#the more I learn about Palestine the more I believe people in Gaza still would have a happy life if Israel had never withdrawn from it

[unhonestlymirror]

I'm terrified by how many people are happy that IDF accidentally killed 3 hostages. Everyone knows that hamas uses its own civilians, its own Palestinian children as human shield, why wouldn't it use kidnapped hostages from Israel? What is so joyful about this?

And of course, the same guy who posted this:

Would also post this shit:

#hamas which controls the whole Palestine including Gaza is financed by russia #but of course Israel who still didn't get 236 hostages back from 'peaceful' Palestine is an occupier #the more I learn about Palestine the more I believe people in Gaza still would have a happy life if Israel had never withdrawn from it #jews #israel palestine war #hamas attack

[fairuzfan]

I have concern that I may still be technically zionist despite claiming to be pro-palestine. This is because I knew very little about Palestine when October 7th happened, so in the time since I have been reluctant to have a stance on a two-state or one-Palestinian-state solution. I know now that almost all of Isreal is stolen land and recognize Isreal only exists due to colonialism, it took me a long time to learn that but I know it now. Before I knew that, I knew that regardless of the prior history that in current day Palestine is being subjected to a genocide. However, I struggle with politics and therefore struggle with understanding how a one-Palestinian-state could be achieved and have concern about what would happen to any genuinely innocent people who live in Isreal. To be clear, Isreal as a whole is guilty and I just have concern about what will happen to the portion of people in Isreal who are just as horrified as the rest of the world at what their government is doing. I do not personally know any Palestinians, so I have not known who to talk to about this especially since I do not want to overstep in any way. Theres more context I could provide but I wont because this is roughly the gist of where I am currently at when it comes to my concerns about whether or not I am still zionist. Do you have any reccomendations as to what I can do about my concerns? I am not sure whether or not I am overstepping right now by asking you this, but I do not know any other Palestians on a personal level that I can go to.

hey thanks for sending this in. i think we all have zionist biases that we have to unlearn, even i catch myself falling for it sometimes. so it's not necessarily a moral failing if you're trying to undo the zionism you've been taught. thanks for trying to undo it!

i do want to correct you a bit thought, in that *all* of israel is stolen land because israel is a settler colonial society. until it is relabeled as "Palestine" it can't not be stolen land.

I guess my advice is that you read scholarship and perspectives on palestinian thought and heritage. i can't tell you what a free palestine will look like but i can tell you what i imagine it to be. but what i can tell you is that the state of israel is fully intent on erasing all traces of palestinian life no matter what.

i guess i can tell you why "two state solutions" don't really work because there is no.... prevention of settlement building in the west bank and they'll never really promote *not* settling in the west bank. like i really cannot imagine a world where there aren't settlers on palestinian land no matter the case. and that's even not allowing palestinians the right of return to their homes and expecting them to give up what they dedicated their lives to. many palestinians in the west bank and gaza are themselves refugees because they were displaced in '48. so no matter what, palestinians will always get the short end of the stick and told to "just deal with it."

plus, why are we concerned with the supposed future danger towards israelis when the current, very real danger towards palestinians exists? shouldn't we prioritize actual events over hypothetical ones? why should we concern ourselves with the future when for palestinians its not a guarantee? i have no idea what's going to happen to gaza, for example.... shouldn't we prioritize that gaza lives on today?

i think i would question why you think israelis are inherently in danger in a one state solution? like do you assume that palestinians will all universally commit violence on all israelis? is it because you believe that hamas wants to kill every single israeli jew no matter what? if so, i think that's where your problem lies — in the assumption that peace can only be achieved through segregation just in a lighter form (because the state of israel relies on segregation as a principal of its existence as a jewish state). what about the palestinians who fear living side by side with the same people who raped, tortured, and murdered them for 75 years, or advocated for their deaths? aren't they inherently in more danger?

i mean palestinians have consistently been painted as the villains for more than 75 years. like in every aspect. i think to really truly be antizionist you need to prioritize palestinian concerns and worries over israeli ones because of how.... unwilling much of the world is to even consider them.

approaching zionism from an idea of an inequality structure is also necessary — rather than assuming its a one off system, we examine it as a perpetuation of multiple types of systems of inequality embedded into one. i recommend the institute for the critical study of zionism (click) for more information on this. There's also this book by Ismail Zayid written in the 80's (click) about the longtime violence the ideology of zionism has done to multiple communities, not just palestinians.

Here's a great reading list by palipunk about different aspects of palestinian thought and culture (click). i suggest looking through them to help decolonize our way of thought.

i might add on to this later if i think of something else to say.

[will80sbyers]

Noah started opening up to a dialogue about Palestine with people around him, I think it's a good step forward!

I would still be vigilant, hold him accountable to what he's saying in the sense that he has to show that he means all of this in the long run, but he is really young and went through a lot of propaganda like I said in posts before... I think people should give others the opportunity to do better and learn in general but especially when people are young and ignorant otherwise we won't go forward and no one will change their minds ever.

We also have to keep in mind that the definition of Zionism has a different meaning for some Jewish people, that meaning comes from propaganda and is obviously opposed on what Zionism is and what it has been doing, but propaganda works so well that some are calling themselves it without considering the context and believing only the direct meaning of wanting a safe place for Jewish people. They have not been able to consider the whole dynamic of power because they are/have been blinded by propaganda.

Transcript :

«Hey guys, it's Noah. I just wanted to come on here super briefly just to discuss everything that's been going on online. I feel like my thoughts and beliefs have been so far misconstrued from anything even close to what I believe and I wanted to just state from my heart how I feel. I only want peace and safety, and security for all innocent people affected by this conflict. I've had many open discussions with friends from Palestine/Palestinian backgrounds and I think those are very important conversations to have and I've learned a lot and one of the takeaways I've had is that we all hope for the same things, that being those innocent people still being held hostage in Gaza to be returned to their families and equally hope for an end of loss of innocent life in Palestine, so many of those people being women and children, and it's horrible to see, and I think anyone with any ounce of humanity would hope for an end to the hostility on both sides. I stand against any killing of any innocent people and I hope you guys all do too and I hope to one day be able to see those two groups live harmoniously together in that region and I hope for 2024 online to see people a little bit more understanding and compassionate and recognize that we're all human regardless of our race, of our ethnicity, of our background, of our country of birth, of our sexuality... of anything. We are all human and we are all the same and we should all love each other for that and support each other and stand together. And stand together for humanity and for peace.»

#noah schnapp #stranger things #byler #Video

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I blocked my Zionist

“”friend”” after she gave condolences for my dog?

Content warnings: pet death, Zionism, genocide mentions

Hi. I’ll try to keep this brief and cohesive. So for some background, I (24F) gave this “friend” from middle school, let’s call her E (24F). We were best friends, but she moved away about halfway through our time in high school. She was from Israel, and not being as informed as I am now, I never thought that much of it. When she moved away, we stayed mutuals on social media, but didn’t chat much. She’d hit me up sometimes, usually after months would go by, and we’d chat a bit, but it would normally end with her disappearing again, and we both just went on with our lives.

Between 2021-2023, I ended up losing a lot of people. Falling outs, rifts, drama etc. Needless to say I don’t have many friends rn. So when she hit me up again at the beginning of 2023 and then later that summer (more consistency then usual), I was excited to reconnect with her. Then, Israel began it’s current violence and genocide in Gaza. Since the beginning of the violence, I took the time to learn more (and am still learning) about the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians by Israel for the past 75 years, and have kept up with Palestinian journalists like Motaz and Bisan on the current aggression that’s been taking place for the past 100 DAYS.

Now remember when I said E was Israeli? Yeaaa, and I brutally reminded of that. She was eating up and regurgitating the lies from Israel on her Instagram stories, blaming Hamas for everything etc. Meanwhile the rest of my feed was of horrific on the ground footage of innocent Palestinians being slaughtered simply for being Palestinian and for living on their land. I believe in the cause for a Free Palestine and an end to the Israeli occupation, and I resolved that a Zionist is not who I want to be friends with, and that I would unfollow E and cut contact.

But this is where I fucked up and am an AH - I stalled. I just restricted her and kept telling myself “I’ll get to it.” I’ll admit the nostalgia of our bond we used to have got the better of me, and I was taking my time cutting the contact cuz I was upset that I have to cut my losses with a connection AGAIN. So I stalled. And kept stalling.

Now this past weekend, my dog passed away. I posted a memorial post to my Instagram, and saw E commented her condolences. Which was nice, but I feel icky taking the sympathy from a Zionist, from someone who does not have sympathy for the lives of the innocent Palestinian men, women, and children being lost in Gaza. And most likely never will.

