to kick the ball. It didn’t feel like it was much longer until the game ended with the 5-1 win for us. I was stopped for an interview after the game.

“Congratulations on the hat-trick, (Y/N),” Aly Wagner said. I grinned and nodded at that. “What was going through your head today with this game?”

“Obviously we didn’t want to be the first USWNT team to lose four games in a row. But it was more for me, but I didn’t expect a hat-trick,” I admitted. I glanced over my shoulder at my teammates when they yelled my name. I shook my head at them. “Obviously, with the men going to Qatar for the World Cup here soon, we’ve been supporting our men and brushing up on the squad details. We watched a program to break down the men’s team and I just found some of the comments very offensive to me. I just want people to put the respect I deserve on my name.”

“Will you be going to Qatar to support Christian?” Aly asked.

“Unfortunately I will not,” I said with a small shake of my head. “I really would love to, but Christian and I have talk about it. I definitely wouldn’t have made such a decision without knowing how he felt about it. It always boils down to Qatar’s stance on the LGBTQ+ as we both would rather not risk that I would be arrested for being queer. Christian knows that if it was elsewhere then I would be attending too, but I did agree to watch the games and send him my own feedback.”

“You just mentioned putting respect on your name and giving your brother feedback,” Aly said. I nodded at that. “With that respect and obviously having won a World Cup yourself, does Christian ask you for advice?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” I nodded. We both often went to each other. “Christian and I understand each other better than most siblings do. He’s the one who taught me how to play soccer, but we’ve grown up practicing and playing together. We’ve been through these journeys together. Christian was the first person I told the first time I got called up for the senior team. And I was the first person who Christian called when he got his first call up. So I think we both ask each other for advice all the time, but I would never not try to help him.”

“All right, thank you and congratulations on the win and the hat-trick, (Y/N).”

I nodded at that before taking the headset off. I grinned as I headed back to the locker room. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the post Christian had tagged me in. It was a picture of me dressed as Captain America and he was calling me his Captain America in the caption.

#uswnt imagine #uswnt imagines #uswnt x reader #USWNT #woso x reader #woso imagine #woso imagines #woso

[girlactionfigure]

At the risk of stating the obvious, there are 15m Jews on the planet, about 8m of them in Israel. That is 15m out of 8b people in the world. 

How do you explain the absolute obsession with the Jews and its one and only microscopic state without using the word antisemitism? 

Why is the news coverage about Israel so disproportionate to the tiny number of Jews or Israelis in the world?

Why are 60% of crimes against religions targeting Jews? 

What is the obsession? 

The Jews have done more to make the world a better place than anyone, so how do you explain it? 

If you’re reading this post, chances are the device you’re reading it on has Israeli tech in it. 

Do you know that Israelis invented drip irrigation? How about cherry tomatoes? Waze? The USB thumb drive? 

What is there to hate? 

Really? The Middle East conflict is the most important news item for the past 5 decades? More important than the literal atrocities happening in Iran, Russia, and Syria every single day? 

Really? It’s 2023 and we are reviving all the good ol’ antisemitic tropes? The Jews control the media and the banks? We’re doing this again? For real?

I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that in today’s “civilized” world, the oldest hatred in the world is not only alive and kicking, it’s actually growing rampant. 

It’s equally sad and terrifying. 

I had so many questions about the holocaust growing up. 

- How was the world silent? They knew what was happening. Why didn’t anyone defend the Jews?

- How could a “civilized” culture like Germany allow this to happen? Where was their moral compass?

- How did the Jews not see what was happening and run for their lives? How did their comfort and total assimilation make them so blind to what was happening? 

I have had all those questions answered in the past five years, only replace ‘Germany’ with ‘America’. 

Growing up, I always dismissed the saying “Never again” because I thought the holocaust **could** never happen again. The world would never support violence against Jews ever again. 

And yet, here we are…

Hillel Fuld

@HilzFuld

#Israel #Jews #😢

[holyfigtree]

Nizar Banat on Iranian support of Palestinian resistance

"To those [Palestinians] who disapprove of Iran, where did you get your rockets from habibi? Don't you applaud the rockets and cheer for them in support of the resistance? Where did you get the rockets that protected Gaza from? You should be ashamed of yourselves!

