#and ending their genocidal bombing campaign

[canichangemyblogname]

As Israel continues to bomb Palestinians in Gaza and attack Palestinians in the West Bank, global condemnation of Israel's occupation grows.

Tens of thousands worldwide have taken to the streets between October 13th - October 15th to rally in solidarity with Palestine. The people called for an end to Israeli bombing and the occupation of Palestine.

Several Governments have also voiced criticism of Israeli attacks on Palestine and have called for an end to the bombing of Gaza.

Cuba Brazil Colombia Venezuela Belize Russia Ireland Norway Indonesia Malaysia Oman Qatar Iraq Iran Kuwait Syria Morocco Algeria African Union South Africa

The Arab League and African Union released a joint statement calling on the international community to stop the unfolding humanitarian disaster and catastrophe before it is "too late." They have warned that the coming ground invasion could lead to a genocide of "unprecedented proportions."

However, in stark contrast, the European Council recently released a statement "condemn[ing] in the strongest possible terms Hamas and its brutal and indiscriminate terrorist attacks across Israel." In the same statement, they "strongly emphasize[d] Israel's right to defend itself in line with humanitarian... law."

The fact this condemnation comes over a week after Hamas' attack on the music festival is insulting. This past week has been filled with death from the constant bombardment of Gaza. Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza in a week than the US dropped on Iraq in a year. There are now about 1 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza. In a week. The state of Israel gave no time for grief and no time for healing before it began its reckless bombing campaign; a campaign that has killed the very hostages they claimed to be freeing. They literally "bombed the freedom" into their own dead Israeli civilians. Israel does not care about its civilians. It would have heeded Egypt's warning about the incoming attack if it did. The State and Government of Israel only care about centralizing power and finalizing its ethnostate from river to sea. If Israelis have to die in the state's bombing campaign for that, so be it. Netanyahu's far-right government has demonstrated time and again that it doesn't give two shits about its Jewish citizens.

The State of Israel will never succeed in providing for the security and comfort of Israeli Jews. It will always fail in this goal. Not because of Hamas. Not because of Hezbollah. Not because of Iran. Not even because of Palestinian resistance to colonization. It will always fail in this goal because it simply isn't the Israeli State's goal. Israel was founded with the intention and goal of displacing the native Arab people to create an ethnostate, not with the primary goal of protecting Jews. Jewish Israelis will always be the State's collateral damage in its primary goal. And they will always be the international community's collateral damage for their security and political interests in the geopolitical region. They're human capital that can be thrown at a fight.

Palestinians are burying their loved ones in mass graves in Gaza. All the living members of 50 entire families have been wiped from the Gaza Civil Registry. The hospitals and morgues are overrun. Israel is bombing hospitals and schools and refugee camps and UN shelters and ambulances and journalists and detonating white phosphorus over civilians. The EU condemnation a week late is nothing short of tone-deaf. They don't care about the victims of terrorism. This statement's release at a time when some EU countries have broken from EU norms to condemn the violence inflicted on Palestinians serves to uphold the international status quo and maintain European security interests in the "Middle East." This comes as Israel continues to fire artillery into Lebanon, as Israel decommissioned Syrian airports in airstrikes, and as Hezbollah and Hamas forces in Lebanon have targeted Israeli settlements and barracks, bringing concerns of war spilling over the region. This also comes as tens of thousands have already taken to the streets to protest their government's stance on Palestine and as people continue to protest in solidarity with Palestine.

Do not look away. Make your opposition known.

[i-am-aprl]

Yesterday, Palestinian and solidarity organizers disrupted a Biden campaign event 14 times during his speech on the protection of women's rights. These activists called out hypocrisy because Biden and his administration are actively causing a reproductive care catastrophe in Gaza.

50,000 pregnant women do not have access to healthcare in Gaza, and C-sections are being performed without anesthesia. Women and children in Gaza are being killed by U.S.-made and supplied bombs.

described by @winged-wolf-s-collection-of-arts

[ID: Transcription of what the protesters are saying, while security personnel try to get them out:

Israel kills two mothers every hour in Gaza. Ceasefire now! End the genocide! Ceasefire!

Women in Gaza are being murdered. Killing people in Gaza is a war crime. You are a war criminal.

Stop funding genocide! Ceasefire now!

50,000 pregnant women don't have healthcare. Their blood is on your hands. Ceasefire!

Ceasefire now! Stop funding genocide! Gaza is a reproductive issue.

Free, free Palestine!

The end of the video shows article headlines with photos of the protesters or of Joe Biden, from various news organizations:

POLITICO: Biden's abortion rights rally repeatedly interrupted by protesters

ALJAZEERA: Biden speech interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters

CNN politics: Biden's abortion rights rally in Virginia beset by repeated protests over his handling of Gaza

abcNEWS: Biden campaign speech on abortion rights disrupted 14 times by protesters

yahoo!news: Biden abortion rally in Virginia interrupted by multiple protesters: 'Genocide Joe'

NEW YORK POST: Biden claims Gaza heckler is 'MAGA Republican' as he's interrupted at least 10 times at rally

Forbes: Protesters Interrupt Biden's Abortion Rights Speech More Than A Dozen Times

NBC NEWS: Biden interrupted by protesters more than a dozen times at campaign rally

USA TODAY: President Biden's abortion rally disrupted by repeated protests over Gaza

Reuters: Biden's abortion rights rally in Virginia interrupted by Gaza protests

/End ID]

[dickgirlsdaily]

Fundamentally, if the democrats lose the presidency in 2024, it will not be because of "voter apathy" or "the idealistic left" or Cornell West or whatever third party candidate the liberals end up blaming. It will be because the democrats have failed to meet the lowest standards of many Americans.

You can talk about strategic voting until you're blue in the face, but fundamentally, people need reasons to vote for a candidate. There are people in this country watching as their family members get slaughtered by American arms, sent to Israel by Joe Biden. The people watching their families get murdered in Palestine have no reason to support Joe Biden. How can you ask them to?