Since she’s restricted, I don’t think her comment is public. And I don’t want to accept it. Accepting it and responding would call all my support for the Palestinian cause into question. Hell, the fact that I stalled unfollowing her so long calls it into question already, I know that. But I also can’t ignore her forever.

So now comes the time to do what I should of done months ago. I have to unfollow her and block her. But a part of me still feels bad doing after she had sweet things to say about my late pet. I KNOW I’m already the AH for not unfollowing her already, but my query is, WIBTA to do so now after she offered her condolences, and to block her on top of that?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[amyisraelchaiforever]

If you don’t mind, would you explain what exactly it means to be a Zionist, or what Zionism is?

Also, looking at posts here and on news sites I see such pradoxical views, one saying to not support Palestine is to support genocide and the other saying to not support Israel is to be antisemitic. I wonder, and I am going around asking people on different sides of the war, do you believe it is possible to support both the lives of Palestinian people and the lives of Jewish people?

Feel free to ignore this ask or to point out any ignorance on my part. I hope you have some peace in your day/night.

Of course! Thank you for being so kind with your questions! 💙 Sorry that it's a bit "all over the place." There's a LOT to cover, and I'll leave a bunch of links to learn about more details.

To start of, Zionism is (by the google-search definition):

a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.

So basically, being a zionist is supporting zionism or the creation & protection of Israel.

Most Jews are Zionists (sources say between 85-95%) of Jews. Something I want to clarify:

Being a zionist, or supporting Israel, does not mean that we support all decisions of Israeli government, especially not Netanyahu. In fact, most Israelis and Jews don't actually like Netanyahu (which I'll be calling Bibi for short). This doesn't mean we don't want Israel to cease to exist. There's multiple sides to even one side in the main argument.

Now I'm going to tackle your harder points:

Also, looking at posts here and on news sites I see such pradoxical views, one saying to not support Palestine is to support genocide and the other saying to not support Israel is to be antisemitic. I wonder, and I am going around asking people on different sides of the war, do you believe it is possible to support both the lives of Palestinian people and the lives of Jewish people?

First of all, I don't support the "Free Palestine" movement for multiple reasons, but get this straight: It's not because I hate the people, it's because the leaders of it are people I don't agree with.

I definitely don't want you to think I think all people in Gaza/'Palestinians' should die. I do NOT think that. But first of all, let me talk about the whole issue of "not supporting Palestine is to support genocide".

It's not genocide, simple as that.

here's the definition of genocide:

the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

In my opinion, you should replace "killing" with "murdering", but you get the gist.

Israel attacking the Gaza Strip right now is not in order to kill the civilians there, it's to retrieve the hostages (hostages, not prisoners of war) and end HAMAS (a globally-recognized terrorist organization. I'll link some pictures of their website at the end), so they can't launch another deathly attack on Israel or Jews as a whole (not to mention HAMAS's other problems with LGBTQ+ and such).

Therefore, not genocide. I do not want the people in Gaza dead, but I do not support Palestine as they want it- Israel gone and a new country. Does that mean I support genocide? That's your own decision to make.

Something I want to briefly touch upon is historical inaccuracy & numbers before we move on to "not supporting Israel is antisemitic".

Like I said, HAMAS is a terrorist organization. Here's a few examples of a website used to show their propaganda & agendas.

This is even from a while back (1-2 weeks)! It's messed up, especially if you take time to read the Stages.

Also, I do not believe that all Palestinians and Palestine-supporters support Hamas, like not every Israeli and Jew support every decision of the Israeli Government. But still, people idolize HAMAS and that is a problem.

People say, "end the 75 (or 76) year occupation!!!!11!!!!!1!!!!" I won't get into history, but the Gaza Strip was ruled by Egypt until 1967 (then it was captured by Israel during a war) and Israel completely left it 2005-6. Can't be 75 or 76 years if you haven't been there for so long.

That was just something I wanted to mention. Now, lets move onto "not supporting Israel is antisemitic."

This changes from person to person, I'll admit. A goy (or non-jewish person) can't decide what is or isn't antisemitic, and a jew cannot really do the same to another jew. Saying that Israel shouldn't exist? Yes, it's antisemitic. Israel (Judea, Eretz Yisrael, etc) is the Jews' land, birthright- we are the indigenous people (whoo boy, I could go on a whole other rant here if you want me to.)

Mostly, I'd say it isn't antisemitic. Some people might disagree. I found a good guide on critizing Israel here - it'll be linked in the end if you want to check it out.

IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION: yes, it is possible! i value both israeli and Jews AND palestinians lives (this is not when they tell me to kms, of course)

sorry it took me so long to answer this :')

Here are some of the links I recommend:

@freegazafromhamas Quick information, easy to digest (and a very kind person); probably most in support of a palestinian state

@fuck-hamas-go-israel has been running this blog for over 10 years, I believe. Important picture & video evidence and information.

@elder-millennial-of-zion Again, important information.

@shretl this user is especially good for information! They're very educated & I've learned a lot. Honestly, just looking through their posts is educational...

I've also preblogged many things in general on my blog!

other pictures:

Online Sources: (this section is taken from @shretl's post) * https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/865383 - Hebrew article, Title means "Sad ending to a magnificent history: Only 4 Jews left in Iraq".

What was the Farhud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud

History of the Jewish community in Baghdad https://cojs.org/the_jewish_community_in_baghdad_in_the_eighteenth_century-_zvi_yehuda-_nehardea-_babylonian_jewry_heritage_center-_2003/

What are Pogroms?https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms?gclid=Cj0KCQiAkeSsBhDUARIsAK3tiedM7DuwIaSQX-kRxvXTgCDxN6-zqeo_DNNFgyanSYGyGOhwu_0vfrkaAg6REALw_wcB

The last Jew of Peki'in, Margalit Zinati https://aish.com/the-last-jew-of-pekiin/

Arab riots of 1930s- https://www.gov.il/en/Departments/General/ben_zvi_30 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-1936-arab-riots

Israel's history from ancient times & timeline : https://www.travelingisrael.com/timeline-land-israel/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=iiUIWnU-Ofk

Second Temple era - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple_period

Forced conversion of Jews across history- https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18mvnct.7?seq=4

If something is wrong, please correct me!

#am yisrael chai #i/p #i/p conflict

[notaplaceofhonour]

An Open Letter Regarding the Holocaust Inversion & Blood Libel of the “Average Pace” Meme:

The person who shared the screenshotted post deleted it after I sent the following message. I truly believe they shared it out of ignorance & not malice; I cannot say the same of OP who created the graphic. I am sharing my deconstruction of its rhetoric & imagery here as a learning opportunity:

Nothing justifies the injustices Palestinians have faced, and what Netanyahu is doing is vile. No country should be above criticism, nor its leaders above condemnation, but this is not that.

What people like OP are doing is weaponizing legitimate atrocities to spread the antisemitic narratives of Holocaust Inversion (an offshoot of Holocaust Revision & Denial that claims “The new Nazis are Jews”) and Blood Libel.

And no, the fact that these libels are made in criticism of Israel does not absolve them of being antisemitic narratives that predate the existence of the State of Israel. As if to hammer in that point, that is not the flag of Israel that the creator of this agitprop decided to equate to the Swastika—that is the Magen David. That’s just the symbol for Judaism.

Worse, to impose the Magen David over images of blood (especially what is implicitly the blood of children) is a direct invocation of Blood Libel, the antisemitic accusation that Jewish leaders thirst for the blood of children. This libel has incited the mass slaughter of Jews since long before the Shoah, and is still being used to this day to incite violence against Jews through Qanon & accusations that Israelis drink & bathe in Palestinian blood.

And if it truly weren’t about the Jewishness of Israel, why would OP pick the Shoah specifically? There have been countless other mass killings in the world, many with much greater resemblance to Israel/Palestine than Jews in Nazi Germany (see: ethnic cleansings in Liberia & India/Pakistan for instance). Meanwhile, the only things The Shoah/WWII and Israel-Palestine have in common is people dying and Jews being present. So why specifically invoke the slaughter of Jews to criticize Israel if it is not about invoking the Jewishness of Israel?

That doesn’t even get into how cherrypicked those numbers are to the point the exact same “average pace” metric could easily be used (and in fact is, by the German far-right) to present the Bombing of Dresden by the Allies—a campaign that killed more than 25,000 German civilians in 72 hours in an area much bigger & less densely populated than Gaza with a fraction of the bombs that Israel has used—as comparable to the death camps.

