#Peace in Middle East

[redvelvetwishtree]

[yhebrew]

Shevat - month of Horsemen Removing Peace

Gaza War is God's War called Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah. What is it... Who really started it?

OCTOBER 7, 2023 – TISHRI 22 5784 EPHRAIM – Early Gaza Slaughter Began SABBATH TORAH PORTION Deuteronomy 32:2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender grass, and as the showers upon the herb. What is prayed for every Sukkot? Hosea 6:3 And let us know, eagerly strive to know the LORD, His going forth is sure as the morning, and He…

[secularreverend]

A Buddhist response to the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

October 13th, 2023

Dear Friends of the International Plum Village Community,

Our hearts are breaking as we witness the horrific violence that is being unleashed in many parts of the world and most recently in the Middle East: in Israel and in Gaza. We know that both Palestinians and Israelis are our siblings—our brothers, sisters, children, our family—who are being killed, and who are driven to kill. In an atmosphere of violence, accusation and retaliation, we have a tendency to dehumanize the other. Once anger, fear, and suspicion take over, it seems like there is nothing to do besides kill or be killed.

Today we shed tears as we witness our Israeli and Palestinian siblings dying, sustaining severe injuries—both psychological and physical—and losing loved ones in the hate-fueled attacks of the very few. Violence can only lead to more violence and diminish any possibility of dialogue and reconciliation—unless we go deeply within ourselves to see that human beings are not our enemy. We need a coalition of wise and courageous people—in Gaza, West Bank, Israel and in the international community—who refuse to give in to this hate: a non-violent army. It is time for violence in all its many forms to end in the Holy Land.

With compassion, love, and wisdom in our hearts we can make ourselves available to listen deeply to the cries of those now in Gaza and Israel and elsewhere in the world—the cries of those undergoing the deep mental crisis of being trapped in a conflict zone, who are looking to keep their love strong in the midst of this horror. We need to lend them our strength. We all need to go beyond the delusive and destructive idea that we are separate from each other.

Let us create islands of non-violence and peace in our hearts, in our homes and beyond, via email, phone and video. Let us live every moment seeing those we think of as the enemy as not separate from ourselves—as our own blood, skin and bones—and let us not allow hatred to take over. Let us come back and take care of our feelings with calm and clarity, holding our sadness, fear, anger, and despair and resist the temptation to blame, punish, and have to choose a side.

This meditation may be challenging at this moment but it is what we as a collective need now in order to awaken from the madness and destruction. Revenge and punishment cannot be the answer. Join us to generate this imperturbable compassion in your own heart, and radiate it out in every direction to our siblings experiencing great loss, fear and pain in this moment. The war is complex and difficult to stop, but it is also impermanent. Its cessation now depends on our capacity, as human beings, to listen deeply, resist polarization and discrimination, and take concrete steps towards lasting reconciliation with love in our hearts. Love, compassion, and courage need to have a place in politics.

With love for all beings suffering in the hell of war,

The Plum Village International Monastic Community

[liberty1776]

I don't know what you were told but Christian Arab Palestinians (like my family) exist and are as oppressed as Muslims Palestinians. Religion is not the core of the issue. Settler colonialism, land theft and racism are the core.

I realize that. But I still believe that if both sides could accept the truth there would be more harmony in the region. I know that in history Christians have been involved with land theft and racism, true in both America and South Africa but when Christians do these things it is going against their faith not part of it.

[luminalunii97]

It's never felt more like a 'Fuck western lefties' time for Iranians than now! My people are struggling socially and economically under the rule of a fascist dictator terrorist regime, getting beaten, murdered and silenced by a corrupt government, that is vastly unpopular, day in day out. Now we're at the brink of a costly war on top of everything. And western left wingers are CHEERING ON THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC! Twitter and Instagram are full of dumb westerners acting like the IR is some kind of hero here. Fuckin hell. Two terrorist regimes are going at each other, the result is going to be more misery and civilian deaths. More destruction and casualties. There's nothing to cheer for here.

I can just hope this won't escalate into another humanitarian crisis. God knows the world doesn't need more war and loss of innocent lives right now.