"Sorry your family got bombed, but I need you to vote for the man who is directly responsible, or *real* people are going to suffer too."

It was at this point While I was drafting this post that I heard he just started bombing Yemen. It's like he's doing everything in his power to sink his own fucking campaign, are you shitting me? This isn't a matter of "stupid commies not being realistic enough", he's not just working for the status quo; just about every action he has taken since October 7th has been an escalation of conflict in the Middle East and made it worse for everyone living there. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

You can scold people for voting wrong as much as you want, but fundamentally the way that democrats can win elections is by pursuing good policy. If the only argument you can come up with in favor of Joe Biden is that he won't do 1 or 2 of the terrible things that Trump wants to do, then that will simply not appeal to the people who are most intensely affected by Biden's failures (not to mention people who have moral objections to genocide, even when it doesn't affect them). You can scream and cry all you want, people are not going to just overlook his role in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza just because he is the Less Bad Genocider.

If a republican wins the presidency in November, you can blame the hundreds of thousands of voters/nonvoters who should've agreed with you and put aside every moral concern they ever had about the Biden administration... or you can blame the one fucking guy whose massive foreign policy failures are going to tank his re-election campaign.

[heritageposts]

A week ago, US President Joe Biden claimed that a “ceasefire” deal in Gaza was imminent and could take effect as soon as March 4. “My national security adviser tells me we are close,” he told reporters while eating ice cream in New York City. But ice cream or not, Biden’s actual position was not nearly that sweet. A subsequent statement by a senior Biden administration official claimed Israel had “basically accepted” a proposal for a temporary pause in fighting. But as of March 4, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Mossad director were still refusing to send a delegation to Cairo, where talks with Hamas were under way. The Biden administration’s eagerness to claim victory in its search for some kind of temporary truce indicates how much it is feeling the heat of the rising global and domestic pressure demanding an immediate ceasefire, an end to the Israeli genocide, an end to the threat of a new escalation against refugee-packed Rafah, and an end to the siege of Gaza and immediate unhindered provision of massive levels of humanitarian aid. Despite Washington’s vain hopes for March 4 and the unofficial goal of a ceasefire by the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on March 10, the deal remains elusive. Media reports indicate Biden is telling the Qatari and Egyptian leaders that he is putting pressure on Israel to agree to a truce and a captives swap. But his claim of pressuring Israel is undermined by the continuing US vetoes of ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council, most recently on February 20, as well as the continuing flow of United States weapons and money to Israel to enable its assault.

And, on the alternative resolution the Biden admin has put forth after vetoing Algeria's resolution (which called for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire," "forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population," and "unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza."):

[...] Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s ambassador to the UN, cast the sole veto against the Algerian resolution, and instead put forward an alternative US text, claiming it also supported a ceasefire. But the proposed US language does not call for an immediate or permanent ceasefire or an end to Israeli genocide; it does not prevent an attack on Rafah or end the Israeli siege. The proposed US resolution is not designed to end the murderous Israeli war against Gaza – nor is the deal that is currently being negotiated in Cairo. To the contrary, the provisions of the US draft resolution reflect the true intentions of the Biden administration vis-a-vis its continuing support of Israel, and reveal the limitations of the truce it is trying to orchestrate. While the US draft resolution does use the dreaded word “ceasefire” – which had been prohibited in the White House for months – it does not call for an immediate halt in the bombing, only “as soon as practicable”, with no indication of when that might be. It does not call for a permanent ceasefire either, leaving Israel free to resume its genocidal bombing – presumably with continuing US support. Virtually everything the US draft calls for is undercut by what is left out. The demand for “lifting all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale” in Gaza certainly sounds appropriately robust. But that’s only until you realise that the text’s failure to challenge or even name the principal barrier to aid getting in – Israel’s bombardment – means that this is not a serious plan to end Israel’s deadly siege. It should not surprise anyone that “the Biden administration is not planning to punish Israel if it launches a military campaign in Rafah without ensuring civilian safety” – as Politico reported – despite claiming it wants a credible plan to ensure Palestinian safety. No one in the Biden administration has even hinted at imposing consequences for Israel’s constant rejection of the insipid appeals for restraint – such as conditioning aid on human rights standards (as required by US law) or cutting US military aid altogether. That’s what real pressure would look like. A more accurate picture of Washington’s approach to Israel’s war against Gaza is the continuing US pipeline of weapons to make Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza more effective, more efficient, and more deadly. According to the Wall Street Journal, the “Biden administration is preparing to send bombs and other weapons to Israel that would add to its military arsenal even as the US pushes for a ceasefire in Gaza.” The arms the US intends to hand over to the Israeli army include MK-82 bombs, KMU-572 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and FMU-139 bomb fuses, worth tens of millions of dollars. It is more than likely that the administration will do another end run around US Congress to send the weapons without relying on congressional approval, as it did on at least two occasions last December.

. . . full article on Al Jazeera (4 Mar 2024)

[palipunk]

If you know anything about Al-Nakba, everything you see now feels like deja vu. I look at the escalation of genocidal violence in Gaza and I am eerily reminded of the stories of the Nakba survivors in my own family because time is really just a flat circle and I would argue that Al-Nakba never really ended for Palestinians. Because how could you say Al-Nakba, literally meaning the Catastrophe, has ever stopped for us?

I mean, look at what we've been seeing. I see schools and homes and hospitals bombed in Gaza and I think of the terror campaigns of the Hagana, the Irgun, and Lehi (who integrated into the literal IOF - terrorist colonizers through and through), who blew up homes and schools and threw bombs into crowds of Arabs. I see the IOF drop leaflets from the sky in Gaza warning Palestinians to flee to the south or face punishment and I think of the loudspeakers in Palestinian villages warning if they did not leave their homes they would face terrible consequences like mass murder and rape of Deir Yassin.