This rhetoric does not aid Palestinians in any way. In fact it drags the movement down by providing ammunition that can be used to paint all criticism of Israel as antisemitic & give people who just hate Palestinians the casus belli they need to shut it down. The only thing it accomplishes is hurting Jews; it twists the knife in the wounds left in our community, it trivializes the Shoah by universalizing it or presenting it as “the lesser of two evils”, and it incites violence by equating Jews to Nazis.

#antisemitism #shoah #shoah mention #holocaust inversion #i/p #cw nazi imagery #cw hitler’s face #cw ​blood libel #holocaust remembrance #shoah inversion

[rahabs]

the fact that you would defend the israeli government after they’ve murdered 30,000 innocents in the largest bombing campaign in modern history is literally despicable and borderline evil. if a genocide documented ad nauseam cannot make you cognizant of israel’s colonial and deeply racist regime, then literally nothing can and you are beyond reasoning with. actually incredible how multiple history degrees have clearly taught you nothing about how a genocide works — or perhaps more concerningly, they have, and you simply don’t care because the victims are palestinian. the fact that you would use those very history degrees to excuse israel’s genocide of palestinians is deeply disturbing and indicative of the rancid hypocrisy within western academia. history will exonerate the indigenous palestinians, and it will be unkind to those like you who defended and cheered on their annihilation.

It‘s so amazing to me that you actually believe this, and that you‘ve so wholeheartedly swallowed the propaganda Hamas (known for using their own civilians as human shields, known for paying their citizens extra for killing Jews) has been peddling. So I am going to paste here some points others have already made that I‘ve saved over the course of information-gathering, though I doubt you‘ll bother to read or learn, judging from your asinine little comments here.

1) Palestine Gaza is a genocidal nation. The goal of the Palestinian government in Gaza is literally to destroy and commit genocide against Israel and kill every Jew by every means possible. This is literally written in their founding charter. "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.

2) Palestine is an apartheid nation that has ethnically cleansed 100% of their Jews and stole their territory after 1948. There used to be tens of thousands of Jews living in the areas of Judea and Samaria, which was renamed to the West Bank by Jordan. However they've all been ethnically after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and 0 Jews are allowed to live in Palestine today. 3) Palestine is an authoritarian dictatorship both in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas won majority of the votes during an election in 2006, but the Palestinian president simply refused to recognize the results of the election and refused to hand power over to them. This resulted in Hamas siezing power in Gaza, executing hundreds of their political rivals, and they never held another election. Likewise, the leadership in the West Bank also refused to hold any elections and still continue to illegitimately cling to power. Abbas, the president of Palestine had a 4 year term which was supposed to end in 2009. He's still the leader today and has continued to postpone election after election. 4) Palestine supports the outright open murder of innocent civilians. I've already mentioned the charter of the Palestinian government in Gaza above where their goal is to eradicate Israel and genocide Israelis, but the Palestinian government in West Bank is just as horrible. There's the Palestinian Authority Matry Fund where they literally pay a salary / pension to any Palestinians who commmit terrorist attacks against Israelis, be it through stabbings, shootings or suicide bombings, and they've paid out billions so far. The Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs pays monthly cash stipends to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israel.

5) Palestine is horribly corrupt oligarchy. Palestine receives billions from the USA and Europe in aid every single year. Whatever money isn't spent on paying literal terrorists, or on rockets to shoot at Israel ends up going to corrupt Palestinian leaders. Yasser Arafat, the first Palestinian leader, died a billionaire. Abbas the current President is worth $100 million. The Palestinian leaders in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal have an estimated combined wealth of over $10 billion. Meanwhile the combined GDP of Gaza is only about $2.5 billion, meaning these 3 leaders wealth is equal to 4 years of Gaza's GDP. 6) Palestinians have caused wars and instability in every country that they've sought refuge in. In Jordan, Palestinains assasinated the Jordanian king in 1951, then attempted a coup of a the country in 1970. After they failed, they were expelled to Lebanon where they started a civil war with the Christian Maronites. This war lasted 15 years and killed several times more people than the entire Israel-Palestine war (150k died in Lebanon civil war vs 25k in Palestinian-Israeli wars). In Kuwait, the Palestinians supported Saddam as Iraq invaded Kuwait. In Egypt, they've been hit by several bombings by Palestinians. 7) There is no freedom of speech or equality in Palestine Gaza. No equality of sexes, no equality of races, and definitely no queer rights in the entirety of Palestine where you could be killed for the crime of being openly queer. [If you identify as a liberal, there is literally] no reason to support a country where majority of [your] friends would either have severely restricted rights, be treated like objects, or be thrown off a building just for existing.

Let me reiterate: Jews are indigenous to Israel. Jews have existed and lived in what we now call the Israel-Palestine region for thousands of years before the foundation of Islam, and even before the foundation of Christianity. In the game of “which Abrahamic religion came first?” Islam ranks dead last.

Israel as an identity as a people has existed for thousands of years and has been recorded as far back as the Iron Age on:

i) The Mesha Stele;

ii) The Tel Dan Stele;

iii) The Kurkh Monoliths; and (potentially)

iv) The Merneptah Stele.

While scholars have argued over the translations on the Merneptah Stele, the general consensus among historians, classicists, archaeologist, etc, is that it refers to the existence of Israel at the very least as a collective identity that existed at the time, and was called Israel.

They were eventually repeatedly forced out by other powers such as the Romans and many others, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jews had a continuous existence in Israel before being forced out by what people like you would normally call “colonising powers” were it not so contrary to your own ill-supported arguments. It also doesn’t change the fact that Jews, and Israel, existed before both Christianity and Islam, and long, long before Palestine.

So if your entire argument boils down to "who was here first" and the ideas of "colonialism" and "anti-colonialism" and "decolonisation", then I am telling you, Jews were there first. You could argue Canaanite groups like Moabites and Ammonites were there too, but Moabites and Ammonites don't exist as a continuous group anymore. No matter how you look at it, you are wrong, so let me parrot your horrible argument right back at you:

The fact that you would defend Hamas, a known organisation whose founding Charter literally calls for the annihilation of Jews, who have systematically purged Jews for years, who launched multiple attacks against innocent Jewish people (the music festival, the babies and the woman and the children slaughtered), the fact that there's a Palestinian Authority Matry Fund where they literally pay a salary / pension to any Palestinians who commit terrorist attacks against Israelis, be it through stabbings, shootings or suicide bombings, and they've paid out billions so far; the fact that you defend the existence of the Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs which pays monthly cash stipends to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israel, etc... that you would defend this is "literally despicable" and not only outright evil, but ignorant to the nth degree.

If the continuous genocidal nature of Hamas against Israel cannot make you cognizant of Hamas' deeply racist, violence, and terrorist regime (to the point where none of the Muslim countries around them will take Palestinians in; even their fellow Muslim countries want nothing to do with them), then I'm not sure what to tell you. You say I am beyond reasoning, but from where I'm standing, your head is so far up your own ass that I don't even know if you're aware of anything that isn't the smell of your own shit.

It's actually incredible to me how you can ignore what multiple historians and scholars are saying because you want to cling to your idea that Hamas are just a bunch of "poor innocent brown people" who need help from the "evil white Israeli regime". Or perhaps, more "concerningly," that is just it: you hate Israel because you erroneously perceive them as white, and so therefore they must be evil. I don't know, but that is what a lot of anti-Israel sentiment seems to boil down to in the world of people like you.

The fact that you would excuse and ignore Hamas' outright horrific acts and ignore history is deeply disturbing and indicative of the rancid hypocrisy within the west, but particularly within western circles that claim to be "progressive", "liberal", and "leftist."

Hamas has said no to every ceasefire. Hamas has said no to every compromise Israel has offered even before October. If Hamas stops fighting, the war ends. If Israel stops, then Israel is annihilated.

History has already shown that Palestinians are not indigenous if we are playing the "who was there first" game with Israel and Palestine, you're just so ignorant that you will refuse to see the evidence right in front of you. You are the one cheering for the annihilation of an indigenous group, and the one history will frown upon is you.