[reasonsforhope]

Where can I find Free Palestine protests and Ceasefire protests?

A super international and continually updated list of actions can be found at Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network's:

Calendar of Resistance for Palestine 2024

They list events by date, then alphabetically by country, then by city - and it's common for them to have dozens of actions listed for a single date, especially on the weekends.

The United States especially often has 40+ events on a single day, especially on the weekends.

Events are posted with links to the event info posted by whoever's hosting the vast majority of the time.

Look blow the read-more for a list of many of the countries that have been on this protest calendar, in alphabetical order, since I know so many websites/lists of actions are country-specific

*Obviously this isn't the only good source of listings for protest events - there are many others. This is by far the biggest/most international roundup I've found, though, so I started with this. If you know another good place for finding ceasefire protests/events, please feel free to add it in the notes, bc I'm planning to put a bigger roundup together once I find enough other sites

Countries that Samidoun has listed/does list protests for include (in alphabetical order):

North America:

United States

Canada

Mexico

Puerto Rico (listed separately in anti-colonial solidarity)

Hawai'i (listed separately in anti-colonial solidarity)

Europe:

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Denmark

England

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Iceland

Ireland

Italy

Netherlands

Norway

Portugal

Romania

Scotland

Serbia

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Wales

SWANA Region (Southwest Asia/North Africa)*:

Bahrain

Iraq

Jordan

Kuwait

Lebanon

Palestine

Tunisia

Turkiye (Turkey)

*Samidoun notes that "We know that these events are mainly international and that the Arab people are marching everywhere for Palestine – we will be honored to add more Arab events whenever we are informed!"

Asia:

Bangladesh

India

Indonesia

Japan

Malaysia

Maldives

Pakistan

South Korea

Africa:

Kenya

Mauritius

Nigeria

South Africa

Tanzania

Tunisia

*Duplicating North African countries (well, Tunisia) here from the SWANA list btw

South America:

Brazil

Colombia

Chile

Peru

Venezuela

Australia and Oceania:

Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Australia

[occvltswim]

[kurdistania]

Do Palestinian children have dreams?

— Ramsey Nasr, Dutch writer

[cooki3face]

My sister said something to me earlier today that further solidified the idea that generations before mine have been constantly made to feel intimidated or afraid of this government and the horrible people who work for it and push its agendas. “They’re watching your social media if you’re not careful about what you say they won’t allow you to get a job or be successful.” Is one of the main things they’ve taught my sisters generation. I told her that you couldn’t intimidate a generation of people who’ve never had this countries protection, care, or protection. I couldn’t give a fuck less if I’m being completely honest with you right now. There’s absolutely nothing this country or the people in it could threaten me with in order to make me shut the fuck up about what they’re doing and the shitty choices they’ve made as a collective. You’ve told generations of Americans that if they don’t shut up and submit to what you’re doing and pushing that their family members would need to move into a state of fear and be afraid for them and that they should be afraid for their livelihoods, their success and their ability to create and build foundations for themselves and it’s about time people get to hear that loud and clear. The fear mongering and the oppression and the silencing of people in this world has got to stop and you only stop cycles of behavior by no longer participating them and changing the way that you behave and react.

They’re trying to make your children uneducated and ignorant by stopping the creation of educational television programs and creating shows and media meant for them that start fucking with their minds from an early age, our teachers are severely underpaid, the curriculum in schools is lacking, they pass laws to take race theory out of the curriculum and stop teaching about the history and oppression of people of color. They ban and attempt to sell apps to American companies so that they can better censor the content that over 1 billion people are consuming every single day that has allowed the truth to spread faster than lies for the first time since this country was founded.

You fucked up letting our generations students with progressive and out of the box ideas into Ivy Leagues to climb your elitist ladder and subjecting generations of individuals to generational trauma and oppression. People have been waiting over forty years for this generation to come into existence. We’re here now. It’s too late.