They say that Iran "exploits the Palestinian Cause to spread Shi'ism" If so, why would it bother with 42+ years of sanctions? Several hundred million of its dollars confiscated, and yet it still takes from its people's food to support and sustain the Palestinian resistance. They don't have to do that. Iran is the only country in the world that has a permanent clause in its budget, from the budget of Iranian people's bread, that pledges support to the Palestinian revolution, regardless of its orientation, whether it was Fatah, the PFLP, the communists, anyone! It never intervened in our ideological conceptions of resistance. It says, "Take, take, become a man and fight"

Iran's problem with America is not new. It did not start with the so-called "Syrian revolution", with all due respect, you bunch of [redacted]! Iran's problem with America started in 1953, when America led a coup d'état against the government of Mosaddeq, and against the will of the Iranian people, who kicked out the shah in 1953, America and Britain came and planned the coup and reinstated the shah, in cooperation with the Mossad.

Iran's vengeance started a long time ago; but it is a nation with dignity and honor, and knows clearly that the American presence is the problem, that the Israeli presence is the problem […]

Iran is your partner culturally, historically, geographically, and religiously, whether you like it or not, they are our partners, and it is their right to lead this current phase [of struggle]. As Arabs, you betrayed all your historical responsibilities, you betrayed your national responsibility and your Islamic responsibility, you even betrayed your linguistic responsibilities and now Iranians speak your language better than you do. What do you have to offer? Come on, go ahead.

There's a fundamental rule in politics: if you do not have your own plan, then you are forced to accept being a part of others' plans, especially since you have nothing to offer. What do you have to offer, our beloved Sunni family? To be a lackey for the Americans, like the rule of the Gulf? No. You have to come with your own plan and be an active member of the new axis that Iran has been building for 40 years and paid for with blood and a 42 year long siege.

Part of this deformed feeling carried by a lot of people against Iran is the result of an inferiority complex among Arabs, where the Arab feels stepped on by other nations. He thinks the Iranian does not deserve to rise. Well the Turk is rising, why aren't you rising against him? The Turk ruled you and humiliated you and the prints of the Turkish boot are seen all over this great Arab homeland so why shouldn't the Iranian rise? [...] you will not find anything more stupid than this. It is utterly infuriating.

So, you are not impressed by the Iranian project, right? What could possibly impress you? What is the alternative? The lines of those who want to head into a peace process? And how? First we destroy our relationship with Syria, then Iran, and then we go, "Well, we cannot defeat Israel through war, war is futile and destructive, and no one supports us!" You are hypocrites! I swear on the blood of all martyrs, I swear on the blood of Wadee' Haddad the Christian, Soleimani the Shia, and Ahmad Yassin the Sunni, I swear on the blood of all three, that you are liars, and that we the Sunnis are the biggest hypocrites and most guilty of taqiya. So please, as we say in colloquial Palestinian, cut the [redacted]

Your job is to fortify society against the spread of defeatist thought […] Iran is a country that's been living under sanction for over 40 years. Based on what right does America besiege it? Do you accept the American sanctions? Is it enough for you that Iran and its allies managed to drive out the American and the French from Lebanon in 1983? The mighty men of Hezbollah in Lebanon blew up the marines base and killed around 400 American and French soldiers. The number was tremendous! They expelled every single one of them, and Hezbollah managed to focus their fight against the Israelis. This is manhood. These are people who think, and know how to plan, and know exactly when to execute the deadly blow.

Iran has been successful in its battles, and has been working, principally, for 42 years to expel the Americans and the Israelis from this region. Not for the purpose of taking their place, but to deter their evil! And you still dare to speak of "an Iranian project"? It is actually more than enough that they've managed to protect themselves while living next to this moronic Arab neighbor.

And again, where is your "Sunni nation"? How many [weapons] did you receive through Jordan? Your Sunni nation refuses to perform its duties towards you while sending thousands of fighters to Syria, and under what pretext? "We want to topple bashar al-assad"—who was not embroiled in any peace process—"we want to topple him and then head to free Palestine!" Well, you did topple him momentarily from dara'a, the golan heights, and other areas bordering israel… what was the result, O fans of Al-Nusra front? the result was that al-nusra front militants received medical treatment in israeli field hospitals.