#antisemitism #Sorry for everyone on my dash who had to read this long reply. #I have sat on this for a month wondering whether to release it. Seriously grappling with everything. But. #Here we go. Will I delete it later? I am not sure. But. #There are too few people willing to speak up on this because they're scared of militant Palestinian supporters. #And truthfully I am scared of them! Militant Palestinian supporters are terrifying and my country has MANY #But this is my line in the sand. I so rarely draw them with political conflicts but this is it for me. #If you support Hamas you are DISGUSTING. #And you cannot divorce the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians have supported and do support Hamas. #People literally cheer for Hamas in the streets here and call for the annihilation of Israel. #Universities defend this shit too (see: the scandal with Penn State and Harvard) #I am so open politically I neither identify as right or left I so rarely truly put my foot down and say #'if you believe this you are disgusting' #But? Yeah. #And maybe I will have a mas exodus of followers now but whatever. #ancient Israel

[perrysoup]

Why did you reblog someone outright admitting that they don't care that Hamas are genocidal terrorists? Why did you feel the need to specifically declare that you don't care about terrorists killing the innocent if you can point to a bigger number and say "well, my thing's worse so there!" If that was how it worked, Gaza wouldn't matter at all because of Ukraine. 30,000's just a drop in the bucket compared to that clusterfuck.

You ignoring the history of Hamas, the oppression of the Palestinian People, and the actions by Israel tell me that you, like me, ignored much of the history in that area.

I recommend looking into Hamas. Look at what the hostages have said. Look at what the people who work with them say.

And then look at the western propaganda we are fed.

A freedom fighter group will never be perfect, despite the fact we want them to be, but comparing a group fighting for a people’s freedom to an army back by the largest western power of the world that actively kill civilians and aid workers is not fair.

War, as long as it exists, has unexpected casualties, and I don’t forgive any of them by the either side. However, they are not the same.

Hamas and Palestine have shown they want to survive. They are invaded. By all right that is should expect, you fight back against the invader and being in stolen land makes you a target whether they intend for you to be one or not.

Hamas recently launched 6 missles into Southern Israel. Do you know how many people were killed? None. How many casualties? None at the time I read. They are an invaded people, they can launch missles back.

Meanwhile Israel regularly kills journalists, civilians, CHILDREN with the intent of killing them. They don’t care. They are the invaders, and they have shown it’s not about defeating a military, it’s about wiping out humanity.

I ask you not treat them as equals, they aren’t.

I ask you look into their history more.

I ask you look into the propaganda you and I and everyone else was fed about them and Palestine as a whole.

We were lied to. It’s okay to admit. It’s okay to say we were fooled.

It’s not okay to refuse to learn, and refuse to be better.

And maybe, you still don’t believe me. And that hurts my heart, but me acting like I jumped on the reality right away would be a lie.

I simply ask you look, withhold your biases, and then make a decision without the pressure on you of “you have to make it right now”

Maybe you won’t agree with me, that will hurt me too. But, I tried, and that’s all I can do. Try, and see if I succeed.

Asalamu Alaikum

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #israel #israel is a terrorist state #genocide #gaza strip #fuck the israeli government #idf is a terrorist group

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Hi Ralph. I hope you’re doing as well as you can be and I thank you for being so patient with all of us.

As someone who’s been involved in social justice movements, organizing etc, how do you deal with confusion, conflicting feelings, and nuance? And how do you handle a potential disagreement with a close friend about it? Also I’m sorry that this is long. I’m thinking out loud and I don’t expect you to answer the questions or even the anon. It’s more to represent my conflicting thoughts and I was wondering how you deal with this kind of thing. Obviously I’m not struggling compared to people there, or the majority of people anywhere, but I thought you might relate, maybe?

My friend (she’s fifty years older and like a grandma to me) is Jewish and supports Israel completely, is a democrat. She’s brilliant, funny, has her phD, has traveled, knows Palestinians, dated one while living in Europe, etc. She said that he believed that members of groups like Hamas cared more about glory and freedom than the health of their people. We were talking about pro-Palestine tweets among Taylor fans. She said she hopes someone like Taylor would come forward supporting Israel and condemning Hamas. I agreed with her aloud even though I don’t agree. How would you deal with this situation?

I’m conflicted about Israel/Palestine. I don’t know if Hamas cares about regular Palestinian lives. I wonder how many Palestinians they thought would die after Israel retaliates. It’s almost as if they’re provoking an even worse humanitarian crisis. But then Israel provoked the creation of Hamas. Im revolted by the excessive bombing and use of white phosphorus. Who I am to judge Hamas, really? But I judge them anyway. I can’t fathom what’s happening to Palestinians.

It’s absolutely understandable that Jews wanted their own country after the Holocaust. I think if the majority of major religions have countries, it’s important that Jews have one too. I don’t think Israel’s an invalid state but I think it’s run by a terrible man and I don’t like much of what they do. It bothers me when people online call it “isntreal.” Aldo I don’t get why they say Israel didn’t exist until 1949 because that land is referred to in the Bible as Israel? Are Israelis and Jews more indigenous to the land than Palestinians if the Jews were there thousands of years ago? How do people declare who’s the most indigenous? Some people think the Jews are taking their land back? Some people think Hamas is a resistance movement? But justification of terrorism is horrifying. It’s not like there was a vote in Palestine to decide whether to attack Israel. If there were, and the majority voted to hurt Israel, Israel would have more justification. But it’s terrifying that Hamas has decided they represent everyone. So many more Palestinians are dying because Hamas gave israel justification to kill more. Israel’s treatment of Gaza will radicalize more young people into joining organizations like Hamas. It’s a disaster.

Iran’s involvement makes me suspicious. I think they want Israel destroyed and don’t care about Palestinians. Why would they care about Palestinians when they murder or arrest women who don’t “properly” cover their hair? But also, the US helped overthrow Iran’s last democratic leader? But also it’s important for israel to exist to have a democratic ally in the Middle East?

I’m 18 and I’m trying to learn everything I can before making judgments. Did you feel conflicted like this when you were younger? Do you still feel like this? I think social media has made it even more confusing. I can’t tell what’s reliable and what’s not. But also, how would someone allegedly live-tweeting from Gaza prove that they’re reliable? Why should they have to? How do you decide what to trust or not trust?

I’m especially worried about American republicans who appear to be supporting Palestine only because Biden supports Israel. I’m worried that young leftists will begin to trust these republicans because they agree with the republicans on one international issue. So many young people supporting Israel are retweeting a man who’s pinned tweet is about how he had a great time chatting with tucker Carlson. That man supports palestine because he wants to prove that Biden is evil or incompetent etc. How does one trust anyone in government ever? I’m worried Biden will lose the 2024 election because of his support for Israel will cost him the support of democrats. And then we’ll end up with someone astronomically worse.

Thank you.

Also just for anyone reading, I listened to this amazing podcast about the history of Israel/Palestine. It was published in September and august of this year so it isn’t colored by the recent events and subsequent/sudden pity for Israel. I like especially the explanation about how Israelis and Palestinians have different names for the same event. It can be the worst day ever or the best day ever, depending on who you are

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2uaV7mS3cTEKITWp7T3JL2?si=aYXRTgRCTJSBXNaHDyH-qw

Thanks so much for your thoughts anon - sending you all the love as you make sense of the world. It took me a long time to figure out what I thought about Israel and Palestine and at times I felt it was too complicated and found the way people talked about Israel stressful, even when I was on Palestinian solidarity protests.

You don't have to have this all figured out to take action. You think the current actions of the Israeli state are terrible - that's enough to take action in solidarity with Palestinians. I really encourage you to do what you can in this week - you don't need to have untangled and resolved everything to take solidarity action.

In terms of the advice you were asking for - my main point is that it's OK that you feel confused and unclear and give yourself time to figure out almost all of this. You will learn more about Israel and Palestine with time. It's OK to take time to figure out how to have friends with people who you disagree with and who pressure you to agree. You will figure out that with time - and my only advice is to give yourself time. The only urgency right now is to take action in solidarity with Palestine - and you can do that with all the confusion and ambiguous feelings you have.

For the rest - rather than trying to respond to everything you say - I'm going to focus on two specific ideas. There are beliefs that seem to underlie what you say and where I understand things very differently. I am offering these alternative ways of understanding the world as a way of showing how I see things. I don't know if they'll speak to where you're coming from or not, but they seemed like a good place to start.

The first is that I don't think religions having countries is a good thing - it's a cause of horrendous oppression and injustice. There are all sorts of examples from history of this idea (the reformation), but I think one particularly good and recent example is the partition of India and the consequences that flow down through till today.

It's easy, I think, for things to be naturalised or talked about as if they are natural - and so when people say oh X is OK because it's an example of Y - there can be a lot of ignorance about Y, which is actually terrible. I think being clear eyed about what ethnic or religious national states are actually like (and have been like) really helps see through some of the false equivalence that goes on with Israel.

