#and for that state to exist the state of Israel must be gone from the earth entirely.

[northwest-by-a-train]

.

[phoenixyfriend]

the state of israel MUST be dismantled for a free palestine. jews existed and lived in ME before the existence of Israel, and jews will continue to live in ME but Israel as a state has to go. israel didnt bring the jews to ME.

See... the whole "Jews will continue to live" thing is what I'm not so sure of.

I understand where people are coming from when they talk about how Israel as a nation-state must be dismantled. It was established by outside forces, maintained by those outside forces, and has in past decades engaged in some truly heinous behavior.

However, that behavior was enacted by the government, which is not all of Israel, nor even all of the Jews in Israel. That government's behavior also reflects on those people of Israel, and any revenge against the government--which is likely if dismantled--is likely to land on the shoulders of the people of Israel who may not have anything to do with it.

There are pacifists and children in Israel, just as there are in Palestine. There are people protesting the conflict in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Over half of the Jews in Palestine are of a Mizrahi background, and either came to Israel from Arab countries that wanted them gone, or are the descendants of the people who did so. The establishment of Israel by the Sykes-Picot agreement resulted in many countries having a place to send their unwanted Jewish population to, and those countries now had the option of driving out, or at least 'encouraging,' those populations to leave. Operation Magic Carpet wasn't driven solely by the Imam of Yemen; Israel played its own role in it, as did the US and UK, but the result was a mass exodus of Jews. In 2022, there were a total of six Jews in Yemen. Now, there is only one.

Those Mizrahi Jews are also by and large not part of the Israeli government.

Many of the others in Israel are holocaust survivors, or the descendants of such.

It is not a stretch to say that Israel is, statistically, a country of refugees and their children.

Many of the powers most vocal about dismantling Israel are also the most vocally antisemitic. The most obvious example is the Yemeni Houthis, who have "death to all Jews" as a slogan. Hamas is aligned with them, and both are aligned with Iran, and Hezbollah. None of these specific groups want Jews in the ME, period. Some have made it very clear they don't want Jews to live at all, anywhere. It's not 'Jews who support the Israeli state' that they object to, it's Jewish people, period.

My hesitation about the argument to dismantle Israel is that I haven't seen anyone yet talk about how to go about doing it without a risk that there is another mass exodus or mass murder.

Un-fucking-fortunately, that possible result is also what Israel's government is using as their justification for war against their neighbors, and what it has been using for the better part of eighty years.

I am not defending Israel's actions. I do not condone what they are doing in Gaza. I do not condone what they are claiming about Gaza, and I have heard some truly horrifying propaganda that is getting fed to Zionists to keep the fervor up. I do not think that what they are doing in the Occupied West Bank is ethical. I do not think the Israeli government has a leg to stand on in terms of morality and ethics.

I also think that people who say "Israel should be dismantled" are looking at the past and turnabout as fair play without actually asking 'what will happen to the people who live there if a group like Hamas or the Houthi rebels or Hezbollah uses a weak transition period or sudden collapse as a chance to enact that revenge.

I don't know what the correct solution is. Rebuilding a government with both Israeli and Palestine officials in a joint system, unifying the two regions with the UN enforcing a fair and equal election and representation system? The two-nations solution that people have been talking about for ages, booting Israel from the Occupied West Bank and Gaza, and demanding they pay reparations to the people of Palestine? I don't think withdrawing all international interest and support to let them work it out among themselves is the right call. I don't think having Israel take over completely, or Palestine take over completely, is going to end well for whichever community ends up Not In Charge.

I don't know what can be done. I just know that the short, sweet, pithy 'dismantle Israel' and 'Zionism is bad' statements only sound good until you ask 'but where will the Jews, hated by most of the ME for what their government has been doing, and hated for millennia before that for existing, go?'

Which sucks, because Israel's government sure as hell didn't ask where the people of Palestine would go when they started pushing them out.

It's not fair! It's not fair to Palestine that this all is happening. It is not fair that the founded but unrealized risk to Israeli lives is being weighed against the fully realized and ongoing threat to theirs. It is not fair that thousands of children are dying of air strikes and hunger.

Palestine is undergoing a massacre at the hands of the Israeli government.

It is entirely possible that Israel will undergo that same massacre at the hands of Hamas and its allies if the 'dismantling' happens without safeguards.

Israel needs to stop. People are dying in the tens of thousands in Gaza because of their completely disproportionate response. A ceasefire is unquestionably needed and the ongoing refusal of the US government to help enforce one by pulling support from the IDF is a failure.

(No, not the Houthi strikes. That is a related, but distinct situation.)

But 'dismantle Israel' tends to come with few ideas on how to do so without risking the same situation as now, but in the other direction, and with the same or larger possibility of escalating into a wider regional conflict.

I don't know. I don't fucking know. But please understand that I am coming at this from a place of attempted compassion and concern. I am not trying to be dismissive of people's claims. I do not support Israel's actions. I don't even necessarily think Israel, as it is and as it was founded and as it acts, deserves to remain the power and government that it currently is. Restructuring, renaming, integrating, all these things are options, maybe even necessary ones.

I just don't think 'deserve' is the only consideration when the past seventy-odd years have been spent sowing the seeds of hate and revenge, and so many military groups in their area have expressed a desire to see all of them dead.

If you know of a 'dismantle Israel' plan by Palestinians, rather than some random Western Leftist, that includes plans on how to integrate the people that have in some cases been there for decades, and in some cases ended up there because they were driven or 'encouraged' out of neighboring Arab states...

Let me know.

But please recognize that I am trying my best to base my opinions on compassion and ethics and morality and awareness, not just parroting the news without thought, or my echo chamber, or whatever the first take to come to mind is. I am not trying to be malicious. I am not trying to be ignorant. I am not trying to 'stan America' or whatever people have been saying in my ask box.