So please…our beloved supporters of all factions, Haj Fouad Shubaki and Captain Omar Akkawi, are still in [Israeli] prisons. the heroes of karine A, the arms ship that was sent by General Soleimani to Fatah during the second intifada, at the time when every single arab regime helped in besieging Arafat, except for Syria. Be ashamed of yourselves.

Our condolences to this great nation for the martyrdom of its heroes. Together we fight for emancipation of the land and the human. But to achieve that, the Arab nation has to be cleansed from this class of compradors who have been taking over a large space in society, the compradors of idiocy, the compradors of NGOs, the compradors of sectarian strife, and the compradors of defeatist thought."

— Martyr Nizar Banat

Nizar Banat was one of the most prominent activists opposing the Palestinian National Authority. He was beaten to death by Palestinian National Authority police on June 24th, 2021 after being taken into custody.

#iran #palestine #glory to the resistance #nizar banat

[mariacallous]

Conspiracists and far-right extremists are blaming just about everything and everyone for Tuesday morning’s Baltimore bridge collapse.

A non-exhaustive list of things that are getting blamed for the bridge collapse on Telegram and X include President Biden, Hamas, ISIS, P. Diddy, Nickelodeon, India, former president Barack Obama, Islam, aliens, Sri Lanka, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Wokeness, Ukraine, foreign aid, the CIA, Jewish people, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Covid vaccines, DEI, immigrants, Black people, and lockdowns.

The Francis Scott Key truss bridge collapsed when the MV Dali cargo ship collided with one of the bridge supports. Six construction workers, who were filling potholes on the bridge’s roadway at the time, are presumed dead. The ship is owned by Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and the 22-person crew were all Indian. The ship was en route to Colombo, Sri Lanka, at the time of the accident.

This did not stop people from “asking questions” about the incident, a frequent conspiracist response to major events. And though conspiracy theorists are having a hard time pinpointing exactly what conspiracy caused the collapse, the one thing they do agree on is that this incident is a “black swan event.”

The term black swan event has been around for decades and is used to describe a major global event (typically in the financial markets) that can cause significant damage to a country’s economy. But in recent years, the term has been co-opted by the conspiracy-minded to explain an event triggered by the so-called deep state that would signal an imminent revolution, a third world war, or some other apocalyptic catastrophe.

One of the first people to call the bridge collapse a black swan event was disgraced former US national security adviser Michael Flynn. “This is a BLACK SWAN event,” he wrote on X. “Black swans normally come out of the world of finance (not military) … There are harbor masters for every single one of these transit points in America that are in charge of assuring the safety of navigation … start there.” Flynn’s post has been viewed 7.2 million times.

Misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged in Romania with rape and human trafficking, also posted on X early on Tuesday morning, writing: “Nothing is safe. Black Swan Event imminent.” The post has been viewed almost 19 million times.

The term black swan quickly began trending on X, and soon conspiracists, extremists, and right-wing lawmakers began coming up with explanations for what or who triggered this “black swan event.”

One post claiming a link between the bridge collapse and the film Leave the World Behind has been viewed more than 1.2 million times. The post claimed that because the ship was headed to Sri Lanka, which has a lion on its flag, then the situation was linked to the ship that runs aground at the beginning of the film which was called White Lion. The post also points out that the film was produced by Obama.

A post from Anthony Sabatini, a former Florida state congressman, declared, without evidence, that “DEI did this”—and its been viewed over 2.2 million times.

Some politicians have boosted the conspiracy as well. “Is this an intentional attack or an accident?” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential and conspiracy-minded member of the GOP, posted on X above a video shared by a prominent QAnon conspiracist.

Under previous iterations of X, formerly Twitter, such speculation would typically have gained little traction, as the algorithm would have prioritized trusted news sources and primary evidence. But under Elon Musk’s reign, anyone willing to pay for a blue check can have their posts artificially boosted by the algorithm. This means that conspiracies like this are ending up in the news feeds of millions of people.