You might have seen an anon come back twice and say 'don't you think Jewish people should have a state' and treat this as if the answer was obviously yes. If you understand what it means to say that only this group of people who live in this land should control the state that rules over it, then it becomes very clear why the answer should be no - and that's not a statement about Jewishness, but about the nature of states.

The second is that I disagree with your understanding of indigeneity in a way that is quite important - and might be useful. As you probably know I've spent most my life in New Zealand and that shapes how I see settler colonisation and resistance to it.

There's a simple rendition of the idea of indigeneity - which is the people who have had the longest connection with a particular piece of land are indigenous and therefore should be able to control what happens to it (or the other side where you look back and see who has the longest connection with land to decide who is right) - really quickly unravels and there's lots of the world where it would lead to supporting terrible things.

The alternative is to see that people become indigenous as a result of the process of dispossession through settler colonialism. Before settler colonies there are no indigenous people - there are just people who live places - just like there have been people who lives places all over the world for as long as there have been people

Settler colonisation is a way of controlling land and resources - and it's different from other sorts of imperialism. In the Americas, and later in New Zealand and Australia resources were taken by new societies that were built where people were already living. This was only possible because huge numbers of people were moved to that land on the basis of a promise that they would have access to land that they wouldn't have otherwise (alongside an ideology that the land they are claiming is their right). Settler colonialism is the process of taking over a society by offering people access to resources, particularly land, to move to the new place (in the Americas obviously there was also the forcible movement of enslaved people in addition to settler colonisation, but it is this movement of free people that characterises settler colonisation). It is the combination of offering inducement to move people, and using those people to maintain power, that makes settler colonisation different from other forms of migration. It's only in the face of settler colonialism that people who are living their lives become indigenous people.

That is the sense in which Palestinians are indigenous to the land of Israel - they were dispossessed from their land and homes by people who lived elsewhere and moved with the assistance of the state and the intention to displace them. It's not about the ancient history of who deserves the land in some kind of mystical way - it's about a very specific (and in this case recent) history of intentional dispossession. I think the way that appeals the bible are used to obscure the very recent history is really well captured by Michael Rosen's poem Promised Land.

The final thing I want to say is to respond to your characterisation of that podcast. Because my response to what you said was to think: 'what a great summary of why it's impossible to support the state of Israel'. I don't think mine or anyone else's freedom or liberation can be built through the oppression of others. One of the most basic building blocks of my politics is the idea of solidarity 'an injury to one is an injury to all'. It's not at all unusual for horrors on one people to be a source of triumph for another - but I believe none of us have a chance unless we can build a different sort of world that is based on solidarity as opposed to fighting over scarcity. If a great joy for one people, is a catastrophe for another - it's a really clear sign that that great joy is not something that I can support politically.

#I hope this connected with you anon #and feel free to come back any time #on or off anon #to talk more

[fancifulpurposelesslovely]

I'm gonna... talk about a personal/selfish-feeling angle of the current situation with Palestine.

I converted to Judaism in 2021-2022. I have been officially Jewish for about 21 months, but I spent the previous year studying and practicing and getting to really know this religion and this culture that I am now part of.

From the very beginning of that journey, I have considered the possibility of becoming a rabbi. From the very beginning, where I was still sort of terrified to even admit I really wanted to be Jewish, I had this small dream in the back of my mind of becoming a rabbi to help people and learn jewish law and learn torah and be a guiding presence in people's lives. I still think I'd be pretty good at it.

I've had more than one rabbi of my acquaintance caution me against it for various reasons, I've faced the terror of the fact that I'd almost certainly have to move away from my chosen family for 5 years, I've worried about the cost, and I've worried about the difficulties of learning hebrew this late in life (ah yes from my ripe old age of 29).

Nothing has truly turned me away from that small dream, that hope in the back of my mind that this might be a good and important opportunity. Nothing until now. It's not even the Israeli genocide that has turned me away from the rabbinate because I believe the Jewish people need and deserve leaders in their communities that are anti-Zionist, that are queer, that are trans, that are polyam, that are compassionate and outspoken about injustice. It's the rabbis that I already know that are making this path feel so untenable.

I am friends with a few reform rabbis (specifically USian), and I follow a handful more on social media, and I don't know if I have just been unfortunate in those I have befriended or if this is more prevalent. I have not seen a single reform rabbi that I pay attention to say anything stronger about the genocide than "Let's pray for peace for both sides." I have not seen or heard active, outspoken, public condemnation of the system slaughter and destruction of the Palestinian people or Gaza from a reform rabbi.

These are my friends, my rabbis (from current and previous synagogues), my teachers, my mentors, and people I look up to. One of them sent a link to the congregation mailing list about the Jewish National Fund ("the single largest provider of Zionist programs in the U.S.") conference in Denver next week. One of them is currently in Israel attending the Amplify Israel Rabbinic Fellowship Israel trip, full of conferences and educational opportunities. She keeps posting about how beautiful Israel is, and how heartbreaking it is to speak to the friends and family members of hostages, and about the "PR problem" that Israel has right now. One of them messaged me privately to disagree with how I defined Zionism and denounced it, and privately said "but fuck genocide and settler colonialism", which is not a sentiment I've seen her express publicly.

I don't know if the problem is that they have all been educated at the same rabbinical school, I don't know if they fear for their social positions or actual jobs if they speak out, I don't know if reform Judaism is so thoroughly steeped in white(ish) liberalism that the entire movement is irrevocably zionist. But whatever the problem, the continued utter lack of empathy or speaking out for the grief and horror of the Palestinian people, and the focus on painting the Israeli military decisions and the whole project of Israel in a positive light genuinely makes me sick.

Part of my heart is still interested in being a rabbi and still hopeful that I would be able to be a force for good and change. But a larger part of my heart is angry and tired and disgusted and disillusioned about the position and the reform rabbinical school specifically.

I do not know how to reconcile these disparate feelings atm, or if now is even the time to try. I don't know who to talk to about it because I would usually talk to my rabbis, but I'm scared of how those conversations would go right now. I feel like I should call out or in these people that I have liked and respected for so long, but I'm afraid of that too. (What a privilege that my fears are so small.)

Idk if there's really a point to this, but I needed to write it out somewhere.

#personal #judaism #israel/palestine #rabbi

[anti-ao3]

the first time i heard about the massacre in gaza was in 2008. i distinctly remember the news mentioning a "terrorist" group (not sure if it was hamas back then) causing trouble, and yet all the images and videos i saw were of children being murdered.

imagine an almost eight year old child watching children getting MURDERED on tv (and of course, i remember the grieving adults who lost their homes, their children, everything). and i remember most palestinians only having rocks to defend themselves while israel attacked them with fucking tanks.

i would see all this as a kid, and yet the news would clearly describe this as a "war" between one "terrorist" group and an entire military power aided by the united fucking states and several western countries. israel was "obviously" the victim because palestinians were a bunch of "savages" who wouldn't let israelis live in "their" homeland.

i think i began deconstructing what the western media taught me thanks to school. for one, i learned the united states were behind a lot of atrocities including in latin america (ESPECIALLY the military dictatorship here in brazil). and later i learned more about israel and how they followed the united states' steps by invading other countries as well. so they're definitely NOT the "victims".

and a few years later i finally realized, israel is a colonialist state. just like the indigenous people from what we call brazil that had their land stolen by the portuguese and other europeans, israel stole all that from palestine as well. this has been going on for decades.

the palestinians have resisted and will still resist. but they're not alone. i support palestine and i believe in their freedom. i may not be able to donate or really go to protests right now, but i will continue to share any resources i can.

i stand with palestine and i always will.

#lotus.txt #zionism tw #genocide tw #don't lose hope #they will be free

[witchywitchy]

*on anon cause i give out more specific details of my location than i'd like to be on the internet

hi, i am coming to you with this question in good faith, i genuinely support palestinians and have attended protests and chanted 'from the river to the sea'

I absolutely agree that Israel's history is rooted in colonialism and I can see some of the flaws of the two-state solution.

However, I'm Australian, my country's history is also rooted in colonialism. Our land belongs to the Aboriginal people. but if the indigenous people wanted to completely abolish Australia and instead us Australians became people living in, say for the example of my area, the Eora nation, I'd be a little upset. I've grown up in and lived in Australia all my life, being Australian is a part of my identity. If I could no longer call myself Australian and Australia no longer existed, I'd feel as if a part of myself has been erased.

Australia shares many of the same flaws with Israel. Our past is built on the genocide of the Aboriginal people. So I see a lot of parallels, the main difference I see is just the Israel is more recent.

But I think people have an inherent desire to belong to a group or a nation, and you know I have a desire to belong to the group of Australians, not to have that group not exist anymore and instead be living in the Eora nation which is a group I don't belong to, I'd feel out of place and no longer like I deserve to live there.