They bombed me, too.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The Palestinian people have tried every method to achieve some form of meaningful self-determination. ‘Renounce violence’, they were told. They did, apart from the odd reprisal after an Israeli atrocity. Among Palestinians at home and in the diaspora, there was massive support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: a peaceful movement par excellence, which began to gain traction worldwide among artists, academics, trade unions and occasionally governments. The US and its NATO family responded by trying to criminalize BDS across Europe and North America – claiming, with the help of Zionist lobby groups, that boycotting Israel was ‘antisemitic’. This has proved largely effective. In Britain, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has banned any mention of ‘Israeli apartheid’ at its upcoming national conference. The Labour left, scared of being expelled, has fallen silent on this issue. A sorry state of affairs. Meanwhile, most of the Arab states have joined Turkey and Egypt in capitulating to Washington. Saudi Arabia is currently in negotiations, mediated by the White House, to officially recognize Israel. The international isolation of the Palestinian people looks set to increase. Peaceful resistance has gone nowhere.   All the while, the IDF has attacked and killed Palestinians at leisure, while successive Israeli governments have worked to sabotage any hope of statehood. Recently, a handful of former IDF generals and Mossad agents have admitted that what is being done in Palestine amounts to ‘war crimes’. But they only plucked up the courage to say this after they’d already retired. While still serving, they fully supported the fascist settlers in the occupied territories, standing by as they burned houses, destroyed olive plantations, poured cement in wells, attacked Palestinians and drove from their homes while chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. So, too, did Western leaders – who let all this unfold without a murmur. The age of political reason had long departed, as Qabbani would say. Then, one day, the elected leadership in Gaza begins to fight back. They break out of their open-air prison and cross Israel’s southern border, striking at military targets and settler populations. Palestinians are suddenly top of the international headlines. Western journalists are shocked and horrified that they are actually resisting. But why shouldn’t they? They know better than anyone that the far-right government in Israel will retaliate viciously, backed by the US and the mealy-mouthed EU. But even so, they are unwilling to sit by as Netanyahu and the criminals in his cabinet gradually expel or kill most of their people. They know that the fascist elements of the Israeli state would have no compunction about sanctioning the mass murder of Arabs. And they know this must be resisted by any means necessary. Earlier this year, Palestinians watched the demonstrations in Tel Aviv and understood that those marching to ‘defend civil rights’ did not care about the rights of their occupied neighbours. They decided to take matters into their own hands.   Do the Palestinians have a right to resist the non-stop aggression to which they are subjected? Absolutely. There is no moral, political or military equivalence as far as the two sides are concerned. Israel is a nuclear state, armed to the teeth by the US. Its existence is not under threat. It’s the Palestinians, their lands, their lives, that are. Western civilization seems willing to stand by while they are exterminated. They, on the other hand, are rising up against the colonizers.

[hero-israel]

The antizionist crowd loves to shift goalposts, so if they're pressed hard enough on where Jews are supposed to go or Jewish ties to the land, they'll just move to the next talking point.

If Jews are allowed to exist in Palestine, for them, they must have "checks and balances" placed against them. I 100% predict discourse talking about how Jews who remain enfranchised cannot be allowed to vote back in the old "Apartheid" system.

Because it will be very difficult to get the numbers of Palestinian refugees around the world to outnumber Jews, and very difficult to get all the Palestinians to vote for the same things, especially against a Jewish voting bloc that's still half or almost half of the country and only cares about preserving their rights. Preserving Jewish rights would be seen as Apartheid by leftists so that's what we're dealing with.

Logically, you either have to expel a certain number of Jews, socially engineer a mass immigration program for Palestinians, when hundreds of thousands of them live in the Americas quite comfortably and probably wouldn't care enough to go, wait decades for the hope that existing Arabs outbreed Jews, or disenfranchise Jews. It's obvious what their first choice is, but their second choice is clear as well.

Say everything goes their way, and peacefully. Say the new Palestinian government, purged of most Jewish influence, starts slowly but surely chipping away at Jewish sovereignty and dignity, which it will eventually. Leftist will cheer all the way and gaslight Jews pointing out the warning signs that dhimmitude is returning, and any organized effort on the part of Palestinian Jews to vote and protest will be seen as anti Arab racism.

Say Jews still have political power in Palestine, it will still be seen as Apartheid because "too many Jews" remain in important government, military, financial, and cultural institutional positions, "too many Jews" vote, and too frequently. They have all the money and power and privileges, don't you know, and they have a vested interest in saying everyone has equal rights but continue to covertly oppress the Palestinians. They will call this Palestine washing or one state washing. Mark my words.

If by some miracle an antizionist can be forced to admit that Jews should not, for moral and practical reasons, be cleansed from the land, I still wholeheartedly believe there's no real solution where they'll be satisfied, because if Jews must remain on the land, then they must be given rights too, and that's what pisses off the antizionists. They want Jews dead or subjugated or just gone so no one has to think about them.

The amount of social engineering their goals call for is neither real-world realistic nor morally tolerable. Also intolerable is the very clearly implied threat of mass violence to back up that attempted "rebalancing". Their approach would quickly devolve into a 1948-style street-by-street civil war with strong racial / religious elements. In one of his final honest comments before he went full Grayzone, Peter Beinart said that a 1SS would probably turn Israel into Lebanon.

On occasion I have attempted to engage anti-Zionists about what the political reality for post-Israeli Jews would be. They were never willing to acknowledge the risks involved or to set out risk-minimization strategies. It's all vindictive, punitive, use-the-Delorean-to-write-a-new-timeline fantasy.

A politics of revenge will not build a free, fair society. You can bet that in the alternate timeline of their 1SS, 30 years later they would still be calling the Jews "former apartheid supporters" or "apartheid beneficiaries", and urging punishments accordingly.

[dvar-trek]

i honestly don't know what to say anymore. i think a ground invasion will be disastrous, but i also think that failing to take decisive military action will leave Hamas feeling that their tactics worked—and more of the same will follow, which would be an existential threat to Israel. no country could fail to respond in the face of such an attack and expect to continue to exist. no country would. and even more so for Israel, which has multiple groups calling for its dissolution and for death to all the Jews that live there. more so for Israel, which already sees itself as the only guarantee of continued Jewish peoplehood.

so Israel will act because it must. and calls for ceasefire, while they make sense, particularly from a humanitarian perspective, i think will backfire. they will be seen as further evidence that the world doesn't care about the Jewish state, and by extension, about the Jewish people (because, as I said above, Israel sees itself as the only guarantee that the Jews will not be wiped from the face of the earth). a call for ceasefire will be interpreted as a statement from the rest of the world that no matter what attacks Israel faces, they should simply accept it and allow their citizens to be killed and tortured, allow their borders to be invaded. it will be interpreted to mean that while yes, non-Jews may express sadness over our deaths, no one really cares but us. no one will come to our aid, no one will protect us, no one will stop the next attempted genocide.

i do not absolve Israel for what is about to happen. but i can't imagine another solution. there is no universe in which Israel will not retaliate militarily. when they act, Palestinians will die, and I believe strongly that they (along with Hamas) have a moral duty to reduce the risk to Palestinian civilians as much as possible. if they do not act, more attacks on Israel will follow, and no one but Israel itself will be working to reduce the risk to Israeli civilians. no matter what path they take, we are unfortunately nowhere close to the end. no matter what they do next, more people are going to die.

what pressures the international community may exert will need to be measured if they are to be heard at all. for example, pressure to extend the 24-hour deadline for evacuation of Northern Gaza, which has long come and gone. to give more warning before an airstrike, in spite of the fact that doing so risks the efficacy of getting their actual target. some of this, Biden is already doing behind closed closed doors—apparently to good effect. this kind of strategic thinking is vital, to protect human life as much as possible.

but the pressure must be applied to Hamas as well: to allow Palestinian civilians to evacuate (instead of ordering them to remain put), to open the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing, to distribute aid to civilians (instead of stealing it, repurposing it, selling it back to civilians at a premium), to release hostages, to stop using hospitals and schools as bases (and thereby using Palestinian civilians as human shields).

pressure must also be exerted on neighboring countries to take in refugees, and resettle them if desired (which they currently refuse to do).

if we actually care about civilians and their lives more than we care about condemning Israel, we need to be strategic. we need to brace ourselves for a long conflict. and we need to fund organizations like Roots that are working to build a peaceful future for both Israeli and Palestinian people. but i'm sorry to say that i don't have much hope.