On Telegram, one prominent election denier claimed the incident was linked to the fact that the bridge was named after Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words for the Star Spangled Banner, and was thus an attempt to undermine America.

“Don't let them erase our history,” the conspiracist wrote.

Investigators are looking into the cause of the tragic incident, but William DelBagno, the FBI special agent in charge, said on Tuesday that there are no indications of terrorism.

[1americanconservative]

@persianjewess

Many of my aunts and uncles didn’t flee #Iran as quickly as my parents did. They were older. They had multiple children. And they had established lives with businesses and homes. In many ways, they were also hopeful. “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” they thought. They were wrong. Seemingly overnight, the #Jewish schools my cousins attended fell under a new administration. Jewish teachers were fired and replaced with radicals loyal to the Islamic Regime. Each day in class, my cousins - some as young as 5 - and all their Jewish classmates had to stand up and recite “Death to America!” “Death to Israel!” as part of their morning ritual. If a child didn’t scream these phrases loud enough to the satisfaction of their sadistic teachers, they were punished. Parents were interrogated. If their answers weren’t satisfactory, they were imprisoned as “Zionist spies.” So the Jewish children made sure to scream these calls for death as loud as they could, to save their parents the wrath of the goons of the IRGC. And then, right on the heels of the Islamic Revolution, came the Iran-Iraq War and with it, the indoctrination of child soldiers into martyrdom. The IRGC drafted young boys, some as young as 9 years old, for mine-sweeping and other suicide missions. The children were given plastic ‘keys to paradise’ and promised that they would go directly to heaven if they died as martyrs against the Iraqi enemy. 9 out of 10 Iranian child soldiers died. An estimated 95,000 child soldiers were sacrificed by the Iranian Regime. My oldest cousin was 14. My aunt and uncle, desperate to save their son, scraped together what money they had to hire smugglers to sneak him out of Iran. The journey would take 2 weeks, with zero communication, and fraught with danger. Thousands who sought to escape via the smugglers never made it to their destination: killed or captured along the way. Their bodies lost to the desert. But staying was certain death. And so they sent off my 14 year old cousin by himself, praying they would be one of the lucky ones who would receive a phone call from their son in two weeks time once he reached Pakistan. It would be years before my aunt and uncle would be reunited with my cousin again. Today, we see the same sickening disregard for human life being carried out by the Islamic Regime’s proxy: Hamas. Islam is distorted and perverted to indoctrinate children into martyrdom and terrorism. Islamic Jihad and murder for the sake of “Allah” is glorified. Democratic countries like the #USA and #Israel are vilified. Because Hamas doesn’t care for Palestinians. Hamas is no more than Iran’s puppet. And Iran’s end goal is not Palestinian statehood, but the spread of radical Islam via the destruction of democracy. Israel, the only bastion of democracy in the Middle East, is just the Islamic Regime’s first target. This was NEVER about land. This was ALWAYS about the destruction of western values. And the war is already on our shores, in our schools, and in every violent Pro-Hamas protest we see in the streets.

So WAKE UP AMERICA, It’s time to smell the Jihad. Before it’s too late.

[qqueenofhades]

Could I ask why so many people call Obama a war criminal? I see that so often that I feel like for a lot of people online it's eroded the good things he did

It's because of the Online Leftist/tankie brainworm culture that pervades so many supposedly progressive spaces, when people can tell you eagerly why Democrats are terrible and Not Leftist Enough. If you ask them why Obama was a "war criminal," they will tell you that he authorized a lot of drone attacks in the Middle East -- which, valid, he did do that, I don't think that was a great plan either, and no American president is institutionally or systematically innocent or detached from the lethal force that they are able to wield with near-total impunity.

However, and here's where the tricky part comes in for people whose grasp of foreign policy stretches no further than "America is bad and therefore must be at fault for everything ever, no other country or actor has any volition, only America can do anything, Democrats are evil, I am very progressive," that is not actually a war crime. It's been a fairly standard part of covert warfare and executive operations for many countries, not just America. And this massive expansion of the executive branch, especially in regard to conducting operations abroad with sole legal authority, came under... you guessed it, Reagan! See the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986, both of which were way beyond anything Obama did. This privilege was then also wildly expanded in the Dubya years, while Dubya and company actually were committing actual legal war crimes by the bushel in Iraq and Guantanamo, or at least very deliberately letting them be committed and finding ways to legally sanction them after the fact. "Extraordinary rendition," anyone?