And writing this, I recognise that this is definitely what the Indigenous people of Australia and also the Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied land must currently feel, and I guess I don't have a solution...

Would you be able to offer your thoughts?

I understand where you're coming from. As for my thoughts, they unfortunately might not be the solution you're looking for. I grew up watching pieces of Palestinian lands get stolen. I remember the pain I felt seeing the name "Palestine" get replaced by "Israel" on the map. It's not even divided into "Palestine" and "Israel". The name "Palestine" got completely replaced if you see it on google maps for an example. I've also studied for a while now a portion of what Native Americans had to go through, and I'm still studying it and I'll continue to learn about more indigenous groups. I've read about buffalo hunting and it felt reminiscent of what's happening now in Gaza. When I look at things from the point of view of indigenous people everywhere, I acknowledge the pain and loss they have experienced, and in some places today such as the US, still experience.

While I completely understand what you mean, I also want you to acknowledge your privilege, and I am not trying to sound hostile at all. You live in a community that officially has a name, has a nationality, and is recognized officially as a country. You live somewhere where you have an identity, I totally get it. But on the other hand, what you have now, this home and this identity, are things that have been robbed of indigenous people throughout the process of colonization. And keep in mind, some parts of indigenous cultures have been permanently erased and cannot be recovered. And while I understand your feelings towards the matter, I also have to see the point of view of those who truly suffered the loss. I cannot offer a solid solution, and the only thing I can honestly think of is prioritizing the feelings of those who actually suffered the loss and still are. We have to understand that it's their land, their culture, their languages and dialects, and their identity that have experienced more loss than what I believe could happen to current inhabitants (aka non-indigenous).

#witchy asks

[hamswalkerpresentationgroup6]

May Mayor: Work Log

I was assigned the role of explaining and describing what is happening in the scene painted by Solomon. I spent a lot of time familiarising myself with the bible story behind the painting in order to get a better understanding of the scene, in which I’ve learned that Samson was a Nazirite, someone chosen by the lord that abstains from cutting their hair and drinking alcohol. He was born of a woman that was infertile until one of the Lord’s angels blessed her with a child, being Samson.�� 

His strength enabled him to tear apart a lion barehanded, tear Gaza’s city gate out and carry it up a hill, kill a thousand men with the jaw of a donkey, escape multiple attempts of being captured and eventually, despite his blindness, bring down the temple he was inside killing him and many more Philistines than when he had lived.  

There is contest on whether or not Delilah was a Philistine, however once Samson falls in love with her she is approached by Philistine officials who offer to pay her 1100 silver shekels each if she aids in his capture – which she agrees to. After multiple failed attempts at Samson’s capture, due to him initially lying to Delilah about what subdues his strength, he eventually gives in after her constant nagging. It is that night she cuts his hair off and the captors finally restrain him, which is what the painting is depicting.  

Reading into this story was interesting - death and war in the name of religion has always been a frightening concept to me due to not personally believing in any religion or the idols, deities and gods that come with that territory. The thought of millions of people in ancient and modern history losing their lives over a concept created thousands of years prior is hard to comprehend, despite it being the basis for many conflicts we still see today.  

During my research into the story behind Samson and Delilah, I’ve really enjoyed learning about the conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines to further understand the context and scene depicted in Solomon’s artwork. Whether or not you believe in the stories from the bible or the characters within, the conflicts between the Israelites and the Philistines did occur.  

The Philistines had occupied modern day Palestine (then known as Canaan) since migrating from the Aegean Sea in the 11th century BCE which was an area we know now as modern day Greece. They are often described as being one of, if not the most advanced civilisations at the time before clashes with the Israelites, Neo-Assyrians and Babylonians. It is generally accepted that the Babylonian conquest in the 7th century BCE was the final blow the Philistines and their culture faced before fading into obscurity.  

It has been interesting, and quite relevant in today's politics, to only read materials on these civilizations that are unbiased towards Judaism and ancient religion, and instead focus on the societies alone that have been studied, excavated and recorded not under the field of religious text but archaeology-based history. Whilst the history of these feuding civilisations and my tangent is not exactly relevant to this 19th century biblical painting, I likely would not have jumped into this rabbit hole had we not studied it, hence writing about it for the blog. 

[liquorisce]

so many thoughts (don’t click on this if you don’t want to read anything to do with current world affairs and politics)

recently i tried my hand cosplaying as makima at comic con. i had a blast, took pics with a lot of cosplayers, enjoyed the nerd central vibes. but.

it felt strange posting about comic con or being at a cute cafe and taking selfies when different parts of the world are at war. i couldn’t stop thinking about it. i still cannot. when i am at work i think about it, when i eat food i think about it, when i sit to write, i think about it.

when i was at cc listening to people i came with spout shockingly transphobic comments about cosplayers, i thought to myself: why did i do this? why am i spending time with people who cannot appreciate different forms of humanity? why didn’t i just go to the protest instead? — i felt a sense of disgust at the choices i made, the things i decided to spend my time on instead of the moral choice.

some time back when i was feeling contemplative about aot i read the wretched of the earth by frantz fanon. his works are a brutal philosophical look into the process of decolonisation. when i read it i was teeming with emotion: i related it to my country’s historical background and aot. aot is fiction and my country’s struggle for independence was in the past. (i am not relating the two things in importance or magnitude in anyway, that would be idiotic) now i revisited his texts and i only feel hopelessness. when i started reading it, i was reading about a fight-back, a chance at a surviving population, the possibility of survival and victory against occupation. now with every sliver of news that comes in, that possibility feels more and more remote.

i also spent my time reading about the occupation and decades of war crimes committed in palestine, and now i am a little more educated than yesterday. but i have no idea what to do with this education. people more knowledgeable than me, people from the region are talking about it. i amplify it. what else can i do? i found links to donate food. but i don’t know if food is reaching the people of gaza bc there is a blockade. from a place of privilege, the experience of watching a genocide take place is terribly sobering and makes me realise the helplessness of the individual.

back home the legal authority decided not to rule in favour of same sex marriage and has left it open to the whims of the heavily religious-right-leaning parliament. i left home to escape the bleak and oppressive politics of a developing nation. i thought being in a developed nation would mean i would be amongst a developed sense of progressivism. but i was wrong. here people only progress in the direction of what serves them. here there is a largely homogenous population that dislikes diversity unless it is to exploit them and get rich off their backs. today they stand with colonisers because that’s what they know, that’s what brought them development. (at the cost of others)

recently a teenager on twt was dogpiled on for calling the war a hot button social issue. this irritates me greatly. there is so much we can learn but time is spent on this. that girl could have chosen not to speak and read a book instead. what is the point in saying new things if you have nothing useful to add? repost information that you believe in instead. thousands of people chose to amplify that instead of posting links to donate to people in need. the only way i rationalise this is that all of us privileged people fighting internet wars are incapable of doing anything real and substantial so we engage in our own wars of morality. it feels useless, it probably is useless.

there is no real point to this rant. i feel distressed, but there are others who feel much worse at this moment. my thoughts are with them.

#personal

[nevermindirah]

Non-Jewish friends, y’all might be wondering right now: Israel is doing clearly unacceptable shit to Palestinians. So, why are some Jews ardent Zionists, and why do some Jews seem to feel personally attacked by criticism of Israel?

A lot of (non-Palestinian) non-Jews have asked me where I stand on Israel/Palestine over the years, apropos of nothing, just because I’m Jewish. For the longest time I felt so stuck because I just didn’t know much about Israel/Palestine and what little I did know turned out to be largely misinformation and I felt so much pressure to say The Correct Thing That All Jews Should Say About This Issue. Obviously the violence Israel is committing against Palestinians is horrific and the interpersonal weirdness individual Jews might experience as people discuss Israel’s horrific violence doesn’t compare. I’m making this post as a small supplement to the important conversations going on about what Israel is doing to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian refugees and their descendants living outside land Israel controls. I’m making this post because non-Jews might be feeling confused by conflicting messages about Zionism as either settler colonialism or Jewish self-determination. It sucks feeling like you have to choose only one oppressed group or another. It’s possible to support Palestinian liberation and Jewish liberation at the same time! Here’s some context that might help.

Palestinian friends will probably want to ignore this post, y’all shouldn’t have to deal with your oppressors’ feelings, and especially not right now.

Zionism is the ideology behind the devastating violence Israel is committing against Palestinians right now and has been committing against Palestinians since 1947-48. It’s heartbreaking and messy to talk about this reality, because Zionism originated as a strategy to protect Jews from antisemitism.