[readingsquotes]

"With every escalation of United States wars — whether the post-9/11 war of terror or Genocide Joe Biden’s current war on Palestine — we witness an escalation in policing and the militarization of the U.S. border. It is no coincidence that the Senate is currently discussing changes to the U.S. migration system as part of a military aid package related to Israel and Ukraine, in the name of “national security.” Israel purchases more than 80 percent of its weapons and military technology from the U.S., using the billions of dollars of military assistance it receives from the U.S. annually. The U.S. in turn supports Israel to operate as the police of the Middle East, North Africa, and the world over. Leftists, abolitionists and antiwar activists need to understand that our struggles against policing, prisons and U.S. empire are inseparable. As my INCITE! Comrade Clarissa Rojas and I have written, just as U.S. empire has always relied upon policing and containment as interconnected strategies for securing global power, it has always been militarist, existing in a permanent state of war and expansion, obsessively concerned with the extractive accumulation of land, resources, cultures and the people it commodifies into power and capital. During this profoundly terrorizing moment of Palestinian genocide, we need to acknowledge how the structures of incarceration, anti-migrant violence and U.S. conquest have always gone hand in hand."

When Abolitionists Say “Free Them All,” We Mean Palestine Too

We must fight militarism and oppression abroad as fiercely as we do at home.

By Nadine Naber , Truthout

Published December 29, 2023

[ollie-monster]

Transform Silence into Action

Dear reader, I am not new to silence - I silence myself in so many ways, not even letting expression of who I am through. But this is not the time for silence. This is not the time to be a bystander - it is a time to learn, to reflect deeply, to speak out, and to act. This page has a good starter kit for reaching out to politicians.

I am here as a Jewish 3rd generation Holocaust survivor to say,

stop killing our cousins! stop killing people!

As someone who has been highly attuned to the suffering of genocidal violence, I purposefully align myself with others targeted by these kinds of harm. I know that punishing, displacing, traumatizing, killing others is not the way to a world where my people or any people can live in well-being and peace.

It is all too easy for our own traumas, our own victimhood to translate into justification for harming others - to say, "I have been hurt these ways, and so it is Okay or even Right for me to hurt others like this, to get what I need to live well".

This is not the only possible response, though. Through the powers of transformative justice and other many paths of growing, healing, and well-being, it truly is possible for all life to exist in balance and flow with each other. May we be people who say - "I have been hurt, You have been hurt, They have been hurt in these ways - We never want anyone to be hurt like this ever again." I know the Palestinian people deserve to be free from harm, free to return, free to be welcomed back joyously by their land. May their homes be returned and rebuilt, may their trees sink roots deep and grow branches full of luscious fruit. May all Palestinian people have ample time, space, and support to mourn and heal.

may it be so. may it be so. may it be so.

we must acknowledge the sheer scale of the losses happening now. with 14,000 dead and more being killed every day, this not just individuals, not just families, but entire bloodlines, and many of them - hundreds upon hundreds, steadily moving towards a thousand. A thousand whole family groups, whole last names, whole bloodlines, just gone from the world. Those who have not been killed by the bombs and guns are dying of starvation, dehydration, and exposure to the elements and toxicity from bombs and rubble - outside under tarps, as the cold moves in. ALL of these are preventable deaths, and ALL of them are purposefully created. This four day ceasefire (ahead of which the Israeli military has rolled out four days worth of bombing in one day) is not the end of these atrocities, and we need to continue to find our voices - not sink into complacency with a 'pause'. In fact, Israel's defence minister has outright stated that they will resume 'fighting' for at least two months after the 'pause' has ended.

we all deserve to live in a world without mass murder; the Palestinian people deserve to be free. As do Armenian people, Congolese people, Wet'sue'ten people, Sudanese people, Yemeni people, Romani people, and all peoples facing genocide - especially those Indigenous and diasporic. All of these ongoing massacres and genocides are supported by the same network of Imperial power.

Rise. Learn. Speak. Act.

Look up where and when your local protests and direct actions are happening - many cities have weekly events. Call your government reps - or if that's too daunting, email and fax them. Check out the BDS short list of targeted boycotts. Speak about these tragedies and how they hurt us all with your friends, your family, and the people around you as much as possible.

Let us join together to create a safer, kinder, more whole world, with dignity and freedom from harm for all. With a heavy yet determined heart, ollie o.

[anthonybialy]

Lawbreaking Government

Are you uninterested in obeying the law? Don’t worry: neither is the government.  Making up rules is the favorite hobby of the ultimately unwieldy entity that’s tasked itself with controlling all the stuff.  Existence’s referees are coincidentally and conveniently not subject to irksome rules that are as absolute as they are capricious.  They must be divine if they can be two things at once.

Full commitment isn’t a virtue for those doing something regrettable.  Unhinged Democrats don’t just provide mild opposition but stand as anti-activity.  If you want to do something, you’re not allowed.  The only exceptions are for shoplifting, crossing the border into a country where you’re not a citizen, and winning the presidency so you can help your crackhead kid grift.

Wholesale interdiction means they don’t hide it anymore.  Liberals used to pretend to be into simply adding guidelines.  Of course, even telling others what to do a little is an unneeded bother, especially when it’s the sort of people liberals are doing the telling.  But supply chain breaks reflect a war on commerce that’s way more effective than that one went in Afghanistan.  Pondering whether they adhered to wholesale lunacy all along or just evolved is a fascinating academic debate.  The overbearing yet anarchic result in actuality is the same.

Accomplices don’t want the police to take it easy: they want cops to take off.  Nobody has to obey any laws unless they’re law-abiding.  A perfectly screwed-up take on compliance, safety, and rights has led to precisely the sort of bleak dystopia anticipated.

Predictability didn’t lead to comfort.  Victims of both street and governmental thievery are punished with constant legal hassles, mandates, and taxes.  It’s their fault for trying to rake in cash without waiting for Treasury checks.