I see the men (and as many pointed out, children and women too) in Gaza rounded up, stripped of their clothes, and carted off to who knows where, and then I think of people like Haim Avinoam, who was ordered by the Hagana to circle Balad al-Shaykh and kill as many men as they could. Or how in the villages and towns that were taken over by the Hagana, men of military age were expelled or imprisoned in POW camps.

I see IOF soldiers in Gaza looting Palestinian homes and rummaging through their belongings for all of social media to see and think of the looting that happened in 1948 - settlers taking precious belongings like jewelry and books but also entire stores and homes. I see the openly genocidal statements of Israeli officials and think of the letters and dreams of Zionists who orchestrated the Nakba, like David Ben-Gurion (the first prime minister of Israel), who would write to Moshe Sharett about starving Arabs out of Jaffa and Haifa and even to his own son wrote: 'The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making this happen, such as a war.'

I push back strongly on the Israeli notion that all of this started on Oct 7th, because it is 1) ahistorical and 2) frames everything that is happening as a reaction to 'Palestinian violence' that just came out of nowhere and not that Palestinian violence is a reaction in itself to over 75 years of consistent Israeli settler violence. This is Al-Nakba.

[zabadi]

i don’t think it’s 100% anti blackness that palestine is getting comparatively more “attention” right now they are both genocide yes but there are a lot of differences btwn the one in palestine & the one in sudan that contribute to a lesser understanding/awareness abt sudan. Chief among them being that for 75 yrs there has been a focused relentless campaign on the part of palestinians both at home & in the diaspora in the pursuit of a clear & singular goal. there’s no comparable movement for sudanese people there’s no infrastructure for getting other people to join the cause. i could spend another 10k words exploring the reasons sudan doesn’t get the same type of attention but honestly at the end of the day what’s the point? one of the reasons IS anti blackness i’m not interested in exonerating people in the imperial core of that.

i don’t want to be reductive about this ive spent weeks thinking abt it. But just because things in sudan are very complicated or unfamiliar just bc they don’t fit as easily into a simple political worldview doesn’t mean you don’t owe it to the sudanese people to try to understand & advocate for them. Palestinians have worked for 75 yrs to make the world see them as human & stil this is happening to them what else can they do? it’s not their fault the whole world is anti black. but if you live in the imperial core if you’re not being bombed every day if exploitation of the third world happens for your benefit then there actually isn’t any excuse for you to not show up. the least You can do is to take the lesson that palestine taught you & not force every other colonized people to spend 75 years teaching you the same one!

[stil-lindigo]

You'r eunder no obligation to reply but I'd like to ask, how do you keep your head up these days considering the genocide? It's been nearly five months now, my entire family is giving up the stirke and falling into propoganda, and every time i think "surely this is the end, no way the us will keep supporting this, israel is on limited time" i keep seeing no end in my twitter feed to the countless losses, i keep seeing gore and childrens butchered on my tiktok. i dont wanna lose hope or faith but ive started feeling so depressed these days that i dont even wanna open my social media because i know what ill see. it might sound selfish but i hope i can open up my tiktok and see silly little people doing trends again instead of seeing one between 6 posts asking to use filters so that they can donate and detailing the necessities that israel banned from palestine and it just feels so soul crushing and hopeless. it makes me feel worse because if im tired of it then how do palestanians cope being in it? if you have any tips or good news id be grateful

hi anon. A lot of what Palestinians report first-hand is graphic, and horrifying, and would contribute to that soul-crushing feeling. But they are so tenacious, they have so much love for their people, their country. Often, Bisan or Motaz or Plestia when she was still in Gaza will share little slices of joy from displaced Palestinians. It reinvigorates me, and I'll often return to watch them when things seem dire.

A baby in Gaza, blessedly unaware of the horrors. Look at that smile!

A Palestinian mother makes donuts for her children, and offers Bisan one as she prepares for an interview. She (the mother) talks about how she makes treats like this to try to cheer up her children, how she keeps herself busy like this so she can't feel the grief of the situation. It is expensive to buy firewood these days, and flour. At her side, her children chip away at a block of wood to help her.

if you'd like to support people like this family, donate to CareforGaza, which directly distributes supplies and money to families in need. They have stopped donations to their Gofundme campaign due to overwhelming support, but you can still donate via the paypal link in their bio.

Young Palestinians parkour in the ruins of Gaza, to show that Israeli bombing will not kill their spirits.

Mo, a Palestinian man, buys cat food after searching for two days straight, and feeds the stray cats in Gaza.

Palestinian children at a refugee camp filming a cute video.

Although they've lost their home, a Palestinian family gather to celebrate their youngest child's birthday, complete with a small cake and a birthday hat.

Bisan makes bread in Khan Younis.

Palestinians celebrate the birthday of an injured girl in hospital, with a small cake. One of them has dressed up as a clown.

After losing 22 members of his family and being injured in a bombardment, a Palestinian man named Mohammed Al Ghandour marries his fiance in a tent.

A Palestinian journalist plays with a baby who survived an airstrike.

@/nisreendiary on TikTok documents the process of making fresh bread in a tent in a calming video.

I got most of these off twitter, from this thread. Twitter is a hellscape at the best of times, but the easy communication it provides is a blessing. I'll try to share more of the good news here, as they pop up. In the future, I recommend you follow Eye on Palestine, or Al Jazeera if you'd like to stay informed on the situation in Gaza with minimal scrolling.

[zvaigzdelasas]

"We are joining millions of people across the US and around the world in demanding an end to Israel's brutal assault on Gaza and its decades-long occupation of Palestine," said Ellie Tang, an organiser with the anti-war youth organisation Dissenters.

"We urge Congress and Biden to hear the calls of millions of us living in this country and push for a ceasefire. Until Congress blocks the bombs, we will." [...]