Any oppressed group can turn into oppressors under enough pressure, because humans are flawed. Jews fleeing antisemitism turning into Israelis ethnically cleansing Palestinians happened because Zionism is profoundly influenced by its time and place of origin: 19th century Europe.

Europe invented antisemitism, and basically every European country has done at least one very very bad structural antisemitism, like expelling all the country's Jews (the monarch and/or the church then stole all the wealth the expelled people had to leave behind), looking the other way when peasants murdered a bunch of Jews as an outlet for their frustration with the actual (non-Jewish) ruling class, banning Jews from owning property or holding certain jobs or being members of guilds etc, and of course the big horrific state-sponsored mass-murder operations the Inquisition and the Holocaust. From the 1790s through the 19th century different European governments emancipated their Jews, ie removed legal barriers to full citizenship and economic participation. But this didn't end antisemitism. Just like the legal improvements of the 19th and 20th centuries didn't end antiblackness in the United States.

Also happening in this time: nationalism swept Europe. From the French Revolution through the end of World War I, Europe’s predominant form of government transformed from multiethnic empires to nation-states, countries led by and for a particular ethnic group.

So this Austro-Hungarian dude Theodor Herzl came up with this idea for Jewish nationalism. Every other European ethnic group is getting their own country, so why not Jews? Maybe this is the solution to antisemitism! Maybe we’ll finally be safe if we just all move en masse out of Europe to a place that will take all of us and never expel us!

But also also happening in Europe and around the world in this time: European imperialism and white supremacist settler colonialism. Chattel slavery saw its height and then its end (legally, at least) during this era, but white supremacy entrenched itself across the planet in post-slavery economic practices and cultural imperialism as well as national and international laws.

I believe countries have a moral obligation to take in as many refugees as they can squeeze in. International law protecting refugees has evolved a lot over the past century, but we’re still devastatingly far from every refugee getting a safe place to call home, and the main reason for that is white supremacy. The Biden administration didn’t undo the Trump administration’s horrifically low cap on refugees until like last week and it’s because Democratic party leaders treat centrist white people as more valuable voters than the huge and growing numbers of people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, unmarried women, and working class people who want to vote for elected leaders who get that nobody’s free until we’re all free. Ahem. Back to the topic at hand, the US and many other countries turned away untold numbers of refugees fleeing the fucking Holocaust, so odds are slim they’d be more welcoming in less desperate times. Moving from places where Jews are an unwanted minority to places where Jews are still a minority and either still unwanted or little understood and unlikely to win revolutionary levels of support from a largely non-Jewish public seems like a bad plan.

In the mid to late 19th century, lots of Jews took the kernel of Zionism and ran with it in different directions. Maybe this ideology could mean Jewish cultural flourishing alongside stronger political/economic integration into the societies where we’re already living! Maybe it could mean a particular kind of socialism that advocates for the liberation of Jews both as Jews and as workers! Maybe it could mean a revitalization of Jewish religious practice both in Jerusalem where we have important heritage sites and everywhere we live across the world!

Eventually Herzl’s vision of Zionism won out over the others: Jewish nationalism in the sense of a Jewish nation-state, a country that has a Jewish demographic majority and/or that legally privileges Jews over non-Jews.

Problem is, if you want to do that, you have to find a piece of land on which to do it, and Earth was already a pretty crowded place a hundred years ago. Many locations were considered, and the one that ended up winning that debate was Palestine. Where a shit ton of people, mostly non-Jews, were already living. They were forming their own nationalist movement at the time: in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire they began to organize for local self-determination in Palestine.

The Herzl types who developed Zionism as an ideology and built institutions to advocate for and create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine were a small subset of European Jews, mostly men, mostly with significant economic privilege within what Jews were able to achieve in their particular societies at the time. They were just as Orientalist as the non-Jews around them, just as antiblack, just as racist generally for all that Jews were (and sometimes still are) considered non-white in much of Europe. They had a cool idea (put a lot of effort into something that could protect Jews from antisemitism) floating in a bathtub full of shit, and they did practically nothing to protect the cool idea from absorbing that shit. Results of this include thinking about the millions of people already living in Palestine as if they were either like the rocks and the trees that will go with the flow and accept a new ruling class, or indistinct Arabs who would just leave for other Arab countries because what could be the difference — in the staggeringly small amount of time they considered the existing residents of Palestine at all.

This racist hand-waving extended to Zionist leaders’ attitudes about Jews outside Europe as well. White Jews in settler colonies like the US were largely anti-Zionist at the time (not wanting their own countries to accuse them of dual loyalty was a common reason) but European Zionist leaders took what help they could get from Jews in the US, South Africa, Australia, etc. Jews across the Middle East and North Africa, however, barely heard from Zionist leaders about any of this until Zionist militias had removed enough Palestinians from the land and it was time to repopulate it with whichever Jewish bodies were convenient. You might have heard "all the Arab countries expelled their Jews in 1948" but lots of first-person accounts tell a different story of Israel coercing Jews who’d lived securely for a long time in places like Morocco to immigrate to Israel and then confiscating their passports and forcing them to live on less-fertile land with fewer resources while serving as a buffer between Palestinians and European Jewish immigrants. Ella Shohat is the best-known writer on Israeli racism against non-European Jews and I strongly recommend Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Perspective of Its Jewish Victims as a starting point to learn more about this.

Which brings us to today. We still haven’t eradicated antisemitism, several European governments that did a lot of structural antisemitism they still haven’t made meaningful reparations for get to feel good about themselves for “giving the Jews a state” as if carving up the former Ottoman Empire was up to them and not the people who lived there, and millions of people across the world who previously either lived peacefully enough alongside Jews or hadn’t really thought about us much at all now have very valid reasons to be pissed at this country that claims it represents all of us.

Zionism was supposed to protect Jews from antisemitism. And Israel has saved Jewish lives! But if we hadn’t sunk the past 70+ years into an ethnostate we could’ve been putting that energy into other political and economic activity to create adequate international support for refugees while we work on ending root causes of refugee crises, like antisemitism, racism, climate change, and capitalism. Meanwhile Zionism has killed, maimed, incarcerated, stolen from, traumatized, and erased the history of millions of Palestinians just because they happened to be living on land that some dudes who had a lot more in common with Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump than with you or me decided needed to be cleansed for a Jewish ethnostate.

White nationalists in the US love Israel because they want American Jews to go away. Fascist leaders across Europe love Israel for the same reason, so much so that Israel’s prime minister is buddy-buddy with Trump and the equivalent shitstains of several European far-right parties. And I don’t know what it’s like in other white supremacist countries that are close allies of Israel, but the overwhelming majority of Zionist lobbying that pushes the US to give so much aid to Israel comes from Evangelical Christians, because they believe all the Jews have to be in the Holy Land for Jesus to come back. No thanks.

This whole thing fucking sucks. Jews and Palestinians, like all human beings, deserve to be free. Many Jews are understandably afraid of what might happen next if Israel decided to give up on ethnonationalism, allow Palestinian refugees to return, make reparations, and establish a pluralistic democracy that represents and protects all its residents — will some Palestinians murder Jews in revenge? That’s genuinely fucking scary. And it’s genuinely fucking scary to be a Palestinian in Israel/Palestine, and has been for over 70 years. We’ve gotta do something different. I say that as a white person sitting on land stolen from Piscataway people who has thought in detail about what portion of my income would be reasonable for my government to tax in order to fund reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.

Ok. One final piece of context before I wrap this up.

Most Jewish institutions in the US are explicitly Zionist, teach children that Zionism is THE way to ensure Jewish safety, and increasingly tell non-Zionist Jews that we're unwelcome or even that we’re not “real” Jews. This comes in a context where it’s only been 76 years since the latest and most gruesome of several attempts to wipe our entire people off the face of the planet. If you grew up in that environment, you, too, might be jumpy about even hearing the words Zionism or Israel, let alone considering the devastation this ideology and country have caused Palestinians.

Jews have a right to exist. Jews have a millennia-old connection to this scrap of land in the Levant, and we have a right to access religiously and culturally important geographic landmarks. What we don't have a right to is murdering or expelling other people in order to make an ethnostate, on that land or any other. Zionism is settler colonialism, but it’s settler colonialism by and for people who have a valid need for protection from structural antisemitism, which means that it’s going to take a lot of messy empathy to undo. The members of my extended family who voted for Trump (non-Jews in my case, though Jared Kushner isn’t the only Jewish Trumpite) are afraid that ending white supremacy will demote them from a privileged class to equal footing with everyone else — that’s the kind of fear individuals work on in therapy, not the kind that’s reasonable for a whole society to prevent from happening. I and millions of Jews do deserve for whole societies to work hard to end antisemitism.