So, like -- if you want to have a conversation about the bloated and evil American military-industrial complex, the unmoored expansion of executive power (Trump was also, for obvious reasons, a big fan of this policy), the wrong-headedness of American policy in the Middle East, and the absolute clusterfuck of twin armed foreign wars that Obama inherited, then we can do that. But you also need to acknowledge that a) Trump ordered even MORE drone strikes, much more indiscriminately, than Obama (remember how he killed a top Iranian general and almost started WW3 for a few weeks?) and b) Biden has scaled them way back, as well as ending the war in Afghanistan (however chaotically that happened and how much of a human rights disaster it has been since the Taliban re-took over).

In short, you have to have a conversation that encompasses all these things, and if all you do is yell about Obama being a war criminal -- which by the rules and laws and regulations of people who actually prosecute this for a living, he is not -- all that tells me is that you're an idiot with a grasp of political and legal nuance that is the approximate depth of a kiddie pool. It doesn't mean Obama is innocent or his foreign policy is flawless, it just means he's not a war criminal. Especially when Dubya and his administration, who actually did meet the legal standards for it, are right there.

Anyway. Once again, if I can't tell the difference between a militant right-wing nut yelling that Obama is the antichrist, and a bunch of braindead leftist tankies yelling the same thing, that means their rhetoric and logical precepts are pretty much the same, and equally stupid. As usual, it's a bunch of people wanting to get Moral Cred Points by ripping the Democrats, while having absolutely no idea what they're talking about and being deliberately unwilling to consider it in actual historical, political, or social context.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

[zvaigzdelasas]

WaPo - Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations

Complaints about the U.S. military’s influence operations using Facebook and Twitter have raised concern in the White House and federal agencies.[...]

The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last weekinstructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and somefederal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter.

The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

The researchers did not specify when the takedowns occurred, but those familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s “imperialist” war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s direct impact on Central Asian countries.[...]

Centcom, headquartered in Tampa, has purview over military operations across 21 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central and South Asia. A spokesman declined to comment. [...]

Spokespersons for Facebook and Twitter declined to comment.

According to the researchers’ report, the accounts taken down included a made-up Persian-language media site that shared content reposted from the U.S.-funded Voice of America Farsi and Radio Free Europe. Another, it said, was linked to a Twitter handle that in the past had claimed to operate on behalf of Centcom.

One fake account posted an inflammatory tweet claiming that relatives of deceased Afghan refugees had reported bodies being returned from Iran with missing organs, according to the report. The tweet linked to a video that was part of an article posted on a U.S.-military affiliated website.

Centcom has not commented on whether these accounts were created by its personnel or contractors. If the organ-harvesting tweet is shown to be Centcom’s, one defense official said, it would “absolutely be a violation of doctrine and training practices.”

Independent of the report, The Washington Post has learned that in 2020 Facebook disabled fictitious personas created by Centcom to counter disinformation spread by China suggesting the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 was created at a U.S. Army lab in Fort Detrick, Md., according to officials familiar with the matter. The pseudo profiles — active in Facebook groups that conversed in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, the officials said — were used to amplify truthful [sic] information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the virus’s origination in China.

The U.S. government’s use of ersatz social media accounts, though authorized by law and policy, has stirred controversy inside the Biden administration, with the White House pressing the Pentagon to clarify and justify its policies. The White House, agencies such as the State Department and even some officials within the Defense Department have been concerned that the policies are too broad, allowing leeway for tactics that even if used to spread truthful information, risk eroding U.S. credibility, several U.S. officials said.

“Our adversaries are absolutely operating in the information domain,” said a second senior defense official. “There are some who think we shouldn’t do anything clandestine in that space. Ceding an entire domain to an adversary would be unwise. But we need stronger policy guardrails.” [Editor's Note: Lolling & Lmaoing]

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, which is part of the White House, declined to comment.