Fighting crime fighting has not reduced crime.  The result somehow surprises some.  Democrats who conveniently want to be the only ones allowed to make decisions haven’t quite figured out how to inflict their edicts, what with their rather incongruous contempt for cops.  But I’m sure they’ll come up with a way to enforce laws minus law enforcement.  These are people who made money worthless, so anything’s possible to such wizards.

A government that does whatever it wants doesn’t stop fellow crooks from doing as they please.  The precedent inspires reprobates who aren’t in office.  Ensuring compliance with an endless series of commands has gone beyond a little lax.  A full withdrawal from preventing traditional crimes coincides with hassling everyone attempting to comply with arbitrary governmental incursions.  Forces march past each other.

Viewers can only conclude present ruling regimes are in favor of felonies, as there’s no other honest way to look at empty shelves and streets full of random assaults in Blue State cities and conclude they think felonies are swell.  Of course, Democrats also claim spending more money because it’s losing value means the economy’s humming, so maybe they’re just confused again.

Opposing the existence of police forces is one of those secrets liberals couldn’t help blurt out.  It’s like how admitting fondness for Hamas just became easier than maintaining the veneer that they only opposed Israel because they’re allegedly colonial occupiers.  Having laws was oppressive in general and specifically racist.  Now, societal breakdown harms everyone, which means we’ve finally reached their goal of equality.

Democrats crave more than a little bit of supervision from messianic dolts who’ve never made a dollar without winning an election.  Actively opposing trade is the only thing they sell.  A constant series of regulations are meant to restrain far more than trade.  Baffled despots never figured out if taxes are to feed government or punish those who thrive without it.  All governmental parasites know is they need to seize more using bullying that makes doing so less likely.

Endless control means countless chances for violations.  That’s the biggest loophole of all.  Getting harassed is for your benefit, and you could be more thankful about that.  Obtuse snots think proles wouldn’t be able to figure out how to unlock their phones without federal assistance.  In practice, the feds assist nobody.

Destroying what they benefit from shows true gratitude.  Life becomes so cushy until Democrats get their way that they have time to cultivate grievances.  Most teens grow out of their contempt for what makes them comfortable, often when they have to start providing it for themselves.  By contrast, staying surly is politically appealing for perpetual brats.

Enemies of the basics show the value of everything they’re against by dismantling them.  They sure are nice to make the case against themselves.  The only way liberals help is by showing why liberalism screws up everything.  Calling what’s working the problem is precisely why everyone’s been grumpy all decade.

Massive overregulation constitutes true lawlessness.  Treating people negotiating with each other as an exploitative Wild West shootout is even sillier contrasted with the ceaseless series of bureaucratic diktats with a similarly unending list of exemptions.  Impossibly helpful politicians make up rules to either compensate for their previous failures or just because they simply don’t feel like following the awful things they enact.  True criminality takes the form of changing rules.

[eleemosynecdoche]

Every so often I think about a post wherein an elderly Palestinian woman in the diaspora recounts nostalgic happy memories of life before the Nakba playing in a religiously mixed environment with Jewish children. And the post occupies my mind because it is functionally a Zionist outlook, because it describes the world after the first aliyah of Zionist settlement as one where peace and coexistence were possible, which puts it in the same camp as 1920s/30s Labor Zionists who believed in something very similar. And a truly anti-Zionist outlook, dealing with Zionism as an ideology people have, would understand that world as one where Palestinians were being brutally oppressed by the presence of those Jews and seek to produce something more in line with the Palestine of 1880, but an independent state.

But for that old woman, the problem was not that Jews were moving to Palestine, the problem was that the new Israeli state in 1947 decided to pursue genocide via ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

Political radicals who are pro-Palestinian nowadays strongly tend to loathe and mock the notion of coexistence. Their rhetoric understands the problem first in essentializing terms- the problem is that Israel exists, or that Israelis fit the category of settlers- and not in terms of what Israel does and is doing. Even when the focus is on Israel's actions, like the horrendous death toll produced in Gaza, this is understood within the rhetoric as a product of essential aspects of Israel and Israelis. Thus, Israel is defined as not capable of choosing to act any other way, and when they then denounce Israeli crimes as evil, Israel becomes inherently evil, Israelis become intrinsically evil, and the struggle is no longer about justice for the Palestinians, but rather about, concretely, the rejection of the demonic Israel and Israelis in the hopes they may be destroyed or forcibly made into something else someday, and then justice for the Palestinians will happen on its own, with the evil gone. Or maybe justice for the Palestinians consists solely of destroying the faceless, homongenous evil in retribution for its deeds.

Whatever thoughts go through people's heads, their words come together to produce this vision so antithetical to what they claim to believe.

Maybe that old woman thought in this way. But her words, her rhetoric, point to something different, and it is very occupying to my mind to think of them amidst all the thundering calls for essentialist retributive "justice" in recompense for the latest horror from Gaza. Shared by the same people. In this way, even though I have brutally condemned these people, vented cold fury, I must also admit, if I am to have any honesty and integrity at all, that they, too, are human and changeable, and it is only their actions and not some essence which is vexing.

[fish3s]

some explanations and amendments about the neil gaiman situation. this is the last i’ll say about it because i literally do not have the mental capacity to talk about it anymore without melting down. hope this is clear enough as english is my 3rd language.

text below the cut

these are the events as they happened:

1. i saw a post accusing neil gaiman of being a zionist apropos of nothing; seeing countless other posts baselessly accusing other jewish people in the public eye of zionism, i assumed it was simply because he was jewish. that was wrong, and for that i am sorry.

2. i was informed of a tweet neil gaiman made in 2015 where he said: “I think Israel has the right to exist. I think Palestine needs to be a country, or Palestinians need full Israeli citizenship.”

3. i wrongly interpreted the meaning as “i think israeli citizens have the right to live. i think palestine needs to be a country. or palestinians need full israeli citizenship.” right off the bat i disagreed with the last sentence, because palestinians should not need a permit to be in their land, and i voiced this. because the first two sentences were so short and vague, i gave him the benefit of the doubt (saying he echoes “very dully” the UN’s statement from 1948) with the hope that he would explain himself about the first two sentences, and own up to the second. i gave him this benefit of the doubt because it’s been 8 years since he tweeted that, and yes, because i wanted to believe he has been educated since then. i was wrong to do that, and if i had known he didn’t, i would never have tweeted any of it in the first place.

4. at this point the original tweet was at about 25.5K likes, having gone WAY outside my twitter bubble and having reached people who haven’t even heard of neil gaiman. these people, along with others, started qrting and calling me awful things. among those qrts there were people who were trying to explain where i was wrong, and i would’ve sought them out if it didn’t mean sifting through all the tweets telling me to go fuck myself in varying degrees of graphic language.