The blockage was organised by Dissenters, St Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee, Black Men Build St Louis, the Boeing Arms Genocide Campaign, and Resist St Louis. The activists are calling for two immediate actions: firstly, for Congress and Biden to demand an immediate halt to hostilities, and secondly, to halt arms sales to Israel. They are also urging communities to persistently partake in direct action aimed at Boeing and other firms benefiting from Israel's occupation. "We want Congress to know what it looks like to take brave action. And that we will not wait for their timelines to actualise demands of ceasefire," said Su Mac, an artist and organiser. "As taxpayers, we all have blood on our hands. Congress must act before they are etched into history books as complicit in a genocide the country called on them to stop. The whole world is watching."

6 Nov 23

[gothhabiba]

[ID: First image: dark gray poster with illustrated hands snapping a missile in half, in white and red. The heading reads "November 9-10". Bold white text reads “international action to stop arming israel” with a subtitle in red “stop the genocide!” At the bottom is the Workers in Palestine logo. Second image reads: "Across the globe, people are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, but those in power aren't heeding the call. It's time to ensure they hear us loud and clear. We call on you to join two international days of action on NOVEMBER 9 - 10 TAKE ACTION TO STOP ISRAEL'S WAR MACHINE AND PUT A HALT TO THE ARMS TRADE. Large rallies are important, but we also need to put direct pressure on governments and companies profiting from the arms trade with Israel. As Israel's genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza escalates, and Palestinians are assaulted and threatened across historic Palestine, we once again appeal to all people of conscience, trade unions, workers and students to take meaningful ation to Stop Arming Israel." Third image shows a stylized globe rendered white and gray, with red streams emanating from several countries into so-called Israel. Top text: "Many of the weapons causing mass destruction in Gaza now are made and shipped globally, with profits passing through your countries." Bottom text: "NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL! THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW!" Fourth image: text reading “WE ARE CALLING FOR GLOBAL DAYS OF ACTION ON NOVEMBER 9-10 TO STOP ARMING ISRAEL. WE CALL ON: EVERYONE to block all factories making and exporting arms to Israel. UNIONS AND WORKERS to not manufacture, transport or handle weapons and/or surveillance tech destined to Israel and make public statements to that effect. STUDENTS AND EDUCATORS to uncover if your university has contracts or cooperation agreements with weapons companies supplying Israel, call them out and organize to cancel them. For more information on how you can take action, and the most appropriate targets, get in touch with us at WorkersInPalestine@gmail.com, on X at WorkersInPales1, on instagram at WorkersInPalestine.” At the bottom is the Workers in Palestine logo, below which in large text is “Together, we can end israeli impunity!” End ID]

[reasonsforhope]

"Thousands of demonstrators converged opposite the White House on Saturday to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza, while children joined a pro-Palestinian march through central London as part of a global day of action against the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Palestinians in 75 years.

People in the U.S. capital held aloft signs questioning President Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel in the nearly 100-day war against Hamas. Some of the signs read: “No votes for Genocide Joe,” “Biden has blood on his hands” and “Let Gaza live.”

Vendors were also selling South African flags as protesters chanted slogans in support of the country whose accusations of genocide against Israel prompted the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, to take up the case...

The plight of children in the Gaza Strip was the focus of the latest London march, symbolized by the appearance of Little Amal, a 3.5-meter (11.5-foot) puppet originally meant to highlight the suffering of Syrian refugees.

The puppet had become a human rights emblem during an 8,000-kilometer (4,970-mile) journey from the Turkish-Syrian border to Manchester in July 2001.

Nearly two-thirds of the 23,843 people killed during Israel’s campaign in Gaza have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory...

“On Saturday Amal walks for those most vulnerable and for their bravery and resilience,“ said Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk Productions. “Amal is a child and a refugee and today in Gaza childhood is under attack, with an unfathomable number of children killed. Childhood itself is being targeted. That’s why we walk.”

London’s Metropolitan Police force said some 1,700 officers would be on duty for the march, including many from outside the capital...

The London march was one of several others being held in European cities including Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin, where thousands also marched along the Irish capital’s main thoroughfare to protest Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian enclave.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags, held placards critical of the Irish, U.S. and Israeli governments and chanted, “Free, free Palestine.″

In Rome, hundreds of demonstrators descended on a boulevard near the famous Colosseum, with some carrying signs reading, “Stop Genocide.”

At one point during the protest, amid the din of sound effects mimicking exploding bombs, a number of demonstrators lied down in the street and pulled white sheets over themselves as if they were corpses, while others knelt beside them, their palms daubed in red paint.

Many hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Paris’ Republic square to set off on a march calling for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the war, a lifting of the blockade on Gaza and to impose sanctions on Israel. Marching protesters waved the Palestinian flag and held aloft placards and banners reading, “From Gaza to Paris. Resistance.”"

-via AP News, January 13, 2023

[qqueenofhades]

What do you think of the movement to vote "uncommitted" in the primary? Personally I think it's a good idea as a protest vote, while not "allowing Trump to win" since it's, ya know, the primary. You're voting for "the Democrat you want to be the candidate for president" not who you actually want to be president. Most of the arguments I've seen against it seem to forget primaries exist...

Well, since you came to me and presumably do want my honest opinion on this topic, I'll share it with you. However, this will also be very blunt and candid, including some things which I haven't yet said in the 4+ months since the whole Israel/Hamas situation kicked off, and therefore also frustrated. This frustration should not be read as/taken as being directed at you personally, but since you're the conduit for this question, that's just something I want to highlight.

So. Why should you vote for Biden in the primary, and not "uncommitted" or whatever else?