Kahl disclosed his review at a virtual meeting convened by the National Security Council on Tuesday, saying he wants to know what types of operations have been carried out, who they’re targeting, what tools are being used and why military commanders have chosen those tactics, and how effective they have been, several officials said.

The message was essentially, “You have to justify to me why you’re doing these types of things,” the first defense official said.

Pentagon policy and doctrine discourage the military from peddling falsehoods, but there are no specific rules mandating the use of truthful information for psychological operations. For instance, the military sometimes employs fiction and satire for persuasion purposes, but generally the messages are supposed to stick to facts, officials said.

In 2020, officers at Facebook and Twitter contacted the Pentagon to raise concerns about the phony accounts they were having to remove, suspicious they were associated with the military. That summer, David Agranovich, Facebook’s director for global threat disruption, spoke to Christopher C. Miller, then assistant director for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict, which oversees influence operations policy, warning him that if Facebook could sniff them out, so could U.S. adversaries, several people familiar with the conversation said.

“His point‚” one person said, “was ‘Guys, you got caught. That’s a problem.’ ”[...]

With the rise of Russia and China as strategic competitors, military commanders have wanted to fight back, including online. And Congress supported that. Frustrated with perceived legal obstacles to the Defense Department’s ability to conduct clandestine activities in cyberspace, Congress in late 2019 passed a law affirming that the military could conduct operations in the “information environment” to defend the United States and to push back against foreign disinformation aimed at undermining its interests. The measure, known as Section 1631, allows the military to carry out clandestine psychological operations without crossing what the CIA has claimed as its covert authority, alleviating some of the friction that had hindered such operations previously.

“Combatant commanders got really excited,” recalled the first defense official. “They were very eager to utilize these new authorities. The defense contractors were equally eager to land lucrative classified contracts to enable clandestine influence operations.”[...]

Last year, with a new administration in place, Facebook’s Agranovich tried again. This time he took his complaint to President Biden’s deputy national security adviser for cyber, Anne Neuberger. Agranovich, who had worked at the NSC under Trump, told Neuberger that Facebook was taking down fake accounts because they violated the company’s terms of service, according to people familiar with the exchange.

The accounts were easily detected by Facebook, which since Russia’s campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election has enhanced its ability to identify mock personas and sites. In some cases, the company had removed profiles, which appeared to be associated with the military, that promoted information deemed by fact-checkers to be false, said a person familiar with the matter.

Agranovich also spoke to officials at the Pentagon. His message was: “We know what DOD is doing. It violates our policies. We will enforce our policies” and so “DOD should knock it off,” said a U.S. official briefed on the matter.

In response to White House concerns, Kahl ordered a review of Military Information Support Operations, or MISO, the Pentagon’s moniker for psychological operations. A draft concluded that policies, training and oversight all needed tightening, and that coordination with other agencies, such as the State Department and the CIA, needed strengthening, according to officials.

The review also found that while there were cases in which fictitious information was pushed by the military, they were the result of inadequate oversight [sic] of contractors and personnel training — not systemic problems [sic], officials said.

Pentagon leadership did little with the review, two officials said, before Graphika and Stanford published their report on Aug. 24, which elicited a flurry of news coverage and questions for the military.

The State Department and CIA have been perturbed by the military’s use of clandestine tactics. Officers at State have admonished the Defense Department, “Hey don’t amplify our policies using fake personas, because we don’t want to be seen as creating false grass roots efforts,” [sic] the first defense official said.

One diplomat put it this way: “Generally speaking, we shouldn’t be employing the same kind of tactics that our adversaries are using because the bottom line is we have the moral high ground [sic]. [...] We promote [our set of] values around the world and when we use tactics like those, it just undermines our argument about who we are.”

Psychological operations to promote U.S. narratives overseas are nothing new in the military, but the popularity of western social media across the globe has led to an expansion of tactics, including the use of artificial personas and images — sometimes called “deep fakes.” The logic is that views expressed by what appears to be, say, an Afghan woman or an Iranian student might be more persuasive [!] than if they were openly pushed by the U.S. government. [...]

A key issue for senior policymakers now is determining whether the military’s execution of clandestine influence operations is delivering results. “Is the juice worth the squeeze? Does our approach really have the potential for the return on investment we hoped or is it just causing more challenges?” one person familiar with the debate said.[...]