5. people have found a tweet i made in 2021 about supporting the two state solution and decided i must still believe it today. all the local palestinian organizations i have interacted with at that point advocated for this or a similar solution in their core beliefs, though reading online since then, i found it’s not a consensus and have advocated for the full liberation of palestine since, because i also learn and grow.

6. people helped themselves to my tumblr asks, where i got bombarded with anonymous asks telling me how awful i am and in graphic detail how i should kill myself, threatening violence, and threatening to kill me. as a person with cptsd-related paranoia, this was so distressful to read that i had to take a tranquilizer to be able to close my eyes and go to sleep. in a paranoid person’s mind, these threats become an actual danger, and they were coming in en masse in my inbox.

7. neil gaiman reasserted on tumblr that he has not changed his mind.

8. people started spreading the tweet around on tumblr, assuming malicious intent from me and twisting my words to mean something i never said or meant. assuming all of this went down after neil gaiman said his beliefs remained the same. people spoke about me with the confidence of someone who knows me, despite not knowing anything about my life or the advocacy i’ve done for palestinian human rights organizations here, in real life, marching and protesting with them weekly, sometimes risking arrest or police violence as i did, because i care about palestinian rights and i always will, regardless of what internet randos have to say about it. and i will continue to go to protests and to donate to those organizations because i feel it is my responsibility to do so, and i’ve felt that way since before this war, this tweet, and certainly before people decided i must be a terrible human being on tumblr, and i will always feel that way.

now add step 0:

0. i had the misfortune to be born in israel as an israeli citizen. i grew up swamped with misinformation and fed propaganda at school. i worked very hard to leave that indoctrination behind — but sometimes i still fuck up.

sometimes i still fall for fake news crafted deliberately by israel’s hasbara (propaganda) office, sometimes i don’t know what’s true, and sometimes i hope that — like me — people with flawed beliefs can change.

add to that the immense stress of living in an active warzone, having to see people be cruel and sometimes straight up lie about me on the internet while i’m hiding in the missile shelter in terror.

or when there isn’t a missile alert and i have a few moments of quiet for myself in my bedroom and not huddled with the rest of my family in a small room, and i open up my tumblr or twitter, who’ve provided escapism for me during this war, and i have to feel terrified for my safety again because i’ve gotten graphic death threats from a brave anonymous soul on tumblr and the cptsd i developed through so many wars (yes, israeli citizens have it, too, because we are also put in danger by our criminal government) makes it feel like i am again put in a life threatening situation.

i am begging all of you who don’t know what it’s like to be in a war, who don’t know how much it takes out of you, who don’t know the bizarre ways in which your body and mind cope with being in a long-lasting danger, to please consider your words when you’re talking to or about a mentally ill person who cannot close twitter to avoid the war. who cannot defend themselves from every accusation, legitimate or otherwise, because they’re conserving their energy just to brush their teeth or run to the bunker when necessary. a person who’s been advocating for palestine for years, who’s been vocal enough about it to be kicked out of creative writing groups and local queer spaces, and yes, who’s been very vocal about it online as well, even when there wasn’t an active war going on.

i am truly sorry for painting a false picture with my tweet. i am just as disappointed by the neil news as the next person. and it is news for me as well. i am sorry for not being able to reply to the good faith criticisms i received, if i had the mental capacity to do it well i would, historically i have done so. i am especially sorry to the palestinians whom i hurt without meaning to.

but i do not deserve death threats, and i do not deserve to have my words intentionally misconstrued. it’s not about me. it’s not about neil gaiman. there’s a genocide happening in gaza at the moment, being carried out by the israeli government. if you’re a westerner perhaps divert your anger towards that, instead of lashing out at someone — who fucked up, who is owning up to it — who is more physically affected by this war than you, who’s been living in nonstop terror for two weeks, who’s had the only source of comfort in their life at the moment stripped away from them.

and i would like to thank the people who have done that, who asked for my well-being and cared enough about me to offer some compassion my way that they absolutely didn’t have to offer, despite me royally fucking up, when everything else is just distress. when so many anons tell you to kill yourself, every one of these positive messages is a light in the darkness.

sorry and thanks for reading. i’ll be keeping to myself for a bit. please listen to palestinians.

[eddieydewr]

standwithus is not “non-partisan” they’re literally classified as right wing even amongst zionist sociologists. the creator of the organization believes that any criticism of the israeli government should be condemned and that to be pro israel you must dogmatically support the actions of the government. they teach people that palestinian refugees exist not because of forceful displacement, but because of a war arab people started themselves (this is also what noah’s new bff moti believes). and when does standwithus ever mention palestinians on their page unless to call to put “palestinian terrorists” in bold red font or tell people to boycott BDS? john hagee is a key partner of SWU, and he’s a homophobic, racist, islamophobic antisemite who said hitler was a gift from god. (here’s an article from the jewish anti zionist org jewish for peace https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2018/10/ccpfisraelilobby/).

you are absolutely right that there are thousands of years of jewish culture. which makes reducing judaism down to the state of israel a stupid conflation. there’s no denying that jewish people have a connection to the land. there is absolutely zero issue with jewish people having historically lived in, visited, or worshipped in the region for much of history before the occupation. the issue comes with an establishment of a european led settler ethnostate and the displacement and incremental genocide/ethnic cleansing of the population that was living there. israel is a white supremacist apartheid state and this is both reflected in the genocide of palestinians and the national oppression that non-ashkenazi jewish people face in israel (https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/zionism/). not only does tourism fund this project, it propagandizes it.

birthright is an indoctrination trip and fundamentally problematic. noah wasn’t on birthright based on what i know, but he was on another free sponsored trip where many of the same issues with birthright remain true (https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2017/10/returnthebirthright-faq/ ).

palestinians aren’t the only people who are being murdered everyday, but why are we minimizing or normalizing the fact that they’re living under actual apartheid because of the israeli state? would it be okay or normal for somebody to have gone to apartheid south africa and called johannesburg their “happy place”? get real. celebrities regularly get all expense paid trips to israel and sell an image of israel that’s a whitewashed paradise. in a world where israel already gets billions of dollars in international support to fund their army that brutalizes palestinian existence and suppresses palestinian resistance, this isn’t an innocuous thing.

i’m just confused bc there are conflicting views about SWU. the zionist organization of america, for example, thinks SWU is too liberal and pro-palestine, more or less lol. i can provide a link if you want a source. also, there’s the whole thing with whether anti-zionism is antisemitism, and i’m not qualified nor an expert to answer that. i’ve been reading up on some stuff but it seems like there’s no clear answer.

this moti guy does seem firm in his convictions. but we don’t know if noah is actually close friends with him or agrees with his views. i doubt it but if he does, then that is something he’ll have to contend with. he is young, he’ll learn. anyway, i honestly think moti and the woman (rachel kay?) were the group leaders, more or less, and the boys noah were with seem to attend UPenn too.

i agree it is insensitve and ignorant to refer to israel as one’s happy place. we don’t know noah, so we don’t know what he means by it. he could be happy that he’s finally out of the closet and getting to hang out with people like him while connecting with his heritage and culture. i don’t think he meant any malice. btw, i did not mean to normalise or minimise what is happening in palestine, nor would i want to, so i apologise for that. i understand what you’re saying but there were people who enjoyed themselves in south africa during the apartheid. musicians for example, they performed gigs there. i can provide a source for that too.

again, we don’t know noah. and we can disagree on this but i don’t think he’s malicious. he likes travelling and exploring - which he often documents on insta and tiktok. and he has the opportunity rn since ST production is on hiatus due to the strike. he must be bored stiff and i don’t think he’s due back at college yet.

anon, thank you for your insights and nuance. i really do appreciate it. and thanks for the links too, i’ll have a look.