First of all, what I desperately want to ask all these self-righteous VOTE UNCOMMITTED IN THE PRIMARY TO SEND BIDEN A MESSAGE types is: what exactly the fuck do you want this message to be, and what action do you expect Biden will take as a result? Is this actually based on an expectation of what he can/and or will actually do, or is it just a froth of misguided Online Leftist "rah rah this Bad Thing Happening Is All Biden's Fault," as we also notably went through when Roe was overturned by the Trump-stacked SCOTUS selected precisely for the purpose of overturning Roe? My god, the amount of bad "THIS IS BIDEN/THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT" posts that appeared, and are still circulating on the particularly idiotic corners of this site. Nothing could ever be Trump/the Republicans' fault in that case; it was the same old same old "DEMOCRATS DON'T CARE ENOUGH TO STOP THIS!!!" puerile fantasy. That's what we are getting now with Israel/Hamas. This isn't Hamas's fault for attacking Israel on October 7 (god forbid; the online left loves Hamas) and it isn't even the state of Israel and Netanyahu's fault for responding with full-scale genocide on Gaza. Or it is, somehow, but not so much that Biden personally couldn't magically reach in and stop it "if he really wanted to." I'm sick and fucking tired of this bullshit sixth-grade bad-faith disingenuous approach to playing Super Moral Social Justice Yahtzee and refusing to acknowledge the thousands of complex factors at play, especially when it involves blaming literally anyone other than Biden, personally (just like the Trump cultists, for whom "IT'S BIDEN'Z FAULT" is the beginning and end of their political theory, just like the Online Leftists). I'm sure this will get me called a genocide apologist by the Very Smart Moral Twitter Thinker types, but I don't think "Biden has failed to magically single-handedly solve this crisis, which stems from one of the most major and long-running issues in post-WWII and indeed pre-WWII world history, in four months" is actually a good reason to vote against him.

Likewise: withholding your vote might make more sense as a strategy if Biden was still only blindly supporting Israel and refusing to do anything to pressure them, which is demonstrably untrue. I know it's hard for some of these people to actually read the news and/or anything outside their ultra-curated Twitter feed, but it's been well-reported and well-documented that he is. If the US was directly involved in the bombing campaign on Gaza, sure, tell Biden that you will vote uncommitted to increase pressure on him to pull out. None of that is actually true, and the "information" about Biden's action in re: Gaza on both Twitter and Tumblr is basically just entirely malicious lies. So again: what message are you sending when you decide to be all precious and announce you're not voting for him? You don't want him to pressure Israel? You're willing to blow this up entirely and increase the media nonsense about BIDEN WEAK DEMOCRATS DIVIDED and give Trump an opening to exploit? You really want to announce to the Trump/Putin/Netanyahu axis of evil that their anti-Biden propaganda is working (since all three of them are working as hard as they fucking can to get Biden out of office, and as someone who opposes all three of them, I think this is a good idea to vote for Biden!) and they need to hammer harder on this wedge issue? Because that's all your oh-so-moral Uncommitted vote is doing. It's not a protest. It's not leverage. It is the withdrawing of leverage. If you want Biden in office so he can be pressured to listen to you and take action that you agree with, you will vote for him. Yes, in the primary. Yes, when it's not directly against Trump.

You want a ceasefire, you say? GREAT! WE ALL WANT A CEASEFIRE AND/OR ACTUAL PEACE AND RECOGNITION OF A PALESTINIAN STATE! That's in fact why you should be busting your fucking ass to make sure Biden gets re-elected, and to give him a strong show of support in the primary. Biden is the only candidate with a credible long-term (and like, baseline functional sane adult) plan for Gaza. Biden is the one who has been pressuring Netanyahu in every single contact to tone it down and stop acting like an insane murderous maniac and therefore torching any remains of sympathy for the attack Israel suffered in October. Biden is the one who has his entire diplomatic team working on high-level contacts with the Israeli government and the Hamas representatives via Qatar, while sufficiently threatening Iran to back down from frothing at the mouth to destroy Israel (once again, just like the rest of the antisemitic western left). Biden is the one who is pushing for this not to be World War III, and yet we get Baby's First Social Justice Activist screaming at him for being GENOCIDE JOE and blaming him personally for not, as I keep putting it, shapeshifting into Netanyahu's body and making this stop. "He should publicly call for a ceasefire!" Or, and this is just a suggestion, he should DO HIS FUCKING JOB and continue to work on serious problems that don't have instant socially media marketable catchphrases and won't come with instant gratification. Also, please tell me how you plan to get both Hamas and Israel to accept the same terms for a ceasefire, abide by it, and do exactly what Big Daddy Biden told them, because you, the dedicated anti-western anti-imperialist, think that's the best course of action?

Like. I mean. As vice president and now as president, Biden is actually one of the least foreign-intervention-happy leaders the US has ever had. He was originally against the Abbottabad raid to take out Osama bin Laden in 2011; he wound down the overseas drone assassination program (at which the Online Leftists screamed bloody murder at Obama, ignored in Trump, and then refused to give Biden any credit for ending) to almost nothing, he pulled the US out of Afghanistan, and even though he's been supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, he's also been extremely slow and cautious (in my opinion, too slow and cautious) at giving them all the military hardware they need, even before this latest blockade of aid in the House by Putin's favorite little bitch Mike Johnson. He has already presided over a historic shift in US policy toward Israel, in terms of conditioning the use of lethal aid, imposing reporting requirements, starting to criticize them publicly, and calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state and more humanitarian aid to get into Gaza. Yet in the Online Leftists' mind, because he is not personally out there Captain America-ing away the Israeli bombs and/or calling for Israel to be totally destroyed "from the river to the sea" as the Tumblr activists are fond of using no matter how often Jews ask them to stop, there is nothing he's actually doing! GENOCIDE JOE!!!!! Like, I thought the anti-western anti-American crowd thought all overseas American influence was evil (but all overseas Russian and/or Chinese influence is fine). When Biden actually doesn't recklessly intervene in foreign conflicts like Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2/pretty much every American president in the latter half of the twentieth century, you'd think that would get him plaudits? NAH.