Clandestine influence operations have a role in support of military operations, but it should be a narrow one with “intrusive oversight” by military and civilian leadership, said Michael Lumpkin, a former senior Pentagon official handling information operations policy and a former head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. “Otherwise, we risk making more enemies than friends.”

19 Sep 22

[eretzyisrael]

The American Front

An American friend asked me yesterday where I thought our greatest dangers lie. Getting bogged down in Gaza? The northern front, facing Hezbollah and the Iranian militias in Syria? The soon-to-be nuclear Iran? Another intifada in Judea and Samaria? Violent riots by Arab citizens of Israel?

None of those, I said. The greatest danger facing Israel today is from the Americans.

My friend was surprised. How is that possible? President Biden expressed his full support for Israel, and is supplying us with weapons and ammunition, and has sent significant naval forces to our region. He threatened Iran against intervening. Congress just overwhelmingly passed a resolution of support for Israel. What more do I want?

So I explained that the problem with America is the same problem that we had here in Israel until October 7. It is the conseptzia, the stubborn resistance to the reality that is behind the conflict that has been going on for at least a century, and of which the butchery on Simchat Torah was just the most recent flareup.

What is the conseptzia? It is a collection of wrong ideas, a constellation of misunderstandings about who the Palestinians are, what motivates them, and what they want. It involves the mistaken projection of a set of values common in the West on a people that have different values, a stubborn refusal to listen to them, and a consistent underestimation of their intelligence, their tenacity, and the exceptionally strong emotion of hatred that infuses their culture.

Right now someone is asking how I can generalize. There are several million Palestinians, and multiple political and religious factions. How can I say they are all the same? Hold that thought – I will come back to it.

Here are a few false propositions that are part of the conseptzia:

1. Like most present-day Americans and Western Europeans, Palestinians are primarily motivated by economic considerations and only secondarily by religion and ideology. 2. The violent terrorism of the Palestinians comes from their frustration that they do not have an independent state. 3. Palestinians are essentially corrupt and will give up their ideological goals if paid enough. 4. The Palestinian Authority (dominated by the Fatah movement) is more moderate than Hamas, and would accept a Jewish state somewhere between the river and the sea if enough of their demands were met.

The reasons none of these are true come from the nature of Palestinian culture.

Palestinian culture is very different from that of liberal Americans or Europeans. That is not surprising, since it developed in an entirely different place from different antecedents. The starting point is traditional nomadic Arab culture, with its emphasis on maintaining personal and family honor and avoiding shame. The Arabs of Eretz Yisrael, who came from various parts of the region, did not consider themselves Palestinians in the beginning of the 20th century (with the exception of a small movement made up of educated Christian Arabs). Their identity was as part of their clans, and as part of the Muslim Ummah. As far as they were concerned, Eretz Yisrael was southern Syria.

Once the 400-year yoke of the Ottomans was removed and Jewish immigration increased, Muslim resistance to the possibility of a Jewish state grew, and was especially encouraged by Amin al-Husseini, the British-appointed, Nazi-supporting, Mufti of Jerusalem. The British had their own reasons for preferring Arab sovereignty when they left in in 1948, and they supported resistance by local Arabs as well as an invasion by the Arab states. But as everyone knows, the Jews succeeded in defeating the Arabs, Arab society in Eretz Yisraelcollapsed, and hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled the area that became the State of Israel.

This was the nakba, a terrible blow to the honor of all the Arabs, who were defeated – and to Islam which was outraged by the reversion of an area from Muslim to infidel rule. And they lost to Jews, the Jews that Mohammed routed in the 7th century and who were permitted to live in Muslim lands only as dhimmis, institutionally inferior to Muslims. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this event in forming a specifically Palestinian culture, a culture that grew out of this massive loss of honor. To be Palestinian is to suffer from the nakba, and to dream of reversing and avenging it.