[thenewdeadseascrolls]

Judges 20: 33-36. "The God of Good Taste."

The skirmish between all of Israel and the renegade Tribe of Benjamin concludes. As with all Torah related content, one must learn never to root for any side of a fight but the one taken by the Most High. This fight has gone back and forth, and of course we were hoping the Benjaminites who had taken up position on the Highest Ground were going to win the fight and live out the rest of their lives in an eternal state of Shabbat, but something went wrong.

The reason is central to the entire theme of the Shoftim, called Baal Tamar, "the god of the most enligthened tastes."

We know of the importance of Shabbat and leaving all that religious stuff behind us someday, but what happens then? The Shoftim says

Baal Tamar is west of Gibeah, meaning it is found along the West by Northwest Wall, #3924, גט‎ב‎ד, gtbd, "you got it, the wine and the cloth."

The risk we manage by maintaining the integrity of all Twelve Tribes all at once is called disaster avoidance. While the goal of Judaism is Shabbat, it does mean one mixes and mingles with the world at large as if nothing happened in the shule. Assimilation is a disaster. Assimilation means opining over non-Jewish politics and mass movements, it means accepting naive and incomplete ideas about God and the State of Israel.

The Shoftim explains how the sword of separate but together works so disaster does not take place, resulting in Baal Tamar instead:

33 All the men of Israel moved from their places and took up positions at Baal Tamar, and the Israelite ambush charged out of its place on the west[c] of Gibeah.[d]

34 Then ten thousand of Israel’s able young men made a frontal attack on Gibeah. The fighting was so heavy that the Benjamites did not realize how near disaster was. 

35 The Lord defeated Benjamin before Israel, and on that day the Israelites struck down 25,100 Benjamites, all armed with swords. 36 Then the Benjamites saw that they were beaten.

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 33. All the men of Israel took up positions. In Shmot, the Departure, we know Moses put the Column of Israel in priority order and weighted them by lot. In Vaera, we learn how the "aroused wild ass becomes one with God." Oneness with God is the objective, not a particular tribal identity. How one accomplishes this, becomes fully totally Jewish and also Shoftim is the subject of this forum.

The Number is 6179, ו‎א‎ז‎ט‎, and az, "and therefore..."

v. 34. The fighting was heavy. The fighting in Jewish communities is always heavy because no one knows what they are talking about, and niether do their opponents. The goal of arguing the meaning of the Tanakh is usually not clear nor are the research points and references because we do not actually know with 100 percent precision what they say. We only know we must make an attempt at being as civilized and as happy as possible all our lives.

Jews perceive God as a suspicious being who depends on His ambiguity in the Torah for His Superiority. But this is not what He said to Moses when the all-important moment when Shabbos and Shabbat - freedom from ignorance and slavery were the topics of discussion between them.

Ten thousand young men are needed to resolve this dilemma, meaning we need ten legions of lifetimes in order to assimilate the decrees and exit into a way of life that has not one hint of strife left within it. If we are not attempting to argue the strife out of existence we are not arguing the correct aspects of the Torah. Strife is forbidden.

The Number is 9646, טו‎‎דו‎, todo=

admit

לְהוֹדוֹת, לְהַכנִיס, לְהַרְשׁוֹת

thank

לְהוֹדוֹת, להביע תוֹדָה

confess

לְהוֹדוֹת, לְהִתְוַדוֹת

acknowledge

לְהוֹדוֹת

avow

לְהוֹדוֹת, לְהַבטִיחַ

grant

לְהַעֲנִיק, לָתֵת, לְזַכּוֹת, לְהַסכִּים, לְהוֹדוֹת, לָחוֹן

glorify

לְפַאֵר, לְרוֹמֵם, לְשַׁבֵּחַ, לְהוֹדוֹת

praise

לְשַׁבֵּחַ, לְהַלֵל, לְבָרֵך, לְקַלֵס, לְדַבֵּר בְּשִׁבחוֹ, לְזַמֵר

concede

לְהוֹדוֹת, לְוַתֵר, לְוַתֵר עַל

I knew all this already. I swear I did.

v. 35-36. The Lord defeated Benjamin before Israel, and on that day the Israelites struck down 25,100 Benjamites, all armed with swords. 36 Then the Benjamites saw that they were beaten.

So now we know how to argue the Torah and Tanakh, and how to integrate all the research and Halachah into one consolidated Jewish thought.

The Number is 11503, יא‎האֶפֶסג‎, Yah Ephesus, "How to properly reach the Summit, the abode of Yah."

As we discovered in the Midrash on the Book of Job, there are various configurations the molecules formed by the Alefbeis will assume and then imprint upon and change the structure of the mind. My Torah is modestly translated but not fully decrypted. It should be put through as full a process of illumination as possible before we presume we can take the elevator all the way to the top. Stairs will have to do until then.

[pixeljade]

I really dont get how anyone can be 100%, fully, no-criticisms, in favor of Israel at this point and still live with themselves.

Like. I try to see both sides of everything, right? Because I just think its important to try to win people over to your point of view. (I rarely succeed these days because everyone is so uttery convinced they're 100% right and take any criticism as insults they can throw away but thats beside the point)

Anyways, I can get, 100%, why Jewish folks would want an Israel to exist! I've been around a lot of Jewish folks and spaces, I've seen the antisemitism happen, and goodness knows it doesnt take a PHD in history to know that Jewish folks trying to live in countries controlled by non-Jews hasnt gone well. So yeah, I do get why the logic then leads to "Lets make our own country then!", even if I disagree with the concept of an ethnostate in principle.

I can also get why they chose the area they did, because like. The Tanakh states that Isaac, son of Abraham, got the land of Israel (called Canaan at the time), because of Abraham's willingness to obey G_d. Its kinda like the origin story of Judaism iirc (I'm still studying so Jewish friends please correct me if I'm wrong on like. Literally any of this lol), and so its very deep at the core of Jewish thought. Again, I have disagreements here, the Palestineans had been on that land for ages before Israel became Israel again, and just ousting them isnt fair to them, but I get where it comes from.