"Biden should stop selling Israel weapons without Congressional approval!" Okay, sure, he should. Which he did one time, and he also repeatedly promised to veto and/or not pass any only-Israel aid package that didn't also help Ukraine and Taiwan. He's also not beholden to the frothing antisemitic Online Leftists position that Israel should just lie down and let all of its citizens be killed and its state wiped from existence. Like. We also remember that Jewish voters exist in America, right? And that Jewish lives are something which are repeatedly and demonstrably under threat in the rest of the world, including from Hamas and the Houthis (who are genuinely terrible people and the western left's warm embrace of them as principled anti-Israel actors is all we need to know about their inherent brainrot and moral vacancy). We know that maybe going full masks-off antisemite (which Biden isn't going to do anyway, for any number of reasons) isn't the greatest plan and nothing to which you should be conditioning your vote? Likewise, please tell me how you plan to make Congress (especially the GOP-led clown car House) "do what Biden wants," since you're still beholden to that being the be-all-and-end-all of moral action? Or how you account for Congress at all, and not just think The President is An Almighty King?

Aside from all this, I am sick to my fucking back teeth of the Precious Moral Princesses (gender neutral) who have spent four years lying about everything Biden has done. We had the personally blaming him for Roe ending (he could unilaterally overturn SCOTUS if he really wanted!) We had the endless bashing about student debt, only to ignore him actually making the most major effort to forgive student debt in all the post-Reagan years. We have had a complete ignoring and/or distortion of his domestic policy accomplishments, which are some of the most momentous since FDR and LBJ. We have had an utter ignoring, revision, and downplaying of the damage Trump did in one term and how very much worse his second would be. We have had to endure "WELL YOU CAN'T ASK ME TO VOTE FOR BIDEN" at every single second for every single thing, because this is such a terrible onerous thing to ask them to lift one single fucking finger to give us some more time to come up with a better solution. And yet, as astutely pointed out by one of my anons yesterday, they utterly don't care whether the obvious outcome of this action is to help Trump get back into power. Apparently that's not a moral reach too far, but straining their delicate tender moral sensibilities to fucking do the goddamn bare minimum to help us out -- both in America and around the world -- no, no. We can't have that.

Like. These people allegedly want a ceasefire, and they want it to come about by asking literally nothing more of them then posting snide anti-Biden diatribes on social media. That's the extent of the effort they're willing to put in. They can't even trouble themselves to take the first step of voting for people who want to address this crisis in a constructive way. So yeah, I have a hard time believing this is anything deeply felt in regard to opposing genocide, and just wants what makes them look morally superior. Also: I don't care if your feelings are genuinely pure and strong and you obviously oppose what's happening in Gaza (we all do!) and want it to end. In that case, why the fuck aren't you throwing your support (yes! Even in the primary!) behind the one guy who's actually working to fix it and not just posting empty platitudes on Twitter? It likewise does not excuse you from the harmful consequences of your rhetoric and actions, if you decide that the best way to act on your deep-seated and genuine desire to stop the genocide is just to blindly bash Biden all day every day. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not excuse the fact that this election is against Trump and everything horrible that he represents, and that we are in this situation largely because the online left has learned literally fucking nothing from 2016 and is eager to do it all over again. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not give you a special Gold Star Moral Activist sticker announcing that you were too virtuous to engage in the process now, but if you're sufficiently placated, you maybe will do it in November. Miss me with that bullshit. I've spent eight years pleading with people to help us fix this mess, by -- yes! engaging with the flawed process that makes partial changes!!! -- and all I hear is that same fucking nonsense. That is a large part of why this response is so steamed.

Anyway. In short, I don't think voting "uncommitted" is a good idea, I think it only helps Trump in the short and long term, I think it protests nothing, I think it represents the same old tired anti-voting schlock that I have had more than fucking enough of, and I don't endorse it by any means. However, you will see that while I can strongly and unequivocally give you my opinion that it is a bad idea, I cannot actually reach through the screen, take control of your body, and force you to obey me one way or the other. So maybe, just maybe, Biden can't do the same with Netanyahu. Weird.

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Israel has a right to defend itself.” This mindless cliché is the go-to posture for those who wish to wave away the mounting Palestinian body count and sirens going off about a potential genocide without the messiness of having to justify the specifics of what they’re defending. On its surface, it sounds both anodyne and sensible: Clearly a country has a “right to defend itself.” We are expected to accept this truism and move on. But wait a second. What is entailed by said country’s theory of “defense” and its political and legal relationship to the population with whom it is going to war? In the abstract, most people would agree that any county has “a right to defend itself.” But Israel is an occupying military power on land that, under international law, isn’t its land. What’s happening in Gaza right now is not a traditional war in any meaningful sense. Israel’s pummeling of a civilian population counts as “defending itself” only under the most Bronze Age moral logic of collective punishment. Even if one accepts this logic—which, to be clear, I obviously do not—or, if you believe some high but arbitrary number of Gazans must die as payback for the October 7 attack by Hamas, it would seem Israel has surpassed that number a long time ago. If one thinks killing civilians is okay as long as in doing so some Hamas fighters may be killed, then they should say what ratio of death is acceptable: 1-to-10? 1-to100? 1-to-1000? Even if a person thinks lobbing bombs into a caged population is justified because of the high Israeli body count—which to be clear, one should not think—surely 5,000 dead civilians and more than 2,000 dead children is recompense enough. No one realistically thinks Hamas—or violent resistance from Gaza—will be “wiped out” by this war. So what is the end game here? And those that do think this, what in Israel’s plan leads them to believe this is achievable without killing tens of thousands of civilians? This is a point Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) made to her pro-Israel congressional colleague Ritchie Torres (D-NY) last week, when she asked her critics, quite appropriately, how many dead Palestinian children will be sufficient. “How many more killings is enough for you? Is it a thousand more? Two thousand more? Three thousand more? How many more Palestinian [deaths] would make you happy?” It’s a genuine question: For liberals who say Israel has a “right” to kill as many civilians as it deems appropriate to “defeat Hamas,” clearly there has to be some upward limit, no? How many Palestinian children need to be snuffed out before the cure has become worse than the disease? Those defending the brutal bombing campaign should provide one, as this would reveal how fundamentally broken their moral logic is.