[sunbeamedskies]

Please do real research before you participate in the Blockout. There are celebrities that I’ve seen be on lists who have spoken up for Gaza, like Selena Gomez, who seem to only be on those lists because they’ve also spoken up for the Israeli hostages. Gen Z and millennials always make fun of boomers for blindly believing things, yet many do little to no research when something like this gets popular. Advocating for Palestine is not antisemitic, but when you start blocking people because they also advocate for Israelis, it is. Also see if the people who you don’t block have spoken up about the many other wars going on that don’t get much attention, like Sudan and the Congo, and ask them to do more

[mysharona1987]

Dear God, Israeli officials accomplishing what 5 years of not stop glowing and positive publicity (and trashing Harry and Meghan) from the British press never did.

Making Prince William appear likeable and sympathetic.

[nigesakis]

If you wanna spread awareness in Germany, you can print and paste this flyer! Please reblog/share/retweet on Twitter or Instagram; here's the PDF! translation below

[anchorsnreignbows]

X

[eternal-echoes]

Ordinary Palestinians want to build a prosperous, functioning society. Hamas, in its obsession with annihilating Israel, doesn't care about that. It wishes only to bring about a genocidal Islamist dystopia. It is Hamas, after all, that holds Palestinians hostage in Gaza, setting up military installations in — and launching rockets from — civilian areas in the full knowledge that counterstrikes will kill innocent people. It is Hamas that impoverishes Palestinians by stealing humanitarian aid to fund its terror. This is what 'by any means necessary' truly signifies: supreme callousness towards Palestinian life. If you genuinely want to see peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or more generally between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East, then Hamas should be your enemy. And even if — like many in the West, as we can now see — you don't care at all about Israeli or Jewish lives, even if you care only about the lives of Palestinians, Hamas is still your enemy. After all, Hamas ruthlessly persecutes any Palestinians who disagree with it: a 2022 U.S. State Department report found that, among other abuses, Hamas detained and assaulted critical journalists. It is especially hostile to public figures associated with its rival Fatah, the Palestinian party voted out of office in Gaza in 2006, but which still runs the West Bank. Hamas harasses its own dissidents, and has invaded the home of at least one young critical activist, telling his parents to keep their son under control — or else. As a Dutch MP in 2004 and 2005, I travelled to the West Bank and met Palestinians. In public, they spouted all the usual lines about Israel being their 'oppressor'. But once the cameras were switched off, they spoke more truthfully. They complained bitterly about their treatment by Hamas and other radical groups, and told me how money meant to feed the people was being taken to fund those organisations' activities and their leaders' luxurious lifestyles. Arabs and Palestinians alike told me how fed up they were with conflict, and how ready they were for peace. Hamas, like other Islamist groups, has done its best over the course of decades to stomp all over those wishes. And it has been successful. The shocking rise in anti-Semitism in the West owes much to the entrenched Islamist networks that have spent years stirring up this ancient hatred. Europe must now wake up to these fifth columnists who shamelessly celebrate violence and bigotry, promoting hatred of the Jewish minority in Europe. The West must also wake up to the moral corruption of its own Hamas supporters, from Left-wing university students to flag-waving street thugs. Meanwhile, elite human-rights organisations need to do far more to name terrorism when they see it. It is horrifying to see Amnesty International claiming that one of the 'root causes' of the crisis is 'Israel's system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians'. Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, should do more than merely equivocating in its insistence that no injustice can justify another. This is not to argue that Israel should be immune from criticism. My point is that much of the criticism is at best misguided and at worst thinly veiled anti-Semitism. Hamas, like Lebanon's Hezbollah, Isis in Syria and Iraq, Nigeria's Boko Haram, Somalia's Al-Shabaab and several other groups, are fighting not for the liberty and prosperity of Muslims but, ultimately, for the annihilation of Israel and the imposition of an Islamic state. If Palestinians and other Muslims have to suffer for that aim, then so be it.

Full article

The emphasis are mine.

[mmccubbing]

I unapologetically support the right of the Palestinian peoples, and all peoples worldwide, to live in their traditional lands, free from the domination and control of colonial powers like Israel and with the freedom and independence that comes with complete, democratic self-governance.

[bunnyhugs22]