And heck, here's one where I get hate from the other pro-Palestine people on sometimes: I'm anti-Hamas too! I do understand Hamas' anger, again, I get both sides, and from their perspective they were forced from their homes and now have to live as second-class citizens in a space they called home for GENERATIONS! Not to mention the number of pre-October violent actions, including massacres, that Israel has taken against Palestineans. Of course they'd be pissed! But taking civilians hostage, launching bombs...I'm against these maneuvers no matter how justified your anger is. Just because Palestine is the victim with the most deaths or Israel has overwhelmingly more power doesnt functionally change that for me.

But what I consider the completely impossible to comprehend part is the conclusion that genocide of Palestineans is necessary. I mean, there's well over 14000 children *dead* because of Israel! If I accept there's no justifications for Hamas' actions then I must by necessity accept that there's also no justifications for Israel's! And we know these are at least reasonably real numbers because Israel itself uses them, as they havent even been keeping track of the death they wreak across the landscape. We now know of several mass graves, with evidence people were thrown in *still alive* to die crushed to death by corpses. I can't see this as okay, and I can't see why so many people can. Even if i follow the logic along that Jewish folks need a country of their own, and it HAS to be there, and Hamas did some horrible shit, there's just no way you can make me think 14,000 dead children is an acceptable price to pay.

[some-other-number]

I must be misunderstanding something in your take because right now I read it as 'the world is violently antisemitic, so instead of one safe space, there should be zero, because then maybe the world (violently antisemitic) will be less antisemitic' and that cannot be what you mean.

(I disagree with telehealth access to reproductive medicine, being able to order abortion pills to be posted to you on the internet lets texas off the hook in dealing with it's abysmal reproductive healthcare access.)

(I disagree with bail funds, because they let states gloss over the inequities in current bail policies that unfairly target low-income people and minority populations.)

(okay, sure, but what about people in texas that need an abortion now and poor poc who needs bail help now)

(in what world will gentiles ever deal with their systemic antisemitism? they didn't do it Before The Establishment of Israel, they haven't done so after, so the only difference is that now there is somewhere to go. like, the only conclusion here seems to be 'actually, we need two or three or five jewish states in the world' which solves your single point of failure issue. However, that'd like, actually be colonialism. So lets not)

so what I meant is that the founding of israel allowed especially europe to not deal with its systemic and embedded antisemetism because 'well if you don't feel safe here you should just go to israel'. even if there were multiple jewish ethnostates (and not even to go into how ethnostates are a terrible idea) this wouldn't stop countries from going 'well we've done enough to protect our jewish population, if they still feel unsafe they should just go to [one of the ethnostates]' when they have done very little in actually protecting jewish people, which is my issue. it allows for that avoidance of the issue of antisemetism. jewish safety should not be resting on the shoulders of one, two or five countries, it should be every country, every community's responsibility to ensure jewish people are safe. as with every community, in my belief. and I believe the existence of a state, or hypothetical states, designed to be 'safe places' impedes and prevents this responsibility from being taken.

I believe the world had the perfect opportunity to start the process of dismantling antisemetism after the holocaust and wwii, but instead the responsibility was offloaded onto another country. this wasn't like poynduk where it was a plan tied into immediate safety concerns (and a frankly over-optimistic plan at that), this was, in my belief, avoidance of the deep-rooted issues that had led to the holocaust, and the similarities between the way jewish people were encouraged to move to israel from europe and the third reich's plan to remove those same jewish populations to madagascar are quite frankly disturbing if I can insert that comment here. I'm not even scraping the surface of the way in which the israel state and palestine have been used as a political pawn for the usa and uk and their allies since the fall of the ottoman empire! however since it has been seventy-five years, this opportunity has been gone for a long time, and currently, it's a hell of an undertaking. I don't claim to know how to dismantle antisemetism in today's world, and I only really know how it might've been achieved in the 1940s with the power of hindsight. I think we should try though. or maybe I'm just a random tumblr user who is naively optimistic

[monsooninn]

Berakhot 7a:5. "Jaws."

Continuing on page 7 is our discussion on law, order, and anger. All of these pertain to the presence of the Black Pillar. There are no reasons for the existence of the Black Pillar of Corruption on this world. It makes no sense that the city of Washington DC is at peace and Jerusalem is not. What is different? One place has a corrupt government one place does not.

If we were to put the DC City Council in charge of Jerusalem, could they fix things? Yes we could. Why are we not doing this then? This is also because of a kind of corruption that should make us angry. We could easily hire people like the DC City Council to work in Jerusalem. Our decision to value the happiness of the people living in Washington over those living in Jerusalem is arbitrary. There is no reason they should be not be governed alike and experience the same quality of life.

The God of Jonathan is a pivotal being in the transference of anger when lawlessness and disorder are displacing people from their ordained purposes. He changed Washington DC, He can change the rest. To be able to mutate from a society that is incapable of noticing all it has lost due to corruption in its midst and eke out civilization is the path to Mashiach the human race too often refuses to take. Nonetheless, the Mishnah Torah states it is a journey we must make:

5. And Rabbi Yohanan said on behalf of Rabbi Yossi: Whence there is no one to restrain a man in the hour of his anger, he dictated: "Let them go and let me go to you." The Holy One, blessed be He, told him to Moses: Wait for me until the faces of anger pass by and you are sweet.

Yossi, Joseph, is derived from yu, "in the Name of the Lord", and sef, "the sill of the threshold." In Judaism the threshold is a complex topic. It is the mystery beneath our feet, the knife in our hearts, it is the unsolvable mystery that we allow to govern our lives. Ultimately it is crossed by understanding the meaning of the lives of the Neviim.

The Torah explains how civilization is made from the clay of human remorse into something none of us shall regret. The Neviim explain how to turn all of it from fantasy in personal reality. They represent the gods of Judaism, demigods and goddesses whose names have symbolic meaning, whose lives and stories have esoteric meaning we can turn into some aspect of real life.

All Jewish gods are successes. They make twists and turns but they are not flawed, they do not fail, all of them complete the portrait God intended for us to see. Jonathan is one of the more frequent named by the Mishnah because he turned a dirty filthy murdering savage boy, David into a King to whom the Lord Prophesied:

2 Samuel 7:

8 “Now then, tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. 9 I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth. 10 And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning 11 and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders[a] over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies. “‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: 12 When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. 15 But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me[b]; your throne will be established forever.’”

Without Jonathan the little trollup whore, David would not have become royalty or taken over the reigns of the mess King Saul, who had no vision left behind and created a lasting name for himself.