I would never and will never ask a Palestinian to gently request their liberation. But if you’re not Palestinian, and you’ve got a little extra empathy to spare this week, I ask you to remember what I’ve shared here when interacting with Jews about Israel/Palestine.

If you’re a fellow Jew reading this and you feel like Israel is the only way to guarantee our safety, all I ask of you is to sit with the idea that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is too high a cost for safety that’s still not guaranteed, and start to imagine real-world ways we can protect our people from antisemitism without an ethnostate.

I made this post for people who know me (or know of me I guess?) in Old Guard and Cap fandom, despite my better judgment, because talking about Jewish Booker and Jewish Bucky and Jewish Natasha makes me so happy and I think some of the people I love on these characters with might appreciate this perspective. I didn’t provide any links in this post on purpose (to decrease its usefulness, so fewer people will reblog it) because the risk of anon hate when talking about Zionism outside my immediate fandom circles is so high. You’re welcome to reblog this post if you find it helpful! Unless you’re not within a few concentric circles of me, in which case, maybe don’t? If seeing this post makes you want to send me anon hate, no need: many people who share your perspective have already done so on Twitter.

Reliable sources on all this info are a few googles away, and I apologize for the things I know I oversimplified as well as any things I might have misremembered. I’m an American who’s never lived in Israel/Palestine who is posting this on my fandom blog.

TL;DR: This is a short ‘n pithy post about the same idea.

TL;DR, fandom edition: The shortest distillation of this anti-Zionist Jew’s feelings on the matter can be found in segment 4 of Five Times Booker Got Wasted on Purim and One Time He Didn’t.

#palestinian liberation #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really want to talk about it #and yet #here we are #long post #mine #antisemitism #settler colonialism #racism #european imperialism #genocide cw

[nogunsjustrosess]

Israel 'defending itself' is a laughable phrase when they have all the military power and technology and respond to whatever attacks Palestinians initiate with homemade rockets and rocks tenfold with more civilian deaths. they wouldn't have to defend themselves if they weren't occupying palestinian land and brutally suppressing its people. the fixation on Hamas which was created YEARS into the conflict, long after Israel had already been perpetrating war crimes, is just a way to deflect from the reality that Israel is a colonial project that is killing Palestinian babies in the name of self defense. consider why you want to justify IDF soldiers shooting at people who are running away from them, surrendering. these people live in a prison. they have no clean air or water. Israel controls everything - their electricity, their sewage systems, controls where they come and go. they have no freedoms. it is not even a remotely comparable situation. Israel has ALL the power, Palestine has NONE.

I will answer you thoroughly because I want you to take the time and read this response, there are MANY incorrections and misconceptions here that I hope are the results of being simply misinformed and not something way worse.

not gonna flood your feed so I’m putting everything under the tag. 

“Israel 'defending itself' is a laughable phrase when they have all the military power and technology and respond to whatever attacks Palestinians initiate with homemade rockets and rocks tenfold with more civilian deaths.”

 The asymmetry you’re talking about - tech and military wise - being your justification as to why Israel just has to endure ‘homemade rockets and rocks’  is fucked up. First of all, these are NOT just homemade rockets. 

Hamas has multiple types of rockets - and let me tell you - they are NOT homemade. Hamas is the third wealthiest terror organisation according to forbes. They receive money from Qatar and Jordan, as well as many other countries that think they fund help for the Palestinian. They don’t, Hamas uses all that money to launch thousands of top notch rockets and missiles to Israel, instead of helping the people of Gaza. Do you think homemade rockets look like this? do you think they can do this? maybe this? 

this?

or that? 

I wrote about the rocks Palestinians throw at soldiers and civilians here,  last week, an Israeli Jewish man was beaten to death and murdered by rocks in Lod by radical Israeli Arabs who identify as Palestinians. This is only the most recent occurrence - but it happens all the time and poses a serious life threat since the rocks thrown aren’t cute little beach stone, they’re big chunks of rock meant to kill, and using them as weapons is illegal in multiple countries around the world because of how dangerous it is. 

Gaza has more civilian deaths, that’s for sure. Again asymmetry that raises the brutal question - why there aren’t more Israeli people dying? Now, Israel does have a better system and way better protective measures against missiles and rockets. Do you want to know why? Israel invests millions in shelters, protective spaces and most of all - the Iron Dome. Hamas invests the same amounts of money in arming itself with missiles they launch at Israeli civilians (Jewish, Arab and Christians). Also, Hamas launches missiles and rockets from civilian areas so when they malfunction they also blow up around the same areas. 

“they wouldn't have to defend themselves if they weren't occupying palestinian land and brutally suppressing its people.”

Do you realize that they wouldn’t have to ‘defend themselves’ if they weren’t shooting at Israel in the first place? They are NOT defending themselves, Hamas has been continually sending missiles to Israel with no regard to human lives - not Israel’s nor theirs. Also, Israel has withdrawn all its settlements in 2005 with the exception of some parts in the Gaza strip, so not so much for your occupation, unless you believe the entire land of Israel is an occupation, and in that case - you’re historically incorrect. 

“the fixation on Hamas which was created YEARS into the conflict, long after Israel had already been perpetrating war crimes”

The ‘fixation’ on Hamas is the direct result of the pure fact they are actively trying to MURDER Israeli civilians every single day. You are correct by saying the conflict is way older than Hamas and way more complicated than them (you see, that’s why you DON’T get your info from infographics folks) but before Hamas there was the terror organisation Hezbollah from Lebanon (that very recently decided to join the party and fire missiles from the northern border to Israel as well), the Muslim Brotherhood and of course, ISIS. They are the terror organisations that continuously try to wipe Israel and everybody in it for good, committing endless war crimes. You all shout war crimes when Israel is the only country trying to minimise and prevent the harm done to Palestinians, often on its own expanse - like here, yesterday Israel tried to ship some resources to Gaza but the shipments were attacked by Palestinians. 

“a way to deflect from the reality that Israel is a colonial project that is killing Palestinian babies in the name of self defense.”

You guys love that argument - Israel killing Palestinian babies. Well here and here you can see well planned attacks on Hamas HQ and offices that were called off last minute because it was revealed civilians and children were present. This is something the army tries to avoid at all cost, even if it means losing millions, as well as months and sometimes years of intelligence gathering. That’s because Israel values human lives more than anything! Every possible effort to eliminate the threat to innocent lives WILL be made on the expense of anything. Except, Hamas doesn’t play by those rules, they have been known to deliberately hide Intelligence HQ, offices, and even high level terrorist amongst civilians, as well as schools, hospitals - and our newest example - news buildings. Putting human lives in danger because they use Israel’s refusal to kill civilians as an advantage. Unfortunately, that also means many time Israel doesn’t know about the presence of civilians there and horrible deaths happen. That’s very much on Hamas. 

“is just consider why you want to justify IDF soldiers shooting at people who are running away from them, surrendering. these people live in a prison.”

Listen, IDF soldiers are rarely allowed to shoot anyone - most of them don’t even carry any weapons but pepper spray. But the ones who do suffer very severe consequences if they misuse their weapons and they need to justify themselves in a court marshall . For example a couple of years ago a 19 years old soldier shot a terrorist that tried to stab his friend, he went through multiple court marshalls and even a civil trial, as well as months in prison. Believe me, this is not something any soldier would want to go trough unless their life was in grave danger and they had to shoot. (maybe America could learn a thing or too).

“they have no clean air or water. Israel controls everything - their electricity, their sewage systems, controls where they come and go. they have no freedoms. it is not even a remotely comparable situation. Israel has ALL the power, Palestine has NONE.”

Lastly, please do your research. First of all, Gaza is currently controlled by Hamas. And has been since its election almost 15 years ago. They control the resources Palestinians get or don’t get, and again - they choose to spend the billions they get in funds by buying missiles and weapons. The only thing Israel truly controls is the border with Israel, and like any other border it’s monitored and controlled, especially since it’s a favoured place for terrorist to execute attacks. Don’t forget there’s a border with Egypt as well. 

We’re not talking about Israel vs Palestinians. We’re talking about Israel vs Hamas - a blood thirsty, antisemitic terror organisation that has no value for human lives whatsoever. And still, Israel is the one who gets blamed and condemned.  

(and i have to thank @mysteryspotillusions because she did such a great job and I link to her posts several times!) 

#zionism #israel #free palestine #anon