During the 1960s, the Soviets encouraged Palestinian nationalism, adding to it some spices of Marxism-Leninism, and presenting the Palestinians to the world as an oppressed third-world people fighting a war of national liberation against European colonialism. Later we had the “Zionism is racism” resolution in the execrable UN, followed by the 2001 anti-racism summit in Durban, South Africa, which emphasized this theme (despite its complete inapplicability to the conflict), leading to today’s accusations of “apartheid.” Despite all this, which is mostly intended to make Western liberals comfortable with idea of wiping Israel off the map, the Palestinian consciousness still centers on the shame of the nakba.

The honor lost in 1948, and which has continued throughout “the occupation” (to Palestinians this means the period of Jewish sovereignty that began in 1948), can only be recovered by reversing the nakba, bringing back all those who fled in 1948 and their descendants, and establishing Palestinian sovereignty over the land. It is also a religious imperative to restore rule by Muslims. Finally, the shame of what has occurred is so great, that the reversal must be accomplished with great violence. Only if the land runs with blood can the accumulated insults of the last 75 years finally be avenged.

This is Palestinian culture. This is what separates Palestinians from other Arabs and Muslims, many of whom can accept the existence of a Jewish state. With various modifications and different emphasis, this is what every Palestinian child learns in school, whether in a Hamas or UNRWA school in Gaza, or a PA school in Judea/Samaria. It is even to a great degree taught to Arab citizens of Israel in the Israeli Arab educational system. It is what Palestinians hear from their leaders, in their mosques, on the TV and radio, and in their newspapers and social media. It’s what Palestinians say in Arabic, and often in English too.

Certainly there are Palestinians for whom economic goals are important; there are secular ones and Christians; and there are those who hate violence and believe in democracy. There is opposition to Hamas in Gaza and to the PA in Judea/Samaria. But the basic ideas are unchallenged – they are pervasive in the culture itself. They are the conventional wisdom, the motherhood and apple pie of Palestinians, and some form of them is accepted by the great majority. Polls consistently show that most Palestinians favor armed resistance against Israel, and elections are almost always won by the most radical candidate. If that isn’t enough, Palestinian values are often enforced by men with guns.

So that is why the ultra-violent massacre in the south was cheered by Palestinians everywhere. And that is why the propositions of the conseptzia are false. Honor/shame and religion are at the top of the list of motivators for the Palestinians. Palestinians have consistently chosen violence over statehood, and weapons over economic development. They are not frustrated because they don’t have an independent state – they are infuriated because we have one on what they believe is their property. If we give them money for development, they will take it (and skim off plenty from the top for the benefit of their leadership). But the PA will always pay terrorists and their families, and Hamas will not stop building tunnels and rockets.

The Palestinians can’t be bought off and they can’t be persuaded that it is in their interest to live at peace alongside a Jewish state. The various factions have different strategies and tactics, but their ultimate objective is the same: Israel must disappear.

The Americans are dangerous, because they don’t or won’t accept this. The Americans have been slaves to the conseptzia since at least 1967. Biden, Blinken, and the rest continue to talk about a “two-state solution”, by which they mean a Palestinian state under the PA in Judea/Samaria and Gaza (sometimes even with a road between them cutting Israel in two!) What happened on October 7 shows that this is unacceptable. If Israel loses control of Judea and Samaria, the horrific events in the lightly populated Gaza Envelope could be repeated, this time in Tel Aviv. Even if the PA were more moderate than Hamas (it isn’t), who is to say a moderate leadership wouldn’t be replaced by an extreme one? Indeed, Gaza was originally ruled by the PA, but Hamas won the PA elections; and when in 2007 it wasn’t allowed to take power, it overthrew the PA in Gaza, tossed local officials off buildings, and took over.

Ordinary Israelis understand this, and our government seems to as well. This is why it announced that it did not want to decide at this time what would happen in Gaza after Hamas is defeated. It is obvious to us that only some form of Israeli control in both Gaza and Judea/Samaria can protect us, and it is equally obvious that the Americans oppose that. That’s why they are demanding that we come up with a plan for “the day after.” Israel would prefer not to have this argument today.

There are two kinds of people that favor a two-state solution: those that don’t understand Palestinians, and those that do and want to hurt Israel. I believe that Biden belongs to the first group, but there are far too many in his administration and the State Department in the second.

#Israel and Palestinian Arabs #Jew Hatred #Terrorism #US-Israel Relations #War