The Mishnah is telling us we need to follow the example of these Neviim, triumph over the messes our former rulers have left for us and cross the border into our own discrete and purposeful lives. This time, it will be one demarcated by the Crown of Israel who will not suffer a lawless human race to overthrow the will of God that is identified by the Torah.

The Value in Gematria is 7292, זבטב‎‎ , zabat zabtev, "the jaws of the wolf."

The Gemara likens the human race to the jaws of a wolf when it tries to be happy while lawlessness and disorder are prevalent.

The planet is becoming a giant tumbled down concrete slum. We have turned our back on it for too long. The Mishnah says God will put our happiness on hold until this is fixed.

[ancestorsofjudah]

2 Kings 25: 13-15. "The Bronze Pillar."

We are discussing the healthy integration of the Church and the State using Constitution. Constitution embodies the desire of the human being to be indentured into the cause of his own freedom and independence at no additional expense to him. All he has to do is reside and be permitted to work in his jurisdiction of choice.

This next comment will not make me more popular, but it certainly can't make me less, but even still it is the Government that has standing in the affairs of all, including the hurch, and not the other way around.

The Church is too subjective, too ethereal in its arguments for the existence of the Unseen and its Will to Power over this world, and this is not what we need or have come to find useful.

Therefore constituted governments in the name of social order guarantee the right to a church education, but cannot mandate it nor ever be subject to the whims of the Church. So the Babylonians, fans of Constitution come and lay siege to Israel and Judah and force them to play by rules that have no potential to become random or assume positions contrary to others. All positions must favor the welfare of the people, all of the people, all of the time, and that is that.

This idea of a mixed majority is also not always popular but societies that are not self-conscious about their human rights legislation do just fine.

The following passages discuss which aspects of the Temple are actually managed by the State and not indirectly so that the value of the human being is not undersold by any means:

13 The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the movable stands and the bronze Sea that were at the temple of the Lord and they carried the bronze to Babylon. 

14 They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service. 

15 The commander of the imperial guard took away the censers and sprinkling bowls—all that were made of pure gold or silver.

Bronze tools are mentioned early in the Torah in Bereshit:

17 Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch “disciplined, well trained” . Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 

18 To Enoch was born Irad “city of fugitives from ignorance” , and Irad was the father of Mehujael “destroyed by God”, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, “man of God” and Methushael was the father of Lamech “strong man for humiliation”. 

19 Lamech married two women, one named Adah “ornament”  and the other Zillah “shadow”. 

20 Adah gave birth to Jabal “to follow a course” ; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. 

21 His brother’s name was Jubal “flow maker”; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. 

22 Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain , who forged all kinds of tools out of[u] bronze “intelligence, insightful” and iron. Tubal-Cain’s “leader of the world’s economy” sister was Naamah. “sweet, pleasant.” 

Ignorance is destroyed by God through the meeting of the human mind with a fine education. A fine education is mandated by the government, but as to how it suits God's purposes and why we should invest in it is explained in the Torah.

Pillars made of bronze are full sized circumcised male penises that have been led to Sinai by the Rab and there burnt in front of the Burning Bush during a kind of sacred weenie roast. From Korach:

Korah, Dathan and Abiram

16 Korah son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and certain Reubenites—Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—became insolent[a] 2 and rose up against Moses. With them were 250 Israelite men, well-known community leaders who had been appointed members of the council. 3 They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?”

Korah= called to God

Izhar=sparkler! "the ripest"

Kohath= obedience, the gathering of the congregation.

Levi= unity

Reubenites= traits of leaders

Dathan= decree or well. A dat is a decree, a han is "of God's Grace."

Abiram= Father of loftiness, my Father is exalted.

Eliab= God is my father

On= Pillar, the abode of the sun

Peleth= to distinguish, to pray something unseen in revealed, also "special, separated".

"Those called to the mountain are the smartest, get along well with others and exhibit the traits of leadership. They observe the Decrees, exalt God [refrain from idolatry and propaganda] and have big golden pillars. They are distinguished in their ability to discern what is unseen."

4 When Moses heard this, he fell facedown. 

=Worship of God, associated with the Amidah "preparation",

In the name of Almighty God, let us be protected, free of limiting deception, free of boundaries, let us connect with love, let us connect in utter holiness.

A moveable stand is a man who is like the trunk of a tree which can spread its branches and fruits as far as the branches grow. Wherever the man goes, there his enlightening influences go with him.

The Molten Sea or Brazen Sea (ים מוצק yām mūṣāq "cast metal sea") was a large basin in the Temple in Jerusalem made by Solomon for ablution of the priests. It is described in 1 Kings 7:23–26 and 2 Chronicles 4:2–5. It stood in the south-eastern corner of the inner court. It represents "the endowment of the present moment."

Pots, shovels, wick trimmers, and dishes are referred to in the Torah as the means to unearth the Sentient Self by discarding what is not intelligent, considerate, noble, or good. Around these qualities, a man is wrap himself like leather around a frame. From Bemidbar:

9 “They are to take a blue cloth and cover the lampstand that is for light, together with its lamps, its wick trimmers and trays, and all its jars for the olive oil used to supply it. 10 Then they are to wrap it and all its accessories in a covering of the durable leather and put it on a carrying frame."

Sprinkling bowls are the weirdest part of this, they represent adavz, "advancing to Zayin" the Eye of the Fountain. Proper knowledge of the universe is sprinkled by God a little at a time all around us. To sprinkle the blood out of a sprinkling bowl represents the diffusion of the Full Understand of God by other males through their blood sacrifices a little at a time, every day, is the key to understanding the mystery of the sprinkling bowls.

History and society advance in the same way. We get one day, one hour at a time in order to work out our problems and fulfill the hidden wishes of the human race that are inherent to the laws named in the process of Constitution. We tend to struggle against them and lie to ourselves, thus we are regressed humanity. Even still the Torah Melachim says we are to do the opposite.

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 13: The Babylonians broke up the Pillars. The Value in Gematria is 8573, חה‎ז‎ג, hazg, "the couple."

By breaking up the Pillars of Religion, the Constitution creates a new kind of union. One in which the rights of persons are guaranteed to be respected. Religion says this is a good thing to do, the law says it is something one must do.

v. 14: They took away the pots and the shoves. The Value in Gematria is זחזא‎, zahza, "it is this."

v. 15: And the censers and sprinkling bowls. The Value in Gematria is 7237, ז‎בג‎ז‎, "wasted."

Happiness is wasted if the Church is allowed to put all of life in its clutches. Religion is necessary for our development, no other institution teaches or demonstrates ethics to little kids or substantiates their importance to adults but the church.

Even still, it is as important to be happy as it is to be ethical. Constitutional governments guarantee the importance of both.