[dostoyevsky-official]

In 1968, Stein was one of 700 students arrested at Columbia during protests targeting both the university’s ties to the US military apparatus at the height of the Vietnam war, and the college’s plan to build a segregated gym, at the height of the civil rights movement. “This was really a crisis moment,” Stein, 78, recalls. “Students were taking a moral stand. We were ready to risk our careers, and our lives and our futures, and take a leap into the unknown and say, ‘No. We are not going to budge.’”

[...] But what hope – or cautions – do these older protest movements, and protesters, offer in the present?

[...]Observing the new protests from the outside, Stein found a great deal to admire. “I think the students have been incredibly organized,” she says. “And, let me say, completely peaceful.”

[...] The Pakistani British political activist and intellectual Tariq Ali, 80, is similarly buoyed by the images of the protests he sees on TV and social media. “I feel very joyous,” he says. “It does bring back memories.”

[...] “The most important thing,” he says, “is how important this is for the Palestinians, and how they must be feeling in Gaza and the West Bank,” he says. “That’s what we used to think when we were marching in the 60s. ‘Does it have any effect at all? Do the Vietnamese watching us know what we’re doing?’ And they did! Later on we found out that many images of demonstrations … were shown to the Vietnamese people, and to the Vietnamese army.”

Thanks to social media and 24-hour news coverage, US students haven’t had to wait to see thank-you notes from Palestinians in Gaza.

Stein sees a similar comparison, in terms of how Vietnam and Palestine serve to exemplify, and crystallize, the more egregious excesses of US (and US-backed) military campaigning. “In my day, the moral issue of our time was Vietnam,” she recalls. “When I look at the students today, I think they’ve identified the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the US’s role in arming and providing high-speed, high-scale weaponry, 1,000-pound bombs, for Israel, and they’re saying: ‘Business as usual can’t go on.’”

For other veterans of the American left, the direct comparison between the Vietnam war and the military incursion in Gaza feels a bit incomplete. The American writer John B Judis – a Berkeley grad, frontliner at Vietnam war protests, and self-identifying democratic socialist – thinks the current situation is more complicated. “I welcome protests against America’s unconditional support [for Israel],” Judis says. “For me, it’s a question of whether the student protests are an effective way of doing that.”

[...] For Judis, the current movements evoke some of the missteps of earlier protests. “They recall, to some extent, the errors that the anti-imperialist wing of the New Left made in the 60s,” he says. “They’re not focused on ending America’s unconditional aid to Israel, but on these broader goals: free Palestine. Or they want to see a secular democracy of Palestine, which I think is really unfeasible. It’s not going to happen. The Israelis are not going to allow that to happen.”

[...] Judis argues that such broadly anti-imperial aims are not only unrealistic, but also indulge a certain tendency toward “romanticizing foreign governments” that has long dogged American leftism. He cites previous generations’ glorification of Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh as examples.

[...] “The idea that this is too controversial, or will produce such a conflagration of ideas, is exactly the opposite of what the university is for,” Stein says. “And students who want to discuss it have been silenced. I think that has led to frustration, and anger, among the students. Protest does have a history on campus. But in this case, the protests were necessary to even get a conversation started about what’s happening in Gaza.”

[...] A man of Quaker and Jewish upbringing, Isserman condemns Israel’s inordinate response to Hamas’s aggression, while maintaining that the nation has a right to exist, and to defend itself “within limits that it too often violates”. And he has a hard time watching socialists (new and old) throw their lot in with fundamentalist groups. “These people are not our friends,” he says of Hamas. “You’re talking about a rightwing fundamentalist sect; a murderous sect. [The protesters] are making a very old error. Just in a new time.”

The New York University historian Michael Koncewicz notes that the anti-Vietnam war movement drew a broader coalition: not just progressive college students and American communists but liberals of all stripes. “There were people who viewed the Vietnam war as a tragic mistake that we needed to end. And then there were those who viewed it as a criminal act perpetrated by the American empire,” he says. “Those two sides were both on the streets.” That said, in his research and reporting, Koncewicz has found broad levels of support for the current movement among older radicals. “This is something that not a lot of young New Leftists had in the 60s and 70s: actual support from elders.”

[...] Historically, the US role in foreign conflicts hasn’t really moved the needle in domestic electoral politics. “We’re in uncharted territory here,” saysKoncewicz, “in terms of trying to figure out whether a foreign policy crisis will actually impact an American election. Because very few do. Most times, these things don’t matter.”

But the recent action across campuses speaks to a more intimate front emerging in the conflict. Another key distinction between the wars in Gaza and Vietnam is that the latter also took the form of a domestic crisis, with the mandatory military draft drawing American families (and voters) into this far-off conflict much more directly. The campus protests could have a similar effect. Images of militarized police forces sweeping through campus quads, rounding up students, professors and other assembled sympathizers, may win hearts and minds more than the images of a war being waged halfway across the world. “We saw that in the 60s and 70s as well,” says Tariq Ali of the police presence on campuses. “This is nothing new. What is interesting is they’re not being called by the governors of the states concerned [as in the 60s], but by the heads of the universities.”

The disgust at the authoritarian response to these protests seems to run across the various splinters fracturing the contemporary socialist left. “I have some criticisms with the encampments,” Isserman says. “But when you send in the cops, then my sympathy is with the students. That’s a separate issue from whether they could be more effective if they moderated their stance.”

Eleanor Stein hopes that, if history is any precedent, the reaction to these protests may be the thing that shifts public opinion. Like the draft, images of students being rounded up in paddy wagons wheeled on to college campuses may have a way of bringing the war home, and moving the needle of public opinion.

“In 1968, Columbia was quite divided about the protests,” she says. “But once we were all arrested, and the police were occupying our campus, the tide of opinion shifted dramatically in our favour. And that’s what you see happening now. This is how people learn … It represents a tremendous force for change. And without it, I shudder to think of where we would be.”

(x)

[northgazaupdates]

https://gofund.me/280da46d

I am Mahmoud from Palestine, and I am displaced with my family in the city of Rafah now

Our situation is very difficult, and in order to achieve safety for my family, we have created a fundraising campaign for us to travel to Egypt, and because of the coordination of entering Egypt and its high costs, we created the campaign.

We want you to help us spread the campaign and intensify the dissemination in order to collect funds for the coordination and travel of all my 42 family members before Israel enters the city of Rafah and we all die.

All our homes were bombed and there is no place to live if the war ends either, so the decision to travel is the best decision

What do you think of our decision and will you help us?

Hello Mahmoud. Thank you for reaching out. We’ll publish this request now, and then make a full post about your situation in a few hours.

Click below⬇️ to donate to Mahmoud’s family so they can evacuate to Egypt and escape genocide!!

[alex51324]

So I finally got around to reading the Gideon the Ninth/Locked Tomb series, which is awesome, and I have a number of observations, but let’s start with this: 

HERE BE SPOILERS!!  Big ones.  Up through Nona the Ninth.

I’ve seen John Gaius’s villain arc summed up as “he got mad and destroyed the solar system because they didn’t use his plan to save Earth/humanity.”  But the actual story, as I understand it, is way more relatable than that.  

I mean, here’s what I understood to have happened:  First, he’s involved in a plan to save humanity from extinction.  Said plan struggles to get funding and resources, until eventually it is put on hold.  (And he develops superpowers.)  Eventually, the Powers That Be reveal the replacement plan to save humanity from extinction, and it has...big, obvious holes in it.  Just does not pass the sniff test.  JG points this out, but nobody pays any attention.  (Meanwhile, he starts attracting more attention for his superpowers.  However, this does not result in any attention for his central message, i.e., “The newly-revised plan to save humanity from extinction is shady as fuck.”)

So he goes about collecting evidence for the shadiness of the New Plan.  Just reams of evidence showing that there is no possible way that there could possibly be enough FTL ships built in time to save more than a tiny fraction of the population.  He tries showing this evidence to world leaders.  He tries showing it to the general public.  (Meanwhile, the powers-that-be have started getting scared of his superpowers; in response he explodes some cows.)   He comes right out and says, “Hey, this small group of extremely rich people are conning the entire world into building & paying for a lifeboat that is only ever going to be big enough for them, and that’s super fucked-up.”

But  the people with seats in the lifeboat say, “That’s the guy who exploded those cows that one time, and cows have feelings.”

And everybody falls for it.  Nobody can be persuaded to care that 99.9% of humanity is going to be left to die, but there is plenty of outrage available for that herd of cows he exploded.  Every time he tries to show his evidence--large amounts of hard and extremely convincing evidence--that there is no second wave of lifeboats (much less any more after that), all anyone wants to talk about is the cows.  

He keeps on attempting to Reveal The Truth up until the lifeboats are on the launching pads and the countdown is starting.  Then, and only then, he goes, “OK, so apparently you only listen to cartoonishly evil supervillains, I can work with that” and starts cackling evilly and waving a nuclear bomb around.  

But the powers-that-be somehow guess that at this point he’s only posing as a cartoonishly evil supervillain at this point, so it doesn’t work, and finally, when it becomes clear that it’s now too late for any rational means of persuasion to work, he flips over to actually being a supervillain.

And man, as supervillain origin stories go, I just find that super-relatable.  

Disclaimer: obviously killing the entire solar system and everyone in it is bad!  And  pursuing a 10,000 year campaign of vengeance against the distant descendants of the people who conned the rest of humanity into building them a lifeboat and then left them (the rest of humanity) for dead is super fucked up. 

But.  If I were ever to go supervillain, it would probably be something like that.  I’ve had the experience of trying to show people that the course of action they’re pursuing is obviously and transparently worse, in all of the ways that they claim to care about than an alternative that they have rejected, and having them just...not care.  If I were given superpowers in the middle of such a situation, it would end badly, is what I’m saying.  

Anyway, I find that very impressive, writing-wise.  JG has obviously sailed way over the moral event horizon, and he’s kept on finding new ways to be evil after the whole genocide-starkiller thing, but the way he got there is a path I could very easily see myself going down.  

Looking back, I think the fundamental error was when he went from thinking, “They should listen to me because I have all this evidence,” to “they should listen to me because I could kill them with my magic powers.”  Everything else--for the next 10,000 years--kind of follows from that.  But I can’t be sure I wouldn’t make that mistake, if I A) was really mad, and B) had magic powers. 

[kineticpenguin]

In hindsight, the mythos of Israeli martial ingenuity and supremacy has been unraveling over the last 20 years. Slowly at first, but quicker in the last decade, and catastrophically over the last few months.

The perception that Israel is just hyper-good at all things war is certainly a cultivated one, but I don't think non-military nerds might realize how fucking pervasive it is, even into pop culture. Take Archer, for example

Cyril: Hey, will I get to learn karate? Archer: Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts? No. ISIS agents use Krav Maga. Cyril: Krav-? Archer: We've got an ex-Mossad guy, he comes in on Thursdays.

This mythos is pervasive enough that giving the US an "Iron Dome" is something Trump has promised at rallies. You know, because American cities are being pelted with low-velocity unguided rockets so much. The crowds ate it up.

But there've been cracks forming. Israel's expeditionary excursions have been a mixed bag at best, and as for their supposedly innovative weapons development, nothing in the IWI catalog is compelling for any reason beyond novelty, and nobody wants their vehicles. (AFAIK the only other country to use the Merkava is the Philippines who bought a bridgelayer variant as a diplomatic deal).

And now their genocidal campaign in Gaza has done little more than paint them as incompetent. You don't exactly cover yourself in glory by bombing hospitals and breaking up equipment in abandoned buildings, or blowing up a building that then collapses and kills 21 of your own men. Or when the whole thing is ostensibly to rescue Israeli hostages, and you murder the hostages while they carry a white flag.

What an absolute clown show. I really hope that there is some justice for the Palestinians at the end of all this.